Records, Then a Reality Check

The Saturday Review is my trading journal, published every Saturday morning. What I traded, what it cost me, and what I got wrong.

No. 4 · Week ending 9 October 2026

Before anything else

Saturday mornings allow me to spend quality time in the Word, so this is where the week's review begins, before a single chart is opened.

Whenever I read the Bible, I like to understand the context and the setting of the book that I'm reading, it helps me put the text in the right context and helps me understand it better. The book of Isaiah was written by a prophet named Isaiah who lived in the 8th century B.C (700's). During this time, God's people, the Israelites, have turned away from him. They no longer trust in his provision and have been consumed by the idolatry of the world. But in this book God announces through the prophet that he still loves them and despite their rebelliousness, he has a plan of grace and glory for them.

Often times we think of the Bible as a story book and we read about the things of the past and what God has done, but this book is more than just stories of the past. It is the inspired Word of God, and it is as much relevant now than it was centuries ago. It is canonical scripture which means it is divinely inspired and authoritative. This book is not meant to only address the Israelites of that time but also to address all God's people (which includes you and me) until Christ's return.

This morning when reading through this passage, it cut deep, especially after realizing this message was not just for people who lived thousands of years ago, but it's FOR ME too. For the here and the now. So, if you're going through a trial right now, meditate on this verse and take it to heart because God is telling us that he is with us, he will helps us and strengthen us. What a comfort it is to know that the God of the universe is telling us that he is with us and will give us strength to overcome whatever we are facing now and whatever comes across our path in the future as well!!

The scorecard

Realized this week, and where that leaves the year.

This week started off well and then derailed on Thursday. It's such a difficult environment to trade in, there's no trend in the overall market, the vast majority of stocks have been going down and the only thing keeping the S&P 500 from dropping are the mega caps who are still performing well because of the AI narrative. So why not stop and walk away for a week or two? Yeah sure, I've contemplated that many times over the past couple of weeks but then every time when I sit down and analyze, I see something that looks ready to move. There are these micro rotations that are happening, like at the end of last week semiconductors looked as if they're going to blast off like one of Elon Musk's rockets, then at the end of the week they took a nose dive and software closed the week at the top and semis right at the bottom..... seriously.... SOXX ended the week dead last in relative strength.

It's this inconsistent movement that's pulling me in one day and slamming me down the next, but every time it feels like something is about to take off that will ignite the market for the next leg higher. That's the reason why I feel like I have to get positioned because something might happen soon. And I still think it will. Meanwhile, I'm taking papercut after papercut and my equity curve is slowly drifting down giving back the good gains I made earlier this year.

One thing that I have noticed though is that I find myself the victim of style drift....... I've been working on a strategy for months now capturing moves as they come out of stage 1 into stage 2 and I've done well with it in the first half of the year. But now it seems I'm taking trades in stocks that seem to be on their second or third bases in stage 2. I have to get back to the basics of my own strategy and try to focus on finding the right setups within that framework.

My equity curve is drifting lower, but I feel like a breakthrough is coming soon. I need to focus on my my strategy and keep following my process, something will happen soon.

Note: the realized returns above are closed trades. The equity curve includes open positions.

Where the market stands

This is exactly the reason why I'm still trying to position myself well. To me this market doesn't look like doom and gloom. To me things look like they're turning around. The SPY has been in chopville since the end of May while the RSP took a nose dive in august. The RSP is the equal weighted SPY meaning each of the 500 stocks in that index has the same weighting, so if it is going down, it means the majority of the stocks are trending down and there is not a couple of them that can keep the index up like the SPY where a few are carrying the most weight.

The RSP is an indicator of breadth, when it goes down the majority of the stocks are going down, but now, it seems like it's turned the corner. It's had an up week this week and reclaimed the 21EMA, which then almost turns my traffic light green, but my system calls for the price above a "RISING" 21EMA. I will take the first couple of days of next week to see what the RSP does. If it confirms the breakout and moves higher, the 21EMA will start moving higher and that will be my confirmation to change the traffic light to green.

The throttle

This week's light: [ 🟡 YELLOW  ]

I'm still keeping it yellow because I want to see if there will be follow-through on the RSP. If Monday closes higher it will be my confirmation that we have indeed tuned the corner and will see some good gains, potentially for the rest of the year.

Sentiment gauge

Reading: +0.38

We are still seeing price of the indexes staying ahead of the mood, and that is what the divergence means. When the sentiment starts catching up, we will see the bullish moves we've been waiting for. Fear & Greed has moved out of "fear" territory and is not neutral, this is a sign that sentiment is moving the right way.

The book

Like I said earlier, the week started well and some of my semiconductor stocks started moving well only to reverse on Wednesday and stop me out on Thursday. I wasn't planning on adding much for the rest of the week, but Friday's action showed strength again. Some of the positions that I got stopped out of, like CEG and AAOI, reversed again and I re-entered. When my stoplosses are hit, it doesn't mean I was wrong, it just means my timing was off. My system is not built around being right or wrong, I try to minimize my losses so that I can stay in the game for as long as possible so that when the market does turn I can be positioned. I trust that my overall thesis is correct and that I just need to find the right time to enter. Sometimes it takes 2 or 3 tries before the trade starts working.

A brief explanation on the 2 section: I have 2 accounts that I trade in and a different strategy for each account. Velocity is a swing trading strategy which I trade in a margin account and Anchor is a position trading strategy that I trade in my registered retirement savings account.

