Transcription
Most traders think they need to make $1,000 a day to kind of make it. And we had this trader on our desk who was absolutely obsessed with this concept. He started out and he'd want to be sure that he was making $1,000 every day. That was his goal. He attached himself to that number. That was really what he wanted so badly. And for some reason, he felt like without it, he wouldn't be a successful trader or really a successful person. So he would come in in the morning and say, "You know, Jeff, if I make $1,000 a day every day, I would be so happy. I would be such a happy trader." I mean, it sounds good, right? But that's kind of a trap.
What if I told you that the real goal, the actual smart goal to have is making $200 a day. And that's exactly how some of our best traders at SMB started. My name is Jeff Holden. I'm the head of trader development at SMB Capital. And in this video, I'm going to walk you through the exact blueprint for how traders on our desk started with a $200 a day goal and how they actually make $200 a day and how you can do it too, even if you're brand new to trading in 2025. We're going to talk about that trader, we can call him Grand, and some of the challenge that he ran into starting with the wrong goal, which is a lot of what this entire discussion is about. Making sure that you're starting with the right goal. And why $200 a day is the perfect goal to start with. So, $200 a day is $4,000 a month. That's rent. That's groceries. That's real money. And most importantly, it's scalable.
Let's talk about the three things you need in order to make $200 a day. So, if you want to make $200 a day consistently, you don't need 20 screens or a crystal ball. You only need three things. You need a high probability setup you actually understand. Let's talk about these setups. One of the best for newer traders is just scalping around the 90 EMA on continuation touches. They're fast, they're repeatable, and they're very manageable. We had traders like E who started his trading journey just watching nine EMA setups all day. He focused on one or two names and then he traded him more like a sniper. And guess what? He was able to meet those consistency goals quickly by taking that sniper mindset.
This is a trade that we love on the desk. It's called the second chance scalp. And this second chance scalp is something that shows up on the scalp radar. This one showed up in the scalp radar. But what is great about this is you're not actually trying to predict that this second chance scalp will occur. What you're doing is looking for the price action to break out of range and then pull back to that area that it broke from. So the setup changes and then you're watching as the stock pulls back in. These are opportunities that give you superior risk-to-reward when they show up for you. So they allow you to risk that $50 or $40 or $30. You know, kind of control your risk and look for that superior risk-to-reward. You know, broadly speaking, if you're trying to make $200 a day, you should probably be risking about $50 in a trade. You know, you're going to want to find that number for you appropriately, but broadly speaking, you're probably at about $50 of risk per trade for $200 in a day, maybe a little bit less, but when you're starting out, you can be such a sniper that you can give yourself the opportunity.
So now as we pull into this prior area, let's watch just like we did before. How does the stock respond to that area? Do we see a key change in the tape with buyers stepping in? Look at that. Look at that distinct and noticeable change in the tape. That's how I want to enter my positions. That's what I want to see in order to get long. We had this nice break higher and then retracement back into that key level that we broke from and then we had that distinct and noticeable change. So I can enter my position after I see that distinct and noticeable change at that key level. And in this case we can risk like 25 cents looking for this stock to continue higher. And look at the response that we get. This is exactly what we want to see. And this is why being such a sniper is really important. We avoided and we sidestepped all of the potential turns here when the stock really didn't get back to that level, but once it did, we had a really good risk-to-reward opportunity and we had the opportunity to put on this trade looking for a sustained up move.
As we see the buying pressure come in again, we're going to be holded with these trades. We recognize that this should put in a higher high. It just put in a higher low. The stock is trending. It just put in a higher low. Now, it should go and put in a higher high. So, as the stock moves in our favor, we can start to move our stop up very slowly with it. If we clear the prior high, we can start to think about moving our stop up so we can preserve any profit and not take on additional risk. Look, we just had that really nice break up and through. So now we can move our stop down to this up to this area that we broke out of. And then we can move our stop up higher and then we can move our stop up higher. At the end of the move, we will be stopped out. But is that the worst thing in the world? It's called doing the stop game. You just keep moving your stop higher and higher and higher. Instead of predicting where the stock can go, you just keep moving your stop up with the price. Eventually, you get stopped out, let's call it right there. That's fine. Other people will use the 9 EMA as their as their stop, but that's the way to really allow yourself to capture the upside in some of these moves. You don't want to be selling here or here. You want to be just moving your stop up and up and up and up so you can capture the superior riskreward opportunities when they are presented to you. And you can see the power of this trade because we were risking about 25 cents in this trade. And look how much upside we captured just by moving our stop higher and higher and higher as the momentum was working in our favor.
