 Welcome to Access to Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey guys, good morning, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Access to Trader.com weekend wrap-up show. Hope everybody is doing well as everybody knows, especially in the last week of the live webinar. I was sick as a dog. You can kind of hear by my voice. It's still not 100%. They are still coughing a little bit, but getting a lot better. Last night I was in the Yankee game, 50, 48 degree weather. It didn't exactly help. But nevertheless, I am slowly but surely getting better and hopefully you guys had a great weekend. I guess at least I'm going in the right direction. So that is a good thing. So hopefully you guys are having a blessed weekend. Hopefully you guys are living the wonderful life that you deserve. And the most important part is that you're healthy and you can see another day. Everything else is kind of a cherry on top. So let's talk about the big news from last week. And again, I'm not even talking about the macro-wise with China, with all the ISM numbers that are poorly and the jobs number to save the market towards the end of the week. We're talking about the commissions, right? We're talking about the commissions and the announcement that Ameritrade and I think it was... Who started it all? I think it was Thinkorswim. I could be wrong, but Thinkorswim, Ameritrade, E-Trade, all these online retail brokers throwing the towel and basically said that they are putting their commissions to the retail public to zero. Again, they're not doing you a favor. Let me go back into kind of a quick history lesson and tell you exactly why. When I started out trading, I started out trading in a company called Generic Trading, Carl & Financial. For those of you guys who might ring the bell, what they are, they were featured, or we were featured, in about 11 to 12 pages in the Michael Lewis book, Flash Boys. If you guys read that, if you heard Carl & Equities, Generic Trading, that was us. When I first started trading, I got a deal with 80% split profit sharing and 3 cents a share. Now, forget about the 80-20 part. That was already crazy to think, especially in these days, but the 3 cents a share when I first got that deal, it didn't sound like a big deal to me because I said to myself, well, the way Ron Shear, if only you guys know who Ron Shear is, Google him, sent me down and he said, well, 3 cents a share, 80-20 split. And basically he said, well, 3 cents a share, if you buy 1,000 shares, it's $30, you sell 1,000 shares, it's $30. Okay, great. It doesn't make a big deal. It's a big deal. 3 cents. If you're buying a stock at $25, okay? So now you're long at $25.03, what's the big deal? You don't realize when you're paying 3 cents a share and you're just trading all day and trading all day and not knowing anything what you're doing and don't have a process and have no clue. Okay, all you're doing is buying a stock and closing your eyes and say, please let it be higher. Right? That adds up. And that adds up really, really quickly. Years later, when you got a little bit of sense under you, okay, a lot of traders got their deals done, kind of reworked their deals and got them down to a penny. And it was around, I think it was around 2001. I got it down to about a penny and I said, wow, this is great. Keep this in mind throughout the internet craze, nobody cared. Okay, nobody cared about 3 cents a share after you finally got your legs running and everything was going great. Because again, when you're long as stock overnight and stock opens up up 10, 12, 15 points, who cares? Okay, you care when you're trading into a day ranks and you're trying to scalp. Nobody was really scalping back then. So the idea that we went from 3 cents a share to a penny, it was like, oh my God, this is like the greatest thing ever. Think about that penny, right? It doesn't make a difference. You buy a thousand shares, $10, you sell a thousand shares. Well, another $10, that's 20. Do it over and over and over and over again. If you're looking at $100, $150 commission, again, you don't know what you're doing. You don't have a process and you're praying to God that your stock works out, right? It goes higher. Okay, it's a big deal. So years went by. Okay, years went by and traders got savvy. Okay, let's not even talking about, let's not even talk about, you know, what happened for the next several years. Let's talk about what happened somewhere around 2005. Okay, so let's fast forward from 2001 to 2005. Somewhere around 2005, a lot of us, a lot of my friends who started out in generic and all that stuff, we turned to each other and we said, well, why the hell are we paying, you know, four tenths of a penny? At that time, again, keep in mind, you're going from three cents a share from four tenths of a penny. So for every thousand shares, now it's $4. Why the hell are we paying $4 for every thousand if we already know, and again, longer you stay in