 OK, good morning, everyone. This is Melissa Armore of the Stocks. Wish I'm doing a little lecture here today with the room live. Can everyone see this little drawing I have? You should be able to see it. It's just a little paint thing. Yesterday we had an interesting discussion. I don't remember what started it. Something to do with taking risk. It was the idea about taking risk in trains. Oh, I know. Trader Gal had mentioned about being in a place where you feel comfortable and safe with your risk and your training. And then somehow we got into a discussion about being in neutral. And I noted that many people are stuck in neutral. And Trader Gal said, well, we better be in neutral than to be down. Theoretically, that's true. You'd rather be flat on the day than down. But wouldn't you rather be up? Of course you'd rather be up. In an ideal world, you're up making money every day and you're positive. Being stuck in neutral or flat 200 plus trading days a year or 365 days a year or however many days or a year that you have a job or you work or you train is not going to ever get you anywhere. So theoretically, I said, actually, if you're stuck in neutral for too long, it's like you're actually going back. Because you can't stay stuck in neutral for too long. You can be in a risk period, which I encourage people to do sometimes when they feel like they got hit with a hammer. Now, that's different for everyone. Sometimes you take a big loss in a trainer of your bad month or you had a bad year or whatever the case may be and you feel like somebody hit you over the head with a hammer and knocked your block off. Those are the times that you've got to know yourself well enough that you take a step back and then you are going to stay in a risk period of neutral. You can be very self-analytical, take some time to rest and think and recoup. And I think the holidays is a good time to rest or recoup anyways. Whether you had a good year or didn't have the year you wanted. Either way, getting back to the topic, you still, after the rest period, need to move forward, okay? So, I got up in the middle of the night last night and I was thinking about this, a good way to explain this. It would really come across very well to people. When you are doing things in life, and this could be applied to anything, but I'm gonna talk about the market, you have the known. You have the known. This is the area of the known. The known outcome, what you know. Then you have a question mark and you have over here the unknown. So, when you're neutral, you do not take a trade. You take no risk. You don't want to begin it. You're on the demo. Okay. You know that you cannot lose any money. You know that you won't lose any money. You also know that you won't make any money. That is the known. You know without a shot of a doubt that you are not gonna lose today in a demo and you're not gonna make any money today in a demo and it is 100% known. You're in neutral. You know if you never take my class, you will never learn what I know. That is a known. Okay. You know if you take my class, you will learn what I know. That is a known. Now, what about the unknown? When you take a trade and you risk money in a trade, what's the unknown? You may lose or you may make money. You also have an unknown. You don't even know how much you'll make even if you make it but you do know how much you'll lose if you put in the stop or if you take an option trade, for example, you have a fixed risk. The unknown is will I make money or will I lose? Will I make money? And if I make money, what will I make? I think when you start to trade and you know you have a good gap, there is a point you get in your training and sometimes I still feel like that now where I have an expectation that I actually know that I'll make money on the day but the unknown is I don't know how much. For example, I may want the stock to drop a dollar. It only drops 60 cents. I make money, good money, less than I thought I would. So you never know and this is what we were talking about yesterday until the fat lady sings the outcome of the unknown, which is the question mark which we have every day when we place a trade. The unknown is will we make money or will we lose? Will we make money? And if so, how much? We do not know. We know if we're in neutral, if we're stuck in the area of the known, of that is all that the known people know is the people that do not take any trades at all. They know they won't make money and they know they will not lose. You as a person go into this side every day as an unknown, taking risks with me if you do on a non-demo and all of you that are in here as regular people that take the risk with me and have done the class and paid for the class. The unknown is you don't know if you'll make money or lose money today. You don't know if it will go to the target or not. Now as it turns out, the one we did today actually went eight cents under the target. I mean, you basically went to the target. I said 10, 50, 10, 50, 10, 50, I'm out of this today. This is exactly where it went. Even when I say 100% conviction, I'm believing within my being that I have 100% conviction that it's known. But really, if we're going to talk reality, it's never over to the fat lady sings and it's an unknown until we have the money booked in the trade. Once the money's booked and we're out of the trade, we know how much we made and we know that we made it and we know we didn't get stopped out, okay? The point I'm trying to make and why I thought