 If you're going to trade this strategy, if you get wicked out in its news, you 100% have to get the same amount of size, right? Because your thesis is that this news is impactful and it's going to make a significant percentage move, right? So you have to make sure you're making up for the losses and then paying yourself. You know what I'm going to say to you is just look wait for the base, wait for that one green candle at 260, a pause candle, a hammer candle, and you get an inside pause candle, and then you can kind of get involved in that 250, risking 260 area, goes down into a halt, wrist down, and then you get a halt and reopen lower, right? Like it was just a really good opportunity and one way I could consider this probably the best one of the month is just on the risk perspective that you didn't really have to risk that much. I think that what makes that trade really great. What is up guys? Alex here and welcome to episode six of the Axis Investors podcast. In this week's episode, we're going to be talking about trading out of a drawdown, how to improve your entry and exit, and also what was the best opportunity of the week. Before getting into the show, a quick reminder that all the best tools for day trading and investing will be linked down in the description that includes brokers, scanner, charts, and newsfeed. And also we have something new. The show is now available on Spotify and Apple podcast if you want to listen to the audio version of this show. So without further ado, let's get right in. Yeah, we could start that house trading this month. Yeah, okay. For me, so far it's been it's been kind of slow. I haven't really been able to catch you know, some big moves or any of the big moves that have happened. You know, and that's part of the game. Sometimes you don't see things really clearly and or sometimes your setup's not there and it's best to just make sure that you you know, don't get FOMO and start taking trades that are outside of your playbook or comfort zone. And, you know, one of the questions that we have later is, you know, about drawdowns. So, you know, we can talk about that and making sure, you know, I'm essentially trying to keep myself out of that. So I haven't made much progress this month, you know, the first couple days this month, you know, but it's all in month and I'm okay with that. And, you know, I know that I just need to keep, you know, coming to work every day, sitting down grinding and waiting for my pitch. Yeah, I'm kind of the opposite. I've seen a lot of good setup when it came to news, but I haven't been able to really capture them. And it's been creating a bunch of FOMO and I kind of FOMO it into a bunch of trades today. I don't think they're really worth going over because there's like, there's just no context. They're just like random clicking on trades. And this is where I can get myself into a drawdown if I don't catch myself early. And I didn't think it would be the case because I've been really, since your last conversation, I've been pretty good with my discipline outside of trading. Like I got back, I signed up at the gym. I started to train again. And I did everything I'm eating well, respecting whatever I'm supposed to sleep, whatever I'm supposed to wake up, like everything is online about where I should see success in my trading, but it's not showing up yet. So I feel a bit, I guess, frustrated that it's not paying off right away, even if it's only been like a week, but, you know, that's just life. And we're going to cover that later in a few topics that we have to talk about. So far, like you said, market has been a bit slow for you. Did you want it to cover some parts that you realized or how did you came about that conclusion? A lot. I just, you know, for me, it's just I, you know, so I engage in both day and swing trading. And, you know, in terms of swing trading, the market's just been grinding up and going higher and higher. And I'm kind of just holding the positions that I have. And I don't really see many new, like bases, you know, even the mini pullback that we had in the Qs, right? It's basically, you know, I'm just looking off at the chart. It looks, it's, you know, basically a half a day in the afternoon, you sell off for a day and then you start rallying. But it's not really enough to really, you know, shake the tree and really form some bases. And as I go through the watch list that I have for my swing trades, there's not much there. And with respect to my day trading, you know, I like, I prefer to trade, I prefer to trade larger cap names that have gaps or R ball relative volume to try to catch continuation moves in those. And now that earning season is kind of winding down, we're seeing some more of those small caps make moves. And it's just not my, they're just not my A plus setups. I know that they're there and there's opportunities there. You know, and I've been obviously playbooking and keeping an eye on what's been moving. So I know that those, that's where the bigger movers are, are, are lately. So I need to, I need to adapt and adjust a little bit and, you know, change my focus up just a little bit there. Yeah, I think that this is exactly where I'm starting to have FOMO. It's all these small caps that are running. They're not necessarily my, my A plus also, but I know I can make money in them, but I'm trying to kind of stay away because it's a very, it gets me into over trading because there's so many running at the same time. So it's a bit harder for me to have like a very direct focus on my edge or what I want to achieve. And I'm kind of spreading myself pretty thin across the board. So this is where I'm starting to sometime, you know, just, just cross the line about over trading and trading my playbook. And we, we spoke about a few setups this week because I send you some ideas that I had and your first response was just, yeah, these are just way too extended. And these were NVIDIA. I think there was even SMCI. And there was a couple of their names that I forgot the exact name, but they were just not out of a base. And could you describe what do you think about like a good, I guess, swing long setup would be like, sorry for the interruption. But if you have any question or topic that you'd like us to cover, let us know in the comment section. And while you add it, like and subscribe, let's get back to the show. Yeah. So, you know, I'm a believer that the market's fractal, right? And by that, I mean, whatever, whatever, whenever you see a base, or whatever I consider a base, whether it's one to 20 candles, you know, just to keep it arbitrary, not one, I don't, you know, two to 20 candles, right? Of it's going to be price contraction, volatility contraction, where things get tighter. And you can see that on a one minute chart, a two minute chart, three minute chart, you know, whatever your flavor is, you know, five 15. And for me for swing trade, I'm going to look for that on a 60 minute in a daily chart. I will incorporate the weekly chart just so I'm aware. But my swing trades tend to be, you know, just just even an overnight, if that's if I get the move that I'm looking for, you know, to two weeks. So, you know, I'm not as concerned, you know, I am concerned with the weekly, but I'm not going to make it as not going to be as concerned, because I'm looking for that kind of momentum burst, or move out of out of like a consolidation. And, you know, with respect to your