 I don't know what happened. I hope this works. I was quick trying to do the fix without having to reboot since I was having trouble earlier. I hope this sticks. So just briefly restart everything I was saying again. I'm going to talk today about technical analysis. And my name is Melissa Armo. For those of you that were here, and I just started talking and then I lost connection really quick, technical analysis is reading price action. So that's when I'm looking at what I'm choosing to take a trade. If you can predict where price is going to go in a stock or the overall market beforehand, then you can get in the trade and get the move in the stock or the ETF before it happens. For example, the market, the overall market is a great example because the market's been moving higher. And ever since the election last year in November 2016, the market has almost gone vertical straight up. If you had been long, the spy ETF or the QQQ's ETF, you would have made a lot of money. So how can you see those things in advance before they happen? So what I do is I read charts. So as I was saying, if you have any questions, you can email me at melissa at the stockswush.com or call me at 929-3200 gap. And also you can watch me on Fox. I'm on Fox News and FBN talking about stocks in the market. Anyways, you can make money using advanced technical analysis, but you have to have a foundation for what you're looking to do. So say for example, you look at a chart, Apple, Amazon, any chart, and you say, okay, the stock is in an uptrend. You still have to get a correct entry in it because if you get an entry in something at the wrong placement, even if you get the trend right, the overall trend correct, you may be down money before you're up, which isn't ideal if you're a trader. And if you're a day trader, which is what I am, you have to make money that day and get in and out of the trade before four o'clock. Someone's mentioned about sound. Renee, can you hear me? Oh yes, I can hear you. If everyone else can hear me, can you guys just let us know in the questions box, type yes or y if you can hear. Pip just said about sound. I just reset everything when I had to log out and log back in, so I think it should be good. Okay, John said it's fine. Anyways, you have to know where to get in. So the entry is important. When you're looking at a chart to determine price, even if you get the overall direction right. So you say, well, this is a good long or this is a good short. And someone mentioned I do prefer to short, I do prefer to short. We're gonna talk about a short from yesterday. But either way, you can make money going longer short, but you gotta get the direction right and you have to get the entry right. And if you're a day trader, it's critical to get the entry right. So how do I do all of that? I'm looking at the charts and I'm using technical analysis. And that's how you make money. If you get in something before it moves in your direction with a good entry and in the right direction that you take it, that's how you'll make money in the market. So understanding really how to read price is so key in making money because you're not gonna make money in the market if you don't get in correct. And you're not gonna make any money at all actually if you're in the wrong direction either. But it will be challenging for you even if you get the overall direction right if your entry is poor, because you'll be down before you're up. And many people do that and then they end up killing the trade and retaking it. And that's just not good at all anyways. So you've gotta set yourself apart from novice traders by really taking trading seriously. And I know everyone says they do take trading seriously, but serious means serious. It means that you're gonna invest your time, you're gonna invest your money, you're gonna maybe not do something fun in a Saturday or a Sunday and do a class or you're gonna sit and review all your charts or your trades from the last week. You're really gonna get serious about doing it. And I'm very serious about what I do. So I think that if you wanna become an expert in something you've gotta do your homework and you've gotta read the information in real time. And part of getting good at technical analysis also is studying charts outside of the days when you're actually live in a trade. It's easy to say when you look at a chart when you're in a trade, but studying things that happen after you're out, even if the market's open or the market could be flat, but looking at things when you're not actually invested in a trade, sometimes you see things you would never see that when you're in it live, okay? So becoming an expert in technical analysis is a vital ingredient to becoming successful as a professional trader investor. What a current company's value or worth is always reflected in the price right now. So I do not focus on fundamentals at all. Now that's not to say that you may not want to do that. You might want to look at fundamentals, but you can't ignore the technicals. And the technicals are really gonna tell you where something's going. If the technicals and fundamentals match up, then that's even better, okay? If that's something you like to look at. But it's not necessary because it's already built in there. Does that make sense? So price patterns and charts hold the key to making decisions ahead of time and in the moment to profit and profit substantially. And making money in the market involves making timely decisions, very important, okay? To get in something right in the right time based on what the price is telling you. Like I just was saying earlier, if you went along the market around that election time more little more than a year ago, what