 found she knows what she's talking about. She's going to tell us about make money fast shorting. So let me just give her a little send off here. She's the founder and owner of her company, which is an international educational company where she teaches people how to successfully trade the stock market. The method she teaches is her own and she created it, which is unique to the stock swish. The method is based on one strategy called golden gaps, which pinpoints institutional money in the stock market. And that's just the short version, I'm sure. Melissa, you will fill us in on everything that's up and what's changing, right? You're self muted. Can you hear me? Yes, just a second. Let me just move this off of here so that you guys don't get a feedback loop here. All right. Can you try again? Thanks for coming and thanks for joining and thanks for being available in case I couldn't get my act together with that. You have your full 60 minutes and I'm going to change you to be the presenter and you do like to see the questions on the fly. Am I right? Yes, I do. I'm on the fly kind of gal. Okay, I knew that. And so it's going to knock out your mic for about five seconds. So just count to five and then you should be back as soon as I hit that button right there. Okay, testing, testing, testing. Let me know if you can hear me. Now it's back. Now you're back and I will mute myself and you take it away. Wonderful. Thanks so much for having me. It's so great to be here with everybody today. Exciting day to talk about stocks. And of course, it's going to be an exciting week next week is the Fed meeting, which people have been dreading or some people have been excited about because the Fed is going to make some more indication about interest rates. Are they going to lower rates? Are they going to stop raising rates or are they going to continue raising rates? Excuse me. So if you have any questions, you can plop them in the room. I'll see them as we go along. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Melissa Armell, and I do own my own company called the Stock Swoosh. I've been trading since 2008, which sounds like a very long time. And it is a very long time actually. But it's funny because I used to do mortgages for about 17 years. And now that I think about it, I'm so glad that I'm not doing mortgages right now because interest rates are so high. It's probably very difficult to get people approved for mortgages. Seven and a half, eight percent interest rates. And again, it's just indicative of the type of environment we're in. And of course, what happens next week with the Fed, which is with interest rates, will affect the stock market and really will end up affecting the economy, which has been happening all this year. So today we're going to talk about trading. We're going to talk about shorting. We're going to talk about gaps, which is what I do. And we're going to talk about how to short for fast profits. So again, feel free to ask me questions as we go along. I'm going to continue talking with the PowerPoint, but we may flip back and forth with the charts if you have questions as well. So this is me. And if you have questions, you can email me at melissathesoxswitch.com. You can call me at 929-3200 gap. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Pinterest, or Skype. I have a lot of videos on YouTube actually where I have my trading room. And then I have my TV hits and you can learn more about what I do with gaps. Again, I appear on television. I appear in Fox News, mostly Fox Business, Cheddar, and a few other channels as well talking about the stock market. So when I first started trading, I started trading because I wanted a new career. Like I said, I was doing mortgages. And at the time it was 2007-2008. I did know what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted a new career. And then I found out about trading. And I said, oh, this is really easy. I think I can do it. And I thought I was going to trade like that. But I didn't know what I was doing. And it wasn't that easy. And then it was a process in about three years until I figured out how to trade. I developed my own system, which I now teach. And I trade full time. But when I started, it was a transition for me. If you are someone that wants to do something different for your job or your career, you have to start that transition. And I say the sooner the better. Because it's a process to learn. You can take my class. We're going to talk about my class. But you may have questions after the class. You may come back to me after the class. You may be working and trading part-time. And that's okay. If you want to make a transition, the sooner you start that process, the better. Because everybody has a different learning curve. Again, for me, I took one class. I wish I could say that in the one class I took, I learned how to make money in the market. I didn't. I did not. I never took another class after that. And ironically, that class, which was in 2008, was 15 years ago, was actually more money than I charge for my class now. But I did learn a basic foundation of technical analysis, which helped me develop the system that I do. And actually did teach me that reading price action and reading chart action was extremely important and how you can make money in the market. And ultimately, the reason that we trade is to make money. While trading is fun and people do it, people are doing it now and losing every day. It's not fun if you lose. It's just not. And if you're someone that's losing, you should stop. Take a break for a little bit and reevaluate because whatever you're doing isn't working if you're losing. But trading is a great job if you can do it full-time. Why? You can make unlimited income and you can work from home. What's better than that? Nothing. And again, the idea of unlimited income is how much money you risk depends on how much you can make and the quality of the trades you take, which obviously you're looking for quality trades. So it's not about piggers, you know, getting massive, massive, huge wins and having one big winner and 10 losses. It's about consistency with the winners. Okay. And then every once in a while you do a big winning trade. But the consistency is what many, many people lack with trading. Okay. And again, if you have questions, I will see them as we go along. But you have one goal when you trade. One goal and that is really to make money. And really, that's my focus every day. So it's one of these things where when I'm looking to trade to short specifically, I'm trying to look