 Hello, everyone, and welcome. My name is Melissa Armo. Today, I thought I would do a motivational lecture on how to get and stay motivated as a trader, if this is what you do. If you'd like more information, you can email me at info at thestockswish.com or melissa at thestockswish.com. And feel free to follow me on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. So let's talk about the stock market. If you've been thinking about trading or for trading right now, I will tell you that the stock market is something that is accessible to everyone from any walk of life to trading and make money. So based on that, why doesn't everyone train then successfully? Well, one reason is that they are not motivated. Or they may begin to trade, start the process, and then fail to stay motivated to follow it through to achieve the success that they originally desired. So it's one of these things where motivation takes work. In any career and anything you want to do and particularly trading as well. Motivation just takes work. Today's the good example. Today there was nothing that met my criteria to trade. So I keep myself motivated personally for what? The next day, tomorrow. Having a day that you don't do anything, there's nothing wrong with that. But you have to stay up. You have to stay positive. You have to stay motivated. There wasn't anything today that met my criteria to do. And in fact, if I had jumped the gun today on something I might have lost. So when you're trading, you have to be very careful and very focused. So I didn't lose any money today, didn't make any money today. I did the right thing. I stayed focused. Motivation really does take work though, particularly on days like today where you have to be disciplined, following your system. And I have my own system, which is called the Golden Gap. But any job that you do, you're going to have days where things don't go right or maybe the time seems to drag and you've got to get work done. You have deadlines, things you've got to do. You've got to keep yourself upbeat. Now let's go over what motivation really means. It's the actor instance of motivating, providing with a reason to act in a certain way. The state or condition to be motivated, something that motivates inducement incentive. So obviously what's the incentive to trade? The incentive to trade, to day trade, specifically Monday through Friday, which is what I do and have the trading room for, is the motivation for that, the incentive for that is to make money. And I like to do the quick moves in stocks. The fast, fast moves that can come in in the morning period. So think about this. Who or what gets you motivated to trade? Might be friends, maybe you have traders that are friends. People are encouraging you. Maybe your family. That's terrific, that's great. My family has always been supportive of me. Maybe a teacher, maybe someone like me. I'm a mentor, teacher to people. Maybe a book, a book that you read can help be motivational to you as well about trading. And experience, the market itself, just seeing the market, seeing the stock, seeing charts how they move. Money obviously is a huge motivator. And number one, yourself. You yourself can help yourself be motivated because why? You either want to trade for a living, want to make more money at your job, want to have extra money coming in, or you want to work the hours of a trader, which are very small, very short compared to most careers. So you can help to motivate yourself to move forward to be successful. And this isn't just on a day like today when you have to be disciplined, but coming into the end of the calendar year 2017, I think it's extremely important to set up your goals for 2018. Because a lot of people that have been thinking about trading all for the last year of 2017 who haven't done it and have put it off or haven't been serious about it now is the time to start to think to do it because if you begin now, you'll be able to move forward for the entire year of 2018 to be successful. Putting yourself in the right placement in the frame of mind with the knowledge, the information, and like I said, the motivation to do it, to have a solid good year of 2018 really, really helps. So it's important to think about why you're doing this. Keep yourself motivated. What are your goals? What are your goals for 2018? And how can you motivate yourself to achieve those goals of success, all right? So think about it, how do you get motivated? You can use whatever resources you can and there are a lot available to you. I mean, tons and tons for free on the internet as well. A lot of resources to motivate yourself to trade each day and every week. And also having a good support system is key. And I offer the support system to the people that have done my Golden Gap course in the live trading room. A training room that has a positive influence on you can get you motivated and keep you motivated. And that is what I do for my students. Also having dreams can be incredibly motivational. And this is what I do for myself. I have a lot of big dreams and they motivate me to continue on my path of success, to continue to become more successful as I'm doing. Also friends and family can be a great motivation for you as well. And I use this too. My friends, my family, they're very supportive of me. The people in