the business, you kind of pick things up. We already know that the broker is basically getting clearance for free. Okay, now without going through the whole big thing, what clearances and all that good stuff, you can get a lot of new guys, you can Google and kind of see for yourself. But we're saying to ourselves, well, why the hell are we still paying four or five tenths of a penny? Okay, we can get a clearance arrangement. Okay, we can, you know, get a prime broker, whatever the case may be, depending on how big the trader's account is, and we could get our clearance basically to nil. Okay, and what happened in the prop industry, somewhere around that time, a lot of the talent, okay, if you've been watching me for years now, we started talking about this years ago, a lot of the talent left, right, they left a lot of prop firms because they said to themselves, well, if I'm already trading, if I already have 100 up, 200 up, 300 up, 50 up, whatever the dollar amount is in their account. Okay, it doesn't make a difference. If I have that number, why am I splitting profits with the broker, right? Why am I splitting profits with the broker? And why the hell am I still paying commissions, these type of commissions in the first place? So a lot of the talent left. So a lot of, if you guys notice, and you can Google this, a lot of the prop firms started letting go traders or a lot of traders started leaving a lot of their talent because, again, the talent level shrunk. Okay, they just wasn't good talent level because they had nobody to learn from because all the guys who started out paying three cents a share, they were a long gone, right? They were a long gone. So the prop industry started depleting, really, depleting in talent, depleting their overnight exposure to traders. And it was really dying out. And what happened was eventually, okay, the retail brokers, okay, they started feeling pressured because you guys started seeing all these commercials. Well, trade with Schwab, you know, why pay $11.99 for a trade? You could pay $8.99. And then Ameritrade would come out, well, why pay $7.99? You could pay $4.99 trade. Why pay, you know, interactive brokers? Why pay $4.99? You could pay $3 a trade. And slowly, but surely, it started building and building and building and building. And ultimately, okay, ultimately fast forward to kind of where we are until last week or two weeks ago, whatever it started, I think it was Thinker Swim that came out and said, well, good news retail public. Okay, you don't need to pay $4.95 a share anymore. We are going to do you a favor. Okay, because we love you. Okay, we love you. Okay, and we are going to make sure that commission doesn't stand in your way. Right? Doesn't stand in your way anymore for trading your goals, your dreams, becoming a professional trader, whatever the hell a professional trader means, right? We want to be with you. Come to us. And when Thinker Swim came out with that news and really, really started hitting all the, you know, all the online brokers, right? The Ameritrade's, the eTrades, the Schwab's, and they all just started collapsing. Okay, because again, the price war was real. The price war wasn't just started two weeks ago. The price war started years ago. Okay, just Thinker Swim. I think it was Thinker Swim that started. If I'm wrong, I keep on thinking Thinker Swim. I'm trying to kind of read the news here. Well, I'm sorry, it was Interactive Brokers. Interactive Brokers. I knew it wasn't us. I think it was, they called it Soft Commission, whatever the hell it was. So they started it and all these brokers got killed, right? Ameritrade and Schwab, all of them, right? Ameritrade, Schwab, they all got killed. What they didn't tell you, okay, what they didn't tell you, and I've been talking about this for years, okay, for absolute years. What they didn't tell you in that press release, and again, everybody knows the news. Ameritrade followed during the week, eTrade followed, Schwab followed, and they're all now commission free, right? Everybody will have a retail broker's commission free. What they didn't tell you for years and years and years leading up to these events were, yeah, they're making money in their commissions. But again, it's not like it's a prop firm, right? And again, I was in the prop industry for years. It's not like you have a group that's doing 20, 30, 40 million shares a month, right? You're dealing with retail, right? You're dealing with retail. If you're an Ameritrade, you're dealing with retail. I'm sure you have some active guys. I'm sure you have some active guys. No doubt, no doubt, blah, blah, blah, blah. But majority of the public is, you know, buy 200 shares here. Maybe three weeks later, sell the 200 shares. You know, that's the reality, okay? What they didn't tell you, and they, you know, again, from doing you a favor and putting your commissions to zero, they've been selling your order flow for years, okay? For