Finally my first post on trading stocks! If you follow me on social media or YouTube, you know that I have been hinting about making content to help new day traders figure out how to make money in the stock market.
Disclaimer: Any content I make on trading stocks or investing, is for informational / entertainment purposes. I am not a financial advisor, I’m only sharing my actual experiences in the stock market. Use this information along with your own research to make educated decisions with your finances. I take zero responsibilities for your actions.
Okay now that I got the legal disclaimer out of the way, let me tell you how I got involved with the stock market, as well as some interesting stories about me related to making money trading penny stocks.
In 1999 when I was working as a CMM programmer, my boss told me about this company in Connecticut that makes noise cancelling technology. It was so long ago that I can’t remember why I invested $5,000 of my savings into this penny stock, other than my boss and his stock broker were dead sure this stock was going to double. Well sure enough I threw down 5 grand on $NTSC and within a few weeks if my memory servers me right, I doubled my money and cashed out over $10,000 in cold hard cash. Not bad for a 20 year old!.
I ended up using that money to pay off the remaining portion of a Ford Credit car loan I had on a 1999 red Ford Mustang GT convertible with every possible option. Well that was 19 years ago. And since then other than 1 other time, I really didn’t have any knowledge about the stock market other than “Buy low, sell high”, the famous quote everyone knows.
Is Tim Sykes a Fraudster?
One day cruising through a moment of boredom on Instagram, I came across Timothy Sykes. Tim is the Donald Trump of penny stock promotion. He is constantly making posts on social media, some of them down right cheesy. At 1st I’m thinking here’s another fraud trying to make money from people who desperately want to get out of the rat race. In situations like this, I do a little background checking and to my surprise, Tim has a track record of actually making money in the stock market, WHOA!
So that’s when it started, I would fill all my free time with day trading YouTube videos from Tim Sykes. Before I knew it, I desperately wanted to get a hold of his paid content, but I didn’t want to fork over $600 or more to get it. Luckily Tim made a very informative video that he chopped up for Youtube called "Trader Checklist Free Study Guide by Tim Sykes".
After watching Trader Checklist I felt I had everything I needed to trade, but honestly it isn't. What you won't learn that much about is patterns, and that's because I believe only his millionaire students program get those in a binder. Tim get's you almost there but you still won't have the whole picture.
Getting Tim Sykes Videos
Having skills in the computer field, I was able to acquire several of Tim Sykes videos. They were good, but I wouldn’t say they were everything you needed to take advantage of the day trading world. A lot of them are pretty old, and since you can’t short stocks under $1 without having tens of thousands in the bank, the information wasn’t 100% useful to me.
However, Tim lit a fire that I knew deep inside would burn for the rest of my life. I mean, I already made well over $15,000 in the stock market when I knew practically nothing, and here comes Tim with examples of what worked for him in his journey to become a stock trading millionaire.
In a future post I'll talk about my experiences with Tim's Profitly Chatroom. There's a lot to unpack there, if you're curious about day trading, bookmark my blogs page and follow me on Twitter. That way you will know right away when I post something new.
Day Trading Reality Check
The stock market is not a static animal, it constantly changes and the only way you can get a grip on cold hard cash, is to study the market as much as possible.
I thought I studied enough by watching most of Tims videos and I also got my hands on Tim Grittani video Trading Tickers as well. All great content, all useful, but the reality is, you’re not going to master anything without constant effort and practice.
After 2 months of at least 10 -16 hours per day studying videos and absorbing trading books, I thought I was ready to jump into the stock market again. And at first it went really well, until the market gave me several wakeup calls.
Day Trading Requires You to Pay Tuition
Unless you find a guru who discusses every nuance of trading, including the way your particular broker works, rest assured, you’re going to pay tuition to the market, one way or another.
In the video at the bottom of this page, I talk about a situation where I was in a winning trade but couldn’t sell it after hours because I didn’t know two things:
- You have to change the routing from Automatic to ARCA on Etrade after 4pm or premarket.
- You have to sign the afterhours agreement on Etrade prior to being able to execute any afterhours or premarket trade.
Those are 2 lessons that have costed me well over $500. Which doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is when you consider that I started with a $3,000 account!
That loss which is my biggest loss to date, also involved another lesson:
3. Be careful what crappy penny stock companies can do, never trust them, never fall in love with them. Just picture the movie Boiler Room to get an idea of the companies you might be trading. It happens more often than not that these companies are complete garbage who within a few years will go down to $0 dollars!
Penny Stocks and Deceptive Press Release Tactics
A few months into the game and with some big profitable trades under my belt, I felt like I already knew what I was doing. This is a stage a lot of noob traders fall into without even knowing. It will take a nice little market ass kicking to whip you back into reality; there’s professionals out here who want your money!
One thing traders do is buy hot news, because most of the time the stock will surge up and the whole key is to get in early and sell into the pop (strength). Well on one particular day a company with the ticker HMNY announced that they just closed a deal with Sam’s Club! Whoa, Sams Club, a Walmart owned company, this news is going to skyrocket this stock, even after hours when regular people can trade it. Those were my thoughts, but as most day traders I only red the headline and not the entire article which included a tiny little sentence at the very bottom of a long press release that stated HMNY only has a 1 week contract with Sams Club.
