I'm James. By day I'm a software engineer; the markets are something I've been involved with on my own account for years. This site is where I write down exactly what I trade — every session, in my own words, while the reasoning is still fresh.
I'm not new to the market, but I am new to trading it this fast. I've held stocks for years at a time, and the honest scorecard is mixed: I've lost money on individual names, and I've also made a good deal of it by buying reasonable things and holding them through the noise. Long-term investing is where the bulk of my results have come from, and I still run that boring core alongside everything else on this site.
In April 2026 I started actively day trading and swing trading — a completely different game from what I'd been doing. Faster, louder, far less forgiving, and much more about controlling myself than about picking the right stock. This journal exists because I wanted to document that transition honestly, while I'm in the middle of it, rather than write it up later once the story had a tidy ending.
I'm not selling signals, I don't run a paid Discord, I don't have a course, and I'm not here to convince you that trading is easy money — because for me it hasn't been. There is nothing to buy on this site. I share the wins, but I also publish the losing days, the trades I took against my own rules, and the mistakes that cost me real money. If you're looking for a highlight reel, this isn't it. I'm a software engineer who trades his own account, not a financial professional, and nothing here should be read as advice.
The numbers here aren't from memory or screenshots — they're reconstructed from my actual brokerage account statements. I export every fill, calculate realized profit and loss on an average-cost basis, and reconcile it against my broker's own per-symbol totals before I publish. When I say a day was down $184 or a name cost me $707, that figure came out of a spreadsheet built from the statement, not a rough guess. My full six-week results, including the parts I'm not proud of, are laid out in the complete trading log.
Writing down a trade forces me to be honest about why I made it. Publishing it forces me to be even more honest. If putting my real entries and exits in public makes me a more disciplined trader, that alone is worth it — and if my mistakes save someone else from repeating them, even better. Accountability is the whole point.
Daily entries and longer analysis covering three things: fast pre-market scalps in small, cheap movers; the occasional more aggressive or leveraged bet (and what those have cost me); and my slower, long-term core. If you want the method and its flaws in one place, start with my strategy deep-dive or the breakdown of what 890 trades taught me.
Questions or feedback? Reach me on the contact page. And please read the disclaimer and terms — nothing here is financial advice.