 Everyone see picture of New York? I should actually change this picture to Central Park now. See my slide and hear me. If you want to chat or type or ask a question, you go down to the chat. You go down to two individual user and then you chat at the bottom. Does everybody know how to do that? Here, I'll type a high in the box. See where it is? Michael has a hand up. Joseph has a hand up. Very good. Excellent. So today is a good day to talk about what we're going to talk about today. Oh, there's Phillip. Hello. Michael got the chat. Very good. And as people come in, Lane, I'll let them come in. But today is a good day to talk about what we're going to talk about here today because it was a good day to do what, to short. So while I train and sometimes go long, sometimes I go long, I mostly focus on shorting. And today was a day that you could have shorted quite a lot of things, actually. Our main short today was Tesla, which worked. You also could have shorted the market today. OK, market fell today. Now, why did the market fall today? Well, you can say this reason, that reason, the other thing. The video fell. Pulled the market down. There was news out actually that came out about the United States putting more sanctions on Russia. And that will be announced later this week. And that is going to have an impact on the market this week. It did today. And the FOMC minutes are tomorrow, which is Wednesday. Remember, it's a short week with the market closed yesterday for President's Day. So there's just a lot of things that are going on this week that could affect the market and pretty much shake things up. Now, why is that good for you if you trade? Because shaking things up is good, because it means you're going to get momentum and movement. If we had a stock market where things didn't really go anywhere and they were just back and forth, back and forth in a range, how would we make any money? So part of the way that you can earn a living trading is you've got to get moves. You've got to get big moves. You want big moves. Big moves are good. Volatility is good. People that think volatility is a bad thing don't know how to trade volatility. So you want a big move. And again, any questions as we go along? Some of you are familiar faces. Some of you are recognized. Some of you I do not. So you can chat in the room if you have any questions as we go along today. I think if you follow me on YouTube, you see an iPad here on TV. I actually got asked to appear on TV today, but I'm here with you guys, so you guys and girls. So I couldn't be on today. And my guess is that they asked me to be on today because of the fact the market was falling. But I already had this webinar scheduled. But I'll be on again. If you have questions, you can email me at MelissaTheStocksWish.com. You can also call me at 929-3200 Gap. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Skype. And again, I try to post information on my YouTube besides all kinds of videos about not just past webinars, trades that we do, interesting tidbits of things in New York, so definitely go to my YouTube and follow me. So we're here and it's crazy. And let's know week and a half, week and a half. Next Friday is March 1st. I cannot even believe it. I seriously can't even believe it. In fact, right now as I'm talking to you, I can tell it's starting to stay light out longer here. So before you know it, it's going to be spring, which I'm excited about. I'm happy about. But the fact is this year already, I feel like it's flying by, flying by. And so just to hop skip in a minute ago, it felt like it was Christmas, it was New Year, and now here we are into 2024. So I put the stats in here for last year for day trades and for options, even though again, we're well into the second month of 2024 and almost into the third month of 2024. But the fact is we're having a great start to this year. We're having a great start to this year with day trades. These are our stats for day trades, $219,324, stats this year with an average risk of about $3,000 per trade. These are trades I called in the live room on margin. And for the options, I risk more in my options trades. We're having a huge start to the year as well. I risk more in my options trades because I want to take bigger positions that I want to hold overnight. Now, the thing about doing options is, we'll talk about this a little bit more later too, you determine your risk. You could take one contract if you want to. So that is up to you. How much you size yourself should be based on your cash size of your account. And again, we could talk about that more later. But we're having a great year doing options as well. So we're already on pace to eclipse our goals from last year or a stats from last year. And the reason for that is because we've had a lot of opportunities. We've had a heck of a lot of opportunities this year. And I have no explanation for that or why. Again, we're gonna talk about what I do. I'm mostly short. And you say, well, that's strange because the market's been very bullish this year. And yeah, that's true today, not withstanding. But the fact is that the opportunities are there. We trade different stocks, individual stocks. It doesn't matter if the market's rally. It doesn't matter if the market's falling. So far this year, our stats in the room of the new options is A23, 669. We are on pace to do better this year than last year. Again, it's been a great year to trade. We've had a lot of movement, a lot of momentum. And today, again, is a good day to talk about this because you had, we had nice moves in stocks today. We had a good move in the market today, a move that you could have captured and shorted. Okay, and we did. And again, any questions as we go along, plop them in the room. But you need a focus. You need a focus to trade. You need a focus to do this for a living. You need goals. You say, even if you wanna do this part time, you have to have goals. Again, I'm constantly, constantly, constantly looking at what I'm doing, comparing, am I doing better this week than last week? Am I doing, am I on pace for the year? Am I on pace for the month? Am I on pace for the week? Again, I'm comparing last week's, last year's results to this year's results. You gotta stay on track. You gotta have goals. You gotta have a focus every single day. I call it chunking it out, but that's really what it is. If you stay on track, you're gonna achieve your goals by the end of the year. If you're all over the place, you're not going to, okay? And part of that is being organized. Okay, I'm a very organized person. Getting up early in the morning, before you train, getting prepped, how many trades you wanna take on a day? Where do you wanna get in? Where do you wanna get out? What do you wanna do? What's the market doing for the day? All of these things, okay, will help you get where you need to go. But specifically for me, my focus is on the strategy that I trade. And that's what we're gonna talk about today. My strategy is based on gaps. And as I said earlier, I prefer to short, okay? I like to short. So, here is a gap. Now, what is a gap? The definition of a gap is when a stock closes at one price at four o'clock Eastern time and gaps down and opens in the morning at 9.30, that's a gap. Or when a stock closes at four o'clock and gaps up the next morning at 9.30, that would be a bullish gap, okay? So we're gonna look at both. This was a chart of Roku. This was the play of the day on Friday. Stock closed here. This was Thursday night. Okay, we're going back in time. It closed at one price, 94 and change. Gap down, open in the morning, around 77 and change, open fell. And we shorted this. Actually, you could have shorted this today. You could have actually shorted this again today. You could have done a put in this here. You could have done a put and a short in this. And again, a put is a short as an option. A day trade is what we did on this on Friday. And you have to have a margin account for that. Anyways, this is a gap. So again, this is four o'clock. This was 9.30 in Friday morning, fell, dropped. Then we did it again here. We didn't play this today, but I'm showing you. This was Friday closure. Then we had Monday, holiday, Tuesday. It was today, gap down, open here, fell, boom. You could have shorted this today. So that is a bearish gap. Let's look at a bullish gap. See what they look like. Here's one over here. Stock closed here, gaped up. So the point of the closure of the price of the stock at four o'clock was whatever this number was, I don't know, 95 something. And then it opened the next day higher, higher than the close. This was a gap up, rallied. You could have gone long this here. Could have got in, got out, boom, made money, been done with it, okay? So there are bullish gaps and bearish gaps. And again, this is a daily chart of Roku. But the point is that there's movement in gaps, which equals what for you, money. And then again, you add size to the position and that's how you pull out a week, a month, your goals, wherever you wanna go. But anyways, getting back to what I do, I trade gaps. This is what I do. And I rate them. I rate gaps with a 26 point checklist. If you decide you wanna learn my strategy, this is it. It's the checklist, okay? This tells me that Roku is going to sell off on Friday. And not rally, which it didn't do, okay? That it's gonna fall, boom, and then it should short it. Now, I'm not predicting Roku's going to close here and open here. I'm not predicting that, okay? I'm not a psychic. But the fact is that after it does that, then I wanna rate it. And I wanna rate it to determine if it's a long, okay? This could it rally, or if it's a short. And again, in this case here, it was a short. And that's what we did. We shorted it. But what tells me that is the points is a checklist. This is what I do. So again, the theme of today is a trade for a living. Why is it important? Because if you don't have a strategy, you're not gonna make any money for a living. You're not gonna make any money at all. You're gonna lose. You have to have a strategy to trade and be successful. That's just a given. And I think a lot of people don't. They