Performance: October 2023 (-1.93%) - More Choppy & Unfavorable Markets
This month was a big lesson for me. A lesson that I learned in the past months and I successfully applied it to October. Going into October, SPY 0.00%↑ was not looking its best and with that, I made a mental note to only trade the top themes/setups. I managed to protect most of my capital this month by only entering 3 trades (the specifics of that are below). These trades were high-quality setups but unfortunately, I was stopped out. Even though GDP printed favourably in Q3 markets haven’t shown any love. Long-swing trading will not be able to start until mid-November at the earliest (best-case scenario) as we continue to see drops in price for SPY.
Deeper Look into My Trades
I traded 3 times this month, all in the Uranium industry.
Ticker: URG 0.00%↑
Date of Entry: Oct 23
Risk: ~0.5% of account
Loss: $-22.29
Ticker: UEC 0.00%↑
Date of Entry: Oct 23
Risk: 0.5% of account
Loss: $-20.68
Ticker: UEC 0.00%↑
Date of Entry: Oct 24
Risk: 0.86% of account
Loss: $-55.09
Almost all uranium names were holding their price levels as SPY continued to fall. My hypothesis of entering on these days was wrong however, these trades offered very favorable risk to reward. Considering that these few trades were some of the only worthwhile opportunities I am glad I followed through with taking the risk here.
As you can see from my UEC trades, my entry could have been better, and if it had been better I might still be in the trade. Although a false breakout occurred in most of the uranium names, a few tickers have entered back into their ranges. They then had another breakout of those ranges on Oct 31st which I was unsuccessful in capturing.
Things to Improve:
Need to prepare my entries and have a more flushed out gameplan before going into the day of the breakout. I must be more prepared each day for when the breakout does occur.
Things I Did Well:
I stuck with only trading the best industry and did not over-trade. I pulled the trigger when it was required (half true) and although lost money, it was worth the risk that I took on. I think the research I did on the uranium theme really helped give me a better view of what to expect from the theme. The format of this research will be used again and will be added to over time.
Stats from Broker:
Current Drawdown: ~6.37%
Note, that my personal tracker is off by 0.3% from my official IB account. This tracker is to show more specifics with regard to winning and losing trades.
One other thing this month that I need to talk about is missing out on trades. Because this wound is still fresh I might as well write my thoughts on the matter. Over the past month, I have been eyeing Uranium stocks as they were one of the only themes in this crumby market that were holding up and creating new highs. After much analysis, however, and a few unprofitable trades in the previous week, I wasn’t able to catch the big breakout day! This a lesson that still hurts because as a swing trader, you only have a handful of opportunities throughout the year to really grow your account (depending on market conditions) so it was tough to experience the missed opportunity.
-F4VS