idea of NVIDIA, you know, you were looking for kind of like a breakout continuation move. And for me, what you can get a nice day trade on from that, right, because it's it's still today, there's some great momentum. You know, there was a nice little flag around nine 10, and you get a 10 $15 move out of that. But in terms of like a swing trade, it's just, you know, at some point, you have to start playing the probabilities and with how far how far away is it from its moving averages on the daily time frames. And, you know, the higher and higher and higher it goes, it's going to be like that rubber band stretch the opposite way for a possible short, like as like what we saw at SMCI a couple, you know, a couple weeks ago. Yeah, so you think I mean, it's hard to really know the probability of like this going down, just staying like staying choppy, ranging and going higher, really, because we don't know it all depends if there's news and if there's no news, right, we don't know it's going to probably just track the market and you know, follow with whatever the semis are doing. And so would you consider an X amount of time for a swing trade that you want to hold over like multiple weeks, like I mean, in terms of a base, like, I mean, a lot of people talk about, you know, like, like a three months or one month or six months, like, is there a specific thing that you're looking for or it could be a shorter base if it's something that has a lot of momentum? I mean, it could totally be a shorter base that has a lot of momentum. You know, some of the best, you know, let's, let's, you know, again, just be fractal here, right. So sometimes you see really strong momentum bursts on like a five or a 15 minute chart off the open, right. And then you see two to like seven minutes of sideways to downward consolidation action. And then you get that a continuation move higher, right. Something that I was looking at today was this, you know, that LIT. And, you know, you get up, you get a solid sideways pulled back for four candles, you get up, consolidation for two candles, then you get up. And for me on the day trade, that's exactly, you know, that's exactly the same thing that I look for. You know, I'm not here to give advice or, or, you know, trade advice or in, you know, so by no means I, I'm not going to say I don't have a position, but something I'm looking at is Carvana, right. And everyone can have an opinion on that, whatever, you know, whatever they want. But if you look at a daily chart, the volatility starting to contract, its moving averages are starting to catch up. You know, so it looks interesting to me for a long, it's still extended from its 20, 21 EMA, which is the, the one of the moving averages that I look at, you know, but as long if the market's continuing to grind higher, you know, I'm going to be looking for some kind of setup for whether it's a day trade or a swing trade. My bias is definitely to the long side there. And when we're talking about the whole market like this, and I mean, this year has been since end of last year, it's been, it's been a pretty good rally when everybody was talking about, like, you know, a bear market case. So it was a big shift of momentum. And you think if the market stays strong like this, do you really focus more on swings? Are you still preferred to kind of mix the day trades with the swing trades? Yeah. So that was something that I had to adjust. And, you know, and that's kind of like what you asked before, you know, what, you know, that's like me seeing, not seeing my day trades really play out, you know, the ones I've been in have kind of been like a single here or a single there or, you know, a one hour loss. So I'm not, if I'm not making progress there, but I see that things are trending higher, kind of trending and just grinding higher, then you know, that's a market where you want to be long and you want to take risk home overnight, you know, because it seems like the probabilities and the grind and the march higher continues, right? You know, and in this low, lower volatility market, you know, there's definitely some great opportunities in swing longs, in my opinion. Yeah. So that means pretty much if things are going higher, but not necessarily in terms of like crazy volatility because there's a big difference when we're not range bonding, but you know, we're going higher on the daily chart, but there's no like crazy CPI catalyst coming in, there's no like panic. There's nothing really that just want to, that's going to get you to have this extra range in the day. It's really just more over time that you're getting paid off. So do you think that this is the best time to be a swing trader? The swing traders that I interact with, you know, they're even finding it difficult to, they're finding it difficult to find new ideas or entries, right? Because they're, most of them think similarly to myself where they're looking for a base to enter, and things, most things are just extended. So they're kind of just riding the positions that they have. You know, so it's hard. I mean, I think that this is a very interesting dynamic of a market because there's been so much strength in the semi-names and you're seeing this big-dike coupling from, I don't want to, you know, straight too far, but you're seeing a big-dike decoupling of the Magnificent Seven, right? Like where Apple and Tesla and Google are all very weak and, you know, NVIDIA, Meta and Amazon are pretty strong. But you know, again, it doesn't mean you can't find trades. You can definitely find day trades. Like you said, you know, you can find news. There are opportunities, but I think it's just, we're in a market where you have to be very selective and aware of what's being, of the dynamic that's being played out. Yeah, totally makes sense. All right. So I wanted to cover a trade I took yesterday, which was on NYCB, which was a bank name. And this talk was, it was fresh news, it was a breaking news trade. And it was a trade I traded well, but then got caught up in some unfortunate situation that I couldn't really know in advance because it was just news that came out while it was halted. So I'll be breaking it down. Maybe you wanted your thoughts and opinion on it. And after that, I really wanted to cover what I thought was the best opportunity, probably of the week or week or past week, even probably the month so far. And it was again on SMCI, but it wasn't really the trade that everybody talked about. So we'll go over that right after. Sounds good. Right. So the trade is going to be on NYCB. And as we can see on this chart, we had a really big move from the three to the 160. And after that, it was halted. So on that specific trade, it was a trade that was really in my playbook. And I thought it was a really good opportunity because even if it's not really a breaking news trader that you are, this news was pretty popular. So it was easy to find the news within the first minute or two minutes. You didn't need to have Bloomberg. A lot of people reposted that news. So it was really easy to participate. And this is, as you can see over here, it's a bank stock. And last year, what we saw on, it was WAL, FRC, PACW, so many of the bank names. On the daily chart, we can see that it's a bank that just not doing well. It was gapping down on earnings at first. And then it was just keeping on selling off because this one is a regional and it was lacking liquidity. So people