 Once you go ahead and get your page up and I'll give you a quick introduction, Melissa Armo is founder of the Stock Swoosh LLC. It is an educational firm that empowers traders with a complete and detailed system to become profitable traders. Melissa Armo graduated Magna Cum Laude from Gettysburg College with a BA in Philosophy and a minor in Latin and 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. A self-taught trader with over 10 years experience. Melissa especially is trading strategy that focuses on shorting stocks that gap. Melissa appears frequently on TV as a stock market expert. Watch Melissa on RT America, Trader TV, CBS, Fox News, and Fox Business Network. Okay Melissa, the way this works is you have until five minutes before the hour and then we will give away the next batch of prizes for the people who patiently listen to you. I see your pages up, the Stock Swoosh, trade on the side of institutional money and gaps, and I'm going to mute myself and you have the floor, and we can. Great, wonderful. Today is an excellent day to be talking about not only institutional money but also of course gaps. Why? Because I'm in the market today, the market gap down today. The market gap down today on bad economic data. We had a bad number, again it was an inflation number, but the reality is that this was much expected by me. The market rally, people were buying the dip last week, I did not do that. Today we're going to focus on shorts, and actually I do focus on shorts, but I do go along occasionally, sometimes I do go along. If there's something that I really want to go along right now, I will. We went long CVX last week, CVX is the symbol for Chevron. It's an oil stock and that worked to the upside. It's been quite an interesting year to trade. What I do is I do day trades, and I also do options, but I'm doing short term options which I'm doing weekly, so I'm not doing long term options or leaps. As far as long term investing, I think you're going to see the continuing volatility between now and the end of the year, and this is something that I've been discussing on television because obviously if you're a consumer, the number today is not surprising. In fact, a lot of people think the number today is actually at the peak. I don't think that's the case. These numbers are retroactive, and if you're a consumer and you're going out purchasing things, you know that the price even of food products is actually more than 11%. So that was one of the numbers out today, and of course these things are all in the past, but the numbers keep going up. So what happens when stocks fall, when the market falls, what happens? You get selling, and you get shorts. So you can short today, and you could short the market even right now. 11.04, I got up this morning, saw it, I said 100% conviction the market is lower today, and we were in it right out of the gate. We're in a market right now where again, you have to take the position correct in the right direction. If you don't, you're going to lose. Now while that's true in any type of market conditions, I think a lot of traders, active traders, day traders specifically, whether you're doing options or day trades or even swing traders, made money in 2021 just buying the dip. Why? The market was very bullish in 2021. You could have bought strong stocks, you could have bought weak stocks, you could have bought virtually anything in the market, and made money in 2021. That market condition is over, and it's been over for some time. But that's a very interesting thing because again, over the long course of your life, if you really want to do this, and if you want to trade, remember trading isn't investing. Investing is something totally different. If you want to say, okay, fine, I think the market's higher five years from now, eight years from now, 10 years from now, that's not what we're talking about here today. So we're talking about getting in and getting a big move, and which is today, if you're short, if you're going to the downside today, getting a big move and capturing that move, booking the profits, I call it chunking it out, and then waiting for the next setup, okay? And again, the next setup is going to happen in what is going to happen in a gap. For those of you that don't know me, again, my name is Melissa Armo, I'm a Stock Swish. You can feel free today to email me after the webinar at Melissa at thestockswish.com. If you have any questions, or call me at 929-3200 Gap. And again, you can write questions in the chat room today. We'll see them as we go along. This is through actually the end of August, our results for the day trade room year to date. Again, I told you what we did today. We shorted the QQQs, we were in and out, although you still could be in it. Stats year to date through the end of August is 475,451. I'm not going to go over all these trades today. The losers are in brackets, and then the winners, every single trade that I do and every single trade that I call in the live room is based on a gap. Some trades are longs, but mostly we short, which is one of the reasons why today is a particular good day for someone like me and the people that are with me, because again, I'm going after it very, very aggressively, okay? So trading is something that you absolutely can make a half a million dollars a year or more. We're only in September now. We got three and a half more months left in the year, plenty of time left in the year to make money. And if you're losing this year, you still have time to turn your year around. Trading is a real