a great timing to actually go long, all right? So price supersedes everything, even fundamentals. But you can look at fundamentals if you want, but you can't ignore the price. So you really gotta make time to trade and learn at a higher level if you wanna get good. And this doesn't mean you have to spend, 40 hours a week studying charts, but it does mean that you have to spend enough time studying charts until you get good that you don't have to spend a lot of time on it. I mean, I've been trading now for almost 10 years. I started out at the end of 2008. It's hard to believe it's almost 10 years. Next year is 2018. And at the beginning, I studied charts all the time. Seven days a week. When I was trading, when I wasn't trading, now I don't do that so much anymore, but I will look at stuff. I will sometimes look at stuff at night. I will sometimes look at stuff over the weekend. I do a lot of videos on YouTube if you wanna go there and subscribe. That helps me to go and look at things. I look at the market, you know? So it really does help any time that you spend outside of trading to study and get better. Now at the end of this lecture today after I talk about charts and technical analysis, I'm gonna talk about my class. And so many people say, well, there's so many places out there, Melissa. Why should I come and learn from you or your method? Which I have my own unique method to trade, which I'm gonna talk a little bit about today. The best reason I could say to come and learn from me is that I'm very passionate about what I do and I have a lot of knowledge about my system. So I have a lot of knowledge about looking at charts. I'm very good at reading price and I'm very passionate. So it's a powerful combination to learn from someone that is passionate about the subject that you're wanting to learn about and get better at and also that has a lot of knowledge. And that's one of the reasons why I've started talking on television. Because my passion has come across to open up many, many doors and opportunities for me because I'm very passionate about talking about stocks in the market. And so that's a powerful combination because when you're learning something and you're new and you don't understand everything, then you're gonna have things that you don't get. You're gonna need that extra motivation and that push and having someone that's very passionate about chart reading, which is what I do, the time make my training decisions will help you learn it faster and better. Now let's talk about what is technical analysis. It's really the methods used to analyze securities and make investment decisions. And it falls into two categories which I briefly talked about. Fundamental analysis and technical analysis, okay? Fundamental analysis involves analyzing the characteristics of a company in order to estimate its value. So you could read everything they have to say about all the earnings reports when they come out or you can just look at the stock chart after the earnings report come out and find out. For example, ALTA reports tonight. ULTA, that's the stock ticker symbol for tonight. I'm gonna be watching that. So that is earnings tonight. You could read everything your report says or you could just look at the chart and make a decision determining where it's going, okay? Technical analysis takes a completely different approach. It doesn't care one bit about the value of a company or a commodity. Technicians sometimes called chartists are only interested in price movements in the market and that's me, okay? And that's what I actually focus on, all right? So you have to train your brain to read price action. If you can do that, you won't be more successful. What do I mean? Meaning strength or weakness, okay? So if you can read that something's really strong, you wanna buy it. If you read that something's really weak, you wanna short it. So you want a short selling action and you wanna buy strength. When you're looking at charts and you're brand new to reading charts, it's like learning a new language. Sometimes you may not understand everything you're seeing. I use Japanese candlesticks on my charts, which I'll show you. And I have a few moving averages I'll go over to. But all in all, it is very much like learning a new language if you don't understand everything that's happening. And sometimes everything is happening very quickly. And again, like I said, I'm a day trader, so I'm looking at one minute charts. When I'm getting in my trains as a day trader, I'm getting into the one minute chart. And I'm looking at the daily chart to analyze the direction that I'm taking something, long or short. So what do I do? I trade gaps. Now, if you've never heard what a gap is before we're gonna go over that, but that's the strategy I train. But I have a method that I created to determine which way to take the gap. And all to tonight, like I said, has earnings. And typically stocks will gap when they have earnings. They don't have to, but I'm saying most times they do. You don't know if the stock's gonna gap up or down until it actually gaps, all right? So I'm not predicting the gap with my system. I'm predicting the direction the stock will move after it gaps, all right? Makes sense? Understanding how to read price is so critical though to create substantial gains in the market. I really don't think you can make money consistently over any long-term period if you can't read price right. And that's why, like I was saying, looking at the price and the charts is so, so important. You have to look at what you wanna look at in the chart to take the trade. So what is important? It's price. When you're looking to short, or when I'm looking to short, okay? What am