 Welcome to Access to Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey, guys. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to another edition of TheAx is a Trader.com weekend update show, just a crazy, crazy week. I think that's the best way to describe it. We'll get to that in a second. Again, just as a reminder, I want to thank everybody who really want to take a serious step for longevity in their trading. Really, really good initial turnout for the August 24th third installment of the PS60 workshop for all you guys who are taking part. Please watch, and it's included in your third installment, but please watch the second installment all the way through. It's going to make it easier to adjust information because you'll already have a foundation of what these pivots are, what they're not, and how to use them with the all new content that is added to the workshop. It should be really, really good. August 24th, 9am Eastern time. So, all you guys who are attending, please, please, please watch the second installment, which is included in the new workshop. So, hopefully everybody is doing well. Hopefully everybody has a phenomenal weekend planned or underway. We're just living our lives. Hopefully everybody's good in your life, and God is a part of it. So, let's talk about this week. You had a Fed, right? You had a Fed date, Powell 25% basis cut, all that good stuff. You had Trump 10% tariffs on the line. You had a 50% surge in the VIX, and you had one of the most aggressive sessions back half of the week that I can remember probably in the last seven years. And that's really should speak volume how aggressive it really was. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, at least the first part of Wednesday was business as usual, right? Complete business as usual. Everything was fine. Pivot's working very seamlessly, very good. And by the afternoon, by the time Wednesday rolled around, I was already pretty much done the day. I just don't like trading in the afternoons because the ranges always contract. And if all you guys have been in the live webinar with me for many years, some of you guys have been here with me for nine years, everybody kind of knows you'll get much better value in the morning. So, the setup that you could possibly get in the afternoon that could be good for 30, 40, 50, 60 cents, that same setup the next day in the first several hours can get you two, three, four dollars depending how aggressive the measure potential is. So, by Wednesday, I was kind of done. I was at a pretty decent day, and I was done and you had the comments coming out on the Fed comments. I believe it was the first caught in about 11 years. I believe that was the comment again, if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But again, initial reaction was kind of muted. Nothing was going on. You know, went up a little bit, went down a little bit. The next thing you know, the floodgates completely opened, really, really open, and you saw a 350 point reversal very, very aggressively. And what was the key for the rest of the week was not what happened on Wednesday. It led to Thursdays and Fridays session. And I'm telling you, the last two days of the week, I had an incredibly difficult time in gauging market risk. And we'll talk about that in a second. Many of my friends, and again, some of my friends, most of the guys that I continued to have pretty good relationships with now at this point of trading anywhere between 15 and 20 years, I think that's kind of the cycle. And the moral of the story is, what they saw, and what I saw, and what I went through, especially on Thursdays session, was a perfect example of what happens when macro news hits and market structure fails you. And when market structure fails you, I don't care what type of trader you are. I don't care what you're trading. I don't care if you're trading pivots or baseball cards or anything in between. The market structure will put you in a situation that you're not used to, that's going to make you very, very uncomfortable, and it's going to compromise your risk. And that's very, very important because when I'm trading, I know ahead of time where these supply zones are, where a measured potential move can start with stop and everything in between. If it's pivot stalls, I know I have a couple of minutes to kind of make that adjustment on the fly and you can use break even as my stop or take a loss. And when you have macro uncertainty, again, the Trump headline, right, 10%, China tariffs, all that good stuff, you know at any given moment, China's going to strike back. They're not going to just sit back and say, well, yeah, everything's all right, you know, you're fine. It's a fair deal what you're about to do. No, no, you know it's coming. You know something aggressive is coming. You combine that with the PAL comments, right? And the market obviously didn't like those comments or the action of the Fed, which I'd obviously sought 350 point decline. Okay, you started seeing slowly but surely a market breakdown in structure. Okay, why is that important? Okay, if you're a guy like me, I trade beta, Netflix, Tesla, BYMD, if I actually put it in there, right, Amazon, Facebook, Square, all that good stuff, right? All that good stuff that I trade every single day, Nvidia, Alibaba, all that good stuff. The problem is when you get market structure breakdown and you have a macro cycle of uncertainty, Fed, tariffs, all that good stuff, right? A surge in the VIX, right? 