 debate on our shows. And our next presenter exceeds all of our standards. You may have seen her on Fox News, Business Network, RT America, Cheddar TV, or CBS News. She's an expert stock market analyst and founder and owner of an international education company where she teaches people how to successfully trade the stock market. Her trading methodology is based on one strategy called golden gaps, which pinpoints institutional money in the stock market. Here to present, trade on the side of institutional money and gaps is Melissa Armo of the Stock Swoosh. Welcome back to Traders Quarter, Melissa. I am doing awesome because I got stuck in AMD on the way down, and oh man, did it come back up. I didn't look at that today. I was focused on some other things. From 170 to 163 back up to 168.9. Well, that's a volatile stock to trade, but you can make a lot of money. I was down a lot and I got it all back. Well, good for you for having the conviction in holding it. I even doubled down at the bottom and scaled down as it came back. Oh my Lanta. Well, thanks so much for having me today. It's great to be here. We're going to talk about shorting. We're going to talk about training. We're going to talk about the market. I will be done today before the Fed talks at two o'clock, but the market will definitely have a reaction today between two and four because Chairman Powell is speaking, and then the market will have a reaction tomorrow, what I call a follow-through reaction to whatever they say today. So if you're in positions, if you're up money, you might want to be flat going into two o'clock, especially if you're up. And it's one of these interesting times to trade where here we are the last day of the month for the first month, the first calendar month of 2024. For those who've been following me for a while, you know, I appear on TV. I talk about the stock market. I talk about all the things that have to do with the economy. And again, the economy and the stock market do not always go hand in hand. But for those of you that don't know me, I day trade the market. I trade options. I trade stocks. And I trade stocks on margin. So we shorted Google today on margin. It was a day trade that was the play of the day today. And I called puts in Google today as well. The stock is falling. And if anyone has any questions, as we go along here, you can email me at Melissa at thestockswish.com. You can call me at 929-3200 Gap. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Skype, where I try to put TV hits, market updates, and anything else that might be of interest if you're thinking about following me. So here we are, like I said, January 31st is today. Hard to believe tomorrow is February 1st. I feel like this year is already flying. And if you've been trading this year so far, it's a good time to take a step back, particularly because not only is it the end of the month, it's also, and we're in the middle here of earning season. How are you doing so far this year? If you're not having a good year so far, again, first month into it, you may want to rethink what you're doing. If you're doing well, you want to stay on track, you want to stay focused, you want to keep the momentum up because, again, you want to have a good year. And it's good sometimes to double triple check yourself where you at with things. Could you be doing better? Is your sizing right? Are you taking profits? Okay, all of these things are important. I haven't heard the stats for last year's results for the live room. Again, I run a live trading room. I didn't upload yet the room for today, but I will. Like I said, we did the Google. These were the stats for the day trades. Most of them were shorts, and I'm mostly short, which we're going to talk about today. Again, Google today, the play of the day was a short, and the action we did was a put. Okay, so we bought the Google put, and then you would sell it to exit the trade. Okay, I trade momentum, and again, Google got down. So these were the results from last year. All of these trades, if you had done them in the room, I called them live in the room, were done on margin. So you would have needed a margin account in order to take these trades. If you go to a retail broker, you need a minimum of 25,000 cash to get 4 to 1 margin to day trade. If you go to a prop broker, you can get 10 to 1 margin, and you can open up an account with $5,000. In some case, less than $5,000. So it's a different type of account. I urge you to do your due diligence when you decide to trade, but you can trade with less than 25,000. Some people don't realize that you can, but you can. So these were results with an average risk of about $2,800 per trade, $5,699.70 for the end of last year. And I'm putting these results in because we just ended the calendar year 2023, and these were the options newsletter results for last year 2023. My risk is greater for my options. These were all the trades, winners and losers. And I risk an average of 8,000, although I increased my risk slightly for this year. We were over 2 million last year. The options newsletter is a newsletter service that gets emailed to you in live time. So the training room is not an options room. I'm not calling the trades in the room to get emailed to you for the options. And then I have here a year to date, but actually I didn't update this. This is through the 16th. Like I said, we did Google today. Yesterday we did UPS was the play, but this year so far we're having a good year. Considering the fact that we were mostly shorting the markets been bullish to start off the year, we're having a great start to 2024. So again, these are the options trades and the day trades only through the 16th year to date 285, 652, but that's really only through January 16th. So I will update this and put it on YouTube over the weekend when I have time. It's been a really busy time to trade. Like I said, yesterday we did UPS. UPS was an earnings gap. Okay, UPS gap down yesterday. We shorted it and you could have bought a put as well. So today we're going to talk about trading. We're going to talk about trading for a living. We're going to talk about institutional money. And we're going to go till as long as Rob tells me I have to stop