Trading Diary – 18% Daily Gain, Despite a Rocky Start

Today turned out to be a fantastic day for my trading — though it didn’t start that way!

Late last night, just before the markets opened, I set up two stop orders: a sell stop on the NASDAQ 100 and a buy stop on Gold, anticipating movement due to ongoing US-Iran tensions. As expected, Gold spiked and triggered my buy… only to retreat straight after. Meanwhile, the NASDAQ opened lower, but frustratingly, my sell order was triggered at the bottom, not where I had originally set it. The index then bounced upwards, putting me immediately into the red.

I cancelled both trades, accepted the small setback, and reassessed.

Seeing the NASDAQ start to rally, I placed a buy trade — but accidentally sold out of the position due to a platform glitch! I re-entered the same trade, and though it didn’t move much overnight, it gained momentum after the London market opened. That move was enough to wipe out my earlier losses, and I closed in small profit thanks to a stop loss in profit.

From there, I set another buy limit around 21,780, went off to do some chores, and came back to see the the index had retracted, taken my trade and hit and closed in the green again. My next entry was at 21,750, and after another rally, I took profit once more with a tight stop. If I had held that trade longer, I’d be up even more — with the NASDAQ now hovering around 22,000.

Still, I’m walking away with a £19.49 profit for the day — that’s around an 18% return on my trading capital. Not bad at all. It’s days like this that make all the analysis and patience worthwhile.