 And for coming out and we have next up on our lineup, Melissa Armo who founded the Stock Swoosh LLC in December of 2012. The Stock Swoosh LLC is an educational firm that empowers traders with a complete and detailed system to become profitable traders. Melissa graduated Magnum Cum Laude from Gettysburg College with a BA in Philosophy and a minor in Latin Political Science in 1994. She was employed by several banks and brokers in Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, and New York as a mortgage broker for 17 years. She changed careers from banking to pursue a security trading career in 2008. She is a self-taught day trader with over four years of experience. Melissa's specialty is a trading strategy that focuses on shorting stocks that, yeah, without further ado, I give you an unmuted. Hello, everyone. Welcome. Let me see here how to get my screen up. Can you see it? Let me know if that's good, everyone. Wonderful. Welcome. Thank you so much, Amy. Thank you, Traders Exclusive for having me. Always enjoy coming here. And I'm really enjoying today's topic because it's one that everyone has an interest in who trades, whether they're day trading, swing trading, court trading. People love to talk about Apple. So today, we're going to talk about how to trade Apple. Welcome. My name is Melissa Armo. And as Amy said, I own a company called the Stock Swoosh LLC. If you'd like more information after the webinar, please feel free to email me at melissa at thestockswoosh.com. And if you'd like more information, you can go to YouTube. I have a lot of videos of trades that I've done live there on YouTube. And I'll be putting one on tonight for the trade I did today. If anyone's interested, it was BRCM. So welcome. Would you like to take a bite out of Apple? Would you? The question is, how are you going to trade it? What to do with Apple? What direction do you take it? People are always wondering, is Apple going to get a lift up? Is it going down? Is it going to keep breaking? Is it going to rally? And actually, the earnings were out on Apple last night. And we're going to talk about that today as well. So to seize opportunity in trading, you must get the directional bias correct. This is one of those particulars. When you are going down a road, if you take the wrong direction in trading, you're going to get lost. And what does that mean that you're going to lose money? In trading, there is only one direction to make money, whatever the direction happens to be in the trend of the stock chart. So for today, we're going to talk about the correct directional bias in Apple. There is only one way as far as I'm concerned to be trading Apple. And we're going to discuss it today. And how are we going to know what the right direction of Apple is? Gaps. This is actually the strategy that I trade. I consider myself a gap expert. However, that being said, I do not trade gaps like every other place out there. All right? So I'm going to talk to you today about Apple and go over the gaps in Apple. And some of this stuff is going to be different. All right? I'm just telling you that right out of the game. You can ask me questions at the end, but the reality is that the way that I'm trading gaps is in the direction of the gap. Gaps are a true show of price. Price tells you direction. What something is really, truly worth is a function of what the current price is. And nothing else. I love Apple. I have Apple products. I have an iPhone. Apple is a fantastic, fabulous, amazing company. I love Apple and everything it stands for. But the fact is that what is going on with the price of Apple right now is what it's true worth is. And as a trader, you've got to get this direction correct if you want to trade it in order to make money. Because the object in trading is to make money. Okay? We can talk and philosophize all we want, but you're trading to make money. And hopefully to make a living like me. So let's talk about gaps. How and why, how and why is both the same answer? Large institutional money. How can understanding how to trade gaps make it possible to read a chart like Apple? Well, because gaps are created with large institutional money. And that is what makes the gap. Not just the gaps in Apple, but every gap that exists in the charts, including the market. The professional gaps that happen and play out in Apple form by one thing and one thing only large institutional money. What do I mean by this? It could be banks. It could be hedge funds. It could be any conglomeration of big money that trades the market. That's the only thing that really moves the market. If everybody here, every single person that's in this webinar today, we all traded the same thing right now. If we all traded BRCM this morning and tried to short it, will we have pushed it down today and made it run like it did? No, no way. We couldn't have