2023 Halfway Journal.

I dont have time to journal anymore. I Dont want to make the time to do it. I know it has been great for me in the past to help clear thoughts and I still get that brain fuzz feeling every now and then, but much less than it used to be.

Im still here, still doing the day and performing decent. Down a bit on the year, but nothing extraordinary. The biggest pointer being missing winners. Not being around, not able to set stop entries on options. Not having confidence in holding contracts for the swing for multiple days.

I cant tell you the amount of times I have been distracted at the perfect moment in work related matters. I had a +$500 trade just last week turn to only +$150 because I was not at the desk to take partials. Countless missed trades becuase im not at the desk. 

It is very hard to set it and forget it with my trading style and being restricted to options. There is uncertanty that is not forseeable in the future with setting stops/limits. 

This is one reason I want to sell options. My stop can actually be set because I wont let it get +100% against me, and the profit target is 0. There is no waiting on profit target and then taking, it is just time based trading. Which is what I need given I dont have all the time in the world to sit at my desk.

Im going to have a 50k account by the end of this month. God has been gracious as has my family to allow me these opportunities and now is the time for me to jump on it and get back to the way I want to trade with circumstances in mind. 

Were coming up on a year and a half that I havent been at my home desk trading. I miss it. I miss it a lot. I still trade but it just isnt scratching that itch for me only trading off of 1 monitor. I know I can do so much better. 

I have sacrificed a lot in this time. Certainly getting out of my comfort zone, joining the workforce, forcing myself to be a different kind of trader. Gathering data, not just trading data, or mental trading data, but self data. Who am I without trading? Do I still keep that freak of nature work ethic. How can I apply workforce life, to trading life. 

So then this is where I need to decide if im going to take that leap of faith and jump all in. Wife and I have talked about it and I can make it work for this family not working at the job I have now. I have enough savings to last us and raise this boy as both stay at home parents. So this is what I have been thinking. 

-We want to have another baby.

-We have enough money to last us a few years raising our child and bringing another one into our family.

-I have enough money and time to trade how I want to trade

-I like my job

-We have talked about me quitting about 6 months AFTER out next child is born.

-I am just not a swing trader. Im just not. Im not a swing trader. Im not good at it, I dont have an interest, I dont have a margin account to make it viable. Swing trading is not going to make me specifically the most money. 

-I make my money being at my desk, scalping/adding in and holding winners until the pattern I recognize ends.

So my solution.

I type that word solution and it brings my back to my deep review days, which I also do not do anymore, and gives me all kinds of feelings again. Sitting and being a freak about recording and analyzing. I really do miss it. I dont even take screenshots anymore. I only in the past 3 months started keeping track of performance again. 

One of my past journal entries I talked about baseball and how I perform best when I do 0 excess thinking. And I have had success this past year in doing only trading, no review, no data tracking, just strictly trade and thats it. I cant say I have the same success in trading as I had baseball. Trading there is just so much more opportunity to not talk about it. Im an amatuer baseball player, I can get away with not being a freak. If I want to make big money being a proffessional trader, you think the guys at SMB walk in, sit, trade, walk out? No of course not.

Trader Dante 

  -"Those guys are working so hard on there edge."

Im not working at all on my edge. Im just trading. Im keeping mental tabs and notes and slowly getting better still, but not as fast as I could, not as aggressive as I once was.

I want it. 

I still want it bad. Sometimes it takes me this fathers day afternoon to finally have a single hour to myself and my office desk to remind myself, to bring myself back into the zone and get to work again. To look back and see whats different, what I did right, what I did wrong, what solutions are to be implemented in the future.

Solutions this past year have been to trade as little as possible. It started just scalping SPY and Q, then to scalp FANG, then back into looking at HTF setups on optionable, small spread options on Large cap names. Becuase thats what I love to do. I am Dan Shapiro, Mier Barak, Lance Beggs, Trader Stewie, DYoptions, karmaoptions all in one. I see myself and my styles in all of them. I use all of there styles in my trading and its what I do best. I like the largecap names, identifying market themes, and stepping on the gas when opportunity presents. 

The BIGGEST miss on 2023, I can already tell, is me missing the Semiconductor run on names. I missed AVGO by a few minutes. I sacrificed a few minutes staring at the chart, for a work scenario and I missed thousands and thousands of dollars on what would have been the biggest trades of my life. I dont like that. That makes me want to quit and focus on trading. 

What I am trying to do now a days, is keep my mind solely looking forward. What do I need to do next. I dont look back at my mistakes right now. I know what they were I know what they are. Whatever. 

Time is the problem. How can I take my lack of time and turn it into a strength.

I believe selling options is a solution. Ive thought and wrote about it for 2 years, I can finally do it. 

So that is my next step. Get this margin accoutn active, and being selling options, playing with spreads and straddles. Getting involved into that. Becuase that style of trading, is all time based. How much time until X. I make profits off of a binary result. I know exactly how much I will risk. I know exactly where my stop will be. I know exactly how muhc I can make. Max. To the dollar. 

There is more consistency for me here. 

I want to get back into stock as well. No more option scalping. Ive said it a hundred times theres too many trades that would be breakeven losses, instead becaue of options and theta, I take full -1R and then some losses. 

That wont happen with stock. Becuase when I get in at 100, and it goes to 101, and back to 100 and I need to exit, its a wash. With options, that scenario is a -1R loss. 

I lose a lot of upside from this. But that isnt the point. Its great seeing +100% gainers, but my problem isnt my winners, its my losers. I lose money on losers. If I can keep making those smaller I can keep my quity curve much more consistent and trending up to the right. 

So this is where I am. This is the next step for me as a trader, to keep growing and expanding my trade methods. I wont be quitting anytime soon, especially now as I start selling options and gaining more knowldge and building a concrete trading plan around them. But my time is still coming. I have sacrificed the last year and a half of my optimal trading career and I wont say it didnt humble me, but it didnt take me very far. It led to other ideas, but again, time, and the time to execute these ideas just hasnt been able to happen. And now it can.

Ill be back again, as I go through this new method of trading, it will be important for me to keep logs on progress as this is a whole new world of trading im getting involved in. Taking notes as I used to and keeping the mental edge sharp and continually tracking myself, so I dont have to keep looking back and re-remembering where I was so that I can keep moving forward. High hopes going into the end of the year. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx38gBIEsOs&ab_channel=kingsofleonVEVO