 on the show with us. And Melissa is the founder and owner of the Stock Swoosh. And you may have seen her on TV doing market commentary. I know she does that quite a bit. And so I know she's got a great presentation for you today about trading gaps. And Melissa, we are very excited to have you with us this morning. Good morning. And I'm going to go ahead and let you take it from me now. You can go ahead and get us kicked off. Good morning. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Great. Let me know if you can see my slide. Yes, I can. Terrific. So the questions, if there's questions, will I see the questions here, Marisa? Make sure you open the chat box, and you'll be able to see all the questions. OK. I just see hosts and panelists, so I don't know if they show me everything. No, you have to open the chat box. So do you see where it says more? Or do you see your toolbar there? Yes, I do. And it has chat. If I pull it down, it just has to host some panelists. OK, well, open the chat box. Just keep the chat box open. OK. And then you should. Everyone, got it. Welcome, everyone. What an exciting day to be here. Why? Because I'm going to talk about trading gaps. And guess what? The market's gapping down this morning. And I'm also going to talk to you about shorting. And guess what? The market's falling off the cliff right now. So this is actually a really good day for me to talk about gaps and shorting. Because the market's crashing, we just had data out. It was inflation data about a half an hour ago. And the market is reacting to that. And actually, again, the other topic we're going to talk about today is institutional money. So in live time right now, what's happening is the market's getting sold off and dumped. So institutional money is selling off the market. The reasons for that, you can go over. You can say because they don't think now they're going to lower rates three times. I never thought that we're going to do that this year. In fact, I was on Charles Schwab network. As Marissa mentioned, I do television. And I said about a week ago that I wouldn't be surprised if they don't lower rates at all this year. So it's very, very interesting time to trade. It's a volatile time to trade. But volatility actually can be your friend as a trader. If you understand it, and if you're on the right side of it. And so the most important thing in which we're going to talk about today, and hopefully you'll have a takeaway today, and you'll learn something, is to trade in the side of institutional money. And specifically, what I do is in gaps. So welcome, everyone. As Marissa said, my name is Melissa Armo. I own my own company called The Stock Swoosh, and I also trade and appear on TV. If you have questions after today, you can email me at melissathestockswoosh.com. You can also call me at 929-3200 Gap if you have questions or if you're interested in signing up for any one of my classes or services after today. You can also follow me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, or Skype. So again, I trade for a living. The reason I got into trading was I wanted to trade for a living. I was doing mortgages for a long time, and then the mortgage industry changed, and I really started to hate my job. So this is a good time to kind of think about it. Spring, change in seasons. Think about what you're doing for a living, and if you love it. Because you really, really should, and you have to love what you're doing for a living. Because the fact is you're gonna do it for hours and hours and hours every day for a long time. And it really can affect the quality of your life if you don't like what you do for a living. Because again, this is how you support yourself and also how you pay your bills, and you have to be invested in what you do. It doesn't mean that some days aren't stressful, but overall you have to like what you do for a living. And that's one of the reasons I decided that I wanted to get into trading, because I stopped enjoying my mortgage job, and then of course the money changed for me. And I wanted to have an unlimited income. So it's also a good time. Like I said, spring is the picture of Central Park. I live in New York City. Think about where your year is at. Are you having a good year? Are you not having a good year? You're having a bad year. Or could your year be better? You still have plenty of time left. It's early April. You still have plenty of time left, almost nine months to have a good year and make money this year trading, even if you're having a rough start to the year. And today is probably a precursor for what will be a rough week for people who have had a long bullish bias on this market in many stocks. And it's not turning out, as you see today, with the selloff to come to fruition. A lot of people that are retail traders have been doing swing trades long. And again, while the market has rallied since late fall last year, October and November really started in November. People have been buying every dip and it's been working. That's not gonna keep working. I don't do that anyways. And again, we're gonna talk about what I do here in a little bit. I did wanna put the stats in here for the trading room and my options letter. So I run a live trading room. I do day trades, okay? Where I trade the stock, short it or go along but I'm mostly short and I'm taking a position on margin. So these are the stats for this year. 309,190, my average risk per trade and I do use stocks or limit order stops is around 3,000 per trade. Now for my options, I risk more money. So my average risk in options because I'm carrying trades overnight and I'm also doing trades like NVIDIA which can be expensive. It's probably the most expensive one we do is around 8,000 a trade. Mainly because I wanna hold overnight and I wanna be able to do more expensive options. So for the year stats, so far year to date, 880,580. So again, I wanted to just show the winners, the losers, break even total trades this year and our win ratio so far for the day trades and the options is 71% for the year, which is really good. Actually if you're even at 51% to 49%, 51% win ratio winners you would be up as a trader. But we're at 71% for the year so far. So again, my options trades are not in my realm. My options trades is a newsletter. It's a subscription service which you could join the day trade room, you gotta be there live and if anyone is interested in anything I have to say today or learning what I know or taking my class, you could email me for a trial for the trading room for Thursday and Friday this week. You must take my class, the Golden Gap class to join my realm. It is not something that you can join without having taken the class but you can join my options newsletter without having to take the class. Peter says he hasn't liked what he's doing for a living for years and that's why he's been learning how to trade. And again, when I started trading it wasn't like I figured it out right away. I took one class, one class that's all I ever took and then I threw myself into it and I never looked back but it took me three years to figure out the strategy that I do, that I now teach and again, we're gonna talk about it as well but we're over a million dollars for the year so far. Again, it's April 10th. It's been a good year. Last year at the end of the year towards the beginning of this year I was talking on TV a lot about the market and I really thought that we wouldn't have trending sectors. Do you know what I'm saying? Like you've seen certain sectors up, certain sectors down, Apple's been falling, Tesla's been falling, then you have some of the banks rallying. So again, I thought it was gonna be a difficult year for the market because of the fact that you're not