 If you're not waking up every single day in the first two, three years, trying to convince yourself how to stay in this business, why to stay in this business, and not thinking about quitting at least 30 times a week, you're not normal, you're not human, okay, and that's okay. Welcome to Access a Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey guys, good morning everybody. Welcome to another edition of The Access a Trader.com. We can update, show hope everybody's doing well. First and foremost, happy new year. If you're watching this broadcast, just know you're blessed, right? Again, everybody wants different things in life and different aspirations, but the most basic thing in life is life, right? So if you're watching this broadcast, you are blessed. Count your blessings. It means you're alive, you're healthy, and that's already a great day. Everything else is cherry on top. So I want to wish everybody a very happy and healthy, most important. I kind of always drive that point home healthy 2022 and beyond. Obviously the last two weeks of the year from my family, we were all fighting COVID. I'm pretty much now back to 100%. Only my daughter somehow became immune to the damn thing. I don't know how she didn't catch it with all the sick in the house, but thank God knock on wood. Again, small little things, small little blessings, and hopefully she'll never catch it. Hopefully, fingers crossed. So everybody, welcome to 2022. So far so good. The bad news is you can see it from the kind of news point of all. And anybody who knows somebody probably is sick with COVID, the Somariano Micron, whatever the hell it's called, is ridiculous. I think we had one day last week, I think we had close to 100,000 cases for the day in New Jersey. Now, yes, we all get it. You're probably not going to die from it. But man, oh man, I'm double vaccinated. My wife and everybody in my house is double vaccinated. My wife even has the booster and we all caught it. So again, I don't think that the narrative anymore is if you're vaccinated, you're safe. Trust me, you're not. I think the narrative now is, well, you're probably going to get it and hope the God gave a milder case. But I think that from what the government is telling us, if you're vaccinated, you're safe. Trust me, you're not. I can have two weeks, very, very unpleasant. And the most important thing is stay alive and stay healthy. So let's talk about the market. So number one, for all you guys who are trading for your first year, for your first two years, congratulations. You made it another year. It's really a good thing. In this business, nobody wakes up as a trader. I'm doing this for going on my 23rd year. Nobody wakes up in one day, go, yeah, I want to become a trader. I think it's great. Okay, fantastic. Nobody does that. So everybody starts the same thing the same way. And your goal, even though subconsciously you won't admit it to yourself, your goal for the first three years or so is just to make it to the next year. Try to really grab as much positive data and positive information you can have. And again, I've been saying this for years with social media, it's very, very tough because you have a lot of inexperienced traders trying to convince you they are experienced and they're only three, four months doing it longer than you. And again, the most important part of being a new trader and starting your journey is the human side of it. And if you haven't thought about quitting your first two years 30 times a month, you're not human. Okay, everybody before you has done it. Okay, everybody who's now trading 20, 25, 30 years has done it as well. So you're right on the track, right? You really are on the right track. So your first couple of years, you're trying to kind of find yourself to see who you are, what type of personality you have based on risk tolerance, count size, lifestyle, all that good stuff that makes you special, unique. And that's why the whole theory of emulating another trader and following another trader is stupidity. Okay, because the other trader is probably doing a lot longer than you or the lot trader has a different account size than you has different monthly bills than you. So there's no way in God's green earth, you can possibly emulate another trader. That's where the personal experience comes in. That's where the personal journey comes in. This is where everybody develops on their own timeline. And there is no finish line. There is no trophies. The only good thing about it is as you get more time in this business and you get more screen time, the screen time aspect is real. That is the one common denominator, no matter if you are trading options or trading futures or trading forex, or like me, high beta technology, we're all in kind of the same path of getting data. And the more times you see that data throughout the years, you're going to start, like we talked about in the last video, I think it was on Wednesday, you're going to start omitting a lot of negative habits. A lot of negative habits, a lot of things that new traders more chances than not are going to shoot themselves in the foot. And slowly but surely, like I said in Wednesday's video, you're not going to be a better trader every year. Your goal is to become a less shittier one. And that's the common denominator behind all traders. But that's kind of the goal line, right? That's kind of the path that every single trader faces. And if you are in your first year going on to your second, I think that's fantastic. I think you should give yourself a round of applause. You're probably still in that early stages just trying to figure out the difference between a bit in an S, but that's okay, right? You're still trying to figure out what type of trader you want to be, whether you're trading, again, the commodities market, forex, whatever it is, whatever your drug of choice is, you're still trying to figure out your lane and your