this was a good analogy is because I'm going to put it to something like we live in a town. And I'm going to bring this really down to reality. So here is all of us. Here we all are. This is all of us as traders. This is Surf Dog, Trader Gal, Boots, Journey Woman. I'm up here, meeting everybody every day. We're all living in a group. Something happened though. The town we live in is under attack. Somehow I lead us all down this road and we hide in a cave. I knew about this cave for a long time because I'm very intuitive and we hide in here. The town is under attack. We're in here. Luckily, I told all of you before we made it to bring food, supplies, anything you carry, we did it. So we find safety and shelter in the cave. Out here is calamity. The known is that we have enough, we have a certain amount of food and a certain amount of supplies to last a certain amount of time. The known factor is that we are safe. As long as we don't leave this cave, no harm will come to us. That we know. But we also know that we have a limited amount of supplies of food and things to get us by, food and water. So I put boots in charge. Here's boots with the hat on. He's good at this kind of stuff. I put boots in charge. I say figure it out boots. Ration it out with all of us. How many days can we last with this many rations that we can all survive here safely? In the meantime, we're hoping that somebody comes and rescues us or all this calamity stops. We don't know though, no one knows. The city is under attack. So boots figures it out. He says we have 365 days. If everybody eats and drinks as much. Some people give up immediately. I mean, their mental stamina can't even take it more than a week. They just, they get sick and die because they can't take the emotional pressure of knowing that they could possibly die in a year. And actually they immediately give up. Now listen, this is really good people because this is how some people think about trading. Okay, this is what I'm relating it to. So some people don't even make it a month. They give up. They lose their whole account, blow up in a week and eat all the rations that boots gave them for a year in a week because they have given up. They get sick and die and give up then and starve themselves to death because obviously they will know that we'll make it the rest of the year. They ate all their rations. Some people, that's what happens. So there's nothing we can do. The rest of us do what we're supposed to and survive. And it's hard and it's tough and it's emotionally taxing. And we are eating less than we normally would and drinking less than we normally know but we know that we'll make it and boots figured it out right. But we only got 365 days, okay? In the meantime, someone could come and save us or this calamity, the city that's under attack could stop. The good guys could win and we might be able to come out safe but nobody knows. Nobody knows. What we do know that we know that we know is if we stay in here, we will last one year. If we stay in here, no harm will come to us. This is the known and we will stay in that but we cannot stay in this past 365 days. So this is what I'm talking about. After the 365 days, that's it. We won't make it. So that's the known too. And this is what I'm talking about about staying in neutral. There will come a time when you can't anymore. I don't know what that is. It's different for all of you but I'm telling you that this is true, okay? Now, we have over here, we have the unknown, okay? The unknown is there's just craziness going on over here in the world, in the city, in our town. It's crazy, okay? And we're over here in the cave and we're safe outside of it but there is a one safe area over here. We're not sure where it is but there's a safe area over here in the town and there's food in there and water and there's actually an army protecting around the safe area. We didn't have time to make it over there before the attack hit. Now, Greg actually is saying, the more people die off, the longer the survivors can survive. Maybe, but it takes an emotional tie on you. Do you wanna see your friends around you dying? Do you think that's not gonna affect you? It will. You see people giving up? You think that's not gonna take an emotional toll on you? Remember, I told you this before. We are emotional beings. So you have this area here that is where we really need to go but we don't know exactly how to get there because to get there is risky. It's dangerous. We have an idea where it is. We're not sure how to get there. It's not safe. We may try to get there and not make it. We may get attacked in the way. We may get injured and hurt. All the roads may be blocked. Nobody really knows what's going on out there. We've been in here for a while. But we know that we only have 365 days in here. We've gotta get over here. We're running out of food and water. Okay? Some people haven't made it already. We, it's an unknown. If we go outside of this cave, we have no idea if we're gonna make it here. We have no idea how long it's gonna take us to make it there that even the rations we have left will even help us make it there. We don't know if we'll even find the road to make us there because have the roads been destroyed by the city being under attack. We have no idea. It is a complete unknown. It's a question mark. It's an unknown. We're aware of the fact that if we can do it and take the risk, we'll survive past 365 days. And actually, that's the only way that we will. When you look