gonna have what you would normally have like the tech sector for example, going up, up, up. Yes, I know NVIDIA had a big client. Actually, I called a short NVIDIA and that worked yesterday, that fell yesterday. You could have got out of the option yesterday or you could still be in it today but some of these things are getting ready to take a little tumble, especially after today but I think it's sort of already started and again, the experience and knowledge that I have having started, I've been trading since now 16 years, it really helps me to be able to do what I do every single day and also teach people and specifically the fact that I only do gaps that's all I do. I'm not doing futures and Forex and Bitcoin and everything and then some. I just trade gaps and I'm mostly, mostly short but if you wanna have a big year too you wanna get on track for the year you need to level up. Now, what does it mean to level up? If you never heard this phrase before it means to improve your current station, your current situation in life in a way that it feels like a powerful shift and it starts by a change in thought, a shift in mindset followed by brave action. You know, I've said this before in other lectures here at Well365, it's 51% the strategy if you wanna be successful as a trader. 49% your attitude. What do I mean? You're not gonna make money if you don't have a good trading strategy. Like you just won't. You can have the best positive attitude in the world but if you don't know what you're doing and you don't have a good strategy that has a high wind ratio you won't make money but if you have a crappy attitude you can actually work against yourself even with a good strategy. So it's 51% the strategy and 49% your attitude and you gotta have both and I think a lot of people once they get into trading and they've been doing this for a very long time they end up just kind of getting into that slow motion stage where they're almost like happy if they don't lose and they're just going on and on and they're back and forth and they're winning and losing and break even and they're just happy if they don't lose a lot. Then they're happy if they're break even and they're happy if they make a little bit. Again, the purpose of doing this is to be successful. You wanna get to the next level. Getting to the next level takes work, time, energy, money and it should be fun. It should be exciting, okay? Anything brand new that you take on that you do in life particularly if you're learning a new trading strategy should be exciting. The very idea that you could even earn over a million dollars in a whole year let alone in three months trading the stock market should be exciting. And one of the things that really inspired me and motivated me to trade the stock market was the unlimited income potential and of course on top of that the fact that I work for myself, which I like. And again, you could do this anywhere in the world. I happen to live in New York. I took this picture. It doesn't even look real, does it? It looks like a postcard. One of the things about trading and one of the things about making money, money is a vehicle. It's a vehicle to have a better quality of life. And again, this level up, it applies to everything. It's our life. Once you push yourself to the next level and again, I don't know why traders don't wanna do it. They're so afraid of doing it for some reason. It's the only way you're gonna get to the next point. If you're not successful and even if you are if you wanna make more money you have to push yourself to the next point. Again, we're gonna talk today specifically about trading but it's just we're in a change of seasons now. We're full on spring here in New York City. You can see the cherry blossoms here. It's a time to think about doing things differently, cleaning out old strategies or indicators you're using that aren't working for you, doing something new, doing something different and getting a change in perspective of really what you're doing so you can get to the next level particularly with your trading because it's really the American dream. And this is not, you have to be an American. You could be anywhere. Again, but it is the American dream to become rich, successful and financially independent. And again, the purpose of making a lot of money is to have a better quality of life and not have to have to work so much. Again, one of the reasons the market's selling off today is inflation is still too high. Interest rates are still too high. Jamie Dimon, again the CEO, JPMorgan Chase came out just two days ago. It was almost like a precursor to what this number would be today where he said, don't be surprised if rates are gonna be 8%. And everyone was shocked by that. And then actually JPM fell the other day, was falling even before the market today. Again, what are you gonna do? You're not gonna change the economy. You're not gonna change the market conditions. You certainly can change interest rates whether it's to buy a house or a car or on your credit card. And again, the difference between now and even like 50, 60 years ago is people used to get raises. Remember, I mean, I remember this like my first couple jobs. We used to have evaluations and annual evaluation and we got a three to 4% raise if we were doing good. Those don't exist anymore in companies. So the problem is inflation and rates keep rising. And even though people again are unemployed, unemployment rates still very low, people aren't getting the increases that we used to from years ago from jobs. And again, on top of that, inflation is rising at a much, much faster rate. So what you need to do is decide if you wanna trade for a living or if you just wanna trade for extra money on the side to help your financial situation because you're not in control of the other things that are going on. And again, do you have a plan of action to make it happen? To make it happen to be successful in the market and also to trade. So where do you start? You first of all, you determine who is in control. Who is in control? Is it the bulls or the bears? Is it the bulls or the bears? Who is in control right now today? Well, the market's tanking. Again, I'm not gonna be trading today because I'm here with you. I might do some options after I close out my lecture here. I'll look after 10. But the fact is, that's how you make money. Look at who is in control. So this is a chart. We're gonna look at a chart here as back from January. Again, this is a beautiful well chart here where you can see the rally. This is a NVIDIA. Starts out here at the beginning of the year, boom. Look at it, took off like a rocket. NVIDIA almost went straight up. There were many times in here where people wanted to retail traders, wanted to short NVIDIA. I said, oh my God, it can't keep going. It can't keep going. It can't keep going. It started at around 400 something to begin the year and it doubled, it more than doubled. It almost reached 1,000. We kept going long. Again, we're gonna talk about this more. Well, I preferred to short. We absolutely did take advantage of this move up in NVIDIA. And the stock closed here, gapped up, rallied. And again, we didn't day trade this. We bought calls in it, but it worked. And again, every time the traders tried to come in and short it, I thought, oh my God, this is going higher because the bulls are in control. So you would have wanted to be long NVIDIA. And again, a great example here of control because the bulls are in control of NVIDIA. And this was up until mid-November here. Again, here's where it almost hit over 1,000. I forget what the high was in here, but it got closed. To Maristani and Money Tool, use it for better life, make a difference. Yes. Thank you, you liked my