years. They've had arrangements for years. And I don't remember, I don't remember who the broker was that announced this, but I think they said something to the effect that I think 4% of the revenue was commissioned. Okay. I think that was the case. And again, you, please double check. And right away that bill should have, should have really rung in your head. They're not even making money on commissions anymore. They've been selling your order flow for years. If you've been trading with a non-direct axis broker, okay? You, and I think some of you guys probably have seen this. You put in your order and it kind of like holds up for like half a second or a second. Like, you don't get that instant execution. So they've been selling your order flow, okay? They've been making tons of money, tons of money probably .003 or .004 per share for years and years and order flow constantly trillions of dollars trading every single day. Okay. Just remember that. So they've been selling your order flow for years on top of the commissions. Okay. And majority of, especially newer traders that don't know that I only learned about maybe six, seven years in that the rebate game was ridiculously, ridiculously profitable. And especially if you're new traders, what you guys don't know, well, maybe, maybe you do, maybe you don't. But any single time, okay, you take an offer or hit a bid. Okay. You're paying an ECN fee. Okay. If you're taking it through ARCA, which is the most expensive one, you're getting charged on top of your commission. Okay. You're getting charged. I think ARCA is the most expensive one .0045. I think BATS is the most, is the cheapest one, but, you know, BATS. So there, anytime you hit it, take an offer, you're getting charged an ECN fee on top of your commission. Anytime you hit a bid, you are getting charged an ECN fee. Okay. When you provide liquidity. Okay. So basically when you are not taking an offer, when you're just bidding for stock and you get hit, okay, you are supposed to get a rebate. Okay. So you are supposed to get a credit for providing liquidity. The problem is, unless you've been around the block where anybody has never kind of sat down and told you this, the brokers have been keeping your rebates for years. Okay. For years. So yeah, it's cool and all when you have, you know, and you're trading a thousand shares, thousand shares there, $4.99 a trade, but that extra money that's adding up through millions and millions of shares daily that even the retail public trades at the Ameritrade's, at the E-Trades, at the Schwab's, they're making a fortune. Okay. They're making a fortune. So when they announced, you know, when they announced, I think when we think of Swim announced that they were going to zero commission, I started chuckling. Okay. Tell the public why. Right. Tell the public why. Why wasn't this in your PR? Don't worry about us. We're still, we're still going to sell you order flow. We're still going to keep the ECN rebates. We're good. We're good. We're doing you a favor. Come to us. And the problem is every single one of these brokers realize, well, one of domino falls, we're all going to fall. We might as well all give out free commissions. Okay. We might as well all give out commissions and do you a favor that now we are going to extend your shelf life. Okay. You're going to do a favor that now you have, you are in the driver's seat to save more money to realize your dream. You're going to be a professional trader. Right. That's the problem. Okay. That's the problem. It's the hidden, it's the hidden stuff. They're not telling us. And this is actually kind of a good thing. Okay. It's obviously a good thing. The retail trader obviously wins here. Okay. Your goal right now is to do two things. Come Monday morning. If you haven't done so already, you should call up. If you have an account with Schwab in E trade and think or swim and probably any other retail broker. The first thing you should do is call them up and say, I want my commissions number one, go to zero. Okay. In 30 seconds, they will say yes. Okay. Because if not, all you have to do is leave. Right. Very simple. You don't need them anymore. You've never left them. I've been telling traders for years. If you're paying $3, $4 a trade, how are you not calling up your broker and say, take my commissions down to half. Take my commissions down to $2 a trade, $1.50 a trade. They need you. You are the commodity. You don't need them. Okay. And now they know that. And now you have the advantage. You have the leverage. So any broker who is still charging you a commission come Monday morning. Okay. They're going to get free trades or you leave and you go to the ones already announced free trading. Okay. You also, again, you don't even stop there. Okay. You don't stop there because the next leg, what they're going to tell you, and they're not going to tell you this in public, but eventually they have to kick back your rebates. Right. Have