done it. All of us together did it. We couldn't have done it. The only thing that made that gap happen today and the gaps that are happening in Apple is huge, big, what I call power money. So therefore you need a way that will help you pick the correct direction to claim the gap and confirm that the large money will flow with it. Because you want to get in the trade in the right direction and flow with the money. So that as soon as you take the trade, you're up money and it goes. By having a formula to rate and qualify the gap, you get confirmation and conviction that the large institutional money is on your side and then you play it. Gaps are an event and create a sense of urgency. Thus an action is being forced by participants of the stock. What do I mean participants, people that are long these stocks if you're looking to short or vice versa. And so this is why gap trading is incredibly powerful. Trading gaps is a powerful and profitable way to trade because you are trading on the side of the power, the power that is changing the price, making the price gap, which creates the event, which is a sense of urgency that people have to force an action. If they're long the stock and the stock gaps down, they must sell out and also some institutional money places short stocks a gap. They can do that too just like us. So we're going to go through six different gaps in Apple. Six different ones. I explained to you what's happened to the tippy tippy top and we're going to go through them all today till however long we have to talk. And then at the end, we're going to talk about the gap that's set up in Apple today. So let's start from the beginning. Apple had a beautiful, beautiful run and it's been an uptrend for years. If you've been long, Apple is a core trade. You made a lot of money in Apple long. Now that being said, last year, this is a chart of Apple. I clipped the end of 2012 here. Apple ran up and broke out to all time highs. Had several beautiful, fabulous bullish gaps making this move all the way up and ran up and broke over 700 and booped over 705 here this bar right here. This was on 923. This gap that happened here on 924 was a very significant gap for Apple. It actually rated high per my system and could have been played and this gap is still intact today. The high of this gap is 695-12 and it hasn't gone over it. Look, now it doesn't look like much. This is why you have to understand how to reprice because candlestick formations is really helpful but just not enough. It could not get over that number. It hasn't. Now, how do I know that? Well, look what happened right after. Right after it did what I call a continuation gap. It broke down. This is on 925 and fell on through and tried to get up here. The high of this bar is 692-78. It couldn't get up there. It couldn't get up to that 695 even, let alone 705. But Apple had a beautiful run. Now, what happened after this one and the continuation? Apple ran all the way down and had a nice move in here. Now, is this real? Is this a pull in? What is it? What's going on? Well, as it turns out, this is what I call a corrective gap. Corrective meaning the chart is in an uptrend until this day. And as of this day, now this chart is not in an uptrend anymore. This is the first day where this chart changed trends and Apple has been in a drown trend ever since this gap that happened in September. And actually, it's almost a year now, really. It's July. It's almost a year since this happened and Apple is still continuing its trend since that gap. This is the power of the gap. I mean, look at this, one little person here and this chart is holding a downtrend for almost a year. Let's look at the gap number two. Gap number two was on 10-8. Now, the high of this gap is 647-56. What's significant about this one? Do you see this area here of support? It's 650 dollars. Apple broke it here in the day of this gap. Okay, again, this doesn't look like much, but it was very significant. Apple broke 650 here in the day of this gap and then came back above here and tried to go over and retested it. Actually, dinged over 650, the high of this topping tail here, the rally back on 10-17, retested it. The high of this is 652.79. Now, just because it went over 650 doesn't mean it's not going to continue. Remember, this is Apple. Supporter resistance are areas and basically this was not the highest level of supporter resistance for this to retest. Guess where it was? These people right here. So, retested and couldn't get above these people here. This is a base. Bases are very strong and now it's a base of resistance. So, this was a support base. When Apple gapped down here, it now has become resistance. Resistance for the stock to retest to try to attempt to go higher and confirm if it's going to go higher or not. The low of these bars here on 9-11 and 9-12 is 650-650-656. These