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.