Friday, February 5, 2021

Practice Day Total Fail

 I must admit that day trading has given me a new pep in my step.  But, sadly, a little less change in my pocket.  

I decided to use my new Candlestick graph knowledge on a few selections today.  Makes me realize I need to watch more than one youtube video about Candlesticks.

Yesterday, I decided to purchase 2 IPO stocks because it is my experience that IPOs zoom up before they settle back down.  That is precisely what my 2 IPO stocks did.  Sigh....I held.  It was just too hard to sell, and it was before I had any knowledge of candlesticks so I couldn't interpret the data.  I could have sold yesterday for a 15% gain....

...Instead today I sold for a 10% loss.  Yuck!




I then decided to try my hand at purchasing a big mover and see if I can capitalize on the movement and get some of my loss back.  Once again, I did get a reasonable 5% gain but didn't exit until the stock had moved down 26.7%...yikes!  (It was only a $5 stock.)  This time the candlesticks lit my way, but I ignored them thinking it was going to reverse.  

I'm still waiting on what my final loss will be as I have one more stock that I decided to sell at close because I can't look at anymore charts today.

I should end up the day with an overall $10 loss and a very bad start to this experiment.  

Today I learned:

1-Candlestick charts really do show you the way as long as you follow them

2-To day trade, you have to move in and out fast.  You are looking for small wins that add up.

3-I need to focus on just one stock to start and stop looking at others.  One stock, one buy/sell, and out.  

4-Day trading is bad for getting steps.  It's almost 3pm, and I only have 2,000 steps.  

Time for a walk!!

I do have a plan for Monday.  Based on some additional youtube videos I watched, it is a very popular strategy to purchase stocks based on their premarket gap.  I found a free screener on Marketwatch.com that will show me the largest gaps.  Then, you put an order in for open and sell usually within 5-10 minutes when you get a 5-10% gain.  Fingers crossed it works!

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