presentation. You're welcome. Again, you gotta have the right attitude. The attitude is you're gonna be successful. So many people start to trade and they have that attitude. Then they start losing, then they say, oh, it's rigged. No, nothing's rigged. It's there. You gotta read it right. And you gotta learn how to do it. And yeah, it's gonna take a little time, a little effort, a little work. I mean, success is promised to no one. No one owes you anything. Certainly not the market. You have to make it happen for yourself. As soon as you come to that conclusion, as soon as you grasp that concept, then you're gonna be great. You're gonna be fine. You're gonna be wonderful. And then again, you look at learning something new as something exciting and a new adventure in your life. Now this is BA. This is falling today too. This started falling yesterday, actually tagged yesterday. We were in puts in this. Anyways, this is the beginning of the year. Again, this is a well chart starting back from January. Stock closed to your gap down, fell. Close to your gap down, fell off a cliff, boom. This is down into April. Again, this today broke down in here. Finally broke that area 180. I think this morning this is around 175. This is tanking, tanking, tanking, tanking, okay? Anyways, who is in control? Institutional money. Institutional money is in charge of the market and stocks at all times. Even if you think it's not, it is not understanding the importance of institutional money in the market. It's a classic mistake many traders make to their detriment, which means they lose and they keep buying every dip. People will buy this dip today. I guarantee you people will be buying this dip today. Retail traders will buy the dip today and the market in support they will. Again, I'm not trading right now here today, but I guarantee you people will buy this market today and it's getting dumped. It's getting sold off. It's getting dumped with institutional money. You wouldn't have a sell off like this otherwise. Someone's talking about the fact they lost on their Google, yeah. If you don't know how to read institutional money in a stock chart, you're missing out on a vital piece of information that can help you succeed and you're trading impaired if you don't know who is really in control of the price action. So again, I don't know if anybody watched this. We've been on point with this guy. This is Tesla, okay, this was Friday. Did anybody watch Tesla Friday? It was insane. We were in a day trade Friday. I was waiting for it to go, waiting for it to go. I prefer to trade the morning fast, quick and out in the first half an hour, but this, look at this, boom. This is a 15 minute well chart of Tesla. This is Friday four or five. This is what I'm talking about people. This is institutional money. The stock price here was around 170 and then boom. And again, it fell almost $10. Didn't quite get to 160 on Friday, but look at it. So again, this is a sell off. This is a big dump. It's a dump. It's an institutional dump. It's a sell off that happened in the stock and you would have wanted to be short this. And we were short this. So the profit is here. And again, you could buy it put. You could have day trade in it. We did both. Okay. So again, you say, well, how do you figure this out? You determine who is in control. First you gotta do that. Then you need a focus, which is a strategy. And then my focus is gaps, which we're gonna talk about and then also shorting. So let's talk about what is a gap. For those of you that don't know, a stock gap. So 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. I don't have my charts up right now. But again, I'm doing this presentation, but the fact is that the market closed at one price yesterday. And when I say the market, I mean the QQQs this fine. I don't, I look at the diamonds, which is a DIA ETF because I had to talk about it sometimes on TV, but there's only 30 stocks in the Dow. So I don't really focus on that index. But the QQQs closed at a price yesterday at four o'clock and this morning wherever we opened, we didn't open yet at 930, the QQQs will open today at a lower price than it closed yesterday, okay? So anyways, that is a gap. So the QQQs today are gapping down. SPI today is gapping down. BA today is gapping down. Tesla today is gapping down. In fact, you probably would have a very hard time finding anything today that's gapping up. But most things today are gapping down with the market. Why? Most things do go with the market. Another reason that many traders find trading tricky is that if you don't know how to read the market, right, it's difficult to make money if you need the market for your trades. Now, earnings season starts officially, officially, officially Friday with the banks reporting. Earning season is a busy time to trade gaps. Why? Most stocks gap on earnings. Do I know where they're gonna gap? No, I don't know. I don't know where they're gonna gap, but I see the gap. Like I'm seeing the gap today in the market. And then I have a process, which is my strategy, which if you wanna come learn from me, I rate it. I rate it. And then I say, wait a minute. If I rate it and it rates that the control is gonna push it down, then I can short it. Otherwise, then I don't. Or again, I could rate it as a bullish gap. Somebody's talking about Tesla yesterday. I would never, never have gone long Tesla yesterday. We did the short, we got out. Again, today, I didn't do anything new because I'm here with you. But the fact is I wouldn't have gone long that. I wouldn't have done it. And if you did, hopefully you got out, Peter. Hopefully you got out. Good morning, Derek. Hi, there's Derek. You lost something about Tesla. I'm guessing you were in Tesla overnight. And it was, let's talk about another gap here, DLTR. Stock closed up here around 150. Boom, open in the morning here around 128. So again, this is a daily chart. This is back from March. So we shorted it. So we shorted it. We shorted DLTR, but this is a gap. So you can have baby gaps. You can have little gaps. You can have big gaps. So what do I do with the gap? I rate it. I rate gaps with a 26-point checklist to determine the stock's direction. Again, in order for me to make money shorting, the stock has to go down. In order for me to make money going long, the stock has to go up. Like we talked about with NVIDIA. The purpose of the raining system is to help me determine who is in control. So again, I'm predicting what's gonna happen on the live day after I see the gap. I'm not predicting the gap itself. Do you know what I'm saying? So again, I didn't know where the market was gonna open this morning. I didn't know what the inflation number was gonna be. Again, I had an idea that we are not gonna continue higher. That's my overall perspective and analysis of the market here and what I think they're doing with interest rates because this market direction and the rally has been driven since the end of 2023 due to interest rates. Remember, we were talking about this again on TV. Five rate cuts they predicted for the year. Then all of a sudden they said, oh, it's only gonna be three. Now today in the Spornium Bloomberg they're saying, well, two. And I'm like, no, it's gonna probably be zero, none, or one. And even one of the Fed members came out and made a statement that they would consider raising rates which is gonna wreak havoc on the market because no one expects them to raise rates this year. So again, think about the control factor. Just what's happening now? Some of you are actually writing it. You people that are writing that you're in trains and you're down money right now, do you see how the power of institutional money has in the market? And it makes perfect sense