+259% in 1 Year - Swing Trading Performance Strategy

Hey everyone, welcome back to the Tra Line Podcast. I'm your host, Richard Moglin. Uh, this episode is brought to you by the Ultimate Training Guide, a free online resource that is perfect for building your foundation for trading. You can pick up your free copy down below in the description. Uh, joining me today for this excellent episode is Deac Upal, who is a top performer in the US Investing Championship, uh, with a return of over 250% this last year. Really looking forward to diving deep into his strategies, his process, his routines. He's prepared an excellent presentation, and we're going to cover a lot of trades from this past year. Uh, Deac, thank you so much for joining us today, and, uh, really looking forward to this.

Yeah, thanks. Thanks for, uh, having me. Looking forward to it as well.

Yeah, perfect. And to set the stage, as always, I like to kind of hear about how people first got interested in the markets. So, would you mind kind of talking through, you know, how you first got started with investing and trading?

Sure. Yeah, uh, it goes back way, um. I started trading, um, when I got out of college. Uh, I got my MBA, um, and as soon as I started working, I kind of got the bug. One of my good, uh, friends' dad, you know, we used to go see him when we were in college, and we'd go to his house, and he'd have CNBC rolling, and, you know, talk about stocks with him a little bit. And that was kind of the start of where I think I got my bug for, uh, for trading. And so, as soon as I graduated, was working, um, had some money I could, uh, invest in the market, uh, I went and opened up a brokerage account and, uh, started my, uh, started my long journey of, uh, trading. So it's been, um, lots of ups and downs. But, uh, I still remember, I think my first trade was, uh, stock I bought was Starbucks because I used to love drinking Starbucks coffee. And, uh, that's kind of where it was when, uh, when I started.

And how, how long have you been doing this?

Uh, so that's probably been since the early '90s, probably '91 or so I started trading. And so, you know, obviously, it's been a long, a long journey and, uh, lots of ups and downs. And, uh, you know, I think, um, you know, I'll share as much as I can in terms of my, uh, you know, what I went through and, uh, kind of what helped me and what, what didn't help me out.

Yeah, and if you had to kind of describe your, your personal trading style now, what would you kind of say? And, and, and what were kind of the, the steps and, and process to actually develop that style, you know, since the '90s?

Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, I'm much more of a swing trader. Um, you know, I'll buy and I'll hold for, you know, a few days to maybe a couple weeks, a month at the most. Um, that would be considered a real long trade for me. And so, you know, I typically avoid day trading, but I'd say I'm more of a swing trader. And, uh, a lot of that, I think, is just based on my personality. I just don't have the patience to sit around and buy a stock and, you know, wait for a year or two years. And, you know, that's, that's just something that took me time to kind of figure out, uh, what, what attracted me and what, what made sense for me.

Yeah, and, and how did you kind of come to the current style and, and where did you kind of go to to learn and, and to develop as a trader?

Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, you know, I like I said, I've been trading for a long time, and I think in the '90s, you know, you've probably heard all the stories about the go-go '90s, the dot-com era. You know, I was, you know, I lived through that. You know, you'd buy a stock in the morning at like five bucks, and it'd be 60 by the end of the week, 70 bucks. And, you know, I took a, a real nice, uh, small account that I had back then, you know, maybe $25,000, $30,000, and I turned it close to a million dollars, uh, by the time the, the bubble burst. And, uh, you know, being novice and and young and not knowing what I was doing, and not really having studied, right, and just kind of trading just a trade, not knowing what I was doing, I watched, uh, most of those gains kind of, uh, go away real quick, uh, in March of 2000. So, uh, in a way, it was very, very painful. I mean, you know, you wanted to sit there and puke because it was just like disgusting of how much money you lost every day. Um, but looking back at it, I mean, it was probably a good, a good lesson. I was young, I was still able to make a lot of money. It's not like I was retired and had no more money and I had to go back to work, right? So, in a way, I look back at that as kind of a great learning lesson. And, um, you know, I think as the years went on, um, you know, I kind of didn't trade for a while, uh, just because I was shell-shocked with, uh, with all the losses. And, uh, you know, it took me a couple years to go back into the market. And, uh, you know, once again, went in, did okay. Market started to improve, I started to make a little bit of money back. And, uh, you know, then you had the, the both the, the, the housing crisis, the bank financial crisis in 2007, 2008. And that once again hit my, uh, hit my account. And, uh, you know, as I went through that again, I didn't trade for a while. And then I went back in the market probably in 2010. And I decided that, uh, you know, if I'm gonna, if I'm going to be a trader and I'm going to trade, uh, my money, and, um, you know, I got to learn how to do it. And, you know, it's just not, not acceptable for me to like be handling money and not knowing what I'm doing. Otherwise, I can give it to someone else, right? Um, so that was kind of the start of my real kind of journey on on trading and trying to figure out, you know, what it, what is trading, how do you do it, and what's the right way to do it? The other thing also I was doing was I was, uh, looking back, is that, you know, I was trading everything, right? I was trading options, I was trading stocks, I tried to trade, uh, uh, currencies for a while. And, uh, you know, put my hand into everything. And that was just a big mistake, right? Uh, and I was holding long-term, short-term. I was trading, you know, metals, all, all sorts of things. I really didn't have a focus. And so, um, moving forward, you know, starting in 2010, 2011, I read, uh, the first book I read was "Making Money in Stocks" by William O'Neil. And, um, you know, I thought that was great. It kind of helped put, start putting things into perspective for me in terms of what you need to look for. Um, I went to some of his seminars that were here in Chicago, and learned a lot from that. You know, read IBD every, every day when it was, uh, you know, delivered every day as a physical paper. And, um, you know, that was kind of the start of it. I did that for several years, three years probably. And then, um, you know, I came across, um, uh, Stock Market Mentor with, uh, Dan Fitzpatrick. And I joined his service, and, you know, learned a lot around technical analysis from him. Um, went to some of his, uh, webinar or, uh, seminars that he used to do. And, uh, you know, that was, that was a great start, I think, for me. Uh, from there, I also, um, you know, started to follow Dan Zanger with his ChartPattern.com. And, uh, you know, learned a lot about kind of his style of trading, which, um, which was, which was good. And it kind of helped me, uh, in terms of trying to select the types of stocks I, I use. Um, but then I think the real game changer was when I came across Mark Minini's books. That was the first thing I did was I read all his books. And I was like, he really helped me, I think, kind of put my whole thought process together around, you know, how should you be trading, and the focus, and the discipline, and not try to do everything, you know, options and, and, uh, stocks and crypto and everything. You know, like, so I just kind of started to focus in on, you know, just trading stocks. I had lost a lot of money trading, um, trading, uh, options. And so, you know, I haven't traded options probably in six, seven years, eight years. And so that was kind of a good first step for me. But anyways, I, uh, read Mark's books, I joined his platform, and in 2018, I went to his, uh, his Master Trader Program. And, um, I still remember in that, in that, uh, in that session, I guess he always asked this question. It was, it was my first one, and he, he said, you know, for everyone in here, you know, there were probably like 300, 400 people in there. He said, you know, raise your hands if you guys think you can do triple-digit return in the next six months. And, um, you know, I just intuitively just raised my hand and said, you know, I, yeah, that's why I'm here, right? Like, if I don't, if I can't figure this out, then why am I here? So I just raised my hand. And I still remember that day. He was like, you know, for the, for the folks that didn't raise your hand, you'll never do it. And the four people that raised their hands, you guys have a chance at doing it. And so that kind of was just an interesting thought that's always stuck in my mind is that if you don't believe in it, believe in yourself, like it's never going to happen. And so, you know, dream big, dream big, and, uh, shoot high. And even if you don't make your goal, you know, you'll be better off than probably if you didn't think that you would, you were gonna be able to do that. So, anyways, so that was kind of, um, where I think some of my, uh, trading success started to come from.

Yeah, I, I, I love that story because I, I think that's a little bit of, of why I love doing these interviews, right? Because we get, I get to talk to people who have done it. The audience gets to see people who have, you know, put a lot of the strategies and methodologies that, you know, they learn from books or whatever into practice, put in the work, and actually gone out and performed and shown, you know, uh, that it's real. It's not just some market wizard in a book who can do it. You know, you yourself, if you put in the work, can make it happen. So, I, I love that story. Um, you mentioned a few, uh, mistakes that you made in your past, you know, trading options, focusing on, you know, everything. Were there any other key mistakes that you were making, you know, during, during the previous trading times, the '90s, 2000s, that when you really cut, cut those out and, and made a specific effort to, to get away from that, that really kind of turned the corner in terms of your performance?

Yeah, I mean, there, the list is probably huge on that. So, I, I would say a few things. Things, one is, um, you know, I, I really didn't know what I was looking for, right? Like, it sounded good, I'm going to buy it and see what happens, kind of thing, right? That was like a big, a big mistake. Not using stops was a big mistake. Y- Not understanding the market environment that I was in, and just still trading like it was, you know, 1999, still, right? Like, everything's going to go up. Uh, not managing the size of my positions. What else? You know, I mean, looking back, not really looking at technicals as much. Well, I was looking at technicals, but I didn't really understand them. I mean, everyone looks, oh, I see this chart, like, yeah, this looks like a cup and handle, but you really don't know what a cup and handle should look like. Not knowing the rules around that, you know, so, so lots of things like that that really, um, that really kind of, uh, were impacting my trading. And like I said, I think I never saw, like, a good something that was put together in such a good way that kind of, like, just for me, it kind of, like, you know, made sense. And until I read Mark's books, I think he just packaged all his kind of style and strategy and everything together into something that, for me, uh, lit a light bulb. And so that's kind of what helped me out, right?

Yeah, perfect. And how much of, you would say, obviously you're more of a swing trader, so it's not quite the the can-cum strategy that that you first read and "Make Money in Stocks." I'm sure, you know, it's influenced by it, but how much of your process would you say is technical-based versus fundamental-based, you know, at this point, in terms of how you trade?

Yeah, so, um, I'd say like 80% is probably technical. Um, I do use, uh, IBD and Market Smith, and I, and I, I try to avoid stocks where, or yeah, companies that don't have earnings. And that's been kind of something that I've really focused in on. Like, I'm, I'm not really trading a lot of these small caps that are losing money. Um, and, and I'll kind of go through a little bit about, like, my criteria. It's evolved over the past, I'd say, three, four years in terms of really what I like to focus on and where I've seen myself make, make money, uh, and get those triple-digit returns. I mean, I've had them, um, two years, three years now, not in a row, but, uh, over the past three, you know, out of five, six years, probably three years where I've made triple-digit, and they all had something in common in terms of the types of stocks I was looking at. So, um, and it just goes with the approach that I use. It just makes more sense for me to focus on stocks that are, uh, companies that are making money. I just feel a little more comfortable with that.

Yeah, and, um, you know, I always like to kind of hear, hear a little bit of context about why people decide to join the USIC. So, I'd love to hear kind of the backstory behind that, and, you know, uh, whether it's something about competing against others, competing for yourself, you know, um, making sure you're more disciplined. What made you actually decide to join the contest?

Yeah, so, uh, you know, I was, uh, I was working full-time. I've been working full-time for, you know, 30 odd years. And so last year, I decided to, to, uh, stop working and start trading full-time. And so, as part of that, you know, one of the things I decided to do is, hey, you know, I'm going to put my skills up against, uh, all these other traders and see, see how it goes and see how I can, how I perform. And it kind of gives me some accountability to myself, right? Because that's the other thing in in trading, I think, is like, no one really knows what you're doing except yourself, right? I mean, unless, um, you're trading on a hedge fund or some sort of fund, and there's people looking at it, but, you know, you need to have accountability. And so that was the one way that I thought I could, I could do that. So, um, that's one of the reasons I joined. And, you know, the other reason was, like I said, I've been trading for so long, and I've been studying this stuff for, you know, since 2010, um, diligently. And I was like, you know, I always feel like you need to learn more. And you do, but I was kind of like, I know a lot. And I mean, how much more am I going to learn? Yeah, there's probably areas I need to focus on and fix a little bit, but and tweak, but I've got 80% of the knowledge I probably need to trade. And I need to have confidence in in that knowledge and just go after it. And so, um, that was the other reason I did it was just to kind of test myself out and say, hey, look, you know, you know this, you're probably as good as, you know, a lot of the other folks that are out there. And, you know, hopefully, I can finish at a at a decent spot and, um, prove to myself that, you know, I've, um, I've kind of learned a lot and, uh, I'm capable of doing this full-time.

Yeah, well, obviously you ended up being a top performer, which is excellent. And, and I'm curious, uh, for, for, for the audience as well, uh, what were you doing professionally before, before you completely switched to trading? And what has that transition kind of been like? Because I'm, I'm sure a lot of people, you know, that's the ultimate goal. Many of them are probably, you know, doing this part-time, working on their skills, improving. What was that transition like to become a full-time trader? And how did, how did ultimately decide to do so?

Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, like, it's like when you're going to college, you're like, oh, I got to get a job, I gotta get a job. Soon as you get your job, you're like, oh my God, how do I get out of this and do something else that I really want to do? And so, you know, for a long time, I was always thinking like, hey, what am I, how am I going to, you know, what am I going to do that I really am passionate about and live off of that, right? And so I tried all sorts of things as, uh, as I was, you know, working. You know, like, tried to, I opened up a furniture store for several years, uh, and that was also a great experience that I reflect back on and I realized, you know what, like, people are like, I want to open up my own business. And for me, I opened it up, I ran it for seven years part-time as I was working full-time. And having a, having a business and running a business is like, I hats off to everyone that does that. Um, it is one of the hardest things in the world to do. And, uh, you know, you work hard, and I'm not sure if the payoff is always there at the end of the day. And it's, you know, you've heard how many businesses survive once they open, it's very small. But I looked back at that and I was like, okay, you know, that was kind of something that I reflect back on saying, okay, you know, that, oh, having my own business after I'm done working is probably not something for me. Uh, the other thing that I also tried to do is I thought, you know, let me get into real estate. And, uh, you know, that sounds like something I'm passionate about and interested in. But, you know, after I looked at that, um, you know, I invested in some real estate opportunities, if you will, and, you know, lost money on them during the, uh, 2007, 2008, uh, debacle, the financial crisis. And then I kind of just sat back and I said, hey, you know what, the best way to do this is what you love doing, which is trading. And, uh, you know, you don't have to worry about anything, you control your money. If you would need to sell, you can sell in seconds, not months or weeks or anything like that, right? And so I was like, in probably in 2008, '09, '10, something like that, I decided like, this is what really I need to focus, focus on because this is like what I love doing. And this is something I can continue to do while learn, while I'm working, and isn't going to take a lot of, uh, well, it takes a lot of time, but it's not going to take a lot of, uh, not, I don't want to say effort either, but like, you know, money and all that other stuff to do it. Uh, though it does take money as well. Uh, anyway, so I, I started doing this. And, uh, you know, I was pretty, my wife always says, like, you are so passionate about this that every day I would spend an hour, two hours after work, um, studying, reading, um, looking at charts, and, you know, for like 10 years, right? And so that's kind of what got me there. And then, um, I was just at a point in my life, you know, where I was just like, okay, I'm done working, and, and I can do this. Um, and, you know, obviously, while you're working, like my job, I was in sales, you know, I had the flexibility to watch the markets and to trade on, you know, especially like with the phones and everything like that, right? I didn't have to be in front of my laptop all the time. And so that's kind of what helped me get to the point where I was confident enough to say, you know what, I'm going to make this transition because I was watching the markets anyways, during the day on my cell phone. Um, and so the, the transition's been, I think the hardest part of the transition has been not having the social interaction with other people, which I love. It's a solo endeavor, yeah. It's true. So, like, I'm sitting in my, my office every day, you know, with my laptop, my screen, I'm just, it's just me, right? Uh, whereas when I was in sales, you're meeting with clients, you're flying around, you're going places, you're talking to your team, etcetera, which, which all, you know, that was the biggest, I think, the biggest challenge for me.

Yeah, and, and for, for anybody who's close to making that transition, were there any, you know, key things that you, you thought about that you need, kind of, take off before you decide, okay, I'm able to do this? Whether it's performance-related, you know, overall size of your portfolio, what were some, kind of, considerations that you took into account when, when deciding to go full-time?

Yeah, I mean, I think it was all those things that you mentioned, right? I mean, I think, um, all along, I was like, hey, I need to have a certain amount of money, uh, available as kind of a backstop, if you will, and try it out for a year at least. And so, you know, getting your portfolio to the right size where you can make enough money to, um, to, uh, continue to make that salary and continue to live, kind of the life you want to live. And then, B, I think the other thing was having the confidence in yourself to say, you know what, I know what I'm doing here, so I can, I can, um, I can do this and just go at it, right? And so that's kind of, those were the two things, really, that I think, uh, got me to the point where I was like, okay, I'm ready to do this now.

Perfect. So now let's go ahead and dive deeper into 2023, trading in the USIC. And I know you prepared some excellent slides on your process and routines. Um, so, yeah, feel free to take it away.

Sure. All right, here we go. So, I, I always get asked a question, um, you know, I was at Mark Minini's, uh, and everyone, you know, always wanted to know what my stats were. And so I figured I'd start off with that. So here are the stats, uh, for last year for me, for the, uh, for the competition. Batting average was 50. Average gain was 3.25%. Average loss was 2.3. You know, I had a 1.41 win-loss ratio. And, as you can see, my whole time, like I mentioned earlier, you know, I'm a pretty quick trader. Um, you know, six days on average was my longest, was my average hold time for gains, and two days for, uh, for losses. And, uh, I did about 152 trades in total. And when I say trades, it's round trips. And so within those 152 trades, each trade could have been like 8, 9, 10, 12 legs or something like that, right? So it just, uh, it just varies for each of those trades. But on average, I did about 152, a total of 152 trades. And on the right-hand side, you can see kind of my equity curve over the course of the year. I ended up with about 260% return, uh, at the end of the year. And, uh, you know, it's much, uh, much higher than I had expected. I always start the year out, uh, you know, kind of putting a 100% goal out there to try to get to 100% at a minimum. And so I was, uh, I was definitely pleased with, uh, with where I ended up.

Yeah, no, fantastic performance. Um, yeah, obviously it speaks for itself. I definitely have a few questions related to your stats that we can go over in just a second. But just looking at your chart, your equity curve, which, by the way, thanks for putting this out there, it looks like, you know, from September, uh, you entered a little bit of a drawdown to end out the year. How is that kind of mentally, you know, obviously being in the competition, your your results are out there. How is that kind of overall experience for you?

Yeah, I'll tell you this, I think the, the mindset and the psychology of trading is so important. And, um, I know there's more and more being written around it, um, but, you know, to me, like this was kind of, it was really interesting because if I look at my equity curve from my other portfolio, I, I have a few portfolios that I, that I manage. And so if you look at my equity curve for the other portfolios, that drawdown during this time, it really, it kind of goes the other way. It kind of, you know, I did well during this time period in my other portfolios. It was in this account particularly that I, I had this drawdown. It's really weird because, um, if you were following at all this, the results last year, you know, I think I started to really, you know, I was doing okay, I was doing decent, I was in the top 10, you know, from January through probably the end of April. And then in May through like the end of August, I think I was in first place every, every month. And, and then, you know, the September results came out, and I think I was like in second. And I think Gordon was like, you know, I had some ridiculous amount of return compared to where I was. And then all of a sudden, I felt the pressure, like, oh my God, I have to, you know, what am I going to do to catch him, right? And, and you kind of get into this pressing yourself, uh, to try to get some, get some gains and, and make money. And, uh, you know, I started to do things, I started to get a little sloppy. And, uh, just, you know, those things that are in your mind, like, hey, I can't let this go down, I can't let, you know, I got to make money. And so you start thinking about the account balance versus your process. And that's kind of where, that's kind of what you're seeing there is my psychology during that time frame. And, um, it was really interesting for me to, to, to see that because, like I said, on my P, my other accounts that weren't part of the competition, I actually did pretty well. Um, but, uh, you know, I kind of tried to shake it off at, uh, at the, uh, end, end of November. And, you know, did, had a decent, had a decent December. But, uh, good, good pickup there on the, uh, on the drawdown on the equity curve. Also, I think, um, you know, during August, September, October was also kind of a tough time in the market as well. So, you know, anything I was trying to, trying to press and trying to get some return out of, I was losing money. So it was a lot of, a lot of paper cuts, some big, uh, some big stabs as well along the way, which, which I'll talk about as we go through the charts.

Yeah, I mean, obviously drawdowns, every, every trader experiences a drawdown, you know, every few months or every year at least. And, you know, it's, it's something completely normal. You know, people love talking about the, the awesome performances, but, you know, this is the reality of trading is you're going to, they're going to have great months, and then you're going to have pullbacks, just like, just like a normal stock. Were there any kind of personal reflections from, from this drawdown that you took away? Or just, you know, in general, um, anything when you're in a drawdown that you tried to do to kind of get back on the right track?

Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, for me, the biggest thing was, uh, to stop focusing on my, my balance and kind of my percent gain, uh, and to go back to the stocks and to the setups and to the, uh, you know, what the price was doing versus worrying about my, my account balance and, and the competition. And so, um, that was my biggest takeaway from this, uh, and also just in general, as well, is like, you know, stop looking at, like, really small time frames. Um, you know, when, once you enter a trade, look, you know, you got to zoom out. Um, you know, I use a lot of shorter time frames as well as I'm watching the stock and how, how it acts, but, um, you know, especially during this time frame where I was kind of pressing a little bit, um, I needed to just zoom back out onto the daily or weekly and, and, you know, because the stocks weren't doing anything wrong. I was just getting antsy and, you know, jumping, jumping out of stocks prematurely when they didn't do anything wrong.

Yeah, excellent. And, and forgive me, and, and you can, you can answer this later if you do address it, but I'd love to hear, um, you know, what, on average, your position sizing is like? How many stocks usually have in a portfolio at one time? Because obviously, some people see, you know, average gain of 3.25% on, on a smaller position, a 5% position, that doesn't, you need a lot of those trades to make a difference. But when, if you're sizing larger, that can have a bigger impact. So, what, what, in general, is kind of your process for, for position sizing?

Yeah, I'm, uh, I'm going to talk a little bit more about it, but, uh, you know, I can kind of talk at a high level here is that, you know, typically what I've seen to get, get your these types of results, like you do need to concentrate your trades. And you do need to, um, you know, position sizing wise, the max number of stocks I'll have is like three to four, probably maybe five, um, but three to four is probably the max I'll have in an account. And, um, within that account, like that's going to be a big size. You know, it could be like one of those is like 80% of my account, and the other three are, you know, because I use a lot of margin, I use margin. I kind of consider margin as part of my account balance. And so I'm, I've learned how to use margin, uh, by losing a lot on margin in the past, um, especially in 2000. And so I've, I've kind of, uh, figured out how to use it in my trading. And so it's just part of my account balance and what I have available is the way I think of it. So I might be 80% in one account, in one. I might have two or three trades that are like, you know, because you can go up to four times margin, uh, I may have, you know, two trades that are 200 and 200. So it just depends. A lot of this though, when I do use it like that, it's, it's got to be in the right market environment. And so, you know, kind of mirroring up your concentration and what the market environment is, I think is real important. And, and that's where I think that was like one of the big learnings that I had was that, you know, I was always just going in on margin all the time, even if we were in a, in a bare market, right? So, um, I, I learned that fairly quickly, uh, over the past few years to, to not do that.

Yeah, and obviously looking at your average loss, 2.3%, you know, how to manage your risk in a way that you, you can use that leverage. So, I just always want to remind people, uh, you know, watching this, if you can't control your risk, you know, you don't really have any business using leverage like that or taking huge concentrated positions. But obviously, you, you can manage your risk very, very tightly.

The other thing I want to just point out is that, you know, the, the percentages look really small, and they are, um, but, you know, that's kind of not, I'm not trying to get like the big, you know, 15, 20, 30. I, obviously, I would love that. But, um, what, what I really look at in my accounts is my, um, and I, I don't look at percentages, I look at dollars. And so when I have an account, say, if it's like, you know, say it's a $100,000 account, I'll risk, you know, on that, like a percent, percent and a half of my account value is what I'm willing to risk on it. Because, um, and, you know, and the types of stocks I buy, a two, three percent move on that stock is a lot of dollars. It equates to a lot of dollars. So if you've got a lot of shares and you got a lot of dollars coming in, dollar-wise, you're making a lot of money. Percent-wise, it does look like a lot, but that's kind of the way I think about it. And that's kind of how I trade.

Yeah, and being a swing trader with those kind of hold times, you're really, you're focused on turnover too, just the next trade, the next move, to capitalize on.

Exactly, exactly. Um, and that's something that, um, you know, has taken me a little bit of time to kind of figure out what, what, you know, I think a lot of people like, and I'll get into this, but, you know, like wanting to really get that big gain on every stock, like, hey, I want to make 30% on this, 50%, I want 100 back, you know, 100 points on this, 100% return on this stock. But, you know, I thinking it was in maybe it was in Mark's books or something I've read that, you know, the, the percentages, as you try to go for the bigger gain, the percentage of times that can happen to a stock starts to go down pretty quickly. And so if you want to make 5% on a stock, probably like 80% of stocks, you can make 5% right, without too much problem. And so that's kind of the way I think about it now. It's like, I'm like, there's enough stocks out there, I could go in and make 5%, 4%, 3%, whatever it is, uh, and have a good enough size that that that's a pretty good return and a pretty good way to make, uh, make money without having to stress about trying to get a 40, you know, 30% return on a, on one stock.

Yeah, for sure. And I don't have any, I didn't have any other follow-ups on this, so, so feel free to carry on, unless you had more to add.

No, no. So I think, um, if you look at this kind of equity curve, what I did was I went back and I looked at the, uh, at the Qs, and I kind of just, I mean, it's a similar sort of equity curve, but I wanted to talk a little bit about, you know, where, where in the year did I really make a lot of my money? And if you look at this, the orange boxes are kind of where I was very, very aggressive and, uh, using a lot of margin and, and all that. Um, the red box is where I, I was kind of a little bit more, um, cautious because the market was in a downtrend. And, uh, the places where there is no box, you know, I was probably trading, I was still trading here during this time, but this was like during that, uh, SVB, uh, issues and all that. I mean, I was trading, I was trading really small, I was getting, you know, just kind of chopped up, didn't really make any progress. But, you know, that was this time frame. I didn't do much, um, during this time frame. I was actually out of the market, 100% across my, all my accounts. I was actually in Europe on vacation for a month, so I didn't do any trading. I came back and I, and I, and I did do a little trading here. I'll talk a little bit about that. Um, and then, you know, talk about some of the losses I had. These stock tickers underneath are some of the ones I'll just kind of walk through as we, uh, as we get into it. But, um, yeah, I mean, you know, if you look at it, typically, I think your, uh, equity curve will follow pretty closely with what the market is doing. And so I think you do need to, uh, make sure you know what the market is doing and kind of where we are in the market cycle to really understand, um, how aggressive you should, you should be getting. Um, one of the things that I, I do like a lot is that, uh, you know, Mark Minini, um, he does his, uh, his weekend updates. If you guys are members, you would know this. But, you know, one of the things he does talk about is market cycles. And, uh, you know, he doesn't use them to trade, but it kind of gives you a roadmap, if you will, of what you could potentially expect. And I, I found that to be very useful, like especially, you know, uh, if you look at it from a presidential cycle or from just kind of an overall 10-year cycle, um, you start looking at these, and you start to get an idea of what typically happens during these time periods and these years. And that kind of just gives you, not, not a roadmap, but it kind of gives you kind of just an idea of what you could potentially expect and how aggressive maybe you could, you could be. But at the end of the day, I think, you know, you got to look at what the current market is, uh, is doing. And how do you kind of define a market cycle for yourself? Does it kind of start when we get above a moving average, or what individual stocks are doing? How do you kind of analyze the market for yourself and determine, okay, you know, we're in an uptrend, we're in a downtrend, I should be aggressive here, I should be more defensive?