your life and your surroundings really have a lot to do with getting you motivated and keeping you motivated. And you gotta think about this. Before 2018, it is best to just do a clean sweep of all the negative people and influences in your life if you have any. And most people do. People that don't support you becoming a trader or learning how to trade. You've really gotta set it up that you can have the incredibly successful trading year in 2018. If you're trading now and you're losing money in the market, you gotta fix that and turn it around. If you're not trading at all and you want to begin trading, where do you start? How do you prep yourself and get yourself in the best position that you can be successful for the entire year of 2018? And I always say, don't wait until the last minute. Don't wait until January one. You gotta start thinking about this now. Today is November 14th, the sooner the better. And actually around the time of the holidays here next week, Thanksgiving is a really good time to be thinking about all of these things. So how do you stay motivated? So you get yourself there, how do you keep it going? Cause you gotta keep it going too. Well, really the same things that got you motivated in the beginning can keep you motivated throughout. Why did you ever want to trade in the first place? What was the reason? Shorter hours, change careers, you love charts, the opportunity to make a limited income. I mean, what was the original reason that you ever started to trade? Think about that. You wanted to get rich, you weren't making enough money your job, that were working you seven days a week. Remember, the market's only open money through Friday. When you need motivation, you have to look at the bigger picture. And this, again, keeps you going. And go back to the original reason, the very, very beginning. And when I go back to that for myself, which was a long time ago now, like 2008, summer of 2008. For me, I really wanted to change careers. I was working way too many hours. And I also really wanted to have a career where I had unlimited potential of income. And with training, the more size I take, the more money I make in the exact same trades. And so that's how I've increased my size a year every year. And I'm gonna continue to do that into the future. So making money trading is really about the bigger picture. There's roughly about 200 some trading days in a year, give or take holidays. And some days, like today, there's nothing that meets the criteria. But you've got to keep yourself motivated and look at it as the whole year. What are you doing? You chunk it out every day when you trade. I said to the room today, we're gonna get one really good one this week, one really big one this week. Could be tomorrow. I keep myself motivated every day, actually, even looking to see what are the earnings for tonight? What are the earnings tomorrow? I do that all the time. But for me and my students, really being in the stocks will show live trading room really helps people stay motivated, helps people stay motivated, helps people get motivated. And if you're interested in a trial for the room this week before my next course, you can obviously reach out to me and email me. I really do my best to try to help people stay focus, focus, focus. And you got to do it because trading is just one of these jobs where you don't get paid if you show up. You only get paid if you do the right actions. And so some days you got to be patient. You just got to be patient. Today was really good, very patient, kept everybody out of trouble today, including myself, did all the right things, waiting for tomorrow, waiting for the good one. It's going to come. There could even be a good one tonight. But it really is about you, you yourself, prepping yourself in your mind, staying motivated, keeping it up, staying focused. And what else do you need? Besides being patient, focused, disciplined, positive, motivated. Well, I think it has any courage. I think it takes courage to train and to go after your dreams. I definitely think it takes courage to go after your dreams. I did it with trading. I'm doing it now with television. It takes a lot of courage to do this. I've got a lot of courage myself. Some people need help with that. You can get the courage you need. It's deep down inside you. It's not from outside you, it's from inside you. Again, think about the reason, the reason you originally wanted to trade. Think about your dreams, what are they? Put them in perspective as well. And that's how you'll end up being patient and give yourself a break sometimes, you know? Maybe you're not where you wanna be right now in 2017 and for November, maybe this year to work out for you with your trading the way you wanted it to. But 2018, you got plenty of time to make it happen. And you can go into 2018 with the courage to do it and set your mind that you're gonna be successful. It really takes courage to trade every day. It takes courage to risk your own money in the market. It takes courage to learn something new, like a brand new class, learning a new system, a new strategy, like gaps, which is what I teach you to have to come learn from me if you wanna trade with me in the room. And not only that, it takes courage to get up and trade the next day when you lost the day before or when