thought this could go bankrupt, which was the exact same story as we saw on all the regional last year. I think it was exactly the same time of year. So it might be a thing that in February or actually March right now, the banks are just not doing well. So there was even some more news today with the Fed and all that stuff. So for this trade, I had it already on watch for a couple of weeks. I was just waiting for some kind of news to come out either on the positive side or negative. And on that specific day, which was Wednesday, the 6th of March, there was exactly what I wanted. And there was some news. And it was the same, same news as what we saw on FRC and also PACW, if ever you guys want to go check it out for last year. And so when I saw that news, what I did, and I'll show the execution on the screen. And if you're not able to see this because you're watching or listening to the audio version, the reference price is the price that the news started at or the price before the news hit. It was 315 and I was able to get an average price of about $3. And on the one minute chart, we had like a quick week and I decided to stop out before a cross reference. And this is where the first issue came in, because after that, when we slammed back down, and the trade really worked out well, and I got paid off pretty much for like, I would say almost a 50% move within a matter of probably 10 minutes, which was really, really good. Before something unfortunate happened. So I wanted to have your thoughts on my execution on this. And where I thought the big problem was is on this news trade, I have a really hard time risking the reference price because sometimes it feels like it's far away or it feels like if it crossed that price, I'm going to get like a bigger loss that I wanted. And you have more experience in me trading breaking news, you've been around a lot of traders that trades news. And could you maybe more describe how would be a proper execution or the issue that you see with that trade? Yeah. As we've spoken about, I don't love trading these one minute fast movers anymore just because I can envision exactly what happened to you, right? You're entering on that first candle because you see the news, the headline, liquidity issues, whatever it was. And then the next candle, whether it's an HFT or some kind of hedge fund, they flash the bid, they buy some stock. And this is a reference from billions, where you buy some stock up and then you slam the bid. Because if this stock was in the SSR mode, you have to short on an uptick. So they buy 50,000 shares or 100,000 shares only to sell 300,000 shares, right? And then the whole candle is almost 800,000 shares. And it's so hard in the moment because you're trying to watch the level two and you don't know exactly if that 315 is going to hold or fail or what's going to happen. And I think this is just going to be for you since trading breaking news is a newer venture. It's just going to come with seeing more and more of these plays happen, seeing more and more and being involved with them more and more, seeing that because if you're right, it's going to really work out. And if you're wrong, you're wrong. And even if you have to cover 320s or 325s because that reference broke and because you gave it that extra second just to see, the times that you make this 50% is going to completely offset that, right? Offset those fewer moments in time when it does reference because for whatever reason the news wasn't received or interpreted the way that you thought it was going to be. Yeah, I mean, that's really interesting because you can almost allow yourself to give just a bit more wiggle room because if you're right, it's going to, like you said, it's going to cover like the losses times five, six. So it's not an issue. And I guess I have to be, maybe it's a problem of me and not just trading breaking news, but sometimes there's really, there's headlines that like they have like a strong initial move and then they just reverse this or just come right back to reference to where before the news happened. And sometimes the news is impactful. Sometimes maybe it's not. Have you seen not a tendency but a way that you can really narrow down your selection to find the one that have more chance of making a bigger move because I did hit a bunch of news which have an initial move. So it's not just random news. It's news that do move the market at first, but then kind of comes back right away to reference price. So you think it's maybe I'm trading too wide of a news spectrum and I should narrow it down or you think it's kind of also just how the game is played? I mean, I think that it's a little bit of both of those things, both of those things that you just mentioned. I think that one, being around people that trade news and looking at PR headlines all the time, that was part of my problem with trying to trade breaking news. I never knew which one is the one that is really going to make a stock move or sometimes I've seen articles passed around that weren't widely distributed and I get involved and nothing's happening. And I'm like, well, I don't want to just be stuck with this position and I'll get out and then someone else on Twitter happens to post it or tweet it and then the move happens. So I was almost too early. And I think that you just need to have a good three to six month news cycle to really see what's moving stocks. What do people care about? What type of headlines? Things like AI or partnerships from large cap to small cap partnerships, drug news, those are things that are always going to move the markets. And then it's these other headlines that as you start seeing them and playing them, you'll realize that 90% of them are probably not market moving events. Case in point, yesterday or the other day before, I think you asked me about a Microsoft headline and there was a small move, but it just wasn't really impactful. And really defining your playbook on your news trades and looking to see what headlines are moving stocks and how they're really moving and you'll get that feel for it and you'll get a good feel for which headlines are the ones that you want to try to focus and find. Yeah. So for the press release, I got really good to compare myself to where I started because I realized even this week and this past week, I mean, for all the headlines that come out in the morning, I only got involved in once stock, I think yesterday and yesterday in the after hour. And also one stock, I think that day before that, and it ended up being the one that did have the biggest move. So now I see so many press release because I just read them every morning from 6 a.m. to pretty much the open. So I know which one within three words are going to be the one that moved the stock, but the one that actually are not going to move the stock. So it's very easy to filter within a quick glance. And my reading is actually getting so much faster just because they're always structured the same way. So you kind of glimpse through them in a very fast way compared to when I started that specific strategy a little while back. So there's progress in that sense that I'm not getting involved in many pre-market stock versus before I used to trade sometimes five or six on press release. They'll manage to hit the good one, but it was just when I was looking at my everything I traded on that day just was way too many shares and way too many tickers, which