say they're trend trading, or they're swing trading, or they're trend trading. And again, I predicted, you could say I'm psychic for this, because I predicted earlier in the year at the end of last year that the market for 2024, even though I think that the market is gonna be bullish this year and hold the uptrend, it might break, it might, but it's probably gonna hold the uptrend. I predicted that it wouldn't be easy, that it wouldn't be easy. Today proves that point. And again, actually Friday too. So when I say not easy, meaning you just trend trade it, you go long in the market, you buy every pullback, and la, la, la, la, you make millions of dollars. That's very unrealistic in any environment or any stock, even the market. And the only time that works really is when the market is power trending. Now we did have a power trend year a couple of years ago, it was after COVID, 2020, 2021, was a power trend year in the market. But for swing traders this year, I think it's gonna be a very difficult year, because you're not gonna have the market go straight up, and it's an uptrend, yeah, that's true. And you're not gonna have it go straight down, and we're not gonna down trend either, even if we go into a downtrend, we're not gonna go straight down. But anyways, you must find selective things to do, and swing trading or trend trading is gonna be difficult in 2024. And part of that reason is because of the market. And you're starting to see a little bit of that break now, okay? Any questions on anything I just said so far? Who is anyone there? Again, I see some new faces. No questions, they're gonna keep going. So let's talk again about what is a gap. Please proceed. Okay, what is a gap? I shall proceed. What is a gap? A stock gaps when the opening price today is different than the closing price of yesterday's trading. A gap is a break in price action from one day to the next. Simple, okay? So again, you said, well, wait a minute, does that mean everything gaps every single day? Pretty much, pretty much, because it's very, very, very rare that something would close at 4205 and open at 4205, okay? So actually stocks and the market pretty much gap every day. So that's just a fact. Now, it could be something where it closes at 4205 and opens at 42. He said, well, Melissa, that's a gap down. Yes, it's a gap down, it's five pennies. I don't know if I'm gonna rate something like that. I might, it might fall, that's true. It's a gap down, but the reality is that most things do not open at the same price as they close, okay? And so it's about finding the good gaps because there's more gaps that are not good gaps and are good gaps, if that makes any sense. So when I develop my system, the rating method, I try to find a way to find the best and highest odds to get something that's actually gonna have a big move and is gonna go in the direction of the gap. And so I qualify it using a checklist because I wanna find the best thing to do because if I don't find the best pick, then I'm at the mercy of the market because most stocks go with the market in any given day. And like I said, most things gap. So how do you predict that that thing is going to follow in the direction of the gap or even have a big move at all or do anything that day when most everything gaps, okay? So it's, you've got to find what I call a good pick, okay? Now here was one that we did, this was UPS. Again, this is crazy that it's, this is a month ago almost, but this fell stock close here, gap down, open, rally, dropped. Now UPS was a short, this didn't go easy either, by the way. But how did I know that UPS would go in the day to trade as a short? Because some people went long in here, that's what this tally thing was. People went long, but it was a short, okay? And it closed, bearish, which you can see here, this red bar. But the rating system, which is my strategy, is how I knew this would fall. So again, when you have a system that you know and you do and you believe and you have conviction in it and you trust it to work more than it doesn't. Again, I take trade, some trades lose, but I win in more than I lose, so I trust it. I have conviction in it. Then you're not worried about a rally against you. Again, I'm talking about if you're in an option, for example, if you bought a put in this and then it went against you. Bart, I just saw you put your camera on and then turn it off. I just, I have everybody's cameras off today. I just saw that pop up, but I see you fixed it. Anyways, this here, okay, getting back to what I was saying was a good gap, but it didn't go right away as it was a little wiggly jiggly, okay? And if you believe in a system and have a system that you apply in a method, if something goes against you, you'll hang on to it until it goes. Actually, I don't have this in here, I don't think. Cisco, Cisco was a gap down that happened last week. I called a put in it, the trade was down and then it gap down today and it worked. But if you killed it, then you would have lost and then the trade went on to work. Again, one of the things that many traders struggle with is holding on to trades when they're down, holding on to them not forever. You have to have a fixed amount that you're willing to risk in an option or a stop in a day trade, but it's the point where you're holding on to it to at least give the trade a chance to work. You gotta give trades a chance to work, okay? And that is also why sizing is so important, because if you oversize yourself, risk too much money, and then it goes against you, you will feel like you wanna kill it because you're worried and you're scared because you had too much risk on, if that makes any sense. Now here was another one here, this was Google, okay? How do I know where the stock's gonna go? I read it, okay? I go through the process. Stock closed here, gap down. Again, this was the last day of January. Stock closed up here around 1.53 in change, gap down here in the morning, around 1.45-ish, I think or something, 1.46. Open dropped, fell. What did you do in Google? You could have shorted Google, you could have bought a put in Google. Again, whether you do day trades or options is totally up to you. I like to do both, now why? Because if I wanna hold something and I wanna hold it overnight, I'm not gonna hold a day trade overnight on margin. And if I did it, that would be basically a swing trade and I would be on two-to-one margin or cash, I feel I've got like the insurance, if I'm in an option, what do I mean by insurance? Like I'm guaranteed that I can't lose any more than the total cost of the position. If the whole position cost me $10,000 and the whole thing goes a bust against me, I'm not gonna lose any more than that. So it's like that protects you when you're in an option but you have an expiration date with an option where you have a time limit on it. So you've gotta get the move during the time that the trade is on in order to make money. And again, this is why it's important to rate the gap. Say, wait a minute, wait a minute, is this rate good? Because if it doesn't, then it may not go within this time period. Again, when people like to do swing trades, they're trend trading, well, yeah, the stock may go in your direction in umpteen weeks or umpteen months or umpteen years and a million things could happen against that where the trade could be down while you're in the trade. When we're actively trading, when we're actively trading, whether you're doing options or whether you're doing day trades, it doesn't matter. You're chunking it out either way because we're doing weekly options. Again, whether I call something like tomorrow that expires March 1st next week, for example, that's basically a week and a half. That's still a fast trade, a quick trade. That's not a long-term investment by any means. It's active trading, and that's what we do. And if I do a trade tomorrow and it goes right away, it's poof, I'll be out of it, okay? Anyways, any other questions here? I saw some people just let in late. We're already underway here, but if anybody has any questions that I just let in, you can type it in the room down here. Or I put the high. Okay, so I rate the gaps. That's what I do. Let's look at another one here, Tesla. This was a while back. Now it feels like stock close here, gap down, open, fell. This was January 25th. This was the earnings in Tesla. Here was today. Today's short in Tesla. We shorted it. We did putts. Stock close here, gap down, fell, boom. We got in, got out, done. And again, you could have done a put. And you could still be in a put here, okay? So how did I know this would fall? I rated it. Same thing with this guy. And it could have rallied. And sometimes things do rally. I just got done talking about the Cisco. Cisco did rally on the earnings, but it went and fell the way that I anticipated it would within the time of the trade. But if you wanna be successful, you have to have a strategy. Whether you wanna do this for a living full-time or part-time, you need to say, I'm gonna get up every day and do this. I'm gonna get up every day and risk this much and take this many trades. And I'm gonna get out here. And it literally has to be like that. And I mean, it literally has to be like that. And if your personality is not someone that you're organized and if you're all over the place and you have a gambling mentality and you've been down this road before with trading and you're just, you need some kind of guidance to keep you on track, that's what the checklist is. First of all, if you're in the live room with me, I should be keeping you on track because I'm calling the trades live in the room. But the checklist should be your checkpoint too. To keep you on track, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna follow it. You read it, okay? So I'm looking for 20 points or more per 26 point checklist. And this is what keeps you on track so you don't go off the rails. So you don't have a trade. So you don't do things you shouldn't do. You're ready to gap. And if it rates 15 points, you shouldn't do it. That's it. You don't have to think about it and agonize on it. And I don't care if somebody on CNBC is telling