for the fast moves right out of the gate. As soon as the market opens, bang, bang, boom. Market opens at the New York time. I'm living New York 930. We're trying to get a trade between 930 and 10am Eastern time. It's an extremely important time to trade. These are our stats on our results. So far through the end of August, I took Labor Day off and a couple of days off for my birthday. But these are the stats for the end of August for the live trading room with an average risk of $2,800 per trade, $417, 937. Was a good start to the year. Eight months into the year, we got four months left. And we're going to be extremely, extremely focused. Again, I think the rest of this year could be more bearish than the start to 2023, which was bullish. Okay. All of these trades are day trades. What do I mean? I mean, you have to have a margin account. If you don't have a margin account, you have to do options. Now I do have an options newsletter. The options newsletter is a newsletter, which I'll show you some trades we did. Here comes to your email. I risk more in my options trades. My average risk is about $8,000 per trade. So these results are much bigger because I was risking much more money on the options. You can do one contract. You could risk $300 a trade. For me, I like holding overnight and I want to take bigger size of my options trades. Again, I will buy a put, which is a short essentially, and then I'm selling it to exit the trade. And again, we'll talk about options in a little bit, but options are a way to trade stocks if you don't have a margin account. So for example, yesterday we did Oracle. I called a put in Oracle, which was cheaper than doing the trade on margin. So far for the year with an average risk of $8,000, $936, 895 is the stats here to date. Again, you could be risking more. You could be risking more. And again, we do do calls and puts, but I mostly prefer to short. And a put is a short in an option. It's a way, it's a cheaper way to take a day trade. And it also allows you an option allows you to hold a trade overnight with a fixed risk. If I risk $7,500 in an option and the trade goes bust and goes completely against me, that's all I'm going to lose. Whereas if you do a swing trade and the trade goes against you and you hold it overnight, you have unlimited risk. And that's bad. That's bad particularly in this type of market. Anyways, trading requires a positive attitude. It's one of these things I've been presenting with Sherry for a long time. I'm a very, very positive and optimistic person. I think that helps me when I teach people, when I run the live trading room, when I personally train, when I talk to people that have been down and out that have been losing money trading and they feel like they've been hit over the head with a bat. I get it. Not everybody wakes up today, boom, and starts to make money trading. It's almost an impossibility. And again, many people take a class and they don't get anything out of the class and then they lose money in the class. Then they lose money trading and then they question why they're doing this. You may have to take several classes until you get with someone that clicks until you find a strategy and a system and a class that actually works. It's one of these things where it really, really is a process and you have to be able to go through that process and do it yourself or learn from someone else to do it. So in order to become successful, you need a system and a niche. So I teach my class once a month, my class on gaps, my class on shorting, and we're going to talk about that today. But ultimately, like I said, the goal is to make money for everyone as a loser. Like we shorted Oracle yesterday. Somebody lost. Somebody went long Oracle yesterday. We shorted it. We got in, got out, it worked. So you're not knitting a sweater, making a pair of socks. You're not creating anything. You're not manufacturing a product when you trade. And that's one of the nice things though about doing this as a job. It's actually a really easy job if you know what to do and you know how to train. But you've got to have a good system. You have to follow it daily. And if you don't, you're going to be all over the place. I was talking about this earlier today. Again, I appear in TV Kramer. I'm sure you've heard of Kramer. He has a show in CNBC. Kramer says, I like this. I like that. You know, he talks about stocks and he mostly goes long. But anyways, he talks about what he thinks about stocks. He doesn't have a system that is applicable that you can say, do this, this, this, this, this, and then it's going to go there. He says, I think this or I think that based on the earnings report or based on the fundamentals or whatever, that's very much, you know, not something that you can apply and say, well, I'm going to follow his method. He doesn't really have a set method. You come and you learn my method, the 26 points, it's a rating system. You can apply it yourself. You say, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, and you do it and you go through the system and you add it up and you should get the same amount of points as I get. And that's something that you can learn and you can apply yourself and do. It's not, well, I think this, well, I think that. And very often those types of thinking systems do not work. Okay? This, what I do is very intellectual. Again, looking at the price action, it's the price action of the gap, but it's very intellectual when I do it. It's not something that you just, you know, wouldn't be able to read somebody's mind and tell what they're thinking or let alone have time to read through the whole earnings report or whatever report came out to get the information. You only have a very limited amount of time to train, particularly day trades. And even if you're doing options, I'm doing the weekly options, or if I do something out for the following week, like a week and a half, two weeks the most. But for me, when I trade, my focus is gaps. And we're going to go over what a gap is. I'm trying to do one trade a day. One trade a day is it. Fast trades in and out. And again, volatility is great because if something moves quick and fast and drops $2, you get the thousand shares of it and you short it and it falls $2. What are you going to make? You're going to make $2,000. Boom. You could make that in five minutes, 10 minutes, but you got to get the pick right. You got to get the pick right. The pick is very important. Can everybody see this? We're on Oracle chart. Let's take a look at it. So this was 9-11. Oracle was