Big up day to save my week

 Experimenting with Friday strategy, which can boom or bust. I routinely play with fire, but I need to moderate the types of explosions that can happen on Fridays. Risk control is #1. Trading as if it will only go in my favor is a recipe for disaster, even if, when it does go for me it's incredibly lucrative. 

Today I first tried next week expiration, which in this case is monthly options. Surprisingly there was no volume on the trades I was watching and what I took didn't ignite. So I adjusted course. Smaller positions with today's expiration. Scaling in so I don't eat a big loss. 

Going small isn't new to me, but scaling IN is not my usual. This might be something interesting to experiment with on other days as well, so I can build some really big positions when it's working.

Closing the week +6%. 

Trade of the day was RBLX. I had it both ways. One of my fatal flaws to work on is when something I'm watching for a long starts to fail, I take it short. NO! Just wait for the long to set up again.

Smart or lucky?

Smart or lucky today? Does it matter? I think trading is analogous to backgammon. There is strategy of game play, but there is also luck of dice. (Vs chess which is all strategy)

Today I missed the open due to picking up kid at school with a stomachache. "The trader life" sometimes looks like this! It's much less glamorous, but is also an advantage of the freedom and flexibility trading provides.

By the time I got back, I needed to find non-opening plays. And this has been one of the things I've been thinking about lately... how to trade midday market. I reviewed my volume movers screen, which is just a price/volume screener, sorted by run rate. I'm not sure how to hone it for midday results. For starters, maybe split it by price range so at least I'll get more ideas (vs max 50 results).

And then I looked for setups. AMC breaking down was "easy money" but I left a lot on the table. TLRY also paid quickly. Both of these for pl and also stop in the 20% range. 

I stopped PATH (crap overnighter) for a pretty big loss. My day would have been best ever if not for that. As it is, +7% (coulda shoulda +12%)

Then reset to look around again. Had my eye on roku, ddog and spwr. All similar setups: rounding off bottoms. I watched the action for a while and scaled into DDOG. Got a terrible fill on first batch, but that's why I started small anyway. Scaled in another partial, and then it really ran. Spreads were wide (another reason I started small/scaled in), so I had to take limits, but I did great.

Things to keep working on:

midday trading strategies

max day loss discipline

don't reverse long setups, just wait for new long

Took a loser home

Had a sizable down day, and took a loser home. Both problems relate to a spready option that I made cardinal sins on: in too big, on something too spready. Gonna take a pretty big reversal on this guy to recover. 

Meanwhile. CLOCKWORK. 

As tempting as it is to try to pile in and recover quickly, remember!... dig out with a spoon. Get back on track. Don't be driven by emotion/greed. 

Clockwork works. Stick with clockwork. Day in and day out. I will get my piece, and be at peace. Why do I keep messing around, thinking I'm "too smart"? That's how I eat it.

Tuesday morning

 This morning the market is pushing near highs. Most of the gaps up are stocks curling off interim lows, and some meme stocks. It's not the really strong stocks on my gaps up. And the opposite, gaps down are generally strong ones and the crypto/adjacent.

The plan will be to sit tight. Enter small. Tight stop is the right stop. Pay myself first.

$21 million loss (Schwab "glitch")

End of day, +6%, but the morning started with a heart attack.

Monday morning. Raring to go. A few good picks. First pick triggers, AI, I buy puts. Place my conditional orders. Look at second trade. Triggers. Can't get the trade in... I don't have funds?

I show my account balance and I'm in utter shock. I'm down $22million!!

OMG! What happened? Did I buy some ton more than I thought? Did I get the worlds worst fill? Did I get exercised? What's going on? None of these ideas get anywhere close to explaining -$22million. My account is many orders of magnitude smaller than that.

I closed AI for a 6% loss, to close my exposure. I had no idea what was going on !

Turns out Schwab had a "glitch" (to say the very least!) after a system update that mis-calculated options commissions. Long story short, at around 11:30 it was resolved, but I lost the whole morning. Finally sat down to trade after 12. 

Managed to catch nice trades on SNOW (tradenet pick), CCIV and AMC (premkt screener). I'm aware I don't have a good screener for mid-day trading. In general I don't really want to do midday trading, and/but so far all I really have to go on is volume screener. All trades were under 25%, only 2 tiny losses (-5%, -2%, -1%). Tight stop is the right stop. Zigs, no zags.

This is what I can do today in the way of annotating