you, this is fabulous, this is great. Do it, do it, do it. No, you have to follow the system. And if you follow the system, you're gonna be more organized. You're gonna feel less stressed, okay? And you're gonna stay on track. And that's what everybody wants to do. But it's up to you to do that. So there's a certain amount of personal responsibility with that. And I think that's something that also the traders struggle with too. But it's something that you can easily get on board with doing. People think, well, you can't, wouldn't you get a bad habit? You're screwed, you can never change it. That's not true. Everybody here knows somebody that smoked cigarettes, that quit. Everybody here knows somebody that was an alcoholic that stopped drinking. Everybody knows somebody here, or you maybe, that you've had a bad habit and you've licked it, okay? So it's not impossible for people to change. Whatever people act like that or talk like that, I hear people, traders talk like that all the time. They're so negative. I don't know why. Don't be down on yourself feeling like you're never gonna get this and it's never gonna improve and you're gonna be stuck in the same habits. No. People change all the time. Human beings have an ability to change, okay? Any questions, any comments about that? Now let's look here at another one. This is DFS. Stack close here, gap down, open, rally, drop. This was discovered, this was earnings. This is again, back in the middle of January. But this fell, and this was a short, okay? So you could have shorted it, which we did, or you could have done a put. Again, sometimes with things that are expensive, which the market is expensive right now, I'm not gonna lie to you. The cues are expensive. The spies expensive. Tesla, you could even say is pricey, although not as pricey as it used to be. Puts are a cheaper way to capture and move in a stock and play it and make money because you don't have to worry about margin, which you do for day trades. But I do love day trading, and here was the day trade we did. So this was on January 18th. And again, this was a day trade on margin. You would have needed a day trade account, a margin account. I'm gonna show you advanced trader risk and beginner. Entry was 115. So I'm calling this in the room. You wanna do it, you do it, boom. If you don't wanna do it, you could buy a put when I'm calling the entry. And you just buy the put. Now some things I'm calling the same things, like today in Tesla. I call puts in Tesla and I call the day trade. DFS, I didn't call it put in it. I didn't even look it up actually. I didn't, but you could have bought a put here if you didn't wanna do the day trade, okay? Shares for advanced trader risk, 2500. I did an ad here, so I actually had more risk on this. Total shares I had almost 5,000. Again, look at the move. So the average price was 162 drops, boom. This is almost $4. This is a three-something. This is a good move. This is what we want. This is momentum. This is selling. This is a huge trade. Again, you would have had to take a big position in this. But what if you did smaller? If you did 1,000 shares, took 500, did the ad. You could have made 38, 20. And this is a reasonable, reasonable, reasonable account. So in order to have a day trading account on margin at a retail broker, you've gotta have 25,000 unless you go prop. If you go prop, you're gonna get 10 to one margin and a retail broker gonna get 4 to one margin. 25 is the requirement. You would have been able to do this trade. So you could have had a $25,000, a little bit more than that account because you can't really be right at that 25. And the average cost here was more than 100. But for 1,000 shares, you could have done this roughly thereabouts a little bit more. And again, this is a nice trade for an account, say for 30 grand to make $3,800 in one trade. And that's how you grow your account. Again, you could have done it put in this. You could have done it put in this, but this was one fifth of the risk of the other trade that I just showed you. Now what happened here, again, this is a 15 minute. Stock closed here, gap down, open, rallied, dropped. We shorted it, got in, got the drop, boom, done. Again, sometimes we're running out in five minutes. Sometimes I hold a little bit. I did hold Tesla a little bit today. I could have held it longer, actually, but I prefer to be out of my day trades earlier in the morning. And you could have got out of this in the morning early. But this, again, was a day trade and you could have done it put. And while it's not exactly the same thing as far as what you're gonna pay and how you're gonna pay it, if you wanna follow me in the room, and again, if you don't trust yourself, if you don't trust yourself to do anything without me, if you're new, you could just follow where I get in, get out, whatever you make, you make. Again, because it's gonna be different because you're not gonna take shares because it puts you to options, makes sense? I mean, not contracts. So again, like I was saying earlier though, you gotta take the weight of the pros versus the cons. You say, yes, I'm going to risk money and I might lose, but I wanna make sure I get this and I really, really like it. And if I don't do this, this is crazy. And I really wanna do this trade because I wanna make money, but I know I might lose. Again, this is the whole point of trading. You're trading because you wanna make money. There's no way to actually make money without actually taking risk. So then I say, cut your risk back. Take a set amount of risk where you'll feel comfortable, you don't have to worry about it. But every trade you take, you're weighing the pros and cons. That's why I have the reigning system. I wanna see lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of reasons that I wanna do it. That's why I have 26 points. And I feel like 20 is good, 20 is a lot. I feel like if it's under 20, the rule is don't do it. So again, the more things you can put in your favor, you feel better about taking it, you feel more confidence, and then you feel like this is less stressful. It takes the weight off of you, of the worryment of the cons because the con is always you can lose money. And also you have no idea what's gonna happen. I can predict everything out as beautiful like an angel and things could go completely different and that's life. You know, we watched this go, I didn't end up doing that as a day trade because it didn't set up right. But the reality is that I thought it would work. Now I was right, it did go that as an option, but it took a couple of days. But again, it should have gone that day and it didn't. And that's what happens sometimes. Afua, that's a question, I'll email you that. Afua's already on board. I will email you what all of that means when we're done here. Just gonna say something else and I just forgot what I was gonna say. Anyways, pros and cons. Afua sent me an email and asked me that question so I remembered to answer it, okay? And it is, you know, getting back to what I was saying, pros and cons, there's no way to get around the fact that when you take a trade, you could lose money. There's just no way to get around it, you know. But that is what separates the winners from the losers because again, if somebody has, I don't wanna say guts, but it really is like guts. If somebody has the fortitude and the knowledge and the capacity to take risk, you know, and the guts, I guess, then they can benefit by making money in the market. And that's, you know, again, some people trade and they trade and they say, oh, I can take risk, I can do it, but they really don't have the stomach for it. And that's why people are killing trades very early, not making a lot of money when they do make money in something, they kill it, they kill it when they're up a little, they kill it when they're down a little, they don't get anywhere with it because they really don't have the personality of the stomach to take risk. And you do need to have money to take risk in an account, whether it's proper retail. Are the 26 points all technical or fundamental? The 26 points are all on the daily chart and they're based on technical analysis. As far as fundamentals, if all of those things, like I said at the beginning, the market fell today, there was news out about Russia sanctions and market tanked them when that news came out, that the US is putting sanctions on that. Very often the reasons or the back story behind why something's doing something is really, it's like almost already there and we don't even know that ahead of time. So to say, well, we're gonna trade based on fundamentals, it's extremely difficult to do. If I had to read every single earnings report that I, when it came out, I'd never have time to trade for Pete's Sakes. You know what I mean? I can go through 26 points, I can go through it in seconds. I don't do that, I take my time. Once you get the hang of it, you can do it in five minutes per gap. But the fundamentals is good if it helps you and you like it and you can wrap your head around it and you're like, yeah, this, you know, say you get up today and you rated the gap, you say, oh, I love this gap. Then you hear the news that I just told you and you're like, oh, now I knew this was good. So again, it can support, the fundamentals can support what you already know and the rating, but it shouldn't be the reason you take the trade if that makes any sense. And that was a good question and that's something I should remind the room. Randy, remind me to remind the room that tomorrow. Is your first name Gail? Whoever asked me that, I don't know, I can't see what your first name is. But that was a good question. Anyways, you can trade options and you can day trade gaps. And like I said, it's whatever works for you. I like doing both. I don't have to, I don't have the pressure. An option where I can just let it ride and get a bigger move. And again, sometimes things take a little bit of time, like a day or two or three. Whereas with a day trade, I do have the pressure to get in and out. I have to get out of that trade before four. I've got to exit that trade. And so it's different, but at