4%, almost a 4% loss weekend on the NASDAQ 100 on the comp, right? You're going to be in a position of weakness compared to a weakness of strength that I'm always used to. And if you saw the action from the Fed date on Wednesday into Thursday session, Netflix was trading at one point, I would say between 75 cents and a dollar wide, 100 share lots on both sides. Amazon at one point was trading between one and a half to three points wide, 100 share lots both sides. Now, why is that a problem? Okay, if you're trading 50 shares, 100 shares, 200 shares of Amazon, okay? It's usually no problem on a normal session, 300 shares, whatever case may be, whatever your size or accounts, it's nobody's business but your own. Okay, the problem is when you get a wide market, a thin spread, right? A thin spread wide market and you are one headline away, okay? One headline away of getting destroyed. If you go short Amazon with that type of spread and something good comes out, you are losing $7 to $10 instantly, instantly. It's not even a thought process instantly. If you are long the stock and some more news, some more negative news comes out, they will spread you down $1 or $2, $3. So it's impossible. It was absolutely impossible from Wednesday afternoon. Again, I didn't have any exposure to Wednesday afternoon to that whole sell-off, so I was okay with that. The problem going into the next day, I knew uncertainty was still there. We talked about that in the live webinar pre-market strategy. I always know what kind of session is going to be based on value. So what did Wednesday session do? Wednesday session, and this is the Wednesday session here, created a lot of technical damage in charts all over the place. Again, I don't care if you trade beta, small, whatever you traded, nothing was spared. And the problem with Wednesday's close, the NASDAQ 100, the QQQs and the elements in there, they close right in the 50% of the range. So what that means was going into the next session, you have technical damage. You have technical damage occur, not only in the indexes, but every single stock, especially in the NASDAQ 100, resembled what we were seeing on the QQQs. So they close right in the middle. So the next day, I knew, even though we had technical damage, we still kind of held this rising bullish demand. But it was a 50-50 proposition going into the next day, which obviously sent them advice to the sell side. So I was prepared to the sell side. Here was where everything that I just talked about and technical analysis and reality kicked in for me the next day. I lost money on Thursday. And I lost money on Thursday. And here is the question, and here was the question I asked people in a live webinar. I asked it on social media. And the question is, why is conviction sometimes your worst enemy? Well, here's the example, right? So we went through all this thing in the last couple of minutes, technical damage, uncertainty, macro uncertainty, Fed, all that good stuff, right? All that good stuff, 50%, 50% bounce back from the lows, 50-50, everything's in the same channel. But we knew the market was getting soft. Here's where everything that I talked about came into play. So I've been talking about this close on Netflix. And I've been saying this the whole week. I said any close below 324, it should get down to about the 312 area, right? 324, again, because if you believe in the theory of stocks trade from supply to supply and demand to demand, then if you look at the 60-minute chart, right? If you look at the 60-minute chart, and again, you see how it came down here to 312, right? So what's the problem then? You shorted the stock and went down to 312. Yeah, I shorted the stock. And I had a lot of conviction in the trade. And the one thing I say to every new trader, every single day that I wake up in the morning, I have a plan, I have an opinion, I know sentiment, and I'm waiting for my confirmation. Again, I am not smart enough, and nobody's smart enough to predict the move until confirmation starts. So everybody can save their opinions. If you've been watching this video for many, many years, you kind of know we're all idiots. I'm the king of the idiots. My opinion doesn't matter until it confirms, right? But I had so much conviction on Netflix on this trade. I knew when internals are breaking down, structure is breaking down. I knew everything was in my sweet box. And I knew if the stock would have confirmed, I knew there was a potential of a 10-12 point move, right? Everything was good. Had a lot of conviction. I