talking here today. I'm just looking at the clock. Now, if you're training and you love it, great. Okay, if you're training and you're losing, though, that's a problem. If you have another job, which I did for for about 17 years, I did mortgages, I got to hate it by the end. I was looking for a different career, completely a different career. And it's really, really tough to do something every single day when you get out of bed to know you have to go to a job if you hate it. And that's why I was at towards the end of my mortgage career. I was looking for a new job. And I found it in day trading, but it wasn't like that. It's a day trading is not where you can sign up and start making money right away as you have to learn what to do. And for me, I developed and created my own system. So no one taught me my system, the system I do now, I developed it and created it by trading the market, my own live money, winning and losing over a course of three years. And if anyone has any questions, you can put them in the room here, I'll see them on the side. But it's really important to love what you do, because you're going to do it for a long time, hours and hours every day for years and years and years. So if you do not love your career, it's a tough life. Again, many people are working and just can't wait to the weekend. And that's not a good mindset to begin your life will improve if you enjoy what you do. It's not just about the money, although it is about the money, you have to make money to pay your bills, but you'll also need to love what you do. Your relationships will improve and your mindset will improve. And again, it's about the confidence to conviction. So again, what do I do? I trade gaps, but I'm raining gaps for the 26 point checklist, I go through the checklist, and I rate the gaps every single morning, when I get a total rating that tells me the gap is going to continue in the direction of the gap. For example, Google gap down and fell. So we shorted it. Okay, we would never have gone long that in a million years. Now, what if it had lifted, what if it had flipped, we would have stopped in it. Okay, we didn't, the trade worked out, but I wouldn't have gone long that no matter what. So again, we talked about UPS. UPS was a gap. Now, what is a gap? A gap is a difference between the close and the open. So UPS closed the night before again, this was what was yesterday Tuesday. So this was Monday night. Monday night, UPS closed up here snug as a bug right around 158 and change gap down here around 147 rallied dropped. So we shorted this is actually fell some today in the morning, I didn't see where this was right before I popped on here. But this did continue down a little bit more today fell through the 144 number. So again, this was a short. So again, if you want a day train, you're in and out and done it a couple of minutes. If you want to buy a putt, okay, I did call puts in this too, you can take the trade get out of it the same day, you could have taken the trade got out of it this morning. Okay, we're doing the weeklies the weeklies. Now here's Google again, I took this right before I came on dream targeting Google is 140 if it can make it down there if the market starts to have a negative reaction at two from two to four, this will go like gangbusters to the downside. Again, I don't know what the feds going to say at two o'clock. But there's nothing stopping Google at this point right now. And this was the short that we did today. And again, later I'll upload this room video on YouTube. But the night before last night, Google closed here gap down open dropped. It was an interesting day for earnings and last night in the last 24 hours, because we had Microsoft last night. And again, that was up that it was down that it opened lower than it rallied. So that was a little while we didn't do anything, anything at all with Microsoft. So again, I like to focus on shorts and why? Because short moves happen fast, they happen quick, they happen big. Here was another one that we did. This was January 18. We entered this 115. This is the one minute again, this is a day trade. This is a train that you would take on margin must have a margin account to take this 2500 shares that we did the ad here again. So I had more risk in this trade. I doubled up. It was a phenomenal trade. One, I plopped on the size. You got to have the account size to take it. And two, we had a big move in this is dropped in here $3 plus. So to be able to make $19,000 plus in a day trade is huge. So what happened with this stock closed here up here around 108 and change open in the morning. Again, this is a one minute. This was back on the 18th. This was out the 17th gap down rallied dropped. And again, we shorted this did the ad got the drop out. Oh, actually, you know, this is 15 minutes. I'm sorry. I thought there was a one minute. Yeah, this is a 15 minute chart in here of the DFS. But again, you still see the gap. And again, this was a short. This is what I call the money moves. Again, this is what you want to be in. So what do I do? I'm looking for momentum. This, the Google, okay, this had momentum, what to the downside. So institutional money is doing what with Google today? We're talking about that at the beginning. Institutional money is selling Google shorting it. Institutional money is not buying Google today. How do I know the stock price is tanking? Okay, it wouldn't look like this. Otherwise, institutional money is in control of stocks and the market at all times. And again, that's why it's going to be really interesting today to see what happens at two o'clock because the QQQs and a spy have been rolling over today. They got down today, they fell today, despite what happened with Microsoft and the earnings, those two market indices, ETS in the market, which you could trade, which you could do daily options in actually, and you could have shorted the market today. I didn't want to do that going into the Fed meeting. But those things, again, are having traction and getting dumped today, getting sold up. The market, though, has been on a tear. You can't deny it. The market's been rallying in November, the market rallying, December, the market rallied in January, the market