the same time, when I'm doing a day trade, I know when I go to bed at night and I hit my head in the pillow, I know I made money or I know I lost money if the trade failed, if I got stopped. So when you go to bed and you're an option, you could be up, you could be down, you could be, you don't even know you're in it. You're, this is a live trade. You hit, your head hits the pillow, you're like, oh my God, I don't know where this is going to be tomorrow. And there are some times where I've gone to bed like that. And usually then, it's to be honest with you, I probably have too many trades on and they're all in one direction. So there's been times when I can tell when I have too much risk on. And again, this is, it's a constant balancing act. You can't hold everything. If I call 10 trades, should you hold them all? No. It's like, you gotta chunk it out because it helps you because you don't wanna be up and 10 things go to bed and they get up in the morning, they're all against you. Cause you're like, well, I'm trying to get it down. Not everything's gonna go to a piggy target and not everything's gonna go to a dream target and you've gotta take profits along the way as you go. And that's a good decision to make. But again, I can tell with myself, it's usually I have too many things on in the same direction. But the nice thing about day trading, the positive, the pro is that I know where I am every night when my head hits a pillow. Are your 26 points evaluated before the open or after? Oh, definitely before the open Bob. I wouldn't have time. Like we're in and out of the trade sometimes in five, 10 minutes. If I'm waiting till the open, I may miss the whole trade. So I know exactly what I wanna do when I get up in the morning and rate the gap. Sometimes if I'm up at 6 a.m. on rating gaps and I'm sending options trades out at 7 a.m. Now if you're on the letter and you get the trade then you can't take it. You can't take the trade until after the open but I've already rated that gap and I may do that three hours before the open. So yes, that's part of the prep work. You could rate gaps at night. Stuff is probably gapping now. Phillip, if Phillip wants me to look at anything when we're done, I'll look at something. I'm sure Phillip's looking at things. How do I know when to get out of an option? That's a good question too. Let's go back. Well, let's just look at this. Right here, we're gonna go over this Tesla one. So I called Wednesday, January 17th. I called the 205s. So let's go to the 17th. This was a put by the way. So let's go to January. Oh, this was before the earnings actually. I forgot this one. So before the earnings here, I called the 205s. You see where we are here. On January 17th, the stock dropped and then gap down here. This was the last day of the expiration date for Tesla. So anyways, this trade went though and fell and you were positive in this trade prior to the last day. Just wanna show you that. I know this chart is small, but if you can see it. So I had called the 205s. So what happened with this one? It cost around $4.50, which I think is very reasonable for this, for this price point. Again, a beginner risk of two contracts who could have spent $900 profit was 100%. That's a good trade. Now you say, Steven is asking, well, how do you know when to get out? First of all, if you're on the newsletter, I am giving targets in the newsletter, but I might give four targets or five targets. Then I also give a dream target, which is a double star in the letter. I don't hold every trade to the dream target. No, in my mind, there's a possibility that the trade could get there. So I call it a piggy target or a dream target. I do not hold every trade to the star target in the letter, but no, that's what I'm thinking. Like this could get to this number, basically. Is what is like, you know, out there. In fact, let's look at what I put on the Tesla. Randy, did you end up doing the Tesla? Randy's on the letter. What did I put on the last Tesla? I forget. I think I said 180, 180, but let me just double check. Do I call the trade today? Yeah, I was right, 180. So the double star target in Tesla, the Tesla put I called today. Let's go back to the current chart here. I have this in here, hold on. I put 180. Now, is this gonna go to 180 in the time I called the trade? I don't know. Trade was positive today, but it might. And so again, what you could do, and I'm just giving you an idea, Stephen, since this is something you struggle with, you would be up here today, say you took two contracts, get out of one today, and then you can hold the next one. And if it continues down, then you make more money in the second one. And if the second one, if it loses, if this was in, then you're still not gonna lose in the trade. So that's another idea for you, Stephen. Or if you do four, book two, hold two. Or if you do four, or if you do three, book two and hold one. So anyways, getting back to what I was saying, I put targets in the letter, but I think I did that before with you, Stephen, and it's something you struggle with. In an ideal world though, just to be normal, if you were just, again, go back to just common sense, what if I had called the trade in this? I didn't for the options. I called a day trade in DFS. Would you have exited this trade here, Stephen? And I have no idea what this cost. I didn't do the option. I did the day trade. I'm just common sense here. Philip, you struggle with this too. If I bought a put in the DFS and it rallied and was down, because that's how this whole thing would have played out for me if I had done it. It would have been down. I don't know what. It could have been down 50%. Would have been down in the rally. Then it would have started to go. Then it would have gone. Then it would have closed positive and I could have got out of it that day. What if I was up 75%, 80%, not even 100? Would I have exited that day? Probably, yeah. Do you know what I'm saying? Why? It's a big fat red bar. I would have been short in the put. I would have taken the trade. The trade would have been down. You see the logic there, Steven? So these are things like, again, common sense should help you. Plus the targets in the letter. I think 50% is a good profit, to be honest with you. Now a lot of our trades this year are going 100% or more. It's just like I said, it's been a good year. I don't think that that's something that you have to say, well, I'm holding everything to 100% because I just laid out a scenario here where I took a trade, say, the trades against me. I'm like, oh crap, then it goes. And I'm happy with what I'm up. I booked the money. I'm already in five other things. Do you follow what I'm saying? I'm in Tesla, say, and I like Tesla more. Like I don't wanna hold DFS in Tesla. Do you understand the logic here a little bit, Steven? Again, you're gonna do the class, Steven. You're gonna do the class. But that's just like, that's a window into my mind when you're thinking about things, you should not be holding every trade to piggy targets. This is all stuff that you gotta learn, but it's really a lot of it, quite frankly, is common sense, common sense. But if you don't trust yourself at least a little bit to hold anything. And Miranda, I think that's where you're at where you wanna get out of anything, anything, everything and anything because as soon as you're up a little bit because you're so scared, well, that's problematic too. Where you take a trade and you're up 20%, you're like, oh my God, this market's crazy. I gotta get out of this now, I'm up, do, do, do. Then you're not giving the trade a chance to work either. Do you know what I mean? Randy, I'm talking to you. Did you hear what I said? Steven, did that answer your question? So the best advice I can give you is common sense with your trading because that's really, really gonna help you. Don't hold everything and don't get out of everything too quickly and give trades a chance to work. But don't hold on where your grip is so tight that you get out too quickly or hold too long. And Phillip, I think that was your problem. But again, maybe you're over that now, Phillip. People can change, they can. You'd be shocked how much people can change. I think there's just such a mentality, particularly with traders. And I'm saying this from someone that's been teaching people now for 12 years. The mentality of traders is feeling very stuck and that they can't change, but that's false, that's a lie. If you ever went to somebody and they taught you something and they taught you how to trade and they told you you could never change and you have a bad habit and it's you, it's all your fault, you're blah, blah, blah. You need to sign up for some computer or moving average thing, that's all crap. The second you stop believing in yourself or your own ability to make decisions with your own mind, you're pretty much screwed. I mean, you may as well pack it in. And I'm not just talking about trading, I'm talking about anything. How are you gonna make a decision to buy a house or a car or get married or have a baby if you don't even trust your own decisions? It's no different with money, it's no different. It's about trusting yourself to make the right choice. And yeah, you might make a mistake. Okay, so you make a mistake? I've made mistakes. Last week one day, I think it was Tuesday. I think it was a week ago. I completely over-traded. I have no explanation for why. I just did, I over-traded. I was like a bat out of hell with my day trades. And I don't do that often, but every once in a while I have a bad day. I was able to come back, but I took so much size in the trades that I was in to come back that I'll have a lot of risk on. This is like, everybody makes mistakes. You just move forward and you get back on track like that. These are good questions and keep asking them. Anyways, it's the American dream to become rich, successful, and financially independent, but you need a plan to make that happen. It could be trading. It could be buying and selling real estate. It could be anything, anything you wanna do. But the nice thing about trading is, the nice thing about it is that this is something