here. This is a one minute. Oracle is up here around 126 and change. Gapped down in the morning. Now what is a gap? A gap is a difference between the clothes and the open. So this was four o'clock Eastern time on 9-11. And then at 9-30, 9-12, the stock gap down. And this was a short. So I called a put in this, but you could have also done a day trade in this too. And here is what you would have shorted. Here's the move. Again, this is a gap down. Boom. Could have shorted it. Now again, you could have done an option. You see where this went. You see where this opened here around 112. And so came all the way down here, 107 and change. That is a nice move. A big move actually. So what is a gap? A gap is a difference between the clothes and the open. Stocks gap most every single day, but not every gap is a good gap or what I call a golden gap. I'm looking for gaps that are predictable. How do I do that? I use my gap rating system. So this is what you come and learn from me. Like I said, it's applicable. You can apply it to anything in the market, ETFs, stocks, and you utilize it to your advantage to be able to make the daily picks. Here is the spy. Now last week we did some putts. The spy fell. Okay. So here is a spy closed here, gap down. This is four o'clock eastern time when the market closes. 9 30 in the morning fell. Boom. Gap down here. So again, you could have shorted the market here. You could have bought a put, could have got it and got out. You could have got in, got out. This is actually a gap down. Even though the bar is green, this closed here at four, this open at 9 30. See here? So again, that is a spy gap. What about Oracle? Stock closed here, gap down. So what happened with this one? This is a daily chart. We were looking at the one minute before. Oracle closed up here around 126 and change open down here around 112. Something fell. Beautiful move. Here's the volume. Again, this is a sell off. A sell off, which you would have wanted to short. This is again, we're talking about volatility. A $5 move, $100 price point stuff is volatility. You want to be able to capture that and you don't have a lot of time to mess around. You got one day, boom, in and out, two done. But again, that's to your benefit. Then you don't have to worry about the market. You don't have to worry about what the market's doing. Fast trades are great because then you don't have to worry about the market. I'm looking for momentum in the gap. To make money. And I wanted to go fast. If I could make three grand a day, every single day in one minute, 60 seconds, that would be a dream life. It would be fabulous. Boom, boom, boom. And again, some trades we do with that fast. Some trades are five minutes. Some trades are 10 minutes. Some trades are 15 minutes. But again, we're looking to get in and out between 9.30 and 10 a.m. Eastern. Any questions here so far? So we're talking. Okay, let me keep going. But getting back to momentum. So if you have a thousand shares of a stock and you short it and it drops a dollar, you'll make a thousand dollars. If you have a thousand shares of a stock and you short it and it drops 10 cents, you're going to make $100. Which would you rather make? You'd rather make the thousand, the thousand. So again, I'm not scalping. I'm trying to get big moves. And also, again, I want fast moves. So if I can make $1,000 in five minutes, that's better than making $1,000 in six hours. I think the longer you're in trades, the more you're at risk for the possibility of losing money or the trade turning against you. Okay, so fast is better. So for me, shorting is the way to go simply because of the fact that stocks drop faster than they're rallying. That's just the way it is. But getting back to system and following a system where we're talking about the example with Kramer, again, you've got to have a system. If you're trading without a system, you're not having any consistency. So you've got to find a system first. Then you've got to follow it. And then you can't veer off of it. You can't make it up as you go along. You've got to follow the system. Trade a system that sets up with a daily level of predictability and preferably one that works independently in the market. So again, most of the trades we did this year actually were short and the market was bullish this year. The market has been bullish this year. Well, we could turn the second half or the tail end of 2023. So far this year, the market has been strong. You cannot deny the strength in the market this year. We started the year rallying in January. But success or failure of anything that you do with your trading. And again, it doesn't matter if you do options or a day trades. It has to do with the quality of your system, which is extremely important. So for me, my niche is shorting. It's shorting. It's fast moves. It's getting in and out quickly. But it's based on institutional money. So my method is based on reading institutional money, moves and stocks. And it's, they're based on gaps. So not every, you know, you can't short every down gap. You can't go long every up gap. So people want to do gap fills. That doesn't consistently work, which would mean a gap down that you go along. You can't do that. You could see if you did that in Oracle, how you would have lost, you would have lost a lot of money. It dropped five dollars plus. So I'm looking for what I call the good gaps or what I term the golden gaps, but it's gaps that are made with institutional money and then follow through in the direction of the gap. Gaps are powerful, powerful, powerful, and create the momentum of volatility. And that is what I'm playing on. Many people don't understand gaps. And then they get scared of gaps if they don't know how to do them. And then they shy away from them. But the fact is they could be very profitable. And that's how you can make these kind of numbers because you get big moves with them. And then they also move fast. So having a niche is important for me. It's shorting, but it is also the whole idea of doing gaps. Now this was BA. We did BA a couple of times, but here was a BA. This close here gap down fell. So you see the BA here was a gap down. Okay, you could have shorted this. You could have done a putt. Actually followed through here the second day. You also could have shorted BA here. Look at this sell-off. Actually, airlines are down today. I don't know where this is trading up right now. We're not in this. But airlines were down this morning. All the airlines were down this morning on news. But anyways, you see this sell-off. This is