Yeah, I mean, I look at the charts, right? Like, I mean, the Qs, um, you know, I'll draw some lines. You can probably see a bunch of lines down here anyways, but, you know, you can kind of just start drawing lines and trend lines and seeing kind of where, where the market is. And, and you get a feel. Um, you also get a feel for just, you know, as you're trading, like, if you're buying some stuff and things are just moving or breaking out, and, and they're continuing to break out and not coming back in, you know, I mean, you kind of feel like, okay, things are working, I'm making money, let's just press it a little bit here and keep going.

Yeah, excellent. So that's kind of the way I look at it. Um, you know, I've got some, some other indicators that I look at every day as well, that kind of gives me a little bit more of a, maybe a little bit more of a shorter-term idea of kind of where the market is and what's going on. So I kind of, I'll go through those as well, some of those indicators that I use, um, every day to kind of just get a feel for the market, uh, if we're overbought in the short term, if we're oversold, and kind of when things could potentially, uh, change direction.

Yeah, great. And, and coming into this year, obviously we were coming out of a longer-term downtrend, bare market, whatever you want to call it. Did that kind of affect your mindset at all, you know, during the beginning of this year? How, how did you, how did you plan to approach 2023, I guess, entering, entering the contest and looking to perform?

Yeah, I mean, I think, um, probably towards the end of 2022, um, I started to get a little bit more bullish, just because I think, um, I don't, I think it was the Fed was saying like, hey, we're kind of done with the interest rate hikes. They came out with something in October of that year, I think in '22, towards the end of it. And, um, that kind of, you kind of saw the market change a little bit there in terms of what it was doing. And I think after, like, Christmas or something, the market started to really kind of solidify and start to change character from what it had been doing, um, all of '22. And so that kind of set it up. And then I just started look for stocks, and stocks started to do well in Jan, in January. And I was pretty, pretty, pretty happy, you know, strong, uh, in January and had a great return. And then, uh, you know, February was a little bit tougher, last year. And so you could see the little bit of a drawdown in my, in my, um, in my, uh, account here, as you can, you know, if you look at it, yeah, like right here, like, you know, you saw it come down. But, you know, and then we got into the SVB stuff. And then, you know, as we got into March, April, I mean, April, May, like, you could just see these, you know, it was like, kind of the mega caps started to really act well, and they started to set up, and, and those are the ones that were moving. So that's kind of where I had a lot of focus last year.

Yeah, and, you know, coming out of that period at the beginning of the year, and also coming into November of this year, um, you know, coming out of a correction, do you have, kind of, a standard game plan of, you know, how you'll test positions? Whether you go to, you know, immediate full size right away, or if you kind of have to build, build some cushion, build some confidence that the, the trends kind of changed again, and we're starting a new short-term uptrend?

Yeah, you know, um, one of the things I do a lot is I'll use, uh, when the market is just kind of like, stocks aren't really, don't know if they're working or not, like what I'll do is I'll, I'll use a lot of the ETFs to kind of test the waters, if you will. So, like, I'll buy it, you know, the TQQQs, and I'll kind of see what, what they do. And

If I start seeing those start to perform because I think having the individual risk, I don't want to have that individual stock risk. At least I'm kind of cushioned with the Qs or, um, you know, any other ETF that you want that kind of, you know, if you want to follow the, uh, the, uh, the Russell or whatever it is, you know, you can buy whatever you want. But, um, that's kind of what I do. Like, even right now, you know, the Russell looks like it's about to about to go. I mean, it had a pretty decent day today, um, coming in. But, uh, I'll start to like, I'll buy using the the ETF first and kind of get a feel for what's going on there. If I start seeing traction on that, I'll probably sell it and then start looking at stocks, uh, or, you know, start looking for stocks and then get out of the ETF and go, go into the stocks, uh, quickly.

Yeah, great. And was there anything else here that you want to reflect on looking back at kind of the overall, uh, overall move of of the Qs this this past year?

Yeah, it was a great move, right? I mean, but you can see like, uh, you can see like, you know, if you were really aggressive here, you could have been trying to buy. But even though the the market went up here, like if you look at the Qs, they went up, we really didn't get a lot of stock traction during this time. At least I didn't. And, uh, so it's interesting to see that just because the Qs are going up doesn't mean the stocks will necessarily go up. So, I mean, I was getting chopped around here. I think it was more of base building that was going on here than anything else. And so you did see a lot of chop during this time, even though on the Qs it looks like it was like, you know, a nice move up. But, you know, in my mind, uh, the market really got going in earnest like in May, end of April, early May, and that's really when it took off until like the the middle of July. And then, uh, then you had that little, you know, that nice, uh, three-month kind of pullback or correction or digestion of this this big move that we had in the first half of the year. So, uh, that was interesting. I also kind of found, you know, this this pullback kind of to be a very interesting pullback when you look at it, right? I mean, undercut, you can't see it on this, but it did undercut this this downtrend line here, and then it undercut it here before it really just kind of took off here in, uh, in November. Um, so I like to use these trend lines quite a bit to kind of just see what's going on with the, uh, either with the stock or even with the, uh, with the, uh, with the index.

Great. So, you know, one of the things that I want to, this was one of the things that I think took me a long time to get to, which was, what kind of a trader am I? And what kind of style do I have? Like I said earlier, I was trading all over the map. I didn't really have a style and I didn't really have a strategy. And I don't know if, if you know, there's there's so much information out there sometimes, like especially now with, you know, with X and with, you know, all these services and social media and people bombarding you with the news and all that. Like, like this was like just something so basic. Like I didn't even think about it. And, uh, once I started to kind of come up with my strategy, I was like, wow, this, I should have known this like years ago. And so hopefully this helps people out to kind of figure out like, what, what is your trading style and strategy? Or, you know, what is it that you want to do? Do you want to be a long-term investor, um, you know, investing for months and years, kind of like a Warren Buffett, if you will, you know, buy value, hold it, uh, and then, you know, sell it? Um, you want to be like a, you know, like a Stan Weinstein, you know, who buys trending, you know, once the trend changes, he starts to buy it and then just holds it and watches, watches it go up. Uh, you know, those are great, great options. Um, or you can be a trader. You can be a day trader, right? Um, which takes a particular type of skill and mindset. Or you can be a swing trader, which is kind of what I am. Um, but I think one of the big things is you got to have it match your personality. Uh, which I, I, when I started trading, like and started going to some of these services, I tried to mimic each of these folks. Like, you know, try to figure out their trading style and try to match it and do the same. And what I realized was, I kept doing things different, even though I was like, well, this guy doesn't do it this way, he does it this way, he holds it, you know, or whatever, or he doesn't look at it at the five-minute or 30-minute chart, right? Uh, and I was like, well, and and it took me a while to say, you know what, I, I just can't, I can't be someone else, right? So like I got to figure out my own style of trading. I can use what their methods are and their approaches and leverage those, but I got to figure out my own style and I got to figure out my own way of doing it. Because if you're just following their buys and sells and just buying it like that, like you're basically getting fed. You're not really learning to fish, right? Right. And so my whole goal was, I need to learn to fish and do this on my own. Because, you know, who knows, these guys might not be in, ser, they might not be doing the service or whatever, right? And you really do want to learn what they're seeing and what they're doing and then figure out your own approach for what works for you. You might be a full-time, you know, you might be a doctor and you, you're in surgery all the time and you can't sit there and look at stocks, right? So your strategy might be very different, right? You might be a value investor, a trend investor, where you buy it and you look at it every night or something or every week and that's it, right? You don't have time for it. Um, so it really comes down to your, your circumstances, but also your personality, I think. And so for me, the swing trading, you know, fits very well with, with what, uh, with my personality and with what I enjoy doing. Like I don't mind sitting here and watching tickers all day long. It's, uh, that's just me. So that's it on this.

I don't know if you have any questions on that.

No, just, just completely agree. And you kind of have to figure out what, what fits yourself and also the time constraints that you have. Like, like you said, if you're, if you're a doctor, you, you can't really be a day trader. It kind of, it's not compatible. So, yeah, completely agree.

Yep. So, um, with that, you know, as I, as I kind of thought through a lot of this, right? I was kind of like, we, we can, you know, only control really three aspects of trading. It's figuring out what stock you want to buy, uh, and then you buy it, you know, when to buy it, how much to buy, and then, uh, you know, when you sell it, you sell it, and, you know, how much to sell, right? You can sell it all, you can sell it in pieces, etcetera. So those are the, the three things we really control once you know, in terms of what we do around trading. And then the last thing, I think that is real important that I never used to do, which was also kind of a, a lesson learned, if you will, was analyzing the results. Um, and so to me, that was like a big aha moment for me as well, was was analyzing my results, which I never did. I never tracked my trades. I never looked back and see what I did right, what I did wrong. I never looked at my, um, year-end results, if you will, um, from my brokerage account. Um, so those are some things that really kind of think I think are important as we talk about trading and and and figuring out how to, how to trade correctly.

Yeah, and for, for people out there who don't really do much post-analysis, what have you kind of started doing, uh, or what do you do regularly to make sure you're, you're, you're learning from your mistakes, all of that, to, to just try to improve, improve over time?

Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, doing the post, I always heard about like people, oh yeah, do post-analysis. It's a lot of work though, you know, you got to go back, pull up your, your, your trades, put it in, chart it, blah, blah, blah. Takes time. Uh, it's not fun. Uh, sometimes what you see is not fun. Um, but I think what you do is like, when I started doing it, I started to see the same common mistakes, you know, buying and no, you know, just buying randomly somewhere. There was no support, there was no trend, there's nothing, right? Like just buying it and holding it, and then it comes shooting down. Um, and you start seeing these common things that you're doing over and over and over, and you're like, oh wow, I didn't realize I was doing that, right? And so, A, it it uncovers the problem if you're having problems. Um, the second thing was, uh, that I thought was important was that, you know, not just to analyze the stock, but then also analyze like where, where you were buying it, but also where you were selling it, right? Like that makes a big, a big difference. Um, one of the things that I did, just since we're on the topic, is like when you talk about analyze results, one of the things I did, I was reading actually, um, uh, I was reading this somewhere, but I, I downloaded, I think it was one of Mark's books, like, you know, download all your, you know, what, what happens if you cut all your, your stops or your losses at 8%? Like, what does it look like? So after I read that, I went and downloaded a year's worth of trades that I had in one of my accounts. And I went through it, and I had lost money that year, right? Like I was down, I don't remember how much, but like some 15% or something like that. I went through, I downloaded all the trades, and I put an 8% stop loss on all those trades. And if I would have put, and not changed anything else, like leave every other positive trade the way it was, and just anything over 8%, chop it. And the result was amazing. I would have made like 50% U that year had I done that. And so that was like one of the biggest aha moments I've ever had. And so I would recommend folks that if you've never done that, it's really eye-opening when you start looking at the numbers and the dollars and cents that you that you lost just because of whatever, you know, putting in stop loss is not easy. And it's, it's always painful for traders, uh, for some reason, at least it was for me. Um, but when you start looking at the numbers and the dollars that you that you lost by doing not doing it, it is just like mind-boggling why you wouldn't do it.

Did you, after that experiment, did you focus a lot more on cutting your downside? Was that kind of a key change in in your trading?

Yeah, because, you know, I think what I saw was that I was making money, like, you know, I was on my winning trades, I was making money, but the problem was, I was losing it all on the other side by not having stops and risk management, right? And so if I could figure out how to do that, and and I'm, and, you know, what, I still, I still struggle with it today, right? Like it's like, you, you, you've got the FOMO, you don't want to miss out on the upside, you get bang, you know, you get banged out, and then you're like, oh geez, I should have stayed in, and the stock turns around and goes up. But, um, I think, you know, I, I've tried lots of different things to kind of overcome that, mental, um, that mental gap, I guess, if you will, or ability to do that. And so, you know, it's always a work in progress for me, but, um, definitely am way better at it than I was a few years ago.

Yeah, so is trading, it's always a work in progress. There's always things we can work on, all of that. But, yeah, I think, I, as well.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I track it like, what, like, you know, I've got a certain dollar amount. If I lose more than that, I track the number of trades that that I went over on that. And, um, you know, go back and analyze them and and take a look at why, why. And a lot of times it's because, you know, I bought it at the wrong spot. I bought it and it was too large of a, uh, uh, you know, a stop to put on it, so you'd lose it, you know, you'd lose too much. Uh, and so, you know, you, you stuff happens, right? Like, I mean, we're all, we're all human. But, to try to take that down to the least common amount that you can, that you can do, like that's kind of my goal.

Yeah, excellent. And anything else on on this slide that you wanted to emphasize here?

No, I think it's pretty basic.

