 Melissa Armo with the Stock Swoosh. Now, Melissa is the founder of the Stock Swoosh, and she's a very sought after stock market analyst on numerous financial media platforms, including Fox Business Network, RT America, Cheddar TV, CBS News, it goes on and on. Her focus is on a unique golden gap strategy that pinpoints how to leverage institutional money in the stock market, particularly around the open of the markets. Now, in today's presentation, she's going to be talking about making money shorting gaps, why the market open is the best time to trade, how to spot a pandemic driven bearish move in the stock, and what to do when you see a power trend move short. And so with that, we'd like to welcome Melissa to the room. Melissa, how are you doing today? Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Terrific. Let's see if this works. Good morning, Melissa. Nice to have you join us as always. Thanks for having me. Can you see my screen? Oh, yes, we see your screen. It looks beautiful. Great. There's the New York I love. One day we'll be back to normal. I don't know when. It's right outside my window though, still. Have a me. Well, Melissa, it's all yours. Take it away. You have an hour. We'll be tracking questions on our end so we can get you at the end of the presentation or if you want to pause, however you want to handle it, the show is yours. Works for you. If people have questions in between, I can't see the Q&A. So if you want to interrupt if somebody has a question, that's fine as we're going along. Okay. I'll be glad to do that. Okay. Welcome, everyone. Hopefully everyone is having a great day today. And it's interesting because the market gapped down today. So it's funny that we're talking about gaps, although we're trying to bounce here right now in the spy today. And I think that there is a high probability that the market will reverse the gap today and probably close green. The size of the body of the market today could be a baby green or a medium green. We got about four hours left in the day. If we have time, we will look at that when we're done. But what I do is short gaps and that's how I make money. And we're going to talk about that this afternoon. So, do you want to make money in the market? If for somebody that's been thinking about trading, it probably is because you want to make extra money. Right now, we're doing this period. We're still in the COVID, one year into it almost. And many, many people are working from home. And there's some people that are unemployed or they're not working as many hours. So they're looking for extra money. Whether you want to trade full-time or part-time, it's a nice thing to do because at least what I do with gaps is I don't spend a lot of time trading. Like, we ran out of the trade today. We did Rost, Rost Gap Down and Earnings, R-O-S-T. We'll look at that trade today. We were in and out in like 10 minutes. Okay? And now I'm here talking to you and it's 12 o'clock and when I'm done, I'll do whatever I want for the rest of the day. So it's nice to be able to make money quickly in the morning and you don't have to spend a lot of time doing it. But I find that when a lot of people have the market bug, they just never kind of lose it. Once you're bitten by the market bug, you make money or you lose money and you're back and forth until you finally invest yourself in it full-on and say, I really, really want to do this. I'm a hundred percent committed to doing it. I absolutely love trading and I've got to figure out something that's going to work for me that I'm going to be able to consistently make money because really even people that are losing have made money in trades. That's what keeps them going. The idea of being successful and doing this and having the longevity has to do with the consistency. Okay? So it's about hitting it Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, getting the wins. While some trades I take lose, I still have more winners than losers and that's the only way that you can get ahead with this thing. And so it's very interesting. I started trading. It was the end of 2008. And now here's 2021 and it's hard to believe. I can't even imagine, like, remember what my life was like before I started trading. But I was bitten with the market bug and I never look back either. But when I started, I didn't know what I was doing. I took one class, one class. That's all I ever took. It was a lot of money and I learned the basics of technical analysis, but I learned how to make money. And ultimately, that was my drive. My drive was to make money to do it because I wanted to do it as my career. It wasn't a side gig for me. And so it was something that I took very, very seriously, even from day one. And I think a lot of people think of it as a side gig and never take it seriously and consequently lose year over year. So even if you're going to do it only for five minutes a day, Monday through Friday, you still have to take it seriously if you want to make money. And you're also risking your own hard-earned money in the market when you take trade. So you obviously want to put it to good use. Otherwise, you may as well go to Atlantic City and gamble. So trading is fun, but the purpose is making money. And if you don't have a lot of time each day to devote to trading, gaps are a way to make money in the market because they move very, very fast. And again, it's extra income coming in each month, even if you can only trade two days a week. Even if you have your work schedule, your family schedule, whatever, two days a week is better than nothing. Okay? So if you want to find a way to pick, which talk to trade, that will have a big, big move like we did with the Ross this morning, okay, then gaps are a way to do it. And very often people come to me, they have no idea where to start. They're all over the place. You're listening to people talk today. There's many, many, many, many different ways to trade the market. Okay, I've become successful by focusing on one thing that is all that I do that is all that I've ever done. I've never done anything else. I never will need to because of the fact that this works. And so year over year, I've just increased my size, or my risk for trades. And I use it for options and day trades. So the focus has has really helped me become extremely good at what I do. So I have a niche. And so my niche is shorting and gaps, although I will go long gaps, and we will talk about a bullish gap today, which was Twitter as well. So how do you become successful in the market? You need a strategy, you need a focus, and you need a system. And it's really just like like if you if you want to play a sport, you want to get good at a sport, you would have to have a focus, okay, a focus on one sport, you wouldn't try to get good at baseball, basketball, tennis, all at once, you choose one sport, you'd have one focus on how to get there. And then you would figure out what your plan of action is to get good. So trading