comfortability in that lane. And just be comfortable just to know that every trader is gone the same path as you. Nobody's special, right? Nobody's special. This business was basically created in the mid 90s. It's about 35, 40 years old, realistically, for people controlling their own finances. Yes, there's people have been trading it from the 70s and the 60s and the 80s. But it's very, very rare that number one started in the pointing click system, as we've seen and kind of know it now, before kind of the 93, 94, 95 area, which the sales band that started. So we're kind of 35 years into this thing. Nobody has every answer in the world. We're still learning, even I'm going on my 23rd year to be 23 years in May. There's still a lot of things to fix, right? And there's a lot of things to fix. But I will tell you this much, it gets a lot easier as time goes by, because all the emotional baggage kind of starts leaving you year by year. Like you know, you don't need to trade every single day, you know, you don't need to hop onto the hot stocks. And you know, new traders are drawn into that time square, bright lights, hot stock. Veteran traders, we don't care about that. We don't care about the hot stock. The hot stock represents retail. Retail is the ones that are in the park. They're pigeons. They're diving into that crumb that somebody throws in the park and there's 30,000 pigeons trying to crawl in that thumb. It doesn't work out well, okay? And slowly but surely as time goes by, you're going to be disconnected from the whole, is it Monday yet? Or is it a new year yet? Or is it, you know, or I have to trade today? Again, you don't have to trade. Just relax. It's all about longevity. It's all about your career. It's not about the day. It's not about the trade. It's about your career. And if you are very, very serious about having a career in this business that's lasting one of 35 minutes, you're going to finally realize that, you know what, maybe today's not my day. Maybe tomorrow will give me a better hand to play. If I'm getting a two seven offsuit today, I don't have to play it, right? I know the market's open. I don't care about the market's open. The market's not giving you the reason to trade values giving the trade. I've been saying this for years and years and years and one day you're going to wake up whether it's year two, year six, year eight and finally realize that I don't need the FOMO, okay? I have the FOMO, the JOMO, the joy of missing out. I'm okay, right? I don't need to trade. I don't have to trade. I'll wait for tomorrow for a better hand. And the most important part is again guys, like I said, if you're not waking up every single day in the first two, three years trying to convince yourself how to stay in this business, why to stay in this business and not thinking about quitting at least 30 times a week, you're not normal, you're not human, okay? And that's okay. You'll be okay, okay guys? You'll be all right. There is no magic time that you're going to wake up one day and say to yourself, well, this is it. If I don't make it by this day, I don't deserve to be in this business. I don't need to be in this business. I'm not smart enough to be in this business. Take a deep breath, right? Take a deep breath. If you're, you know, if you love social media, use social media after hours, okay? Technical analysis. If all you guys are just watching this broadcast the first time, it's all about technical analysis. All these little lines and all these little charts, they're telling you a story. Stocks where they came from, where they stopped, where they're possibly going is, and you don't need 20 people on social media to tell you their opinion about the stock. You can see it with your own eyes. It's either going to go or it's not going to go. And you're using data to make your determination technically, if and when you need to allocate your money. If not, again, give it to somebody else, right? It's the Jomo. It's a joy of missing out. You're getting a clear path to the goal line. You're not getting the sexy one. You're not getting the sexy stock. As I have said for years and years and years, we're not looking, okay? I'm not looking to trade the hot stock. I'm looking for the chart that potentially can get hot. And that's the more important. So I want to wish everybody a happy and healthy and prosperous 2022. I hope all you guys who are on year one are getting to year two for all you guys are year five and getting to year six and on and on and on. Eventually, you will be comfortable in your own skin. And the most important part is you will be where you want to be. So let's talk about the market. So we got our year-end rally. Pretty impressive numbers throughout the throughout the year. The Q's, you know, Nasdaq 100 was up 27%, obviously a big deal led by your favorite stocks. No matter what it is, you know, your Microsoft's of the world and your Apple's of the world and the video's of the world and all that good stuff, right? Tesla's of the world, all my favorite stocks. They're great. They love and awesome. You know, they're, you know, if only you guys are watching this for the first time, I would say 90, 95% of all my trades are literally the same 10 stocks every single day. So I don't get too creative. So I love these stocks, whether it's long, short, doesn't make a difference as long as I can at least identify technically which way the wind is going to blow. And traditionally the fourth quarter is was a very bullish time and it was, right? We had a really good bullish run. And if you look at the Q's, especially for the last two weeks or so, again, we had a little bit of turbulence around the 50 day moving average and we'll get to that and why it's important for a bunch of individual stocks coming into the morning. But you could see the importance of the 50 day moving average. What happens when you lose the 50 day moving average, you go into the next