Yeah. So what, what I wanted to talk about a little bit about is like stock selection. I think this is kind of gets a lot of a lot of talk out there in terms of, you know, how do you go about selecting stocks? What kind of scans do you run? Things like that. And so I think over the last three, four years, I've kind of narrowed down kind of how my criteria for for picking stocks, right? So my criteria are, and a lot of this is like, you know, from, from, uh, the Minini books and, you know, how to make money in stocks. But, you know, I look for stocks and uptrends, strong relative strength, 85 plus. Uh, I look for prices or stocks that are only $75 or more. So like, I, I generally avoid trading anything less than $75. Um, the reason is that I find that stocks that are less than that, A, you know, for, for my style, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to dollar moves on a, uh, on a stock. And so stocks that are higher priced obviously are going to be able to move a lot more in terms of dollars and than something that's not. Industry groups, uh, I've really narrowed it down. I really focus only on tech, tech semis, uh, retail, and then leveraged ETFs. I use those quite a bit in my trading. Uh, I avoid all other asset classes, metals, energy, financials, biotech. Uh, and the reason is that, you know, I used to trade, like I said, I, I used to trade all this stuff, right? Like, and what I found, what I find is that, you know, when you start getting into metals or into energy, it's kind of like trading almost like Bitcoin, right? Like, so if you buy like, uh, Coinbase because it's, you know, a lot of it's tied to the price of Bitcoin, right? Or if you look at metals, it's tied to the price of gold or silver or whatever else, copper. Uh, or energy, you know, the price of oil. And so now you got to not be correct on the company you're buying, but you also be have to be correct on the direction of that underlying commodity. And so now you're just kind of reducing the the percent chance of you being right because now you got to coordinate two different things, right? You got to buy the right company that deals in that commodity, and the commodity has to move in your direction. So I've just, just, you know, and those trades, like, yeah, they may be good for like a few months, but then they're they're kind of gone, like they don't last, and you don't really get the big moves, um, like you do in like a tech or in even in retail or or anything like that. So, um, I avoid those asset classes for that reason. Biotechs, I just, um, you know, they're very good movers, but once again, most of them have no earnings and they're very volatile, and they're basically news driven events. And so I don't trade any biotechs. Um, if I'm interested in biotechs, like I am now, you know, I'm, I've been trading some biotechs, but I do it through the ETFs, uh, and not through individual stocks, and I've just, I've just never had success trading biotech, so I just avoid it. Um, the other thing is I look for stocks with high ATRs, uh, typically five or more. Uh, otherwise, I probably won't won't be trading it, um, at least not with any size. Uh, and then I focus, like I mentioned earlier, focus on companies that have positive earnings. And, um, I try to keep my stock list very manageable to 20 to 25 stocks, probably on average, um, at any given time, because I just find like I used to have these lists, watch lists that were like, you know, 100 stocks, and I was like, you, I never even look at, you know, 70% of these stocks, and I would never even buy those stocks like that are on the list, right? And so I just kind of figured like, I just knock, knock them all out and just keep it very, very small, uh, which has helped me a lot because now I can really focus in on those stocks. And honestly, like, I, I scan like once a week, um, but I, I probably, you know, my list doesn't change all that much because a lot of these stocks, like they'll go through their phases of uptrends and then they'll digest, but out of that 30, there'll be some other, you know, handful of stocks that are that are just breaking out, right, or coming out of a consolidation or a pullback. And so you've got the opportunity to kind of just stick with some very limited number of stocks that are manageable that have good ATR. I just kind of hone in on those, and that's that's kind of it. Try to keep it simple.

And how would you define stocks and uptrends? Are you looking for above a certain moving average or, yeah, what's your requirement there for for being in an uptrend?

Yeah, so like, I mean, I want to see the, uh, the 200 day in an uptrend. I want to see the 50 over that. I mean, ideally, I'd love to see, you know, that the 50 has to be over the 200 is is criteria, and they need to be in a decent uptrend, like at least for a month or two. And then, um, you know, the 21 day, I look at that, but I'm not as concerned about that. Uh, if it's in an upter, I mean, if if the 200 and the, the 20 or or 50 are moving up, then I'm, I'm usually pretty good with that.

And do you pay attention at all to to overall, like liquidity, like dollar volume? The price over $75 probably, you know, fulfills most of that, but I was wondering if you have any restriction for, you know, average volume traded or anything like that?

Yeah, like I, I, I usually won't trade anything less than like 150,000 shares traded on average, like, you know, it's usually above that. And so for the type of stocks, and, and we can kind of look at some of my focus stocks that that I have on, you know, that I'm looking at right now, um, most of them really don't have any liquidity issues. So, but I would never trade like a, you know, a stock that only trades like, you know, 75,000 shares a day or something like that.

Yeah, too thin, too thin. And then just in terms of, uh, tools that I use, you know, I mean, I use Market Smith, which I think is great. A, not just from a technical perspective, but also, you know, like I said, if I'm looking, when I do look at stuff, I look at earnings, you know, how much short position there might be in the stock, uh, how many funds have it, you know, but mostly earnings and sales are kind of what I'm looking at. Are those moving up? What's, you know, what percent of change is it, etcetera? So that's what I look for. Um, I read IBD, uh, and then I use TC2000 as my, uh, charting software.

Yeah, excellent. Anything else when it comes to stock selection that you, you just want to emphasize here?

Or I mean, you've covered a lot of great stuff. These bullets, not really. I mean, you know, out of this 20 to 25, 30 stocks that I have, usually, you know, I'll kick some stuff out and I'll and I'll bring some stuff back in. But the other reason I like to keep these stocks like kind of limited is I find that each stock kind of has its own personality of how it trades. And, and, you know, for me to go in and put in size on something that I've never traded before, kind of scares me a little bit. Uh, I just feel like you're, you don't understand the stock. Like it might be a stock that, you know, goes up huge in the morning and then corrects down during the day, but then closes on the high. Uh, and if it's the first time I'm trading that and I buy a big size on it, like, you know, I might just freak out and sell it or something, right? So I, I like to kind of have a, a smaller list that I, I've been watching for a little bit, so I can kind of get a feel for how it trades overall. Um, you know, you look at SMCI, right? Super Micro. I think it's wild, right? Like it'll move a lot up and down all the time. So it's good to know that so that you don't go, like I wouldn't want to go in there and do one of my typical, you know, big concentrated positions when it can drop, you know, 100 points in a day, right? So it's good to know that before you kind of get into some of these stocks. So that's the other reason I like to keep my stocks, uh, my stock list kind of limited and smaller, just because I can, you know, as you watch it every day and see what it does, you kind of get a feel for how it moves and, um, how much volatility there is in it, especially, you know, when you're looking at high ATR type of stocks.

Yeah, for sure. Um, all right, perfect. I, I don't think I had anything else on, uh, on stock selection.

Cool. So buying stocks. Um, the patterns that I typically like to look at are cup and handle, um, you know, pullbacks. I do a lot of post-earnings plays as well, which I find to be pretty, could be can be very lucrative. And I'll kind of go through a few of those. Uh, I look for both flags and then also just, you know, uh, consolidations of a, of a chart, uh, of price, right? Along, uh, a horizontal consolidation that might be taking place. And so those are the ones that I typically kind of focus on. I don't really focus on a lot of like trying to find the bottom of a, you know, a downtrending stock or something like that. So these are all, you know, your typical kind of high percentage, I think plays, except for maybe the post-earnings ones, but we'll, we'll, we'll talk through that as well. Um, and then like I said earlier, is that I really look at market environment. Like I think that it's real important to marry up what the market is doing overall, uh, with your trading and how aggressive you want to be, right? And so I, uh, what, one of the things I do is I've got like this little sheet that I fill out every day in the mornings before the market opens. I look at some key things. I look at the VIX, you know, what's the VIX at? I look at put call ratio, stocks over the 200, bull bear sentiment, CN, and the greed index. I look at that all the time. Um, I look at the IBD market trend, and then with, uh, some of these, uh, uh, uh, services that I have, you know, they've got some proprietary indicators. So I, I look at those. And between these things, like I, I kind of just get a feel for, especially this doesn't help me like when the market's just in a good trend, but it helps you when things are overbought or oversold. And that's kind of where this thing really kind of helps out in terms of figuring out, you know, what kind of trading or trades that, you know, I want to put on overall.

Yeah, and are there, are there any key values that you want to point out when it comes to any of these indicators that you kind of serve as a reference point, both either to the overbought or over overall side, oversold side equation?

Yeah, like I mean, you know, like the bull bear index, I think is, you know, a lot of this is from like IBD, that's from IBD, right? Like when it gets over, I think it was like 60 or something like that, you know, it's kind of like be careful, um, a little bit too much enthusiasm and greed. But, you know, it shows it on, on, uh, in IBD every day. Um, the put call ratio is something also that I look at, which is kind of like, you know, if it's over 1, 1.1, like especially if we're going down in, in a, in the market and it's like pulling back, like once it gets to like one over one, one, two is like really high, then you know, you kind of know that we might be getting close to a, a short-term, a short-term bottom where, you know, you may want to take a chance on buying some, you know, like for me, I, in that sort of situation, I would buy some ETFs, right? Like to kind of just test the market and try to make some money. Um, or, you know, with the, with the VIX, you know, the VIX varies, uh, it's obviously super low, so it's kind of just, you got to just pull up the VIX chart and kind of see where it is relative to where it's been over the last few, few weeks. I mean, I think it's so low right now, like anything over, you know, probably 15 or 20 would be like, we'd feel the pain right now. U, whereas in the past, right, like if it was like a 20, it'd be like, okay, VIX has come down, it's kind of nice. So that one varies. Um, but, you know, in general, those are those are the ones that I really kind of, uh, really look at.

Great. Um, the other thing is market themes. Like every market has a theme. And one of the things is like, I like to follow those themes. Like, I, I don't need to go anywhere else. Like I'm not, I'm not one of those people that's like, you know, like last year, everyone was like, oh, the, you know, the Mag 7 or, you know, the mega caps or just, you know, driving the market. And, you know, people are looking for other ideas. And I just couldn't understand it. I was like, you know, the money's pouring into these, like, why, why look anywhere else? Like, just go with these. Like, it's the easiest. You got seven stocks or eight stocks, just buy those and keep buying them and selling them and watch them move up, right? And so the market themes, I think, goes a long way. And, um, you know, that's something that I think I've learned is that don't try to veer too far away from the market themes. Don't try to find anything else. Like, just, if it's making money, just stick with it. Like, why, why try to, you know, create something new when there's nothing there? Um, the other thing is, uh, like I mentioned, is when I buy, if it's a good environment, I'm going to buy very concentrated and, um, heavily margined, um, in my account to try to get those, uh, get those gains. And, um, you know, like I said, I, I, I look at everything based on dollars versus, uh, versus, um, uh, percentages. And what, what kind of points you towards the market themes, uh, in a typical year, obviously, it might be a little bit different depending on what the theme is. But what do you look for to say, hey, you know, there's a theme in this industry group that I should focus in on? That's where I should, you know, focus my attention.

Well, I mean, I think you get, you kind of see it in what stocks are moving, right? When you go through, like IBD, for example, you go through that and you look at kind of what are the industries, you know, they've got them ranked every week in the paper, right? First, second, third, whatever. Um, and you can just see like, okay, these, this is kind of where money's flowing or has been flowing. And and those are the kind of the areas that that I go after. And, you know, what, as you read the paper and you kind of just hear what folks are saying, right? You kind of pick up those themes. Right? Like right now, it's, you know, semis, AI is like the big theme. And so look for stocks that are moving up based off the AI theme. And I think that theme is going to last for a while. Um, obviously, it needs to pull back and correct a little bit. Uh, it's moved very fast and very high, but you never know what this stuff, like it can just keep going, right? So keep riding it and keep keep going at it and just manage your risk accordingly so that you don't get burned when, when the music stops and the pullback happens. So, um, you know, I think the themes are, if you, if you just pay attention, you can kind of figure out what those are, right? Like a few years ago, it was like the housing theme was huge. Or, you know, in 2022, 2022, it was all energy, right? Energy was doing well, and that was the theme back for 22. And so at that point, I, I really didn't trade it because I don't, I don't like trading that stuff. So I just kind of just sat around and waited for the market to, uh, to turn and things to change.

Yeah, great. And coming back to the concentrated position sizing, and feel free to leave it to a later slide if you discuss it there, but do you buy all at once or do you add to position to build up to a very concentrated position, uh, cuz I think that's that's a question a lot of people have about people who, you know, trade, you know, high, high percentage of their account. How are they managing risk going into that name, as they position that way?

Yeah, I mean, typically what I do is like, I'll buy the stock. And I, you know, a lot of people say, I'll buy like a, like a small starter position. But for me, kind of like what I feel is that if you buy a starter position that has no, like, it's not really going to add any value to your account, like, why buy it? Like, I'm going to buy something that's substantial enough where it can make an impact to my account, but not substantial enough where I can, you know, get killed. So I'll buy something and I'll try to buy it as close to a particular danger zone and buy enough of it, have a good enough risk management stop on it, put the stop in, and if it starts to move, like it could start to move in five minutes, and I'll just like, go, you know, it starts going, I'll just buy a lot more and, um, go all in and then adjust my stop again and you, you, you know, see kind of how, how it plays out. But typically, I'm buying something where I'm expecting it to turn around or break out or do something, right? So, um, that's kind of how, how I do it. The other thing I also do is like, if I buy something, and sometimes I try to buy a little early, and it doesn't always work out well, but, you know, I'll also put in a lot of buy stops at the proper breakout point so that I can just, you know, not if I happen to miss it because I'm not watching it, um, it'll, it'll execute and, and then, um, you know, in, so I've been using a lot more buy stops and they see, especially right now when breakouts are working, I mean, it's a good, it's a good strategy to use. I've never really used it a lot in the past, uh, but I've just started using it a little bit more over the last, uh, several months, and it seems to be a, a decent approach and works well for me.