because if you're in the wrong direction you're gonna do what? You're gonna panic. And this is the whole reason why shorting is so, so, so powerful. And again, it's the control. One of the reasons I love to do options. And again, you can trade options with a beginner account. You don't need a margin account to trade options. You can open up in a margin account or a non-margin account, a cash account as an options account at a retail broker with $2,000. Your risk has to be associated with the size of your cash but you can trade options and hold stocks overnight. And you could get the gap in the overnight. Again, if it continues in your direction. And again, the whole purpose of shorting is to grab a hold of the fear and the panic. Now, panic buying is something that is rare. You did see that in the video. You absolutely, absolutely didn't and we played it and we got it. But it's so rare to see panic buying. It's not that rare to see panic selling. Panic selling's happening right now as we speak in the pre-market and I wouldn't be surprised if it happens today. Not necessarily in everything today that's down but there will be things today where people are gonna dump it. So Peter says, your strategy is not to try to find gas before they happen but instead to trade them as they're happening. Well, I don't trade in the pre-market. So again, I would wait until the open Peter but I'm already in trades. I'm already in trades that I called last week that I was waiting to go. And so I was already in things but in general, I'm not predicting the gap but as it turns out sometimes I'm already in a trade and I was already in it and then it continues in my direction through the strike or something like that which we're seeing today. So again, it's one of these things and again, I don't wanna get too in the weeds here about specific trades right now but as far as what we're looking to do with stuff when I take something, I'm looking at it it's always based on the gap and the rating. If I hold it, I might get a bigger move and it could happen the second day, could happen the third day, I'm doing the weekly options. Like for example, on 4-4, which was Thursday last week I called the NVIDIA 875 puts. You can just look at the chart and look at where it's at and you could have got out of it yesterday. But again, when you're doing options you may have to hold it a little bit. I don't think a week is a long time for a trade. Day trades were in and out in five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. TESLA we had to hold till later and it worked in our favor, BA yesterday too. BA crash yesterday, we were short that, it took a little bit to go. But again, usually most of my day trades, usually the room, I run it for a half an hour and that's it and we're in and out. So this feels like a long time ago now but it's funny, because again, where the stock has been at, you can even see today. We shorted TESLA, we did the 180 puts. So this is an example of the newsletter. If you wanna sign up for the options newsletter, again, you don't need any prerequisites for that but you'd have to know how to take the trade and do options. I sent this at 8.18 in the morning. So I sent this on 3.5, the next expiration date of 3.15, cost of the trade was 4.50. Again, good trade, you're in, you're out. 100% is a good return on investment for an option. If you took a less size, a smaller size, three contracts, again, you could have made 13.50. This is not that much risk to flip your trade around in a very, very short time and let's look at the chart on TESLA. So 3.5, 3.5, again, you see what it did. Stock closed here, gap down, dropped. Stock closed here, gap down, fell. So again, here's the move, boom! And again, this is something where you might already be in and it continues. You could get in and get out even in Scout but if you want. But again, this is one of these things here where you see the selling starts to happen and you can play it, play it, play it, play it. Okay? I'm just letting you know I can hear upstairs. They're doing construction on the apartment above me. So if you kind of, if you hear some construction noise there's nothing I can do about it. I apologize. I'll have to talk louder if you started to hear it because I just heard them make a little hammer noise. Anyways, here was the NVIDIA. 3.6, NVIDIA, 900 calls we did. So 3.6, let's look at 3.6, NVIDIA. Oh here, here it was. Stock closed here, gapped up, rally, boom! And then it had this move, boom! It went and then you would be out. So again, in this case here, I didn't predict the gap. We did the trade. You could have got out a little bit. It wasn't that much here. Continue, again, could have got out here or you're in it till here, you're out. You gotta be out here. And again, you see where this was. This was at 9.50. So again, these are not cheap. These are not cheap at all. $21 was the cost for one contract here. So again, 290% return investment, a nice trade. Take it one day in and out. Take it one day in and out. Even to hold something for three days is fine. But if you wanna get out the same day, that's up to you. But again, nice move here in the NVIDIA. That was the big rally. So anyways, getting back to the whole philosophy of everything we're talking about. There's only one thing of one thing only that can move the direction of a stock. And it's money, and it's big money. It's power money, it's a lot of money. It's institutional money. Institutional money is hedge funds, big banks. Large traders in the market, power money is in charge. They weren't pushing the market up. It was failing to go higher. It wasn't going anywhere with power. Retail traders were buying on support and it wasn't going anywhere. I'm gonna massive sell off last week on Thursday. Does anyone remember that? That was crazy. So I'm not surprised about today at all. Anyways, power money is in charge. Power money is in charge of the stock's direction and trends are set. I moved by the power money people, which was a lot of in the market. I buy the put and sell it. I buy the call and sell it. Gordon's asked you, do I do straight puts and calls? Yes. The other thing I'm doing in reference to my options is based on the rating system, which is the checklist. That's it. So I'm predicting the direction and then I'm taking it in the direction. A put is a short, a call is a long. It's just a different way to do the trade. I'm not doing any fancy dancey option strategies because I'm trying to get the move, the move, the momentum. I'm not trying to make 10 cents. I'm the same thing with my day trades, which we're gonna talk about here in a minute. I'm trying to get a momentum move and success requires a plan. So this is what you'd come if you paid for my class and signed up, you'd learn the checklist. This is a meat and potatoes. We were talking about this the other day in the room. Why? Because some of the trades reversed that I had called last Thursday, reversed Friday and I said, go back people and rate the gap. Rate it. The gap rating helps you stay with something and stay with it and hold the conviction. Because again, this is where knowledge really trumps anything else that you're ever gonna hear on TV or all the noise that you're hearing or even when you look at the trade and you say, oh my God, the trade's down, what do I do? Nothing. If you size yourself correctly, you let the trade play out. You'll see from the stats if you go back, trades that I lose in, I pretty much go bust pretty much the last day of Friday. So I mean, trades that I lose in, I lose in. Trades that I make money in, I make money in. So whatever you make money in this week, we're making money to the downside, the puts. So I got till Friday, I made everything till Friday, they're