Monday came and I was ready for my thirst week as a trader. When the market opened I tried to remember everything I had learned over the last couple of months, and look for the right patterns. I found a pattern that looked familiar and placed my first order - trying to go long. A few seconds after my order was placed the stock spiked before my order was filled. I was so disappointed that I didn't get filled before the stock took off, that I looked for another stock to trade. I found VLTC, which looked like it was about to go. I put in a small order which quickly got filled. Now the emotions really kicked in - I was in my first real trade. The stock did go up at first just as I expected but then slowly started downtrending. I kept looking at my loss which got bigger and bigger, but tried to stay calm and remember what my plan was and how much I wanted to risk.

 

However, every time VLTC had a downtick I got more and more worried - Was i wrong?  did it just hit a lower high and was it about to collapse resulting in my first trade being a major loss? 
In order to calm my nerves I placed a stop-loss at my risk level. The stock kept downtrending and all of the sudden had a big downtick and broke my risk level and activated my stop-loss. I was out of the trade with a small loss of 41USD.
I was sad to see that I lost money on my first trade but didn't think to much about it as it was more important that I followed my rules. Since I was out of the stock I decided to look for another stock to trade completely ignoring VLTC for the rest of the day. It wasn't until later that day that I discovered that VLTC only went a few cents under my stop-loss and then spiked for what could have been a one dollar gain per share - I've posted a screenshot of the graph with my entry and exit. As much as I was annoyed that I didn't check back in with VLTC later during the day or watched it for a while after selling I took some comfort in knowing that I cut my loss quickly and followed my rules. 

 

I'm not going to discuss every single trade I made during the week for a few reasons. First of all I made a lot of mistakes throughout the week, and a lot of them can be traced back to my first trade of VLTC which is why I explained that one. Second, most of my mistakes had to do with my emotions were all over the place, and I knew it would be the one thing I couldn't prepare myself for. But to be honest I didn't believe it would cause me to enter and exit trades as poorly as I did. Here is a general conclusion on some of the mistake I know I've made throughout the week: 

What I believe to be my biggest mistakes this week is that I was afraid of missing trades, and not being able to push the button when I found the right trade setup. 
These two are connected in many ways, as I often started the day, just as my first trading day, with finding a stock that I believed was about to breakout. Whether or not I managed to place a buy order or not before the stock took off confirming my analysis, the result were the same. I wasn't in the stock because I was too slow and wanted to be absolutely sure that I read the pattern correctly. After seeing the stock spiking without my order being filled I can sadly look back and in more than one case see that I took my frustrations out on the next stock I was looking at. I had just missed a trade because I didn't react fast enough and I wasn't about to let that happen again. This resulted in me getting in to trades too high, and before they fully proved the pattern I looked for etc. Many of my losses is thus a result of this. Some of them could have been avoided with a better entry as I in some cases were up at first but chose not to take a very small profit because i barely would breakeven after SureTraders commission - This of course also has to do with the fact I in most trades took a very small position. 

 

Going into my first week as a trader I felt confident in what I had learned over the last few months. I believed that I knew what to look for and that If I followed my rules I might be able to come out of the first week with a small profit. Looking back I can see that I probably was a bit too confident in myself, and that I defiantly don't know how to control my emotions when trading. This actually made me question whether or not I will ever be succesfull as a trader despite all the hours I'd put into studying.
I'm however not going to give up yet. This week is a great lesson for me as I now know that I have a lot to learn before I can even think about being profitable. After my huge loss yesterday I decided not to trade today unless I found a setup that I felt comfortable with - my account is bleeding and I had to get back on track.
I spend quite some time looking over my trades, evaluating my mistakes and writing these blog posts - hopefully they can clear my mind. I am considering going back to paper trading to get my confidence back, while waiting for Tim Grittani's DVD to get released on august 1st. As mentioned I read his blog early on and knew he was about to publish a DVD so I bought the early bird special and can't wait to learn from him. In the mean time I'm defiantly going to watch Nate's DVD again (already went over one of the chapters today), and see what I missed the first couple of times. I'm not sure how much trading I'll do the rest of July, as I don't want to risk too much before I have studied Tim Grittani's DVD but time will tell.