Yeah, so, so to kind of create an example, if you're trying to put, trying to put on an 80% position on a stock that's near a pivot, near a breakout, how would you kind of go about it? Would that first buy be maybe a 20% position, and then very quickly you'll add on that, that other 60% if it, if it starts pushing towards that pivot and, and actually breaking out?

Yep, yeah, exactly. Like I'll buy like 20, 25%. So, you know, that's a decent size so that if it does move and I don't buy anymore, it's still, I'm going to get a decent return on it. Um, and I can put the stop hopefully, you know, small enough that it doesn't, it's not that big of a, it's not that big of a dollar loss, um, relative to my account. And then if it gets going and the market's doing well, and, you know, things look like they're moving, then I'll just, I'll buy, you know, the rest of my position right away. Like it doesn't, I don't wait around. I think one of the things that I used to do in the past was I, I didn't trust what was going on in the market and I, I'd like question it and double think about things, and then by the time, like it was like, yeah, it's, it's the right thing to do, like the stock up so much, it's gone, and then I'm like, oh shoot, I got FOMO, then I buy it, it, and then like, I don't really have a good place to put my stop, right? And then I don't, then I don't put a stop, and then the stock just comes crumbling down, and I lose, you know, lose on my winning position that I originally bought, uh, right, because now I've increased my size, my position, and it's turned around. So, um, the one thing I, I, I believe in is is just go in and buy it, right? Like, don't, don't put in limit orders. Just buy. Stops are fine, but limit orders, you know, like usually you'll miss out. Like it happened to me, like I tried putting, I tried to get cute and do a limit order on, uh, MicroStrategy a few weeks ago, and it was right when it was turning, and, you know, went up $2, $300 like over the course of like a few days. And so, you know, I kick myself on that, uh, uh, by, you know, doing something I always say I don't do. So, but that's also a very volatile stock, so that, you know, I was trying to get, be a little get a little cute on it and get a bigger position a little bit lower down. Um, but that, that's that's what happens in trading. So you can't, uh, you can't fret about it, but, uh, it's just something to kind of think about as you, as you start using some of these different techniques.

Yeah, and for sure. And when you're placing your orders, uh, where are you usually putting your stops? Is it based on, you know, the low of the day, you know, low of the, the tight area low, or or is it just based on, you know, a percentage, uh, percentage, you know, entry?

Yeah, no, it's going to be based on some sort of technical area. So low of the day. And, and, you know, and I don't really, if, if it's like some of the stocks that I'm doing, like I'm not doing like 10 cents because usually those will get hit. Like I'll put it like a dollar below, maybe the low, or, you know, 75 cents or something. So I give it a little bit of room. Um, because some of these stocks that I'm doing, higher dollar amount, so like 10 cents really doesn't do it. Even 75 cents sometimes doesn't do it. So, but it's usually like, I'll try to find either like on the, on the daily or on even like a five-minute chart, depending on what I'm trading, um, find something that makes sense where there would be a logical, a logical, uh, stop. And, you know, if it hits it, then yeah, I was wrong on it, and we'll wait again and try after a little bit.

Yeah, great. That answered my question. And sorry for going off topic to the slide, but just, just wanted to throw those in there.

No, those are good questions. I love those. Um, but yeah, that's all I really had on buying stocks. So, you know, concentration, I think is also something that, you know, I think to get big returns, you need to do that. And, you know, I used to trade, I, I used to have like 10, 15 stocks in my portfolio. One would go up, the other one would go down. I'd never, you never really see that big, that big, uh, move in your account, just because there's just too much, too much ebb and flow in in each of these different, uh, stocks, and you just end up getting mediocre kind of returns on it. So concentration, I think was one of the aha moments of what I learned to be successful.

Selling stocks. Okay. So this is kind of where, you know, kind of how I manage my risk. So like I said earlier, like I'll, whatever my account values, I like to have, um, like a one to one and a half percent risk of my account on any trade. Uh, typically it's going to be smaller, but like if I lost one or one and a half percent on two, three trades all at once, like A, that would tell me like, hey, something's going on with your, uh, with the market. Uh, and B, you know, even if I lost that, it'd be four or five percent. So it's not like it's not going to crush me too bad that, you know, that I'd be in big trouble. So that's kind of how I look at when I start trading. Like that's how I look at my risk. So any account that I'm trading, each account has its own, you know, risk level. Um, I try to get three R or more on any trade. So if it's a $100,000 account, you know, I'm going to risk one, one and a half percent. I want to try to get to at least three, 3% or $3,000 of return on that trade or better. And so that's kind of the way I look at each of my trades and what I'm trying to do for, uh, for the account. Um, a lot of times, I mean, you know, you might get because because my risk sometimes is is pretty tight, like I might get eight, nine R right on a, on a trade. And then in that situation, I'll try to sell half and then, you know, just kind of move my stops up and and keep it, keep it going and see how much I can get out of it. Um, yeah, like I said, take profits, especially above your average R. If stock's not doing what you expect or it's acting abnormal, to sell it. One of the biggest things I think you think that I had a problem with was that, you know, oh my God, I'm going to sell it, then I can't buy it back. But obviously, you can buy it right back. So if it turns around two minutes later, go back in and buy it. Um, and and I kind of like to think of it like jockeying for position. Position, you know, you're not going to get it right all the time, the first time. And more often than not, you're not going to get it right the first time. So don't take it off your radar. You know, Meta is kind of a good example. I've been kind of watching that, thinking it's going to break out. You know, bought it, sold it, bought it, sold it, bought it, sold it, several times over the last, I'd say two weeks, right? But I know when that thing gets going, it's gonna, you know, it's going to make up for the small little paper cuts that I've had trying to jockey around and position my myself for that for that move if it moves, right? It may not, but it looks like it should move up. Uh, it's acting well. But that's kind of an example what I mean by jockeying for position, like it takes a few times sometimes for these things to get out of their, uh, out of their own way and and actually break out. So you got to be aware of that. Um, and then, you know, like overall, if the market's extended, you know, light up, you know, just at least sell half or, you know, don't, don't put yourself in a position where you can get hurt real bad on on your, uh, on your holdings if the market turns around the the next day. So, I mean, those are kind of like in general, the way I think about selling. And, and I typically don't sell sometimes I will sell everything at once, especially if I've got a really good profit. But, you know, typically, you know, I kind of scale out on the sell, on the sell side, if, if, if the stock is moving up, obviously, if it's moving down, I'm trying to get out as fast as I can. But, you know, on the way up, I'll start to scale gradually, maybe, you know, 20% at a time or something like that, and try to capture as much, uh, upside of that stock move as I can.

And once you've got a little bit of profits, maybe maybe it's already moved one R for you at that point, do you move your stop up to break even or or how do you kind of manage your, your down, your stop loss on the downside, as a, as a stock, you know, works for you?

Yeah, I mean, I think typically, like I may do that, it just depends like what R, like it depends on the stock too, like how volatile it is and how, how crazy things are in the market. Like typically, I'm just going to leave my original stop where it was and just like, let it, let it go. And I don't want to tighten it up and then get stopped out, just over a few things because I was willing to lose the money anyways, um, on that and risk that amount. So, you know, I'm really trying to get for, you know, the, the three R is kind of really what I'm going at. If it's a two R, yeah, then I might consider, you know, moving the stop up or even just selling it. Um, but like I said, a lot of it depends on the market, where we are in the market, if it's way extended, then yeah, I might just take that and call it a day. Um, or if it's a very volatile stock and I made two R, like in a few hours, then yeah, I'll just sell it and and get out. So it just depends. There's real no real clean cut answer to that, unfortunately.

Yes, so is trading, it's a lot. There's a lot of nuance that goes on, especially with different market environments and all that.

So exactly, exactly. So you got to look at the whole thing, I think, in my opinion.

Yeah, and, and before you jump in, maybe to start with, just kind of orient people, you know, what moving averages you're using, what's your overall layout, just to kind of, you know, add that context.

All right, so let's, uh, let's go through some charts from last year that I created. Um, so, you know, like I said, I used TC2000 and, um, just to kind of give you an.