to kick you back your rebates. It's just reality. So not only should you call up your broker and say, hey, I want free commissions. Okay. Now I want my rebates. Okay. I want to get credits for my liquidity that I provide. And obviously if you pay for liquidity, you have to pay. I'm okay with that. But if I'm providing liquidity on the way out, I want my rebates. Okay. That's the second thing. And again, if they say, well, we can't do that, of course they can do that. Of course you can do that. And obviously the more active of a trader you are, again, if you trade 100 shares a month, yes, you're probably not going to get your ECNs back. Probably. But if you are an active trader and there's some pretty retail active traders that do trade a half a million, a million, two, three million shares a month that you are paying a lot of ECN fees. Okay. You should get back. You will be shocked. How much money you get back on ECN rebates. So again, was this a good thing for the public? Absolutely. Were they kind of doing you a favor? Probably not. It's just cold staying in business. Who knows what's going to happen years from now? Okay. Nobody knows. Okay. Absolutely. Nobody knows what is going to happen years from now. But will a lot of smaller brokerage firms go out of business? Probably. Okay. Probably. If they do provide some sort of added benefit. So again, a lot of you guys are big short sellers. Okay. And locates are a big deal for you. So if a broker is providing phenomenal locates for you guys. Yes. You probably will pay a commission because they are facilitating a service that is making your business viable. Okay. So if you are getting phenomenal, you know, phenomenal locates, for example, on the short side. Okay. You probably want to definitely get your commissions down. But that's the broker you want to hang on to because again, you don't want to go to eat, you know, you don't want to go to a different firm that has no locates pay zero commission, but you can't run your business. It just doesn't make sense. So if you have smaller firms that are giving you good locates, right, lower overnight fees, if they can provide that business, you know, they're going to be the ones that survive. But it's up to you now as a consumer to get, you know, get control of your future, get control of your business. This is your business. This is one of the biggest expenses you are paying a month as a trader is your as your, as your ability to run your account the proper way. So yes, is this a big one for the consumer? Absolutely it is. And now your job as especially a newer trader or even seasoned traders who just didn't know about this. Now you are in the driver's seat, get back control of your ECN fees for sure. Okay. And make sure that you are control of your business. So hopefully this will be a pretty good kind of a wake up poll. I guess I didn't know this. If you guys don't know this about already again, please forget my voice. I'm still fighting a little bit of a cold, but more important guys just again gain control of your future. So really, really crazy, crazy market, really, really crazy market. Again, for all you guys who heard, we started, I think Kyler started putting out our nightly videos without, without the pivot watches for obvious reasons. I think Tuesdays and Thursdays. So if you guys heard Thursdays, if you watched, watched a Thursday session, you first of all, you saw how sick I was. But the most important part is how again, how important technical analysis was. And we talked about how really important it was that the NASDAQ 100, the QQQs, reclaimed this bottom channel. If you watch, go back to Thursday's video, you'll see that. Because every single time we held this bottom channel, what started was a, you know, a net move back up. And you can see it on Thursday's session spilling over Friday. Again, the job numbers were good. It actually saved the indexes throughout the week. Even though we had this really big 370 point move on the Dow, the Dow actually still finished in the red. So did the S&P for the week, the NASDAQ 100 sweeted out. I think a half of a percent gain for the week. But again, what this did was kind of set us up, what Thursday's session did was kind of set us up for future price action. Again, we are in the sweet spot additionally. In the fourth quarter, again, you have your, you have your Halloween, I guess, brief Halloween rally potential, your Thanksgiving turkey day rally, your Santa Claus rally, January effect, all that good stuff. Again, is that guaranteed? It's not. It's been viable now for years and years and years, but again, it's not guaranteed. So don't, you know, set up for the long side if you are not getting a clear technical symbol. I think for the bulls to really understand these two numbers, these are the channels that I will share with you because it's very, very important. If you guys notice, it got, the cues got rejected twice. Okay. One 90 58 on September the 