you can do on the side and you don't have to do it full-time if you want to, or you could, or you could. Which trade was 500, some trades were. Some trades were 500%. Yes, we've had some trades this year that have been ridiculous. I don't think I have any of those in this, but that doesn't mean every trade, Stephen. I think what you're asking me, and I don't know if I have this chart in here, I don't think I do. I don't think I do, but if I don't, I'll bring it up at the end. I think your point is, Stephen, how am I ever gonna make more than 100%? If I get out of everything at 50% or 75% or 80% or 100%, how am I ever gonna make more than 100%? I think that's what you're trying to say, because yes, we've had some big trades. Ooh, the hawk just went over me right now as I'm talking to you. The red-tailed hawk that lives on my roof just went over me right now. He's going out to hunt. He's going out to get his dinner and he's gone. I think that's your point, Stephen. Is that basically what you're trying to ask me? I'm trying to read your mind here. Am I, is that what you're trying to ask? Well, that's an easy question. You're gonna be in it overnight. So, BA was the one that I don't know if I have that in here, but I'm gonna use this here as an example with Tesla. You will be in the trade at some point, some trade that I do, or multiple trades or whatever. Some people might be in some trades right now. Actually, let's go to the Tesla right now. Let's go to the current Tesla here today. Randy's in it, so am I. If Randy and I get up tomorrow morning, and I'm just making this up to just show you, Stephen, and Tesla's at 180, Randy and I are gonna be up more than 100%. I don't know what percent. I have no idea how much it's gonna be up, but it's gonna be up a lot. And that's how you're gonna get those moves, Stephen. You will be in the trade, and it continues in a gap. And we have had trades like that this year. And that's how these ended up going. And I called two Teslas today. So again, getting back to being reasonable and normal, you could have done one trade today, which is I think what Randy did. I think he got out too early before he talked to me, but Randy did a trade, Randy got out, Randy made money. Then I called another trade. I think that's the trade Randy's in, right? Randy's in the second one. So he booked money in the first one, so he's in the second one, and he's gonna let it ride. Is that correct, Randy? And that was the right thing to do. So how are you gonna make more? You're gonna be in a trade when it gaps in your direction. Same thing could happen in a bullish gap. I could call a call and you could be in it. We've had that happen with NVIDIA. I've called calls, NVIDIA gapped up, it's over the strike. We're up more than 100%. That's the day you're gonna look to get out, Stephen. And some of those we weren't even up enough to even consider getting out. So those are not trades you're gonna plan. You're not gonna plan those. You're gonna just be in them by participating and getting the trades. And anyways, getting back to BA. That did happen in the BA. We had some BAs this year that were just huge, huge, huge trades because we were in puts and then there was mechanical failures or issues or things that happened and this was earlier in the year and the stock fell overnight. All right, I'll look at those fill out. Anyways, all you need is one strategy and one focus and you do need that. And you need that and mine is gaps, but it's also shorting. Again, using your brain and thinking clearly and analyzing stuff and working it out and being, I keep saying being normal because there's so many things in the world right now that are not normal. I mean, again, if having the TV on or being in Reddit chat rooms or things that are gonna distract you and make you go crazy in your head or looking at your P&L, if something's down, even if it's a great trade, it's a beautiful trade, you've got two weeks left, there's no reason to stress about it. You know, you have to just try to be as logical as you can. Again, that's where going back to the rating system helps you. If you're worried, rate the gap, rate it. Do the work. If you don't know how to rate it, well, that's a different story. That's why you do the class. You do the class to learn it. And again, if you're just gonna trade options with me and you're not gonna take the big class, well, you follow the targets I have in the letter or you have to look at some profit targets, you have to say, I am gonna get out of every trade at 75% or 50% or 100% or whatever because I don't understand what Melissa's looking at. I didn't learn it yet. You still should be okay and make money that way. But you can't hold everything to a pigger. I hope Tesla goes to 180 between now and March 1st. I feel very confident that it will. Is it gonna need the market? Probably. Are we gonna get the market? I think so. Like I just told you when we started, there's a lot of crazy stuff that's going on in the next 24 hours that could rock this market. But you need your brain. And you also have to believe in yourself. If you get down in yourself and you wanna quit and you get frustrated, you're working against yourself. You already got other people in the market that want your money. They want your cash. They're in trades against you. If you're working against yourself and other people are working against you, you got no chance. So you've gotta work for yourself. And I'm trying to help you too, but you gotta help yourself. And that's taking the class, signing up, learning, doing the homework, doing the ratings, getting organized, showing up for the room on time, not coming to the room late. These are good questions though. Anyways, why gaps? Gaps are the most powerful show of price action in a chart. Again, how do we read the gap? You look at the daily. Gaps have large moves. Gaps can move up or they can move down. Some of the biggest momentum moves in a daily chart though come from a gap. And we looked at some of those today. Here was another one, PayPal. PayPal, here we did. Stack close here, gap down, fell. This was back on the 8th of February. This was a good short. Stephen, would you have gotten out of this train this day? I did. We did a put. I got out. I don't know why you wouldn't have gotten out. Like, do you know what I mean, Stephen? This is like a reasonable trade. Was it some monster 300%? No, it's just a trade. You get in, get out. You take it, you book it, done. That's it. I don't know if you would have got out and I see even, but you should have. And again, I don't know what you were doing. Like, were you holding things too long? I don't know. I don't, and then you just move off of it. So what if that would have dropped all the way down to 52? Oh, we would have done another trade. Big what? So like, if you would have got up in the morning and this would have kept going, I would have just done another trade if I wanted to. You gotta book money and stuff. Again, this was a short. It was a day trade short and we did a put. Anyways, part of the thing that I'm looking for is whatever's going on in the chart, whatever's going on in the stock of the market or wherever we're playing, I'm looking for institutional money. What are they doing here with this thing? Again, are they selling it? Are they buying it? Are they going along? There's only one thing and one thing only that can move the direction of a stock and it's money. Not a little bit of money, but a lot of money. And that's the only way the stock's gonna move. If all of us together took one trade, the same trade of the same price at the same second in the market, we wouldn't move it. There's no way. Not even with size. You need institutional money. Millions and hundreds of thousands of shares. And what I call power money. Power money is in charge. Power money is in charge of the stock's direction. Trends are set and moved by the power money people of which there's a lot of in the market. I mean, there's just a ton. Again, we talked about the spy. So the spy closed here, gap down, open, fell. So the banks were down today. There was some news out with banks today. So the banks were down and the financials go with the spies. So the spy was down and then we talked about the negative information with Russia, which continued to sell off today. Now people loved it by support. They could be buying the market today tomorrow. We could be up to start the day. We could be gapping up. We might be up tonight. Why? Because people love to buy this market and they love to buy support. And that's what I'm telling you. This is gonna be tricky. Anyways, making money trading is fun but you need to use your brain and if you don't, you're gonna struggle. You're gonna have a hard, hard time. I know, again, I keep saying common sense but that is literally what it is because at the end of the day, if you learn the system, follow the rating system, keep your risk the same on almost every trade. Get out when you're up. You should be fine. And when I say get out when you're up, that's not get out when you're up 20%, that's not hold every trade till you're up 500%. It's be normal. Give the trade a chance to work. Look for the momentum. What is momentum? In a short, it's a sell-off. In a long, it's a rally. And again, I'm saying a dollar or more but that's pretty much average. Obviously, if we're doing something like NVIDIA, NVIDIA is very expensive. You could pay $15 for one contract in NVIDIA so I need NVIDIA to go 20, 25, 30 bucks to make money in NVIDIA. That's a lot different than a PayPal. A dollar move in PayPal, like I just showed you in that chart, that's a good move. But also trading isn't gambling. And yes, some people have some problems with this and this is a problem you can solve and you can fix it. How do you fix it? Just stop it. Just stop it today, stop it tomorrow. Don't do it anymore. Take, force yourself to do one trade a day so you don't go off the rails. I mean, you're not gonna have a horrible week if you're doing one trade a day. But we'd be the worst thing that could happen to you. If you don't know what you're doing, you'd lose in five trades in a row. Some people are gambling