Riding December's Momentum Into 2020

Happy new year, traders!

It’s hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that it’s 2020. I think that’s for a few reasons, not the least of which is that restarting my trading account over the past three months has almost felt like a whole new year for me. December’s small account challenge alone was packed with enough action to fill three or four months.

Speaking of which, I’ve tentatively closed the books on my first monthly small account challenge. All told I ended the month with about $54,000 from my initial $500 account, trading just 16 days out of 21. Helping the challenge was the fact that I doubled the size of my account four of the 16 days. But the truly crazy thing is, I made about 65% of that profit in the final three days of the month.

Last Friday was a perfect confluence of these factors since I both doubled the size of my account and posted my biggest green day of the challenge and my best trading day in several months.

Friday’s momentum was probably the biggest factor in helping me squeeze the most out of the day. Verona Pharma plc VRNA, the second leading gapping stock on my premarket stock scanner, exploded out of the gate, busting past the premarket high and above $10 in a matter of seconds. I rode that initial move all the way up to $12 for more $6,000, hoping for a halt that ultimately didn’t come before the stock retreated.

The other big momentum stock from last Friday, Iterum Therapeutics plc ITRM, was a lower float stock popped up out of nowhere on my intraday momentum scanner. Since it wasn’t on my watchlist, I might have been a little overeager jumping into this before it was halted at $4.10, but it continued taking off as soon as it resumed. I added around $4.50 and held on into a second circuit breaker halt. As soon as it started trading again, ITRM hit $6 and I took profit. Then, as the stock consolidated, I added at the first green candle hit the high of day at $6.50 for another $6,000.

The brilliant thing about both of those trades is that, because of the stops I placed in my initial position, I was never risking more than $1,000.

Which again brings me back to why the fact that it’s 2020 is so astonishing. Because, looking all the way back to my stats for the last small account challenge way back in 2017, it took me about twice as long to get to where I am now.

Because of this momentum, I’m thinking over whether I will actually start a new small account for January or whether I’ll continue with this current account and see how long it takes to reach $100,000. Follow along on the Warrior Trading YouTube page and Facebook account to stay posted on how the challenge is going.

And, if you’re hoping to start the new year by learning to day trade, we’re running our New Year Sale on Warrior Trading courses for all levels of trader. Again, happy new year and happy trading.