So let's take a step back. Let me paint you a quick picture. So when Gran started, he showed promise. He was able to put together good trading ideas each day. He was finding good stocks. But as soon as he got into his own head that he wanted to make $1,000 a day trading, what do you think kind of happened? Well, frustration, inconsistency, and honestly, he almost kind of burnt himself out of trading. What was really happening with Gran, he was starting out with a $500 daily stop, but then he got into this negative cycle. He wanted to make $1,000 a day. He'd make 300 or 500 in in a trade just in the morning. And then he would start to press because he had that $1,000 number in the back of his head. And by the end of the day, he'd wind up frustrated. and he'd be down $100 or $200. He'd even get close to being down a full stop some days. What was really happening was he was so attached to that number that was just out of reach, which sounds like an enthusiastically good thing to do, to be challenging yourself, to be stretching. But what he was really doing was he would be $300 or $400 away from that goal and he would lose 700 or $800 trying to get to that goal. He would be so attached to a number and a number that wasn't the right number for him. He wound up getting on tilt so often by reaching for that goal that it would almost always take him like two or three days to recover psychologically after he went into that negative cycle. It really was kind of this boom and bust cycle that isn't sustainable for traders when they start out.
But when we kind of reframed this whole goal and took some of the pressure off and said, "Okay, just $200 a day." Something started to click with Grant. He stopped swinging for home runs. He stopped pushing at the wrong times and he started playing like a pro. One good scalp, one clean setup, well-managed risk. That was enough for him. And it felt like a giant step back initially. So, initially he felt like he was struggling and he wasn't able to put his mind around how can I go from wanting to make $1,000 a day to only wanting to make $200 a day. Once he stepped back and accepted the more appropriate goal of $200 a day, he really started to move himself forward. Shark, one of our senior traders, started out that way. He'd have a goal of making a hundred or $200 a day. Just string together $100 day, $200 days for a month, then two months, then three months. He would show consistency and then he'd follow it up with more consistency and then again more consistency. When Gran started doing this, he was approaching things the right way with the first rule we have for the developing traders which is consistency. And then the second rule we have for the developing traders, consistency. Then he would move on to the third rule we have for developing traders, consistency. By the time he had done this and started just stringing together $200 days for three months, he hit the development curve of traders and that development curve started working for him, not against him. It kind of became this path for him to follow. It wasn't that boom and bust cycle anymore. And you can fast forward and Grand is now one of our consistently profitable traders. The only thing that really changed was the target and then his process and his mindset followed appropriately with that target.
The second thing you need is a way to find those setups every single day. But here's a key. You really need a way to filter out the noise. You really need to be able to pick two or three names each day with clean setups, good pre-market volume, and a catalyst. And our technology in the scalp radar does this for you. But even if you just take the basics in play rules of a fresh catalyst, a gap up or down of 3% and gapping out of a range, you can get a giant head start because you're actually going to be looking at a lot of stocks in play. But we can't really approach this goal without highlighting a key to success in this process, which is risk management. The risk management lets you stay in the game. It's the difference between gamblers and the pros. If you're trying to make $200 a day, but you're risking 300 per trade, it's not going to work. What we teach a lot of developing traders on our desk is what we call the oner rule. So, if you're going to risk $25 or you're going to risk $50, you're looking to make 50 or $100 on each scalp. But the thing is, you're going to look for opportunities to both decrease the actual amount that you're risking in the trade, and we'll get to how in just a second, but you're also looking for opportunities where you can increase the amount you're expecting to gain. So, structurally, you might be thinking, okay, this is a 2:1, and you're thinking in terms of R and not dollars. But in reality, as you get a little bit better at these trades, you can turn them into five to ones or six to ones or sometimes let them run and really turn into something special. You're really looking for these consistent small risk, highreward big confidence trades.