at your training, which I know this sounds, I'm really being, I'm trying to make a point, but it's actually an amazing way to explain it because this is how people think about trading. And to be honest with you, this is how I think because I'm such a extreme person with my highs and lows myself that when I was trying to figure this stuff out, I really made it so that I had no way out. I had put myself in a position that I had no way out but to make it here. And so I kept going. And I talk about this in the class. If you give yourself an out, you will always take it. And the out is that I'm gonna stay in the neutral. Well, then how are you ever gonna make any money? How are you ever gonna survive or actually be happy? And actually, this is a great place to live because they've learned from all the mistakes over here. And in fact, these people are scared of the head of this town, the army. Even though it's smaller, it's more powerful and stronger and richer and smarter and more evolved. They wouldn't even dare to come over here. It's actually like a fortress. But if we find a way over here, they will let us in. They need as many people on their side as possible. So what do you do? Do you jump into the unknown because you wanna live past 365 days or do you stay in neutral for the rest of your life with your trading? And this is just a very good example because you can't stay in neutral forever. Eventually you'll go back and people do. But taking the leap of a class or a risk in a train or going outside of the cave to make it over here is a question mark. It is an unknown. The timing is unknown. When it will happen is unknown. The road to get there is unknown. The road to get there is different from everyone. We all split up. We say, you know what the best chance of us making this is we're gonna split up in four groups. You go this way. We're gonna go this way. We're gonna go this way. We're gonna go this way, okay? And we split up into four groups and we go. Surfdog says you're one amazing, gorgeous woman. Why do you say that, Surfdog? I don't know where you're getting that from this lecture. Anyways, we split up, okay? Two groups make it over here. Two are out there. But the two that make it over there tell the people back home about the other two groups, have an idea where they were going and go out and find them and bring them back. So it's, and then everybody ends up making it because they were willing to take a chance. But this was a hard, hard road. It was a hard road to leave the cave. It took a while to do it. Then it was hard because we all split up. Then we had no idea where we were going. And the road for everyone is different, okay? So this is, I'm just trying to bring it down to a level where I'm relating it to life because you could say this about anything that you do. But it is so true about trading because so many people are stuck in neutral, but they're really not. They're actually behind. And many people are so out of their bodies they can't even admit it. They're actually losing money in the market but they'll say and tell me they know what they're doing. I just want to sign up for the room, Melissa. I know how to trade it ready. Okay, meanwhile their account is negative down and they're losing money. They're like, I just, I know what I'm doing. Really? Well then you'd be making money. And then everybody wants guarantees. There's no guarantee, it's an unknown. I don't know if you will have the courage to go outside of the game. I don't know if you'll listen to what Boots told you to do. Boots said, this is all you've got to eat. You have 365 days. If you gorge yourself on being a butter and eat the pizza now for the next two months, you will have nothing left. And I'm not giving you any, he says, because I'm concerned about Melissa and Trader Gal and Surf Dog. And I'm not taking away from them to give to you. So, you know, we live in a society here and the society is the market and a full understanding of what it takes. And I'm reminding myself of this because of the entire year this year, everything that's happened to me this year, which we're gonna talk about on Friday, personally and professionally. And I want you to think about these things because it's really all the same thing. I don't even know why I just said personally and professionally. It's like one big mishmash, it's called our life, and it's all together. Because things that you do with your trading affect your life personally. If you have a bad trading day financially, it affects you personally. If you have a great trading day financially, it affects you personally. You'll go home to your spouse or your boyfriend or your girlfriend and you'll buy him a present and you'll have a fabulous night out if you have a great day trading. And if you have a crappy day trading, maybe miserable to even be around for the evening. If you're stuck in neutral, you won't be in a good man, you won't be in a bad man, you'll just be like a whatever. But eventually you're just going back because if you never decide to move forward and leave the cave, you will go back. You only have 365 days. And again, I don't know what this time is for everybody but it's the time span of your life. Eventually your passion for trading the market will die off or you will run out of money as you fail to admit to yourself that you've been losing for years and you pretend that you know how to trade because you know how to read a chart and you don't. Okay, and that's the point that I'm trying to make. Now, does