idea like I I've just tried to simplify and keep everything super um you know here's kind of like what I used to use in the past like I used to you know my screens were just like super noisy and colors and everything and I just kind of decided that it was too much for me and so I kind of use a very simplified uh screen now so i' I've got price and if you notice all my price bars are all green um I just feel like it's easier for me to see patterns this way and uh actually I learned this from uh Ryan uh perpoint yeah he does this so I was like this is brilliant it's just so much easier to see things so I use uh you know just kind of the the standard green bars uh open high low close no candlesticks um and then I use three moving averages I've got the 200 in white I've got the yellow which is 50 and then I've got this orange or this purple one which is a 21 day and then underneath here I've just got volume simple volume and um this shaded area is kind of the average volume so if it's above that I know it's a you know volume was higher during that that day so what do you have what do you what do you have against candlesticks then what's why are you team bar use candlesticks all the time I used to them all time yeah always always I have nothing against them I just find that this is a little easier for me to to read and I like the the cleanliness of it for sure and I can I feel like I can see things a little bit easier on this than I can with candlesticks because they're a little wider and all that so but uh I do I will switch into candlesticks every now and then um and take a look at a chart pattern but typically I I just use these uh you know open low this doesn't even have open it just has closes on them and U but uh so this has kind of helped me out a lot I think um so that's that's really all I look at I look at price and I look at volume and the moving averages and that's it yeah perfect do you want to Dive Right In with RNA yeah so like the the first few charts I did earlier in January and so like see if I can just show maybe I'll try to do it so that we can just see December so here is kind of the chart um I bought this back in January um to me this kind of looked like a cup in you know some sort of a very deep handle here um so I bought this stock uh based off of that um what I did was I'm going to just zoom in a little bit more on this mhm so what I did was I looked at this and this was kind of the handle it had touched the bottom uh trend line on this handle um as soon as it crossed you know this high of this this uh bar this is kind of where I bought it and um you know I bought 100% of my portfolio on this one because two things were happening one is AC cross this uh the high of this bar and secondly it was crossing this line that I had here for the top of the handle and so I bought it my stop was you know below probably this uh the low on this on this can on this H bar right here M and so I bought this broke out and you know I held it through through this uh day here when it kind of went up I was hoping it would continue up because this was a really strong bar that day MH um in terms of you know it was kind of an engulfing bar to the positive side uh it moved up a little bit the following day and then just turned around and didn't have a great a great close and I and I sold it out here so um you know I sold it I think I made like when I talk about dollars like even if it was I don't remember the exact but like five five dollars on it but I had a 100% of my account in itself for you know let's see 17 bars like for for pretty much the whole month I I held this position and so I made a decent return one of the things that really I think is important that I think is helped me out is that if you can have a good start to the year and obviously this is probably very obvious but if you get a good start to the year and you can get a little bit of a cushion in terms of um you know increasing your account that just mentally I think helps you out so much so I try to be very careful at the beginning of the year M to make sure I don't put myself into a into a Hole uh because it's just tough then mentally I think for me to dig yourself out of that uh and you and you just kind of have a little bit more pressure like you're losing money already at the start of the year and so one thing I think that can really help out is to be a little more conservative early in the year uh to get your account balance up and you get a little bit of cushion and then you can try to get a little bit more aggressive once once the uh you know once the market is in your in your favor as well yeah great and for for this one did you sell it all at once or had you had you sold any prior no I sold I sold it all at once this was just like I bought it and I sold it like I was in March in January so I had a few other stocks that I bought in addition to this so like for example this nety um I bought this stock in January um so when I talk about consolidations like here was kind of like this move you kind of consider it a flag even I guess but you know it had a decent move up here in a in a few weeks um it tightened up here Consolidated you had a little bit of a shake out here on this day came back up closed well and then I bought it right here as it was like Crossing this you know this little consolidation or the top of the flag here uh I bought it here and then I sold it like right here so you know this was one where I think I made I don't know like6 seven Dollar on it and mind you the the reason these like the the the trading account I had was was a fairly small account not super small but decently small so five6 dollar moves on what I was buying uh on this was was a considerable amount in terms of dollars uh added to the account so uh it doesn't seem like a lot but it's kind of how I started the year out was with these you know smaller five6 dollar moves singles and doubles to work it up to to the bigger trades exactly and and as we kind of go through some of these you'll see that my moves that I was getting were were a little bit bigger because I had a little bit more Capital to deploy towards some of these things so I played a lot of small ball initially to kind of build start to build the account up yeah great uh and then Lulu was another one that I got uh in January um this was kind of like one of those uh you know the stock was just kind of in this sideways you know it was very volatile it was kind of going all over the place I did end up buying it um here on uh on this day which is H January 9th and the reason I bought this was I'm zo on this a little bit um the reason I bought this was like I was looking at this chart and I was like well this is like so volatile but it's gotten crushed a few times but it's bounced back and this was kind of the low that I had overall like these were a little few shakeouts here but it bounced right back into this kind of Channel if you will um and it just did this again right like it it came down and it came down hard and this was and I kind of consider this a big cap stock or not huge but pretty big um but you know for this stock to go down from this price I don't remember what the news was or what what happened that it wasn't earnings and all that um you know it fell $40 right like that's a huge move for something like this so I I watched this and it never got below this and so I bought this stock I don't remember exactly the price I bought it at but I brought it somewhere like around here where I had like a small enough stop it was like 2% 3% which I'm okay with doing that I bought it there thinking that this you know was was kind of the crescendo you know was huge volume too right like maybe the volume it's done selling so I did buy it um and yeah it did turn around and uh went up and I I sold it like pretty quickly because this was a pretty big dollar dollar stock and I think I had a lot of money invested in it but you know it moved up you know 25 bucks I probably got like $18 of it or something like that and um sold out so this was like a big a big win for me in January that really kind of helped my stock uh you know count value go up and kind of give me that cushion that I wanted and so this was a good a really good trade for me that that helped me out and gave me some confidence and as you can see is like you know I I I traded this several more times um you know buying it at these lows um like here I bought it again soon as it crossed this low here because it looked like it had support right here at the at the low of uh 30241 is 302 is and so I bought it as soon as I crossed this bar here yeah uh bought it there and then you know my stop was right below this uh support area here and so you know I held it for a day and a half two days I went to the top and I got got out of it so like you know that's another like probably eight n $10 move that I was able to capture on that and then I did it again over here um you know it was kind of like it didn't really come down to test this so it stayed higher which was probably a good sign right like it's showing a little bit more strength and um I bought it again and then sold it up here so like I mean know so like this is an example of like you know I I know how this stock trades I've been watching it I felt comfortable with it and I don't need to hold it you know for a long time I just need to get that few few dollars out of it and then just keep watching it and if it's set up again for something that was like low risk for me I'd buy it and and hold it for a couple days or however many days uh get some dollars out of it and then get out and if one of these uh moves up um you know off of support you know didn't really go right away how how much kind of leash or patience do you have with the stock um you know it hasn't hit your stop but it hasn't really made uh you know pushed higher yet what what's kind of your normal process with that will you just wait until it hits your stop or you know after a few days it's not going it's not acting quite right as you expected uh would you cut it kind of early yeah I probably would or I might sell like you know half of it and hold the other half or something but yeah like I want to see it move in like the next in the first two three four days probably yeah um I don't want to hold it longer than that because then something is probably not right or you just don't know what's going to happen there so why risk it uh because there's probably some if it's a good Market you're in then there's probably something else that you should be focusing on versus wai around for this yeah great and um it even if would you continue holding it even if you know you're down on the position on that first day I know a lot of Traders have that rule where you know if if you're not green the first day you don't have any cushion they'll just kind of cut it wait for it to set back up or maybe look at it again the next day no I I don't I don't give it like you know an hour or anything like that if it doesn't move them out of it um if it's not moving if it's going down I'll sell it but if it's not doing anything wrong like I'll just I'll hold it and wait and see like I usually like to give it more than a few hours or you know a day give it a few days to see uh see what it'll do yeah perfect and one more question um for Lulu and just just in general as well yeah do you find you making more of your trades in the morning near the close or it just it just kind of depends on when it when the stock makes its move um yeah a little bit of it depends on when it makes it makes its move but I do trade you know if it's a good setup if things are like looking good in the morning I'll buy it in the morning or I'll uh you know if the stock is doing well and it's closing real strong maybe I'll buy it towards the end of the day I won't buy as big a position but U I'll buy buy some of it and then kind of watch it the next morning and if it's continues to move then I'll buy you know I'll buy a full position then yeah kind of depends on the day and um but I you know there's there's certain time periods where are moving well I always find like you know at the central 9:00 Central I find that you know stocks make big moves in the morning like everyone's after them uh for the first 15 20 minutes but then things kind of calm down and around if you really want the stock wait till like around nine o'clock first half hours or so and you usually you see it pull back a little bit and that kind of tells you a lot whether the move is real or not right um because if it doesn't keep going and turn around um quickly after like the first half hour then you know that it's probably it was probably a fake move uh up so that's also something that that I I do as well especially if I want to buy the stock it's moved up a lot in the first 15 20 minutes I just give it another 10 15 and see kind of what it does if it pulls back and turns around then I'll uh I'll jump in on it yeah great no I I I I've noticed that same thing and and also one more question about your execution are you watching once you've got the the stock set your focus on that you're looking to execute what time frame are you kind of watching in that moment or maybe are you watching multiple time frames at the same time well I'm looking at the I'm making the decision that I want to buy it based on the daily or the weekly uh but then I'll drop down to a five minute to kind of see when when to buy it like because I use a five minute to kind of help me with my you know like especially if I'm going to put size on if I go down to the five minute then I can kind of take a look and see like okay during the day like when if I buy it here like I know it's it's pulled back a few times but it's held this area like maybe then I can just buy a lot of it and put a stop at a on a f minute chart you can see it very clearly right yeah and put a stop there and say okay if it if it violates this that means you know it hasn't violated it all day long on this five minute if it violates it probably you know probably not the right thing to do right now so put a stop in maybe it's like a percent or something like that or 50 cents or a dollar or whatever it is right which isn't that huge but my size is huge and if I get it right um you know then then I can zoom back out and then follow it you know on the daily chart yeah perfect um yeah I think that's all the questions I had for Lulu another stock here is uh align uh technology is also one that I created I think in uh in January no this is in uh yeah in in early February I traded this thing let's see it was pulling back uh you know it had a good really really solid run which I didn't catch any of this um but I was watching it I think this is the earnings came out it started to pull back and uh you know if you if you draw another trend line here it was like kind of a almost like a flag is kind of what I was thinking about it uh I bought it on this day um thinking it was it would you know turn back up and and continue to go it turned up hit this trend line and uh you know only made it up here started to come back down and then I sold it on this uh the day that it started to come back down and didn't show any more strength in terms of moving back up so got rid of it there um waited and you know this was on my on my radar came back down and this trend line it broke it on this day MH so I bought it as soon as it crossed the high of this uh previous bar held it held it held it didn't use my cell signals uh my sell uh strategy on this you know kind of got greedy turned around I should have sold it right here on this day knowing that you know there's a big like naked bar if you will right and obviously it's not showing any power to go up uh I should have sold it didn't do it held it held it held it and I sold it finally on this day here I was thinking this was going to you know pull back and turn back around never made it another bad day I should have probably closed it here it didn't do it and I finally got out of it over here as it cut the low of this one and so I still made I think a little money maybe broke even on it but it's an example of like when you don't follow your rules and you try to get greedy like I should have probably done is sold half of it here and just followed my rule of you know this is a pretty decent R here on this stock like you know 4 40 bucks and um I think you know I should have just sold half and this was like a good lesson for me in terms of you know um following your rules and not getting not getting greedy right right the next one I had here was uh was Netflix now I traded Netflix a lot last year it was like one of those stocks that was um that did pretty well overall uh it was one of the the it was one of the first movers I think when you take a look at the mega caps last year it really really kind of started the whole at least for for me in my portfolio like was a was a major uh mover in h April uh end of April early May so I bought this a few times and played this right um it was obviously in this downtrend starting in uh in February um and it came down and then you know the market wasn't doing all that great so I kind of followed the market but it broke out of this uh downtrend line came back down touched it and then started to go back up right so like I bought it on this day here as it touched and started to move back up I bought it I bought um I don't remember how many shares I bought but anyways it moved up second day it made a really nice move and I got out of it right here and so I made on this one I made $27 on that move right in a day um or two days I guess um but I kept it on my radar and uh it made like this nice little bull flag here and um broke out didn't catch it on that one came back came up here and then it kind of Consolidated again and so it had a bad it had a really bad close here at the bottom went down and then turned around that day and as it started to turn back on up I probably was looking at this on the five minute to be able to to find that it was turning back up and snapping back and I bought it um you know on this day probably somewhere around here after it came back up and recaptured this uh this low um I held it for a few days and um I sold it on the way down as it as it broke down through this and so on this trade I made you know $21 um and then my third buy was out here in uh in July so here when I looked at it it looked like it was just making a nice little cup and a little consolidation here if you want to call it a handle but it was pretty for for the move it made it was still pretty well organized it wasn't you know too crazy in terms of volatility and so it came down it touched the 21 Day started a bounce off of it and so I bought it here and uh held it for few days and you know we had this big big move here in uh on July 18th and after that move I kind of sold it um as it was moving up out of the uh out of these bars and made you know another $18 on it so just an example of like I could have I guess held it all the way through and just you know from here to here and I would have made a lot more in terms of dollars um $141 versus you know what I got out of it but um for me you know as that's hindsight like you just don't know like these things could turn around and come slamming down and um you just never know so I I I would prefer to take these little chunks of it along the way and have my risk management on it where I'm feeling comfortable that I can buy size on it so that's just me someone else may be like hey I'll buy a lot less shares and just hold it for that that full move so it just depends on your style yeah for sure and looks like two days later from that that third sell it may have been an earnings gap down do you have any rules related to to earnings I imagine being a swing Trader you're much more in the selling to strength uh before instead of just looking a hold through yeah I typically never hold over earnings like even if I have like maybe if I have a cushion I may just for fun like hold a little bit like I'll sell most of it and hold like you know a few you know very minor shares just for fun but typically I'm not going to I don't I used to do that I used to gamble a lot with earnings and just like oh yeah I think it's going to do well I'm going to buy a bunch of shares and you know get my head handed to me um so I stopped doing that like there's no need to do it um it's fun sometimes I'll do like but I'll have such minuscule amount that it's not really gonna hurt me anyway so I do that um but also like Netflix is another example where I kind of played it a lot last year um these were just three of the trades that I had on it but there was also Al Another I'm going to show you another like I did get burned on Netflix as well so I'm going to kind of walk through that one right now so it's right here so you know this thing was looking good it made this big pullback and you know made this little you know kind of rounding cup and a little handle here and so I bought some right here on this day uh sixth of September obviously the market wasn't doing all that great either at that time it was you know pulling back but bought some here it looked like it had crossed over this kind of like this cup I would say this was kind of to me like I was looking at it as as resistance crossed it I bought it didn't have a great clothes um it kind of just hung in there and so I I didn't really put a stop on this one so this was like another one of those things where I broke a little bit of my rule but I was watching it and so you know a few days go by it kind of went down came back up and it was tightening up again I thought like it's looking okay okay uh this day was not good it came down to the 50 I kind of held it because it was still over the 50 um and then the next day there was like the CFO was at some conference and basically said hey you know I know there's a lot of excitement around what we're doing and this ad tier that they're putting in place and we're going to make all this money uh just to set expectations it's not going to happen as fast as everyone thinks you know it's going to take time we're not seeing all the the results yet Etc so he mentioned this at the conference and the stock immediately just tanked and by the time I saw this was happening I mean I I had gotten crushed already right so and I had a decent side size position and so this was like one of my largest losses and you know when you looked at my Equity curve and you're like yeah you had a pullback this is one big reason why I had a big pullback on uh on the equity curve which which really kind of hurt me um psychologically and mentally I think it hurt um and it was also like a time when the market was not doing well so you couldn't just bounce back you had to like you know it was it was a tough market during those three months and so I had to sit through all that and that's where you kind of need to like make sure mentally you try to like keep your mental Capital positive as much as you can because it can really impact your trading and and then really cause Havoc for you until you until you can kind of fix that yeah for sure and like you said it seemed like you traded Netflix quite a bit last year do you often find yourself kind of coming back to these names you know quite a bit I imagine Tesla might be the same way a nice liquid name that can make really strong moves um you know throughout the year within bases you know all of that yep exactly then and that's kind of what I do like that's kind of my Approach like so like I said I don't like to look for a lot of new like I'll look for new stocks new things that are that are are good um but I try to keep it to like you know a handful like my day-to-day list is this Focus list and these are the stocks I focus on like you know if you look at them these are all like you know this is the ATR on the on these stocks and so you can see like these are Big ATR kind of stocks that move a lot can move a lot in a day um so those are the ones these are the ones I focus on I mean I've I've traded these in and out a lot and so um you know I've got this list that I kind of add to all the time these are my like you know but there's like 80 80 stocks in this so like when I scan during the week I'll put them into this list but this kind of just gives me a general idea of what's going on in the market and I can look at this list but it's not like my trading list if you will but this is like my trading list and even within the trading list I move these stocks around like so for me these like top 10 15 like these these are the ones I really am focused on right now right for you know whatever the reason is but so I keep it very very uh small and I try I keep going back to the well if you will for sure so yeah so that was Netflix um I did trade you mentioned Tesla I did trade Tesla a little bit last year as well this is one of the trades on Tesla that I did um you know this was kind of just a a little you know it was it wasn't a downtrend but it looked like it was trying to like set back up it was like turning around here tightened up had a little very minor cup I don't can't even call it a cup it was just kind of a little consolidation um I used this as resistance this bar right here and as soon as I crossed it I bought some bought some shares and um you know ran it for a few days if you notice like it went up this is another thing I noticed a lot is like when when a stock breaks out like it'll it'll more often than not come and test that breakout or that level again and so you know this is an area where you can add more if you want and you've got a very you know limited loss there that you can set in terms of risk and um you know it came back down I held it and then the next day it had a decent move and I and I got out of it so you know I made $111 you know on that uh on that little trade I should have held it obviously you know made a nice move from there but uh so goes it I guess yeah that's hindsight yeah so um then I wanted to kind of talk I talked a little bit about like if the Market's not doing well I like I don't like to trade the stock necessarily I not trading ETF so here's an example of um last year when the market was uh you know the market was in a correction I um like I said I was out of the market from you know like July 18th or something um the 20th or some you know around here I was out of the market and when I got back home from uh from vacation I was watching kind of what was going on I was watching it there but I wasn't trading um what I noticed was this huge down day and this is kind of like you know you mentioned how do you use your indicators so like I was looking at the indicators the vix was like had spiked I think on this day um the bul you know the bearishness was huge the vix was huge the put call ratio was like super high and so in this situation you know this thing fell pretty substantially in the morning and then started to snap back and so I bought you know I bought a lot of uh tle q's and uh you know was leveraged on those and you know as soon as this thing kind of I bought it I had a pretty decent Siz stop like I mean a tight stop on it so it wasn't risking a lot but held it overnight opened up back into this Channel and uh you know it was a little volatile um this especially this drop but I held it U because it didn't hit my stop which was you know much lower uh and it was a small stop so I held it and it bounced right back up and then I got rid of it on this day so this was a pretty you know it was like a67 I think uh return on it I think five or $6 so but I was really heavily like my whole account plus margin was in it so it was a very good uh a good size return for me yeah H how do you handle a big reversal day like that when you've got um you know a very sizable portion of your account because it seems like you like to play you know that initial move up or that initial momentum move but even during those initial moves you can have a reversal day like that before It ultimately continues so what's that kind of like psychologically and how do you deal with that yeah I mean it's um first of all I should have probably sold here because this was a Telltale like like this hitting the two getting close to the 50-day you would think would be you know resistance which it was um I should have probably sold it on this day and not even had to deal with this you know downturn um it's I mean psychologically you're kind of thinking about this you're like oh shoot you know like I shouldn't have I should have sold it and or sell it now but for me there was two things one was this was my trend line right and it held it number two I knew what my risk was um down here and so I I was willing to deal with it it wasn't a very large risk so and I don't remember exactly what was going on in the Market at this time but it was you know obviously volatile I don't know what the news was or what what happened here but I I held it and then I got out of it once it went back up um typically you know I could have held it probably since it went over the 200 100 day but or the 50 day here but I think based on what was going on here and the volatility I just uh took the money and and and ran yep so like in these situations like especially like when you're looking at like a the markets and like a big down day and a lot of volatility out there and you're trying to play off of that um it's going to be volatile but for me it's like if I know my stop is so small or it's limited risk I know I've got like you know a one half perc account risk on it like I'm okay with that um to kind of play it because I've seen this happen a lot of times like right and and a lot of times when you see the volatility so high it'll come smashing down but come right back up and if it doesn't go over the you know the vix doesn't go over what it was the few days before then you kind of know like okay the volatility is starting to shrink and right I don't remember if that's what I looked at here but that was kind of what what I do look at a lot lot when I'm trading these types of uh these uh snapbacks if you will on the on the indexes yeah and and for these type of snapbacks are you often looking to sell in that 50 SMA area if if your if your buy points kind of under that at the bottom of a channel like this I mean that is like a key level that a lot of people are watching and potential resistance often so yep exactly uh so that's where I would I should have sold it um but I didn't for whatever reason I don't remember um but yeah and this could have been one of those where the market opened up high at the 50 and then you know kind of hung around for a little bit and then just dropped the rest of the day so that could have been what happened and I was thinking it would turn around but then by the time it happened it was like too late right so you know that's the kind of you know I guess some of the risk that you do have to take with this um either you be you know you just take the take the profit and run because that was still a pretty decent uh decent move up here like it was $4 right so I didn't make a lot more but I took a lot more risk on it unfortunately but right ended up okay which is which is not great I me which is good but I shouldn't have I should have sold it right here um but that's kind of how I use uh and I played this again uh not in my uh USIC account but my other account I played it again right here um on this second uh time it came down um and then you know work played it up here and then you know got rid of it I think it was over here here into the 50 yeah all right so that's kind of an example of that and then um here's an example of I think I mentioned like one of the things I like to try to do is find uh uh earnings place and uh you know I always earnings are always interesting and interesting time so this was one where um aago avago came out with earnings um and during this time like in early December uh November time frame and you know like the chip stocks were doing in general pretty well aago came out with really good earnings from what I remember and their stock just uh tanked like not tanked but it went down right like and I was like trying to figure out why it went down I listen looked at the earnings reports Etc the stock came down but it initially opened down that day yeah it opened down and um yeah this was it so this was a Friday I think uh they were at earnings on Thursday Friday it opened it opened down the ear started up opened down came down and then started to turn around right and so I bought this thing like as it crossed this uh I think what about it when I crossed the opening High um soon as I crossed this I bought it right here and um I think I draw yeah I mean if you look there was like a trend line that was here as well it's probably a little lower um right there so I bought it as it was coming out of this uh after it crossed the high right here and then just kind of held it and rode it up for a few days and that ended up being really a good earnings a lot of times you know the market overreacts on earnings um the market overreacts on earnings and it gives you an opportunity to kind of catch that and so like this was this was the thing right so like I caught it coming out of here I held it for you know a good four five six days but you know that was almost a 200 Point move right like I didn't have a ton of shares but I had a decent amount of shares and on my USIC account like this was one of my big one of one of my other big trades that really kind of helped me especially when you looked at my Equity curve in December start to go up this was one of the reasons why uh why uh why it went up or that helped me out so that's an example of an earnings play I'll look for when the earnings don't look bad the market just is expecting so much more I mean if you look at today with Salesforce right CRM same thing they had good decent earnings and you know people are like not that happy with it and it gave you an opportunity this morning to buy Salesforce it was down like two three four dollars I think at one point and you know it ended up closing up $10 so a pretty big reversal and a good and a good move for a trade yeah I think uh another one today that was similar C I think initially moved lower and then came really powerfully up through I don't you want bring up that chart but it was super strong yeah that was a huge uh a huge move today on H Celsius yeah like look at that so if you look at it on the five minute right like I mean this thing just it opened down here so volatile at the open that's crazy yeah I wasn't following this uh so I didn't I didn't trade it but I looked at it uh midday I think and I was just like holy cow what the heck happened here but yeah it opened here and shot up and so like this was like one you could have bought like I mean yeah you could have been aggressive and bought it here but like if you look at the low of the day it really wasn't near any major moving average like for you to buy this like at at the open would have been pretty dangerous I think but I think you could have caught still a lot of this move if would have just waited you know this was the high and also like on a lot of these when when it happens like give it a few 15 20 minutes but like here like this went up came back down and stopped like this is where you could have used like mid you know 15 15 minutes or something or even on this bar when it when it happened you could have bought it here and you know use this as your stop and you would have caught like even if you caught it here you know you still made so 7 eight bucks on it so would have been a great trade yeah so so you would have really look to play through the prior days high here maybe setting your stop below yesterday's low something like that yeah yeah that that's another approach you could used as well but like you know obviously this thing like this was it's a key level yeah yeah that was a key level so as soon as it broke this you could have even done that and held it so that would actually be a good one too so that's still a decent you know $101 move for sure so um all right P Alto this was also another great uh earnings play for me from last year um so just give so these guys even they're they came out with earnings last um whenever it was in Q3 in November earnings were like they were they were fine like I I I was in software and software Tech sales so when they came out with their earnings there were there were some issues year around like people were not happy with their growth or something and customers were basically saying hey we're not going to buy it all right now for a three-year deal we're going to do a one-ear deal because interest rates are high Etc so like I I've heard that story with customers I was like okay there's nothing wrong here so you know the stock fell quite a bit it fell let's see it opened up $21 down like almost 10% 9% and so I watched this this morning uh and you know kind ofuse the same sort of approach on this one yeah this recently had another earnings drop and and good recovery like the all all the cyber security stocks kind of fell together yeah exactly so yeah so I watched this thing uh you know they came out with their earnings people didn't like it and so you know it came slamming down I looked at the five minute like we looked at on the other on the avago like waited till the five minute was crossed bought it and I bought quite a bit uh this was is another