all gonna go. I'm in one call, which I'm probably gonna lose in now. So that's fine, I'm gonna lose, I was long Amazon. That's it, everything else I'm in is puts. So again, when you know something and you follow through with the rating, it helps you not to be so nervous, not to be so jerky. Of course, you gotta size yourself right. Sometimes people don't size themselves right. Sometimes people don't use stops and you gotta use stops, okay. So again, very important part of trading. Anyways, I use the 26 point checklist and that's how I know where shop will go in the day. I use the rating system. Here was INTC. Again, sometimes people say, I mean, well, how are you getting these results? Are you holding it the best exit? No, so I, this kept going. This is probably down again today too. I got out of this the same day. I had a good trade in this. I made 67%, I didn't make 100% of this. I cut up, stack close here, gap down, open, dropped. Closed up here around 44, gap down here, around 41.50. This is INTC. I shorted it, we did a day trade. I also bought a put, I got in, got out. But anyways, this kept going. It was absolutely, absolutely, absolutely ridiculous. So no, I don't always get the best exit in all of my trades. I try to do the best I can, but at the end of the day, I'm about making money. And I'm very active as a trader. Again, I take it, get the move, get out. I chunk it out, and it was okay to get out of this here, but it kept going. There were some people in the room actually that kept that held that put. It just was ridiculous actually. But the rating system tells you the momentum is headed. Then you play it in the direction of the institutional money. Again, this is a chart here from the other day of Tesla. Again, wherever Tesla is right now, it isn't here. Again, so much talked about the fact they went long this yesterday. You're gonna be down today. You're gonna be down. So again, one of these things in reference to trading, you have to understand who is in control because trading isn't gambling. You gotta put the odds in your favor. If you're on the side of the control, you're still doesn't mean you're gonna make money at every trade. I have some trades that I lose in. Again, you can go back and look at the stats, but you're gonna make money in more than you lose. You're gonna win more than you lose if you're on the right side of things, okay? And again, you have to size yourself right too. So one trade gaps. Gaps are the most powerful show of price action in a chart. Gaps have large moves. Gaps can move up or down. Some of the biggest momentum moves in a daily chart come from a gap. The most powerful gaps are created with institutional money. So I use one strategy daily to stay consistent. It's the 26 point golden gap rating system. I get up in the morning and I rate my gaps and then I determine if I want to short it or if I wanna do nothing or if there's a gap up then I might go long. I'm just gonna show you here one week of trades. This was trades in the live trading room. Again, these are all shorts, all day trades, all on margin. Actually, no, Apple, we went long. I'm sorry, we went long Apple, I'll show you that one. But the total for this one week of an average risk of 3,000 was over 16 grand. So let's talk about the first one here, B.A. on Monday. So this was B.A., okay? Entrate here was 193.80, risk was 32.50, exit. Again, you see we're trading momentum. Get in, get out, get the move, get out. Profit was 33.75, so this is the B.A. Stack close here, gap down, open, rallying, boom. We got it, got the drop. And again, this was on March 11th. So I call these trades live in the room. I'm giving you exact entry and the exact exit. And again, whether you hold it or not or one, two or not is totally, totally up to you. But the trading room is live, but again, you have to have a margin account to do these trades. Now if you wanna buy a put, while I'm shorting it, again, I do puts too, but I'm not calling them in the room, you could, but basically by the put, you're not gonna get the exact same profit here with an option, you know, you would be up. But if you don't have a margin account to do day trades, that's an idea. March 12th entry was 187.45, exit was 185.58. Again, boom, got in, got out. Again, I'm looking to turn my money over, usually one in a day train. Stack close here, gap down, open drop, fell off a cliff. Again, this was March 12th, this was BA again. BA again, another BA. Then we did, oh, this was a DLTR. I showed you the daily on this. We entered it at 130, exited at 128.78. Profit on this was 1220. I got out of this a little early. But anyways, this one did work. And again, I'm chunking it out when I'm day trading. We didn't get out fast, five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. And again, there's probably gonna be a lot of opportunities for that today as well. Then on the 14th, we did Tesla. What happened here? Oh, this was the one we entered at 166.80. We did an ad in this. I doubled up in this because I thought it was lower or was it a big stop? 166.75, 164.80 was the drop in this. Here's the drop. And again, 2730 was the profit. This was March 14th, Tesla was the short. And then Apple. So this was the one long we did. Apple was the best apple on this particular day. I don't remember the reason for the gap. It was March 15th. Stock closed here, gap up, and then it pushed up and we got in and got out. And again, this is one of these ones where you look at it and you're like, okay, it's gonna go, it's gonna go, it's gonna go. Anyways, that all worked out. Someone is saying, can you explain a margin account? A margin account is where you have an account where you, for example, if you're at a retail broker, you have to open up an account if you want a margin account with 25,000 and then you have four to one margin. So you would have buying power of 100,000. So in other words, you would, if you want to take 1,000 shares of a stock that had a $100 price point, you could do that with 100 grand of buying power, but you only have 25,000 in cash. Does that make sense? So margin is something that all professional traders who've talked about institutional money use to trade. If you don't have a margin account, you're basically trading cash, so you'd only have access to 25,000. You can also go prop, there's prop places out there, there's a million you could look into where you could get 10 to one margin where you could have open up an account with, say 10,000 and you'd get 100,000 buying power. And again, that would be a proprietary day trading account. But in order to day trade stocks to short stocks to actually short them outright, yeah, you need a margin account. Otherwise, you can open up an options account, you could buy a put, which is basically shorting, but you still have to have that options account set up correctly with the broker they're gonna flag you if you don't have 25,000. You have to have it set up as a cash account, but you can open up an options account with those $2,000. The, there's benefits and pros, which I'm not gonna get into now today, but there's pros and cons to doing both, okay? So again, if you want to know more about that, you could of course email me, you could just Google it. But, you know, so many people I think are swing trading because they don't understand margin. So they're doing swing trades, which they're basically taking trades that could be on two to one margin. They may not be aware of it or cash with the broker or they just don't have the account set up right. You know, I don't stay in a trade. If the trade is down, I lose in it. I get out of it, I exit it with a loss before four. I'm not holding a trade overnight, just hoping and praying it'll work the next day because you're