rallying. And again, what I do every single day is looking for, and this is my niche, the best stock to short because you only need one good play a day in order to make money. And again, the fact that the market has been so bullish and we've had these plays has been amazing because there's been a lot of opportunities short. You may not realize that you might not have capitalized on it, but it has been there. Now as far as the daily here, here is the gap. The stock closed up here was above 108. This is before the earnings gap down here rallying got the drop. So again, this was DFS, this was discovered January 18th. So that's a gap and then here's the trade we did. Now, what if you don't can't take this size? You don't have a margin account. Again, you could have bought a put. I didn't call putting this, but you could have. You can trade options with a cash account. You can open up an options account with $2,000. You can even trade options in your IRA. You can buy puts because you can't short in your IRA. You could have done half size in this. You could have done a third. All right. And again, I'm calling these trades in the live trading room. Any questions here by anyone? I was having a conversation with someone the other day and I realized this again, teaching people for as long as I have been teaching people. So I teach the class once a month and I trade every day. But I've been teaching people now for more than 10 years and is amazing to me how people trade the market on a regular basis and don't understand gaps, have no idea about gaps or their thinking of gaps or what they do understand about gaps is incorrect. Okay. I'm not predicting the gap itself. I didn't short Google here going back. I didn't short this last night. I didn't short this yesterday. I didn't buy a put in this yesterday before the close. Okay. No idea what Google was going to say in the earnings for all I know it could have gapped up to 200 last night. All right. So I'm not predicting the gap itself. If I happen to be in an option overnight, I'm already in it because I'm already in the trade and I'm waiting for it to go and then something happens and it goes in my favor. And that did happen earlier this year with BA. We're going to talk about that because of the but that was an earnings. It was because of the accidents that have been happening. The mechanical failures. But I'm not predicting the gap. I am predicting what the gap will do today. And when do I do that? Well, I could have rated the gap last night or it could have rated this morning in the pre-market. I got up and I rated it this morning in the pre-market. So I'm just predicting what it's going to do today because that's all I'm worried about. I want to trade it today. I want to get it out. It's called chunking it out. Again, we're not investing long term here. We're actively trading. Even the options that I'm doing, these aren't long term. A short trade, a weak trade in options is a short term trade for me. And you can trade options and day trade gaps. You can do both. Okay. It's just that again, a lot of people are trading options and they're so worried about time and delta and these kinds of things. I'm trading the momentum. The momentum comes in. It doesn't matter if I have one week left, one day left, three days left, two weeks left in the train. If the momentum comes in big like it is today in Google and we just did the train, you're going to make money. And it's not about trading for pennies. Okay. We're not scalping these options. We're trading them. We want momentum. We want a dollar, two dollars, three dollars, four. And that's where the money is with options because one, you got to get the direction right. And two, you got to get a big move because if you don't get a big move, you're basically not going to make any money doing it. Or you'll run out of time, even if you get the direction right. Now, this was BA. I didn't update this here since the last week, but this has been a really nice chart, a really nice chart to short pretty much since the beginning of the year. Now, BA had earnings this morning. We didn't do anything with it, but it was a nothing burger as far as I was concerned. We did not go long BA today. We did not short BA today. There are people that are going long BA today because the stocks rallied. And if you went long BA today and you get out before the close or somewhere now here, one o'clock, if you went long this morning, yes, you would have made money going long. It wasn't a trade I did. To me, it wasn't a good train. To me, I definitely wouldn't have done it. And so we didn't do it. But we were doing BA a lot pretty much since the beginning of the year. And again, let's look at what is a gap. So this is BA. Stock close here, gap down, open dropped. Okay. So you could have bought a put in this. And I did call puts in this. And again, this is well before the mechanical failure started to show up. So the mechanical failures and BA started to show up here. And it's interesting if anybody read about the BA earnings again, they came out this morning, they pretty much didn't give any guidance. I don't know how they were able to get away with that. It seems pretty crazy. So again, another reason why no one should be going long that today, because they pretty much didn't give any information about guidance on the earnings, which is crazy town as far as I'm concerned. Anyways, here was the BA that we did. Oh, this was the third. This was the third here it was. So I called this 1043 in the morning on that day on the Wednesday. I'll go back. It was the 245 strikes. You, you buy the put when you get the newsletter, if you want to do the options with me, the cost here was $3 30 contracts is a higher risk is advanced trader risk sold at 19. This wasn't even the best exit you could have gotten because I didn't hold it all the way down, which I'll show you in a minute. It was $48,000 profit or 533% return on investment getting out when that overnight move happened, which was because of the mechanical failure. So I called the trade here. This exit is here. Now I want to show you this expiration, though, was the 12th. So here I called the 245s on the day this gap down here. This was the Friday to the Monday. It was