25th and one 90 58, the exact same number again. This is why technical analysis is so is so essential for you guys to understand if the cues can reclaim one 90 58 on a close, then yeah, we have a shot for all you guys, especially training the bulls to take a bet on the one 95 because that is the measure potential. Again, if you believe stocks trade from supply to supply and demand to demand, then the next potential move is one 95. So from one 90 to one 95. Again, I'm not an option trader. I can't tell you how to formulate your trade. But again, I'm pretty good in directional bias and measure potential and one 95 is your pot of gold. So very, very aggressive week on this week. If you're not doing anything that's not necessary on YouTube, just watch the video. Thursday was one of more exaggerated pivot days. I can remember in a long time I'm talking about the short side. And then when the market reversed and it was a tweet, I pulled out and said, hey, cues just cues just reclaimed a daily support. We should rally and big rally was. But again, it's nothing to do with me. I'm I'm I don't predict things. and a tweet in the middle of the week. If I had to do it again, when it started my trading career all over again, the first thing I would do is get a book of basic Japanese candlesticks. That's it, basic Japanese candlesticks, guys. I'm telling you, you don't need to trade with me. Okay, and that pivots enough for everybody. If you have a $1,500 account, you can't trade with me. It's just the reality. So I understand the fact that there's 3,000, 4,000, 5,000 people in these alert rooms and they're all chasing the same $2 stock to make five cents. I get it, okay, I get it. But you don't need that. That's the whole point. You don't need that. Any type of way you decide to trade, the most important part is sit your ass down, get a book of technical analysis. Japanese candlesticks are the most purest forms of just understanding, okay? There's just very few things that, again, if you have all the spinning tops and all these things that I have no idea what they're about, but things like, you know, things like hammers, inverted hammers, these are basic things that just will give you, if nothing at all, will give you at least directional probability bias, okay? And that's where you start there. You don't start out, again, building from the roof to the foundation. You start with the foundation to the roof and it's incredibly important to understand that. So very, very, again, you don't need anybody. Okay, guys, again, if you're, all you 20-somethings that believe that somebody's giving you a trade is ridiculous. You sound like a fucking fool. Excuse my French, but it's so frustrating to hear, you know, a new trader talking about, I'll do anything to succeed and they keep on going from these alert services to alert services, alert services, chasing the same stocks. Just doesn't make sense. Again, eventually you have to stop. You're on a timeline. You guys don't even know it. You're, and I said this before, you're kind of like a weekly option, okay? You're going to expire worthless. What you do in your time before you expire is crucial to your development and it's incredibly important for you to really take control of your trading and start today. Forget about waiting for tomorrow. Again, what do you think is going to change tomorrow that it did from last Friday, last Thursday, last Wednesday? If you're doing the same thing, waiting for some guy, some random avatar to tell you, well, ABCGV is about to break out. Well, that's 14,000. She's, oh my God, there it goes. Doesn't make sense. Get your ducks in a row. Again, figure this game out or else you will be a statistic. So again, Friday, again, Thursday was incredibly aggressive. Friday had more selective, okay, they had more and more selective areas of strength. Again, I am going through this week. I am, I'm 80, 20 bush. There's certain names that I do like to the downside that they confirm. Tesla is one of them. Tesla is definitely one of them. We gave a pretty decent trade on Friday. Beyond, you know, it's so close. It's so close. It feels like every single time Beyond confirms really aggressively to the downside some nonsense PR. And again, they had that PR with McDonald's. And again, no offense to anybody who lives like in Southeast, West, Ontario, Canada, but they're putting into eight stores. If this PR came out to Los Angeles, testing areas, Los Angeles, Chicago, LA, it's a whole different story. You know, so that Tesla, Beyond, I'm kind of watching through the downside. If they confirm everything else, I'm pretty bullish in. So let's talk about Friday's session. So I took this pivot here, right? I took this Netflix pivot here, 269.5270. The problem with this pivot was, I didn't get filled in any size. It only went up like 50, 70 cents. If you guys remember, it was trading really, really thin. Okay, really, really thin. And yes, it went to 271.5, but it was