momentum. This was momentum. Here was Apple. Apple, we had a nice put. This was last week. Stock close here gap down called the 180 puts, fell, fell for planet. Gap down here. Well, well, well through the strike. Again, that was an options trade. So again, one of the benefits of doing options is A, countering overnight moves, but big having moves far greater than you could ever have as a day trade. Because again, this went massively big because it followed through in a gap down overnight because it stopped closed here. Okay, we were ready in it, like 183 and change. And then it opened here in the morning. You can see around 175 ish. So that's a big move. That's a big move even for Apple. And again, if you're in this short, this is where all the money is. Okay. And again, options are a great way to capture moves overnight in stocks. And you can trade options with a small account. You can open up a cash account trade options. You don't need a margin account to trade options. You can open up an options account with as little as $2,000. Any questions about that? Any questions about options? So my niche is gas, my niche is shorting. How can you make money shorting? You make money shorting when the stock price drops. Simple. So you're looking for the price to drop for the market. Now, who can short? Anyone can short. As long as you have an account set up to short, retail traders and professional traders can both short. So that's a really nice thing actually. So you may not have realized that you can short, but you can. You have to call your broker and find out how do you set up your account to short, but you can do it. And again, when we're doing options, we're buying puts and then we're selling to exit them. So that's a short. Okay. Buying a put is essentially doing a short. So we're betting the stock price will drop like we did in the Apple. But selling happens fast, very, very quickly. And again, usually we're in and out of the trades quickly in the morning. Now I'm going over here. I took the Labor Day holiday off and a few days off my birthday, but this was the end of August. We had a one week of trades here. These were day trades. These weren't options. The average risk was $2,800 per train. We made $11,965. On this particular week, it was August 21st, Monday, we did no trades. Tuesday, we won. I'm going to go over each of these trades in a minute with the charts, $39,65. Wednesday was $3,200. Thursday was $2,550 profit and Friday was $2,250. You can see how I'm trying to turn my money around one. So if you're risking $1,000, you're trying to make $1,000. If you're risking $500, you're trying to make $500. This is one week of trades and we didn't do anything on Monday because no gaps rated good. So if I go through my process, I go through my point rating system and nothing rates that it's going to drop or fall. I won't do any trades that day. So there were no gaps on that day. 22nd, we had DKX. This was a nice gap. This was really nice short. We entered this and shorted it at $1,595. Risk was $3,315. Exit was $1,290. Profit was $3,965. This is an advanced trader risk. You could have taken 100 shares of this. Again, you do need to have a margin account though because we did not do an option in this. Let's talk about the gap. This was up here the night before, closed here at four o'clock, around 1.47 and change. Boom, open in the morning. This was DKX, around 1.17 something. We got in, got out. Boom, done. And again, I could have held this a lot longer. I got in the short trade, the fast trade in the morning. But this really continued and I could have held this longer. Again, I prefer to do the fast trades. That's just my thing. I do have a live trading room. I call the trades in the live room. You must take my Golden Gap course to join the live room. However, if you would like a trial for the trading room for the rest of this week, for Thursday and Friday, you can email me at ballissathestoxswish.com and we'll give you a free trial for the next two days. But if you want to join the room, if that's what you're asking me, whoever was asking me that, you must take the class to become a room member. Everyone has taken the class. It's been in the room. We talk about proprietary things, also the trade set up very, very quickly. You do not have to have taken the class to sign up for the options newsletter. Those are trades are emailed to you in live time. But in the room, I'm calling the trades live. Where to get in? Where to get out? Where to put the stop? I'm calling the numbers live. If you want to do a trial there for the next two days, you can email me at ballissathestoxswish.com and I will send you one for free for two days. I don't know what we're doing tomorrow. I have no idea what we're doing tomorrow. Thursday night, there's a bunch of earnings, Adobe and Lens. So Friday for sure, I'm sure we're going to get something good. Tomorrow we may have something market related because the unemployment claims are out tomorrow. We have some data out tomorrow. The market could rock and roll tomorrow. We could have some market type things tomorrow. But again, I never know what I'm going to get till I get up. So it's like, it's 1.30 in the afternoon. I have no idea. I have no idea. I don't know till I get out of bed. Now I get out of bed early. I start rating things early. I usually get up pretty early. Rum opens at 9am. I don't start trading till the open. But the early bird gets the worm. The earlier than I'm up, the more I'm prepped, decide what I like to decide what I want to trade, the better off I'll do. So it's just one of these things where I might spend an hour and a half, two hours getting ready and rating stuff, and then I could be out of the trade in like two minutes. But that's low stress to me. So all of my work, the pre-work, the thinking, the preparation is how I make the money. So that's where I put my energy. The trade sets up. I'm ready to go. I'm watching it like we did the work on watching it. It goes boom, boom, boom, done. It's so many people don't even make up their mind what they're doing till after the market opens, and they're so stressed trying to decide what to do. And reading it is, should I share this? Should I get lines? What's the market doing? That's too stressful. If it's 9.30, and I didn't rate anything over 20 points for my 26-point system, I'm doing nothing that day. I'm not, I don't trade on the fly, and you shouldn't trade on the fly either, actually. The 23rd, we did Foot Locker. 