also say every single morning, okay, and this is kind of one of my biggest pet peeves. When you have no expectations, right? I come in every single day no expectations. I don't know if I'm going to trade eight times. I'm going to trade two times. Well, I'm going to sit it out, right? I don't know. But I always say when you have no expectations, okay? You have no disappointments, right? You have no disappointments. And that usually slowly but surely takes away emotional commitment to any single trade. The problem was I had a commitment, okay? I had an opinion. I had a bias. And I knew, and I knew any close, right? Any close below the five-day moving average of $3.24 was going to send the stock lower. I knew it. I was talking about it for three days in a row. This was my primary look, and the stock closed at $3.23. This was my trade, right? This was my trade. I didn't care about anything else. So what happened, right? So what happened? So market structure is breaking down. It's trading very, very wide. So I get short Netflix. I talked about this whole day on Thursday. Again, it wasn't the money. It was the point that my conviction let me down. It was the point that market structure let me down. And it was the point that I broke a very, very basic rule when I trade. And that rule is once you get cash flow, use breakeven as you stop, right? Again, there's no guarantees. You're going to see a full move, full measure potential, and you move. So no matter what, I always tell this to new traders. Once you get cash flow, breakeven as you stop, hella high water. I don't care if God is telling you to stick with the position. You have to use breakeven as you stop. So I short Netflix, right? I short Netflix and it goes down very, very quickly, say a dollar and change, right? About a dollar and change. And I'm thinking to myself, this is it, right? This is it. I have zero reason to cover the stock. The market is getting weak, right? The sentiment is souring. All this uncertainty. You know China is coming out. What a response to Trump. I have everything lined up. The expectation is through the roof. The conviction is through the roof. So I don't cover a single share. And what happens after that was some sort of news came out, okay? And I didn't use breakeven as my stop. And here was the problem. The stock started spreading out. And the biggest thing for me is I always say to myself, if I can control a trade, that means that things will be all right. Win, lose, or draw on the trade. But if I have the ability to control the trade, I'm going to be okay. So I had the conviction, right? Had the sentiment, had the opinion, had the trade. Now I'm waiting for the big payday, right? I'm waiting for the big payoff for the market guys to tap me on the shoulder and say, good job, great effort. You did the right thing. And none of that happened because they spread me out. And before long, I was looking roughly a little bit less than a two dollar loss. So I went from being up a dollar and changing the trade. It didn't take any off because of my conviction. Again, this is where I kind of like conviction let me down. And then market structure because it got so depleted. That was my, that kind of made me roadkill. Now again, I wanted to be losing about $1.70 on the trade, okay? And before you turn around and say, well, what's the big deal? Well, $1.70 for me, it's a big deal. Okay, it's a big deal. It's a big deal. Maybe relatively speaking, certain people, not certain people sell, but the point is I lost that money, right? And the problem was I was not in control of the trade. Once they spread me out a dollar, no liquidity was in the trade. I would just sit there literally like a deer in headlights. And this happens to me once or twice a year when you start trading in a macro cycle that you have absolutely no control. Okay, there's no control. Technical analysis does not care when you see a macro headline coming out and you're on the wrong side of the trade. It doesn't care, okay? It doesn't care because fewer participants are taking part when technical damage is occurring, when macro channels are expanding on thinner volume. And the only thing you have to do is make sure you are a pretty good person in your previous life because at this juncture, God is on your corner and you're hoping you are a good enough human being that they let you out all easy. The problem was when technicals start breaking down, okay? And the structure, market structure starts depleting. That's the time I learned a very, very valuable lesson. It wasn't a month, okay? The money was, I took a solid loss. Don't get me wrong, okay? But the point is the macro structure let me down. And the one thing I always say to new traders, okay? I could show anybody how to trade a pivot, how to control a pivot. Normal days, everything is fine. The problem is when you have, when you've lost control of the trade because of all these exterior forces, you have to be an adult and stop trading. Very, very important, incredibly