are now getting really fleshed out. But where I still struggle is more on the intraday news. The one that are kind of the not expected or not coming from that company specific. So hit piece, articles and so on and so forth. These are the one that are, I guess, they're the most impactful because nobody saw it coming. But at the same time, they're pretty hard to play because it goes very quickly. And it happened to me a few times that I was just too early on the news. And that's the worst part because you get involved, you get out, you look at the stock two minutes later and it's done 40% and you're like, oh, I was just too early. So this is, yeah, go ahead. So maybe you just need a little tweaking of your entry tactics. We've had offline discussions about needing to trade the breaking news. But there are things you can do even for this NYCB trade where obviously the putting yourself in the biggest amount of strength is getting your max position size before three. And then just before you even know it, just putting a hard stop in at 320. For example, or it's like, all right, I know that my stops at 320. Whatever I'm risking because it was so fast, that's what I'm risking. Things like that where you're not relying on your speed of watching the level two or the flickers of those prints because of that little wick. Some of the things you can do are, if news is real, and it's very important, you wait until the stock is almost approaching that limit up or limit down spot. And then you get involved. You get yourself involved into that halt at that spot. You're at a little bit of a position of weakness, just in my opinion, just because you're entering further away from the reference points. But in my opinion, you're also giving yourself a higher probability of follow through when the stock reopens. So you can figure out where the limit, the reference point is and where the stock was going to halt. In this case, it looks like it's say 290-ish at that first halt. And you might not be able to get in. That's one of the risks. But at least then you can gauge and see and give yourself that moment in time to think about the trade and setup. Some other things you can do are watch where the stock's indicating. In this case, it almost indicated the same exact closing price. So if you don't want to hold through the halt, you can try to get yourself involved in that opening print and shorting that opening print and watching the stock go down then. And every stock's going to be different because, as you can see as time goes on, the halts and the reopenings become bigger and bigger. But really close to that news, it could be a good lesson or something for you to think about in terms of entering. And what I'm going to say to you is just wait for the base. Wait for that one green candle at 260, a hammer candle and you get an inside pause candle. And then you can get involved in that 250-risking 260 area, goes down into a halt, risks down, and then you get a halt and reopen lower. So you don't have to be involved in that breaking news. So just little nuances that you can think about to maybe incorporate into how you're trading these breaking news things. Yeah. So yeah, that covers really, really well what I was was thinking because a lot of these trades I get involved, but I take too much of a big loss on the first exit, which is like normally when it wicks back up. And then whatever I make back, I still make it back, but then it just sometimes I don't really hit it with the same size because I'm a little scared that I take the second loss. So then I just make it back and make a bit more. So there's definitely some I figured out how, which news, how to get involved and all that, but there's more refining of the strategy, which I think it's probably incomplete at this point. Yeah. I think that, oh, sorry. The one thing I'm going to say real quick though is if you're going to trade this strategy, if you get wicked out in its news, you 100% have to get the same amount of size, right? Because your thesis is that this news is impactful and it's going to make a significant percentage move, right? So you have to make sure you're making up for the losses and then paying yourself. Sorry. Yeah, no, that's exactly it is. Some trade management that's just incomplete and I don't have my if dense statement built in like, okay, if I get in and it ended up recrossing reference price and I stop out. Well, if we get back to that low of that candle, let's for example, reference price, it's 310. We cross back 315 and then we re-slam back because it's negative news, maybe a little imbalance, a lot of people panicking, creates a weird first minute price action. But when we recross that price where I think it's negative news and we're going back down, then I need to really hit it as again. I don't have my, that's where it gets probably incomplete that as we talk about it, that's where I realize that for my other strategy or the way of trading, I do have these kind of variable of like, okay, I'm buying a breakout, you know, if I'm buying that breakout and I see it stall and if flush is back, I'll get out on the flush. But then if we recross that breakout spot, I'll just get back in because it was probably a shakeout, like for example, stuff like that. Yeah. So this is where it gets a little weird. So, you know, before moving out of that trade, this trade was good until it wasn't. So on the last halt up over here when he started to, when he was just getting altered up, I try to get out of that trade and I didn't, and it got halted for news, which was something that you can't really predict. And I think this is going to be a good spot to talk about a question that we got from one of your friend and somebody I know a little, and it was about how to trade out of a drawdown. And also, I thought it would be good to add what makes people or trader go into drawdown, like different scenario that are pretty common and how to maybe not get yourself in that position and what's the best practice to get out of it? So you want to start with the question that we got? Sure. So, what do you do when you get into a drawdown? And every person is going to be different. Everyone thinks differently. But to me, there's two types of drawdowns. There's a drawdown like this event or something like ZJYL that happened in December where it closed at 11 and opened up at 100. That's the black swan drawdown. And I'm not talking, even if you're not, even if you get stuck in a halt like this, and it's not just you fading a parabolic small cap. If you are a solid trader with a sound process and you get stuck in that black swan event, as devastating it is financially, you have to remember or hope, I hope that you, prior to that black swan event, are trading in a solid with a solid mentality and you're profitable, you have to somehow tell yourself and remind yourself that that's just that one off. And unfortunately, you have to grind away to get yourself back to that pre-black swan event watermark. And I would say that the way to work out the other drawdown is your strategy is just not there. Like mine is right now. For me, what I want to see and how I want to trade things, I just haven't been hitting it. And I've taken some of our losses, but I know that for me in this moment of time, it's really important to not start just searching for trades, searching for the next Holy Grail, searching for just to be active, just because you're not making