Intro

My name is Derek and I am a Chinese American and had been living in New York since September 2003. I was very fortunate that my parents provided me all the necessity since the day I was born and I didn't have to worry about the food on the table, the place to live and the future to come. I was not a good student in high school because I spent a lot of time playing PC games and just not working hard enough for SAT and GPA. I ended up going to Baruch(CUNY) and in pursuit of finance degree. I am a mediocre person and perhaps below average person in terms of academic and career performance. I seem have a lot of troubles blend into the college circle and suck at networking. 4 years passed by in a blink of eyes and most people had successfully landed jobs but I was struggling to find a job. I had a few opportunities of interviews but I screwed up badly and ended up working as salesperson after graduation. In a few months I was fired because I and several other people seem couldn't contribute much to the company. I was depressed since then and spent every single day home. My mom is the nicest person in the world because she didn't scold at me but still looked after at me. One day I got into a fight with my mom and the next day I started looking for a job, any job!!! Then I ended up with Reiko Wireless, a cellphone accessories wholesaler and distributor doing sales job. I met many good people that I still stay in touch with but I know that I can't do this job for rest of my life. During Chinese New Year 2014 I went to China and was inspired by my aunt talking about making whole year's salary in one day from the stock market. She had been my role model ever since I was a child and I always looked at her as someone I wanted to become. I was fascinated of her story and decided to open a brokerage account when I got back to the US. So I opened and funded my first brokerage account-Scottrade but subsequently lost all my capital there-$12500. I still remember my first trade-$ATHM. I was up $2000 in 2 days and excited about it but in third day my P&L went from $2000 to $1500 to $500 and I had to sell it for profit which was less than what I could sell it the day before. My first 6 months as a trader was disaster because I emotionally bought and sold short stocks. Then I came across Tim Sykes and his videos and how his trading strategies helped his subscribers making tens of thousands of dollars. I opened an account at Suretrader to get over Pattern Day Trader rule but I was in a endless cycle of funding. I had consistent and unstoppable losses since the day I opened Suretrader. I've even kept the whole stack of credit card authorization forms in my drawer. I made all kinds of beginners' mistakes-impulsive and reckless trading, emotional trading, going into a trade without plan, refuse to cut losses, what happened was I was very often taken out of the game right out of the gate. I didn't understand the stock charts, patterns and just made decisions purely based on what I felt the stock would do. This was the period that I never want to go back to because I was depressed, anxious, angry, frustrated and any negative emotions you could think of. In the February 2015 I went to China again and came back and I actually started to trade better. I used to fund my account on daily basis but this time I could keep my account alive for more than a couple days. I was inspired by Tim Grittani so I started recording my daily trading log on excel spreadsheet and kept track of all my daily trades on it including position size, percentage gain/loss, notes. I started to become a better trader. I survived !!!! then one day I made $17000 on the ticker symbol $ITEK. I was super happy about it but guess what I lost nearly half of it in the following trading sessions. My account was going through roller-coaster ride since ITEK's profit. One day I lost $6000 on EBIO and the next day I made $7000 on CERE. I was trading huge after ITEK's profit, $20000-$30000 position size as opposed to the size I used to trade-3k, 5k, 8k. Then finally I lost all my capital on Suretrader but the only silver lining was I still had 10k profit on my IB account. the reason I did well on my IB was it was subject to PDT, the funding came from the borrowing from my best friend, and most importantly I always exercised patience before entering the trade. My strike after confirmation definitely paid off. I've been writing diary on my word document in my computer and starting today, I will start posting charts, analysis, my wins&losses and lessons on this blog. I was inspired by Jordan from "Investors Underground" on starting this blog and as what Jordan said, "it will help with my accountability and consistency as a trader." I hope this blog has values far beyond than I think and I can become a better trader. At the end, I want to THANK YOU for reading my blog!!! My English writing is bad, I hope what I wrote makes sense to you.