little tails, which were very significant actually. So, retested here, ran up here again. This is right after this gap. So, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, within a week. Within a week of it, it retested and decided it wasn't going to go over that area. It had made this strong level of resistance. What support is now resistance falls off a cliff. Falls off a cliff and not only falls off a cliff past the 200-peri-moving average, really falls off a cliff. Okay? And guess what? Gaps again. So, let's look at the next one. Number three. After this fell off a cliff, it gaps again right here on 11-7. Now, we're still, we're less than two months actually since the first initial gap back here. And look at the move that this thing has made. It's ran down quite a bit, well over $100 just in less than two months and fallen past any areas of support. Okay? Do you see all of this here? It just crushed right through it and continues going to gaps again. Gaps again on 11-7. High of this bar here. It's 574.54. The next day, here, here, it breaks another level. Two beautiful red bars right in a row. It breaks 550. This is what I call a continuation gap. Okay? And then it fell off a cliff again and almost broke 500. In this tippy-tippy bottom of the tail, it's like 502 or 501 or something. It almost broke $500. So, from this is the power of the gap, momentum. Look, you could actually draw a angle with your pencil and a ruler, and it would almost be straight. Like, if you actually, look, look at the 8-peri-moving average. Like, if you actually draw a line with your pencil, it's almost a perfect angle. And in between there were very significant gaps. The first one, this one, and this one here. And that's why people say, well, it can't possibly, you know, continue going. What do you mean it can't continue going? Momentum can continue going as long as it wants. And this goes into both directions, up or down. What creates momentum? Power. And that's reflected in the price of the chart, which you have to learn how to read, which you can and is possible through gaps. Okay? Because gaps are showing you what's going on in the price. You can read them and see what's happening and read the price. And it's easy to reprice in gaps. It's a great way to actually determine what's going on to read it so you know how to trade it. Okay? So anyways, what happened here? So this guy ran all the way down, almost broke $500. Okay? So now we're in gap number three into this break from September, late September. Rally back. Rally back all the way up here. This is $11.29. High, this bar is $594.25. Tried to retest it three days after it. Two days after it, $594.59. It never got anywhere. And guess what? This is a base. So it formed, and here it is again too. Look at this. So this is support, drops off, falls back, resistance, resistance, base. Base that it's not going above. And by the way, Apple still has not got anywhere near that number. This is a base here under $595. And it's not gotten anywhere near $600. And couldn't get over the $200 per year moving average either, which, you know, moving average are, moving averages are assists. Okay? They kind of help you see things fast and quick. They're assists. They're not something they should use to make all of your decisions, prices and gaps. But you can tell very easily here how it couldn't even get anywhere near it. Wasn't even going to think about it. Okay? So let's go to the next one. What happened after that? Number four. Gap number four is here. This is on $12.5. The high of this gap is $569.25. Huge big red bar. And let me tell you why this is significant. It's significant for a bunch of reasons, but mostly this gap, this was a gap up. It was not a good one. It would not have rated high in my system. I never would have bought this long. Stock was in a downtrend. I knew about this gap. I knew about all of them. But anyways, this was retraced immediately. Look, actually closed under the low of this bar. So anyone that bought in this gap, which people did buy in this gap, this is a gap up. This is actually a buy setup, a crappy one, but it is a buy setup. It's a buy setup on the APR moving average. Also, it is a big green bar. Also, it's a bullish gap. It wasn't a good one. I would have traded. And this is why, you know, I have to know how to what gaps are good and what gaps are not good. But anyways, it was reversed almost immediately. Retest and resistance, retest and resistance, drop, broke it, broke this bullish gap, broke the low of the screen bar, kaputsy for this, and then fell even more. So then what happened? Within two days after it, it tried to retest this area here. This is 12.7. The high is 5.55. 