money doesn't mean you have to be recklessly risking money. And I think a lot of people get into a drawdown that way. And if you're getting into a drawdown that way, you have to be just be self-aware and see that your strategies are just on working and you have to slow down. So you either need to decrease the frequency of your trading or decrease the risk for trade that you're putting on until you are seeing things better. I don't believe in just completely stopping your trading. I think that you want to continue to engage. I'm a proponent of taking breaks, so maybe you need to take a day off, maybe you need to take a week off and just get your head away from the markets. And when you come back, you start trading small. I think that too many people have too big of an ego where they can't just go back to risking $50 a trade or $10 a trade, whatever something where it's insignificant enough to you that you can really see things, try to see things clearly. Because it's not about the P&L, it's about the process and about getting your confidence back. And those things can come back quickly. And the type of market we're in are going to obviously make a difference in terms of the speed and velocity of that happening. But there's no reason why you can't risk $100 a trade or whatever, something small again for a whole week, just to prove to yourself that I still know how to trade. For whatever reason, I need to slow it down or I'm being, I have too much FOMO because too many things are going on and I'm chasing or whatever the cause of your drawdown is, really stepping back and just reflecting and being self-aware, I think is the first most important thing that someone can do. So if we have to put it by step, so how to trade out of a drawdown, what it would be step one, it's probably take the, I think if I had to guess or for me, what I'm, drawdowns for me happen very quickly. Just to take an example, I'll take one bigger loss than I wanted, not necessarily like really big, just like an annoying loss. And the next day, I'm already trying to make back that loss. So then like I oversized, I trade just a bit bigger and then I get probably locked out on the second day because that's just exactly how it goes every time. So after that you're locked out, you're like, all right, so I'm going to trade small, you trade small for a day or two, try to get back in your groove and you really go back quickly to like the same size as you were before, but it feels like maybe you got yourself in a drawdown like you mentioned because the market is not, is just not really there for your strategy and everything is so cyclical in the market that when you make money or when the market aligns with your view, it's almost hard to lose money because like everything just works, but it's so quick to not realize that. So for me, the step one always been to take like a break of the market and it's so hard because you, it's not asking a trader to not be in front of the market like on a day, it's like the ultimate FOMO indicator. It's so hard. You're just, no matter what you're going to do on that day, the only thing you're going to think about is about am I missing something? Then you go back at the end of the day and you're like, oh, my A plus setup was there on that day. This would have been a home run. So then you even have some time, even more FOMO versus just like, even if you were there, you were probably not going to be in like a good place to take it. So it always been take like at least a day off and sometimes even to it's, it's, so I'll example, I'll start like, I'll take a Friday and maybe like a Monday or something like that. So it's like, it's very, it's like a good break. And also there's two day that the market is actually closed. So it gives me like, I come back like after a week and I'm like really at peace with myself versus already thinking about the day before. Do you have like a different aspect or way that you, you go about it? No, I mean, I think that, I think that what you said is, is great. It's great for you, right? Every person's different. Every person's in a different situation and different place in their life, in their lives. Some people might be able to, I think that being self aware is very important and some people might be able to just take a walk at noon and really clear their mind, become peace with what what's happened and get themselves back on track. And some people might really need to take more time off. Like you said, and some people might need to take a week off. I think the biggest thing that you just admitted, which is hard to do and is just that you're focusing on the money, right? You're not focusing on your process, your trading process, right? And focusing on your trading process, the results will come, right? And as long as, you know, and for me, when I've been to try downs, I just sometimes I just go back and look at my results. I go back and look at my trading and I mean, I just remind myself that over however many years I've been doing this now, I've been profitable, right? Some more so than others. But just like how the stock market over the long run has gone up, my trading over the long run has been profitable, right? So you have to, you know, is discouraged as you may be about the financial, the monetary, the result, right? That's not what this is about, right? This is about good sound trading where you're putting yourself in high probability situations with positive expectant value, positive risk to reward, like a good risk to reward, whatever that means to you, whether it's trading one minute news charts or, you know, slow 15 minute setups like myself, it, you know, getting back to your bread and butter and your basics and just reminding yourself that if you're in this for the marathon, then the next day doesn't matter, right? Because even if your A plus setup was there and, you know, even if you risked, even if you risked 3R on that trade, just because you were still on emotional tilt from the days before, like, and, you know, so then you get a 15R winner. Is that life changing to you? Like probably not, right? I mean, maybe it is. Maybe you take such a crazy shot that you put your whole account in on, you know, LIT this morning and it goes from 2 to 15, like maybe that, maybe, right? But people are always looking at that in hindsight, right? And that's not, that's not the, that's the exception. That's not the norm, right? Where it looks so easy to just go all in, you know, risking, you know, it was so obvious, right? But in the moment, in the moment, you probably weren't thinking that, right? Otherwise, you would have done it, right? That's what I, and that's something that I've been telling you and some other friends, you know, you can't think like that, that that was the spot to get out of your hole in that one trade just because you saw that happen, right? You weren't in the right mindset, otherwise, you would have done it, you know, and don't get me wrong, I do it too, you know, I, you know, we're going to talk about the SMCI trade, this man, what if I just was at my desk in 515 on a Friday, like, and I just boom, wailed it in, you know, all in, but, you know, great, I would have been having, you know, instead of having a mediocre, slow start to the year, I would have, you know, all those emotions and of underperformance and not doing well to start the year are just gone, right? Because of one trade. But, you know, that's, that's, that's