Last Monday's plan vs what happened

• Planned: My plan for last week was to keep a close eye on semiconductor stocks which I was sure were going to move because the group looked strong.
• Happened: They sure did move on Monday and Tuesday and I entered some, but that didn't last long and semiconductors turned down finishing the week the weakest of all. This is an example of how difficult trading can be.... I did everything right, did the homework, planned the trades, planned the risk and executed according to my plan. But the price action is out of my control and it didn't work out..... this is the story of the market over the last couple of months.
• The one I got wrong: I'm not the best trader out there and I make mistakes every time. Like with ARM for example, i wrote about it this week here. I added where I shouldn't have and it cost me not giving my trade the best chance of succeeding. For the sake of managing my risk, I was stopped out of my trade way too early. And then we have CRWD that I just completely stuffed up this week. I had such a good position and all that I had to do was just leave it, but NOOOOOO, because of the losses of Thursday, I did not want to incur any more losses and decided to sell. What happened on Friday? It reversed and started to go up! That's my mistake for the week, I write about it below.

Mistake Audit

$CRWD is the trade I look back on this week and wish I could take it back. I did the hard part right and got a good entry, I also added to it at a good spot which made it a full size position for me and a serious potential needle mover. It's moved higher and I was over 20% in profit near the top, but after seeing it come down on Wednesday I started getting nervous about it. My sell rules are to start taking profit at 7X ATR, that means when price reaches 7 times its daily average true range above the 50 day SMA, I consider the stock extended and start taking profit. So there are a couple of things that went wrong with this trade:

1. I should've taken my first trim on Tuesday with the gap up and subsequent sell-off. That was a clear exhaustion indicator. The trim there would've been 30%
2. Instead, I waited until Wednesday and sold 60% right at the bottom as it touched the 10EMA. My rules say 40% on the first trim, not 60%.
3. When Thursday did not look any better I decided to close the entire position out of fear of it falling further and losing more profit.

The funny thing is that I had the support zone (the blue box) already drawn in there for weeks and it held. On Friday price reversed and started moving higher with the entire software group showing strength.

This is a clear example of how emotions get the better of you in trading. I have rules built around it to prevent this very thing, but when you are in the moment and in an environment where you are not thinking clearly emotions take over and you make rash decisions.

The lessons for me from this trade is once again: Trust my process and my rules. If I had followed my process I would've taken 40% off on Tuesday with the reversal bar on that day being my trigger. Then moved my SL up to just below the 21EMA to protect some more profit. This would've already paid me for the trade AND keep 60% of the position in play with the potential of more gains. Instead, I sold it all out of fear and sitting on the sidelines, potentially looking at the train leaving for destination profit without me.

Hindsight is always 20/20 and it's probably going to happen again, but my hope is that by journaling this trade and recording the mistake I can hopefully learn from it and also reduce my chances of repeating the error. Trading is a constant, never-ending battle of continuous improvement.

Cellys

$HNGE is the trade I'm glad I stuck with. This is the type of trade that wears you out, a constant slow grind to seemingly nowhere and then just when you decide to sell it pops. One of the things I'm really trying hard to get better at is letting the winners run..... something I failed dismally at with CRWD this week. With HNGE, there was absolutely no reason to sell. It is still trading above all the key moving averages, volatility is super low and volume is declining. None of these show any signs of weakness or concern, in fact, it all pointed forward to the pop on Friday. That is what happens when volatility contracts and volume dries up, a classic VCP pattern.

I am happy to let this one run and hope it starts stretching its legs next week.

The week ahead

After realizing I'm suffering from an acute case of "style-drift", I've decided to change the timeframe I use when I scan through my scanners and use the weekly timeframe instead of the daily. This will help me keep focusing on stocks with long bases in stage 1 about to move into stage 2 as per my strategy. I've written an article about it and what exactly this looks like. Read it here

Here are the stocks on my focus lists for this week

Weekly Focus list: $FSLY $SNAP $ALLT $FIVN $BB $ELF $NOW $ALRM $MGNI $APPS $U

Daily Focus list: $U $SNAP $FSLY $NOW $BB $ELF

Sector read: Software continued its strength on Friday and I do think this is going to be the more dominant theme in the next few months. The majority of my scans contain software stocks with long bases and quite a number are reflected in my focus lists mentioned above. I'm also seeing some utility/energy names popping up which might be pointing to a future rotation into this theme. For now, I've limited myself on the semiconductor names, quite the opposite from last week, but I have to trust my process.

The focus will be on my existing holdings, I still want to add more to $CEG $AAOI $CRCL and $VECO which was a late entry on Friday. $VECO is my only semiconductor name, purely on the fact of its structure. It has a very long base, broke out, came back for a retest and now looking to make the next move.

What would change my mind: All eyes are still on bonds, the diesel price and war with Iran. So far things are holding steady with the midterms approaching I'm presuming Trump does not want to do anything drastic. Any change to that status quo might send the market down. I'm still managing my risk tightly

This is my own trading journal. It is not investment advice, it is not a recommendation to buy or sell any security, and it is not tailored to your circumstances, your objectives or your risk tolerance. I am not registered as an investment adviser, dealer or representative with any securities regulator. Trading involves substantial risk of loss and most active traders lose money. Do your own work and speak with a registered professional before acting on anything you read here. Full disclaimer.