is the same thing, you have to have the focus when you're doing it. So for me, it was gaps. And one of the reasons that I think this is a great strategy is time of the day doesn't take that long for them to set up, I'm in my trades between 930 and 10am Eastern time, you can also use them for options or day trades, like I said, and the options you can put the trade on, and you don't have to sit necessarily babysit it, you know, all day. And the other reason I like gaps is because they have big moves. Okay, so you can take a couple hundred shares or a couple thousand shares and have a big move and you can have some really, really nice profits. And that's what we'll talk about in the Rossed example today. But basics are this, what is a gap? So for those of you that don't know what a gap is, I'm going to explain to you what is a gap. This is a chart of the spine. Now I'm going to go back here. This was January. Market closed here gap down closed here right around, I don't know, it was 385 and change gap down here in the morning around 382. So this was a bearish gap. So anyways, what is a gap? It's a difference between the close and the open. So the market closed here, boom, open here. So the market closes every day at four and opens every day at 930 in between four o'clock and 930. Sometimes trades go off in the post market in the pre market. We saw that today. Okay, what happened today? The market actually was up last night in the post market. Then it was up this morning in the pre market. Then it reversed this morning and it actually was down in the pre market. Then and then we opened down because there was bad data that came out this morning. I don't think it was that big of a deal which is one of the reasons why I think we're going to hold here and bounce. But the fact is that trades go off at night and trades go off in the morning. I do not trade that period. Okay, I do not take positions on or off in that period. But that is what's happening and what's happening in that period is the gap is being created. Okay, so I am not I am not predicting whatever is going to gap. I am predicting what is going to happen after after I see the gap. And in this case here, this was a short. This was the 27th of January. Now let's look at a bullish gap. This was to start up the month of February, which was extremely bullish. February here. The first we started out actually this was a gap up here and I'm seeing this here close to your gapped up to start the first day of February rallied close to your gap update to she'll be closed here like around, you know, whatever this was 377. And then we open up here run 380 and then we pretty much rallied. This was the first two weeks of the month of February in the spy. The banks are making new highs and JPM was making brand new long-term highs and Goldman Sachs was rallying and making new highs. Then we ran up and then we made new highs here, which was the last day we made a new high in the spy, which was the 16th. Okay, so that was a couple of weeks ago. So anyways, this is a bullish gap. This is a bearish gap. Here's another one here. This was Walmart. This was a short. We shorted this and we did a putt in it. Okay, a putt is an option where you're basically betting that the stock is going to move lower. So I bought puts. So when I do options, I just buy the putt. If I think that the momentum is lower and I'd buy the call if the momentum is higher and that's how I play it. So I predicted that Walmart would sell off. I was right. Dream target was 130. It came down here to that. Anyways, let's go back to the day before closed here, boom, gap down, closed up here around 147. Opened the morning around 138. So I got up in the morning and I used my system that I created to determine that this would indeed continue lower. Okay, which is what it did. Now I haven't looked at Walmart here today but long story short, Walmart is still in an uptrend but for whatever reason it fell on the earnings. Okay, so what I do is based on technical analysis and it's technical analysis in the gap and I like shorting because short moves happen quickly. Panic happens fast and I like to be in and out of my day traits quick. Like there's no panic if you wanted to go long. I'm just gonna make up a name here like Twitter. If you wanted to go long Twitter, you could go long Twitter today, you could go tomorrow, you could go Monday. There's no panic. Like you could buy Twitter whenever you want. If you're in Twitter and you're down in Twitter, you might be panicking today like when you get up in the morning in a position if you're down, you will panic and sell it because you're down. Do you see the difference? So there's it's panic buying is real. It's very very rare though but anyways the last time I saw panic buying was probably like I think it was two summers ago. BYND which was beyond me kind of had that look toward the panic buying and that weird stock that everyone's been trading with the reddit traders the GME had some panic buying but then it completely washed all of the momentum and move and it sold off. So panic buying is rare. Panic in shorts is real and happens on a regular basis every single solitary day okay. So that's what he was here in the Walmart and that is what I like to trade. So one of the other reasons I like to trade gaps is it has a great risk to your payout. Lose your looking for one to one. So if you risk a thousand dollars looking to make a thousand risking 500 looking to make 500 risking 2000 looking to make 2000 a trade and this is whether I'm doing an option or a day trade and that's a good amount of money to to make pretty quickly okay. And again I'm in and out of my trade sometimes you know five minutes 10 minutes 15 minutes so it's really nice to have these quick profits. So many things are going on right now they're the Senate's talking about the stimulus bill today who knows if they're going to pass it some version of it my guesses will pass in the next week but the reality is the longer you're in trades day trades okay the more you're at risk for volatility to flip things around back and forth. So the faster you can quick money in the morning the better off you are because you don't have to contend with all the political stuff that's happening the wiggles and jiggles of the market fedments and reports that come out later in the afternoon getting in and getting out is the best best idea to consistently book money as early as you can before all this other stuff affects the market and actually before the market affects your trade like if you're in a stock that the market would affect like for example if you're in something and you're long and then the market would sell off on some kind of negative news or something. So one of the reasons I like trading gaps is what institutional money what do I mean by that hedge funds big big money big professional traders that take positions of the market so when I'm looking at it okay in the pre-market I'm going through it I'm