support zone. And what happens when you reclaim the 50 day moving average, you go on a big run. So that's kind of a big, big deal. And for all you new traders going into this year, that 50 day is a monster line in the sand. If stocks break down below the 50 day, it usually starts a sequence of pretty aggressive selling into the next rising demand zone. And if stocks reclaim the 50 day on the close, it starts a really aggressive cycle back to the upside. And just keep that in mind when we start talking about some individual names in a few minutes. But that's kind of where we are. And traditionally that first quarter is very, very bullish, right? Everybody, even if you're a brand new trader, you've heard the word January effect. Usually that is the time where a lot of speculation money, not necessarily even small cap names, which I don't trade. I would trade, I think I trade small caps. I think if I had 10 small cap trades this year was all driven on option flow. Okay. So I'm not really a big small cap trader, but traditionally that January effect is kind of a big deal for small caps, but not only for small caps or anything that is set to be attached to speculation money. So because brand new funds are allocating, right? All these pension funds, index funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, even individual investors, they're allocating speculation money to the start of the year. They're expecting that investment throughout the year to be very, very fruitful. So traditionally it's a very, very important part of the year. And there's an old adage that says the first two weeks of the year, how they go will probably have the rest of the year to follow. I think it's an old wives tale. I don't believe in that. Because if you guys remember, I think it was 2018, we had a horrific fourth quarter and we had a horrific start to the year of 2019. And after that first month, month and a half or so, we had a really, really aggressive market. So don't listen to a lot of media outlets telling you, well, it's very important in the first week. If we don't rally that first week, well, hell, this market's going to zero. It's going to hell in a hand basket. Yeah, not so fast. Okay. There's a lot of old wives tales in this market. Remember, nothing needs to happen, right? Nothing needs to happen. Nothing has to happen. What's happening is a day to day and how much data you are formulating into your opinion. So let's talk about where we are. Forget about what we've been. Whatever you've accomplished in year 2021, it's behind you, right? Now, whether you had a great year, subpar year, or you're just learning, just trying to get in your feet wet, it's behind you, right? Good part about it is it's going on your mental roll of that. So all those experiences you've seen and you've been okay with, right? You're taking it and you're spilling it over all that experience into the following year. But the most important part is where we are going into the first week of 2022. So let's talk about this. So NASDAQ had a really good run and especially the market itself just had a really, really good run. The last, you know, week and a half, two weeks or so from bouncing and reclaiming the 50-day moving average. You could see here why it was so important to when the 50-day got lost, it got traded down to the next support zone. And again, keep that in mind before we talk about some individual names. But to the credit of the NASDAQ and to a lot of indexes in itself, we got a remount, a good remount off the 50-day moving average and started a really good five-day run. And for the last couple of days, we lost a little bit of steam. Now, the playing devil's advocate, if you guys remember in the last couple of days going into Thanksgiving, that Wednesday, right? Thursday we were closed for Thanksgiving and that Friday we had a pretty aggressive sell-off. And the question was going into that Monday, well, what was going to happen next? So the bulls are going to just roll over and die. The bear is going to take over. And the question was answered very, very quickly that Monday. If you guys remember that Friday, we lost like eight, nine hundred Dow points. And the next day on Monday, we got back five, six hundred points right away because, again, predominantly players returned. If you guys remember, there's nobody around in the last two days of the year. There's really not. You could see the action from last week. There was nobody around. So the question is, was that a true market? Was that a true representation of them selling Amazon? Them selling, starting to selling back Apple, starting to selling back Microsoft at their really, really big runs, selling Amazon. Amazon never participate in the rally. As much as we saw a really good aggressive call-buying for very short-term expiration on Amazon, it never played out that way. Tesla, I believe Tesla's coming out with some China numbers over the weekend. If they haven't come out already, I apologize, I just have not looked at any news at all this weekend. But more important was, well, you know, what's Tesla going to do? Right? What's Tesla going to do? It's held now the 50-day moving average twice. What is it going to do? What is Nvidia going to do? These are the leaders of the past year. What are these stocks going to do the first year, first week of the new year? And obviously, that is to be determined. We will see what happens on Monday. But the most important part is kind of getting ready, right? Get kind of getting ready mentally, taking a deep breath. And for all you guys who are brand new to trading the first two, three years, I'm going to give you a really, really important piece of advice. A lot of you guys, if you did go out on your Z, if you probably went out with a lot of your buddies and you know, I've done the same thing. Okay, all the way back then, like 99 and stuff like that. I've done exactly the same thing. We're going to kill