15.25, we got in, boom. Exit of 14.85, if you know Foot Locker, it's a rinky dinker. This is actually a decent move for Foot Locker. It doesn't move that much anymore. The price of this has dropped tremendously over the years, actually, since I've been trading this profit was 3,200. A lot of size, but manning get filled. Lots of volume in this. Cheap price point, good one to treat. Stock close here, gap down, we shorted it, we got in, got out, done, boom. That was the end of August. And then we did the DLTR on the 24th. Stock close here, gap down, fell, dropped, entered at 129.90, shares was 1,500, 3,300 risk. Again, you could take less. You could take half the size. You risk half, the quarter. Exit was 128.20, 25.50. I should have held this, actually. I did what I normally do. I did what I normally do. I didn't get out, but look where this went. This went all the way down here, almost got to 122-ish, but I think it did get to 122. That was crazy. I really could have held that, or could have held half of it, but I got out of it in the fast, quick trade. But that was a really nice gap. And it had a big move when we were talking about shorting and we're talking about selling. And this is a great example of that. Stock closed up here around 140 and change, opened here at 130 and fell off a cliff. So again, it's around 130. So this is like eight bucks. That's a huge move for stock, even at this price point. And again, I did not do an option in this. I'm not sure if DLTR even has options, or if they have volume, but I did the day trade. Sometimes I did the same trades in the day trades and the options. Sometimes I don't. So again, some things we short as day trades don't have option availability or they don't have the volume. So, you know, but again, this was a day trade. Everything that we're going over here are day trades on margin that I call live in the room. We will, I will show you some of the newsletters for the options in a little bit, but these are all day trades. What do I mean by a day trade, a trade that I call in the live room that's a trade on margin? What does that mean? You have to have a margin account. You have to have 25,000 minimum at a retail broker where you will have four to one margin, which would be 100,000 in buying power. For example, you know, and again, you don't have to take the size, but just just roughing it out. If a stock costs 130 or approximately where we shorted this, and you wanted to do 1500 shares of this, for example, you would have needed $195,000 in buying power, which is essentially you would have needed $49,000 roughly in cash to do this trade right here on margin. Now, if you have a prop account, it's called a proprietary day trading account, you would have needed a lot less money. You can open up a prop account with $2,500. They will give you 10 to one margin. I would not be risking any huge size with a small account. Say you had $10,000 in a prop account and you had 10 to one margin, you would have had 100,000 in BP. You could have taken half this size. You could have taken maybe 750 shares or 700 shares of this risk half the money here. That would have been okay with a $10,000 cash account, and you would have made like $12,000, $1300. That's still a great trade, and that would have been 10% of your account you would have made on that day. So again, say you have a prop account, and I'm just talking off the cup here, and we'll continue with the lecture, but you could try to build that prop account to get to the 25,000 that you can get then to a retail account. But I mean, prop accounts are good to get started because you get 10 to one. And in a retail broker, you're only getting four to one. So I mean, that is the pros and cons of doing that. And again, there are some people in my trading room that don't have a margin account. They have an options account. If I call a trade like an Apple or something, and I call a day trading Apple and say, I'm not doing a put, they may do a put, and they may get out of it. When I get out of the day trade, I'm not doing that in the room. I'm doing the options separate, but some people are doing that. But it's a cheaper way to trade the stock. Again, I never even looked up any options of this. I don't even know if the LTR has options in it. And if they do, I don't know if they have volume. This isn't something that I've ever done an option in. So some things are the same. Some things are not, but the room is day trades. Does that answer your question? Then on the 25th, we did Marvell. This was really a reason to do price. Huge move. Again, dollar and more. Boom. Out. Entry was 5410. Shares was 2,500. Risk was 3,000. Exit 5320. Profit 2250. So this here, closed here. Gap down, fell. Boom. You're in, you're out. Done. There's the volume. This was Friday. That was before the holiday week. So anyways, it was a good week. It was a good week. Again, you know, I have no idea where we're going to get this week. And I don't know what's going to happen next week with the Fed. I get up in the morning and I rate gaps and I take it as I see it. Now we were talking about options. Here was one we did in the spy. This was in August 2, August 16th, I called a spy put. So this goes to you automatically. The room was closed. 1.15 in the afternoon. I sent this trade out. You buy it. Boom. You do it. So the cost was 3.30. Number of contracts for an advanced trader risk was 25. Risk of 8250. You could have made 127% would have been 10,500. This is selling this the following day, which I'm going to show you the chart. But this is something that if you want to do options with me, you have to check your email. You will take the trade when I send it. Typically I send trades in the morning. Most of them I send in the pre-market. I actually sent Oracle the night before, like at seven o'clock at night. You wouldn't do it till the next day. You don't do options until the market opens. But this one here, if I call and trade this link, either I'm expecting to sell off into the close or I'm expecting to hold it to the next day that it's going to gap down the next morning, which is what this did. So this sold off into the close and gap down the next morning. So this was a nice call here because we captured the timing of this perfect. Now if you've never traded options, I will tell you a timing is extremely important for options. You can make money trading options if you get the momentum and you can make money trading options if you get the direction right. And you can make a lot of money trading options if you get the timing right. If you don't, you're screwed. But you're screwed anyways. You got to get the timing direction and momentum right