Markets Fall, Money to Be Made

Decent Short action this morning

I’ve attached an image of my trade this morning above. Yes, I only took one and then decided I should not get greedy. There will come a time for that but now is not the time.

$OXY (the stock in the chart above) has been popping at the open then dropping nicely in the first hour before consolidating and then choosing a direction it’s going to move for the rest of the day. Friday October 7, 2022 is a good example of that happening. So I just expected it to do the same thing it has been and shorted the stock.

Shorting a stock can be dangerous and it’s not something to be taken lightly. Here’s a link to Investopedia that has some information on what short selling is if you’d like to read it. You need to be sure about your decision or be ready to take a small loss and cover your position if it goes the other way especially if you’re using a leveraged margin account. Some of my biggest losses since March have been from shorts so I’m very particular about my short setups.

I’m happy with this trade and came out with about $150 USD net after commissions. Slight change of topic….

Last month I mentioned perhaps posting my final results for September and I reversed my decision on that. It was a good month and I’ll just assume you believe me when I say that overall I pulled $2200 USD out of the markets and decided I should pull a little of that out into my bank account. I decided on $1000 CDN ($740 USD on the 4th when I transferred the money or 1/3 of my gains) would be a good start.

  1. It would be a reminder that I want to do this for a living and in order to live, you have to generate income. Moving money from my brokerage account just felt good and reinforced the idea, for me, that I could do this for a living.
  2. It would allow me to keep 2/3 of my gains in the account. I’d like to grow the account to the point I’m above $20k USD for additional leverage possibilities. An account of that size would allow for up to $60k of stock purchase with margin included. At this point, it will probably take a year.
  3. It would allow me to show my wonderful wife that this is a possibility that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

That last one is, far and away, the most important part of the withdrawal process. Sitting her down and talking about wanting to pursue this rather than continue the job search was important.

She is the most important person in my life and will always have a say into my career and what I do with my life. I think she’s already a bit peeved that I’m at home most of the day and really only ‘work’ for a couple of hours in the morning before heading out for my walk later in the day.

She doesn’t see the rest of it, of course. The reading, the study, the videos, the simulator work. It does keep me quite busy. I can’t just sit at home and play video games if I plan on getting better at this. It’s a lot of work and my performance in the markets each morning really depends on my knowledge and ability to think on my feet while the markets are open.

I’m going to keep doing this for a least the next 5 months with the expectation that my daily average will increase (currently at $77.88 USD per day but ever climbing) and that I’ll be hitting my long term goal of $350 USD average per day. That would effectively replace the salary I left in March and allow for additional trading opportunities.