rating it I'm reviewing it I'm studying the chart and I'm making decision if I want to do rust for example okay I'm looking for institutional buying or institutional selling in the pre-market and so I have a rating system where I determine that institutional money is what moves stocks institutional money moves the market and even though people complain about it all the hedge funds dupe dupe dupe the reality is it is good that we have that kind of huge massive money in the market it is good that they move stocks that is the way that people like you and I can make thousands of dollars because we can't move stocks by ourselves that GME was a one-off and in fact they're not in control of that right now because the stock is nowhere near five hundred dollars let alone a thousand that the people said it was going to go to and you won't get it there with that institutional money buying it up either so it's very very interesting because institutional money controls what actually happens in stocks in the market because it's a lot of money and it's a lot of power and that is what I'm looking for and that is what I want to trade alongside and it makes it very easy to make money when you get that okay so they're not your enemy but many many people don't understand how to read that money but if you can learn how to play with that money which is what I've done and what I do then it's very advantageous okay very advantageous so one of the other reasons to trade gaps is what focus focus on one thing boom one stock one ticker symbol one direction one thing like I'm never going long and short the same stock the same day and I don't trade all day long and I don't trade a million things and if I am doing two or three things in a day I'm probably not having a good morning I probably took the first trade lost and had to take a second trade my best days my biggest days is one stock one thing and I would tend to do maybe a an option and a day trade in the same ticker symbol too so anyways getting back to what I was saying it's a multi-purpose system that I use for options and day trades but it's all based on gaps and it's based on reading the institutional money in the gaps and it's because they have big profits and that's why I like to trade them now let's look at the rust so this is what we did today I have a live trading room I called the trade live thought I'll put it on YouTube later this here this was yesterday what's today Wednesday so Tuesday Tuesday night this closed here right around 117 and change boom open in the morning here around 114 now this looks a little wily here but anyways bottom line is we shorted this got the drop now I got out of this way before the low this continued our target originally was 113 it broke it and I got out but it went all the way down to 112 broke that and actually went to 111 and change again I like to do the fast trade but this had a very very nice move this was a gap down okay so here was the trade entry was 113 shares for an advanced trader risk 3000 risk is 2550 exit was 112 75 profit 3150 now over here's the one minute chart of the rust okay so we did it here right in here snug is above it's around 945 ish okay and we got the drop boom now here you see actually where it went looks like it went to like a 111 111 50 almost it got to so you could have been in it for another dollar and actually this was only into 1030 now that I'm seeing here before it bounced that was still a morning move but it was a very very nice trade that was quick now if you want to take a thousand shares a beginner risk a lot less size risk was 850 this is a nice trade you could have made a thousand bucks risking 750 I mean 850 dollars again you're in out take it get out boom done that's it but if you wanted to hold it for like 45 minutes you could have held it but it backed up here it did back up the stop held stop held where we had it but it did back up and they had to wait for the second drop or what you could have done again I didn't do this but you could have taken it got out where I called it and then you could have retaken it could have retaken it and got out a second time anyways the time of the trade was like 10 minutes so that's what I do and so I was able to do that good done come on here talk to you and that's what I'm looking for every morning and again selling go back to this here it's the selling pressure selling selling selling the pressure that comes in to something like this rosk it can happen like that and so I find that trades short like long stick longer to work shorts go faster again because it's the idea that when people are down they're gonna dump it and there's no necessarily the the rush rush rush about buying stocks okay and you sometimes have to wait longer for stocks to go to bigger targets but you do have really nice big profits quickly quickly quickly in shorts now we did this yesterday this continued today actually this was ddd this was yesterday's the trading room's on on my youtube for the ddd if you want to listen to me call it we did it and I got out of this early too but this fell all the way down to the dream target as well went to 31 but again I did a morning trade now what did this do closed here gap down boom the shorted it got the drop this is the daily and today you could have done it actually I saw this here today but we didn't do this today but you could have done this and I didn't do an option in this but actually you could have done an option in this too here was yesterday's I squished this you could see if you wanted to be in it all day this was the whole day of the one minute in yesterday's ddd but I did it in the morning and it went to my target I got out actually target was 35 broke 35 and I took it entry 36 30 shares 2000 risk was 2600 ends at 3460 boom 3400 bucks two nice days of over 3000 profit and really fast trades that's good enough for me but I but I want to show you here going back well now I'm gonna show you here this went to 31 from where we did this at 36 you could have made five dollars on this I mean it's just insane and again the market drug down yesterday which is what pulled this down and helped us continue but we did it right in here and I know this is small but I wanted to show you the whole day and then we got the drop out so I like to be in and out fast if you took a thousand shares of this yesterday could have made 700 bucks some some nice shorts in here lately and some big moves in here lately and some fast moves in here lately and and again this was earnings too sometimes we do gaps in earnings sometimes we do gaps with the market sometimes we do gaps for news it depends things got for many many reasons but these two were earnings gaps we were in that trade yesterday for 15 minutes but you could have it all day you could have been in that all day as I showed you and you could have made even more I did not because again I like to get in and I like to get out but that's just my habit and I think it's a good habit so let's say