If you're a developing trader and your goal is to make $200 a day, the reality is this becomes a really tough goal if you're trading the volatility that occurs right on the open. So, we have this stock that made a really strong move to the upside. And we're going to follow the 9 EMA. That's that blue line that's creeping up. We're going to watch for the price action to come into that 9 EMA. And we're not going to take a trade. We're not going to chase because that's the thing that gets a lot of traders in trouble. You'll chase looking for a breakout there and then it'll fail. And it's like, what do I do here? How do I make that $200? All of a sudden, it it winds up being a problem. So, we're teaching you the 9 EMA continuation scalp. And the first step is to let the price action come into the 9 EMA. And ideally, you want to see the volume start to trail off a little bit as we're pushing lower. Look at this little battle that's occurring. And there's a little bit of uncertainty. And that's okay. We're still going to let the price come to us. We're going to watch what happens when we get that push down into the 9 period exponential moving average, that 9 EMA. And we're not going to take this trade unless a stock has made a distinct move in one direction from the open. That's just a really good best practice for us to do. Now, we can see the 9 EMA catching up. Price trying to push down into it. And so, we're going to look for a clear and distinct rejection. on the part of the buyers, meaning the buyers are stepping right in, defending, and then stepping back up and through. It looks like we're stepping higher already, but then you can kind of see that little bit of balance. Looks like we're trying. We still need to see the buyer step up and through. It's almost there. It looks like there's a battle there. Oh, it feels like a go. Maybe it's going to come back against us. This is why you wait for that clear and distinct rejection of that price. You look for that 9 EMA to just respond appropriately with that buy program kicking right in. If it doesn't, we don't have a trade. And right now, we honestly don't have a trade. We have all the makings of a trade, but we still need to watch the price action for a distinct and noticeable change. And then we're there to participate. If you're reading the tape, you can watch the offers and see where we just can't quite get above. But then once the buyers step through that price, you can buy above there. You don't even need to necessarily watch the tape, although most of our traders do, but you're looking for that change. And without that change, you don't have a trade. It feels like it's just it's not really sure. But wait for the change. That's all you have to do.
If your goal is to make $200 a day, you now understand where you're risking against, which would be the low of that candle. So, you can calculate your share size. You can be ready for that change if it occurs, and you can wait and look for an opportunity right now. Now look, if we entered this position right here, we would put our stop right below the pullback low. Let's say we would risk $50 in this trade, right? If our goal is to make 200, we're looking for a 4R trade. But in reality, because of that little battle that occurred right above the 9 EMA, if this price action fails and starts to come right back down, we're probably going to stop out in advance of it getting all the way to the lows. So, we're probably closer to like a $30 risk, right? If this doesn't go up and through almost immediately, we're probably feeling like, h, well, you know, this isn't really the trade that I was looking for. So, you want to see price action start to move up and away. As we clear up and through, we can look to hold our position. And this is one of the big challenges a lot of traders have is they will not hold their trades. You'll be up in the trade and you'll be like, "Oh man, I can make a profit." But if your goal is to make $200 a day, you want to have a distinct reason to sell your position. And in this case, you want to allow the price action to work for you until it gets to a unsustainable price. So you want to see the price action accelerate and accelerate more. And this is showing that 9 EMA. So this is where we would take our first exit. We would be out of the trade. We finally had some real acceleration to the upside. So what happened was we entered at like 10:07. and we were risking a little less than 10 cents and we were allowing ourselves to use that momentum to really get out when we saw that real acceleration to the upside. And I understand the stock goes way higher later in the day. That's okay. The reality is we captured a really strong move by making a very consistent, very straightforward trade and we got really close to that 4:1 riskreward. So although we were really risking about $30 or $40 because we weren't going to get it all the way back to the low, we were calculating our risk off of that low at $50. And we got really close to that 4 to one. So essentially, we almost hit our daily goal already. It's trades like this that can show you the consistency that you're looking for and give you the opportunity to really put yourself in a great position. Notice how distinct we were with what we were looking for, though. We weren't coming up with this broad idea. We were looking for something very nuanced and very specific.
