As I stated in my last post, I’ve been getting my mind focused on stocks. These last four weekends really had me re-work my strategies and test out different ways to see tickers. So I had a thought: what if I sim-traded only one stock for one month? Will any of the lessons I’ve learned bear fruit through my simulation trades? So I decided to pick one stock to trade for all of May.
The stock I chose was Netflix (NFLX). I picked it for its daily range, the fact that I've studied it for over two years, and I absolutely love its patterns. So now I present Week 1 of The Netflix Trades:
Monday May 2nd
$510
Tuesday May 3rd
$310
$260
Wednesday May 4th
$200
Thursday May 5th
$1,150
$450
$160
Friday May 6th
$350
Totals for Week 1: $3,390
Unreal. Over $3,000 in one week. That’s 18 years of premium Netflix service. That’s almost 4 months of cutting bolts and checking in trucks on weekends at the shipping depot. That’s 2 months of work at the bank job. Instead of being at the bank job right now, midway through a 36 hour work-a-thon, I could be writing this post at home. In fact, the 36 hours I'm working this weekend will make me the exact amount of money I made on Friday with about 50 minutes of stock research and trading. That’s… unreal.
One might think that I’m happy with the results of Week 1, but I’m not. As many things as I did right, I made a number of bad decisions. The first two days were good, but I did an impulse buy on May 4th. That impulse buy could have cost me $800 but I got lucky. On May 5th I made three trades. The second trade was risky because I usually let the pattern develop before I buy into the stock. I didn’t wait and made the trade, and got lucky when the stock jumped. But the worst one was the third trade on the same day. I saw there was a big drop in the stock. Without looking to see why the stock had dropped, I immediately made the trade. It was only after I bought the stock that I realized all the stocks were down due to some bad news from the Federal Reserve. I reset my sell limit as low as possible and, miraculously, it went to that exact limit price (89.3) and sold before dropping over a dollar. Had it not reached that price before dropping, I would have lost over $1000.
Week 1 showed me that I have potential, but I still need to control myself. When I’m up on profits, I get cocky and start making risky trades that go against my rules. See, it’s not really important how much money is made. It’s how I make the money that’s important. I made a couple bad decisions and was bailed out based on luck. But I can't make stable money on luck. I would much rather make $700 a week by following my strategies meticulously than to make $3,390 by occasionally deviating from the plan. After all, a stable strategy means a stable income. So what is my strategy?
Obviously I’m not going to spell it out. One of the first things I learned about the market is that, if I find a trend that works for me, keep it to myself for as long as possible. The more people do what I do, the greater chance that the trend will be forced to change. But I will say this: my strategy is based on three things. The first is my experience with both simulation and live trading the last two years. The second is the teaching of the Nathan Michaud DVD. The third, and probably most important, is my overall philosophical belief that variable elimination makes the easiest money. I combine all three to form a strategy that maximizes my profits in a safe way while minimizing my risks through variable elimination.
But hey, this is only Week 1. Let’s see if the strategy holds up for Week 2.
The stock I chose was Netflix (NFLX). I picked it for its daily range, the fact that I've studied it for over two years, and I absolutely love its patterns. So now I present Week 1 of The Netflix Trades:
Monday May 2nd
$510
Tuesday May 3rd
$310
$260
Wednesday May 4th
$200
Thursday May 5th
$1,150
$450
$160
Friday May 6th
$350
Totals for Week 1: $3,390
Unreal. Over $3,000 in one week. That’s 18 years of premium Netflix service. That’s almost 4 months of cutting bolts and checking in trucks on weekends at the shipping depot. That’s 2 months of work at the bank job. Instead of being at the bank job right now, midway through a 36 hour work-a-thon, I could be writing this post at home. In fact, the 36 hours I'm working this weekend will make me the exact amount of money I made on Friday with about 50 minutes of stock research and trading. That’s… unreal.
One might think that I’m happy with the results of Week 1, but I’m not. As many things as I did right, I made a number of bad decisions. The first two days were good, but I did an impulse buy on May 4th. That impulse buy could have cost me $800 but I got lucky. On May 5th I made three trades. The second trade was risky because I usually let the pattern develop before I buy into the stock. I didn’t wait and made the trade, and got lucky when the stock jumped. But the worst one was the third trade on the same day. I saw there was a big drop in the stock. Without looking to see why the stock had dropped, I immediately made the trade. It was only after I bought the stock that I realized all the stocks were down due to some bad news from the Federal Reserve. I reset my sell limit as low as possible and, miraculously, it went to that exact limit price (89.3) and sold before dropping over a dollar. Had it not reached that price before dropping, I would have lost over $1000.
Week 1 showed me that I have potential, but I still need to control myself. When I’m up on profits, I get cocky and start making risky trades that go against my rules. See, it’s not really important how much money is made. It’s how I make the money that’s important. I made a couple bad decisions and was bailed out based on luck. But I can't make stable money on luck. I would much rather make $700 a week by following my strategies meticulously than to make $3,390 by occasionally deviating from the plan. After all, a stable strategy means a stable income. So what is my strategy?
Obviously I’m not going to spell it out. One of the first things I learned about the market is that, if I find a trend that works for me, keep it to myself for as long as possible. The more people do what I do, the greater chance that the trend will be forced to change. But I will say this: my strategy is based on three things. The first is my experience with both simulation and live trading the last two years. The second is the teaching of the Nathan Michaud DVD. The third, and probably most important, is my overall philosophical belief that variable elimination makes the easiest money. I combine all three to form a strategy that maximizes my profits in a safe way while minimizing my risks through variable elimination.
But hey, this is only Week 1. Let’s see if the strategy holds up for Week 2.
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