not the case, you know, and, you know, I'm, I'm okay with that. I've made peace with it. And recognizing that is the most important thing that you can do. So what would you say step two is if we say maybe take a bit of a time off is going to be relative to the person, as we said, some people hold a grudges against the market or against themselves for way longer, like probably I am. But then step two would be, would you go back to stats? Like, I think it would be probably good, good to go to stats as a second, see where you, where you're really crushing it or where things are doing well and where things are, are the opposite. Yeah, 100%. You know, I, you know, I hope, I hope that all traders who watch this record all their trades somewhere, whether it's trader view or trade Zella or, you know, some of the other products that, you know, your own spreadsheet that are out there basically. Because you want to know what trades are doing well at that time, right? Are, is it your one minute setups? Is it your five minute setups? Is it your 15 minute setups? Is it your, is it your pullback trades? Is it your flag trades? Is it your breakout trades? And there's always a pattern, right? Is it, is it, is it the trades that you're making from 11 to 11, 11 to 1? Is it the trades you're making 11 to 4, right? Are you only making money? You know, I found a pattern, like for a long period of time where I wasn't making money from 930 to 10. But every morning I was coming in and I was trading and every, you know, 75% of my mornings I was down, right? And so I just, I cut it out and it helped me work out of that drawdown that I'd put myself in or that stagnant state, right? So looking at your stats and, and just something as simple as eliminating the trades that you realize aren't working for a period of time. And maybe that naturally slows you down a little bit and naturally forces you to only look for one setup that you know is working well right now. You know, and it can help you build out, work out of the drawdown. Yeah, for me, for me, when I looked at my stats, I haven't done it recently. It's definitely a good thing that I, it's definitely a thing I should be doing and I will be doing. Me was really the afternoon trading. I always had such a hard time finding a playbook for that. Because I always traded the, before going full time, probably four years ago, whatever it, whenever it was, I was always being able to, to trade like the pre-market, which I wasn't trading that much, but at least the first like two hours of the day or three hours until noon, pretty much. So I built a playbook or I got used to how fast the stock moved during that time. So I built a, what I would call an edge during that like high, high momentum time of day. But I never understood when things are just slowing down. So I was always like, whenever I transitioned to trading full time, I was still making money in the morning, but I was just always give back like 30% or half. And it was just really, really frustrating. And I never really found that much of a playbook, except when it was like some of these like crazy, crazy stock that like, you know, like, like the really outlier stock that I'm like, oh, these are probably still worth watching the afternoon because something could happen on, on them. But for your average day, it was always just staying around and then, you know, punting a bit here, punting a bit there. And then I should have never took those trade. Now I'm frustrated going the next day. So it was, it was always, this was really like, all right, still is if I stay around and trade random stuff at the afternoon with the decision fatigue, it's just something that I kind of always punt a bit of cash. And when you look at the end of the month, it's a lot, you know, it's, it's probably like sometimes 30% of your month that that's gone right there. Yeah. You know, and that's key. So I mean, those are, if those are the patterns that you know and recognize about your trading, you need to implement rules, right? Like I might give back budget is always 10, maybe it's 10% because you think that there might be a trade there, or maybe, maybe your stats are a lot worse than you think they are. And you just need to cut out all of your trading. For me, you know, if I'm here, I'll continue to watch. But as the day goes on, I want to make sure that I'm only involved in the bigger trend. So the rule that I implemented was that I only watch 15 minute candles after lunchtime. You know, that's the shortest timeframe I'll watch. I'll watch 15s, 30s and 60s basically. And you know, I can really see or look for, you know, as I look around at my screens, I can really see, is there anything really worth trading, right? So many times when you're still looking at those smaller timeframes, people, you know, people, the brain's naturally looking for patterns, right? The brain naturally looks for patterns. So you're, you're going to naturally look for something that might not be there, right? And get yourself involved in things that might not actually be, you know, significant, right? On the larger, on the larger timeframe or the larger, you know, the larger scale of things. Yeah. So if we like, so take a bit of time off after we would say, look at really, really deep down on your stats and after would you say size down, that would be probably the continuation until you at least have some kind of like probably, probably for like almost like a month, just to like really build like mental momentum or mental confidence. Would you think that would be a stretch or a couple of weeks? I think it, you know, again, it goes, that's, it's still trader dependent, right? Everyone's going to be a little different. Some, you know, and everyone's interpretation of what a drawdown is, is going to be different, right? You know, it's funny that you mentioned just, you know, two negative days. So two negative days of, you know, is that really a drawdown? Or I mean, yeah, you've had two negative days or, you know, drawdown, I would say like maybe you had a month or two or three months of negative trading, you know, then you really have to take a hard self-look, right? And maybe your steps, your recovery steps are going to be a little bit slower and more pronounced. You know, but if you had three or four or five a week or two weeks of bad trading, you know, maybe you are, you trade small for a week and get that competence back, and then you go back to normal, right? Whereas if you've had three, four or five months of slow or poor trading, you know, maybe you do it for a whole month just to prove to yourself that I can trade small and have a positive month and, you know, without taking a big outsized loss, you know, whatever it is that you were really struggling with, right? And really work through those bad habits so that, you know, as you come out of this and you slowly increase your size again, you know, you're creating new good habits for yourself. Yeah. When I said a couple of days, it's how it starts, not to worry it or it is. And would you say, would you think that cutting off Twitter would be a good thing? Probably it's like social media. I feel like it generates a lot of formal for me. Even when I'm trading well, I just, I don't know, it's so odd that like I'm like, I'm not, like I think I'm a decent trader. I'm not the greatest, but like as soon as I compared to myself to everybody on Twitter, it's like, I feel like almost ashamed of my trading. Like I thought I had a good day. Yeah. I have a great day. Like, you know, everything I traded well, I made some, you know, like good amount of money compared to I guess the average citizen. And then you go on Twitter and you look like a total loser and you're like, wow, I'm the bottom tier of all the internet trader. Like, and it's so, and then the next day you're like, oh man, like you're instantly not satisfied about your trading. And like whenever I'm trading even worse, it's like you have a grudge against these people sometimes. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's, I mean, that's a whole nother podcast, you know, episode or topic of conversation for us to have. Like there's so many different things you just touched on, right? Like your, you know, your self worth, your view of yourself, like the ego, all these things that are controlling and controlling our daily actions basically. And, you know, all things that I've been still working on to this day, right? And I think a lot of people are working on, you know, and I don't think a lot of people are self aware of what you just said, like in the moment, right? Being self aware that in the moment is key. And like if you feel that, right, like I have, you know, I, I have a little daily note that I read to myself of just 20 rules, like things that I'm trying to work on progressively, right? And one of those things is that if I feel emotional because of something else, like I shouldn't trade or I should really cut back on my trading. I don't always follow it. That's another, that's another issue, right? But I, I try to be at least aware of it, right? Whether it's, oh my gosh, I can't believe I missed that trade yesterday. All right, be aware of that. Make a mental note of it. The next morning, like when I read my little notes, all right, just because I missed XYZ yesterday, if XYZ or something similar sets up today, I just got to hit it, you know, like I don't have to take extra size or extra risk. Just make sure you hit it, you know, and take your piece of the pie because everything is, every event is independent of each other. I can't control the results. I can just control my actions, right? Yeah, it totally makes sense. So I think it's pretty much complete that segment, which is really about trading out of a drawdown, which it's much more familiar than what people or what is the average trader think? I mean, I know so many guys that have been, and like profitable guys that have been in drawdown for years, not for years, but they have been example traded. Well, for a few years, they made like a really good chunk of PNL and then they were just stuck for like a year straight. And it's really hard to get out of one. When you're in like a deep hole, it's, it's definitely not, it's not fun. And it's, it's really, really hard to, to come back and be really your full self as a trader. Yeah, I mean, because it just weighs, it weighs on you, it weighs on you, you know, because then you're just putting more pressure on your, on yourself to perform, right? Because this is a performance job and you're only getting paid when you're, when you're making money, right? So it's just, it's hard, you know, and I get it. Yeah. So I wanted to, so the next subject I wanted to talk about, it was the best opportunity of the week. And I thought it was SMCI. And we're not talking about the big, the big day that it flushed out like crazy. And everybody made money shorting it, but it was kind of an opposite trade. It was on the long side. And it was when they announced the news that they were going to be being added to the S&P 500. So this one was a very interesting one because they announced it on Friday at 517. And we've seen another trade that was somewhat similar to that one. And it was on Amazon recently that they were getting added to the Dow Jones, I believe that's what it was. And it's not a trade that I took many times. I think I took this trade or not the specific one, but a similar trade, a couple of times. But this one was like a really good opportunity because the ticker has been such a stock in play, right? I mean, everybody probably traded it at some point recently, just because it had this crazy run. This was the big red day that everybody talked about. And now the news when it came, it was on that specific date right over here, technically, this after hour of that day. So what was special about this opportunity is the time that it took for the stock to actually break out. Normally on a breaking news like this, on a stock that's really in play like that, the fact that it gets added to the S&P is a big deal. That means the S&P is going to have to buy some stocks. So automatically, first, it's going to be a positive catalyst, right? And also, the stock is in place. A lot of people were shorting this thing with options, like all kinds of instruments, either the stock option, because people thought it was never really going to break out again. Like after a big red day like this, you think it's going to go sideways for quite a long time. And then you get a catalyst after hour that people are probably just panicking out or chasing in. And there was a lot of delay on that news. So the news came at 517. By the time it got reposted on Twitter was somewhere around 520, which is about that time right over here. And the stock really broke out of that range like probably like six, seven minutes later, which is so much, so much, so much time to buy the stock. And you have such a small risk on this, you can risk the probably the reference price, which is 906. You can even risk 902. And the upsize was just the craziest thing I've seen in a long time. And there was probably millions to be made on that trade without having to risk that much money. And I thought it was probably the best opportunity of the week or even the month. Like it's not something that you had to add so much risk on. You could have traded the trend on multiple time frame. Even if you look at something like a five minute, there was like multiple setup, we have a setup right over here. This is probably a little tougher to get in. But even there, if you wanted just to buy another breakout, there was another leg over here. And after that, this was another trade for another day. But what do you think about that opportunity and that trade overall? Is this something that you would trade if this happened again and you're at your screen? What would you consider that as an opportunity? Yeah, I completely agree. I think that was an amazing opportunity. I know that there were a couple traders at their desk that definitely caught that trade that I know. And it just comes down to being at your desk. I feel like the S&P likes to do this Friday at the closed thing. I don't really know why there was a little pause at 920. Maybe that's because that was, I think, the intraday high. Maybe that was a little inflection point. Maybe it had something to do with options market makers because anyone who was short calls, for example, your calls can get executed up up until 530, I believe. I think it's about that you can do it in the after hour, but not for so long. So it could get there. Yeah, but it could be 530s. So that 15-minute pause, basically, and then options, whatever happens with the options, whoever going through all that order flow basically and then it can kind of just trade freely because maybe some of it was market makers who