Too Many Trades

I seem to keep falling into the trap of too many trades.

Though the positions I enter do appreciate in value, by the time I buy and sell the options and then buy and sell another one, commissions and fees have already eaten up the gains.

As a result, I'm going to restrict myself to entering no more than three positions at a time.

But when I do, I will risk more of the account value so as to benefit from the percent gains.

Since last week, the following trades have occurred.

Again here is the overall market gain for the account.

And the net gain for the account.

For those counting that's $70.80 in additional commissions and fees since last time.
This means I'm pretty much back at the beginning for the second time.

Maybe I should set up a brokerage firm.

Win Some, Lose Some

Since the market was closed today for Good Friday, here's an update. I'll simply screenshot my trading history instead of typing it out.

Here it is for the past 10 days:

Hopefully that's legible enough for you to read.
As you can see, there's quite a bit of trading going on. Just how much?

First a look at the total account market gain since I started trading again:

Then a look at the total account gain with commissions and fees included:

As the difference shows, commissions ate up a whopping $166.78. The brokerage company has made almost 3 times what I have!

This kind of a thing is only a problem with a small account size. Remember we only started with $200.

And here's the current account value:

By the way, if you're astute you'll notice that an account that started with $200 and has a net gain of $61.22 doesn't add up to a value of $263.21. That's because I actually had $1.99 sitting in the account from my older days of attempting to trade options before depositing $200.

Hopefully successes continue to outnumber the failed trades and the account can move into the $300 range.

Back to Square One

The last post said the account value was $285.07.

Since then I've:

1. Bought an F May 17 $12 call @ 0.19 that was sold @ 0.16,
2. Gotten rid of the MU May 17 $28 call that was bought @1.97 for $1.73. 
3. Bought two MU May 17 $26 put @0.56 and 0.41, only to unintentionally sell them both @0.46 from the execution of an improperly set trailing stop. 
4. Sold the VALE Apr 17 $9 put that was originally bought @0.38 for 0.56 then bought a May 17 $9 put @0.52 only to sell at 0.56 two days later. I still thought VALE would head down based on support and resistance, but I wasn't able to look at the chart before determining a price point for entry. Because of this, I paid market price for that same put @0.49. It's currently sitting at a $22.14 net loss. 
5. Bought a GE May 17 $30 put @ 1.09 which sold later @0.89. I forgot set a trailing stop so the loss was greater than I'd like

So with all those trades, commissions and fees ate up $60.65. Add that to a market loss of $34 (which includes the current open VALE position) and the account now sits at $190.42

Got a few pending orders, but essentially, I'm back to the beginning.