important because again, everything what we do is confidence, process, right? And staying in control. And at that juncture, I was completely out of control, right? Completely out of control, not emotionally. Emotionally, I'm always fine. I'm always very, very calm when I trade. But I wasn't in control. And the lesson here is any single time, folks, okay? Any single time you see more than one macro event, okay? Whether it's political, whether it's economical, whether it's internal earnings, whatever the macro picture is telling you to do, everything, I don't care how good of a trader you are. You could be the smartest trader in the world, the most sophisticated technology you're using. You could have this incredible algo on your side. When market structure breaks down, everything you deem as normal goes away, you are a sitting duck. And the problem with that is it spilled over into Friday's session from the macro wise. Again, it made back some money on Friday. So it wasn't, it wasn't horrible. And I also made back some money that day. Trading BYND gave us a really good $1.52 move in 30, 40 seconds after that initial pivot. So the point wasn't the money. The point was that I was participating even though all these forces, right? All these forces are right sticking in front of me. And the key to becoming a better trader. And again, despite me doing this for 20 years, I'm trying to become a better trader every single day, okay? And we always say this, we are the only ones that could shoot ourselves in the foot. We're the only ones. The market's going to market. This doesn't care if it's wide, if it's spreading, if there's a macro event going on, it doesn't care that you want to trade. It really does. The market's job is to take your money, okay? Because again, the way market structure is presented to you, people are not designed to trade every day. That's why people are called, you know, that's why it's called investments. It's not called trading, right? Trading is 25, 30 years old, okay? There was no trading 30 years ago. The last public going to wake up in the morning and say, well, I don't have a job. I'm going to create my own job. So this is all new, right? This is all new. We're all learning as we go along. But the one thing I always tell traders, before we try to make you a better trader, we want to make you a smarter trader, right? We want to be smarter traders. So when you see events like this in the future, okay, you already know, you already filed this under your mental rolodex, and you're saying to yourself, I probably shouldn't have participated, right? I probably shouldn't have participated. It's an isolated incident, right? Maybe you'll last one, two, maybe three days. But again, market structure will return, premium hands will come, and the most important thing is I will be solvent. I will not burn mental equity, okay? And I will be that smarter trader that's getting better instead of that stupid trader that keeps on learning their lessons over and over and over again, burning, you know, mental carnage every single, you know, every single time and just trying to play back from behind. It's a very, very hard game to play. So, you know, this is one of those weeks that Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday were fine. Nothing wrong with it. Thursday, I was just wrong, okay? I was wrong, I was too aggressive when I should not have been in the market. And guess what happened, right? Guess what happened two hours later, right? You had a market going from up 350 points. And by the way, I can't tell you how many of my friends came in short from Wednesday into Thursday, right? The Dow Jones made back all their Thursday losses in the first hour, which basically had everybody covering at the top, okay? Everybody covering at the top. And I can't tell you how many guys I know bought that first dip. And what happened? The Dow went from up 350, right? The Dow 280 in the next hour. So, the bulls got killed, the bears got killed, the bearish bulls got killed, the bearish bears got killed. Everybody got fisted. And the moral of the story is, again, we learn from our experiences. That's why folks, again, for all you traders who believe that you could work 15 minutes a day and don't care about screen time, because, again, it doesn't affect you. Eventually, it's gonna affect you. And the last thing you wanna do is keep on repeating the same mistakes over and over and over and over again. So, the lesson here, guys, again, we're not smart, we're reactionary creatures that are trying to stay in control. When you have this aggressive market interval, and again, this will probably go away by Monday, maybe Tuesday at the latest. Again, people digest information very, very quickly. Even the most aggressive distribution cycles that have channels kinda contract, they go away after three, four days. So, I'm assuming everything will go back to normal Monday, maybe Tuesday at the latest, okay? But, in the meantime, guys, and this, again, speaks to myself, gotta be