job if you take it seriously. Unfortunately, a lot of people don't. They want to watch YouTube videos or come to webinars like today and why this week is very educational. It's you're not going to learn how to trade, even listening to me for one hour and the speakers today. You have to commit yourself to taking a class to really seriously doing it. And I think a lot of people just don't understand how seriously you have to take it. Does it mean it has to be agonizing? No, learning can be fun, okay? But there is a level of commitment. The commitment is a time commitment. The commitment is a financial commitment. And really it's a commitment to yourself that you decide that this is something that you want to do. Whether you want to do it full-time, part-time, whether you want to do it for a living as a real job, either way, it's something that if you want to do it and if you want to do well, you can do well but you have to take it seriously. And really one of the benefits of trading, day trading, is that it's part-time hours with full-time trading. We were out of the market trade this morning super duper early. By 10 a.m. we were done. Now again, while you still could be in the market short today, we were done quick, okay? The first 30 minutes of the day is extremely important in the market at any stock that you trade. Today was another day where that really shone through. But in reference to picking what you want to do, what stock you want to do, what direction you want to do it, I really think it's very important if you want to be successful as a trader to have an edge. In fact, I think you must have an edge. A lot of traders went long the dip last week. They did, but I did not. Why? Because I knew today was going to happen but I didn't know when and I didn't do it until you see it but the fact is you could be long overnight and any second today could have happened. They could have happened Monday, could have happened Friday, could have happened last Thursday. And actually it's interesting because last Thursday we rallied and that was crazy to me. We really should have fallen last Thursday but it took three days to catch up to it. If you're going with the crowds, you're going to lose. Why? Most people lose in the market. Why? Again, going back to the same thing I just said, people don't take it seriously. They don't take it seriously. And as the losses add up as they're trading and taking potshots at things, then they feel depressed, downtrodden and then start to do piggy targets and take potshots at stuff, dead in desperation to make money back from the losses. If you just want to start and have a fresh clean slate, you can learn how to trade. But I think again, going back to what I was saying, a lot of people just don't take it seriously enough but today we're going to talk about some very serious things. What? Institutional money and also gaps. But really today, and one of the good reasons it's a good day this webinar is going on is we're seeing momentum in the market today. And trading momentum actually gives you an edge. Why? Because a regular person could trade with less than $100,000 for example and make a lot of money on one particular day. Otherwise you'd need a hundred grand, $500,000 if you had to take small positions in something. You want to be able to take a hundred shares, a thousand shares and make $1,000. If you have to take 10,000 shares of something or a hundred contracts for example and options say in order to make 10 grand or eight grand or $7,000, you're going to need a lot of money to do that. So if you get a big move in something, something that moves a dollar, $2, $3, $4, again like the market today, you don't have to take this enormous size or position size cash wise in order to make a lot of money. So there's a benefit again to doing equity trading because you're trading on margin. There's a benefit to trading options because you can hold them overnight and you don't need a margin account to do options but either way, no matter what type of trading you do, momentum is key, okay? Momentum trading is one of the most profitable and fastest ways to make money trading. And by fast I mean a couple of minutes or a couple of days if you're in an option. Learn how to take a position in a stock in anticipation that the stock will have an explosive move. These enormous moves happen in one direction and they happen fast. Again, today is a great example. Momentum trading is very profitable and that is how you can make big money in the market without having a huge account, okay? Because most people do not have a huge account. And while some people have retail accounts where the minimum is 25,000 to do equity trading, you really need more than 25,000 because if you have one loss and you're hit under the 25,000, you have to send money. So you really need 30 or 40 or 50, okay? Unless you're at a prop place. So for individual traders, most people really need to get the quick, fast moves. And you have to think like a professional. Now professional traders, big traders that work for hedge funds and banks, obviously they have a lot of money. They're taking big positions, all right? You have to think and look at what they're doing in order to ride the coattails of what they're doing in order to get the big moves or the momentum for profit. And really, again, you must have a reason to take the trades and risk money, all right? Now, the fundamentals matched up with the gap down in the market today. That's not the reason that I decided to short the market today. I rated the gap and using my