in any trade you take. So I mean it's like trading 101. It doesn't matter. I don't know what people are like. Oh, it's so much easier No, options are great. If you get it right, again, it's all about the pick. You have to know the spy's going to drop. If you do, you buy the putts, you know, otherwise, if you're long, you're going to lose. Somebody's asking a question. What do I teach in the class? I teach the my 26 point rating system in my class, which is all day on Saturday, which is how you're going to find the picks. How do I know Oracle's going to fall? I rate it in the morning. You're going to learn how I do that. 20 points or more. I take it in the direction of the gap. Then Sunday, it's a two day class. All day Sunday is all the entries that I do. Six different entries and all my exits and targets. So that is what the class is. Essentially, I teach everything in the class that I know that you could do and apply on your own. However, again, if you want to get my trades, if you want to get my calls, then you can be in the room and get them live. Ideally, you should be rating the gaps yourself as well. I know there's people in the room that don't even bother doing that anymore. Again, the class is a prerequisite to join the room, but the fact is that you should be rating things yourself. You're going to trade better yourself if you know what to do. The options newsletter, it's not a prerequisite to do the class, but again, if you understand the system and know what to do, you will trade the options better too. I mean, it's just understanding what to do helps you, particularly in a difficult market. I think the rest of the year could be tricky for people because people are expecting the Fed not to raise rates or lower rates or give some indication they're going to lower rates. The Fed may not do that, in which case the market could really be in for a rough ride in the next four months of the year. Again, we're talking about shorting today, but quite frankly, you should know how to do both. I do know how to go long. I just prefer to short. There's times we go long. I may go long something Friday, but the fact is, because there's two big earnings out on Thursday night, but the reality is I prefer to short. If I don't find a good short, then I will look for a good long, then I'm looking for bullish gaps. But many people have no idea how to short and they're missing many, many opportunities to trade, and they will certainly be missing the opportunity to be able to take advantage of a down market, which we could be in for the end part, I shouldn't say the second part, it's past June, the final quarter of 2023. So anyways, let's look at that 16th where we are. Here we are here. Fell dropped, closed here, gap down, fell, boom. So this was the sell-off. This was back in August. Now, if you had a beginner risk, 330, four contracts, risk was 1320, sold at 750. Again, 127% is a good return. I'm looking to turn over my money one, close enough. Some options, I'll even get out of 50%. Right now, it's not earning season. You know, 50% is good till we get into the busy part of the fall. Anyway, short moves happen fast. Why? Because of a whole concept of panic, this idea of panic, this idea of fear. If you are in a position and something moves against you, you will be scared out of your mind. You will be worried about losing. Okay. And that is the whole thing. And if you are in a trade and you're up, you're not going to be worried. So I mean, when something starts to sell off and fall, you can see how the panic can start to set in. It's the fear thing. And again, people are very, very emotional about money. I was talking at the beginning and I said, you have to have a positive attitude. Yes, that's true. But if you're training for a number of years and you're losing, and I'm going to talk about losing every day you trade, I'm talking about in general, you sit down to do your taxes for 2023, or if you did your taxes for 2022, and you realize, oh my God, you lost money trading the market, you're like, oh my God, why am I even doing this? You see how you can get into a negative place about it. So you have to be positive about your trading. And if you want to make it doing this, it's not impossible. It's just that so many people are very emotional about their decisions about money and taking positions in stock, so they don't think things through. I said a couple of minutes ago, I spend a lot of time thinking when the market's closed, the market's not even open before 930. Now, while technically I could take a cash position in the pre-market, I do not trade like that. It would be on a two-to-one margin or cash. You can't do options. I don't trade during that time frame. It's a wild time to trade. But the time when the market is not open is when you should be making your decisions, when you should be making your choices, when you should be thinking it through. What do I want to do today? How much money do I want to risk in it? Where do I want to get out of it? Where does it have to set up? Bing bamboo. How many trades do I want to take today? What's the market going to do? That's your prep time. You're less emotional and not so charged up and in that fear mode when you're winging it, you know what I mean, or trading on the fly. So prep is good. The prep time is good and that's what I do because again many people trade and they trade and they're in fear about their decisions and they make bad decisions with money. I mean if you could go back in your life and make different decisions with things with money, I'm sure that you you could name five things right at the top of your bat that you could say, you know, so change it. I mean that's all I can say, change it. If you've been making bad decisions in your trades, stop doing it. It's not like somebody else, somebody has control over you. Nobody has control over you. You have control over you. I don't, I don't have control over you. I may be calling trades at the room and if you don't like it, don't do it. If you don't think Oracle is going to fall yesterday, you said, oh, I don't like it. I don't like what Melissa wants to do today. So you don't do the trade, then you don't make any money, but you didn't lose either and then you understand things as time goes on. So again, you have to think positive because even if you're doing, even if you're not doing well, okay, you can change that outcome of your future. Now, if you continue trading a strategy or system that doesn't work, if you continue trading and risking money in the market and you don't have a system or