Yet Another Best Day Ever

This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com

Along with Dino and Bubs, I cleaned up today, putting a personal “Best Day Ever” on the board. Pulled off my first +10R trade ever today! And I actually did it twice! I lost -2.2R in 4 trades in a row this morning, in CFC short, ZOLT long (twice) and CAL long. The losers were nothing special, just reasonable risks that didn’t pan out for me. Not too good a way to start the day, but “Keep Swinging”, right? So then I got my game on, and I traded Countrywide Financial Corporation (NYSE: CFC) 5 more times over the rest of the day. I was scalper-boy, trading with $0.10 stops and watching the tape for trade frequency and volume more than anything, though I did watch a 1 minute chart too. I took partials where momentum paused or we had a severe retrace, and I exited close to round numbers or breakeven. Here’s the chart of my winners in CFC:

That’s three trades for about +2R, and two trades of around +10R–overall, I made +20.1R today (just over 10% on my equity)! I remember a post that Trader Mike did about his path to +100R in daytrading. Here’s my chart superimposed on his:

I post this chart not to gloat, but out of complete astonishment! I can’t believe my eyes! I look up to all the great traders out there, and I’m floored that I’m doing this well. Once I overcame my capitalization hurdles and was able to trade at a frequency that suits me, I’ve been taking off. I guess I did it all the hard way for so long that it forced me to really drill in the basics of risk management, position sizing, setups, etc. I blame my success on all of the great traders like Trader Mike that have shared so generously and taught me so much over the last couple of years! If my R’s beat Trader Mike’s, it’s because he paved the way and cleared the path. Thank you!

I can’t believe I made it 1/5 of the way to +100R in a day. (For those counting at home, at a rate 1% of equity risked per trade, +100R is a 100% return. I started with 0.5%, and dialed up to 1% where I stand currently.) Frankly, I’m stunned to be profitable at all, to say nothing of being up this big. I’m now up +35R overall after 92 trades since starting Prop Trading on July 25 (that’s a net return of +29.7% on my starting equity). As Dino said today, God Bless America.

Trade Grade for Today:

As a side note, I gotta LMAO at this timely recommendation! Whoops. To be fair, I did say that the short interest was a potential problem, and that a sharp reversal would cause me to change my mind. That’s exactly what we got after 12:00! I covered my short above my entry point in the afternoon, and went long to get some short squeeze action. Bought at $44, sold at $44.95, and made back double my loss on the short. I still think that FED is doomed, but the end may not come for a bit. You have to respect the price action–fundamentals are just supporting information. I’m proud of how I reversed my stance on CFC and on FED. I overcame my built-in biases and traded what I saw. Hope everybody else did well today too!

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This post was contributed by a guest author, and does not necessarily reflect the views of Richard or MovetheMarkets.com