I looking for? I'm looking for panic, all right? I'm looking to short panic action. I'm looking to short selling action. So if you get in a stock, I'm just gonna use an example. Say the stock price is trading at 10 bucks. If the stock is moving down and it's selling off and you short it at 10, you know if it's going lower that no matter where it goes, 975, 950, 940, whatever. If you short it at 10 and it's dropping, it's going down, you're gonna make money no matter where it goes. As long as the stock price continues to drop. And the best, best shorts, and this is what I'm saying, the best shorts in the world are what? Our shorting panic, okay? Panic action. What about longs? What are the best longs to do? You wanna buy something that is crazy, crazy strong that people do not want to sell where there is no kind of panic, at least not a panic to sell it, okay? Now, I wanna show this chart here of Amazon because this is the strongest thing right now in the market and such a great example of strength. I mean, the market itself is a good example of strength but Amazon's even better because it's moving ahead faster than the market. Amazon had a beautiful gorgeous scat back in October. This was an earnings scat and I'm gonna go over here now for those of you that don't know what a gap is, what a gap is using this chart. So this is a daily chart here of Amazon. A gap is when the stock closes at one price at night, at four o'clock, that's when the US market closes and opens the next day at a different price. So here you have down here, this is the night of the earnings, it was a Thursday night. The stock closed right over here around 970 something, all right? Then in the morning, the stock gapped up where? Around 1070, I'm sure whatever the exact number was. The stock gapped up a huge amount from four o'clock on Thursday until the next day at 930 in the morning of Friday when the market opened. So it was like a hundred point move almost. So this is showing a lot of what? Strength. So I wait for the gap and then if I see the gap and can predict the stock's gonna get bought which was the case here, you can go long the stock as a swing trade, an option trader, a day trade. Now, you can't buy every gap up. This is a gap up, all right? Just like you can't short every gap down. In fact, Amazon had a gap up a couple of days ago. Stock closed here at four o'clock, opened up here the next morning at 930, gapped up but you couldn't have gone long here and been profitable on this day. This was just a couple of days ago. On Monday, I think it was the 2027. So you can't go long every up gap. This one was good. This one was not good to go long, okay? So the idea is, if you can predict where this gap's gonna go up or down, you can make money taking the trade in the right direction beforehand. And in this case here, this was a good long. And I called an option on it because this is a very expensive stock. So one of the other ways that you can trade and you can day trade options, meaning you can get in and get out the same day even if you take it out for a week or two weeks or whatever, you can get in and out the same day if you're up money and you have a big move in something which was the case in here. Although this did continue the next day, all right? So you wanna buy strength when you're looking to go long and you want to short panic or selling action when you're looking to short, but you gotta read it in the chart. So I created my own method almost 10 years ago in 2008, which I called the Golden Gap 26 point rating system. So that sounds like a lot, but it actually is a lot of things to look at, but that's what helps me get the accuracy rate so defined. So I'm trying to get as many positive trades as I can any day that I trade. And I do sit down to look to trade five days a week. Now that doesn't mean I'm gonna get a good trade five days a week. Sometimes something doesn't meet my criteria either long or short, and I do prefer to short. Now sometimes people ask me, well, why do you prefer to short because stocks tend to drop faster than they tend to rally, that's why. So you will have faster moves in shorts, but it doesn't mean you can't make money going long. You just saw the Amazon, I just talked about the market, you can make money in either direction. You've gotta get the momentum right though when you're doing it. So getting back to what I was saying here, what is a gap? Because this is fundamentally a very important part of what I do. A stock gap, so the opening price today is different from the closing price of the previous days trading. A gap is a break in the price action from one day to the next. So again, my 26 point system is not predicting the gap to happen. I don't know where Ulta will gap tonight, but I'm telling you right now it's gonna. All right, Ulta will gap tonight on the earnings, and I think it's gonna have a significant move. I do not know if the move is up or down, nor do I know if I'm gonna do anything with it at all. I don't know if it's gonna be a good long if it gaps up. I don't know if it's gonna be a good short if it gaps down, but looking at the chart and the price levels, I can tell if it goes to a certain number, it is gonna be a good long, and if it goes a certain number down and gaps down, it's gonna be a good short. And that's the beauty of having my system. And anybody that trades should have a system. By the way, if you're here today listening and you trade the market or do futures anything, anything at all, swing trading even, and you don't have a system that you follow, you must, must get one before 2018, make that your goal because you cannot change what you're doing every single solitary day. And by the way, if I get in