Trading Recap 3/16/15

Last week I didn't trade at all even though I wanted to. I couldn't pull the trigger on using big size like I had alluded to in my previous recap. If I had pulled the trigger, almost every trade would have made me money and I would have banked. Today, I tried using normal size but adding aggressively at certain spots that were non-random. Throughout the whole trade, I thought I was up a lot (I don't look at PnL when trading) but after everything was said and done and after commissions due to all the adds, I barely came out green. I felt I worked for barely anything. Even worse, on one of my trades the idea of paying commissions on scaling out caused me to turn a potential winner into a loser.

Arrows are entries and last arrow is exit for all shares.

I think I will just have to bite the bullet and use big size on my entry with a tight stop and see what happens. It would have worked well last week on all the trades so perhaps my original thesis is right. I'm not going to just keep grinding commissions and barely make anything.

MVIS: I thought I was up a lot more on this since I eventually got a .20 more on a $3 stock but my piker size and commissions due to the two adds after my entry diminished the real. I looked at the history of the stock and saw that it had similar news in the past and it ended up fading anyway, so that gave me the confidence to let it ride for most of the day. I had a buy order to cover all at $3 and it ended up going to 3.10 before putting in higher lows and I ended up covering at 3.2 for all my shares. I started in when it had sightly lower highs and once the line in the sand broke I added in on pops and kept riding them down and added when other support broke.

AMPE: I had an eye on this for the intraday base break to get short for failed follow momo. Once the base cracked and peaked, I started in short and added when it peaked at 7.5. It washed a little but I still held on and then it reclaimed 7.5 and started to hold, which was my stop on the add only. However, after realizing all the commissions I had racked up on MVIS I just decided to cut it off entirely instead of just my add. This was a mistake because my 7.7 over/under on my initial still peaked and the rest of the day the stock washed until one last big spike towards the end of the day. I am not sure if I would have covered before that spike had I still kept my initial entry.

Things to work on:

Trading-wise and rule-wise I did a good job of not being stubborn and covering at the higher lows on MVIS and adding into a winner. Obviously, I wish I hadn't cut off AMPE completely like I would have done if I had a bigger acct/lower commissions.

1. Bite the bullet and just size in first entry.