you didn't do anything the day before. But you must do this while you're learning. And you have to have amnesia sometimes about things that happened in the past and people really struggle with that with who are on the path of trading. And let me explain what I mean. Amnesia means a loss of a large block of interrelated memories, complete or partial loss of memory cause of a brain injury shock. Nah, I don't want anyone to go into brain injury or shock. But the problem is that people that have taken trading classes in the past or lost money in the market in the past, they do kind of go into this mental shock from all the memories of things that happened in the past. And then they get stuck. And they get stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck, stuck. And they don't move forward. And so then they never really get anywhere with anything. And they're either trading losing money or they've stopped trading, but they still think about it, come to webinars, look up stuff online, wanna do it, but they never really let go of the things that happened in the past. And then it keeps them stuck. Cause if you're not moving forward, guess what? You're stuck. Because life's moving forward. My goodness, look at it. It's almost 2018. So you gotta have amnesia about the things that happened in the past, whether they were trade losses or classes you took in the past where you lost money, you didn't get anything out of them. Somebody told me the other night that they spent $25,000 for a course and they didn't learn anything from it. I said, oh yeah, yeah, that's too bad. But guess what? You learned something from that. You learned from that experience and you've gotta take that and let it go. And I say have amnesia. The only way that I can get up the next day and go into the market, if I have a bad day in the past, which I've had bad days in the past, I mean, if I go back all the way from 2008, how do I get to this point today? You have to move forward. If you don't move forward, how do you ever get any better? How do you ever make more money? Proceed, get better, become successful. You gotta let the things that happened in the past go. Everybody is at a different place in their life. The only way to move forward is to have amnesia, particularly with trades in the market or classes that you paid for that you didn't get anything out of. You gotta let it go. It's one of these things where you've got to be so, so focused on the goal. The original goal, which was for you to be successful as a trader, a day trader, if you want to be, or an options trader, long-term trader investor, if that's your goal, that's what you really want to do. You have to stay focused on it. And so you've got to be strong. You got to have an inner strength. You got to keep yourself motivated like I just talked about. And you got to realize that really, sometimes things happen, it's just experiences in a life, but it's not your fault. It's not anyone's fault. What do you do when things don't work right? When the trade, for example, is it your fault? No, sometimes things don't set up like today. The gap didn't set up right. It's nobody's fault. It's not the stock's fault, it's not the market's fault. I didn't lose any money in it. The room didn't either. We just didn't do it. It's no one's fault. It's just trading. It's just about the fact that the mathematical odd sometimes set up to have plays fail or not set up at all. And that's why you have to learn a strategic way to play them. I'm talking about stocks here, okay? So that if a trader you take fails, for example, you only lose a little and that's why you stop. And then if they work out, you make a lot. And obviously that is your goal ultimately anyways. So don't give up on the market if you don't get a good play every day. And don't give up on the market if one trade doesn't work every once in a while. You still should have way more positive trades than negative trades. And if you dump in your system, your using isn't working. My system, my strategy, the golden gap system has about an 80% win ratio. So out of every 10 trades, eight or positive two could be losers or days like today where we don't do anything. But that's actually a very good percentage, high odds. And that's what I'm looking for every day. High odds. There are things that work today. There were stocks that dropped that could have been shorted but they didn't set up that I saw them ahead of time in the pre-market and didn't have high odds of working. Trading and making money trading is about playing the odds correctly in your favor. And that's how you're gonna win and be successful. And you gotta get that. Not only do you have to get it, you have to understand that that that's really what trading is in the market. And if you do that over the course of a month, a week and a year, guess what? You will make money by staying on track with your game plan. And that is what you want to do. So what do you do when some trades don't work right? You just, you take the loss. You can either stop for the day and wait till the next day. What do you do when they do work right? Well, that's very, very easy. You celebrate pie yourself in the back, keep the money from the market, you make your goal for the day, stop. Okay? But it's very important not to get lazy. Every day I'm so focused. I've been