To The Moon

April was supposed to be the best trading month I’ve had in 2025, but of course, time and time again I had to screw it up for myself! 🤣

I concluded the month massively disappointed, and going through my trades chart-by-chart was intensely painful/uncomfortable, but it is for that exact reason why I must write this review. This month left a very lasting impression and key takeaways worth pointing out.

Trading Stats (MTD +0.08%, YTD +31.03%) –

The beginning of April couldn’t be better – I avoided liberation day, saw the market down in the dumps, and had the courage to go for the $ProShares UltraPro QQQ(TQQQ)$ mean reversion.

Waking up on that Monday to the $E-mini Nasdaq 100 - main 2506(NQmain)$ futures at 7:45am HKT, I was watching the action intraday and noticed it beginning to print a higher low on the 5-min chart.

Intuitively that was my queue, and I began accumulating a 30% position overnight in the TQQQ. That happened to be near the dead low, and the Monday session pump hit my target to scale partials very quickly.

Overall, I would rate this trade a 7/10, with the missing 3 in not trailing my remaining position and letting it work.

The other thing that I should have recognized at this point but did not was hone in on the potential ‘leaders’ on that Monday open and trading the U&R setups. Yes, I could argue that risk management = #1 and I should be more conservative in a volatile market. BUT the risk reward at this spot in the market and expected value [EV] (in my assessment) if it works is extremely high. This is a learning lesson and room for improvement going forward.

Going forward from this point, everything went downhill here. My give back is a result of the following:

(1) I was not focused enough and therefore made the wrong read in my assessment of market direction, initially trying to re-short the market and then getting my butt handed to me.

(2) When I finally adjusted and tried to get positioned in the potential leaders, the volatility kept whipping me out and I got increasingly frustrated. In a volatile market where the aggravation to reward ratio is so high, having strong emotional control, precision in entries, and staying nimble is key – I failed to do so this month.

(3) This led to overtrading on tilt and chasing non-setups just to get a piece of the pie. Totally not worth the effort!

(4) The trading friction quickly snapped me out of my ‘trading zone’, where everything I did just felt wrong.

Reflecting on the month of April:

(1) I am not a believer of ignoring the market index and only looking at the setups when placing trades. In my observation, market context is vital to determine good risk reward spots with the highest EV, and this should be paired with the skew of setups (long or short) on your watchlists.

(2) In that line of thought, had I only participated at these junctures of the market this year, getting increasingly aggressive on the back of traction/performance as the year goes on, it is not entirely out of the question to achieve triple digit returns by mid-year. The over-discretion in thinking that I am smarter than the market, along with not picking my spots properly eroded my edge.

(3) This is the ‘distance’ I need to close up to be considered a professional in trading – being mediocre will not pay the bills! As jfsrevg correctly points out (loosely paraphrasing): Looking for reasons not to place a trade will greatly enhance the quality of your trading data.

That’s it! A bummer April but I will be better! 😎

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