Week of Feb 2–Feb 15, 2026
Every trade journal has a week zero, and this one is actually two weeks. Nothing was bought, nothing was sold, and the only three entries in the log are bank transfers: $30 on Thursday, February 5, then $6,450.00 the following Tuesday and $9,650.91 the day after that. The $30 came first for the least dramatic reason imaginable: before you wire five figures through a brand-new bank link, you send an amount you could afford to lose to a typo.
Deposited
$16,130.91
Three ACH transfers, Feb 5 to Feb 11
Trades placed
0
The first order comes the following week
What actually happened
| Date | Action | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Thu Feb 5 | Deposit | $30.00 ACH, the test transfer |
| Tue Feb 10 | Deposit | $6,450.00 ACH |
| Wed Feb 11 | Deposit | $9,650.91 ACH |
That’s the whole fortnight. The odd figure on the last deposit says something true about how this account gets funded: it wasn’t a round number someone budgeted on a whiteboard, it was what was available. That stayed the pattern all year. Deposits into this account happen when there’s spare cash to send. There are competing priorities in a real financial life, and this portfolio has to share a paycheck with all of them, but it stays high on the list, and the record shows money kept arriving.
What moved the market this week?
Stocks spent early February finding their feet after a rough late January, when tariff threats had knocked the indexes around. None of it matters much to an account that owned nothing yet. The relevant market event of these two weeks is that nothing about them suggested what late February would bring.
Anything new tried?
Everything and nothing: an account was opened, funded, and left alone. The restraint is worth noticing only in hindsight, because the money sat for a full week before the first order. Whatever else this record shows, it didn’t start with a same-day impulse trade.
Takeaway
The account began as $16,130.91 of real, transferred money, documented to the penny, with a test transfer first because that’s what you do with a new bank link. Unglamorous is the right way for a record like this to start.
Frequently asked questions
How much money did this account start with?
Three ACH deposits totaling $16,130.91: a $30 transfer on February 5, 2026, then $6,450.00 on February 10 and $9,650.91 on February 11. The first options trade came a week later, on February 18.
Why deposit $30 first?
The log just shows a $30 ACH followed by two large ones a few days later. It reads like what it almost certainly was: a test transfer to confirm the bank link worked before sending real money through it.
Were there more deposits later?
Yes, four smaller ones spread across May, June, and July 2026, each in the $340 to $675 range. Deposits happen when there's spare cash available, and they're documented in the week they land.