it, man. You know, the liquor starts getting into your system. Again, I don't drink. By the way, I got destroyed on your Z. Not through alcohol. I don't drink. I eat more sushi than a human body can handle. I'm still going through sushi with a draw, but that's not here nor there. So, you know, you know the drill, right? You're in a nightclub. You're in and hopefully you guys are safe. You're in a nightclub. You're in a bar and you're sitting with your trading buddies. Two, three years that you're we're going to kill it, man. This is our year. And then you realize come Monday morning, you're doing exactly the same thing that you've done the previous year that's gotten you nowhere. And that's a very, very depressing first week for you. Then you just realize that you haven't changed anything. You haven't really omitted any bad habits. You haven't formulated any new opinions, technical analysis, kind of going through the wayside. You're still looking for the hot stock of the day. And the only thing that's changed is the date on the calendar. And that's a very, very depressing point of view when you turn off your computer at four o'clock that day and realize nothing has changed. And that becomes very, very impressive. For all you guys who are brand new in trading, let me just give you a great piece of advice. Monday is an ordinary trading day. It literally is. There's no difference between this Monday or last Wednesday or two Thursdays ago. It's exactly the same thing. It's not about the calendar day. It's not about, quote, unquote, I'm going to kill it this year. It's all about me learning this year, me getting better this year, getting more practical omitting bad habits this year. And if you haven't done that, if you haven't seen that progression throughout 2021, well, what makes you think come Monday morning, anything's going to be different. So take a step back, right? It's all about value. It's all about your preparation and research going into the new week and making sure you are prepared that you are not, you're not faced with any unexpected things. And that's where, again, technical analysis takes place. So where are we? Right? So where are we? So here's kind of where we are. Okay? So the NASDAQ 100, the Qs, we close now below the five-day moving average. Again, if you've been watching this broadcast or very, very new to trading or very, very new to this broadcast, you kind of well know or maybe not know, but the five-day moving average is, at least for me, the most important shortest-term sentiment. It really does show you who has control of the next trading day, right? It's not a long-gated opinion of what's going to happen three months from now or three weeks from now. It's basically what probably could happen the next day. And you can see here how we close not only below the five-day moving average, but what we closed below this rising linear regression line is you can see there's been a really, really big battle line throughout the last couple months or so. And if you believe in the theory, again, that stocks trade from supply to supply, well, stocks trade from demand to demand. And the next level of demand is the 10-day moving average, which becomes the birth of the trade. If it, you know, birth the trade to the upside, that means it's become the birth of the trade to the downside. And if you look at a lot of names that are in the NASDAQ 100, again, some of the biggest players out there, you kind of see the same thing. Apple closed below the five-day moving average. Microsoft closed below the five-day moving average. Facebook, right? Facebook closed below the five-day moving average. Names like Amazon never rallied, right? Absolutely never rallied. It was a pretty good, pretty good aggressive pivot on Friday off that 3370 level, gotten to the 3330s. And you can see here now it's all the way right close to this bottom of the range here. And we're not talking about the five-day moving average on Amazon. It's been below the 50-day moving average now for quite a while here. It's been for, you know, for about two weeks now. So if we start taking out the bottom of the range here on Amazon that never rallied with everything else, well, that's a very, very big problem. And then you start looking at names like a Tesla, right? That is the stock has been a godsend. It really has been on the long side, on the short side. And this week has been some phenomenal, phenomenal bounces on Tesla from the five-day, from the 50. But now we're at the level that it's hugging the 50-day moving average. And again, as you can see here, the 50-day moving average is a big deal. When it lost its 50-day moving average right over here, it started two weeks worth of selling. And when it reclaimed the 50-day moving average, it had really two, three days big of buying before it hit the upper linear regression line. So now we're sitting at the 50-day moving average on Tesla. I'm guessing depending on the data, and unless I'm completely messed up in my brain and the sushi overload, I thought there was some data coming out this weekend, some sort of data from China. Let's just pretend it doesn't. Then everybody knows I'm already out of my mind. But let's just pretend from phase value. It's touched now the 50-day moving average now two days in a row. This is a definitive line in the sand. If we close below the 50-day moving average on Tesla and you believe in the theories of technical analysis, well here it was two weeks worth of selling below the 50-day moving average. If we open below the 50-day moving average and reclaim it, then obviously any close above the 50-day moving average, the bull thesis is still in place. So this is definitely one that I am watching from Monday. I'm going to watch that 50-day moving average. If the bears start taking control, you know, we got a pretty good scenario back to the downside. If the bulls hold and start taking out the previous channels high, then