something and it doesn't work as a short and I take a stop, all right, I'm not flipping it and going long it. The trade is off and then I have one loss for the day, all right? It's not a good idea to flip flop back and forth. You either have 100% conviction of what you're doing in that direction of the price based on the chart or you don't. You can't change your mind back and forth and I think a lot of traders do that and it really, you never gain a high level of conviction in any direction than for the chart. And I say it's best to always find something that you believe in and have a lot of conviction in to trade because you're risking your money. Whether you're risking a hundred bucks or a thousand bucks, it's still your money, but you're risking to trade and that's the only way you're gonna be profitable. Now let's talk here about this one. This was a really good gap from yesterday. This was ADSK. So this stock wasn't an uptrend, actually it still isn't an uptrend, but it looked a lot better a couple days ago. So the stock was up here closed at 130-ish, all right? So today is Thursday, yesterday was Wednesday. So this was Tuesday night. Tuesday night it had earnings, then the stock gap down and open in the morning on Wednesday morning around 114, okay? So clearly you see that the stock was a different price from the close to the open. So you get up in the morning or you could have seen it at night, which I saw it at night because it came out in the evening after four, and you can prep. You can prep ahead of time and rate the gap at night if you want, but I always usually do it in the morning. Anyways, you look at this and you rate it if you take my class and learn my system to determine, hey, is this a short, which it was, or is it a long, okay? This could have held into the prior support in here where it was gapping to. So if you take it across, take it across over here, this has actually got up, okay, that happened back in October in this chart. Again, I'm a chart reader, I'm a chartist, we're looking at, this is technical analysis, 101 here, we're looking at price. The stock had a move here right from this original level where it opened on Wednesday and rallied. So if you went along the stock here, I mean, you were up. It had a nice move, you know, 15 points plus. So this was a good long here for a longer-term trade or even as a day trade on the day it was green. This day here, it could have held on this prior support and rally, it did not, it was a short, okay, and it was a really good short and it went to something what I call the dream target. Dream target was down in here, low of the data to being 106 something. So do you see how it would have been very challenging for you to make any money going along this stock? The wrong thing to do was go long, the right thing to do was to go short and how do you know that or how would I know that because I have a point system where I'm looking at the daily chart to determine it. But you don't want in this trades like this because this move of this stock was Jimongous, okay? High up in here was 114 and the low of the data I just got done saying was 106. To get a stock that moves like this, even at this price point, it's huge. You only need to do one trade like this a week to make a living trading, but you gotta get it right and you gotta get it in the right direction, okay? Now I coined my system, the point rating system golden gap because to me, it is like finding gold in the market. It's something that has a high ads of working. You never know 100% if a train's gonna work or not until after you take it and after you're out and the profit's booked and it's in your account and it's done, all right? But every trade I go in and I take, I firmly believe it's going to work but I still use stops. I put in hard stops or limit order stops that protect me so that if the trade does not work and it goes over that price number on the chart then I'm out because I look at the price level then on the chart and I say, I don't wanna be in this, it's not right, it's not gonna work if it goes over that level and that's something else you'd learn in my class too. But anyways, what I'm looking for is really what institutions are doing with the stocks and the gap. Are they buying the gap or are they selling the gap? Because golden gaps are made by professional traders, institutions, big banks, investors who are taking a big shares in something or they're selling big shares in something and creating the gap in the first place. So they're creating the gap and then I'm looking for them to follow it through on the day, all right? And that's how I narrow it down. I like to try to trade one ticker symbol a day. That is really my goal, one a day. That's not to say that I don't ever do two, it's really rare I do three but one a day is what I try to focus on because like I said, you only need one good trade like that ADSK. So I'm looking for gaps that have a high chance of having big volume, momentum. Down in here is the volume bar. You can see it, again, look at this. This is the rest of the volume going back since August and you can see this here. So not only did this have incredible volume it was the biggest bar in the chart. All right, so you don't want to miss days like that. Any questions so far here? Anyways, gaps are created with institutional money. That's what makes the gap in the first place. And so the gaps that happen and play out in stocks are formed by institutional money. You would never have something like Amazon move up overnight, 100 points at that price point if it wasn't getting bopping institutions. You've got to play the directional bias right in the chart of what the price is telling you that you know