Week 42: down $1,240, but the process is holding up

Bad week. No drama, no blown account, no excuse-making — just a bad week. I gave back $1,240 on the week, mostly from an earnings play on a semiconductor name that I had no business being in three days before the print. I know the rule. You know the rule. I broke it anyway because the setup "looked clean." It did not look clean. It looked exciting. Those are different things and I know the difference, which is the annoying part.

Here's the number that matters more: account is at $71,405, started at $8,400 in March 2023. That's still up ~8.5x, and drawdown from the high is 6.2%. I've had five weeks worse than this one on the way here. It just doesn't feel like it at 8pm on a Sunday.

The week in numbers: 9 trades, 4 wins, 5 losses. Win rate 44% — that's fine, my winners ran bigger. Average win +$712, average loss -$813. Yes, you read that right, my average loss was bigger than my average win this week. That's the earnings trade dragging it. Remove it and it's a normal, boring, slightly green week. One trade, man. One trade.

What I'm doing about it: no earnings plays inside 5 trading days of the print. Written it into the trading plan, told two people who'll check on me. The plan only works if the dumbest version of me can follow it, so the plan has to be written for the dumbest version of me.

Next week: back to the list. No revenge trade Monday morning. I promise nothing except receipts.

Week 38: new equity high, and I almost ruined it in one afternoon

Account hit $76,822 on Thursday, a new high, and by Friday afternoon I was up in a trade I hadn't planned, sized twice my normal, because a friend texted me "you seeing this??" about a mid-cap breaking out. Closed it for -$680 and sat there feeling like an idiot at 3:47 PM ET. The lesson isn't new. The lesson is never new. Don't take trades other people are excited about.

Otherwise: 11 trades, 6 wins, +$2,910 on the week. The boring swing system did what it does. I keep saying this and I'll keep saying it — the edge is not in the exciting stuff.

People ask why I post the losses. Honestly? Because everyone else posts the wins, and after a while you start believing trading is a ladder with no missing rungs. It's not. It's stairs, and sometimes you're on a step that isn't there. Write down the misses. Future you is grateful, even if present you is embarrassed.

Three years in: $8,400 → $68k, and what I got wrong the first year

Started this blog in March 2023 with $8,400 and a Chipotle loyalty level I was more proud of than my trading stats. Three years later the account is at $68,010 and the blog has, by my last count, 1,100-ish readers, most of whom are silent and all of whom are welcome.

If I could rerun year one, here's what I'd fix:

1. Sizing. Year one I traded 20-25% of the account per position because "small account needs aggressive sizing." What it actually needs is to survive long enough for the edge to show up. First year net: -$2,900. Ugly.

2. Weekly options. They felt like free money. They are not free money. They're lottery tickets with better branding.

3. Not journaling the misses. My first "trade journal" was just a list of wins, which is like keeping a diary where you only write about your good hair days. Useless.

Year two and three, with position sizes at 5-8% and a system I can explain to my sister in one sentence, the account compounded properly. The math from here: $68k to $1M needs a bit under 14x. At my current pace that's somewhere between six and nine more years. Which sounds insane until you remember this blog is called Million Dollar PATH, not Million Dollar Sprint.

"Amateurs want to be right. Professionals want to be solvent." — I read this somewhere in year two and it lives rent-free in my head.

Thanks for being here for three years of this. Next milestone post at $100k. See you on the road.

Week 21: the $2,100 day that taught me nothing (and the $1,800 day that taught me everything)

Tuesday I made $2,100 in ninety minutes on a gap-and-go that went exactly like the textbook says. Felt like a genius. Learned nothing — when a trade works immediately and you have no pain, you learn nothing, you just get confirmed in whatever you already believed.

Thursday I lost $1,800 by adding to a loser three times, each add "averaging in" and each add actually just "not wanting to be wrong." Same trade, same size, same stock almost. The difference was that Thursday I was tired and wanted the week to be over, which is, if you think about it for even four seconds, the worst possible reason to place a trade.

Net for the week: +$640. Funny how the good week and the bad week can be the same week.

Rule added to the plan after Thursday: max one add per position, and it has to be at the original entry logic, not "hope." Hope is not an entry signal. Someone should put that on a poster.

Week 14: first red month in a year, and I'm weirdly okay with it

November: -$1,105. First negative month since October 2024. It stings less than the old ones did, which I'm taking as a sign of progress, or possibly just of being numb, and I've decided not to investigate which.

What happened: chop. Two range-break systems, both wrong for a low-volatility grind, and me too stubborn to stand aside for two weeks. Standing aside IS a position. I write it in the plan every quarter and re-learn it every November, apparently.

Wins this month that don't show in P&L: kept risk per trade under 1% the whole month, even on the bad days. Didn't revenge trade once (okay, once, but it was small). Read two books. Flossed daily. Small victories.

The market doesn't owe anyone a green month. Onward.