a 230. This is an awesome train. You can't look a gift horse in the mouth, but I just want to show you here where this was on the 12th on the 12th. This was under 220. You could have made 10 plus extra in that holding that all the way down. I did not do that. I don't even know what this was. This could have been a thousand percent return on investment if you held it the last day. I just don't think that that was a good conservative decision to do. We got the move. It was a huge, huge trade. Everybody made a lot of money in this. And again, this is I didn't know that there was going to be any mechanical failures in VA. I rated the gap. I read the gap. I saw the VA was lower on the third on the third again. This was the beginning of the year. Now, what if you took four contracts risk $1,200? I consider that a beginner starter risk, you could have done one. You could have risked $300. It was a huge trade. Huge trade no matter what. Again, this is getting out on that Monday gap down. So again, this is momentum that we're trading when we're doing this. We're trading momentum in the gap, okay, which was here, which was here. All right. And you also could have done that as a day trade as well. We did a bunch of day trades in VA, but I'm looking for institutional money. So what has institutional money been doing in VA? They've been selling it. They've been shorting it. And guess what? Institutional money is not going long VA today, which is exactly why despite the fact the stock is rallying is exactly why I'm not longing. I'm not longing. Okay. Robin mentioned AMD. I did one trade in that we could have done two trades in that, but I did one. And again, another thing we've been doing not a lot, but a few we've done to Vinnius. Again, you got to capture these things at the right timing and you got to get in and you got to get out because you need to book money. It's called chunking it out. And you don't want to hold things too long. Again, today is going to be a great example because I have no idea what drone pal is going to say today. The market wants to hear him say that they're going to lower rates between now and the summer, June 1st by the beginning part of the year. I don't think he's going to say that. I think it's going to be wishy-washy, not really give an answer, not say he's going to raise rates, not say when he's going to lower rates and really it's going to be a nothing burger speech today. Now I could be wrong. You could actually say something meaningful to give the market a clue what he's going to do this year. But I think he's going to be wishy-washy and then we'll see how the market reacts if they believe him or not whatever he happens to say. He doesn't want to say that they're not going to lower rates, but I don't think they do at the first six months of this year. Why? Because unemployment's still too low and there's no reason for them really to and the economy has been strong. Okay. So I don't and inflation's still too high, which everybody knows. So I don't think they're going to lower rates in the first six months of this year. So we'll see what he says today, but this is another reason why you can't risk the farm. I bet it on everything and hold everything forever because the market can screw up your chain trades. Most of the stocks that trade on any given particular day go with the market on any day. And if you're not going to read the market correctly every day in the gap, then if you're not picking something specific, you can't just trend trade everything every day. Okay. Any questions here? Let me look before I keep going. Okay. Well, getting back to what I was saying, if this is something that you want to do, you got to know why you want to do it. For me, it was about changing careers. But for a lot of people, they just want to make extra money. And it's the American dream to become rich, successful and financially independent. And that's great. Even if you're not an American. But the fact is, do you have a plan to make that happen? You know, what exactly are you going to do? What steps are you going to take to make it happen? No one's going to ring your bell. You know, ring your doorbell with a lottery check. And if you want to trade the market, you need a strategy that you can use and utilize every single solitary day when you're trading. Because otherwise, what are you going to do? Again, it's a 50-50 crapshoot otherwise when you're going into stuff. There was a webinar lecture I was at. This was a couple weeks ago where someone was asking me where to short NVIDIA. At that time, NVIDIA was a brand new all-time highs. It was a crazy thought to even consider shorting NVIDIA. NVIDIA is not a short. And I said to that person, NVIDIA is not a short. You shouldn't have been considering when to short NVIDIA. Like never. It's basically where you're at with it. And that's where I'm at with BA. BA isn't a long. Not now, not never. And that's kind of how the mindset that you have to be. Because we need to look for the setups that are going to make sense. They're going to make money for you right now. Again, you're not a long-term investor if you're doing this. And if you want to do long-term investing, fine. You've got to be with the market. You need to be trend trading whatever the stock is. And if an earnings happens that crushes the trend or whatever's happening in the stock that you happen to be invested in long-term, you're going to have a problem. You could be upside down. And nobody wants to be upside down. Nobody wants to be upside down even in the retirement account, even though that's not a margin account. It's on cash. But getting back to what I was saying, you need to focus. And my focus is gaps. So what is a gap? It's very basic. It's very simple. It's not complicated. It's finding the right stocks to trade in the right direction. That's more complicated. A stock gaps in the opening price today is different than the closing price of yesterday's trading. A gap is a break in price action from one day to the next. Simple. Everything gaps almost every single day. It's very rare that something would close at $3202 and open the next day at $3202. But because something closes at $3202 and happens to gap down to $3202, does not necessarily