really, really thin. So I broke even on the trade. Again, once you see a hundred share lots, I'm not, you know, there was no institutional pushing the stock. So I got out of the trade, I got out of the trade, break even, went up like a dollar and change. Again, again, safety's first. And intraday, okay, you had that news that Disney is pulling all ads, right? You had that news that Disney was pulling ads and the stock, I mean, really came in. I mean, really, really came in and, you know, came in like four or five points very, very aggressively. And when you guys noticed, right, when you guys noticed it woke up, right? And this is how you know the market is strong when they take bad news and they throw it underneath the rug and it woke up. It was very, very important. We'll talk about that in a second. Roku never obviously got to that 110 area. Navidia woke up late, okay? Woke up late off that 182 level, made a move. I was already, I already logged off. I logged off early a couple of days this week because I was just sick. It made its move close above the 82 area. I still like there. Tesla, okay? So I got long Tesla. Tesla was exactly the same trade as I got long Tesla what was it? All right, so here was the pivot, right? Here was the pivot that I initially put in. 234 to the upside, 232 downside. I actually got long Tesla and it was exactly the same thing as Netflix, okay? It was trading very, very thin and it went up, you know, 50 cents or so, same thing. And again, I scratched on the trade. So my first two trades of the day was scratch trades. And once I tweeted this out and I go, I just don't like how thin these stocks are trading. I wanna watch the bottom channels. And this is before the market exploded. So Tesla confirmed 230 and nice trade. It went down to like 28 very, very quickly. Good trade very, very quickly. And then you started seeing things, started to wake up. Shop 228 needs to build. Again, not a big move, I still like shop 228. Only went to like 231. But again, I still like the channel if it confirms on Friday, if it confirms this week, 331 it should go. But you started seeing slowly things coming out of their channels, Amazon 1736 needs to build. You can see Amazon again, not big moves, okay? Not big moves yet. But here's a 1736. It's traded up to 1743. I like it once it starts building 1745, I think it goes to 1760 and then probably to 1800. Again, if we continue, if you again, if you continue this area that we talked about on the queues that starts confirming Amazon, all these stocks will start confirming with it. So Monday, Tuesday will be very, very important. So again, not big moves, right? Not big moves, but the point is again, they are mirroring, okay? They are absolutely mirroring what is going on in NASDAQ 100. And then things got really, things got really, really good, right? Big area, again, they flushed. Again, I even said this, I go, I mess this up. I messed up the Netflix solar flat because up then it was trading. And then I said, it's 272 because it woke up. 272.30 will be the big area if it needs to confirm daily. So this is where Netflix has exploded and congratulations guys. This was like a $3 move, probably in about three minutes. Again, this was the 72.30, right? This was the 72.30 area and it just absolutely went nuts. 72.30, it went to 75.5. I'm telling you in a matter of minutes, just a huge, huge move on Netflix, right? Huge, huge move on Netflix. Tesla, there you go. Again, this is where tweet is out, 272.30. Macro area needs to build. If it confirms that first push of 275.73, it will get aggressive. Again, three points in a matter of like several minutes. Bingo, bingo, bingo, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's about it. That's about it. This will be obviously a big area from Monday on beyond. So good, aggressive, good, aggressive action on Friday. Again, you need to be a little more patient. Thursday was like getting five aces. Okay, if it was possible to get five aces, it is, again, it's so important guys. And I think everybody in the live webinars really embraces trade the days that you're getting value. That's it. Don't trade the random days. There are ranges that are 50 cents, 70 cents. Yeah, you can scout, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you want the potential of really, really great aggressive potential moves. And that's the key. So for all you guys, have an awesome, awesome trading week. Call if you're broke or get your commissions to zero, make sure, again, you're extending your shelf life. Again, you don't need anybody, guys. It's all about technical analysis. God bless everybody. Have an awesome week and stay blessed. Take care. Congratulations for putting in the time to take control of your trading. You're one step closer to owning your future and achieving the success you desire. Want daily trade ideas directly from Dan? Straight off his personal watch list? 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