This will be the first real post on Smarty Trades! I started this blog before, but have been finding it difficult to keep updated. I am not sure why that is and I am still trying to figure it out. However, I feel like I am ready to start posting daily and hopefully I stick to it. I just started a new trading account about 2 weeks ago and want to make sure I keep myself in check and hold myself accountable for my mistakes.

So, as I said I have been trading a new account for two weeks now. The bad part of the story is that I am already in the red. I am trading with a prop firm, which I don’t like to begin with, but I am trying to escape the Pattern Day Trading rule. I find the PDT rule can be beneficial to new traders, but I have been trading long enough to know not to go crazy. I need to be free of it if I am ever going to do this full time and grow my account. Anyways, with losses and fees related to the prop firm I am already in the red by about $1000. My losses have been fairly small at the end of the day compared to the past, but the fees are also killing me.

My actual losses are only $485 and a lot of that was due to trades I should have never taken. The other day I lost $215 on AIG and VMW alone which were both stupid trades. We all know AIG is a crazy, fast moving stock and doesn’t always move with real reason. VMW went crazy and went approximately from $57 to $62! I had a good entry on VMW, but decided it was too risky since it had already ran so much in the day. I left it alone, came back and saw that it did run a LOT more. After watching this stock go all day and having a missed entry I let my emotions get the best of me and jumped in without any real setup other than it keeps running. If you are new to trading, here is the lesson, it’s NEVER a good idea to jump into a stock just because it’s moving. It’s very tempting to see it run, run and run some more, but wait for a true setup. If it’s already running you more than likely already missed the trade. More often than not if you jump in, it will turn around soon after you get in and you will have bought the top at least for the time being.

To say the least I am very disappointed with my performance thus far. I have made good trades only to give all the profits back and then some on stupid mistakes. I may need to look at other options of trading without a prop firm as trading other people’s money, having someone play risk management for you AND having fees taking out weekly is a lot of mental crap to deal with while trying to trade well. The goal right now though is to buckle down on my discipline and try to break even or turn a small profit this month so I can get a fresh start in May. Keep reading to see how I do next week on recovering from the $1000 hole I dug.

I will make a post in a few days about the “Real-Time Trades” link on the main menu. I will be posting real time trades that you can see, but I am going to hold off due to my recent performance. Once I get things under control and I can offer value I will fill you all in on how to use my Real-Time trades.

Welcome!

First off I want to state that I am by no means a professional trader or a guru.  In fact I am just getting started in my day trading career and am the point where I am confident and will hopefully soon be profiting consistently..  What I plan to do with this blog is document not only my trades, but my journey to becoming a profitable, full-time trader.  If you follow along or are reading this post by looking through the archives you will essentially see my day to day goals and progress to success.  Again, I am not a pro and you should not take any of this advice as fact and should take it and research or test it yourself. I am not offering financial advice, only my take on the market and trade ideas.

With that out of the way this is what you’ll find on the blog from day to day.

Daily Trading Journal:
I will be keeping a daily trading journal in excel and I plan to post parts, if not all of it here on the blog.  This is for me to keep track of what I am doing and to give others an idea of what is possible.  I am not sure how specific I will be as of yet in the posting of these, but there will be some information provided into what I am doing.  I will make the decision when I get to that point.  The reason being I don’t want to brag or mislead my readers.  If you win big one day and lose bigger on another the one day really doesn’t mean much.  I will at least be posting my trades, and possibly some win/loss data.  My trades aren’t all that important to you – your trades are important to you.

Interesting Finance News:
I am constantly reading finance and stock news and intend to post commentary on interesting news articles I find around the media.  I will occasionally find an article I found useful, interesting or just plain crazy and post on it.  I will often analyze it and offer my opinion how the overall news may affect a certain sector or overall market.

Market Watches & Stock Picks:
Eventually I would like to offer market watches and stock tips to my readers.  I have my own personal lists now, but I am obviously not going to promote them until I can prove they are useful in my own trading.  Once I have established myself you can expect free stock picks/watches.  As with any financial advice – use at your own risk.

Tips For Newbies:
I have  a lot of interests and I’ve always found it hard to find a good resource for information to get started.  A goal I will eventually accomplish on the blog is to write a newbie guide to day trading.  It will be a series of posts of the steps I took to become a day trader and which ones I think are important to you through my experience.  I hope this to be a huge help for people new to trading.

Book Reviews:
One thing I’ve learned this far in day trading, investing – whatever, is that you never stop learning.  I personally love reading no matter the subject, but since starting my day trading journey I have read a ton of related books.  Each book I read I will review on the blog and give you a personal and honest recommendation.

That’s pretty much the structure of the blog.  I will add more as things progress, but that is my main focus and goal of the blog. I will kick things off tomorrow with some stocks that I am watching and updating the sections of the blog.

Happy trading,
Keith