The Rocketship Journal

I'm 56, a Pennsylvania business owner getting ready to sell my fabrication company and start a new chapter with my wife. Trading is one piece of that chapter — not the most important piece, but a real one. I've been studying Ross Cameron's gap-and-go method for the last few months: low float, HOFC breakouts, scale out at R-multiples, hard exit by 11:30 AM, never hold overnight. Built a scanner and dashboard this week to automate the signal detection (Rocketship Scanner on trading.michaelmankin.com/hq). Today the wiring went live. The plan: post every trade here, win or lose, starting with 30 days of paper trades. No real money until the discipline is muscle memory. Goal: 100 documented trades before I look up from the screen.

Trading matters. But feeding the masses, raising kids, building things people depend on — those matter more. We all get to take the same amount with us when we die. So if I'm going to learn this craft, I'll learn it the right way: in public, with honesty, with gratitude for the people who taught me what they know.