if can I a couple of questions just came up before you move on with regard to your rost trade you had mentioned somebody had said you know what option would you have traded for rost and do you buy put options ever yeah I buy puts and I buy calls I don't do any fancy dancey things I'm not doing spreads or this or that and so like I'm all in if I do it either wins or it loses now I didn't do this because you know some of them I think make more sense than others to do options in as far as the cost of them with the momentum I think this was an easier day trade than an option to do to get in out quick do you know what I'm saying but anyways long story short I do trade things like Amazon Google stuff that's really really super expensive that I would never day trade as an option even though sometimes those are a little pricy I don't even know what this cost today to do an option somebody can look it up and tell me but I would have done probably like if they had a strike of 114 and if they didn't I would probably would have looked at strike below 114 113 112 I don't know this probably doesn't have a lot of choices here this isn't like Amazon I don't know what even what strikes has had but if I had done a put in it I would have bought it as close to the strike as I could have or something underneath it from where it was at initially out of the gate on the open hey that's excellent thank you Melissa that's a and that's an excellent point you're getting in and out of these trades and unless it's a real expensive stock you're just buying the share of street out and again you have to have a margin account today trade actively you can have a prop account you can have a retail account if you have an options account you can have a cash account so obviously you don't need to worry about margin now this was over $100 a share so again it depends what you can afford to to take because you could open up an options account with two grand if you go to a prop place you can probably find a place with $2,500 minimum or $5,000 and get 10 to 1 margin you know that's up to you but either way your risk per trade has to do with the cash amount of your account whether you have an option account or whether you have a margin account you can only risk the amount that you have available and it should never be your whole account so so for example if you had $2,000 in an options account you would not risk $2,000 in this trade I'd risk $200 or maybe $250 or something like that it has to be based on the size of your position sizing but anyways the the market has made some good options trades because the market costs of the options I find is very reasonable and the market is kind of pricey right now to day trade so we I do do options in in the market I don't know if that answered all the questions was there any other ones probably no that's good for right now thank you melissa okay all right let's talk about the twitter so even though I loved a short uh twitter was a good one twitter had earnings this was back god feels like a million years ago but it was only three weeks ago twitter went up up up up and this was the date here was the 10th this closed here this capped up boom so we closed the night before here right around I don't know I think it was like 59 it was under 60 open here around 66 so we did do options in this we did calls and we went long it and we went long it here and we went long it here and we did a million trades in this because it kept going and so we kept doing them and doing them doing them and sometimes when I stick on something and I love something and I really really love it like the Walmart even well I'll keep doing it I'll just keep doing it till it stops working because when you get one good gap sometimes you can just parlay it off into multiple multiple trains as day trades or options to do it several days down the ddd was another one you could have done the second day down too so again that's so you know it's so nice to have that that follow through and even the market has been extremely choppy and we haven't seen follow through yet yet in the market um I really think that stocks are just a lot more easier to day trade because because of the the nice follow through you can get with stocks so this was a long okay here's the advanced risk and beginner risk for the twitter this was on this day here okay so this was this this guy we entered in 73 I'll show you the one minute a minute boom got more than back out of it almost two dollars we had a great exit on this I'll show you that in the one minute in a minute 74 70 2800 shares profit 4780 dollars that just that far just that far there alone and I don't think this is too expensive to do to do it on margin either but again you have to look at the size of your your available buying power a thousand shares with this could have made 1700 again just that one little bar there we also did this here though and we did it there too now let's look at the one minute so this was the day here we are 216 so we got in at 7 we actually got in this little late to be honest with you so we got in this at 73 got the rally up out we had a beautiful exit on this we did enter it a little bit later than I normally would um and we were in this for maybe about 50 minutes or something wasn't quite an hour but you know that's so fast when you consider the markets open for six and a half hours a day but anyways you could have get out of it super different quick and just scalped it for like 70 80 cents you could have from where we took it because it went straight up but that was a really really really nice bullish gap that we did and kept playing and playing and playing and again gaps move fast which is why I like to do them even though I prefer to short I will go long if I see a really good long I always go to the short side first if I see a bullish gap though that is better than a short gap I'll do it but I mean I do go to the short side most of the time you really only need one trade a day though if you're going to do this to make a living but you have to know what to do because it is about the quality it's about the pick it's about honing it down just finding that perfect one like we did Ross today but by the way I did like Wendy's too I think Wendy's broke I think Wendy's did work it took about a setup and we ended up doing Ross but Wendy's was like a snail in the morning that was a short two that I liked and I liked JWN but I didn't do that one either but I think they all all three of them worked but you just need one a day one a day is all you need so you plop on the size to make more money that's how you do it you don't have to do a million trades you don't have to do a million different systems you don't have to do a million different strategies and if you look at my charts by the way just go back to my charts here like my charts are so clean like you can see everything you can see every bar you can see the clock I mean you could look at this chart this is like a beautiful beautiful