in the market, they lose in five trades in five minutes. Literally, that's how crazy some people are trading. Like they're sticking coins in a slot machine at Las Vegas. You can't be like that. You have to be very succinct and think it through. And the nice thing about options is you have time to think it through. You have time to think it through. You have time to think it, okay? Anyways, the whole system is based on the checklist. I go through the points and I read them and this is what you learn from me. It helps you stay consistent. The 26 points, you check, check, check. You go through it, you rate it, you do it, you see what's going on and that helps you. It helps you in the end because otherwise, why, how do you know what's going on? How do you even know it's gonna work? And again, whoever asks a question about fundamentals, you can't just say, well, you know, the fundamentals are good. Yeah, but the stock might sell off. The fundamentals also may be bad and then the stock rallies. Again, we've had so much mixed data with the overall economic data that's come out. We've had people predicting that the Fed's gonna do all kinds of things in the last two years. They were gonna raise rates. They were gonna drop rates. They were gonna lower rates. They were gonna keep race setting. Nobody knows what they're gonna do. If you're making decisions based on that, you're changing your mind every hour on the hour depending on who makes a statement from the Fed and the data. And again, good data could come out and then the market falls because they're worried that the Fed isn't gonna lower rates. Bad data could come out and the market rallies because they say, oh, well, for sure now, for sure they're gonna lower rates in March, which I don't think they're gonna do. This year in 2024, despite the fact that selection year is gonna be very driven by the market reactions, everything that happens with the Fed and rates, I don't think the Fed is gonna make any rate change decisions until June or later in the year. That is, again, what I think. We'll see if I'm right and what they do and how much they drop rates or keep rates steady or how long or anything is gonna depend on the numbers and what happens with inflation and unemployment. Any, which nobody knows. So you shouldn't worry about it. You can worry about it for your long-term retirement account if you want, but for day trading, we can short pay pound today and get out tomorrow in an option and we can buy Navinia in the morning and sell it into the close in a call. We can do whatever we want with stuff and be very, very active no matter what because we're trading the momentum in the stocks, we're short-term traders, and that's really actually gonna be beneficial this year for reasons like I said earlier. Any other questions about that? Anyways, we talked about the Roku. Again, Stephen, if I called and put in Roku, would you have got out here? I think you should have. If I had done one, I would have. Guess what? If I had stayed in it, this would have been more if I had done it, should you care? No, you're not gonna get out of every single options chain at the perfect, perfect, perfect price. If I called and traded in this and you had done it, you should have got out here and this would have been a good exit. Not knowing what was gonna happen on three-day weekend, not knowing what the market's gonna do and not knowing anything. It would have been a good, solid exit in the trade. You would have been up. You would have been up a good amount. If you held it, you would have been up more, but you can't worry about that. Randy, are you seeing this too? Again, we didn't do this except for a day trade, but it's the point I'm trying to make. The rating system tells you where the momentum is headed and that's how you can make money. And the benefit of trading gaps is you can trade fast and be done. And it doesn't matter if you're doing options or day trades. Now, I have one week of results in here. I didn't update this. I should update this because this was the last week of January and I'm just gonna go through this very quickly. This is an average risk, though, of $3,000 a trade. You see what we're looking to make. So if I'm risking 3,000, sometimes I make more than 100%. Sometimes I make right at that. Here was a trade that lost. It was Tesla. Google was a big one. I'll go over that in a minute. But this one first day, we didn't do any trades. Then we did the BA. Here's the sell-off MBA. This worked. And again, BA, you could have bought a put if you don't wanna do this as a margin trade. Then UPS was a good short. We talked about that gap earlier, remember? This was a good one. Tesla, I lost in this one on the 31st. Google, we made money. Google was a big trade because I didn't add. So an add is an advanced concept, which I'm not gonna go over here. But if I call an add in the room and you wanna do it and you can do it, you're doubling up your side. It's basically like taking two trades this one and I really like the gap. Did I get in PayPal before or after the gap? I never get in. How would I know if, no, the stock gapped and we entered the trade into the open, Steven. How would I have known that was an earnings gap? How would I have known to buy the put in PayPal? It might have rallied up. It might have been a bullish gap. I'm not just saying, I don't know if PayPal's gonna gap down in the earnings if that's what you're asking me. So how would I have known to do that beforehand? The money you make is on the day. You wait for the gap and then you rate it. Or I rate it and then I'm sending out the newsletters. No, I'm not predicting what's gonna happen. I'm not predicting that Tesla's gonna gap down tomorrow at 180. Again, if I knew that, I'd be a psychic. I'd be a billionaire and I wouldn't be here with you. I can tell you that right now if I was a billionaire. I was a psychic like that. That's a 50-50 crapshoot predicting what somebody's gonna happen into the earnings you don't know. Now, I might be, and this does happen every once in a blue moon, I might be in a trade. I'm completely down in it. I can't lose any more, I'm already down in it. The earnings are that night. The option expires Friday. I'm just making up an example here. And then it goes and it goes in my favor. And then I have a trade that was completely down. I had, it was worth this, it was worth five cents. And then it gaps on earnings in my favor. I was already in it and I make money in it. But I didn't take that trade to plan to play it through the earnings. But I was in the trade and it didn't go before the time and I had nothing to lose by holding it because I was already down in it, if that makes sense. Now that has happened to me. Philip has played some of those with me. We've gotten trades like that. That's never pre-planned. That's like it didn't go when I wanted it to, kind of thing. But no, I don't know. I can't get in them before they gap, Stephen, I don't know. Two one here, we lost in Q-com. I got stopped. Some people did get out. We shorted this, I didn't get out. I was up, I could have got out. And then I got stopped in it. And then BA was a big trade here on February 1st that was a short. And Amazon, we did, which was a long. Actually, Amazon was a long. This was on two, two. This was earnings, this rally. Amazon was a nice long. You could have bought calls. You could have done the day trade here. Again, this was a trade on margin where you would have bought it and I called it in the room and then we got out, boom. We had a good exit on this, actually. So anyways, this is an average of risking around three grand a trade. That's the risk with the entry and the stop. Again, you have to have an account to take some of these trades on margin. And if you don't, you can do options in them. We were already talking about this as far as chunking out profits. And I think that's something that some of you need to work on. I think that's something that Stephen you need to work on. Now that you're coming back, I think it's something that Philip, Philip definitely knew about doing. And Randy, maybe that's something you work on too. So again, this isn't about quickly getting out of it and saving anything. And it's not about holding everything to a piggy. It's about just being normal, letting the momentum come in. If you're in a long, let it rally. If you're in a short, let it drop. Let it sell off. Give it a chance. Give it a chance to work. Any other questions here? How are we doing? But you do need your brain. And as much as people say, I don't wanna use my brain. I wanna press a button and just not think and be a robot. Yeah, you can come in the room and I'm calling the trades in the room, but that's the closest you're gonna get to being a robot. But you really can't even be a robot then because you're gonna have to size your trade. So I don't know your account. You have to size yourself. You have to decide if you're gonna risk 1,000 a trade, 2,000 a trade, whatever. Then you have to say, okay, well, this one's buying power and I can take 2,000 shares. You have to use your brain. And for the life of me, again, I don't know why this is. For the 12 years that I've been teaching people, I don't know why people are so against doing that. Like people would rather not use their brain. Your brain is your greatest asset. You should wanna use it. Keep yourself healthy, keep your brain healthy. And again, this is part of keeping your stress down. If you rated your gaps and got all your picks in order and you know what you wanna do or you say, I don't wanna do anything today, nothing's good. You got it all straightened out before the market even opens. That keeps your stress level down, which helps your brain. Your brain will go better and think better and act better and you're gonna be more stable if you have everything pre-planned and then you get the setups and you do it. Then you don't have to be a stressed out. Okay, there's no getting around the fact that you have to take risks. There's no getting around that. That's why we put stops in where there are day trades. Okay? Anyways, it's a daily focus. I rate the gap, I use a 26 point checklist. That's what