not a margin anymore. So margin is something that exists only between 930 and four. If you're overnight in something, you won't be on four to one margin. You'll either be on cash or two to one margin. And again, many, many people that are swing trading this market for the last six months are gonna get killed starting now. It started to happen already in the last week, I had a conversation with my broker two weeks ago. She said this one guy that's been doing so well, he's not doing well. He's taking trades, he's killing them, he's taking big losses, he's doing terrible now. So again, market's been in a sideways range for quite some time here, even for the Easter holiday. But my bias for the market, we have not been going along the market since January. I know we've rallied, I get it, we made new highs. But my bias was that we were gonna break off. Is this it? Is this the real break? Will we not make another new high before the end of the year? I don't know, it's too soon to say. I also don't really care because I'm day trading, I'm actively trading, I'm in and out of stocks where even an option is only a weekly trade. But the bottom line is there's more to life than work. Money is a vehicle to have a better life. You wanna have a better life, okay? It's worth the time, it's worth the effort, it's worth the energy, and the money to become a successful trader. So that's why you gotta take the time to actually learn how to do this, invest the money in it, because again, fast forward, Thanksgiving 2024, or Labor Day, whatever, you could be making the money you wanna make. You could be exactly where you wanna be. Fast forward a year from now, 2025. You could say, oh my God, it's a year to make this much money. That's nothing, it's a blip. Again, it's hard to believe. It's almost the summer, it's crazy. Memorial Day will be here before you know it, it's already April. Time is flying by, and so many people just wanna waste time, never getting anywhere with their trading, and hope that what? Hope and pray that one day they'll just, a light bulb will go off and they'll get it? No, you're never gonna get it unless you have a successful strategy. Never, you're not. So you're gonna take the time and money to figure out one yourself, and you're gonna pay someone like me and learn my class, and take my class and learn my strategy. I had somebody email me, this is God like two months ago, and he said, he's figured it out, he's figured out his own strategy, and 99% accuracy or something, which I don't think even exists. He's doing it on a demo, you know, that's crazy. I traded real-life money when I figured out what I did. I won, I lost, I won, I lost, I went back and forth. You're never gonna feel for anything unless you're dealing with real money. You have to use real money to trade. Even if you're figuring out a strategy on your own, you've gotta do it real cash. And most people can't go through the brutality of the ups and downs of that because it's painful when you're figuring something out before you learn what to do. But I make it easy for people because I'm calling the trains. All you gotta do is follow me. I don't think it's that hard. And I also only do like usually one thing a day, maybe two, which you can see in here. But again, why do I prefer to short? It's the fear and panic. It's the fear and panic that comes in. The fear and panic that comes in, you're seeing that now in the market. So you say, well, who's in control today? Well, it's obviously the bears. The bears for now. And again, no matter what happens today, even if the market opens and 930 and rallies all day, right now what transpired in the last 70 minutes was fear and panic. Fear and panic that they're not going to lower interest rates this year, that they're not gonna do it at all, that inflation is still a problem and that's what you're trading on that fear and panic. So again, shorting gives me an edge. Most traders go long. I don't know the concept of buying a low and selling high is something that people can wrap their head around. And again, people just prefer to go long. And again, many people are swing trading long. Few traders know how to short. Also selling comes in fast unlike buying. Hence the fear and panic situation. Institutional money sells and takes short positions and stocks in the market. And again, that's what happened today. Today was just a perfect day to do this lecture. I mean, I couldn't have planned it out better if I had predicted it. Again, it could have been on data that happened Thursday and Friday. Today was just a big day to day. But institutional money sold the market off this morning. That's what happened. So there's no way, even if we rallied today, that I'd ever go long on the market. One, we gap down and I don't go long gap downs. And again, people trade gap fills. It does not work consistently. Even if sometimes it works, it doesn't work consistently. You've got to have a strategy that works consistently. There is no such thing as 100%. You will take losses even if you come and trade with me. But you're going to win in more than you lose if you follow what I'm doing. And that's all that you can ask for. And then some trades, you're going to get big trades. Some trades, you're going to get big trades. Again, the video is a good example of that. B is a good example. That was some of the puts that I called this week. But institutional money is selling the market this morning, dumping positions. And again, no matter what, I wouldn't go long today. Even if we closed today, green at four o'clock, I wouldn't go long the market. So you're either short or ready, which it sounds like many of you were not. Or we'll see how we set up today that you could get in step, new short today, but you wouldn't go long. The longs are off here now for this market, for the foreseeable future right now. Anyways, this was Thursday. I was talking about this. Here's the wealth chart from last Thursday, April 4th. Anybody remember this? It went pooh, and it fell off a cliff. Again, great example of institutional money. There it is. What the heck is going to make the market do this? It isn't you, and it isn't me. And we could have 1,000 people here this morning, and we never, never, never make this happen. You could throw your whole account. You wouldn't move the market like this. This is a dump, pooh, and it happened. And this is kind of basically, again, I don't have today's pre-market up. This is pretty much what happened here this morning. It's crazy. I don't even know where we open. I'll look at it later. But this was a massive sell-off, 523, started around 130, and then boom, it was $10. And this happened so fast. This happened too fast for anybody to do anything at all. Don't you understand? And the market is still in an uptrend. I want to make that clear. Even with the gap down today, the market is still strong. This isn't, I'm not trend trading here. I'm an active day trader. I'm actively trading options for momentum. The momentum here, you would have wanted to be short. But anyways, the market is still in an uptrend, and the market is still strong. Here was another option, just so you can see what the letter looks like. I give the symbol, the strike, the expiration date. We've been shorting BA pretty much all year, pretty much since January. It was the first trade of the year, was BA, was a put, and this is even before all the accidents and the problems. I mean, if you look over the stock, was it the day of the year, and where it is now, it's almost like, it's like shocking actually. So this was Monday the 11th, and I called this for the Friday. Cost was so cheap, 145s, BA, let's look at where it was. 383% return of investment, BA, where was that? Oh, that was here. Again, stock