20. Fell down again, tried to break 500, couldn't gap up. Terrible gap up to buy. And in fact was a retest of resistance taken across. Guess what the high of this gap is here on 12. It's $555. That's it. And by the way, I think the market gaped up this day. It was the first day of the year. It was 12. It was the first day of the year, first trading day of the year. So the market gaped up and Apple gaped up and retested this and made, guess what, another beautiful, fabulous resistance area. Okay, around 555 is the high here. So confirming that it was not going to turn back around, at least not yet. So then we have the next gap on Apple that happens, and it was an earnings gap. It happened here in January, January 24th. This gap actually rated very high in my system. So that even I knew when the stock rallied back over the high of the gap that it was still going to hold and did hold. Okay? Remember, as a stock moves and wiggles and jiggles, it's going to move and wiggle and jiggle. Just because it went over the high of the gap doesn't mean the gap didn't hold. This gap did hold. You can see how it hold. Broke, rallied back. Broke again, rallied back. Broke again, gapped again. Dropped, rallied back. This gap is still intact, by the way. And it's still intact today. All right. So let's go back to this guy here. This rated very well. High of this gap was 465.73, and then within the two days of this gap here, it broke $450 a second day. Again, a nice continuation move for Apple. Rallied all the way back. On February 11th, it rallied back, and the high of this bar here with the green topping tail is 484.94. It's holding 485. Holding 485, and by the way, still holding 485, because this is today. This is the current look here. Still holding. Look at that. Then it went back up here and retested 469.95, how it didn't get anywhere near it. Okay? All right. Let's look at the next one. Number six, gapped down here. Okay? Gapped down here. This is on 417. The high of the bar is 420.60. The low is 398.11. What's so significant about this gap here? It broke another level, another huge level on Apple. 420.400. It broke them all. Continued down here, down to 385.10. And just, you know, once again, confirmed the utter weakness in the chart. Rallied all the way back up here, retested again, and still holding. High of this is 465.75. Okay? So, I want to talk for a minute here before we keep going through these charts. When something moves and makes a trend, when something does lower highs and higher lows, it does not mean that it is changing the trend or fixing the trend or setting the trend. And you can see this here. Why? Because Apple rallied and made a higher low here. Actually, it made a higher low here. Did the bias set up or ran out and made a higher high? This did not change the trend of the chart. Apple was still in a downtrend. Fell in, rallied up, fell in, made a higher high here. Didn't make a higher low, gapped down again, and broke. Ran up here, came down again, made a new pivot, made a higher low, ran up here, broke again, made a higher low here, and now gapped up today. Now, let's talk about today. This was not a good buy. Now, if you did this on an intraday chart and wanted to buy Apple today, you could have bought it. Would I have done this? Did I do it? No. Because I'm not going to buy a poor low quality gap. And this is a bullish gap. And there are good bullish gaps, but this is not one of them. This did not change the trend of Apple. This didn't do anything. This is what I call nothing gap. There's nothing to do with it. You don't short it, you don't buy it, it's just boop. You don't do anything with it. You just let it be. Apple has not changed its trend and is not changing its trend in the gap that's happening today. Gaps make trends in charts and continue trends in charts. They correct the trend, which means they would change a trend, and they continue trends to go deeper. All this is happening in the formation of price, which is happening in the event of the gap. And that's why gaps are so powerful. So let's just look here at the current trend of the market. I'm just looking at the last, you know, six, seven months here, a clip of the market, QQQs, which Apple follows here. The market has been in an uptrend. The market's been in an uptrend. The current trend of the market is long. It's in an uptrend. And even with the market coming in the last few days, it doesn't matter. The market's still in uptrend. The market can come all the way into support and still be in uptrend. The market is breaking higher. And in, guess what? In gaps. Here they are. There's all the gaps in the market. So why all of this is happening in the market is one reason I've been able to read the market so well. All of this is happening in the market and Apple is continuing lower. Okay. So you can see how there is true weakness in Apple. Those gaps are really weak. Not even the market can give Apple a lift. Not even. The current trend of Apple is down. Here's a bigger picture of the chart. And