the money's gonna keep going, that it's gonna push and flow through it just like the market's doing, okay? And people are trying to short this market and people have been making attempts to short the highs in the market and failing every time. And the market's been continuing to make new highs, all right? You can't do that. You can't go against what's really happening of who's in charge of the price. So gaps are an event and they create a sense of urgency. That's an action that's being forced by participants of the stock. They're either forcing the buying action or forcing the panicky selling action which is what I like. But that's why trading gaps are so incredibly powerful. Trading gaps is a powerful and profitable way to trade because you're trading on the side of power money, okay? And that's what you want to do. Kenneth's saying what's the reason for the dive on it? The reason isn't that important. I will tell you it was earnings, okay? But it doesn't necessarily matter. If the stock had dropped down and we're gonna look at that chart a couple more times, the ADSK. But if that stock had done that gap for news or whatever, it wouldn't have mattered because it did it and that's all that matters. Do you know what I'm saying? So it happened. You can research the reason. If that helps you, wanna do the trade. But the bottom line is it was real anyways because you see that it lost 15 points whatever overnight. I mean, that was real and it had volume. It had volume in the pre-market too, all right? So when you're looking at something, you're trying to focus on number one, your main goal, which is to make money. Okay, so number two, how are you gonna do that? You have to be able to predict where somebody's gonna go before it does it. I mean, the long and short of it is that's a simple thing that everyone should be thinking every day when they wanna trade. A, I wanna make money. B, I have to be able to predict where somebody's gonna go before it does it accurately. And you've gotta be able to do it. If you are chasing stuff after the fact, you will have crappy entries. And nine times out of 10, you will be down before the stock goes, even if you get the overall direction right. And it's very difficult to trade with conviction that way. And not only that, it's also very, very difficult for anyone to take any significant monetary risk because say you wanna go into a trade, you wanna risk a thousand bucks. Well, it's not very nice if you go in and you're, all of a sudden, you're down like $900 as soon as you take the trade. That's not ideal. That's not the way that I trade. That's not what I'm looking for, okay? You really, really have to be focusing on getting it into the move, getting it right before it goes, shh, and it sells off, or getting it right before it lifts and rallies. You wanna take it right when the money's gonna go, whew. And it goes right into it, okay? And I'm saying on the live day, this isn't the pre and post market. Peter's asking how do you find the stocks that gap? Oh my gosh, so you could find stocks that gap anywhere, anywhere in the world. I mean, anywhere online. You can go to Yahoo Finance and print out the earnings calendar from now to the end of the year. Look at every stock that has earnings tonight. I just told you all to do this. Typically stocks that have earnings gap, okay? As far as finding gaps in the live day, your platform should have a top 20 list in both the Nasdaq and New York Stock exchanges. So 20 picks up and 20 picks down. So you got 40 picks. So you would have those. Or you can get a scanner, you know? You'd have to pay for a scanner, but I think you get enough from the free stuff that you can find out places. Earnings list and on your platform, which it should be included for free if you pay for a platform, that you should have that list. But it is very easy to find gaps and it's not as easy to actually determine which one you're gonna do. Of all the hundreds and thousands of stocks in the day, how would you know to find ADSK that that would move and have a big move like that and work? That's the beauty and the genius in what I do. But remember, I've been doing this for 10 years. But that's why you come and learn from me, like I said. Anyways, getting back to this. Here's the ADSK. So how do you make money using technical analysis? You gotta take the trade. You gotta get in. You gotta get in before the stock sells off, all right? Again, on the live day, I'm focusing to trade between 9.30 and 10. That's the main time section that I'm looking to get into the trade and preferably out. And it doesn't mean that I won't hold something longer than that, which occasionally I do, but, or if it's still going, I'll stay with it. If it's still dropping and I'm shorted, I won't kill it right at 10. But I'm watching, watching, watching as I'm getting into the 10 o'clock period, okay? And I do figure out targets. And when that's something else you learn from me too, but long and short of it is, dream target was 106 for that, for that ADSK. But the real target was 108, which by the way, it went to when it went to in the morning. So anyways, let's look at this. So this was the morning of the ADSK. So it was a one minute chart, 9.30, 9.31. Again, technical analysis, what are you looking at? First of all, you rate the gap in the morning, which is what I do, or you do it at night and you determine, okay, this is a good short today. It rates for the 26 point system. So I'm gonna look to short it if it sets up. Again, you don't know if it's gonna set up or not. You gotta watch it, you gotta wait. Anyways, this open dropped, fell. Rallying back, short entry was here. Boom, you put the stop. Now, look what it did right