origin

August, 2012. Beginning of my second year at Texas State University. I was (and still am..) studying for a Bachelor's in Business Administration, majoring in Finance. I didn't know much about the markets at the time and grants from the state were paying for my school, so I took about $5,000 of student loans and started playing around penny stocks and small cap junk stocks.. because WHAT COULD GO WRONG?! Well, nothing went wrong. In fact, things went more perfectly than I could've ever imagined.

In just a couple months I turned that roughly $5,000 into almost $15,000. I was having $500-$2,000 days pretty regularly (see $5,000 in single day above) ^ ^ ^. I made enough money for the time being. So, I got out for a while. Spent a little money on some new computers, a couple trips with the girlfriend, and lots of booze at our local bars. 

I decided I probably needed a job around May 2013, so I could get a little experience in the finance industry (banking is close enough?). I got hired as a teller at Wells Fargo inside of a Wal-Mart in May. When I was a teller, all I could think about was trading. I made a few trades at work.. I had graduated from penny stock trading to trading volatile, low-float, small cap stocks, but it was pretty difficult to do while dealing with lines of customers. So, I stopped again.

Then, in February 2014, I was promoted to personal banker. This allowed me a lot more time to trade while at work. 

• In a whole week as a banker, I was making about $700 before taxes. 
• Often times, in thirty minutes as a trader, I was making >$700. 

I felt like I could keep this up. I was pretty inconsistent trading while at Wells Fargo, but I just blamed it on customers getting in the way or other work-related things. It couldn't just be me, right? 

On October 18th, 2014, I quit my job as a personal banker at a Wells Fargo. I started day trading full time-ish while finishing up my school and travelling a bit for about six months. As you can see in the chart posted, my consistency wasn't great, but I was doing pretty well... until March.

A few things happened that caused my nice steep decline. 

1. I got too cocky. 
2. Starting trading with more shares and $$$ than I was comfortable with. 
3. Let debts and other worries get to me so I could no longer control my emotions when trading.

and

MOST IMPORTANT- I let the market consume me and every aspect of my life. Trading was all I thought about. It even hurt my relationships..
I became so mentally and emotionally drained over the months of March and April that I couldn't handle the stress and losing anymore money and I just quit.
I burnt out. Just like that I wasn't able to trade anymore. I hated it.

I got a great new job as a financial accountant in the middle of May 2015. Since then I've been able to trade every once in a while.. now that I've recovered a bit since April.
A couple things I noticed that helped me immensely since starting up again two weeks ago...

1. My account is no longer margin, strictly cash. This keeps me from over trading because once I run out of settled cash, I just can't trade. Yes, I miss great opportunities because of this, but It forces me to think more critically and strategically rather than jumping on any trade I see.
2. Because I am limited on amount of cash I can trade, I also am much more patient and am able to let the trade go the way I intended it too, rather than stopping out ever time it dips a little.

Sorry for such a long first post. I just felt I needed to share my experience because it might be able to save some of you from some of the negative things I went through.. and maybe even save you some money!

I'm doing much better now. Since June 10th, in approximately 8 days trading, I have cleared +$4,500.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to share or message me.

Thanks and have a great weekend everyone!

Just for a bonus, my trades from beginning until today, July 24th, 2015.