All right, we're going to bring in this 9 EMA continuation trade. Just look at it from the other side. And I love studying these with the tape because we really get a sense for when the price rejects at that 9 EMA. So, when we're going to the upside, the reason that it rejects is because the buyers are stepping in. those momentum players are stepping in right at that 9 EMA, that nine exponential moving average, and they're driving price higher. And when it rejects as we're going to the downside, it's because the sellers are right there at that 9 EMA, that 9 exponential moving average. That's a really aggressive moving average for traders to follow, for big players to be moving. And that's why we want to look for an aggressive move right after that. So, let's pay attention to the price action. We have a really nice distinct down move in the stock and then we can watch it as it starts to go in. Again, we don't want to chase. We want to allow the price to come to us. We can be the snipers here when we're looking to make a couple hundred every day. We need to be the sniper. Don't ever forget that. You have such an advantage over other traders out there because you can be the sniper. So, look, it's coming up to that 9 EMA, that 9 exponential moving average, and we're going to look and see what happens right there. We're not going to predict, but we're going to look and see how the price responds to that 9 EMA. Let's look for a distinct and clear rejection of that level. Right now, you can see the buyers driving it up, driving it up, driving it up. Notice if you see this, wait for it. Look for the buyers to actually lose right here. And if they don't, we don't have a trade. It doesn't feel like they've lost quite yet, but if they do, we have a trade. We have that opportunity. Look at those sellers stepping in. This is giving us an indication that those sellers are there. If this drops, then we can take it short against the with our stop right above the highs right there. We can take this short with our stop right against the highs. So, we're risking about 15 cents in this by entering when we get that turn with our stop above the highs. It doesn't seem like a lot of risk, but again, if we started to see those buyers step right up, we would try and lose less than we need to. That's a key component here is you want to try and lose less than you need to.
As you see the price action coming down, you also don't want to exit your trades too early. This is why a lot of traders with those thousand goals end up not being being able to make that goal is because they'll wind up being in a trade that could make them $1,000 but really only makes them $400 or $300 because they exit the trade too early. So you want to make sure that you're aware of what your reasons to sell are your reasons to exit. In this case, either you want that momentum move to the downside that's really sustained or you want to see that 9 EMA or the the stock come back above the 9 EMA. So, we're just holding our position now. We don't have anything to do. This is why that $200 goal is so achievable to start because you're actually building really good trading skills. You're managing your risk appropriately. you're managing your reward appropriately, which is a really important factor in doing things the right way. And then you're allowing the price action to occur without overresponding to any of it. You're building really good foundational trading skills. We see this little consolidation and then we would look for momentum out of that consolidation to continue to the downside. If we have really extreme momentum, we might exit the rest of our position and give ourselves a really nice straightforward 9 EMA continuation trade to the downside. Other traders will argue you want to let it go until it crosses the 9 EMA. I think when you get real momentum, you just want to exit the position. We're seeing a real press lower. So, we're getting right to that spot where we want to exit our position. You see the increase in volume. That's another indication that it's just time to exit our position. We had a really good scalp, really straightforward. We managed our risk well, and now we can move on. So, in this case, we captured almost a 3:1, which again, if you're doing these things, these are very sustainable moves. Maybe you're not making $200 in this trade, but you're putting yourself in a position to make $200 in a day by being very consistent.