smarter, okay? Gotta be smarter, gotta be more responsible, have to be more mature, and sometimes, again, there's a big difference between sitting on your hands and sitting on your hands, because, again, you cannot fight the good fight. Again, you cannot bring a butter knife to a gunfight. It's just, you're going to lose every single time. Again, it wasn't the fact of the money on Thursday. It was more of the idea is that I could have controlled it, I could have said no, but again, quote, unquote, fear of missing out, right? Fear of missing out. Again, we're human beings, we're gonna make mistakes, and to watch Netflix go from literally, and by the way, if I didn't cover it, right, if I didn't cover it, I watched the stock go up six. I literally watched the stock go up six. Only to watch it go down about $7 from where I initially shorted it, like the complete gut-punching experience, and if you would see me, I was literally punching the air. I was very, very calm on the microphone, very, very calm on the live webinar. I was punching the air. Again, I was just so much more disgusted that all this was going on that I just couldn't control. So hopefully, that will be a good lesson for everybody going forward. Again, when you see something that you can't control, please stay out. Other than that, again, Friday's session was fine. You know, I was just scalping away Friday. Scalped, again, Tesla. You know what else I was scalping? Tesla. Man, I don't remember what the hell was trading on Friday. But I was just scalping away. I was scalping away. It was fine. You know, I made back some money, but the moral of the story is it really took some life out of me, man. It really did. It really took some life out of me. By the time Friday after the close came, I was, dude, I was a vegetable. My eyes were tearing. I had a migraine. The only thing that saved me was this magical bird with a full disclosure. I'll start by dying on Monday. So let's talk about Friday's session. Again, Netflix broke down pretty, pretty aggressively. Broke down pretty aggressively. Again, again, it wasn't the easiest move. It wasn't the thinnest. It wasn't the, you know, the most, it just so many hiccups because of the spread. But again, 316 build went down to this 31180 area. Again, again, and you can see the reversal very, very aggressively. You had Pinterest and there was two trades on Pinterest. We had in the live webinar, the first one to the upside, 3340, 3330, 3340 to the upside. Again, this is a pretty basic opening range play. Here is the, you know, here is the whole cycle right here. Initially it went up about, you know, 50, 60 cents or so before it came in before it kind of ultimately went up. But this is the sneaky pivot that I think a lot of people did take in the live webinar. I even tweeted this out. There was actually a value play and there were the 32 puts that were trading, they were trading around, I think a nickel, okay? I think a nickel when the stock was like 33 and a half. And I said, hey, if this thing starts building below 3290, you could get a move in those puts. I know some of you guys did buy them and the stock went down to the 3240s before rebounding. But puts went from a nickel to like 20 cents. Pretty, pretty incredible. Okay, so at least I get the idea why so many people love the options markets. There was a two-way trade there as well. Tandem went pretty nuts here at the open. 6750, we talked about, here's a 6750, went to 70 before a pretty aggressive reversal. FTNT, we talked about 8850 needs to build. FTNT, right, 8850, here's the two candles, 8850 needs to build, went to as high as 93. Pretty, pretty aggressive move here. OLED never got up there. And so I'm on a market structure, right? Just to give you an idea of market structure. We saw OLED go red in the day or it was about to go red in the day. And I turn around and say, hey guys, watch that 208 breakdown before I could turn my head. Literally, I mean, this is within 30 seconds before I could just to give you an idea of how market structure broke down, how thin things were. It went from 208 to 203. And then ultimately it went to like the 190s. I would say all this occurred probably in about two minutes. Insane, obviously I had no piece of the trade, but just to show you how aggressive market structure will play out if you're not in control of your trading. BYND, we're waiting for that 182 break that never came. Actually it came, excuse me, it did come, I'm sorry, the sneaky pillar I think I tweeted out was 179. I don't think I put this on the stock to its feet, but it was 179. It actually went up a couple of points. Boeing 338 needs to build for some cash flow. Here's a 338 on Boeing. Actually went to 340 and change. Roku never got up there. Tesla's a decent trade. I caught like, and again, just wasn't big moves. I wasn't trading a lot of size, but you know, give about an 80, 85 cent move. And then I covered most of it. I just wanted to take some cash flow. And then the rest I got stopped. That was small