on a great run here. Really most of 2017, the year has been good. It's been strong. And in the last few weeks, I've really been so focused even too. Every day I gotta be. There's no, tomorrow I gotta be focused again. Today I was very focused. Tomorrow I gotta be very focused. Every day I gotta get up and be very, very focused. I can never be complacent with my discipline. All right? I have to be focused every day. But it is a great time of the year to learn a new trading strategy if you have one that doesn't work or you're losing or if you don't have a trading strategy at all and you're thinking about getting started trading, it's a good time to do it. You will be able to ramp up and be ready and prepped and to just go right into 2018 and be successful. And particularly if you want to join the live training with me after the class. Like I said, I'm calling the trades live in the room and it's a good support system. So now is the time to get ready for 2018. But I want you to keep in mind that you really gotta be disciplined between now and the end of the year. There will be days where the markets slow over the holidays and you just gotta wait for the good ones. Although I think this is a good rule of thumb for always with trading. You must wait for the good ones. And that is why the rating system I do is so great. It's why it's what keeps me under control. And also you've got to stay motivated. If you don't, you will miss the good ones. And if you give up and walk away then you're not gonna make any money at all. So you can't get caught up in the negativity. And there's a lot of negative people out there about trading the market. And they will never be successful. You've got to have a successful strategy, a mentor that's on your side to support you to stay motivated and positive as well. You gotta do it for yourself too. And you have to understand what trading is and how to be successful with it. And if you've had a hard time in the past, the best thing I can say to you is to have amnesia, forget about mistakes you've made in the past and just keep the faith. If you wanna move forward and be successful, doing nothing is not gonna get you there. Now I'm just showing this, this was a trade from last week but it was a great trade but it's an exact great example where we could get something like this tomorrow. So the fact that there was nothing today, there could be a trip tomorrow, a trip Thursday, a trip Friday. So that's why you wait. Actually, this was the morning move in the trip. Then there was an afternoon play in the trip right here and it fell. And there was a couple different plays in this but the second trade in this, the afternoon trade entry was a short at 3182. Exit of the target, 31, it actually went further. Profit you could have made in this 2,460 bucks. Buying power and needed for this specific trade at this price point in trip with the share quantity was 95,460. So I usually tell people 100 grand in buying power, okay, that's an account with margin, usually will allow you to take a decent size position. So not that you have to have that but pretty decent size positions in most of the stocks that we trade upon in the room. And a prop account, it'd be 10 to one leverage, you would only need 9,546. That you as a trader, as a person, have to act like a monk. You, you are so, so, so, so, so, so focused. You know, you don't allow any distractions to affect you during the day. You, that period of from 930 to 10. And that's what I really focus on in the morning. You can be a monk. I say to people, you can be perfect for that 30 minutes. We get in, we get out. And you focus on what you're doing. It's all about clarity. This helps you be successful, helps you make money in the market. So you've got to keep the momentum going. You've got to keep the positivity going. You've got to keep it going into this holiday period, into 2018. And you've got to stick to the program, not deviate from it. This was DKS for this morning. It finally, finally broke very, very late. Outside of the criteria for me to do anything with it, it was a short. Someone mentioned in the room that it was a long, let's go long DKS. And I said, no, you don't, you don't go long. It wasn't long. It really was a short. It just didn't set up to very late. It was very sloppy. And I'm glad we didn't do it, but it was not a long. So you can't deviate from the program itself. One of the qualities you will need also as a professional trader is to persevere. There will be days where today, like for example, you might have a hard time not doing anything. You might want to feel sucked into trading and then lose. That's not going to get you to the top of the mountain and that's not going to get you where you want to be. Focuses, quality picks, quality gaps, quality trades. Ultimately, one of your goals should be not only to be successful, but it should be longevity and consistency in trading, which will help you achieve the success that you want and the money that you want that you're trying to make from the market long-term. Trading is about consistency and longevity. If you want to have longevity, you need to produce consistent results. So you're not going to make it. You can't be losing all the time or how are you going to get anywhere? It'll be funny, your account all the time. You've got to be