obviously the 50-day moving average is your max pain stop if you get long above the 50-day remount. Same thing with the video, right? Same thing with the video. You see here how it stopped right at the 50-day moving average on Friday. That will be a huge battleground. If we can test that 50-day in the bull's hold and they trap very, very eager late shorts, then yeah, we could squeeze right back up. But if we violate this 50-day moving average on the video and we start really building below that opening range lows, then you're talking about an initial eight to 10 points and then obviously any close over 86 goes all the way back down to the next demand zone, all the way down into the 270s that we saw this third week of December. So this will be very, very important. Also take names for example, like the Bitcoin related names, right? Bitcoin has been a little bit of a downturn. Again, I'm not a big crypto guy, but I kind of know what's going on. 47,000 in Bitcoin. Well, look at derivatives, right? Look at the derivatives of Bitcoin. You've got names like a Coinbase, right? Like a Coinbase has been, well, had this big, big run-up with Bitcoin and then it's kind of gone mirroring Bitcoin's performance. And you could see here on Coinbase. You have three days in a row on the bottom channel. If you look at the 60-minute support, 60-minute support, look how tight it's getting on this Bollinger Band. This Bollinger Band gets lost and this daily channel gets violated, right? You have room all the way back down to the bottom of the channel. Even names, for example, like a Mara, right? Like a Mara, that's again kind of a Bitcoin derivative. Same thing, had this big, big run-up on Bitcoin, kind of went big down. And now it's just trying to hold on to this daily linear regression line that's tested five days in a row. As you can see here, first close on Friday below this linear regression line. If this thing confirms opening range lows, look how much room you have, right? Same thing with a name like a Riot, right? Same thing like a Riot. It's holding this bottom of the range here. It's sitting here two, one, two, three, four, five times defended this linear regression line. This linear channel falls and Bitcoin continues to fall. It's going to fall right with it. So there's definitely themes playing out here that at least the first day of the week. Again, nobody's trying to predict prices. The market goes up, the market goes down. Who the hell knows where we're going to be, right? We have rising cases. Is the market going to engulf this bad news and continue to kind of live with this whole COVID theme for the rest of our lives? Maybe so, maybe not. We don't know, right? We're not in the prediction business. We're not in the guessing business. I don't know where these stocks are going to close at four o'clock. All we can do is prepare to where they potentially can go. So even take names, even the hotel names, casino names, like look at a name like wind, right? Look at a name like wind that, again, obviously if COVID is on the rise and again, you absolutely need the book of a vacation, then you're thinking about twice. Obviously the casinos, obviously the cruise ships are going to have a lot of better problems and look at wind. Wind is just sitting on the bottom channel here on the 10 and 20 day cross. If wind starts losing this channel here, look at which room you have down to the downside. So there's a lot of value potentially going to the downside opening this week. Are there names that I like to the upside that look pretty good? Yeah, there are. Look at Starbucks, right? Look at Starbucks. I had a really, really big move from the bottom. I would like this thing to go sideways maybe for a couple of days, but you can see here at the top of the channel here it's gotten rejected off the same price three times. A name like Rivian, name like Rivian. Again, do I love it? No, I don't love it. It's not something that I'm dying to trade, but if the market does get good, you can see the top of the channel here. If this thing gets violated, maybe this thing could wake up, right? Maybe a name like RBLX, if the market gets going, right? Maybe starts reclaiming this top of the channel as well, but I don't love these stocks, right? That's the thing. I don't love these stocks. I'm seeing there's a lot more value if we could confirm to the downside. Obviously, I would love to see us rally every single day. Everybody feels better on a bull market. Everybody feels taller and prettier and more handsome, right? Food tastes better, air tastes, smells fresher, but the point is the stock market goes up, the stock market goes down. As much as I preferable market, I have no problem trading to the downside as we all know that old adage staircase up, elevated down, stocks go down very, very aggressively, very, very fast. And again, like I said for many, many years, God gave you two hands, two ears, two eyes, you could trade both sides of the market. And as you get deeper into this business and you get much more comfortable, you'll realize you're not a bad person, okay? You're not a bad person for wanting to short stocks when the sentiment is telling you it's a sell bias. And you're equally not a bad person when you're looking to buy stocks that somebody thinks the company sucks, right? Social media thinks the stock sucks, man. Okay. Okay. Whatever. So price action is the most important part. Remember, our opinions don't mean anything. It's all about collecting data. And the most important part is making it to the next year. So guys, I want to wish everybody a very happy and healthy 2022. I hope you guys develop. I hope you guys develop in a pace that you feel comfortable. And the most important part is of any type of flow in this business is actually staying in business. Guys, God bless. Have a wonderful week. Have a wonderful 2022. And may God continue to bless you and your family. Take care, guys.