system, the gap rated that it would follow through to the downside and fall and that's what's happening. But there are times when the data shows a negative in the market rallies. Like I said, that happened last week. Fundamentals are good. If they match up with the technicals, if that helps you get conviction. If they don't, it's dangerous though to look at fundamentals and say, okay, well, the fundamentals are good. So therefore, I'm gonna do this, X, Y, Z. What if the price action of the technicals don't match up for it? And I think that was part of the problem in the, I call it a fake rally. It was a fake rally last week because I knew it wasn't gonna hold but I didn't know when it would drop again. It happened today. But anyways, with the fundamentals look a certain way, somebody can come out and say, do ba do ba do, this report is this. Again, all of these things are, I don't wanna say fudged, but if you're a consumer and you're going out right now and you're shopping and you do grocery shopping, you know that food prices are not 11% higher. They are way more than 11% higher, okay? Because they take an accumulation at an average of many, many products. In reality, a lot of the products and things of the food consumption that we eat are actually double 50%, 100% more. And even though everyone's talking about oil prices, yeah, oil prices have come down since June. They haven't come down since last September, since last June, okay? So again, fundamentals take into account people's opinions, way too much. Price action, real timeline price action that you're seeing is what counts. And that's what you wanna look at and that's where you wanna put your money at or your money to work for you, I should say. So what I'm looking at is the footprints of institutional money. What do I mean? It's buying and selling or shorting, okay? Because hedge funds can short, big traders can short and they can buy puts, which is a short in an option. So institutional money is what? It's big money, big money that comes in and it comes in big and fast and quick and huge. And again, big is good because that means momentum because you could take a smaller miniature or a medium sized position as an active trader and make a lot of money if you get a big move, okay? Again, you don't have to have 10,000 shares of something, for example. It's always about looking at, oh, look at this. I clipped this, I clipped this last night. This is before the gap down today, look at this. This is the spy. I took a picture of this last night and stuck it into here. It's all about who is in charge. Who is in charge? The bulls, the bears. This is a daily chart of the spy going back until April. You look at it and you wanna go with who is in charge. Who is in control? If the bulls are in control, you wanna be long. If the bears are in control, you wanna be short. You may say, well, that sounds easy enough to say, but sometimes it's tricky. This really isn't tricky. It's not tricky. If you know what to do, if you don't know what to do, then it is tricky and that's where people get tripped up and then they get very upset and they say, oh, the market's rigged and this thing, that thing, that thing, no, it's not. If you're losing money, you're looking at the wrong thing or the strategy that you're using to try to make money doesn't work, okay? So you have to make money on a regular basis if you wanna trade for a career. And quite frankly, I think if you're even doing this part-time, you still have to know what to do because you're still putting your own hard-earned money on a position. I think it could be $500, it could be $1,000. Either way, it's money that you don't want to lose. You want to win, okay? You need more winners than losers. You gotta have more winners than losers. And preferably you have some big winners, okay? So I use a method that looks at institutional money. I'm capturing these big moves on a small-time frame on a chart and I'm looking at it on the daily where we're in and we're out. I'm looking at institutional money. It is in charge. It is in charge all the time. Even if you think it's not, it is. Today is a great example of this. A big flow of money going in a certain direction is what moves the market, stocks, and creates momentum and sets the trend in charts. I didn't have any interest in going along this market in the last week. None. I'm not surprised about what happened today. When you're looking for institutional money or really reading the side of the power in a stock, you wanna be in the side of the power in order for you to make money trading. Institutional money is in charge in the market and stocks at all times. Even if you think it's not, it is. It doesn't mean that something can't go against a certain direction for a certain period of time, but it doesn't mean it's in charge, okay? Because if you are in the wrong direction in something, you're gonna lose. If you're in the right direction, you're gonna win and you've got to have more winners than losers, okay? And again, any questions, I'm seeing the chat box here on the side, but as I was talking about earlier, technical analysis is how I'm making my decisions. It's based on chart reading. It's the price action in charts. Comprehending how to redefine and trade with this power will have a huge positive impact on your profitability as a trader. You've got to elevate yourself and your trading and your profits to a higher level of consistency and success by learning how to read the footprints of institutions trading in the market. And the reality is if you're