closed here, gap down. So I called it, dropped, boom, fell. Here was that week. Here was the week that the BA tanked. And again, who knows, I don't even remember what though. There were so many reasons, so many mechanical failures, so many things with this. Oh, here's back since the beginning of the year. Yeah, here's the one we did at the beginning of the year. The first one we did in January is right here. We made money in this one. I was in the trade, I remember this now. I was in the trade here, I was in the putt, and then it did this, boom, and that was the same week. That was the start to our year. And look at it now, it's completely insane. So it started the year above 250. I mean, this is a big move even for a stock like this. So you can't rely on economic data or even fundamentals to make decisions because you wouldn't have known what the data was today. You wouldn't have known that at all. The only reason I've been talking on TV, like I said for the last six, seven months, I'm not believing they were gonna lower rates as many times, but then it came clear to me in the last month that they may not do it at all. It's because I'm a consumer. I'm a consumer just like you. So I can see I'm following mortgage rates, I'm following interest rates, I'm following savings rates, I'm following prices of things. I buy lots and lots of stuff. I buy food, obviously. The price of food and oil and everything, I mean, oil prices fluctuate in any type of economy, but food prices are not going down. And even rent prices and even home prices are not really going down yet. So I mean, as a consumer, I can say, well, this is completely ridiculous. Again, it depends where you live. Obviously prices are higher in New York than in other places in the country, but I mean, we'll never see in New York City a $299 dozen eggs again. We'll never, I'll never see that again. I'm lucky if I can find eggs that cost under $5, like $499. It's completely like golden goose eggs. Do you need thousands of trader strategies or can you get in positions with around $100? If you want to train on margin, you have to have a margin account. A margin account of a retail broker is $25,000 minimum. A margin account at a prop broker, you're probably gonna need about $5,000. As far as doing options, Peter, you can open up an options account at a retail broker with $2,000. And then, yes, you could take a $100 risk. So you could do puts. You would need a margin account at a prop broker to day trade. And maybe you can find somebody to open up an account with less than $5,000, but $5,000 is probably a good number. So you weigh the pros and cons every time you take a trade, but you must put the odds in your favor. There's no guarantees. And that's why you need a system that has high odds. So the 26 point golden gap system, it's a rating system that helps you pick which stock to trade each day. And I definitely look at the market. It pinpoints ahead of time which stock will have the move in the day with volatility to trade. Having a checklist keeps you organized and focused and having a checklist forces you to look at what you should be looking at in a chart in a stock to make the correct decision. Having a checklist helps assist you with directional bias and having a checklist keeps you in track to reach your goals. So a checklist is a plan of action. Everyone that puts money in the market should have a plan of action and a checklist. On a professional level, all high income career field specialists have checklists. No, I don't do anything with premiums. I'm buying the calls and selling them. I'm buying the puts and selling them. I'm trading the momentum. So again, the 26 points helps me pinpoint the footprints of institutional money. And you've got to have your brain when you do this. You've got to think about what you're doing. There's no, there's no, you know, moving average Fibonacci that you can stick on a chart that would have told you what the market was going to do today. The gap will, the gap will, and that's why I read it. So it's the price action. So again, indicators are not going to help you. You got it. You got to use your brain. And the benefit of trading gaps is you can be trade fast and be done, but think about what I'm saying. Work smarter, not harder. You want to make as much money as you possibly can in the shortest timeframe that you could possibly make it. And that's why I'm trading, again, the day trades on the one minute chart. But a big flow of money going a certain direction is what moves the market, stocks, creates momentum and sets the trend in charts. When you're looking for institutional money, you're really reading the side of the power and stock. You want to be in the side of the power in order for you to make money trading. So again, how do you make money in the market? Trade in the side of institutional money. This is the whole lecture today. You see what the market's doing. I would have rated the market gap today if I was trading it. I'm trading momentum. It's understanding what's really happening in the gaps. Again, there's so many people that don't understand gas, but they're so important and so meaningful. There's people that don't understand institutional money and they will, there's people that are going to buy this market today. I don't know where it's at right now. I guarantee you there's retail traders right now that are buying this market today. They don't understand how to short. They don't know where it's short. They don't know how to short. They're afraid to short. Don't be afraid to short and don't be afraid to learn something new. Because if you're not hitting the kind of numbers and I'm hitting the success that we're hitting this year, then you need to learn something different. Again, I started out today's lecture. Level up, level up. You have to have some kind of way to be different to do what you're doing if you want to be successful because quite frankly, most retail traders are losing. That's why weekly presentations, daily presentations, this whole thing this week that 365 is doing, they get lots and lots and lots of people because so many retail traders are losing and everybody's desperate for the next quick, rich, get rich quick thing. There's no get rich quick thing, anything, okay? Again, if you come and learn from me, that class is two days. You're gonna have to take a weekend. You're gonna do the class, it's 14 hours. Then you're gonna be in the room. Then you're gonna have to learn it. Then you're gonna have to take the trades. Again, the benefit of being in the room is and getting on the options newsletter before you even maybe understand everything, you can take the trades. You can sign up and take the trades and start trading before the class. But again, you may have a learning curve. So what? Again, look at it as something successful. There's no get rich quick anything. Remember the Reddit stocks that happened like two, three years ago, it's three years ago now. There's no, there's nothing like that, okay? You have to get out of the box of what you're doing to get to the next point, to get to the next level and be excited about doing that. The fact that you even can do it, the fact that I even know what I'm doing right now, that I've been doing it as long as I have, the fact that I even still offer the class, it's amazing for you, it's a great opportunity because I'm not gonna do this forever. At some point, I will say, I'm gonna probably retire or whatever it is. But anyways, every day I'm looking for stocks to trade that have, number one, a high probability of directional bias for the entire day, number two, big moves in the day, number three, early confirmation of the bias in the move between nine, 30 and 10, and precise entries with