picture my charts are so clean this allows me to see the price because that's all that matters the price in the gap so I can make a decision otherwise it's like too many things and like you get a headache and you're like oh my god do I do this do I do this is it no look at the gap look at the price make a decision is it higher is it lower if it's higher we're going to go long if it's lower we're going to short it okay now can you go long every bullish gap up no can you short every bearish gap down no I just got done telling you I think the market flips it's like fact I I'm I'm just a look at it here we're done but the reality is I qualify each gap that I do to determine if it's going to follow through follow through in the buying if it's a gap up or follow through the selling if it's a gap down because not everyone does not everyone does so I'm picking the right ones because again I'm looking for institutional money that's one of the reasons why I think the market's going to flip because buying is going to come into the market and every drop because the market's so so strong so strong anyways 30 60 minutes a day is all you need to trade my system that's it and you take the option trade when I call them put the order out go about your business you can put a sell order in if it hits that day it hits if it doesn't it's a cancel day order then you get up the next morning see where it is sometimes a gap in your direction overnight or the next day put an order in to sell the next day I usually do the weeklies or do a map for two weeks so you really don't have to heavily manage you know the options either because I just don't I mean in normal times break over I did not sit at my desk all day I'm at my desk a lot now because of the conditions in New York City where I live but before that I would be you know at Fox News I'd be doing stuff in the city getting my hair done so I you know hopefully life will get back to normal one day soon but for right now I'm watching stuff but you know people that have families and kids and it depends where you live I mean some states are totally open up and that's fabulous and great and people are out and about and doing their own thing so you can put an order into the option to fill you but the day trades you have to be there in the morning you've got to be there between 9 30 and 10 but it is a nice way to make a living or extra money because you don't have to spend a lot of time with the day trades it's just the question of what are you willing to do to get there like my class is next weekend March 13th and 14th not this weekend the following weekend it's it's 16 hours so it's it's a whole weekend that you'd have to spend learning but it's totally totally worth it you know you have to put for some level of effort and cost and commitment in order to learn how to do this I mean it's you can make a lot of money trading but it's going to cost you something to learn it and it's also going to cost you the time that you have to invest in it to figure it out many people just want to do things where they buy systems where they just press a button the computer does it for them that's not reality reality is that you do have to use your brain I have a great brain it's one of my best assets and it's one of the reasons that I figure this stuff out but I teach people how to look at a chart and what to look at and I teach people what I know okay so that they too can gain the skill to do it themselves now while I'm mentoring people and I'm calling the trades until you get it the fact is you learn everything in the class to do it yourself there's no computer that is going to make you a million dollars in the market that is just not realistic and once you get on board with that and understand that it is up to you actually it's more self-empowering then when you realize that you're in charge you're the one that's in charge you can make this happen but there is a skill set involved and you have to learn the skill set so I have a skill set my skill set is predicting price action in a gap and my skill set also is reading the first five minutes of the day in a stock that gaps or the market so those are my skill sets reading that short short tiny time frame predicting what it's going to do on the big day and then looking at the day chart and predicting if it's going to you know rallying up like the twitter did which blew out went over the high or fall and drop like the Walmart did okay and I'm predicting it by looking at the gap okay but you've got to do something to change your situation if you're losing money trading I can never feel bad for people when I talk to people on the phone or they call me and say they've been trading for you know 10 years and losing why I mean there's so many places out there where you can learn what to do some are good some are bad but you have to find the right one and you have to have a positive attitude if you have a negative attitude that the trading is a is ranked or you're gonna lose or whatever the case may be then you know you're you're destined to fail don't put yourself in that category you must get in a positive mindset believe that you can do it and put the odds in your favor which is not taking pot shot set stuff and just going on a forum like reddit and just taking trades you have no idea and don't understand and don't make any sense the what I do make sense okay when I explain something to you and I'm explaining this happened because of this you'll understand it and you'll get it and you'll and you'll be able to fully grasp the concept then to be able to risk your own money to take the trade because it is your whole hard-earned money and you want it to actually work so anyways the class I teach is called the golden gap course and it teaches a rating system which you're gonna learn what a high probability of direction of bias for the entire day preferably okay but even though I only trade the morning I'd like to see that it could move the whole day particularly from doing an option big move of the day which I always like early confirmation of the bias of the move between 9 30 and 10 and precise entries with follow-through and a good risk to award I'm always looking for a good target I'm always looking for a good risk to award and I say it about a dollar depends it could be a stock that's more expensive it could be looking for more than a dollar could be looking for two bucks but you have to be consistent with your share quantity of the risk of the cost so for example say you're going to risk a thousand bucks that's it you're going to risk that in every trade so you have to risk that in every train to be consistent okay and I do you stops it's a limit order stop but I figure out the rating system in the pre-market that's when I do my work I get up early you have to give yourself about an hour even though I'm up super dipper early the room opens at 8 30 so between 8 30 and 9 30 you could take one hour to rate the gaps and this is what you learn