watching TV and you're listening to what people are saying even today, even this morning or last week particularly, you know, if you're just listening to people, you might think X, Y, and Z. And then you turn out and you say it's no, it's A, B, C. Because again, everyone has a bias. People that are even talking, other people that I'm on TV with, they have biases. They're in positions, okay? Their bias is the position that they're in, whether it's long or short, all right? You need to learn what's happening in the chart because that, you know, if the market's trading at, you know, 295 and change or whatever, I'm just talking about the QQQs, everybody can pull it out and we can see in live time that the markets are 295. There is no questioning that, okay? There's no difference of opinion. It's at 295 or whatever the price happens to be. So I think it's a lot of it is about opinions and we're in a very highly opinionated world right now. So the fact is that social media, all of these things, it can affect people's ability to be able to make decisions that they should just make based on the right information. But if you use the right information, if you know what to look for, the market does have the ability to pay you. And so there's no reason to get depressed or down. If you have a losing day or losing week or if you've been losing this year, you can turn it around. But you've got to learn what to do, okay? So you can be successful and you can win big if you're on the side of power. How do I do that? I do that in gaps. So let's talk about again, what happened here today? What is a gap? A stock gap, so the opening price today is a different than the closing price of yesterday's trading. A gap is a break in price action from one day to the next. Last night on Monday night, the market closed at four o'clock Eastern time at blah, blah, blah price and so did everything else. And it closed green on the day. Then today we opened down, down meaning the price of today was lower than the price of yesterday. Again, we rallied yesterday, closed strong, strong, strong, strong, had a four day rally. Then today we got up in the morning and the market was down. Now we could have filled the gap today. We could have rallied today. In fact, the market for a little bit today tried to rally, tried to hold on, tried to do it, couldn't do it. Tried to hold on support, failed and then fell, okay? So there are gap ups, there are gap downs. The market could have gap up today on the data. It didn't. The market gap up from Friday to Monday, okay? So if you went along the market, for example, Friday, I did not do this. You were up Monday morning when you got up because the market closed at one price on Friday and was at a higher price on Monday morning, all right? But I think a lot of people that did that and there were people that did that thought the market would continue and was higher into this week. We have a rate increase next week. Is that gonna continue to volatility in the market? Sure, is it gonna be we're gonna continue to fall? Not necessarily, not necessarily at all. Whatever you think you are going to expect to happen fundamentally is probably not gonna be what you think. And even if it is a negative reaction, meaning a negative report, I should say, it doesn't mean we're gonna have a negative reaction and vice versa. So you must look at the price. Let's look at here at this again. I put this in this morning before we even open. Here was the cues, okay? Somebody telling me where the market's at right now. I can't see it because I'm talking. Where's the market at right now? We may as well just look at this right here because this is accused. Somebody tell me where the market is a second. Talking about the cue, cue, cues. Where are we trading right now? Is anybody there? Anybody have their charts up? Any real traders here that are trading right now? 297.65, there we go. So here's where we are. You see this? Snug as a bug. Where did we open this morning? Up here. So if we're here right now and we open here, we're falling today. Where were we last night? Or this morning even before the re... This like literally happened at 8.30 people, okay? We gapped down at 8.30. This wasn't at 6 a.m. So here's where we were last night. 310.74 and change and then boom. Snug as a bug. This is where we open. And then somebody just said we're here. That's a gap. Now let's go back to last week. I was talking about Friday. So actually, no, let's go back to Thursday. Thursday we closed here. Then we gapped up. Then we rallied. We got bought, ran straight up like a rocket. This was Friday. Then we closed. Then we gapped up Monday. Then we rallied. So again, theoretically, if you had gone long, you could have made money if you went in and got in and out. I did not do that because I was anticipating a downward move. So I waited patiently. Sometimes you just wait. You wait for the setup, you stalk it. But anyways, technically you could have gone long Friday and you could have got out by the end of the day Friday and you would have been fine. This is a daily chart. Every decision I make is on the daily. The gap is where? The gap's on the daily, okay? Let's go back. Let's take it back. Take it back, back, back, back, back. What happened here? This was another big sell-off day. I remember the day was a Friday. I was going to look for apartments that day. I left the house, came back, and we closed with the loads. I was like yippie-skippy. This was a day in the market. I don't even remember why we fell that day. It doesn't even matter. We closed