Now, here are some really important pain points, and these are rookie mistakes that kind of kill that $200 a day goal. These are the exact mistakes that kind of keep our newer traders from making progress early on. And this is the number one thing that really sets people back. that bell rings and they start trading right from the open. So, if you really want to achieve this goal, you're probably not going to trade from 9:30 to 9:35. I understand it's on the open. It's exciting. It's what you want to be doing. You want to be a trader. I want to be a trader. We all are here to be traders. But I'll tell you what, most of the time, unless you have a very distinctly clear setup or a really distinct opportunity, trading from 9:30 to 9:35 is actually taking on more risk than you think. You don't want to set out with a goal of making $200 a day and then by 935 be down $300. It's something that can happen. So, what we tell traders to do is to focus on letting the trades develop for you. What you're going to do is allow the trades to fall into your lap. So, you're going to learn a couple really discreet trades, understand when to look for them, like we're talking about in this video, but then allow those trades to truly show up for you. The benefit you have of setting out with this goal of consistency and in numbers making that $200 a day or risking one R to make three or four R consistently is that you can be more selective. You can be the sniper waiting in the weeds. You don't have to have a bunch of tries in order to do something with a very manageable and achievable goal. You can sit there and wait for the trading opportunities to come to you. It's this little moment of selft talk that right before the open you just take a breath, remind yourself what your goal is and then go out to be a sniper. Let the opportunities find you.
Another big challenge that occurs is traders will start chasing breakouts without any confirmation because oh man, if this breaks out, it really could go. That can be such a dangerous game. What you'll see on our desk is traders will take those breakouts, but they're going to do it with different sizes and they're going to be really aware of the risk. So, you're kind of playing a speed game on breakouts, which is a tough game to play when you're starting out and even more tough to play when you're trying to achieve consistency. You want to play a game that you can win. You don't want to play games where you're competing and potentially going to lose and even worse lose more than you plan to. So chasing breakouts without confirmation is a really big challenge, but something you want to sidestep to work towards your goal. And the third thing is ignoring changes that are occurring on the tape. You can see what happens in the tape and the chart, but when you're ignoring the changes that are happening, you're actually missing the vital information, and that's going to hold you back from reaching your goal. If you're watching too many tickers, again, the same thing is going to be true. You're going to miss the vital information that's going to allow you to achieve this very important goal in your trading journey. And then the final thing, it's pretty obvious, but if you're not journaling or reviewing your trades, you're really putting yourself in a bad position because you're not going to be going up the development curve. It's going to be like all this learning that occurs while you're trading stops in that moment and it doesn't move forward. Not all of us have amazing memories where we can recall every experience that happens. And even worse, a lot of times when you're starting out as a trader, what you'll wind up doing is feeling like you recall something happening in a specific way, but it wasn't actually occurring that way. If you go back and journal and review your trades, that's how you get better. The journaling and review is such an important part of getting better as a trader.
When we see traders on our desk struggling. So, nine times out of 10, it's because they're distracted, undisiplined, or they're just kind of overtrading. And we fix that by tightening the focus. And we track only their B setups. That's right, B. B for baseline. If you can't show consistency and skill in your baseline trades, it makes it infinitely harder to show that consistency and develop the skills needed to execute in those A and A+ trades. Remember, trading's a skill development game at its core. In order to grow, you have to develop your skills. Like traders for the Scalp Radar, for example, are filtering for three to five of the top names, and they're only trading what shows real edge. It's about the quality over the quantity. They do this to develop the trading skills needed to show consistency, then more consistency, and then even more consistency, and then they follow it up with their daily process. They don't miss on their daily process for the first 60 trading days after setting a goal. So, if you're looking to set a goal of making $200 a day trading, that should be your goal for the next 60 days. And you should not miss on your process for the next 60 days.
So, what does a real $200 a day trading routine look like? Here's exactly what we teach our developing traders to do every single day. You want to prep two or three names with news volume and a clear chart setup. You can go back to what we talked about earlier. You can find things that are gapping out of a range, gapping more than 3% either to the upside or the downside. Trading elevated volume in the pre-market. Then you're going to build a game plan. So once you understand a couple trades, what's your ideal scalp for that trade? If you get that trade, what's your stop? What's your size? You kind of notice that all of those questions are about understanding your risk and accepting that risk in advance of your trading. And then during the market, you're going to focus on only the setups, only the opportunities that show you real edge. You're going to use tools, maybe notes to yourself, maybe scalp radar, maybe you know a friend to stay super laser targeted on your opportunities. And then after you've executed, you're going to journal every single trade. And you're going to review your tape all the way from the way the t the trade was setting up. You're going to review it before entry, that pivotal moment when you got the confirmation to enter, and then what the price action looked like after that. Then you're going to build a playbook of your top $200 trades. This is what prodevelopment looks like. This is what we do every single day at SMB. The numbers change. The numbers always change for traders that are doing the right things. But this is what it looks like to grow and develop every day.