anyone have any questions? This is a really, really powerful imagery to help some of you understand. I hope I made my point. Ashley, why can't you be here on Friday? Try to be here if you can. I said between 10, 30, 11, I'll do the end of the year discussion on Friday. You can't participate if you're not here. I don't know if I'm taping it, probably not. It's not something I'm gonna put on YouTube. So try to be here. Does anyone have any questions about anything I'm saying? Did anything I say make any sense? Did it make all the sense in the world? No sense whatsoever? Am I talking to myself? Said it made sense. Thunder said no, I'm not talking to myself. Trader Gal said somewhere in between. Trader Gal, you were the one that inspired me to do the talk. Jack Garplace says, yes, it put a lot of things into perspective. Boots said it makes sense. Birdbrained said, thank you again, very, very intense. First time ever in a live session. You love this chart reading, tech anticipation decision confidence must have money and no fear. Yeah. Well, this is, Weezy said it makes sense too. This is where I'm talking about the balance. I'm not saying take risk for unnecessary risk sense. And even I am reminding myself of this with Adobe. It wasn't that I didn't conceive of it, but it's so interesting because I really never can really, I didn't ever conceive that that trade would not work out. But that's how much I believe in myself. If I could find a way to juice up and bottle that part of myself and sell it, all half of you would need to do is to take two drop or fills and would last you all year. And I can't. I just, I just can't. It's just who I am, but that's why you're here with me every day and take the class. And that's why somebody jokingly said it was my attorney. He said that I'm the 27th point. It's like, but I was reminded of myself and I took Adobe, how much, how much I believe in myself. But you know what the long-term market column making will more than outweigh because I feel the same way about that. And I backed off that, but I still have enough of it with a good enough price that it's gonna be a just an incredible trade for me. Even if it doesn't go anywhere near where I think it's gonna go. It will be an explosive trade for me because it's such so far out. Kind of like Alta, but better. You felt like you were talking to you directly, Surf Dog. You felt that my eyes are burning through you. That's interesting. It was talking to you. I was talking to Boots. I was talking to Trader Guy. I was talking to everyone, even the trials in here. This stuff is important. We have no control over the market and what it chooses to do. We can only discipline ourselves in the decisions we make, not to make stupid choices. Yes, that's true. But the point I'm trying to make is, and this is what I'm saying, boiling up drops and selling them is that many people are over here happy to live like this. That being a neutral is actually okay and better than the unknown. And I'm telling you that it's not. And you're kidding yourself because the longer you're in this space, you're going back. Now, that time, it varies from person to person, but don't kid yourself. Don't kid yourself. In the meantime, if I have to kill Adobe with a loss, which I don't know, it's an unknown still. But if I have to kill that trade with a loss, I will get up and turn that sucker around just like I had a fabulous trade today, like nobody's business, which is me going out in the cave, having to deal with the danger, fighting my way through to a fabulous place. And in the end, making it and having a fabulous life. So you have to know yourself enough to know if you are stuck in a place where you're not even moving. There's a difference between resting and stuck. I don't know all of you well enough to know that. Some of you are not stuck. Some of you are out here with me, taking chances every day into the unknown and believing to have 100% conviction and doing all the trades and going for it. Some of you are stuck in neutral, going back. Some of you are resting. It's too new and you're resting and you're integrating the material and you're learning and you're in the process and you're going through it. You feel confident, but you're just learning and it's new and you're working on it and that's fine. You could be in that place for a period of time. I don't know how long, but I know that only you know when you are at that place where you actually are going back then, okay? And that's the people that I want to think about with this talk because I do not know that. You only know that, okay? But don't kid yourself that you're in neutral and that it's okay to be in neutral because it's not okay to be in neutral. Stocks do not hardly ever stay in a neutral trend. And relate yourself, I always say people. It's a people and I talk about stocks, but people are just like stocks because guess who's trading stocks? People. Stocks do not stay in a neutral trend forever. Temporarily they might be in a neutral trend they eventually will break out of it higher or underneath it lower. Either way, something's gonna happen. A stock in the market will not stay in a neutral trend for long. And many, many stocks are hardly ever in a neutral trend. It's rare that you would find something in a neutral trend. And even if it is and it's resting it won't stay there for long. That's a healthy, healthy stock. And stocks are healthy. They are healthy and act healthy. And until they go out of business or die or go to zero. And