My $500 account trading challenge

Please accept my apologies for not posting a blog for a while.  It’s just what with testing some things for Mark and Peter and my full time job being extra busy there has not been much time for trading.  This week we had a Bank Holiday in the UK on Monday and what with a busy work day on Tuesday, I have only managed 2 trading days.  I managed to make a grand total of $41 dollars in these 2 days taking my total profit since I started to $105 dollars.

Now this certainly isn’t going to make me rich but if you remember that is not the point of this challenge.  I'm trading a $500 account to help me improve my trading.  I always knew that this was going to have to be slow and steady to preserve what little capital I have.  OK so it's not huge in dollar terms but I'm delighted so far because it is in fact a 20% increase on my starting balance!  I’m getting there.

Also the markets have still been low volume with smaller moves which means I can start to increase my profits once the markets pick back up.  Obviously I need to be aware that bigger moves generally have bigger stops and therefore I will have to be very careful which trades I take so to not give back the profits I have already made.  That's why I'm enjoying trading this small account, it's making me think really hard about my trading.

One bad day could still take me back to where I started hence why I have added a max daily loss with Ninja.  So far the things that I have learnt doing this challenge are:

• The NQ is just too volatile for me at the moment for my account and therefore I am just trading the ES and the Russell
• I find trading these 2 instruments less stressful than the NQ anyway, so I may stick with just them
• I miss out on some trades as the risk is too big and they don’t pull back far enough to for me to enter with an acceptable risk.  I am slowly getting more comfortable with the FOMO I experience from this
• I don’t do well profit wise when I re-enter a trade that I have been stopped out of for a small profit. So this has been removed from my strategy for now
• I have been too quick to move my stop up and have lost out on further profits. I am hoping that I will get better at this once I get more of a feel for the instruments. Especially the Russell as I haven’t traded this for a long time
• It can be invaluable speaking to other members in the Inteligex Trading Room (Discord group). I have learnt so much from the chats I have had with Andrew and Jim. It is always good to speak to others who understand what we go through as Traders. And if anyway does want to chat I am always able to make time if anyone thinks that they will find it useful, just message me on Discord.

Until next time…