mean you short it. Consequently, if it closes at $3202 and gaps up to $3205, that doesn't necessarily mean you want to go long it. So you can't go long every gap up. You can't short every gap down. You can't go long every gap down. And you can't short every gap up. Okay. So I find what a lot of traders want to do is and they get, you know, really confused with gaps because they try to do it for a gap fill, which doesn't work consistently. So yes, sometimes it does. That's what's happening in BA today. It's not a good trade to go long that's stock today. And you could say, well, it's filling the gap. No, that's nothing. It's like if you were running a hedge fund and you got on TV on CNBC or Fox Business, I mean, you said, well, explain to me what's happening in BA today. You say, well, it's filling the gap. People are like, what are you talking about? That makes absolutely no sense. Again, institutional money isn't buying BA today. Therefore, there's no play. You may not want to short it today, but you're not going long it. And you don't have to trade the same stock every day. We often don't. Like tomorrow, I'm going to something different today. We did something different than we did yesterday. Okay. So it's not always as simple as taking it in the direction of the gap or doing the opposite. And that's what confuses people about gaps. Now, Tesla was one that this was last week. Tesla really, along with BA, has been one of the best shorts this year. So again, there was negative news actually out with a lawsuit with Musk last night. Actually, last night, again, in the post market, Tesla was at 180. I don't know where it is right now, but Tesla was at 180 last night. It was tanking when the news came out. And we'll see what happens with that if it gets appealed. But we did a short in this last week. Tesla closed your gap down, opened, rallied, dropped. So this was the 25th. We shorted Tesla. We did a put in Tesla. This was the day of their earnings. Similar to Google in the sense that it was the earnings and we did the day trade and the put. But I watched it today. Tesla, unfortunately, did not open at 180. I would have loved it to open where it was last night. It didn't. And again, I haven't looked at where that's at right now, but that is still a watch for me. So what happened in Tesla last week? What happened in Tesla last night? There's only one thing. And one thing only that can move the direction of a stock. It's money. Not a little bit of money, but a lot of money. Or what I call power money. Power money is in charge. Power money is in charge of the stock's direction. Trends are set and move with the power money people, which is a lot of them in the market. And again, you can say, what's the rich people? It's the hedge funds. It's the big banks, the big traders, whatever. It's because of people like that. That you're able to get filled in and out of trades. That's because that's one of the reasons we have so much volume in the market. So when you're seeing what institutional money is doing, if you can read it and get in aggressively and trade with it, whether you're doing options or whether you're doing day trades and capture the momentum whether long or short. Again, I prefer to short. But whether long or short, that is your best way to capitalize on making a lot of money. One of my clients told me last week, she did a video, it's gonna be on YouTube. She started out the year in her options account with $1,500. And as of Friday, she had $7,600 in her account. She has more this week because we made money. Obviously we made money today in the Google. That's a phenomenal way to grow your account. Again, it was the overnight moves. It was the GAT moves. It was the big moves. It was the Tesla moves. It was the VA moves. As someone, people always say, well, I need a lot of money to do this. No, you don't. You can open up an account with a small account. And if you are careful taking one contract or setting your risk, even if it's $500, $300, whatever you wanna set, you can definitely make money doing this. And she didn't do the NVIDIAs because the NVIDIAs were expensive that I called. And they were called. Anyways, she made money in the VA that did this. Okay. So that was a really, really big move and everybody did that did it. Now, we went over this train. This was the put. Then I called another VA on the 11th. Let's see where that was. 225. Oh, here. So I called the 225 VA puts here. Then it gap down. Then it gap down. Then it fell off a cliff. That's where it broke 200. It was another great trade. So this was actually 658% but it was the extension that happened. Again, I say 24 to 48 hours but sometimes things can take a week. So I'm usually doing the weeklies or I'm trying to give a cushion for that. I didn't think this was expensive. I don't think any of these things have been expensive. NVIDIA was expensive. Some of the market puts have been expensive if not the dailies but the weeklies. Again, the spy is expensive if you're doing it now as a trade on margin. It's actually cheaper to do options right now when the QQQ is in the spy because the price has gone up so much in the last six to 12 months. But anyways, we did another VA here. Then we did a Friday VA. I did the 215s. We were early in this. This was crazy. It was $1.50 here. It was Friday. Gosh, this feels like forever ago but it was only two weeks ago. So on this day here, no, it was here. I called it the day before this. That was another Friday Monday gap down. So this was the VA here and I called the 215s and then it gap down under 215. It opened at 210. And we did this here and that's why that was so cheap. It was $1.50 for one. That was, this was the biggest trade we've had so far this year. And this is accounted for why some of the people have done so well and grown their accounts so much in just one month. So again, when people say to me, you need a lot of money, your, again, your experience should have to do with how much you risk and also your cash, okay? And it's an active letter. I'm calling a lot of trades. You say, well, I want to risk $1,000. You have 10 grand in an options account. What if I call 10 trades? You shouldn't have your whole account at risk. So I'd say keep around 500, 