Today's market was volatile. It started off on a high note, with some early morning surprises giving me an opportunity to make some smart bets. But as the day wore on, things took a turn for the worse.

Consumer Sentiment numbers came in showing a cooling of sentiment among consumers, which I expected to see more of yesterday. That sent equities tumbling downward. I should have taken that as a cue to cash out and call it a day, but instead I got caught up in the excitement of trying to spot an advantageous dip later on.

I misjudged the bottom of the dip and ended up tying up too much capital in the slide downward. I had to swallow my pride and realize some losses on one strategy just to free up capital before the close.

Despite the ups and downs, I managed to make it out green for the day, but not without a lot of juggling towards the end as the bulls and bears fought it out. As I look at my positions going into the weekend, I feel uneasy about some of the risks I'm holding onto.

What a roller coaster! Here's hoping next week sees some positive news with Nvidia (NVDA) earnings and who knows what else.

Next week

I had previously bought Shopify (SHOP) after a dip and then successfully exited after their earnings when they soared. Now they're approaching my buy point again at $115/share. The downward trend in consumer sentiment and potential slow down in the consumer-driven economy does not bode well for Shopify. However I still think that the stock is appropriately valued at 118-125. I will need to make sure I'm in a position to move should Shopify bottom out a little lower.

On Thursday of next week we should see Nvidia's (NVDA) earnings. They slid down to around $135/share and I think that they are appropriately priced around $140/share. The shine on Nvidia has come down a little bit which I think is helpful, but the expectations around earnings next week I still think are impossible for them to succeed on. I don't know if there's going to be a play for me here. If NVDA slides a bit further on Monday, I might pursue some call options for the other side of earnings..

Log

• Played the open really well before the Consumer Sentiment and other economic indicators were released which I was really pleased with. Stepped away from the terminal for a good after.
• Came back later in the session and spotted what I thought were downward trends and misjudged "bottom" of the dip and ended up in some positions that continued to erode for most of the day. Very annoyed with myself for that because I did double-down on some of those positions as the trench deepened. Did myself no favors.
• Ended up behind on my margin and needed to correct my position before the end of the day, that led to closing some positions for losses that erased the entirety of the gains made in the morning. Foolish and self-inflicted. Still pretty mad about it.
• Ran into the same order ticket pricing bug mentioned yesterday which exacerbated some of the day's loss, fortunately the order size was small enough to be annoying rather than disasterous.
• I have been getting better at tiering the entries and exits into positions, which I have been working on improving so I can take more upside out of some of my conservative exits.
• I was able to work through some of the last hour's volatility to make up some lost ground and come out ahead from the day, but when looking at things wholistically today's gains were probably 1.5x what yesterday's were, but the losses were probably 1x of the gain yesterday.
• Still green, but unhappy with it.

Portfolio