follow through and a good risk to reward. So don't waste time trading without getting anywhere. It's so important. Think about what I said today. It makes sense. Unfortunately, most people, they just waste years. There are people that are older than me that have been following me since I started the Stockswish business in 2012. I've had the business now for, again, 12 years going on 13. There are people that are following me that long. Think about doing my class. I don't know if they'll ever have the opportunity. I'll just keep thinking about it for another 12 years. And again, I'm not gonna do this forever. So you have an opportunity to learn from me because I'm the one that created the system and I'm the one that knows what I'm doing with the trades. That's how I can call trades like Tesla and VA, even read this market. You can go on YouTube and look at the clip where I said on Schwab, I was one of the Nicole Pinnellites and I said, I won't be surprised if they don't raise rates at all this year. If they don't lower rates at all this year, I said it right on air. And then we tanked on Thursday. I think it was on Tuesday. We tank Thursday and I'll look at this today. Now everybody, like I said in Bloomberg, saying, oh my God, maybe only one, two, it's probably gonna be none. And again, the fact that Jamie Dimon came out this week, that was two days ago and it was like a precursor. Again, maybe he knew what the numbers were gonna be today. I don't know that he said interest rates maybe 8%. Now, can you do this in beginner? Yes, you can. You can learn the nuts and bolts in my class, charts, everything, right out of the game. The Golden Gap course teaches you a strategy on how to trade gaps. The course teaches a 26-point rating system to find the best stock to trade each day. The course also teaches you how to play the stock on the day. The course teaches you chart analysis and technical analysis on a very, very advanced level. This is a great quote from Warren Buffett, even though he is really a long-term investor, which is not what I do. You could be in long-term and things for your retirement account now won't, but I wouldn't go long the market today in my personal professional opinion because of the gap. There's one investment that supersedes all others, invest in yourself, because that's an investment if you believe in yourself that will absolutely pay off and you need to get value out of your education. So if you come, you're gonna learn what I know in the points. It's about understanding that you can do it and empowering yourself today. So the Golden Gap course is a complete system to use to trade. The class is a full-to-day course on how to strategically find pick-and-play stocks that are professional bearish gaps. Class is online. You can be anywhere in the world and take it. It's not til the end of the month. Again, it's a busy, busy month with earnings season. So you can join and start trading with us now. Class is online. Tuition is $69.99. It's April 27th, the 28th, nine to five. And the combo includes the trends, which is April 30th, that's $74.99. Again, all classes online. Look at that picture. That's amazing, so beautiful. I'm going out today. Again, one of the luxuries of working for myself and actually trading for a living is I'm going out for a walk in the park today. It's supposed to be 70 degrees. So again, if I worked for a company or had to go and sit in an office till five or six, I'd never be able to do this and enjoy this beautiful weather. So if you wanna sign up and doing a spring special until Sunday, April 14th, and again, that is this Sunday, if you sign up for the Golden Gap course, you will get the live training room free for one year, the options newsletter free for one year and the market report subscription free for one year. Spring special ends Sunday. If you would like a trial for Thursday and Friday, you can email me today. And again, if you have questions, you can ask me now. I've done a few minutes early for questions. My class is 6999, which is the main class. If you wanna just sign up for the options newsletter, I have a six month subscription. It's the smallest subscription, which is 4999 if you just wanna get the options trades. And again, you can sign up for that today and you can start trading tomorrow. There is no trial for the options newsletter that letters like gold. I will give a trial for the room. It's not an options room. It's a day trade room. It's Thursday and Friday. If you wanna do that, you can email me. It's just this week. And again, the special is running through Sunday. If you wanna do this, the class is 6999 and the combo is 7499. And again, I'm giving you so much support here. I'm giving you all the options trades with this special for the year. I'm giving you all my day trades with this special for the year. And the market report subscription is a weekly subscription that comes out on a Monday. Ricardo is asking about chat. I don't know. I can see your chat, Ricardo. Does anybody else have any other questions? Again, I will look at what's going on today in the market and maybe do a YouTube video. You can go to YouTube. You can follow me there. Not only do I have all my trading information to show you the room and stuff like that on my YouTube. I've also been putting some amazing videos of nature in New York. I stood in the roof of my building and watched the solar eclipse two days ago and I put some videos of that up on my YouTube as well. Again, when I started trading, I didn't know what I was doing. It took me three years to figure this out. I'm telling you that you can do this and you can figure it out and you can come and learn from me. It's not impossible. It's just that for some reason, at some point, after traders are doing this for a number of years and losing money and taking classes, people take classes and they don't make money with whatever they learn, then they get frustrated, they take bad trades and they pay for cheap classes and they end up losing more than even my class cost because they pay for cheap class and then take bad trades that don't work from a system that doesn't work. That's so silly. Think about this. This is an investment in yourself but I try to give a lot when I do a special like this to give you all the support and all the help that you need. It's not impossible to trade the market. It's not impossible to do this with a small account or beginner account or anything. It's baby steps only if you have a beginner account but you need the right attitude and you know who you are. If you're out there and you've been trading for a while and you've had a negative attitude, you've got to turn it around and it doesn't have to take forever. You could do it today. You could even turn your trading around today if you sign it for my class now and start trading with this tomorrow and get tomorrow's newsletters. So, I mean, it doesn't have to take that long. It may, you may have a learning curve of understanding. Well, how did I know that BA was gonna gap down? How did I know that Tesla was gonna gap down? Again, these are things that I teach in the class that you have to understand and learn and take in the class. But again, the class is at the end of the month. So you have time to sign in for that but the specials line going on through Sunday. The class is $69.99. So I don't know what you mean by semester, Nick. And if you sign up by Sunday, you get the room free for one year and the options newsletter subscription free for one year. After that, if you wanna renew or rejoin, I do specials for students but that's April 2025. So I wouldn't even worry about it. All right, Melissa, I'm gonna start getting you wrapped up here. Thank you. All right, thank you so much for being.