while the market is going up at new highs over the base, highs it hasn't seen back for 13 years is what the market did in the last few months. It broke out over at highs over the base that it hasn't seen for 13 years, back since 2000. Okay. And Apple is continuing and holding a beautiful fabulous picture perfect downtrend. I mean it literally could not be any prettier. If I made it up in my head and drew it on a piece of paper, Apple wouldn't look any better to do everything it's supposed to do based on the gaps. It's like beautiful. It's just one of these charts that you just study and say just can almost just it's fantastic. Okay. Showing you the incredible weakness and the power of the gap. So the Apple trend is down and the market is at new highs over the base. So is Apple something you should buy and pick a bottom in? No. Not even close. That's not the right way to trade. The way to trade is with the trend and the trend of Apple is down. So for the trend forecast for Apple, it's clear and you can see in this chart and I know this from trading. Pivots are not enough. In order to read what a trend, a change in trend is, the gaps are what you want to read. You want to read the gaps. That's what's telling you what's going on with this. And that's why gaps are so powerful and important. So when you learn how to trade using gaps, money will come to you easily. There is power and knowledge and the knowledge comes from understanding what a quality gap reading is, whether or not you can take it for a trade or whether or not it's a gap to do nothing with. And there are gaps that happen in charts all the time. There's not anything to do with. And yet there's plenty of gaps in charts of stocks and Apple in particular that they're great trade entries to trade as day trade and swing trades or core trades if they're solid and rate high. Remember timing is everything and trading end in life. The right entry and the right exit will pay you trading gaps. And in trading any strategy do you've got to be willing to take the risk to take the trade and learn how to read these gaps at the right price. So many people are concerned they just don't understand gaps. Well, if you learn how to how to trade them, it's actually the best way to trade. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it's the only way to trade. I just can't see how anyone can trade anything any other way. It's the most solid, solid way to trade with 100% conviction. And the reason is because gaps are set by power and money and the way to make money as an individual trader is to trade with the side of the power. So empower yourself to do it to learn how to read gaps properly. I teach a class called the Golden Gap course. And it is a complete system to trade effectively. It teaches you a rating system to find which gaps are the ones to play and how to enter the gaps and exit the gaps. And I teach support and resistance in the class as well. The class is next weekend, August 3rd and 4th from 9am to 5pm. And the cost is 24.99. If anyone here is interested, you can contact me at Melissa at thestockswish.com. I also teach a class on trends. One of the main reasons people lose money trading is they get the directional bias and their trades incorrect. So reading how to read trends, and again this is all based on gaps, is very significant to your success as an individual trader. This class is August 12th and 13th from 1 to 5. It's an eight hour course. It's a course on how to read trends and stock charts. The cost is 9.99. If you want to do the class separately, oops, and I'm running a special for August. If you want to do both classes, you'll actually save almost $500. You can do both classes for $29.99 in August. Learn how to rate gaps and also learn how to read trends. So thank you so much. Does anyone have any questions? Left a few minutes here for questions and I can go back and look at the chart of Apple. If anybody wants to ask me specifically about Apple's current chart, I'll bring it back up here. Okay. Thanks, Melissa. We have a couple questions up here. Beth is asking, how do you interpret the downward gap on 8.30 and how do you determine the gap significance on the right edge of the chart? The right edge of the chart. Which one does she mean? The one today? Beth, which chart are you referring to? We're just waiting for her to answer. We'll come back to that one. Ron was asking, what treated your interest in BRCM? BRCM was actually, I played BRCM two days in a row. This is one of these phenomenal things. Talk about the power of gaps. I shorted BRCM yesterday and made money and BRCM gap down huge today and I aggressively shorted BRCM today at 9.31 AM with a huge gap down and you can go look at the bar. I rated the gap. I have a system. I look at 26 points in a daily chart of a stock and if it rates over 20 points, I will look for a setup and trade