I'm enjoying the conversation. I can learn from everyone here and respect/appreciate every comment. Also, anything I say I hope it isn't upsetting anyone -- don't mean to do that. I don't mind people being hard on me. I understand their perspective. What I am doing is quite unusual I realize.
I've read Bogle's book along with Jim Collin's Simple Path to Wealth. I really respect what they have to say. I just started out with my financial independence, since October of last year, and have been working hard at being frugal and saving every penny I can. Learned so much from this forum and MMM's blog. I just would hate to see Wall Street take from me half or more of what I just put in, with a potential crash very soon. (Even Bogle, just a couple months before he passed -- God Bless his soul -- suggested allocating more money to bonds/cash due to the market conditions.. I think even he was concerned about it.). Also, I learned about the Shiller P/E ratio from MMM himself from a blog post he made what about a year ago? He was starting to show some concern as well I believe.
I really would like to invest like Bogle/Collins and I will do that someday (perhaps soon), I just can't get over the fear of losing it in the short term. I hope the big correction happens soon enough so I don't have to day trade because I rather spend my time doing other things. But that said, I do for some reason seem to be enjoying what I am learning and doing okay with it so far.
I feel comfortable knowing I can't lose say more than 1.5% at at time. I keep a journal of all trades in a spreadhseet, commenting on each trade in detail. I re-read the entries over and over so I can make sure I learn from any mistakes. I keep a running batting average, win/loss ratio, avg return per trade etc. in each row of the spreadsheet as well. If my batting average or w/l ratio starts dropping, it will only cause me to analyze things more, re-reading my comments on the trades, to see what I'm doing wrong and how I can improve.
I lost 1.21% with VTWO and 1.37% with AAPL recently, both due to being swing trades in a volatile environment, where I had absolutely no control over precise exit point, being locked in. These are the only two trades I lost other than the WTI day trade where I lost only 0.75%. (If I hadn't of exited WTI at 0.75% loss I would of been down 2.8% because it dropped much further.). The first swing trade I entered VTWO I wasn't expecting the market to dive like it did over the weekend.. I had one day trade left and I could of exited Friday with a 0.3% gain. I really believed that with the jobs report of record 49 year unemployment and the fact there wasn't any significant economic news announcements on Monday, that I'd be safe.. but then Trump tweeted about increasing Chinese tariffs from 10% to 25% on 300 billion dollars of goods. The other swing trade I lost, I entered pre-market on Tuesday. I had bought AAPL when it was 1% down premarket. That day I purchased AAPL was at a golden cross point where the 50 day moving average crosses over the 200 day, and I figured the market would rebound like it did the day before with respect to tarriff threats but that didn't happen.. it got much worse; and there was nothing I could do about it but watch my balance deplete by $190. I couldn't trade because of the stupid PDT rule. It actually went up 0.30% that morning before it declined and I would of sold it then had I had a day trade left. But nope, had to watch it go down like 3%. Fortunately I got out of it the next day after market opened trailing it manually with a stop until it reversed. Only lost 1.3% on that. Anyways, so my lesson I learned is don't swing trade anymore especially since things are much more volatile now. Swing trading is more of a gamble in the short term, no control. I'm still up 2.37% since I opened my TD Ameritrade account last week.