Inside Diane's Life

(How has your trading journey been going?  Have you started yet?)

I am so grateful for online trading apps because without them I don’t think I would have ever started investing.  They are so easy to use and since I am not a techie, if I can do it than I think anyone can.

So let’s get into my progress, though  I am warning you that it is not pretty.  I opened a Robinhood account with $100 and during that time I think I have gotten about .40 in dividends.  For me to get to the place where I break even I will need to bring my account back to $100.40.  As I will show you I am far from that amount.

My current account balance as I am writing this is $54.71.  It is hard to admit, but the account actually got down to $47.29.  I have been slowly trying to pick better stocks and stick with them.  It is definitely not day trading.  The last 2 stocks I got went down after I bought them (of course), but I was almost positive they would go up because they were in an upward trend and had no bad news to make them fall.  I held onto them for about 4 weeks before they finally came up and sold for the price I was asking for.

It was so hard to wait.  In fact I almost sold out of one of the stocks for a loss about 3 days before it’s price hit the selling point I had set.  This is how I lost most of my money in the first place. I lost money by not trusting my decision on buying the stock and selling for a loss.  The second mistake was if I was going to sell I would hold onto the stock too long and sell it for a bigger loss. I often felt so good about my wins and then lose bigger than what I just won.  I need to practice having a stop loss price that is set in stone before I buy a stock.  Since I haven’t done that regularly I lose more than I should.

So, here is what my account looks like from the beginning.

I was finally going to show you that I was gaining some ground and then my stock took a small dive.  Of course it happened a day after I bought it.  It drives me nuts how often this happens.  Though unless I hear bad news about the company, then I will hold onto the stock.

 UGH!

As you can tell that after 19 months I am far from being a good day trader.  In fact I can’t become a real day trader unless I have $25,000 in my account.  Since I have less than that I am only able to have a max of 3 day trades within 5 trading days.  I love Robinhood because sometimes I lose track of how many day trades I have done and the app gives me a warning that I had hit my limit.

I have not been a good day trader because I am not doing the research and putting in the time to do better trades.  Many mornings I have a job I need to go to and I am just not interested in getting up really early to trade before going to work.  Then once I am at work I am not able to get into and out of stocks in a timely fashion since I am working.  So at this time, I am not too interested in Day or Swing trading.

What I am getting interested in is Dividend and Growth investing.  For my lifestyle right now, this is more my speed.  The apps I am using for these are Stash and M1 Finance.
Like I said at the beginning, I love these investing apps.  They make investing so easy. You still need to be careful what you are investing in, but the ease is amazing.

I hope when I get more free time I will look more into day/swing trading because I still think I would love to watch the charts and news (never thought that would be true) and use techniques to predict the direction of a stock.  Until then, I will just invest in stocks I feel secure about and hold long term.  I plan to share my experience with the Robinhood, Stash, M1 Finance, and Webull apps in upcoming posts.

In case you are interested in starting your own journey with investing (Do research and start with a small amount of money so you can practice) here are my links to sign up with these investing apps that I am using.  If you sign up through someone’s referral, then you get a bonus when you sign up (I get a bonus too if you use my referral.)  So, if you would like a free gift use one of these links below. (copy and paste)

Robinhood:   join.robinhood.com/dianez7
Stash:    http://get.stashinvest.com/diane421
Webull:                                                         https://act.webull.com/promotion/invitation/share.html?inviteCode=hVnRJM8545jj
M1 Finance:   https://mbsy.co/t2wpC

How has your trading journey been going?  Have you started yet?