after. Base, base, base, fell off a planet. So this is what you wanna get in this thing here, okay, before this happens. This is all the panic that's coming into it. And again, the reason is not so significant, but this was an earnings gap. Here was the whole thing. So this, again, was a short. This is the daily, this is the one minute. You take it in there. So how do you make money? You actually are gonna short this stock at a price that you believe is gonna hold and be the resistance. Now just listen to what I'm saying. And it's gonna be an act like the resistance, that's like a ceiling. Okay, you can't see me right now. I'm not on TV this second, but if you could, you'd see it, it's like a ceiling, okay? The stock is like making a ceiling and the stock has a head, like you have a head and it doesn't wanna crack its skull. So it doesn't go over the ceiling of the price because it doesn't wanna die. It would rather fall than die completely and crack its skull. So it makes the resistance at that price level. And what happens is it's, again, gaps are created by institutional money. Pressure is on the stock, holding it down. This stock would not have done this unless it had selling pressure on it. So here's the ceiling and here's the head of the stock and it doesn't wanna die so it doesn't go over the ceiling. So instead it falls, okay? So you are shorting the resistance and you are taking the trade because you believe that the stock is gonna keep going down and hold that resistance. And your object is to make money. You gotta get the direction right. You say this is a short. You believe the price is gonna drop underneath the ceiling because it doesn't wanna die and the pressure's on. That's the best way I can describe it. I'm trying to describe this as the best possible way. The pressure is on the stock, an enormous amount of pressure. This stock dropped almost $10. Not quite, but almost eight bucks, whatever it was. I think it even broke 106. So whatever the exact high and low was, it was a crazy move for even a stock like this. So the selling pressure was on. The panic was coming in. It wasn't over when the gap opened. It sold off all day almost, okay? So you wanna take advantage of an opportunity when you see something like that. So anyways, here was the entry. Entry was 111.90. I'm gonna go over three risk units, beginner, intermediate, and advanced. But the entry's the same. It's how much money you wanna actually take of your own personal risk in your account to do the trade. So entry was 111.90. Stop, 112.55. So you put the stop in. If it had gone over there, you would have lost. Time of the day for the entry, 944. Again, looking to get in between 930 and 10 because you wanna get in before it sells off. Share quantity, 250. Again, this is a beginner risk, which is fine, all right? And this was an expensive stock anyways. Risk, 162.50. So if you had lost in the trade, which you wouldn't have, but if you had, you would have lost 162 bucks or thereabouts. Exit though, because it worked, was at the target 108. It went past this. But again, you gotta have areas you're looking at. I'd say no PE targets, but actually you could have traded this stock all day. I always am looking to get in and out of the morning. 95% of the days I trade, but this did keep going, all right? But you could have taken a second trade in there, even a third. Anyways, your profit would have been huge. 975 bucks you would have made if you had risked only 162. This is a nice way to trade. This is a beautiful, beautiful gap. It worked, all right? In fact, I think it's selling off even now still today. If you did an intermediate risk, same entry, same stop, same time of the day. Share quantity more, 800, risk 520 bucks. Exit same, 108, profit $3,120. So there again, some people don't make $3,000 a week trading or even at their job. So in one day, you could have made this in a half an hour and that is the reason to date trade. The reason to date trade is that you can make a lot of money doing this and you can make a living doing this and you don't have to work a lot of hours. What people find so challenging though about day trading is that there's so much information out there. They do not know what to focus on, but I'm telling you, you have to focus on getting the direction right and you have to focus on reading price and you have to focus on who is in control of what's happening with that price. And that's what I've done. I've created a method to do that, but that's the only way you're ever gonna be able to sustain yourself trading for a long time and you gotta take it seriously. You just have to. And now this is an advanced risk. And again, I've been trading for 10 years. You don't have to risk over $1,000 to trade, but an advanced risk of 2,500 shares, you have to have the buying power to take it. This was a little bit of expensive, although most stocks I would say that I watch are between $20, $25 and 65, but there are occasionally some that are look expensive like this one. Same entry, same exit, you could have made almost 10 grand. And this could have been your whole month, but you would have had to risk 1,625 bucks to do it and you would have had to be okay with the loss if it wouldn't have worked because sometimes I take a trade and they don't work. But I'd say about eight out of every 10 trades I take works. So I have about an 80% win ratio, but you gotta be okay with the two of the loose of out of every 10. So bottom line is your goal as a trader is to be able to predict selling and you short it or buying and you go long it. And how do I do that? I have a rating system I use and I'm looking at gaps. There's tons of places to find gaps. That's not the hard part. The hard part