in my class it's a 26 point rating system the purpose of the system is to help you evaluate which gap to trade each morning using a checklist that is what I do that is the meat and potatoes of how I know that something like rost is going to sell off okay if it would not have sold off or if it wouldn't have rated well then I wouldn't have shorted it but I also wouldn't have gone long I wouldn't have played it at all okay in fact in any given day many many things have no plays in them that's another reason why you shouldn't trade all day even if you take a trade and it works right out of the gate you shouldn't trade trade train because your odds go down the more trades you take as the day goes on things again like I said are affected by the market and wiggle and jiggle anyways the checklist tells you what to trade when and in what direction the 26 point checklist predicts directional bias in a stock that gaps and again that is the meat and potatoes now we're going to look at the twitter options I did so I have a gap options newsletter we went long twitter we did we did so many I couldn't put them all in here all the letters we did on the twitter we did all calls we did calls calls calls and in fact we were in this I don't think I have this one in here we were in this one this gapped up here so we were in it we were in a call on this day trade was down and we got up in the morning and it was up a lot so that happens too now yes it sold off but we were up right away when we got up and so you just get out anyways we did the 65s that was on the 10th let's go back oh it was a day it was a day that it actually had the earnings did the 65s here I did the 65 calls and they worked cost was 215 that was cheap this is an advanced trader risk 75 25 35 contracts sold a 460 was a beautiful trade 113 return investment ran up and actually could have held this longer this isn't even holding it that long to be honest with you because again my goal is 100% if I can get that or close to what I'm out but this continued because this was out to the 19th so anyways really really nice trade you could have taken one contract for $215 and doubled your money so again it doesn't matter how many you take but I do risk more in options because I feel like I want to get the bigger move and plus some of the things I'm doing are expensive like the googles and the amazons and the teslas when we do them now then on the friday I'll go back and show you the chart I did the 68s same expiration I did the calls cost was 260 sold it by 25 again 102% return on investment in twitter so friday go back here that was the friday of the week of the day it went went up took off like a rocket now the letter you can see here this one here I sent out the afternoon this one here I sent before the open so if I set a trade up before the open you're looking to take it into the open but anyways I sent a lot out before the open sometimes I'll send an afternoon one like the twitter though that had dropped and then I decided to do the 65s any questions here I see six questions Raleigh or anybody have any questions before I keep going here yeah no several questions have been coming up on this uh um let's say once again the good place to stop don't want to derail your train of thought there but one of the things that came up several times and I believe your answer is it's variable but do you teach your students when they get into a trade once they've identified it do you like to work with the defined profit target and stop loss well the stop loss is whatever you risk and I put in the stop as far as a day trade and I say where the stop is I call it live in the room I say put the stop if I call it I might say 50 by 25 the first number is the entry the second one's a stop for options what I risk is a stop if you want to kill it if it's down 50 percent or whatever that's up to you some people do but what do you risk is a stop if you risk a thousand bucks you can't lose more than a thousand dollars in an option okay so for example if you're looking at just you know not an option if you're just looking at a stock you see a gap you see a stock opportunity there your 26 point checklist has said guys this is a high probability trade nothing's for certain but it's high probability so you get into the trade at that point in time do you that's what I'm saying do you get in with a stop and with a profit target or is that really up to the stop in and I have the target yes for the rock okay just quickly go back here to the Ross the one that we did today the target was 113 so I we waited waited waited it broke it and then it started back up I got out that was it I got exactly and as you said you know you could have stayed in it all day but whatever you're happy you made money at the front end you're not sitting there going like I could make more money you're like this is the way we work with it so that that question came up not that I can make more money I look at it that my job for the day is done I did excellent I took the Ross I was in I was out I made money I made my call I am done if you want to do this for a career like seriously seriously seriously you cannot be like more more more more this is how this is where people go off the rails and you can call a grade if you want but the reality is you know it's your you're you have a job my job is I get up in the morning I find the best thing I trade it I'm done I'm out that's it that's my job when I first started trading out a serious problem where I kept trading too it was a disaster that's one of the reasons I closed the room in the morning and I closed it and I'm done because you will get sucked into things you'll say oh this looks good and this looks good and and all of a sudden you'll be up to a grand and then you'll be down to grand but seriously no I agree with you completely you know the big question somebody's mind is okay Melissa I got in at 845 I'm out at nine o'clock now what am I supposed to do for the rest of the day enjoy your life enjoy your life what life I'm sequestered paper trade do something else write a book I used to go I used to go be on tv now I'm sitting here at Skype and it and it's more challenging but but I hopefully we get the heck out of this COVID thing here in New York this summer I don't know sure let me ask you this and maybe the once again this is part of your checklist but do you pay attention to news releases that might be occurring around the open of the market of what's going on I don't make decisions based on fundamentals no but I'm aware of what's happening in the world and again sometimes I have to talk about it on television so I'm aware like I'm aware of the fact that the discussing the stimulus that's one of the reasons why you know I I didn't short this gap this morning I don't think it's going to have follow-through we'll see if I'm right or not I'm talking about the overall market but I'm also aware that they're talking about the stimulus which could create a bounce so I'm