here in the Thursday. Open here where we're down a little bit, fell off a cliff. That was Friday, August 26th. That was before Labor Day, okay? Here is the spy. This was last night. Again, what is it got? There's a lot of gaps in here. Here's the one from Thursday to Friday, Friday to Monday, and then this morning we opened somewhere down in here. And again, I don't know where the spy is right now. If anyone wants to tell me that, I know we're falling. I don't even have to look at it to know that we're falling because the gap today was going to follow through to the downside. So again, I'm not predicting where we're going to gap. I'm waiting for the gap, seeing it in the pre-market, and then I rate it. And I say, okay, this gap is going to move up, or this gap is going to move down. And so I saw the gap today, but it didn't happen until after 8.30. Now this was a gap that we did on that day I just was talking to you about. August 26th, this was an options trade. I sent out the options trade at 10.05 in the morning. The 4.15 spy put that expired on Labor Day, or the weekend before Labor Day, September 2nd, but it fell that day. It was a beautiful trade. It fell that day. Cost was $3.00. That's very reasonable for the market. 25 contracts, so a $7,500 risk, sold at 18.50, was a 517% return on investment profit, 38,750. What if you risked $1,200? You could have made 6,200. Let's take a look at the chart. It was a 4.15 puts that I called here. Somewhere in here was like right above, I called it right above. I saw that we would do this, and we did this, boom, boom, boom. So again, just like today, I called puts today in the morning, in the pre-market, way before the open. You can't do the trades until they open, but I called them very early this morning. This here, again, was this particular day. It was a huge trade, why? Momentum, momentum, momentum, momentum. How do you get trains like this, over 500% return on investment? Get a good entry. Predict it's gonna go, whether up or down. This was a put though. This was a put though, this morning was a put. Again, spotting the power of money that's gonna come in before it comes in is where that's all where it's, that's the technique, okay? The technique is to see it, to make the prediction, and then know it. I'm gonna tell you right now. It's 11.24 in the morning. Today is not four o'clock yet. Four o'clock is four and a half hours from now. I'm telling you right now, the market will close right today. I don't know where, the bar could be small, it could be medium, it could be big, it could be John Mungo. We could have a big tail by the end of the day. We could try to bounce by the end of the day, but either way, the market will have a red bar today of some sort in size. I can tell you that right now, I'm making the prediction for an half hours from now. You can email me after four. I'll be right. So, you know, seeing where something's gonna go, seeing the power of money is how you can make money as one individual person. Whether you do three contracts or 33 contracts, it's the point. There is only one thing, and one thing only, that can move the direction of a stock that's money. Not a little bit of money, but a lot of money, or what I call power money. Power money is in charge. Power money is in charge of the stock's direction. Trends are set and moved by the power money people, which here's a lot of in the market. And if you know how to trade with them, you can make money, even though you don't have as much money as they do. But they're moving stocks. What happened this morning? Again, you had a big move to the downside. Yes, you had a move up last week, but in my opinion, in my opinion, Melissa Armel, that rally was not made with institutional buying. Therefore, I did not go long any of those gaps. Therefore, I did not go long at all. We went long CVX, it worked, that was it. But the, and the only reason I did that was because I knew that would work, no matter what the market did. But the fact is, you can have green bars, and they may not be made with institutional money. You can have red bars, and they may not be made with institutional money, do follow me. And this is where people get tripped up. This is where people get tripped up, and then they get confused, and they get frustrated, and everything else like that. And again, people are looking at fundamentals too. And some people are saying we're getting out. Kathy Wood was on Fox Business. It was actually last Thursday. She was on Mornings with Maria. And she was saying how she thinks that we're not in a recession. We'll get down to inflation levels of 3%, in the next three to six months. Three to six months. I totally disagree with what she said. Totally disagree with what she said with that. I did agree with one thing that she said. She said that unemployment is gonna go higher, much, much higher. That point, I agree with her on, okay. But again, you see, you could have even funds that are in disagreement. You could have a small fund and a big fund and a medium-sized fund. People that are running these funds. Someone like her who's very successful. She's running big money, who could have very, very, very different opinions, okay. We're only buying and selling. So we buy the put and sell it. It's momentum in the options. I'm not doing fancy dancey stuff. Or I'm buying a call and I'm selling it. That's it. So gaps have, it's momentum. We're trading the options based on momentum too. Very easy. Gaps happen in the market on a regular basis. However, some gaps are better than others. Some gaps