making money. Like I said, eight out of 10 trades. You have to put in the stops. You can't flip things around like in the DKS if they don't work short. Cause that did work short. It really was a short. It just was outside of the time criteria for me. You've got to be consistent with the way you're looking at your strategy, your system, and I am. And I really, really do not deviate from it at all. And today was a good example of that too, because somebody asked about going in long-TKS. If you want to produce consistent results, you must stick to the plan and stay consistent with your trading strategy, whatever it is. But you've got to have a strategy that works and if you don't, then reach out to me because I have a successful system and strategy. And you have plenty of time to learn my method before 2018 because I'm doing a class this weekend. And it will give you time to ramp up and trade for at least a month before the next calendar year. So, just in closing here, you've got to think about what are you going to do to become successful next year? What are you going to do to set yourself up for success? Have you had setbacks? Are you going to let those go? Are you going to let those setbacks you've had in the past prevent you from being successful in the future? Because if you're going to, then you're going to continue to falter and have even more setbacks. And that isn't what you want. Success means removing the blockages towards success and not allowing setbacks to guide your decisions. They were not present when you made the choice to trade in the first place. When you started out trading, you didn't know what you were getting yourself into. And you weren't unsuccessful. You didn't have setbacks. You began probably very motivated with an optimistic attitude when you started out. So you got to go back to thinking what was in your mind at that time. Remember those thoughts, those feelings. Those setbacks that you've had along the way, okay, were not present when you originally started to trade, when you originally motivated yourself to do it. Success does not come without taking a risk of making an effort. Part of the effort means continuing to move forward and to stay positive when you are testing or trading. And there may be days when you are, when there's nothing to do and it doesn't meet your criteria. Cause that's a test, really. If there was no risk involved in trading in life, everyone would be successful. Everyone would be successful in the market and they're not. And actually it's very similar to television. Many, many people want to be on TV. Many, many people will never be successful on television. So you have to be willing to take risks to be successful in life. And you have to have the right mindset and the correct attitude towards that to move forward, to keep going. Here's this guy, this is a great slide. He is going to get the cheese and he's prepared. He says prepared as anyone could possibly be. He has his helmet on, he's going for it. He's fully aware that the trap is there, ready to get him. Ready to stop him from getting the cheese and nick him too. But he's got the helmet on, he's starved. And this cheese here represents the money in the trade and you, trying to get the money and you got to go for it, okay? You got to go for it in life, but you got to be prepared. So the preparation is important. And I do a lot of preparation in the room in the morning before I trade. Rating the gaps, looking at the numbers, looking at many, many different things. Lots of different picks, narrowing it down. A lot of people just have this dream to trade. They don't know how to make it happen. I have a great program. If you come and do my class with me, it sets out everything for you, the strategy, the entries and then joining the trading room with me where I'm giving the calls and then the emotional support system too. And the motivation. You really can turn your dream of becoming a trader into reality and not just a fantasy. If you are willing to take it serious enough, let go of the things that happened in the past and really be dedicated to do it and set your mindset up that you are gonna be successful because it can be done. Ultimately, trading is about power. The people that are moving the market have the most power in the market and their institutions and that's why I'm looking to go with them. Short stocks that are dropping, buy stocks that are rallying. Market is a very, very powerful source of profit and money. Billions of dollars that are running through it all the time. The power is in the market. It's the power of the gap, which is what I trade. The power of the golden gap system, which is what I teach and do. Power of conviction, which I use every day when I'm making my trading choices. The power of information, which is the reason if you came to me what you'd get, learning in my class, the information which I charge for it, but it's really invaluable because it will teach you how to trade gaps. And then the power of knowledge, which means that you can use what you learn with me to trade for the rest of your life. And then it's the power of you because you've got to be a strong person to set your mind up and say, you know what, I'm not gonna let the things that happened in the past stop me from being successful in the future. I'm not gonna let the