Can I day trade my way to 1% daily gains?

This is the first day that I’m starting a daily trading journal to document my futures trading journey.

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I started a journey like this before, back in 2021, when I was first learning about options and futures options trading. It went spectacularly for the first 8 or so months when I turned $16,000 into a high of $42,000, and it came crashing down in January 2022 when I lost everything.

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Well, I’ve learned a few lessons since then.

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I won’t lie, it did turn me off from actively trading for a couple of years. I think I got PTSD since my whole portfolio (retirement and taxable accounts) lost around $150,000 in value.

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Well, I’ve built it back and now I’m restarting my daytrading account. I’m still using tastytrade as my platform, but I’m trying a different strategy.

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Instead of just trading futures options, i.e. selling put ratio spreads on /MES (S&P 500), /MNQ (Nasdaq), and /RTY (Russell 2000), I’ll trade the actual futures product themselves.

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I’m starting with $16,000 - with a daily goal of 1% per day.

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Some days I might not trade. On other days I might lose a lot. But let’s see what happens.

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Here are some parameters I’ve set in order to not make the same mistakes as last time:

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1. I have a “Walk Away” daily loss target of 2% of portfolio value. If I hit that, I need to close my trading platform and walk away. Never ever revenge trade.

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2. I set a daily goal of 1% of portfolio value and a stretch goal of 3%. This prevents FOMO if the market keeps increasing and I feel I’m losing out on potential profits.

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3. Close all positions at end of day. Stop thinking about trading until tomorrow.

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Trade Summary

In and out in the morning to hit my goal. A few dumb afternoon trades to end up where I began.

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First trade - Long /MNQ

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Oh man, as you can see on the chart, I perfectly timed the bottom today at 09:54 AM! You can see the low was at 18994.75 and I was able to get in at 19001.50.

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The timing! Wooh! I knew I had to wait around 9:45 AM to see what the trend was going to be, but if you look at the chart, /MNQ went past the lower band pretty quickly. It felt like the bottom so I went in for 2 contracts.

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Exit Trade - Close /MNQ

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I watched like a hawk, saw that I hit above my 1% goal, and got out at 19,065.00 for a total of $254 profit (minus fees).

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Went out the room, told my wife I hit my goal and I’m not going to look at the charts again so I don’t get greedy and lose it all.

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Afternoon Trades and Regrets

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I checked /NQ in the afternoon and I couldn’t believe myself.

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/MNQ gained another 160 points after I exited this morning!

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Of course I couldn’t help it and got out the futures calculator and saw that if I held my original position and exited at the current price of 19225.00, I would’ve made around $900 instead of just $254.

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And thus began an afternoon of stupid trades where if you check my trade summary, I gained nothing. I actually lost money because of fees. I don’t even need to analyze what I did because it was just emotional trading and greed. Nothing more.

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Nasdaq kept going up and ended the day at 19250.

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What did I learn today? I learned that I should stick to my goal, be happy, and go on with my day.

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What can I do to prevent FOMO (fear of missing out)? Think about how I’m long in my retirement portfolio and I’m not actually losing out on money when the market keeps going up.

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If I’ve made more than 1% of my daily goal, I need to walk away.

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Will this work? We shall see tomorrow.

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EOD Profit: +$211.94

Profit

$211.94

1% Daily Goal

$159.46

Difference

$52.48

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