is narrowing it, narrowing it, narrowing it down to that just one that's just gonna pop and explode up that you go long or it's gonna sell off like crazy like this did actually too. So if you'd wanna come and learn from me, what would you do? One, follow the system, you rate the gap. Two, wait for it to set up, easy. If it doesn't set up, you don't take it. I never got to get in the pre-market. Three, take the trade, put in the stock with fixed risk. Gonna call the trades live in my trading room. Four, hold to the target or if you don't want to hold it to the target just hold it until you and as soon as you're up. Just get out as soon as you're green, get out. And you get out with profit. Let me just see here some questions. I gotta watch my time though because I had some computer issues. What's a margin account value to do with the advanced risk? Well, that's what I'm saying. It's a wide range of stock prices that I trade. So I will do things that could be over $100 price point and that's just the reality. I'm not saying every day but even something like Walmart's in the 90s, 97, 98 wherever that's at today. If you wanna be able to do those more expensive ones then yes, we've gotta have the margin to do it. But you can open up a proprietary day trading account instead of a retail account. Retail accounts only give four to one. Prop accounts give 10 to one and some places give 20 to one. So I look around for that. It's not like I'm doing expensive stocks like that though every day but if there's a good gap there I mean, I'm gonna do it. So that's something where I would shop around for different types of accounts that you can get the maximum margin or BP that you can. But even if you did that in the intermediate risk Ken, you could have made, even if you could have only taken a couple hundred shares, 500 shares, 600 shares, 800 shares. You should be able to have the buying power to take that kind of intermediate position and you would have made over three grand. Good questions. Anyways, the point I'm trying to make though all along today that is you gotta be serious about what you're doing. Think like a professional and that's what I do and I use a checklist and it works. So the purpose of my checklist is to find stocks that have a high probability of direction of bias for the entire day. Big moves on the day, early confirmation of my bias, meaning the direction I'm gonna take it between nine, 30 and 10 and then precise entries with follow through on a good risk to reward which is important too and actually that ADSK had a great risk to reward. So one of the reasons that my system works for so many people and I have a successful business now is because I have people that come to me that wanna do everything. They wanna trade options, they don't wanna worry about margin which you don't have to worry about margin if you have an options account. You could have done a put, you could have just bought a put in the ADSK, all right. Also people are using it for swing trading. So swing trading, options, day trading. Personally, I like the day trading the best just because of the fact that you can get in and out so fast but you can get in and out of options fast too. You just gotta watch them and you gotta make sure you throw your order out in between the ask and the bid. So it's a little bit different way to take them but you can use my system for anything that you wanted, any method that you wanna use to trade. It's just the idea, you have to make it work and fit for you. If you can't afford to have a margin encounter and don't wanna go to a prop place then you can do it with options where you don't have to worry about the margin. But I mean, even me myself, I mean, as far as stocks like Amazon going, things like that, I mean, it just doesn't even make any sense to day trade those. It's the best thing you could do is do options for things that are expensive like that and Google is another one too. Anyways, here's the market. I thought this was an interesting clip this is back from beginning of 2016. And so this is like basically a two-year glimpse here of just snap chatted here of the spy of the market rally. So remember we dropped off, I mean, you may not remember but at the beginning of 2016 we dropped off, we had a gap down. We failed to go lower on that gap down. So we started out the year, this is again two years ago almost now, January 2016 we started with a gap down. We could have collapsed but we didn't. So the market not only did not collapse from that gap down that started off the year, the early 2016 in January, not only did we not collapse, we have gone almost vertical. So not only did we not collapse, failed to follow through in the gap down here. This is the election last year, November 2016. If you went long the bullish gap up in the spiders, look, I'm gonna take this across over here. Low in here was around two, I don't know, 14 or whatever it was and look where we are, over 260. This is an incredible move for the market to have in one year's time. So you see this how powerful trading gaps is, this would have been your entry. All right, this is showing who's in control. Somebody's asking me a couple questions. Do I search mainly for the larger gaps to trade? What do you mean larger? You mean size-wise? No, not necessarily. How do you predict the gap is going to take place? I can predict it's gonna take place but I'm telling you most gaps happen on earnings. I don't predict the gaps to take place, I predict where they're gonna go after the gap. I just scan four gaps. So I don't predict the gap in my system, I predict where it's gonna go after it gaps but I'm telling you a lot of things gap on earnings. I don't focus on large gaps