tells me what to trade each day and what to look for. And the key to getting the big trades is the momentum. You know, like the PayPal, like the Roku. That was really a nice trade, actually. And when I'm trading, I'm looking for momentum. This gives me an edge. I don't have to worry about scalping. My expectation is I'm gonna get a big move, Stephen. Now, to me 100% is a big move. If I get 80% on the same day, I still think that's a big move. Now, if it goes a little bit and I'm in it, I'm gonna hold it overnight to see where it goes. But I always expect to get a big move. I don't expect every trade that would go to 500%. But I do expect that some will, why? Cause I'm gonna be in that BA that I liked and we did a couple of times and something happens and then all of a sudden it's 20 points for the strike and we're all in it. And that pretty much made everybody's January. So I mean, it's just, you know that it's gonna happen. Again, it has to do with having the confidence to be in the trades. But if you're taking a trading, you're killing it too quickly where you're never gonna get that. You're not gonna, you didn't give it a chance to work. So you're not gonna get those big ones when they go overnight. Cause sometimes that's how these options play out. Sometimes Cisco, that's what happened with Cisco. Cisco is down. It gapped down this morning and it's probably still lower, actually. Momentum trading is one of the most profitable fastest ways to make money trading. Learn how to take a position in a stock in anticipation. The stock will have an explosive move and that is what you need. That is what you need. These enormous moves happen in one direction and happen fast. Momentum trading can be very profitable but it's all based on the gap. It's all based on institutional money. Gaps happen in the market all the time. Every day, everything gaps, like I said earlier. But some gaps are nothing gaps and more gaps are nothing gaps than are good gaps. You wanna find the ones that are the good ones that the institutions are buying or selling are shorting. The most important gaps in the market are gaps that signify a change in direction or a bigger move in the same direction, which is what we want. And basically that's Tesla. That's Tesla, actually. Understanding which gaps are meaningful and which gaps are not meaningful in the market will help you to know what to do and when a change is occurring. And that is how you know when the power of money will flow to pay you, which of course we want. And obviously the faster the better. Okay, so the 26 points is what I'm looking at. I'm following the footprints of institutional money. I'm not predicting the gap. I wait. I wait until the institutional money does whatever it's gonna do. Then I see it, then I rate it. And then either it rates good or it doesn't. And many don't. So I don't do them. And then I don't lose money in them. And I try to narrow it down to do the good ones then. So a big flow of money going a certain direction is what moves the market, stocks and creates momentum and sets the trend in charts. When you're looking for institutional money, you're really reading the side of the power in stock. Power meaning the power of money. You want to be in the side of the power in order for you to make money trading. Institutional money is in charge of the market and stocks at all times. Even if you think it's not, it is. And that is gonna be the tricky part this year for traders with the market because there's almost gonna be like, you've already seen it. You're already seeing it now. It's like a tug of war is going on the market. It's gonna be the bulls fighting with the bears. But again, I believe that the market probably holds the uptrend. But it's still gonna be a fight to the death where the market looks like it's selling off, tries to break, goes and then doesn't. And then it looks like it's gonna go up and rally and then poof and then it runs out of steam and then it doesn't. And you know what I'm saying. Like that's tough trading. If you don't get in at the right place and out of the right place. So that's why you gotta find stocks that are gonna have nothing to do with the market at all or you can just trade the stocks and make money. And that's what I'm trying to look for, you know. Not that we're never gonna play the market this year. We already have had some market trades but I've done less market trades this year in 2024 than I ever did in the last two years so far. It's just not ready yet. It's not ready to make a move higher and it's not ready yet to fall off a cliff. Anyways, can you do this if you're a beginner? Yes. I'm teaching someone that's brand new. Actually, she already paid for the class, already signed up this weekend. She's pregnant. I'm gonna teach my first pregnant student this weekend. She's doing the class of February which I think is fantastic and I think is great and she's not traded before and I think it's awesome. So, you know, doing something new, you know, giving yourself that courage to try something new and do something different. It's what a lot of people need and they're so scared and you just gotta get over that hump. Oh, here was one we did. Isn't this funny here? This was a 180 test so we did that already expired but it worked so this was Wednesday the 31st. Oh, shoot, do I have it in here? Oh, here I do. Wednesday the 31st was here. The 180, boom, dropped. So again, this fell, here's the momentum, fell through the strike, boom, done. So again, this was a good trade. I actually had that out to the 16th but the exit was to five. This was cheap, 330 for a Tesla? At the time we did it, this was kind of far from the strike. So if you risked 82.50, you could have made 13,000, return investment 158%. Again, Steven, are you still here? Steven's always saying, well, where do you get out? Well, you wouldn't have gotten out here, Steven. You just, I just called it. You wouldn't have got out here. You would have been down a little. You could have got out here but you weren't up much. What happened here? Gapped down, sold off. So I don't care where you get out here, Steven, but you're getting out here this day, somewhere, anywhere, it doesn't matter. Whether it's 158% or 125% or whether you could have made 175, you're gonna get out of the train here. It fell through the 180. Steven, do you see this? Hello, talking to you, Steven. And Randy too, Randy too. I don't know if you did this one, Randy. Now if you had a beginner risk, you could have taken three contracts. This is a good trade. For somebody that you have five grand in your account, you risked 9.90, this is insane. These are good trades. Steven, do you see this here? Do you see how you would have looked to get out here? So then we did another one. This was BABA. We did the 75s. What day was that? 27. So again, here we go. Stock closed here, a gap down. Called the trade in 27, open, rallying, fell. Boom, again, 75s. So this cost $1.80, this was cheap. Sold at 425. Could have made a little more than 100%. Could have got out of it before. Does it really matter? No. But again, you were up here. You could have got out here, actually. I thought about it. But I didn't think this was gonna go against me with the time I had left. But then when it did this, I got out here. What if you didn't get out here? You would have made more here. What if you didn't get out here? You would have actually made more here, Steven. What if you didn't get out here? You still would have been up. I'm just looking at this here. You still would have been up. This, you still would have been up. I call the trade here on the 75s. And even if you botched this whole thing, this was at 71 in change. And you would have been four bucks for the strike. You still would have been up in the trade there into the last week, which was the 16th. So again, but you do have to pay attention to your trades. Okay, any other questions here? But having an edge counts. You wanna spot the momentum. You wanna capture it. You wanna trade it. You wanna make money on it. You don't wanna squeeze every penny out of every trade. I wish we could, we can't. We're not psychics. You're not and I'm not. We tried our best. We said, this is a good move. Let's get out. And then you just move off of it. Don't go back and sweat a bullet over it. You take the trade, you make money, get out. Don't keep going back and feeling terrible if it keeps going. Like I didn't do the put in Roku. I could have been mad at myself all day. Why? That's crazy. It's we had a good trade in it for a day trade. I called a Google put that worked on Friday. Things are going well. You're not gonna get everything and you're not gonna get out of everything at the height of the options chain. It's just not realistic. Some trades you will because you're gonna be right on top of it. You're gonna be watching it. You're gonna have a great entry. You're gonna have the market with you. It's gonna set up that way. Or you're gonna be in it overnight and it goes in your favor and it gaps down five points through the strike. You're gonna get those trades, but you have to be on the letter to get them. You have to be active. So you have to be in the trades. Anyways, we've been talking mostly about shorting because that's what I do most of the time. 99% of the time or whatever close to it. Why is shorting so profitable because of fear and panic? You will always have this in the market. You saw that today in a video. We did not shorten a video today, but the video fell and there was a lot of fear and a lot of panic that came into the stock today. Why it doesn't matter? We didn't do it anyways, but the fact is it sold off and you could have shorted it today and people panicked and it fell. So again, panic is something that's a powerful thing to trade on fear and panic. And to be honest with you, that's essentially what we're doing when we're trading with the institutional money that's selling off these stocks. Again, I'm seeing the gap in a rating net and we're doing that based on the chart. And if finding the reason the fundamentals helps you like with the Russian news today, that helps you get more conviction, fine. That's another reason