loss, but it was a pretty decent trade. Oh yeah, here's the sneaky pivot I talked about. BYND, 79.50, if the bills can give cash flow. And here's the pivot. Again, here's the sneaky pivots we talked about. So here's the 79.50 right here, right? Here's the 79.50 right here. And nice move. I mean, it actually went to almost 81. So again, good trading vehicle. I do believe there is going to be, I mean, now we have very, very definitive channels here. You can see it from the downside to the upside. Look, I've watched 100 people talk about how expensive BYND is. They're right. Of course they're right. Right? Of course they're right. I mean, I saw all the numbers. The valuation is through the roof. It's worth 60 times more than like pilgrim's price. Look, everybody knows the stocks are going down, right? There's no secret. Nobody's, you know, 60 times sales, everything, right? Multiple, look, everybody knows. Everybody knows it's going to go down. Everybody knows it. You can save your opinion. It's not a stock scam. It's not, look, momentum is the most aggressive enemy of people who don't believe things should play out. Okay? Momentum has been around for ages. When Amazon was trading at 3,000 PE, how can you buy Amazon at 3,000 PE? This was 1,800 points ago. Okay? So companies, there's not a scam. There's nothing to scam. Look, analyst, man, is this the best? There's so many videos this week. I was like, wow, people are really, really taking this to heart. And trade the momentum. There's credits to the upside, trade to the upside. Look, there's a definitive channel here. Okay? If you look at the 60-minute view, you can see it. There's a definitive channel to the upside, definitive channel to the downside. If you look at the daily chart, yes. Can this stock ultimately get to about 140, which is the next measure potential? Absolutely. Okay? If it loses the bottom channel this week, absolutely, guys, 100%. 100%. But until then, okay, save your energy. So many of you guys are so emotional, okay? And this is why I compare this to Tesla 2.0. You want to be right so bad that it's affecting your life, man. Calm down. It's just not that serious. It's just a piece of paper, man. You're either going to be right or you're going to be wrong. You're going to be long or you're going to be short. Okay? It's not that serious. It's just trading. You're about to put yourself in a stray jacket if you're overly so sensitive about the stock. It's just a stock like anything else. Just like Tesla, just like Amazon, just like, what was it? Ice-tea company that went crazy. Just like TLRY. Who cares? Calm down. Trade the stock. Everybody knows it's expensive. Everybody knows the stock will be under 100. Whether it's going to happen tomorrow or the next day or the next month, we don't know. Instead of worrying about that, trade the channels. Take the long side. Take the short side. Once it gives you that green light, and believe me, trust me when I tell you, I'm waiting for that green light to come this week. You will be a 20-star short to the back side. Until then, trade the channels. Save your mental equity. Again, don't kick your dog. You know, love your dog. Your dog loves you. No reason to get so emotional. Okay, guys? So, going into this week, again, you have to be so biased until the market gives you a reason not to be. A line in the sand on the QQQs this week will be the 50-day moving average. Again, there's no room for interpretation of this channel. Any clothes below 186 on the Qs will go down to here against the whole theory of supply supply and demand and demand. Again, so this is me, the big number of this 186 clothes on the Qs, and that will really pull down sentiment, because, again, it's the laws of physics. Whatever goes up, must go down, even the most aggressive linear market. So, again, guys, August 24th, if you're struggling with your process or don't have a process, I'm telling you, if all you guys have been following me on social media for years, I put these things in real time. Like I said on Friday, 298, 2990s, there's a pivot. You don't want to be long on that. You know, if you want to be long, when that thing confirms, it goes down 50 cents in a matter of a couple of minutes. Again, nobody's looking to, you know, to be right, to be wrong. We're just trying to stay profitable. Guys, God bless you. For all you guys who do want to attend August 24th, the PS60 workshop 3.0, and again, there is an alternative to the normal, and I'd love to show you what that is. Guys, have a great remainder of your weekend. God bless, and we'll see you all Monday. Take care, guys. Congratulations for putting in the time to take control of your trading. You're one step closer to owning your future and achieving the success you desire. Want daily trade ideas directly from Dan? Straight off his personal watch list? Unlock our free PS60 vault, where you'll get nightly updates on pivot opportunities we're watching for the next day's session. Click the link in the description to get started today.