600. Don't be in any more than five things at once. But again, if you want to do the day trades, we day traded the BA. We did the, we day traded this. I think this room video actually is already on YouTube. So I called the trade in this. We got in, got out. Again, I trade this quick in the morning. I rarely hold my day trades all day. But BA was a gap. BA was a put, BA was a short, okay? And again, we didn't do anything with this today. It was like a nothing burger for the earnings. But I thought Microsoft was a nothing burger on the earnings. The only good earnings today really was Google. Any questions here? Let me look. How are we doing? Quiet group here, or everyone's on their tippy toes until two o'clock watching their positions. Anyways, making money trading is fun, but you need to use your brain. I've been doing this for a long time. So it's second nature to me. But until you get used to doing it, you need to use your brain. So I'm very focused in the morning. Again, I get up early, I rate my gaps. I have everything figured out what I want to do. And then I take the trade into the open. Why do I wait? Because I don't know if it's gonna set up. I gotta get the set up. I don't want to trade in the pre or the post market. And it's a wild time to trade and you can't use stops. But I think things through. I don't trade on the fly. There's so many people that trade and they trade on the fly, but trading isn't gambling. You really are not putting the odds in your favor if you're just a 50-50 on the trade. And I say, that's how you think. You have zero conviction and you probably shouldn't even take the trade. So for me, it's all about the rating system. I want to stay consistent. I want to get consistent results, okay? Some trades will be big, some will be huge. Some will be medium, some will be small. The whole idea is to get a string of winners. Some trades I take lose. I have the stats, again, at the beginning of the lecture here, I have the losers in here. We do lose in some trades. So far this year, though, we are really having a great start to the year. We've had very few losers, but I still put my stop in when I take a trade. I had to stop in Google. And if I had got stopped, I would have lost in that. I don't know if I would have retaken it or if I would have looked for something else to do. But it's the rating system. That's the meat and potatoes that tells me. That's the strategy that tells me that it's gonna work or not. And again, my goal is to find momentum. My goal is to find and follow and trade with the institutional money. I prefer to short, but we do go long. And again, the longs I did this year was NVIDIA and we did do AMD, but I only did one trade in the AMD. Somebody is asking something here. Is the amount of risk you're max loss for the train? Well, if I'm doing the day train, then I put the stop, it's a liminar stop. I call it a hard stop. Well, it'll stop me out if the trade loses. I don't know what you mean by max loss. It's not my max loss in the day for the day trade. I'll allow myself four or five day trades, but I'm not taking four or five day trades. But if I take a trade in the morning and I get stopped in a day trade, I will look for a second trade, yes. For my options, I'm not killing them. If that's what you mean for my options, now that's not a stock swish rule or it's not a Melissa rule, that's I don't kill my trades. So if you take an option and the trade is down at 50% and you wanna kill it, that you can kill it. And that's on you. And some people are doing that, I don't do that. So like say I took a trade and it goes bust, then I run it into the end of the last day and it's all down. And you'll see that if you scroll back at the beginning of the stats for last year. So I have full losses and options that I lost in. Like if I do a trade on Monday that expires on Friday and it never goes right for me or maybe it's up 10% or 15%, I'm not getting out of it then. Like it just doesn't go my way. Then I'll let the whole trade go into the last day and I may lose in it. Okay, actually we lost in, I lost in JPM. We did a day trade in JPM. We went long on that in earnings. The day trade worked. We had a high of the day exit in that actually for the day trade, but I had done calls. On that day, I forget the day, it was the earnings. It was like the beginning of earnings season. It was the first day of earnings and then it never went right. It was up a little bit. It was never up enough to get out. It was never up 50%. I let the trade ride out. I lost completely in it on the Friday. And that should have worked actually, but that didn't, but the day trade did. But that's your personal choice, Paula's. Anyways, the benefits of trading gaps is you can trade fast and be done. Now I had stats in here from this one week. This was an average rate. This wasn't a week where we had a million fabulous huge trades. This was the first week of the year. First full week of the year where we had one day where we didn't have any trades. And again, this was an earnings season. It's earnings season now. So we typically have trades every day. I did one trade and a retake in BA on the Monday. Tuesday I did another BA. No trades on Wednesday. Thursday we did two and this was the, oh, here it is. It was a 12th. You can look at the, oh, I might have it in here actually. This is long. So this was an average week where even we had one day we didn't trade and we had one stop. So I'm just gonna quickly go through these. This was a BA short and I got stopped. So I got stopped in this BA, it lifted, and then I retook it later in the day. This was the eight. The later trade ended up going really, really good, but I got stopped in the first one. The ninth I did BA, I got in, got out here, got the drop, this is a one minute, 10th we did nothing, 11th was Tessa. Again, this has just been amazing actually, but I did a quick trade and this got out on this on the 11th and then I also did BA in the 11th which was a better trade, got in, got out of that. And then the 12th was JPM. So here was the day. So this close to your gap doubt, we went long, rallying, got out. But I did the calls and it pitted out and it broke the low and it based out and then it dropped and then