Well, I bought the stock after it spiked and went for it’s first dip. This is a very common practice, it’s called dib buying. Most stocks will run up on news, sell off a little (dip), then go for a second, third, and even fourth run later on in the day.
Anyways, I bought the dip, the stock slowly crawled up which I thought was really strange because the news was so big. I didn’t get it. Then the stock slowly began turning downwards and my profit and loss went into the negative.
At this time I pulled up the press release and read the whole thing, “Holy Sh!T, I F-ed up!”. Well I’m already in, maybe this thing will go back up at 3pm which is called power hour and it’s known for pushing up stocks from the morning runners list, which HMNY was a part of.
Three o-clock came and HMNY went up slightly, I thought about selling but I was still down $70 and maybe it would bring me to break even once the regular people read the press release and buy the stock after 4pm.
After Hours = Aftermath
A lot of shady companies issue good press releases in the morning and horrible ones in the evening right after the market closes at 4pm. Tim Sykes thought me this lesson, but I never experienced it, until that day. At 4:03pm HMNY releases a press release stating that they are about to run out of money, so they have to do an offering which can be the kiss of death.
So the stock starts plunging, I’m down $100, $125, $200 and by 8pm I was down around negative $250. Oh BTW during the press release and immediate drop I was not able to sell because I didn’t sign the Etrade afterhours agreement.
The next morning I’m thinking this stock will have a morning spike which is highly typical and I will sell into the pop. WRONG, this freakin stock started a panic sale and by the time I got out, I was down $500! That folks was the most valuable lesson I have learned in the day trading world. Hopefully by sharing it, you won’t have to go through the same situation. Always check with your broker about after hours trading terms, as well as keep an eye on any stock your holding overnight. To this day, I will NOT HOLD any penny stock overnight, even though my biggest win was over $700 on an overnight hold.
Back To Reality
Okay folks this is my first stock trading story and I hope you like it. I will most likely put this story into my book one day. Below is my very first day trading video, in the video you will hear more stock trading stories and tips. You will also see first hand what happens when a company like Micron ticker $MU gets stock moving news. I think you will be very surprised how quickly traders react to news and move the stock up and down in sometimes very violent swings. Enjoy and let me know what you think about this post on my Facebook page.
Take Care,
Voitek
The video is in 4k, below the video you will find all the time codes to different sections of the video. Enjoy!
Power Hour Trading Recap July 3rd 2018 | $AVXL $MU $AQXP $GBR $FB
Watch what the hottest stocks did in power hour on 07/03/2018. Includes commentary, personal stories and trading insights.
Use TIMESTAMPS below to jump through sections. I recorded this video because I review what the biggest percent gainers do, so I can learn entry and exit points.
Let me know if you like this video, because it will tell me if I should make more day trading videos.
2:15 Introduction and the software I use: Etrade Pro, Benzinga Pro, Trade Ideas Pro.
3:40 How I bought my 1999 Mustang GT by doubling my money with a Penny Stock. Allowed me to do a Saleen conversion.
4:45 $MU Perfect short opportunity on Micron shares dropping on heavy volume
5:10 Playing Bigger Stocks – Just take smaller share size.
Trading Calculator in Excel and Shorting Calculator
7:50 My YouTube Plan for these live trading video recaps
11:00 All the chatrooms I tried. Profity, Warrior Trading, Dekmar Trades. Didn’t try Awesome Calls. New problems when joining chatrooms with live commentary.
18:15 Day Trading vs Ego. The story of good news in the morning and terrible news at night. How to sell a stock afterhours your first time.
22:00 Mark Douglass Trading in The Zone Book
23:00 Cutting Losses Short – Head and Shoulders Pattern
The reality of trading, no one wins 100%. 70% win ratio is really good in the trading profession.
29:55 Shorting Stocks the HTB Hard to Borrow Rate Calculator
32:34 My Introduction to Day Trading was by Timothy Sykes
33:15 How I Got Etrade Pro
34:00 My 3rd Business. Stocks don’t have to do what you want, because traders could be in the bathroom. If it doesn’t work, get the hell out of the trade!
36:00 The truth about Hot News posts like FDA approvals during a Halt.
37:00 Bullflags, Dips, VWAP bounces and my observations.
38:18 Why I didn’t paper trade. Tim Grittani advice.
40:20 $GBR premarket runner takes a gigantic multi-point dump on market open from $13 to $6!!!.
42:45 $AVXL has swing trade potential, and my original call on AVXL in the chatroom. Taking lessons from the Big Boys to stay out on holidays, Fridays, and shortened trading hour days, which are the days before the holidays.
44:40 $FB Facebook getting slaughtered today.
45:30 $MU Micron pops after responding to previous news reports. This is how fast trading news effects the stock market! News in background is from Benzinga Pro Squawk.
46:40 Tips on end of the day trading, including what happens with certain OTC stocks.
SUBSCRIBE if you like my stuff
http://www.youtube.com/user/homeaddition?sub_confirmation=1
BTW Keep up with my shenanigans on Social Media. I mainly use Twitter, but I’m all over, just like everyone else.
Don't forget I'll be posting a review of my experience on various trading chat rooms including Profitly, Dekmar Trades, Trade Ideas Chat room, and Warrior Trading. I've joined them all and have all the details a new trader should know before forking over your cold hard cash.
https://twitter.com/LexSelfMadeLife
https://www.facebook.com/LexSelfMadeLife/