even that is actually moving out of it and actually just dying then. So again, relate yourself to a stock. Know where you're at. If you're stuck in neutral for too long then you're actually probably going to zero. And you've got 365 days in this cave and then there's no more food for boots to give you. You totally understand me in a bottle. You ready to have an endless supply? So glad you finally found this class or me. Thank you, Burb Rain. I don't know who you are, I have to look it up. You fear some interpret the right side that way. Wait a minute, I think I missed your one up above. You've been winning small amounts and must increase the size. You need to increase the size of the wins. You've been winning consistently but need to make more in each trade. Your first year with me has been successful and that's great boots. Trader Gal says you think that this talk, are you talking about this talk itself, Trader Gal? About the idea of taking risk or just this talk specifically. What do you mean about taking dangerous, making dangerous choices? Explain what you mean by that. Are you really into this talk? The wild side. This isn't the wild side, this is reality. Reality is that you cannot stay in neutral forever. I'm not telling you to take some crazy amount of risk in your trades. That wasn't the point of this lecture. If you think it, then you misinterpreted it. The point of this lecture was not to take an unknown amount of risk with an unlimited amount. I knew the amount of risk I was taking in the Adobe trade, I fully believed in it. But I will tell you that what's so amazing is that even when I go back and think in my mind about the amount of money that I could have made if it had worked out in my favor, I still think I would have made it. I still think I would have made it. I still think I would have done the same thing I did now. It's easy to see now. Well, I wish I would have risked less, but to be honest with you, in my mind, by Wednesday night, this was the night before the earnings, I was fully aware of the amount of money I had risked in the trade. And looking back, it's easy to say, well, shoulda coulda woulda, I don't think I would have done it any different. To be able to end the year making six figures in one trade with the amount of risk that I took, which was a good amount of risk, but still, it would have been a huge art trade. I still think I would have done it. You know, it's all easy to say, well, shoulda woulda coulda when the trade doesn't work out. Or when it does work out and we didn't take enough risk, we say I wish it would have worked more or whatever. Looking back, I was talking to someone last night and I still think I would have done it. So, you know, I don't know how I'm gonna fare in that trade, it isn't unknown and I'll know tomorrow. I won't be in it till Friday. But I will tell you that the point of this lecture was not to take too much risk. It was to not stay in neutral for too long and to have the ability to take risk. The risk still has to be something that you financially can afford when you take trades. That's just common sense. Maybe I need to reiterate that because Trader Gal's bringing it up. She's concerned that people will take an unknown risk that wasn't the point. You must take a risk amount but in order to make money, which means get off a demo and learn how to trade and get out of neutral. But it still has to be an amount you can afford to lose and keep going, whether it's $50, $100, $150. But I emailed somebody today. It's like, do you know that $200 a day, and I'm just breaking it down, $200 a day is $1,000 a week. $1,000 a week is four grand a month. Four grand a month is $48,000 a year to trade for an hour a day. I mean, I'm just trying to break it down to something very reasonable for some of you. Some of you have these pie in the sky goals and you think you need to risk $1,000 in every trade with me, but you don't. You don't need to at all. If you could consistently make $1,000 a week, that's almost 50 grand a year. That's real money. At the end of the year when you do your taxes and you make 50 grand a year, you're like, wow, I made 50 grand extra this year, just trading part-time with Melissa for an hour. Can you live with that for the first year out? Risking maybe $100 a day? Only looking to make $200? I mean, that's not crazy. The point of the lecture was not for people to take an unlimited amount of risk, it was about the idea to not be afraid to take risk that you can afford. Not to stay in neutral and never take any risk at all. That is foolish. It's just as foolish as risking more than you can afford. But what I was saying was it's the belief and the fact that knowing that you're gonna be okay, knowing that you will be okay, that if you take the risk and if it doesn't work out, you will still be okay. And that is the point that I'm trying to make. Whether we band together in a group to see our way over to the side or whether we split up or whether I lead everyone out front with a shield, whatever it takes, knowing that you're gonna make it, that you will become a profitable trader. The time is unknown, but you have to willing to take the risk. And this is the whole point. It's not to take an unlimited amount of risk that you can't afford. And by the way, that would not be an unknown. If you risk your whole account in one trade, let's say you have a $10,000 prop account and you have no stop loss in the day, which would be strange because they probably will put one for you. But let's