strategy, then don't expect yourself to do well and don't expect anything to change because it won't. So nothing is going to change in your trading unless you take steps to change it, that could be taking a class like mine or taking somebody else's class and doing something different. You're not going to have different results if you continue doing what you're doing. So stop kidding yourself that you're going to. If you've been attempting to trade for more than 12 months, I'm going to say 12 months, and that's a long time even, by going to different free lectures like all day today and trying to figure things out, listening to what I'm even saying here in this 60-minute presentation, you're not going to figure out what I know in an hour. This is an opportunity for you to hear me and see if anything I say resonates with you and to tell you a little bit about what I do. Same thing with the other people. You're not going to learn my system here today. You couldn't. It's 16 hours. The class is all weekend. But if you get up tomorrow and trade and keep doing the same thing you've been doing for the last eight and a half months, if you've been losing, you will continue to lose until the end of the year. So you've got to change what you're doing. 2022 was a tough year for retail traders because in general, most retail traders like to go long. They like to go long, they like to buy dips. Buying the dip is not a strategy. I'm just here to tell you. How do you know what dip's going to hold? You don't. How do you know what support's going to hold? You don't. Okay? And in this long story short, 2021 was very bullish. If you bought the dips in the market in 2021, the market power trended that year. And so you made money, it worked. But that did not work in 2022. And sometimes it worked in 2023. And sometimes it didn't work in 2023. So again, the idea of consistency in trading, if you want to, you know, I started trading like I said in 2008, but I didn't start doing well. I figured out my system, which took three years. Like, you know, so it's like, you want to get on a path where you say, okay, I'm on a path I'm going to go forward where I'm going to be consistently profitable. If you fast forward five years from now, it's 2023. This sounds crazy. I can't even say this number. It's 2028. So, September 2028, five years from now, if you change what you're doing five years from now, you may be making the kind of money that you want to make. You may be making this kind of money. But if you continue doing what you're doing, and you don't change it, if you don't take steps to change it, if you don't stop making mistakes, if you don't spend the money for a class like mine, you're not going to get to that next level. You're not going to get to that point. And there's always a cost. There's always a cost to get to the next level. The cost is always more than you want to pay or think you should have to pay or feel like you should have to pay because you're probably like, oh my God, I've been losing for 10 years. I shouldn't have to pay for this. I've done so many classes. I've lost money in the market. I paid my dues. You paid your dues when you've jumped the shark and you've climbed up to the top of the mountain and then it's just all comes together. That's the point when you've made it and you're not going to know when that is or how long it takes to get there until you're there because nobody has a crystal mom. Nobody can tell you what's going to happen. You can theorize, you can say, you can feel what I should have and what I shouldn't have. But at the end of the day, it is what it is. Sometimes life takes longer to have the things that we want. But there's one thing that I realize in life that is if you stick with something and you persevere, you can absolutely have what you want. If anyone had told me 20 years ago that I would be at this place in my life, like I said this week is my birthday. If anyone had told me that I would have the life that I have right now 20 years ago, I would say, yeah, I could totally see that could be my life. But if anyone had told me it would take me this long to have the life I have, I would have said, you're crazy. Because again, in my mind, I was always at this point. But it took me a hell of a lot longer than I ever thought it would to get to this point. But I always knew that I could get to this point. So I just kept going till I got there. And again, I don't know why this is true, but it is often true with things that we want that are lofty goals. So what would be a lofty goal? Making a million dollars a year, making $500,000 a year, trading, sitting at home with a computer at your desk living anywhere in the world, actually, that you want to because you're mobile and you only need a computer with an internet connection, and not having to report to a boss. I mean, all these things are dream jobs, especially in the time that we live in right now, not having to worry about money. There's many people right now that are in crunch that that may be actually earning more money than they've ever earned in their life at their job, at their day job. But because things cost so damn much right now, people don't feel rich. And that's a shame. And that's beyond your control. No, but I mean, you can blame the government, you can blame this, you can blame the Fed, you can blame the market, you can blame whatever. But the fact is that people could, you know, many people are earning more income than they've ever earned before, but things cost so much now, you know, interest rates on credit cards, borrowing, buying a house, buying a car, food prices, gas prices, that, you know, you have to have extra money coming in. So trading is a way to have extra money coming in. Options are a great way to do that and decide. If you want to day trade, you got to be in the room every day, you have to be available between 9 30 am and 10 am. Even if you can only do it two, three days a week, you could do it. But if you want to do this as a career, it is going to be a process for you. It is going to be an investment, you're investing in your time to learn the system and to learn from me. And then, of course, you get the benefit of me calling the trains and asking me questions about things. But the sooner you just get into that positive mindset to move forward, the better you're going to be. And I just put that five-year number out there because five years is actually a long time. You know, five years is a long, a long time. You know, any questions? Kind of went off in a tangent there. I'm looking at the time