Despite containing fewer than 20 trading days throughout the month, February has been an exercise in brinksmanship and control across my trading accounts. And while the month started as one of the worst in my career, including a brutal -$240,000 loss on a single trade in CPS Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ:CPSH), I finished the back half of the month with one of my strongest periods of profit in my history as a day trader.

That end-of-month recovery was of course helped by the same rapid momentum that has characterized the market recently, particularly in SPYR, Inc. (OTC:SPYR) on Wednesday and the resurgence of the GameStop Corp. (NYSE:GME) short squeeze late in the month. 

However, what’s truly helped me regain control of my trading are the same steps I tend to take when I feel as though I’ve lost the plot of the market, including lowering my share size and scaling into positions so as to lock in profits early before stepping on the gas. Those final two weeks of February had substantially fewer, and substantially less dramatic, drawdowns, so I wasn’t constantly finding myself playing catchup in order to end the day in the green.

One of the most helpful steps I was able to take in the final weeks of February was to come to each trading day more calm and collected, deliberately exercising discipline not only in my trades but in how I started my day. I say often in my live trading and recap videos on the Warrior Trading Facebook and Youtube pages, but getting in the habit of waking up after a good night’s rest, starting the day with some exercise and finding your center before making a single trade is the most surefire way of improving your trading results over the long term.