are nothing, gaps. Some gaps are very powerful displays of institutional money, aka today in the market. The most important gaps in the market are gaps that signify a change in direction or a bigger move in the same direction. Understanding which gaps are meaningful and which gaps are not meaningful in the market will help you to know what to do and when it changes occurring. That is how you know when the power of money will flow to pay you. And this is very, very important. It's important not just for your active day trades accounts but let me tell you this. This is very important for your retiring accounts, okay. A lot of people got pummeled at the beginning of the year. We started off the year at brand new all-time highs in the spy, not in the cues but in the spy, fell off a cliff ever since. We will not make a brand new all-time high in the market before the end of the year. You can write that down in blood too. We won't, okay. We may have a rally, a Christmas rally or something in December. We may have another rally this year. We may be in a range after today for the next six weeks until our earnings season. I don't know. I'm not even worried about that. But the fact is that we're not gonna make a new high in the market this year at all. And a lot of people think that we will or thought that we would before today actually. So we don't have time to do it. And there's no reason that we're gonna do it, okay. So again, next week, interest rates are gonna go up probably 75 basis points. The market's gonna react not to that because everybody knows it's gonna be 75 basis points. The market's gonna react to what the Fed share says, whether or not he gives an indication if he's gonna lower rates in the following months or if he's gonna raise them. Again, Caddy Wood thinks that the Fed's gonna lower rates into the end of the year into 2023. I just don't see how that's possible, okay. And until the unemployment numbers really reflect moving higher, I'm talking about over 4%, over 5% or 6% which she even brought up, the Fed isn't gonna drop rates. That could be 12 months on. Anyways, here was another gap. This was a day trade we did. This closed here gap down. This was a 24. So we closed up here. This is JWM, it's Nordstrom. I love Nordstrom. They opened up a new store a couple of years ago, luckily before COVID in New York. 22 and change, open in the morning here, around 19 and something. We shorted this as a day trade, quick in and out. This is not an option. This is a day trade. You need a margin to do this. 1935 was the entry, 3,000 shares, risk 2850. Exit at 1868, that's in and out. Boom, that's good. And a $19 stock, $20 stock, $18 stock. This is good, that's a move. 30 cents, 40 cents, 50 cents, 60 cents out. It did continue down, down, down, down, down, down. And you could have done a couple of other trades in there actually, but this was a quick one. We were in and out, here is the one minute. So I ranked the gap based on the daily chart. I'm taking the trades in the one minute. Here's the one minute. It's four o'clock the day before. You can see where this was. Gap down, rally, we got in it. Got the drop, boom, out, done. Done in the first half an hour of the day, done. That was A24, that was earnings, that was JWN. I didn't look at this today. So this is dropping today with everything else. But anyways, everything I do is based on gaps. It's a strategy. A lot of people just wanna buy, redip, that's not a strategy. You could say that it is, but it's really not because you could say, well, I always buy support. Okay, well, there's about a one billion supports. I mean, how do you know what support's gonna hold? You need an infrastructure for every entry and it's a strategy. So for me, it's gaps. The strategy's a core reason behind why you're even watching the stock in the first place or the market or even contemplating an entry or a trade in it. An entry and a stock should not be taken unless the trade is a foundation supporting it. The foundation for me is gaps. Without the foundation, for the reason you're taking the trade, you're going to lose more than you win. And that is why day traders struggle. They struggle because they lack a foundation. They may say that this is the foundation, that they buy support. There's too many support areas. We were on support today, guess what? It didn't hold. You know that right now. We're two hours into the open. So you can't buy support and say that's a strategy. It does not consistently work, okay? So gaps are a strategy and a foundation for you to take trades in the market. When you choose to take a trade, there has to be a support system behind why you're taking it in the first place. Gaps are the support system or reason why you wouldn't enter a position whether long or short. Okay, we just happened to be talking about shorts because I like to short, I love to short. The reason you're choosing to enter a stock or the foundation for your entry should be because the stock is a quality gap. This is something that I look at in the pre-market. Okay, so again, what is a gap? The stock gaps in the opening price today is different from the closing price of the previous days trading. A gap is a break in the price action from one day to the next. It happens quick, it happens overnight. Let's take a look in the video. We did a video and the video is falling today. Again, everything's falling today with the market. When the market falls, most things fall. When the market rallies, most things rally. Okay, so if you don't know how to read the market, and by market