aware of what's going on in the world but that's not the reason that I make decisions in trades okay and the last question at this point in time was and once again this may be part of your 26 step six step process is do you do you have like a basket of stocks that you tend to follow or some kind of a skin or what I look every day at new stuff and if I can't find anything that I might go back like if we didn't have anything today like the Ross I might have gone back and done the DD from yesterday I looked at it but I look at brand new stuff every day okay great thanks Melissa so anyways let's talk about job security speaking of the COVID and everything that's happened in the world in the last year today's world is not the same as 25 years ago or 10 years ago or five years ago or one year ago pre-COVID what we think is a secure job today may be gone tomorrow look at the world economy and the decisions that lawmakers are making for you do you want to create your own future do you want someone else to determine it and I'm serious about this because look at what's happening in the world and again it depends where you live though you may feel more show about this than less we can be great employees productive outgoing hardworking and it may not even matter to employer in the end if the company can't keep you on if a company has poor management they might fail or depends what the industry is during this time right now and it has nothing to do with you nothing to do with your own skill set or anything it could be your industry might fail and again it's zipped to do with you look at the travel industry right now look at the restaurant industry it's a disaster here at least still in New York so again there's been many many different times where things have happened like we had the banking collapse and that's what when I was doing mortgages when I realized this myself I said I have to do something where I'm in charge of my life I'm in charge of my future the market isn't going anywhere so the market will always continue so if you learn how to train you'll be good otherwise you're doing something that can be negatively affected by world events and I realized that like I said back in 2007 and it was it just changed my whole mindset and I never looked back so you know I was set because I knew how to trade pre-covid and I worked from home as well but many people were just taken off guard by how their whole career and their business and everything that they had in their life could be you know the carpet could be ripped out from under them so when you learn how to do something for yourself if you're an entrepreneurial person if you're independent trading is for you you may have no clue how to do it you may be losing and doing it now the fact is you can learn how to do it but you've got to learn how to do it from someone that you know knows what they're doing okay and actually has a strategy that works too but if you're a skilled person with a great mind you can learn how to do this and you can work for yourself in the market and I do think it has a lot to do with your attitude if you are like I said an independent person I like working for myself I like making my own decisions I like working from home too I don't like anyone telling me what to do Raleigh says after signing by 12 o'clock I show up that's about as much as I like someone telling me what to do but you know you can create your own job security work for yourself you can create your own opportunity by taking it upon yourself to learn how to trade the market and make money trading so the going against system which is the class that I teach is one strategy and you do not need a general overall broad-based view to make money tons of people have that and they fail all the time it's pinpointed it's a niche I'm looking to read institutional money and the price patterns and gaps and you don't need to do anything else okay it is it is again I don't look at the fundamentals I'm aware what's happening in the world you should be aware what's going on but the reality is that's not the reason for making the decisions so again if you can trade between 9 30 and 10 when you do the fast trades work from home and when an unlimited income potential this may be for you and then people always say well how much can you make what are you up to risk again it's one to one you want to make a thousand you have to risk a thousand want to make two thousand after this two thousand want to make $500 a day that's $2,500 a week that's still good that's still 10 grand a month but then you have to risk $500 to trade I do your stops but it is about quality not quantity and again we're usually doing one trade a day so you know if you want to email me and want to trial today's Wednesday Thursday and Friday you can pop in the room if you want to email me at melissa at the stockswush.com if you want to come in the room and listen for a trial this week you can come in for two days here's some testimonials for some people who is a zen trader zen trader this was 2020 this was 2020 zen trader had a really good year last year she does the options and she has done extremely extremely well that was a testimonial from her from last year and then this is Elaine Elaine's with me about three years she's been doing options as well and day trades and this is Jackie Jackie was a nurse she quit her nursing job and is now full-time trading um and she was a beginner she was a beginner didn't know what she was doing with anything at all and I taught her from the ground up so you do not have to know a lot what to do if you come to me in fact you don't have to know anything at all some people that know how to train actually have to unlearn things that they know before me so you do not need a lot of experience to do this in fact you can come and not know anything and I will teach you but if you do have experience again you may have to forget some of the things that you've been doing that I do the opposite of or that are just flat out wrong so again what do I use a checklist you learn it in the class it's a complete system you learn the targets the entries the exits you learn the 26 points and the class is a full today course on how to strategically find pick and play stocks that are professional bearish gaps and the class is march 13th and 14th this is the march class so class tuition is 69.99 it's nine to five eastern time well worth the money now i am doing a early bird special through friday if you want to sign up by march 5th which is the week before uh you get the trading room free through the end of the year this is huge so you get all my trade calls for the end of the year in the day trade room if you're interested in that email me you must email me forms to sign up you can not sign up through the website you have to email me and you can come if you want a trial email me thursday friday you still could be in the room thursday friday see what we do uh before i take the trades now let's pull up the market