things that happened in the past, the losses I had in the market or classes I took where I didn't learn. I think stop me from learning a good system or trading in the future to becoming successful. Going forward towards the end of 2017 and into 2018 as well. When you compare yourself to other people, people that are successful against people that are not successful, it really ultimately comes down to the power of the human spirit and we're all human beings. And we all have spirits too. So the power of the human spirit is the power that is within you and it is up to you to do it. You are the one with the power. Your human spirit is so powerful. You have the power within yourself to follow a disciplined trading plan, make money in the market and keep yourself motivated during personal setbacks. You can control your destiny by making a choice in your spirit, not to allow anything to stand in the way of your trading success. And it really, truly is up to you. It is about the power of intention. What is your intention for 2018? What do you want to do? Do you wanna be successful? Because if you do, it's time to start getting serious about it right now. Like I said, the sooner, the better. When you have a clear vision, a clear intention and a plan of action in place, you can use the power of intention to assist you in creating the trading results you desire. So you've gotta get clear. Intention only works with complete clarity and focus. Focus on one or two stocks. Focus on one strategy. Focus by being in the stocks with trading room if you want to. You can learn my method and sign up. You must take my class though to become a room member because you've gotta know what you're doing when you trade. And I think it's a very, very important piece of what I teach as well, which is self-empowerment, knowing the information yourself. All of these things will help you get and stay clear and motivated. So again, clarity is extremely important. You can create your own dream world. I love it. This is the Time Warner building. They have the stars out for Christmas. I just love going there at the holiday time. It's gonna be a great 2018. I am ready for it. I'm gonna have a strong close to 2017 and move forward into 2018. Very, very motivated. You know, you can do it. If you want a new life for yourself filled with trading success, the sooner you get started, the better. Have amnesia about the mistakes that you've made in the past or things that you've done in the market, classes you took or losses you had, just let it go. You are never gonna be able to move forward if you don't start getting the right mindset. And it is an important, important part of this. So what do you need? A plan of action. You need a plan of action. What are you gonna do? Where are you gonna start? You need a plan of action in place in order to be successful trading and you need a proven strategy and a system that works in order to make money trading. And you absolutely must follow this plan to achieve success. So I teach a class on my method. It is this weekend, November 18th and 19th. The class of the class is $4,999. If you're interested, email me at Melissa at thestockswitch.com if you wanna sign up. Only two more classes before the end of the year, this one in one in December. It's really gonna be a great 2018. And 2017 has been good. I'm gonna be very, very picky every day between now and the end of the year to close out the year strong. It's important that you know what to do when you trade. It is important to have the right mindset. It is important to stay focused and you can be in the period of time I trade in the morning. Think about the things I said today. If you're interested in more information or have questions, feel free to email me at Melissa at thestockswitch.com. And I hope that this lecture helped a lot of different people. Education really is a gift that you give to yourself because once you have the information that you would learn in my class, you have it forever. And it works. I've had the business now for going on six years and I've turned people into successful traders and that's amazing actually to me. You've gotta believe that you can do it. So the trading room, just to give you a little more information is available for students of the Golden Gap course. I focus on results. I'm very focused on one pick usually in the morning. I usually focus on shorts. If there's no good shorts, I'll look at longs. My goal is to go in every day and take fast trades in the morning between 9.30 and 10 and get the money move and get in and get out. I call the entry stop and the exit as well. The hours for the room are 8.30 to 11 or whenever we're done. It's 3.50 a month for the trading room after the class and it's very, very focused. I'm extremely focused on gaps and I'm really focused on technical analysis in the chart. I'm looking at institutional money. I'm looking at shorting stocks to gap down, buying stocks to gap up, but not every one. I'm focused on quality ones because you can't go long every gap up and you can't short every gap down. So you've really gotta focus, find the good ones. One pick is all you need every day. Some days we did too, but usually one a day is all that you need. Thanks everybody and have a wonderful, happy, healthy and holiday season and have a fantastic, fantastic 2018.