it tried to rally and this was going on and on and then it never did it. I just never went right and it should have gone right and there were other bank earnings too. This was carry over into the next week. It wasn't this Friday expiration. It was the 19th, I think it was, it just didn't work. So I lost in this and I lost completely and I could have gotten out of it and saved something. Actually, if I had killed it on the day I did it, I could have saved. So that was a good week. But again, how do you make money in the market? Take the train, make the money get out. Take the train, make the money get out. Take it, book it, take it, book it. Cause again, it's, again, sometimes you're looking for things that really aren't even there. I mean, a lot of times, like somebody said to me, like they had 600 indicators on their charts. I thought, oh my God, this man can't see anything. He can't see a candlestick. He's got to be blind with that many indicators. Like he's looking for something that doesn't exist. There is no 100%. There isn't, okay? You're trading momentum. If you're gonna make money, that's what you need. You've got to get the direction right. You've got to get the timing right and that's it. Less is more, okay? My charts are very clean. And I'm using the rating system of doing the prep work in the morning. How did I know that VA would fall? How did I know that Tesla would fall? I didn't know what the earnings would say. I didn't know about the mechanical issues. I was reading the price in the chart. And again, my charts are very, very clean. Less is more. If you have too many indicators, chances are you don't know what you're doing. Take them off, take them all off. See if you can survive, okay? That's called zero conviction. You need clean charts. Simple in the charts with the price because what you really wanna do is focus on the price. But the key to getting big trades is momentum. It's the key, whether you're doing options, whether you're doing daily trades, but they really can pay if you're in an overnight trade in an option. They can really, really pay. And when I trade, I'm looking for momentum. This is what gives me an edge and then we'll give you an edge because that's how you can take $1,000 and turn it into five, $5,000 and turn it into 20. And not in that short of a time. It's not about risking your whole account every day or being looking for piggy targets in every trade. Not every gap is equal, okay? Yes, I like Google. Is Google better than Tesla? No, okay. We're playing and it's good. It's fine. We're making money. It's a trade. It's a positive trade. It's not the best thing in the world. We did it. It worked. It's fine. You shouldn't be holding everything in a piggy target, okay? Not every gap is created equal. Momentum trading is one of the most profitable and fastest ways to make money trading. Learn how to take a position of stock and anticipation that the stock will have an explosive move. Again, it could be up, it could be down. I prefer the shorts. These enormous moves happen in one direction and happen fast. Momentum trading can be very profitable. And again, it's the institution of money that's creating the gap in the first place and they happen every day or most days, okay? But we're looking for the good ones and understanding which gaps are meaningful and which gaps are not meaningful in the market will help you to know what to do and when a change is occurring. And that's how you know when the power of money will flow to pay you because obviously that's what you want. So how do I figure it out? I use the rating system. If you came and took my classes is what you're gonna learn from me. You're gonna learn the 26 points. Then you're gonna learn the entries and the exits and the targets, but it's really the rating system. Now, if I'm running the room and you're there and I'm calling the trade, I rated the gap when I got up. I call it, I like it. I say it rates good. I call the trade, we do it. You should be rating them in the morning too before you enter the trading room. And then that's the point of learning. And again, if anyone is serious about the class and would like a trial for the next two days, you can email me at melissatheswitch.com for a trial for the room. But for me, I do the rating. Then I call the trade. If I'm sending the newsletter, I did the rating for the newsletter too, okay? But you gotta know how to do this. So you know what you're doing because you're risking your own money and you're pressing the button, not me. For your own account, okay? Even if you think that a stock is not going a certain direction or going this way or that way, whatever, it's even if you think it's not there, it is. And this is what I always say, and this is why people say they get tripped up and they say, oh, it's rigged, the system's rigged. No, it's not. You just didn't look at what was going on right. A big flow of money going a certain direction is what moves the market stops, creates momentum and sets the trend in charts. When you're looking for an institution of money, you're really bringing this side of the power in a stock. You wanna be on the side of the power in order for you to make money trading. Institution of money is in charge of the market and stocks at all times, even if you think it's not, it is. And this is what trips people up because they could see a stock rally and they could say, oh, this is a long, but it's not, you understand. Again, just because something rallies and it's green on the day, doesn't mean you should have gone long it and just because something falls on the day, doesn't mean you should have shorted it. I haven't looked at NVIDIA yet since this morning. I don't know if it's red, if the market's red, if NVIDIA falls today, doesn't mean you should short it, okay? So it's about finding what's really going on there and then playing with it. Now, can you do this if you're a beginner? Yes, I teach people and that's some bolts from the beginning. There are people that have a learning curve that have been doing this for years because they don't understand gaps. So whether you're brand, brand new to trading is really neither here nor there to learn it. You can still learn it, you can go through the