were short calls and they have to run back to their desk. I mean, I don't know, I'm just speculation. And then they're the ones starting to buy the stock or control that order flow because so they don't blow up the system on their morning. Yeah, so when I was reviewing that trade, what I thought could have been is a lot of, there's a lot of options being traded on that name because so much volatility, people are chasing some highs and lows, whatever you want to call it. But if ever you short some call and for some reason you can't really get executed or XYZ, you just need to buy the stock at a certain point because you do that or you're going to blow up. So whatever you have buying power left, you buy it. So I feel like the dynamic was just so good. There was just a lot of money to be made then. I mean, it's something that I think, I mean, it's pretty easy to set alerts for that kind of stuff. But it's just being there in the after hour on a Friday, which is like a luck of the draw. Like who's really there? And sometimes that's when the biggest trade happens, unfortunately. Usually it's earlier, because I was sitting at my desk on the Fridays that I was sitting at my desk at the Friday that like Uber and Lululemon, because they're recent additions as well. But I want to say that those both, they came out at 415 or 420. So the 515 announcement is just late. I mean, I could be wrong. So please don't troll me on the comments about that. But I want to say that it was just earlier on that Friday afternoon where people were probably still there. Maybe that's why it was just a little delayed as well. People weren't there and they had to rush back or open up their phones or do whatever they had to do. Because it was a kind of a quiet Friday and to get involved. Yeah, I think it's, these are great opportunities. I never traded that many of the add, delete whatever the strategy is called. But it's whenever things are getting added to, like the spy, the doubt, the cues and whatever something is leaving. It's like it's a pretty good trade. I know a lot of people are going to be looking to short that stock example the day after that it gets like, you know, they stopped buying it for the ad. I don't know if you're familiar with that strategy. Yeah, if you look at Uber's daily chart, you know, you can, there's a mass of the day that it gets added, you know, it gets added at the close, you know, bring up, bring a booper. And we can talk about that. But yeah, I mean, just because all of the funds that haven't added their allocations are going to get in on that print the day that it closes. Is there a short opportunity, you know, like that volume goes off at the closing print. You know, so 6150, you know, I don't know. You know, is there a short opportunity that you can you can short it? Because now all those funds have added it, but it's still going to track the market. So if the market's going to go back up, then everyone who's long and they have to buy it or the tracking ETFs have to buy it. So it's not going to trade us freely, right? I think that's the key. So people are going to keep trading people might keep trading SMCI. But Tesla, for example, when that was added to the SMB 500 that the way that traded really changed when that was added to the SMB 500 just because so many more funds and ETFs had to start tracking it. You know, so that's maybe that's something to consider. But I wouldn't say that it's a flat out short. No, I wouldn't say that because that just wouldn't be too easy. But it's, I mean, I don't remember who I spoke about that strategy introduced me, but it was, it was like, sometimes it's going to be a good, like a very scalpy trade that you can take that has like a very high win rate. But I'm not, I don't think I'll be even looking for that trade. I'm not really interested in I try to do less of the one minute unless it's a news thing. But I mean, it's it's a strategy that exists. Definitely not a popular one on the internet, because that's just shorting small cap. But it is a strategy that exists. And but I think the better trade was really just about this SMCI when it got added. I mean, the way it traded, I mean, it goes back to what we said is, oh, if I was there, I would have just put my whole accounts in and you know, I would have made so much. But even if you wanted just to trade it like properly with just like, very like, you know, risking one hour 1.5 hour, whatever you want to risk it, like the way it traded on that news, we had like a really fresh catalyst, a stock that was super in play. You know, something that could have so much range, and you didn't really have to risk that much. Like you technically had such you had probably the five, 10 points of risk for like a few hundred bucks, through 100 points, like a 10 to one hour risk reward. Like it was just a really good opportunity. And when I could consider this, probably the best one of the month is just on the risk perspective that you didn't really have to risk that much. I think that what makes that trade really great. Yeah. And I think the key is that there's a fresh news catalyst, right? It's a positive news catalyst, right? And as people start seeing these more, and as you start paying attention to these more, you'll see, you know, just like you said, the Amazon and the Dow, they gap up, right? So, you know, even if your risk is a little bit more, right, getting more of your account involved, knowing that this is probably the 99%, like there's a 1% chance that it references and use money, right? As long as you, you know, as long as you don't go all in and you actually have a stop loss or you sell, you know, that's, that's, you know, that's like, I would say like asymmetric risk to reward, you know. Yeah. I think the exact math on this trade that you're listening was you needed to get in pretty much at the $920. Your risk at the most was 900. So, you're risking 20 points. And technically, you were capped on, even if you didn't want to take it overnight, it went to 1040. So, you made 120 points, yeah, 120 points out of a 20-point risk. So, it's like a six to one. Yeah, it's still a six to one. So, you can still find those great, you know, risk to reward setups. Yeah. So, that was, that was definitely the one through me. I don't know if you have any other opportunity that you thought were better than this one, or you think that pretty much tops it off. I think that was just a great, you know, great opportunity. You know, maybe next week we can talk about some of these small caps that have been running, especially if they continue to run, because I think there's some really good lessons there. You know, but it just is, and then we can see if we're getting more and more of those, then those might top that SMCI. But we'll see, you know, every day in the different, every day in the market is different. And, you know, that's why people like ourselves love to participate, right? It's every day's new. It's a challenge. And, you know, sometimes it's about the game for people. Sometimes it's about the competition versus others and, and, you know, but for me, it's just, it's about making a living and giving myself like the freedom and the time, you know, to do other things that I want to do. All right. So, that's going to wrap it up. Thanks guys for watching. If you enjoyed, like, comment and subscribe. Also, leave us a comment or a question if you'd like us to cover it. So, thanks again. Peace.