IT'S JUST PAPER

In preperation for a potential full time endevour, I am briefly "paper trading" to test some of my trading ideas. This is a seperate account, time frame, and mindset to IT or longer term ideas and strategy. I don't even care, nor need to know anything about these companies, all I care is they meet my criteria for my trading style.

Paramount to success IMHO is the ability to SCAN for targets, then choose from that list the best candidates that offer the most potential for winning trades. ALWAYS EMPLOYING STOP LOSS to keep the losers from swamping any winners, very key....set goals before pushing any button.

If time permits I will post what I am doing here and keep score. I will also do my best to post the buys in REAL TIME and SELLS IN REAL TIME, I have no reason nor would I put bogus data up just to make myself look good.....but I would like to keep a public record of how I do and some insights on how I do it, maybe it will be helpful to someone and is another added feature to my site....and would be something when going LIVE I would reveal to my subscribers should I decide to go that path....lots up in the air right now...many potential paths I could blaze....

OK so far....at Thursday's close I bought (ALL 1,000 share lots....when I buy cheapies)

PZG Bought  $3.35 sold $3.46  less $14 commisions  NET GAIN $96
HDY  $4.43 SOLD $4.68  GAIN $236
MSO (YES MARTHA STEWART!!) $4.63 SOLD $5.14 GAIN $496
ZLC Bought $ 5.06 SOLD $5.73 GAIN $656

Total trading profits for Friday $1,484

I used a scan that showed me stocks in a "breakaway gap" pattern and I honestly didn't spend to much time picking these 4, and there were maybe 30 others to look at. I pared these down from a list of 6 mainly because there was really good volume, a plus for trading.

My contention was, there was a good chance there would be at least one more day of momentum to carry the stocks after breaking out in this manner. Friday happened to be an UP DAY for market, so that didn't hurt, what if the market had sold off? Don't know.....

Paper trading allows you to try your ideas, with NO RISK, hence NO EMOTION, so you will most likely DO what you WANT to do, and NOT overthink it. Size of your tardes could be determined by the amount of cash you are staking yourself with.

I had an awesome day, but this doesn't mean this system is either fool proof or will actually work, but 4 for 4 is pretty good start and so is $1,484 of profit LOCKED IN AT CLOSE as my goal is to not hold overnight unless establishing new positions.

GAP ups or DOWNS can go right thru stop losses, and leave you with MUCH MORE pain than otherwise....RISK is always there, your goal is to mitigate it.

I could have closed the trades at 10 am and made $430...with 2 up and 2 unchanged. That is not bad either. MY personal goal is to make $100K per year and that would be fine with me.....that's $400 a trading day...a modest goal. So if I have a great day like Friday, it could help even out things should I have one of those other kinds of days.

If the market goes more sour, I would look at SDS or other inverse ETF'S for that play, and would need to use different technical analysis to accomplish it.

My initial game plan going into this is to find momentum, and try to hard, nor overthink....so NO other TA was used, I relied mainly on the SCAN (which I also need to refine).

Have great weekend.

Duratek