All right. If you're ready to stop spinning your wheels and start trading with a purpose, start with this. Make $200 a day. Lock it in. build consistently and then start to scale it up. But again, remember the first goal of the desk, the first rule on the desk is consistency. The second rule, consistency. The third rule, consistency. So, build that consistency first. And if you want help finding some of those trades that get dropped into your lap, that's what the scalp radar was built for. kind of the same tool our pros use to find real-time scalps with Edge. It's fast, focused, no noise. More importantly, you can click the link below to learn more. And if you really want more information, subscribe for more trader development breakdowns. Drop your questions in the comments. Let us know what's stopping you from making $200 in a day. Stop missing profitable trades. A breakthrough Wall Street scanner spots high probability setups other traders never see. At SMB Capital, we're not your typical secretive Wall Street firm. Instead of hiding our strategies, we built our success by sharing them. Our New York trading floor houses dozens of professional traders, many of whom are seven figure and even eight figure per year earners, and we hire select remote traders worldwide. Are you constantly feeling like becoming consistently profitable is just around the corner, but you're never actually getting there? Here's what we've learned in nearly 20 years of training elite traders. Scalping is by far the fastest and easiest way to become consistently profitable in US stocks. Now, we're talking about hitandun trading in and out of the market within 5 to 30 minutes. Here's the challenge, though. When you're trading alone without the support of a prop firm environment, it's extremely difficult to find good scalps consistently. The key is being in the right stocks at the right time and spotting what we call easy money setups. How much time and money have you lost trading without realworld edge? That's exactly why we developed the SMB Scalp Radar, a groundbreaking tool that does 80% of the heavy lifting by scanning US stocks in real time. So, we've programmed it with five of our most powerful scalping strategies, the same ones that have collectively made our firm tens of millions of dollars. The radar identifies the 20 to 40 stocks in play during each session. It detects 7 to 12 high quality scalping opportunities daily. It alerts you minutes before these setups trigger, giving you time to prepare. And then it monitors the market in real time, so you never actually miss a setup. Look, there's a reason why professional trading floors work. Traders helping traders spot and execute their best setups in real time. And that's exactly what the scalp radar does for independent traders like you. It's having a team of professional traders scanning the market alongside you, pointing out the highest probability setups even before they happen. What would it mean to have the same advantages as professional traders on a Wall Street trading floor? And because these are the exact same setups our professional traders use every day, you're not just getting some theoretical system. You're actually getting battle tested strategies that actually work in today's markets. We've distilled nearly two decades of proprietary trading experience into five core concepts that provide numerous great trades day in and day out. This isn't just another automated system. This is a tool that trains you to build real repeatable trading skills while relieving your trading uncertainty. So, if you're tired of the endless trading struggle, if you're fed up with taking one step forward and then two steps back, if you're ready to do something truly different backed by two decades of Wall Street success, then here's what you need to do right now. Now, this is a free intensive workshop where you'll get a detailed tour of the Scalp Raider in action. You'll see exactly how it detects robust scalping opportunities in real time, relieving your trading uncertainty. So, click the link to grab your free seat and you'll get a detailed tour of the revolutionary scalp radar. You'll get the exact entry and exit rules of five of our top scalping strategies. You'll get convenient cheat sheets with all the rules, and you'll get extra valuable execution information for each strategy. That's the entries and exits for each strategy. These workshop spots are limited and they'll fill up quickly. Don't waste another day trading without a realworld edge. One that's proven by traders who make real money. Register for your free spot now by clicking the link below. Remember, these are the same strategies that help three of our traders each make nearly $20 million in a single year. The only question is, will you be next?