I mean the cute, cute cues of the spy, even though I look at the diamonds, which is ETF for the Dow, there's only 30 stocks of the Dow, so I don't look at that every day. I look at the spy, I look at the cues. Again, most things go with the market. If you don't know how to read the market direction in the morning or overall, day by day or week by week, you're gonna get tripped up in trades too because most things go with the market. Anyways, this was back in here. This close to your gap down. This was the 31st. Again, fell, dropped, boom. So we did the 145, I sent it at 746 in the morning. You cannot take this trade until it opens. So I caught an expiration date of September 9th. The cost was $6, 12 contracts, which was 7,200, sold at 13 profit, 8,400. It was 117% return on investment. What if you wanna do a smaller size? Again, take two, take one for $600. Either way, you're turned your money over pretty quick. Right, again, momentum, I'm gonna go back. Again, you take it, get in, get the trap, get out. Boom, down here's the volume. If you wanted to hold it, that was fine too. It held under the 145 for the strike. But again, the whole idea of trading is not to hold something forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. This is a long-term investing. And people do get confused with that because they're thinking long-term, long-term do I think the market recovers? Of course. Do I think it recovers before the end of the year? No. Again, it doesn't mean we don't have rallies between now and December 31st, okay? But we're not going back up to the high. So if you know that, then what are you gonna do? You better be quickening out of your long positions, people. Or you better know what you're going long, okay? You better be in love with whatever you're going long in or be prepared to take the hit, like for example in today. So anyways, the system I used to find the right gap each day is a system I created. This is a class I teach once a month. It's called the Golden Gap 26-Point Rating System. I'm doing the class through September this weekend. Hard to believe it's this weekend. September 17th and 18th. We're halfway through September this weekend. Before you know it, we're gonna be changing the clocks. It's already getting darker here earlier in Manhattan this week, it's hard to believe. It's soon gonna be fall, it's soon gonna be cold, and it's gonna be winter, and then it's gonna be the holidays. The year is going very fast, but I do teach this class once a month. This was another one we did. This was that amazing day on the Friday. This closed here gap down fell. This was Marvell. Entry was $53.35. This was a day trade, 1500 shares. Risk was $32.25. Add $53.10. Total shares I plopped on and did an ad here because I really liked the trade a lot. Cost averaged myself in a little bit underneath your original position price, but I knew it was moving big. And again, exit was $50.52. So again, $3.00, two and a half bucks. You wanna get a move. Momentum, really good profit in this. Again, it's a big fat red bar. So again, this was a short. It was a short. So in the live trading room, like today, I'm calling the entry. Take it here, put the stuff. Get out here, in and out, okay? And again, this is Marvell, $8.26. Here's, that was the daily, and let's look at the one minute. Stock closed here, gap down fell. Again, look, boom. This is the money. This is what you want to do. This is the selling. Again, if you're going long here, you're gonna lose. You were stopped out. It dropped. So again, that was another move of what? Institutional money, saw Marvell. Same thing back in here with this guy here in NVIDIA. This actually started all the way up in here. Look, so that's selling people. That's institutional selling. You see how easy it is to make money if you're in the right direction. So once you know how to do it, it's just not hard. Think about it. It's the fact that if you don't know how to do it, it is hard, but that's true for anything, all right? It's like if someone said, okay, you're gonna be in the US open next year. You're like, oh my God, I've never played tennis in my life. What's the chances you're gonna win? Slim to none. I mean, you have to learn how to do stuff to excel at it, to do well. So then we did the spy on the first as well. Entry was 392.35. This was a day trade. We did another ad in this too, right really underneath the original price position, pummeled it on, got the move, again, got the drop, $2 out. That's a momentum move, even in something at this price point. You could have bought a put in this if you didn't wanna take this trade on margin. Profit 5,850. So again, nine one is here. What happened here? It had a gap down and it rated good to fall and it worked. Stock close here, gap down, dropped, boom. You're in, you're out, boom. This was this other day back in here too. Remember that day, that was a big day there. So we started off, I mean, again, today is the 13th. We're two weeks into the month, we started off September, guess what? To the downside. So this was nine one, again, this is a one minute. Stock close here, gap down, dropped. Again, this is a short. You take it, you're in, get the drop. We're not, these are shorts, we're not buying. We're shorting. Tim's asking, are we buying? No, we're shorting, we're shorting, shorting, shorting. But we're taking a position on margin if that's what you mean. Is that what you mean or did you mean actually buying? There's no buying here in these. We're shorting, okay? Does that make sense? But the most important