just say you went to a place and they didn't really care about you and you're no stop loss in the day and you kept doing a trading, kept doing a trading, kept doing a trade, you got blown through the stop and you traded all data four o'clock. And by the end of the day, you had how much money left? A thousand dollars. It's not an unknown. You've got $10,000 to train with. If you blow up your account in one day, it is not an unknown. It's a known. You'll have no more money left to train. You don't have any more money in your savings account to refund it. They will close it out. If you have any less than $3,000 or $2,000 in there, whatever, they're gonna shut you off and shut you down and you won't be able to trade tomorrow. Even with a thousand dollars you've left. They're gonna say, well, Mr. Smith, you have to deposit $1,500 for us to keep you on tomorrow. And you say, what? I still have a thousand dollars left. No, that's not enough. I mean, this is how it is. So that is even not an unknown. You know you have 10 grand to trade. So what are you gonna do with that? So taking unlimited amount of risk that you can't afford is still even not an unknown. You know how much money that you can't lose that if you lose it, you won't be able to make your car payment or your credit card payment or your rent for next month. And I guess you gotta, okay? And those things are more important than trading. So you have to be able to balance it out. But what I find many people are over here, few people are over here, I do push the limits, but that's why I'm leaving the pack. Only someone that would have the ability to push the limits would be able to make some of the calls that I make that turn out to be huge calls and make us a lot of money. Do you understand? I'm not saying be me. I'm saying get out of this and take the risk that you can afford and don't be afraid of doing it. You can't learn to drive a car if you never try. The scenario has to have no losing days, which is impossible, but it would be great to say that. But again, it would also be great to say that the city wasn't under attack. It's not reality. It's just not reality. Look at the world that we live in. I mean, do you think it's an ideal time to be traveling the holidays? Look at the people that have to go travel right now to see their relatives and loved ones and family. Luckily, some of you don't have to do that. I mean, look at the world that we live in. It'd be great to say a lot of things. We've got to deal with reality. The point of the lecture is commitment, dedication. Don't look back. Confidence and the calculated risk. Not take a shot in the dark. We don't take shots in the dark. I mean, we absolutely do not do that. I think this is where the balance comes in. The unknown is I take a train and I don't know where it's gonna go for the target on the day, how much money I'm gonna make. I take it, believe it, it will work, but I do put the stop in knowing that it may lose. And that's an unknown until it's over, until the fat lady sings. But I don't take shots in the dark. So we aren't taking pot shots in trains. Many, many trading rooms out there do take nothing but pot shots. The rooms are open from 9.30 to 4 every day. All they do is call trades all day long. They call themselves the grading traders rooms in the world. And there many people probably bought joy today over the high of the day as along. Would I call that a good trade? No, I think it's a horrible trade. The trade we did today was a great trade. So you know, I don't do pot shots. I rate the gap, I look for the setup, I've got the target, it goes to it, mount. So it is about calculated risk, but you have to know what you're willing to afford. So if you can afford $1,000 or $500 or $400, then you don't risk it. Every person that should have the wherewithal to even train the US stock market should be able to risk at least $100 in a live trade cash. If you don't feel that you can afford that, then you have to work, save your money, and wait until you can open up an account and risk that much. Because that is a small account to take that risk. And that is something that it should be very doable for anyone that has full-time employment, okay? And that amounts to $500 if you take one traded day a week, okay? So you really have to get out of thinking, oh my gosh, I have to have a million dollars to trade and I have to have a hundred grand and I have to have this and I have to have that and I have to risk $500 and I have to make $1,000 a day and if I don't, then this isn't worth it. No, that's not true. If you can make a $100 risk per trade each day and make an average of $200 per day, which is 1,000 a week and 48 grand a year and 4,000 a month, okay? Then it's worth your time investment. No one says you have to make $1,000 a day. Everyone wants to just run before they walk and I know not to do that because I learned the hard way. I learned the hard way when I started it out and guess what, I just learned the hard way now with Adobe. If I end up having to take the loss in this train, I will have learned the hard way in doing these options now but I can tell you right now, I won't forget it. So when you go through this process of going to the next level with doing things sometimes, you learn the hard way but if you're smart, you won't forget it. Yeah, Trader Gal is saying a profit count, small risk of 100, you have discipline and a pram. All right, good job today everyone. If you have any questions, email me at melissathestalkswitch.com.