here if i pull this up will you be able to see can we see the market there do i have to click it on and off uh let's see i don't see the market yet but you should be able to go ahead and just switch screens okay let me stop share there can you see it now let's see yep see it do there you go okay so here we are so this is 12 52 we got if we get over the high we're gonna we're gonna go green yeah this is what i thought so here let's just take a look at this so we are at high was 386 83 so this is what the market is trying to do this is what i wanted to see if we're gonna hold this is what we have to do we have to hold here so if we hold here and continue and get up over the high we're gonna we're gonna run up let's just look at the queues really quickly and any questions that anybody has let me know are there any other questions really let's see here i was just taking a look real quick here did it did it did it i think we've added that news release yes yes yes yes oh yeah one question came here and i think you're answering it right now is that to take your course or to practice what you what you teach it looks like you're going to need real-time data just not end-of-day data well no you need you need a platform to be able to enter the trades and exit the trades you can use whatever platform whatever broker you want most charting packages you can make look like my my charts here because they're pretty pretty clean like i said but you will need charts and you will need a brokerage account yes you will need that in order to trade sure and like i said because you're looking at one minute 15 minute charts things of that nature just going to have to have an intraday data feed you must have an intraday data feed yes i mean if you're going to do options you know you could just you don't have to have the charts but i think it's i think you you will do better if you have the charts because all the decisions i'm making are based on technical analysis so if you want to learn it and do it then i mean why wouldn't you want to get charts and so many places now offer pretty much free commissions and free platforms we don't have to pay for the charts so i mean that's a nice benefit right now ever since the merger with Schwab buying ameritrade and then e-trade turned in with the free free too so you can find plenty of places out there to get free free data absolutely and as you said look how clean these charts are these are indicators that you can get on any chart yep so it'll be interesting to see if the market holds here but again if anybody wants to trial for Thursday Friday i didn't even look and see what's out for tonight uh earnings wise or tomorrow morning i'm sure we'll have something but there's a big number out Friday which is the unemployment number comes out Friday we've unemployment claims on Thursday morning again and the stimulus they're working on too so i think we're gonna have to have continued volatility in the market which has been making for some nice trades i did question just popped up here melissa and it's kind of an interesting one is what what increment constitutes a gap in your opinion because i guess a gap it could be anything like the difference one tick difference between yesterday but at what point in time does the gap become interesting to you do you look at a minimal sort of a spread there the minimum and i don't have a maximum and i don't do anything with percentages and people always ask me that no technically speaking one penny is a gap up or one penny is a gap down so the reality is that i don't i don't have anything we'll look at if it's less than this or more than this i just look at each thing individually and that's what you have to do again it's not like again you have to use your brain where you're looking at it and you're seeing what's happening not every chart is the same one thing might have a big gap one thing might have a small gap they might both be good it isn't it's not like that do you know what i mean again it's not like plugging it into computer and saying anything with 12 and a half percent doopadoopadoop it's not like that you must look at it and analyze it you look at it and analyze it you learn how to analyze it you're gonna learn from me what to look at and then i'm going to teach you how to analyze it and then you're going to learn the skill to do it and then you're going to take the trait and that's what happens and the longer you do it the better you get and i've been doing this and nothing else besides since 2008 so i mean i'm very good at this because i've been doing it now for you know 12 years going on 13 so it's a skill it's not about that it's not that easy people that are trainers have to get out of this black and white i'll say this one last thing and i know we're running out of time but it's not black and white you got to live in the gray area you live in the gray area it's not black white it's gray you live in the gray and that's where you're gonna get rich outstanding well put any other questions uh at this point in time no i think we've covered an awful lot of these here all right thanks so much for having well listen melissa thank you so much for the time that you spent with us and i know that you just had nothing to do today you were doing your nails or something like that since you made a fortune this morning and as you said the only thing that you'll accept is raleigh telling you where to be quarter to twelve exactly and that means you're a very special person raleigh i'll just let you know that well i tell you what i will take that i will take that no this is great melissa thank you so much and folks once again you know you had you did ask several questions here uh melissa does have a very very specific program that she has put together and that's part of what you know that she's going to be offering to you on how to evaluate how she selects things how you can follow her and how you can learn and i think she made that abundantly clear and we were just delighted to have her with us today let me go ahead and grab the screen here that was melissa armo with the stocks whoosh her golden gap course learn how to find those golden gaps every morning you know you're going to learn a 26 point rating system to determine the best trade and there's an awful lot that goes into those 26 points i think she shared that this is something that she prepares every morning and it's part of what you're going to be taught to do as well the special offer here is for people that sign up for the program uh i think it is by the fifth of march we'll also get free access to the stocks whoosh trading room through december 31st so you can go to westmarktrading.com forward slash armo that will take you to the stocks whoosh website or you can just go ahead and email melissa directly at melissa at the stocks whoosh dot com that's in the chat panel you can communicate with her directly ask her other specific questions but once again it's been great to have her with us