Dark Prince's Trading Experience

June 2016 - April 2019

I have been trading since 2016 and the way I started was pathetic like most rookie traders. I didn't have the beginners luck neither did I believed in that. So it was a full throttle market buys all the time, chasing stocks and just kept losing money. Did not understand the market and its fundamentals. Neither I knew any technical nor any good platforms to use. I also held stocks that was getting delisted because I didn't have the guts to take loss. Never had a goal in mind and I was reckless. And I kept losing money wiping out my 95% investment.

FNCX and TTPH were the biggest culprits for me. I went super long thinking they would make me rich and wiped out 95% of my money on these two. I was listening to everyone at this point. The only note able success during this period was OPGN and UAVS - I made good money on this although I lost some in few trades on them. I told you i am no expert.


May 2019

This is where I said enough is enough. I knew where I made mistakes and I accepted that its my fault to have been trading like what I did to lose this much money. I took this upon myself. My wife asked me to quit it, if its not working out. But I told myself and her that quitting after all the bad lessons is not right. It needs to be answered by myself. That is when i started to talk to few people. I started to understand the importance of having a goal and few strategies to suit my expectations.

I opened up an excel sheet and started to document all the big losses and what I didn't know about those stocks that I was failing badly. I was making a list of items and learnt them one by one myself over the internet. That included fundamentals like sec filing, financials, understanding the sector.

My first goal was to recover all the losses. So I set a monthly goal because I don't want to pressure myself to get something every day and I also didn't want a lottery to make up all my losses in one trade. Instead I focused on just few stocks and tried to do a swing at them. I mostly picked the ones that were oversold based on RSI. At this time, I still didn't knew I could use Bollinger band, SMA trends and MACD to figure out bottom stocks.

I started off with 6,000$, well that's all I had in my bank. I was nearly wiping out my bank at this point.

This is when I picked VTVT near 1.50, I did all my DD on them in terms of technicals, insider buys and also the data catalysts that was coming up. I also learnt bios usually run up towards the data be it good or bad and the CEO was also buying tons of shares. Thought this would be a low risk setup. The stock started to move up after few days as expected and I scaled them out 1.75, 1.80 and at 2$. I held them for 3-4 weeks but it was worth it. This gave me a lot of confidence that I can recover my losses.

I was able to make 1500$ on that and started a possible turn around.

Rest of 2019

I broke my leg in July and had to lay down in bed for 2-3 months. This is where I decided to make the most use of my time as I had to work out of my bed. I was learning more and more technicals using investopedia and learning charts as I am a visual learner. I was able to spot the buys and sell zones on a chart purely by looking at them. It was more an optimistic approach. I started to pick stocks and ended up making decent gains every month throughout 2019. Although I still haven't fully recovered, I was focusing more on learning. Eventually my losses were diminishing slowly.

I moved out funds from robin hood and thinkorswim and opened up Webull as I loved some of their options. I started to focus on two accounts only with both being cash accounts. so I had only limited funds to use and don't lose it all. I was restricted because of the T+2 and personally I wanted that on me. because I had a self control over how much money I could put in a trade. I didn't go all in because of that limitation which helped me being not so aggressive.

I also did pick some of the best stocks like PRTY EROS and made decent gains out of it. I was still making smaller gains on other stocks but that was good enough for me.

Jan 2020 - May 2020

Coronovirus hit our world and market was turning to be worst. I still haven't fully recovered my losses yet at this point.

I didn't worry about the market crashes every week and instead focused on oversold stocks and started to trade them in a channel without being much greed. I was making sure I don't repeat my mistakes from 2019. I had smaller goals in mind and I was able to either achieve them or was making sure I have bearable losses at the worst case. I also look a huge loss on LK coffee. I don't know how I took loss right at the bottom of the chart. But it was one such day and one such trade. Same happened to me with NBY as well. I wish I held both of them but by now I was also learning that there is no should have, would have or could have in trading.

But I had some good picks like UAVS, FRAN, GRPN, DTEA, KIRK and SXTC from the bottom as market was shrugging away the crash.

It was only until May 2020 that I broke even. Recovered all my losses end of the month. And I also personally hit a challenge account from 6k to 30k. I was also following TjTradez and Brjp more closely during this period and understood how to do day trades, how to size up, where to sell avoiding greed and also to cut losses quickly. More important ones for any type of trader. Possibly I will put more of my experience during this month at a later time.

May 2020 - Dec 2020

This is where things turned even better. I had started to put weekly goals, which in turn made me pick more stocks every day. I started to pick the ones that are bottomed out and they were paying me well. As usual I went with RSI, BB, MACD to figure out if I need to get in, where to get in and of course where to get out. I was starting to be disciplined. I also followed lot of advice from TjTradez, followed him like a hawk and learnt a lot from him. He was a beast when it comes to trading positively. That mindset and execution skill is something different and it cant be learnt. it can be coached and it needs to be practiced a lot. There is no text book stuff for it , atleast in my opinion.

Every day and week I started to make consistent gains. This is when I thought I should start my 100kchallenge from 20k. I said to myself I can do that in 1 year time from June 2019. Currently I'm at 81k and should be able to get it to 100k by end of January 2021.

I also sat on my hands when the day was so bad, wont force any trades unnecessarily. I was coaching myself to be disciplined no matter whether I make money or not. All I cared at this point was success in a trade than $$$, as I realized money will follow success eventually. I was only looking for winning trades. Even if I made a bad trade, I knew I could make it up in next trade. I was also playing swings consistently. I also realized more potential in low floats. That is my favorite play most of the times. I started to scan for them and picks ones that crashed very badly but had good fundamentals and potential. I started to buy the red, right when everyone is in fear. I bought stocks that nobody wanted. ALJJ, BGI, ISIG, APEX, AFH, SHLO, MVIS, AWX, NVFY to name some.

I also love to play sympathy on a running sector. Trust me, these are best plays and guaranteed to be running if you picked them early enough.

More to come..