Before my first day of day trading for 2025, I did quite a bit of journaling the night before. Just trying to reinforce some things…mainly to stick with the trades that are working.
If you follow these posts you may remember that I am working on holding some of my trades for bigger gains. I trade stocks that run—and have been putting more effort each night into finding ones that could run (and that have big daily ranges as well)—so I may as well take advantage.
The Best Day Trading Stocks List is still a great list of stocks (and there is usually overlap with what I end up trading each day) and is what I use if my additional nightly research doesn’t produce anything more compelling.
In my journaling on Sunday night, I came up with a way of thinking about trading that appealed to me:
Be brain-dead while trading. No need to overthink or strategize. That work is already done outside trading hours in strategy development and mindset maintenance.
That said, I still made some mistakes today in that regard, but also executed a runner perfectly.
I also feel it is important to point out that while the insight is nice, it only comes from putting in the work. After being at this for 20 years I am still scribbling 2-3 pages of notes to myself each night to help prepare for the next day. It takes work. Successful trading is not a destination, it is an ongoing never-ending process.
Here is a video going over the trades:
Here are the stock day trading charts for Jan. 6 2025. They are 2-minute charts. 1-minute is fine as well, but since I am generally holding for longer now anyway I usually use the 2- or something even the 3-minute to avoid the charts from getting too squished looking. I will still drop to the 1 minute to see the finer details of certain movements.
And below is how the daily charts looked at the same time the above screenshot was taken.
AMPG was executed well. I got half the position out (25% and 25%) on two volume spikes and the rest was trailed out at the longer blue line.
PDYN was a good trade but I randomly decided to take a quick profit, partially because I had just taken a small loss on ABAT (which exiting early was also a mistake). I call that a domino, where one mistake leads to another.
QUBT I could have closed a bit earlier as once it had the big double pump it should have been off to the races. When it didn’t run, that was a warning sign. But overall pretty good there. At one point it was onside more than 3R. Not so fun giving most of it back, but that is also the nature of holding for bigger moves. There is always a trade-off somewhere.
All the classic strategies, which I am still using and combining with this additional scanning and research I am doing, are laid out step-by-step in the Price Action Stock Day Trading Course.
And remember…journal, review, and get your thoughts down on paper each night. Get to where you need to be for the next day.
Cory Mitchell, CMT
Disclaimer: Nothing in this article is personal investment advice, or advice to buy or sell anything. Trading is risky and can result in substantial losses, even more than deposited if using leverage.