process, you can take small size at the beginning, you could start in a demo if you want to, you can trade small size. I say start trading. We've been doing so well, it would be a shame if you were on a demo the last month actually, you wouldn't miss opportunity to make money. So I mean, people that did the class in December have already surpassed what it cost to even do the class in a month. This was Tesla we did on the 11th, 230 puts that expired on the 19th, it was a good trade. Tesla's a little pricey, but you could have done one, $5.75 for one. Again, we got the move, let's look at the chart, Tesla 111, Tesla, oh, this was way before any of this. Oh, here, oh, here, 9, 10, 11. So we did it here. What did we do, the 230s? So stock closed here, gap down, we did the 230 puts, boom, there it was. Again, you see here how people went long here? It was a crazy, crazy thing to do. This was the trade, this was the trade, the short. This is a nothing burger. Yeah. Anyways, for me, my edge really is not just the fast trains, but shorting. And then of course, getting the momentum, which I'm always trying to do, and I will go long. We've had some nice moves to the upside, like I said in the video, but there hasn't been a lot of things I've been allowed to go long. They said, well, how can that be? I don't know, I could change my mind, there's a lot of earnings that didn't report yet. The next two weeks are really big. Apple, Facebook, lots of things are going on. We did go long Netflix, we went long that. Now that I'm thinking about that was one of the first earnings, but there's lots of things that are gonna be reporting on. I don't know what I'm going to do, because I'm not predicting the gap. I'm not predicting the earnings. I wait for the gap, I see the gap. Then after I see the gap, I rate it. So again, shorting is profitable because of the fear, the panic that comes in. And when I rate the gap, I can determine if it's gonna work in my favor or not. So I'm looking for big moves of the day, early confirmation and a high probability of directional bias. If you come and learn from me, you will learn the 26 point checklist, you will learn the rating system, and then you can do it for yourself. But again, the benefit is in being in the live room, the benefit is getting my options trades, but you have to take the class in order to sign up and join the live room. But it's an investment, it's an investment in yourself, it's an investment in your future, and you definitely want value in the education. A lot of people pay for a low cost cheap education, they get no value out of it. And then they take bad trades along with that. So they lose money in the trades, they lose money in the education, even if it didn't cost a lot, it's a waste. Think about what you're doing and spend your money wisely. Even if it's something that's expensive, it may be well worth it for you to invest in yourself in the future. So it's a class where I teach the whole system. It's a full, full two-day class, it's all weekend. And the next class isn't until the end of the month. So it's a full two-day course on how to strategically find pick and play stocks that are professional bearish gaps. Class is online, it can be anywhere in the world and take it. Class is February 24th and 25th. Again, I can't even believe tomorrow is February, but the class is $69.99, it's nine to five. Class is online, I'm doing a combo special. This includes the trends. So it's $500 more, you get a discount if you sign up for this together, $74.99. And again, I'm doing an earnings season special. This is going on for a week. If you sign up by February 9th, it's the Friday before the Super Bowl, for the combo, you get the trading room free to the end of the year, the newsletter free to the end of the year and the market report subscription free to the end of the year. If you wanna join and you wanna sign up for this, you can start trading, you can sign up and start trading right away before the class. I urge you to go slow till you understand what we're doing for the class, but I do have people that have already signed up and are doing that. Any questions from anyone about anything at all? I think I did good here with time to be done. I have a question. Go ahead. Did you short Tesla on earnings? Yeah, Tesla, that was the one that I had in here. We did this back in here. What, I apologize. No, that's okay, that's okay. I'll go back to this, because I had this in here. Now Tesla, again, I'm gonna go back to the first chart. Tesla was at 180 last night. We didn't short Tesla today because it didn't open where I wanted it to open. Crap, where did I have that? It didn't open where I wanted it to open, but I thought I had it in here. That's all right. No, I was just curious, because I remember them announcing, with all the competition, they had to cut prices and lower the margins and stuff like that. Yeah, here we did it. And I knew they were still gonna sell every vehicle, but with lower margins. Yes, they did it right here. Their earnings were gonna have to suffer. Yeah, it was the 25th, but the lawsuit happened last night, and it was down this morning. It did gap down this morning, but it wasn't down as much today, but that's a watch. That's a watch. I don't know where it's at right now, but we did it on our earnings, it was the 25th there. Last night looked, it made a beautiful recovery. It's back up above 190. Well, I wouldn't say that's a beautiful recovery, but it's something. It was from 183. Oh, that's true. That's true, from last night. Yeah, if you got it last night for short. No, but I'm... Well, thanks so much for having me. I did send you an email. I can't wait to be in your room and see what you do live. Probably we'll see what the Fed does in a half an hour. Good luck, everybody. Hey, thank you so much for being here. Great presentation. And I have to give you credit above and beyond with the shape the market's in, finding shorts and profiting from them. You have an amazing talent. Thank you for being here today and making such a generous offer to our audience. It's always a pleasure to have you on Trader's Corner. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Melissa Armo of the Stock Swooch. Stock Swooch.