A squeaked out a win, exceeding my dollar-value goal this week. I’d say it was hard-fought, but it was actually a couple of bad decisions on my part balanced by one not-so-bad decision.

Mistake #1 – Taking Profits too early. I saw a breakout on DIG, and played it to the upside. It did very well at first, and then retreated. Hard. I panicked, and got out with a slender profit. I was too afraid of the volatility.  This wasn’t a horrible mistake, especially considering the general choppiness of the market – and considering that a couple of days later the price would have gone into negative territory for me before shooting up on Friday.  So while my entry was fine, my management after the entry was poor.

Mistake #2 – During my panic-induced frenzy, I decided the pullback from the above was a bull trap (a hasty decision made near the close of the day). I very quickly made a bearish SPY play without having fully planned out the trade. After close, I evaluated my position and realized that I had merely been looking at an expected pullback from a breakout. It hadn’t pulled back far enough to be considered a bull trap. I quickly got out of the position the following day at a mild loss.

After these two trades, I thought my chances of hitting my profit goal this week was slim.

Success - Shortly after exiting the bear position – on confirming (I felt) that my analysis was correct, I entered a SPY position with calls. I doubled up on my position on further confirmation I exited these at EOD on Friday at a very nice profit – half when I hit a very conservative target (which made up for the loss on the puts, plus a tiny bit more after transaction costs), and then half at the EOD Friday (since I really don’t like to hold over the weekend when the market is this choppy and news-driven).  Since I doubled-up on this position, this may be considered two plays, not one. But ah, well.

So this puts me at seven winning weeks to two losses this year (and one week I just didn’t participate). I really like that ratio. My individual trades are running at around a 60% win/loss ratio – not nearly as high, but this tells me that I’m doing a better job of managing my losers.

While I’m still not convinced that my success thus far is skill-based rather than luck-based, I think that having an actual goal – a target income – each week has really helped my trading. Before, I was goal-less, with no plan other than to “make as much money as possible” on every trade. Oh, and to not lose “too much” on any losers.

Based on my overall negative performance the last two years (with some amazing volatility), I’d call that plan (or lack thereof) a failure. While I’m not enjoying the kinds of amazingly profitable weeks now that I experienced back then, my trading account is nevertheless swelling at a pretty impressive rate. It’ll take a while at this rate to recover the amount that I’ve put into “tuition” over the last couple of years, but I’m regaining confidence that I can do this.