You know, really positive one for me in terms of return. I really loaded up on it for two reasons. One is I was using this as a stop. Um, as a stop here, like a low. It kind of came down and didn't even go below that low, and kind of, like, to me, that's kind of a double bottom there, right? Looking at it. And so I felt very comfortable for two reasons. One is that I had a very tight stop. B, I kind of knew, like, their their stuff was, you know, their earnings were pretty good. There's nothing wrong with them. And when I saw the opening day high, or the five-minute high get taken out, um, you know, that kind of told me that there's some demand for this thing. This thing is not going to keep going down. So I actually loaded the boat on this particular trade quite a bit. Um, and so I held it for a few days. It kind of just stopped at this previous high, tried to break out, didn't do it, closed here. Next day, here it broke out, and I added more to that position. So I mean, I was, this was like one of my largest positions last year. Um, and then I just held this thing and then started to peel stuff off as it kind of consolidated here. And then I sold the rest of it over here. I probably sold this in like four or five chunks, uh, over the course of, let's see, uh, 19 bars, 28 days, so the course of a month. So I mean, this was a great mover. So, you know, the power of some of these earnings plays is is pretty good, um, with low risk. And so that's the key, right? And it has to make sense. So that's an example of P. P. Alto. But actually, you know, I can talk a little bit about, like, I did the same thing here, um, on this earnings gap. Like, obviously the earnings were, I mean, it fell $100, that's ridiculous. Um, and they didn't really say they weren't going to make any money or going out of business. So I kind of followed this. Soon as it broke out of this high of the second day is when I bought it. Um, and I happen to catch it. And, you know, I sold out of it here the next day because this move was just a huge move. It was a, um, you know, almost $25 move, I think. So I made some good money on this. It's kind of an earnings and earnings play again. So I look for those when it makes sense. Um, not all of them do, but that was H, that's another example of a of an earnings play. It's a little bit faster, typically, but, um, I think the payoff can be very good on those.

Yeah, on on these gap down ones, are you always waiting? Obviously, you didn't for the previous pandw, but here, you know, it it kind of showed with the next bar that it wasn't really trying to push lower. So it kind of formed a little bit of a range there, uh, against the moving average, or you were watching that level? Okay, gotcha. Yeah, like that would be the level right there. Gotcha. Right. So it undercut it, it popped back over it. Soon as it popped back over it, like that's when it popped back over. But that's, I like to look for it right here after it crossed this this high here because obviously it tried to go, move back up on day two and couldn't do it and ended up down at the bottom. So your tell is that if it kind of goes over this next, this bar that it couldn't get any higher, like that would make a logical sense to buy. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, great. Uh, maybe we should cover one more, maybe SMCI, and then maybe even a recent trade that you're taking a look at. Think that'd be good.

Uh, yeah, let's see. SMCI, this was kind of a wild child for me. Um, this was kind of an example of where I, I kind of visited this one a few times and then caught it at the wrong time and then just, you know, this was another one where I kind of lost a little bit of money. It, it was choppy in the space, so very, very choppy during this time. And, uh, you know, this is one where I had made a lot of money on it, um, throughout the year. And so I was kind of revisiting it. It had come down. I thought it was, you know, coming back around. This was earning, this was an earnings, um, gap down, but, um, it looked like it was kind of trying to steady itself out, get back over to the two, the 50-day average here. And so I bought it. And, uh, you know, got knocked out the first, right away, same day, right, closed at the bottom. I tried to buy it again, um, over here, jumping off the, uh, the 21-day. Didn't do it. Um, and then I got stopped out down, down here, um, and then on half of it. And then I sold the rest of it after it, like, had this big gap and couldn't recover off of that. So sold the rest of it here. So this is another one where, you know, kind of hurt my, uh, account balance in September. Um, and that's the other thing. I think is like, when, when the market's doing well and you're just making money and you have to reverse course really quickly. And from a mindset perspective, I think that's real important. Like, I still have a hard time doing that. Like, you still got to work on, on that all the time. Is that when the market is not, when the market's turning around, you cannot have the same expectations in terms of returns as you did maybe even a week ago, right? So to move quickly to turn on that sort of mindset is is critical, I think, to, uh, keeping your account balance intact, um, but also in terms of your mental, mental capital as well, which, you know, plays a huge part in the whole, uh, in the whole trading game.

Yeah, and that, that, that mental switch is tough to do. And also, you know, the flip side, we've been in a correction for a while, and it's time, you know, to, to flip more, more aggressive. That's, those switches, that's one of the hardest parts to figure out. Exactly, exactly.

Um, so yeah, so those are those are some of the trades that I did, uh, last year. I can talk about maybe something that, you know, I mentioned the mon, the monster trade or MicroStrategy trade, um, that I missed. And, uh, you know, that was back here. When you look at it, I was looking to buy this, you know, it looked like a nice, it was, it was coming down, it was hitting its, this uptrending line. And I tried to, I caught, you know, I was looking at it during the day and I saw that, you know, it had come down. I was trying to buy it closer to this, uh, downtrend line. I put in a limit order, didn't get filled that day. Next day it bounced and this thing just like ripped, you know, for a few days. And so this is the stock I was talking about that I kind of still, you know, totally missed. It was a big, would have been a big move, but, um, you know, because I put in a limit order, which was, uh, which was my fault. But that's the way it goes. But if you look at this stock right here, like, you know, you bring this down, like this was just like it undercut just enough to shake people out, right, and bounce back into the, into this, uh, support area and then just, just rip. Tire. So, um, it's, it's this is one of those stocks where I do like to trade it every now and then, but, um, definitely can't trade it with size. It can, yeah, it's, it's a vault one for sure. Yeah.