the gap and BRCM rated 21 points today even though it was a huge gap down. It was a beautiful gap. It was an utter, utter weakness and you can look at the market gapped up today even though it fell, the market gapped up today and BRCM gapped down on earnings last night. I rated the gap. Per my system, I rated 21 points, so that's how I trade. I look at 26 things in a daily chart to determine whether or not a gap is a quality gap to trade or what I call a nothing gap. If it hadn't rated over 20, BRCM, I wouldn't have done it today because it was a huge gap down, but it did. After I looked at it and after I talked about it and traded it, I said, oh, my Lanta. I mean, this is the kind of thing where you just go back, you say, yippity-doodle-a. I mean, this thing paid me two days in a row. It was a gutsy trade today. I got to tell you that. It was one that just check it off on my list of missy things. It was a gutsy call and it was amazing. Okay, back to Beth's question. The one on AALP, AAPL on 830, if you didn't see the rest of the chart from there. 830, I can't see really, is it this guy here? Is it this grouping, this cluster? Because I can't tell from the exact date here. What she's saying was 830 and AAPL on that one, if you didn't see the rest of that chart. A little further to the right, she's saying. Here? Here. It's a gap down. It's a gap down. This one here, is this it? Yes. This one here. I would have to rate the gap. That's what I do every morning. I didn't rate this one. I'd have to go back and rate it. Just off the top of my head though, this configuration here doesn't look like much of significance to me. I see what you're looking at here. I do see the gap down. There are gap downs that aren't really playable. It's not like I trade every single gap down. There was a reason that I pointed out the ones that they did because they rated high. I mean, there was actually some other ones in there you could have traded short. There were lots of short trades in this. Would I have done this? No. I didn't rate it. It might have rated well enough to play it because it did go red, but I didn't play this and I actually didn't even rate it. But if it had rated over 20, you could have played it. It would have worked if you had done it. Okay. And one last question for you today, Melissa. Where do you see the AAPL in the short term? No. I knew somebody was going to ask me that. You know, short term, I know people love to do short term trades and stuff like this. Apple's going to rally back. I thought the target today in Apple was 450 and with the gap up, even though it's not a good buy, all right? Because it's going to rally back up to resistance and then it's going to gap down again. That's where I see what I see Apple doing. If you short term target on Apple is 450, all right? It's at 42 or what's today when I clipped this and added it to the chart. Apple could even rally all the way up here if it wants to and still be in a downtrend. I mean, this thing could rally up another 40 bucks and still be in a downtrend. Remember what I said earlier about up here, pivots are not enough. If Apple makes a high or high here, even over this top and tail, this bar back here, it's still not going to change the trend of this chart. It's still not changing it. And you have to be careful when you're due that because gaps are amazing thing to trade. But if you hold overnight positions and you're in something in the wrong direction of the overall trend, you could get up in the morning and you could be against the trend, okay? So if you want to day trade Apple on a short term timeframe, I'd say it has a little bit of a rally up in it where it's going to go exactly. I don't know. Today, I thought it was 450, didn't get there. But the market fell in today. You could have done Apple today as a long intraday. You had to be patient. You had to wait. It did not set up aggressively right away. And it came down hard before it went in. And you know, this is still not something that I would buy why you're going against the trend. The trend is your friend. Whoever said that, it wasn't me, but that is good advice. Understanding the trend is where people get tripped up here. They and more than that, I think the dream, the dreamy dreamy dreaminess about being able to make a million dollars buying Apple way, way at the long going to buy Apple, it's going to go up to $1,000. No, that's not the right way to trade. Way to get a good professional bullish gap up a quality gap up and buy it and ride that puppy to the sky. That's the right thing to do. That's the right way to trade or keep, keep shorting it. It's a short. Apple's a short and nothing else until otherwise noted. Okay. Thank you very much, Melissa. That was awesome. Thanks, everyone. You can email me at melissa, m-e-l-a-s-s-a, at thestockswish.com. Thanks, everyone. Have a good day.