necessarily, no. For a beginner to trade, how do you educational structure for a beginner? Would you recommend starting with a paper trading account? How will I know whether the gap rate is gonna be filled or not? Well, that's what the points tell you. My points tell you that the gap is gonna continue in the direction it's going. So I'm looking to rate the gap if it's gapping up, I'm looking to see if it rates per the 26-point system to go long and the stock gap's down like ADSK. I'm rating it to determine if it's gonna continue in the direction the gap is, which is down, if it's gonna be a short. If it rates per my system, it's gonna continue in the direction that the gap is going. If it doesn't, it doesn't. So as far as the beginner question though, you can trade with a demo if you want but I wouldn't trade for more than a month as a demo because you gotta get the feel of trading live money and you can take small size and then at least you're getting the feel of it. But, you know, your goal is really to make money. So I wouldn't trade on a demo for too long, all right? Anyway, seeing these gaps really helps me have a lot of conviction to do it because otherwise it would be trend trading and we wouldn't never get the risk to reward that some of these gaps pay and some of them have really good risk to reward. It doesn't mean I'm holding every trade to the target but sometimes the gaps just are so good and that ADSK was one of them you just know and Amazon was another one too. So playing gaps helps give me an edge because they have momentum, they have volatility, I'm going with the people that are in control of the institutions because institutions are not necessarily in every stock every day. You have institutions that are long, for example, Amazon but they're not necessarily taking positions on or off every single day. So you don't get the same play in something even like Amazon every day. Even stocks that trade that are stocks you know of that are wildly known companies and that's why trading gaps really does give me an edge. Let me just see if there's another question here I think I missed. Somebody said they can't hear me, I don't know what to say about that. I'm sorry, sometimes stocks open in the gap up but then breaks yesterday's low how to handle that. Sometimes stocks gap up and then they break yesterday's low. I don't understand what your question is, you'd have to give me a chart to look at. Give me an example, give me a ticker symbol, I'll pull one up. Can you use a gap system for forex or forex options? Gaps only happen once a week in forex because it only has one closed and open. So you'd only be able to do it once a week. Okay, let me get caught up here and then I'll answer the rest of the questions. And if the person that asked about the chart example if you want to give me a ticker symbol for that. Anyways, I'm looking at riskiness. It's a percentage of return based on an R concept. I did not create this but I'm looking to risk pretty much the same amount every time I take a trade. And you should do that too. And that's why you stops because I don't want to have an unlimited risk. So people say well trading is risky in a sense it is because you're risking money and you could lose it but in a sense it's not because you protect yourself. It's like the insurance you put the stop in. A lot of people don't trade with stops. I have always traded with stops and I always will unless I decide to run a hedge fund. The bottom line is that I want to know I have a fixed risk. It doesn't mean sometimes I don't get filled a little bit through it but I know I'm gonna get out. It's not unlimited. So you take an amount, $500, $300, $1,000, $200 whatever you say and that determines the quantity of the share size that you take and the difference between the entry and the stop. And you don't know what that is until it sets up or when I call it in the room, all right. But that's where you have to figure yourself out are you in the beginner? Are you in the intermediate? Are you in the advanced? Now this Walmart was an option trade I call it was a really, really good one too. The stock apt up. This was in earnings. You could have gone long on as a day trade or you could have done as an option both. Again, a little pricey here but you could have done the option, all right. So the option trade in this was what? One to eight. So 1.8 risks to reward. So if you had risks, for example, $525 in the Walmart you could have made what? $975 in the day. So as a day trade, you could have done the same trade as a day trade. You could have done as an option trade. Again, that's the beauty. I called the 100 calls of would you believe that the stock, I called it out of the week would you believe the stock almost went up there? High of the day on that day was 99 something. So I read in the morning when I saw the gap and I rated the gap that the stock was gonna make a move like that that it would go to that number. It would go to it. And that's what did it headed straight for that number. When you're doing an option trade, you play it into the momentum and that's when you're doing day trades too. When I trade, I'm playing it into the momentum here. And that's how you make money. I mean, that's the only way you can make money. And the ADSK was a great one. It was six times. Oh, but I think I'm up with time. Sorry. Listen, if anybody has any questions you can email me. Here's the information about my class. It's December 16th and 17th. Email me at melissathestockswitch.com. I'm running a special for a one year free in the trading room if you sign up for this class through next Friday. Sorry, I know I ran over. If you have questions, email me. Sorry. All right. Well, thank you.