you're taking the trade though, but it is a powerful thing to be able to trade on that when we get the gap in our favor. And again, it all has to do with the checklist. That's how I rate it. That's why I go through that. That's how I make the decision. I try to find the best one every day. I might do five options trades one day, none the next. I'm trying to do a day trade every day. So options are up or down. I might go two days with no trades. Then I might have one day where I do six. So again, you have to look at options as you're weakling. I'm gonna do five trades a week or 10 trades a week. I wanna be in two things at a time. That is something, again, where you have to get organized, get a plan of action and what you're gonna do. Every day though, I'm looking for stocks to trade that have number one, a high probability of directional bias for the entire day. Two, big moves in the day. Always trying to find a big move. Early confirmation of the bias in the move between 9.30 and 10. We get in early, we trade early and precise entries would follow through at a good risk to reward, which again, is one to one in the day trades. If I'm risking 3,000, I'm trying to make 3,000. If I'm doing an option, I'm trying to get every trade to 100%, but it doesn't mean I hold every trade to that because like if I get a good move on the day, say it's a Friday or it's a Thursday and the trade expires the next day, I'm getting out. If it's 68%, I'm getting out. If it was a big fat red bar or broke later or was down in it for a week before it went, all of those things combine, then I'm getting out. If I have plenty of time left and I love it and it's good and I'm not up even 50%, then I'm gonna hold it and I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but you could always split it up. Again, take three contracts, get out of two, hold one, take five. Again, do things that are gonna help you maybe split it up where you don't feel guilty if it goes, it continues and you didn't hold anything at all but you're not risking the whole profit of whatever you're up in it by holding all of the contracts and then if the thing turns around, which can happen? Which can happen? Because the market could do something that could mess up your trade, if you wanna hold it. Any other questions here? But again, checklists work. You can learn the 26 point checklist in the Golden Gap course. They work. That's the whole reason I take the time every day to do it and I've been doing this for a long time now. The 26 point Golden Gap rating system helps you pick which stock to trade each day. It pin points ahead of time, which stock will have the move and the day with volatility to trade. Having a checklist keeps you organized and focused. Having a checklist forces you to look at what you should be looking at in a chart and a stock to make the correct decision instead of being worried all about your P&L and the money or what anyone's saying on TV. Having a checklist helps assist you with directional bias, which you gotta get right. You gotta get it right. And having a checklist keeps you on track to reach your goals. If you went on to video today, you lost. So again, you gotta get the direction right. A checklist is a plan of action. Everyone that puts money into the market should have a plan of action and a checklist. On a professional level, all high income career field specialists have a checklist. I see planes going by my window all day long. Those pilots don't take off without going through a checklist. If they do, they risk their lives in the lives of everyone on board. You go in to get an operation. The doctor's going through a checklist. Did you ever go and they say you were not allowed to drink anything or eat anything for 12 hours? They ask you those questions. You go in, or if you have to give blood, they say, Mr. Smith, when was the last time you ate? And if you answer it wrong, well, that's it. The operation's off today. You can't do it. And again, this is being responsible. You have to be that responsible. Like you're performing an operation every day on the stop. Anyways, don't waste time trading without getting anywhere. I say that a lot, but for some reason people do. I don't know. I don't think I would be motivated to get out of bed every morning if I didn't make money doing this if I had started out in 2008, which was when I started and here we are 2024. I couldn't be doing this for 16 years if I wasn't making money. There's gonna be no way, my personality. I was frustrated in six months. I wasn't making money when I first started, but I didn't realize how challenging trading was. I didn't realize I needed a strategy right out of the gate. I didn't figure out this whole thing for about three years and that was a very long time. At some point you have to say, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna take it seriously and I really wanna get somewhere with this and I wanna do it and this is my year. And again, you have plenty of time left in the year to do it, but I will say that the year seems to be flying by, flying by. I mean, I just can't even believe it's almost March. So if you're interested in my class, it's called the Golden Gap course. It teaches the strategy and how to trade gaps. The course teaches a 26 point rating system to find the best stock to trade each day. The course also teaches you how to play the stock on the day and the course teaches you chart analysis and technical analysis on an advanced level. And when you sign up for a class and you learn the information, it's your investing in yourself. It's an investment in yourself, in your future, in your trading and that's how you have to look at it because that's what it is. And you've gotta love what you do. Personally, I love shorting. I do love being able to predict that something's going to fall and then have it fall like Tesla today, but I'm not predicting the gap itself. I did do a market report actually yesterday on the day off, some of you got it and I said, I think the market's gonna gap down today. My instinct is that it will. I don't trade on instinct, but I was right. The market did gap down today. Again, that sixth sense that I have comes from trading for 16 years and trading nothing but gaps and mostly shorting as well. I love what I do. If you're doing something right now and you don't love what you do, you're spending an awful lot of time doing something that you don't love where you're not enjoying your life. It's okay to actually work and do something to make money and love what you do. No one said you have to hate your job. Your job though could be a vehicle and it means for you to make a career transition with trading because you have to have money for an account. You have to have money to take my class. There could be a learning curve till you learn it. Like the woman that's learning it this week and this pregnant, she's gonna have a learning curve. That's okay. So this is life. We go through transitions in life. It's not the end of the world and we wanna enjoy going through the transition and going through the learning process of it too. Everybody wants everything right now. I think this is a society that we live in but it's a mindset that really doesn't help us move forward in our lives if we're constantly, constantly wishing things to be different. The only way things will be different is if we make them so. And it may involve work but I try to make the room fun. I try to make learning fun. I don't know, some of you are in the room. I do my best, you know. Making money is definitely fun. That's for darn sure. But you need to get value out of your education. You know, you gotta learn something. You're definitely going to for me. So empower yourself today if you're interested and wanna sign up for the class. The class is this weekend, February 24th and 25th. It's called the Golden Gap course. It's a complete system to use to trade. You're gonna learn the 26 points. You're gonna learn the entries, the exits. You're gonna learn how to short. And again, this is the meat and potatoes of everything I do, which is the rating system. It's a full two-day course on how to strategically find pick-and-play stocks that are professional bearish gaps. Class is online, you can be anywhere in the world and take it. It's Saturday and Sunday, it still has spots available. The class, all the card itself is $69.99. However, I am doing a special and again, this is to support people if you sign up for the combo, which is $74.99. It's a Chinese New Year combo. There's been tons of celebrations at all kinds of things in New York City for Chinese New Year. And it's interesting, it's called the Year of the Dragon. There's a symbolism to this, which is a year of prosperity. I can't deny that that is where we're at so far this year. Knock on wood. 2024 has been very prosperous for us at the Stockswish, the way that we're trading now. And I've been extremely careful. And again, I have to stay on track. I have to do my ratings. I have to keep myself organized. I gotta get up early. I gotta keep my brain healthy too. It's nice to have a three-day weekend like we did yesterday and to just relax. But the fact is that it's not like just these things magically happen. I do the pre-work. I'm doing the pre-work myself. I look at the market. I said, the market's probably gonna go today. It's probably gonna break, but I don't know when. It's not gonna go easy. And it was right. It was right. It broke and it broke late. Anyways, the class special is going on through Friday. Again, I still have spots for the class this weekend. It's 90 of them to 5 p.m. The golden gap and the trends is what comes with the combo. The special includes the room to the end of the year, the options newsletter to the end of the year, the market report to the end of the year and the gap options course frame, which is not until March 26th. But that gives you time you can start trading right now, get in and then that class is right before Easter. Actually, I think that is the week of Easter. Any questions from anyone about anything? People are doing good this year. Philip wanted to look at a couple things. Any questions from anybody but.