So those are some, some examples of some things I mentioned. Meta as well, like, you know, I'm, I'm in Meta. Uh, let's see, bought some Meta here, you know, obviously it had this great move. Uh, bought some Meta here on this pullback, uh, using this as kind of the low, uh, as a stop. And kind of loaded up on it a little bit. Hasn't really moved. Um, I, I sold a little bit. Came back down, still didn't undercut it, so I'm still in it. Didn't hit my stop, but it's just been kind of like very volatile. So I did reduce size on this a little bit here. So I'm, I'm just at an okay size. I still think this thing can move up, uh, quite a bit. So I've been buying it a little bit like as it's, you know, I try to buy it here, you know, turned around, came back in, gapped, bought it again as I thought it was going back up. Um, you know, got stopped out of this. And so I mean, I think it closed pretty well today, which is, we'll see how this thing does tomorrow. But I like the way it closed. It closed at the high, all-time high. It closed like right at the top of this one. And we'll see what it does tomorrow. But I'm, you know, I've got a pretty full-size position on this right now. Um, I think if it crosses this, I'll add to it tomorrow, um, and see where it goes. But this is one that I'm, you know, it's on my radar, uh, and I'm pretty bullish on. So and I like the pattern. I mean, this is for, for, for the big move it made here of, you know, $90 or whatever it was, um, it really hasn't corrected a lot. And it's, it's acting very tight. It's very tight, tight, uh, movements in the stock. And the vol, you know, if you look at the volume, it's just like gone down and nothing on here. So, uh, I really like the way this thing is acting.

Yeah, trading tight. If it broke, so now it's kind of formed for five days, a little bit of a range there. If it broke lower from that, would that be a tell for you to, hey, this, this needs more time? It can't, it hasn't really managed to push above the earnings gap high. It's time to let it let go a little bit more. Yep.

Uh, I think my stop on this is like right below this, like maybe a dollar or so below this, this low. Gotcha. And, um, you know, part of the reason I kind of, I kind of held what I had today was that the market ended up pretty well towards the end of the day, right? It was pretty volatile in the morning, but it showed a lot of strength towards the end of the day, or, you know, midday onwards. And so that gives me a little bit of, you know, kind of confidence that if the market is good tomorrow, like this thing is going to go. But who knows, you always think that. Yeah, we, we'll see what happens. Always think positive. Yep, yep. Perfect.

Uh, well, it's, I think it's always good, especially to go over trade examples because that really conveys, I think, your process in a much more, um, you know, real way than than just talking about a word. So thank you very much for going through those trade examples.

Yeah, perfect. And, uh, to go forward, you know, I think it's a good summary to hear about people's challenges, what they're working on, because, uh, you know, every trader goes through the same things, whether it's drawdowns, FOMO, which is your number one bullet there. How, what kind of challenges have you experienced, and and what kind of resources would you recommend to kind of help with each of those?

Yeah, um, yeah, so I mean, I think I even mentioned, like, you know, I had FOMO and greed, you know, like wanted, I should have sold some things when I should have sold them, made sense, and I was getting greedy on it. But, you know, FOMO is still, all these challenges, I still work on. I haven't, like, conquered any one of these, right? Like, you're always just working on improving it, uh, every day. And so FOMO for me is a big, is a big thing. And, um, you know, one of, one of the books that I read that kind of helped me with this was Trading in the Zone. And, uh, I thought it was a little bit kind of eye-opening for me in terms of, um, the way he positioned everything. And one of the best lines in there, I, he said was that, you know, the best thing in stock trading is the word next. There's always a stock out there, right? So you don't have to get every, you know, bit of juice out of that, out of that stock, uh, to be successful, because there's another one that's right behind it. Just go find it, right? And so that's helped me in terms of how I think a little bit. And so to me, that was something that's really, really impacted my trading and helped me, um, do a much better job of FOMO than I, than I had in the past. Stops, um, I talked about this one already, like this was something that I just had a mental hard time doing. And, um, you know, at one time I was even calling it, instead of stops, like stops just makes it sound like you're out of it and you're not going to make any money. To call it a safety net instead of a stop, um, you know, mentally, it kind of just helped me out. But, you know, I think the biggest thing that helped me with this stops was that post-trade analysis I mentioned, you know, cutting all your losses to 8% and see how you would perform. Eye-opener. And so that really helped me with stops. And I, and I'm, you know, do a much better job than I used to on that. Uh, taking profits on the way up, um, you know, thinking of managing your your R's, what's your return versus your risk on a trade, and kind of going with your averages and and taking your money on the way up versus, you know, waiting and trying to, you know, go too far. You know, for me, the goal is not to get that big 20%, 30% return. I mean, I do get that, but, um, typically my returns are smaller, but I'm just trying to get that little edge where I can consistently make that 15, 18, 20 bucks, 10 bucks a trade, uh, and and keep that, keep that rolling all the time. So that's kind of how I make my money. Um, there was one thing that I used to be was really scared of strength. And I think we went through some of these where, you know, the stock, like Meta, for example, right, like had a 90-point move. Typically, I would have in the past just taken that off my radar saying it's gone up too much and not really focus on it. But, you know, don't be scared of strength. Buy into strength and and embrace it, right? And I think for me, that has come through experience, um, watching stocks with strength keep going. And, you know, that's, um, that's something that I think just takes time and and experience and looking at charts and learning that, you know, strength is a friend, not an enemy. So like go in and and be confident, especially in a good market. Um, confidence, I think was something else that I was always like double-guessing myself on. In my gut, I'd be like, yeah, I think I should buy this because I think it's going to go up, it's set up, but I would never execute on it, move on it because I wasn't confident. And that's also something I think that just comes with experience. You know, if you're scared to do it, just buy a little and prove yourself that you know what you're doing and and, you know, next time you'll buy the right amount and and, uh, you know, be successful at it. Uh, the other thing was inaction on the way down. I was always like, when a mark, when a stock turned down, I was like a deer in headlights. Like, oh my God, it's going to come back. And I wouldn't move. And my gut was like, sell it, but I wouldn't do it. It was inaction. And, um, I think the biggest thing that helped me with that is just kind of like, hey, I can sell it now. I can buy it back a minute later if it turns around. Like, it doesn't hurt. Like, at least I'm, at least I'm, I'm managing my risk and my downside by selling it now. And, um, like I said, if it turns around, you can, there's no law that says you can't buy it right back, right? It doesn't matter. So just, it's better to, better to save yourself on the way down than not to make it on the way up, if you will.

Yeah, it protects your capital and as you've said before, your mental capital as well, your your psyche. Exactly.

So these are, these have been my biggest challenges, I think, during my trading journey. And, um, these are some of the things that I've, I've tried to do to kind of overcome them.

Yeah, great. Weekly, daily routines, real quick. Um, you know, nothing earth-shattering on this, I don't think. Um, you know, like I mentioned earlier, pre-market, you know, I'm just looking at my indicators. I look at the, you know, what's going on in the pre-market in terms of the stocks that I, my focus stocks. See if anything looks interesting. Like, is it, is it crossing, like a, a particular resistance line? Is it crossing a, a downtrend line in pre-market? And if I see something that looks like it's doing something interesting, I'll, you know, kind of move it to the top and that'll be my focus for, for the open. And, uh, you know, that's kind of my pre-market routine. Uh, post-market, you know, I look at all my focus stocks. I review the, the patterns, the charts, see how it did for the day. I'll maybe sometimes go down into, like, the, uh, into the hourly or 30-minute chart for the day on, on the stock, just to kind of see how it moves so I get a feel for it in case I do end up buying it at some point. Uh, and then I kind of just plan for tomorrow. Like, you know, what, what, what, what's going on? Like, do I have room to buy anything else, or should I be taking off some money, uh, some, uh, some risk? Um, and then review updates from the services that I follow. Like I mentioned, you know, follow Minini and, uh, and, uh, Chart Pattern and all that. So, you know, I'll kind of go through some of their, uh, platforms and see what's going on there. Uh, and kind of keep myself updated with that. Weekly, I do my scanning on Saturdays through Market Smith and I read IBD. Sundays, I listen to, like I mentioned, the Minini update where he kind of gives an overall update of the market and kind of where things stand. I find that very helpful. Um, then once again, I'll start looking at the charts, uh, for my focus list, any new stocks that I've found during my screening, and then, uh, review my accounts and holdings and what I have and kind of just plan out for the week, what I, what I want to do and kind of how I want to position myself, um, for the, for the upcoming week. And then monthly, what I do do is I review all my results. So I've got a spreadsheet where I go through and I download all my trades for the month. I'll go through and I'll find out what with the big winners, what were the big losers. I'll take the big winners, top five winners, top five losers, uh, I'll go back, chart them up, and kind of where I bought them, where I sold them, try to see why I did what I did, and see if I can learn from that, uh, for, uh, for, you know, for moving forward and and continuing to, uh, trade better.

Yeah, great. And, you know, I think a big thing is just to have, have routines like this, having a consistency and doing them, that's going to help, you know, build your intuition about what's going on in the market and all of that. So, yeah, I think this is a great template for, for traders watching this to, to learn from and and try some of it, see if you want to add anything else and and find, find something that works for you.

Yeah, I think the, the key is the monthly results. Like I track how much I made in each account, you know, dollar-wise, my highest winning, you know, one, the lowest, biggest loser, biggest winners, and just track that every month. And so, you know, kind of where, where you're at, in terms of, uh, in terms of making money.

Yeah, perfect. Um, and I, I'd say the, the biggest takeaways like from the contest last year, for me, were that, you know, risk management is not just for from the K does, but just in general, like also, it's like risk management is key, right? Like that is kind of the Holy Grail of trading is like managing your risk, right? It's not the making money, it's the, it's not losing the money. And that was something I struggled with for many, many, many years. Like I said, I, I figured out, I knew how to make money, but I wasn't good at keeping the money. And so risk management is absolutely the number one thing that you need to focus on if you're a new trader. Uh, the other thing was also don't put undue pressure on yourself to make money. If, even if the market is, if the market is not cooperating, even if it is cooperating, don't make, don't put pressure on yourself that you got to make a certain amount of money. One of the things I used to think about all the time when I got into trading was like, oh, you know, what if I can make, you know, $2,000 every month? Like, yeah, that's, that's what I'm going to go for. And the reality is is that once you start thinking like that, you put undue pressure to make that money, and you end up losing a lot more. Uh, the market's going to give when it's going to give. You can't control that. You got to be on the watch for that, like when is it going to be giving, and you got to try to make as much money during the times it's giving and make sure you, like, you know, close it off as quick, quickly as you can, uh, uh, you know, when it's not giving and don't, don't let your money out of your hands, um, at all. You know, like one of the things that people say is, oh, you know, it's the house's money. Like that's the worst way to think about your money. If it's in your account, it's your money. It's not the house's money, so don't think like that. Don't try to make money too quickly is the other thing. That was something that I used to think about was like, oh, how much, how quickly can I make, like a big, a big, you know, a big chunk of money right away. Um, obviously you'll have big wins, but it's not about making, like, a ton of money. It's about getting consistent with something you can do and make and do that over and over, right? It's a marathon, not a sprint, which people hear all the time, I think. Um, I think the other thing is have confidence in your skills and ability. Think positive. Um, follow your process, and not your account balance. I think I mentioned that earlier, like that was a big, kind of, aha moment for me as well. Like, you know, especially in the contest, like when I said like in fall last year, I was losing money. It was like, I was, I started to focus on my account balance versus the stocks. And, you know, I'd look at the stock like a week later or five days later, four days later, and the stock would be up like huge. And had I held, I would have made money. But I got too focused on my on my percentages and my account balance that I didn't focus on the stock. And and that kind of hurt me. Um, let your winners ride longer than you think. Sometimes that a good way to think about things. There are a bunch of stocks I think I went through that, you know, I had sold them, but had I held them, I could have probably gotten some more out of it. The stocks didn't do anything wrong. Um, so that's another kind of thing to think about as you start to, especially if the stocks are doing well and they're set up properly, like you should probably just hold them a little bit longer. The other thing is don't get distracted by CNBC or others. Um, I used to follow CNBC and like listen to what some of their guests were saying and like, oh shoot, I should do this or I should do that. Um, I know a lot of folks try to follow others. I, I try to create my own stocks to trade and the reasons to trade it and and trade those and and not let the noise get in the way because that can distract you from your strategy and what you are intending to do. So keep your focus on your strategy and your approach and don't, um, don't let the outside noise, you know, uh, distract you from that. And then the last thing, you know, is believe in yourself, right? Like, I mean, you got to believe that you can be successful and get triple-digit returns or do better than the market or whatever your goals are, right? And then go figure out how to do it. And you can do it. Like everyone can do it. If I could do it, it took me a long time to get there, but I'm still learning. But, you know, I've been successful for the past few years and don't ever give up.

Yeah, these are key. So for the last point, as you kind of mentioned, if we were all sitting in the room, everybody watching this right now, and we asked a question, do you think you can get triple-digit returns in the next six months to a year? You guys should all be raising your hand. So, get to that point. Everybody believe in your abilities.

Um, perfect. Uh, thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed it. Congratulations again on your performance last year in the contest. Excellent work. Uh, do you have any kind of closing points outside of, you know, these key takeaways that you want to leave everybody with today? If, if they ask you, you know, what can I do to perform better, you know, make it as a trader?

Yeah, I mean, um, I'm open to, you know, answering questions anyone has. You know, I'm on Twitter as well, or X, um, you know, D75. Feel free to reach out to me. But, um, you know, this is kind of a, a big, um, it's not an easy endeavor, um, but it's a success. It can be a very successful endeavor that can change your life. Um, you know, ask questions, learn, study, and, um, you know, I think I think everyone can can do it if you have the right mindset around it.

Yeah, great. So we'll have your Twitter linked below. Is that the best place for people to reach out if they want to get, get in contact?

Okay, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Perfect.

Well, Deac, thank you again for for walking through your trading, your process, and your presentation. I definitely appreciate it. I think everybody who's watching did as well. Uh, if you did enjoy, please go ahead and leave a like down below. Subscribe if you're new to the channel. Uh, feel free to leave any questions down below in the comments, and we'll try to get those answered there for you. So thank you guys so much for tuning in and, uh, we'll see you guys in future videos. Take care.

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