Trade Log - May 4, 2023

Overall, today was a great day and I was very good about maintaining my rules, specifically my risk management. I went 2 for 2 on 2 longs, $SHOP and $NVDA. Both trades started with small positions and then I eventually added to both. I think my entries were very good, as well as my exits. Some improvement could be that after my adds, I did not reset my stops, but I was standing by to close positions once I had adjusted the stops mentally.

$SHOP

I saw the premarket action after earnings and saw that someone I follow on Twitter had them on their watchlist, so I added them to mine. I set my levels and you can see the ones that were in play today. The one you cannot see was close to the $52 range. My first entry was premarket, as you can see, but it was a very small position since we were premarket. I entered here for a small position since it came into my level and I was prepared to take it long around this level. My stop was around my $52 level just in case the open saw major volatility after this premarket action. The first candle, on open, did not range as much as I expected, even though it was nearly $2, but the premarket action made me think it could much more, hence my roughly $2.50 stop. Since I saw it hold my level and even started to come back to it on the second handle, I added to my position around $55. My position still was not the large since I am attempting to focus on strategy, risk management, and psychology (I've had a hard time with this, overtrading, and taking on huge positions while letting them run against me). With that, I did not partial at premarket high, so I waited for the next whole dollar at $57 for a partial. I waited again for the next whole dollar at $58 for another partial, and then I decided to close the entire position at my $58.73 level. Overall, I actually really like this trade and consider this my best trade of the day.

$NVDA

I trade $NVDA quite often and this stock has gotten me into a lot of trouble in the past. However, since I am trying to focus on sticking to my plan and managing my risk, I figured it was okay to continue to take positions in this stock if I was careful. I did adjust my plan on this one, which is why, even though I only took two trades today, it is my worst trade of the day. I initially had a plan to take it long around $274, but since you can see how it held $275, I went ahead and took it long at $275 after it bounced off of yesterday's low. My stop is fairly far since I recognized that my initial plan was $274, and technically, I felt more confident in $274 as a level, but I knew $275 was at least a psychological level. As you can see, it barcoded on $276, but I added twice around this level since it was fighting to hold it and the overall market was actually trending up. From here, I waited for $277 for my first partial, then took another partial shortly above that after a big dip back to VWAP (got emotional/scared). I took another partial above my $277.73 level, because it had played so well recently and PDC was just above it. As it fought this level, I was concerned that we found the range, $275 - $278, so I thought it would either barcode here, or soon drop back to $275 - $276, so I closed the remainder of my position. Even though there was spike above PDC, it was short lived, and I am certainly okay with this final exit.

Overall, I think this was a pretty good day. For now, I am not calculating R's as long as I am sticking to my plans, most specifically my risk management. And, no, I will not share my position size, or PnL, sorry. That is not what this is about. I do not care how much I made or how much you made, sorry. That is not what is important here. Regardless, I'm looking forward to the coming days and future trade logs as this was my first post. Ironically, I started on a good day, but when I do have a bad day, I will still share that to provide the transparency and the reality of trading; specifically my trading.

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