here. I want to want to finish up. Anyways, how do I find the best shorts daily? How do I make the picks? I use my rating system, the 26 points. I'm looking for gaps that are created with large institutional money. That's what makes the gap in the first place. The professional gaps that happen and play out in stocks are formed by one thing and one thing only, large institutional money. Therefore, you need a way that will help you pick the correct direction to play the gap and then confirm that the large money will flow with it. The spy is a great example. Like I said, the spy fell last week. We captured that move in the gap down. It happened overnight. Then it was a really nice move to happen, particularly on a short week. But if you come and you learn from me in the class, you will learn the 26 points. I'm looking for 20 points or more. Every gap does not have to be a perfectly rated gap. But I like shorting. Shorting gives me a niche. People get scared when stocks fall. We were talking earlier about beginner trader risk and small accounts. Yes, you can trade if you have a small account. I would say options is better because you can open up a cash account. You don't need the 25,000. Again, we buy puts. We buy puts and we sell puts. This was a similar trade. We did the same day that we did the spy. This was a QQQ360. They cost 2.90. This is a nice trade. I'm looking for 100%, but because it gapped down here, this ended up being 141%. Here was the move. Here's the 16th. Stock close here, gap down. And then we did the puts. Boom. And again, we did the 360s. You can see how this dropped and where it went. And if you had risk for contracts or 1160, you could have made 1640. Again, this is a nice way to be able to build your account up by doing options and capturing that type of overnight move. But ultimately, I'm just really looking for one to one. I think one to one is good. Even like I said, 50% right now is good at an option until earnings season starts. Earning a season doesn't start until October. Until October. So until then, I'm going to be extremely picky about everything I'm doing. But we should have some opportunities with volatility in the market because of things that the Fed is doing. But I'm looking for the points. I'm looking for the 26 points. And that's how I rate the gap. That is what you'll learn in the class. And then you learn the entries and the exits, which I do call in the live room. But you've got to have a positive attitude if you want to do it. You really have to be your own cheerleader with this. Because if you have a negative attitude, you will not make it. You will not make it. And far too many people have a negative attitude. So be something different. Be someone different. Have a positive attitude. And get the proper education so you can do well. It's great if you have a mentor. Again, I allow people to call me and ask me questions if they have them after the fact. You have to set your risk based on your cash size of your account. Don't go over it. And don't take risk for risk sake. You're trying to look for quality trades. Whatever your risks are, how much money you want to make, you have to look at the cash you have. And again, you can grow your account over time. But create a plan of action to achieve your financial goals. I would say between now and the end of the year. Start with that. That's good. Between now and January 1st. So I want to make this much money trading. But if you come and take my class, you'll learn the rating system. This is the meat and potatoes of everything that I do. It measures gaps of rating them in a daily chart to find stocks to trade that have, number one, a high probability of directional bias for the entire day. A big move on the day. Early confirmation of the bias of the move between 9.30 and 10. Precise entries with follow-through and a good risk to reward target potential. So the golden gap system is a 26-point professional gap rating system. The purpose of this system is to help you evaluate which gap to trade each morning using a checklist. This checklist tells you what to trade when and in what direction. And the 26-point checklist predicts directional bias in a stop. That's what you need. Because if you're going along something that's falling, you're going to lose and vice versa. But it's, everything I do is based on the gap system. It doesn't matter if I do an option, a day trade, a swing trade. It's always looking at the gap, always looking at institutional money. And again, it's momentum. Momentum. How do I know what's going to happen? Because I did the pre-market work. I did the checklist. I did the rating system. I figured it out ahead of time. And again, if you're in the room, I'm calling the trade slide. So the class is called the Golden Gap Course. It's September 30th and October 1st. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time Class is online. You can be anywhere in the world and take it. If you're interested, email me at MelissaTheStockSwitch.com if you want to sign up. It is a class on how to find, pick and play professional bearish gaps. I'm going to birthday special this week that's going on through Sunday, September 17th. If you are interested and you sign up for the Golden Gap class, you will pay $69.99 and you can get the trading room free for one year and the options that are free for one year. This is a great special. And if you don't know if you want to do options or day trades or if you want to do both, you get all my trades free for one year to follow me. And again, this ends on Sunday classes at the end of this month. Any questions from anyone about anything? We have a couple minutes. Good lecture today. Good lecture. I hope you learned something. If you would like a trial of the training room for Thursday Friday, email me at MelissaTheStockSwitch.com. If you're interested in the class, email me there. If you're interested in the special, I wouldn't miss out on it. It is a good deal. Be very careful if you're trading right now. Again, earning season doesn't start until October. And thank you for having me. Melissa, thank you so much for joining us. I just put your email address in the chat so everyone can get it. You guys really need to go and check this out. Did you have a link that you wanted me to go to or you just want to go to thestockswitch.com? Yeah, just a website, www.thestockswitch.com or you can email me at Melissa at thestockswitch.com. Okay. Well, that was fantastic. And I know that people, they don't kind of sink in, you know, as the day rolls on. This will be on our recording and