thing, if you take nothing away from anything I've said today, which I hope you took a lot away from what I said today, is that you need to daily focus. One pick a day is all you need. If you wanna make money in the market, one thing is all you need to do a day. That's it, that's all you need to do. And you do it right and you do it well. Professional traders have specialized strategy systems and reasons for taking trades. You have to focus on one thing, one strategy, one pick to be effective and efficient. So my method tells me one pick to do each day, although there are days like today when I know the market's gonna drop and we did several options today. Why? Because I saw that we get the help of the market. It's rare that the market will power trend up or down in any one particular direction on the day. Today is a day the market will power trend down today. Like I said, we will close red. But when you find institutional money, you will also find momentum and you need that for big profits. Well, we short, there's two things. We're buying puts and selling puts, that's a short. Shorting on margin for this here, the spy, this trade is an equity trade. But I prefer to short overall for the whole since I started trading 14 years ago because I believe that it gives me an edge because a lot of traders prefer to go long and they don't know how to short, right? Okay, so I know how to short. I'm aggressive in doing it. I can see it very early in the pre-market. Short big moves happen to the downside fast and quick like today. And I feel that that gives me an edge. Okay, so I prefer to short, but I will go long. We're not never going long. Okay, but I prefer to short because I think it gives me an edge. Hope it answers your question. Anyways, every day I'm looking for a stock to trade that's gaping as a high probability directional bias for the entire day, aka the market today. Big moves of the day, again, market today. Early confirmation of my bias in the move between 9.30 and 10, howdy today, and precise entries with follow-through and a good risk to reward. So if you'd like to learn my method, it is a rating system. That is what I teach in the class once a month. Again, the class is this weekend, September 17th and 18th. It will teach you how to analyze a large time frame to make the trend decisions on the directional bias for the gap. All large traders of every kind are looking at large time frames to make decisions, particularly institutional traders. And if you can trade with that, it's gonna help you. It's gonna help you make money and lose less. Okay, nothing is 100%. I do have trades that lose, but the whole idea is that we wanna win more than we lose and we wanna have some big winners. Okay, I'm losing the daily chart to make the decision for the stock pick and that allows for accuracy in the direction and then the one minute allows for the good risk to reward trades with accuracy. But it's really the meat and potatoes what I do is a 26 point checklist. This is what you'd pay me for to come and learn my time and the information because it's like finding gold in the market. And that is why I termed it the golden gap course. It is a plan of action is a checklist and all professionals have checklists to do. Again, if you were someone that you were gonna fly an airplane, okay, you would go through a checklist if you're a pilot. You don't just take off, all right. Traders constantly do 50, 50 crap shoots taking pot shots for stuff. I guarantee there were day traders today that went long and shorted the market and done both and they will before the end of the day, okay. So you can't be like that. You don't have conviction in something to the upside and the downside that's impossible, all right. You have to focus on institutional money and that is really what is so powerful about doing gaps. Are all gaps made with institutional money? No, no, you can't short of a gap down. You can't buy every gap up. You have to find the good ones, okay. Gaps are an event and they create a sense of urgency. That's an action that's being forced by participants of the stock. This is why gap trade is incredibly powerful. Trading gaps is a power line, profit-related trade because you're trading the side of power money. So there's bullish institutional money like what? Alta, we went long this. We did go long this. We did cause in this, it worked. This got bought. This is large institutional money buying it. It's a very strong chart, okay. That had earnings a couple of weeks ago. What's another one? CVS, another very bullish chart. I'm sure this is falling today, but we did go long this too when it worked. This is a bullish chart with institutions are buying this. You also have bearish institutional money. Again, where you have shorts and you're selling. Dell was a short. Look at that, we did that. That worked, dropped, fell off a planet, okay. Again, how did it do it? In a gap, stock closed here, gap down, dropped, fell off a planet, okay. That is selling that's happening in this. And then Marvell, which we already talked about that had this big selling here and we had that nice trade in the Marvell. So you're looking for the bulls and you're looking for the bears and you wanna get on the right side of it. I have the level two and the level three, but I'm not making trading decisions based on that. I'm making trading decisions based on the gap. Based on the gap. So you gotta have a chart and you gotta have live data, okay. I'm not making trading decisions based on those other things. I have them, but I don't make the decisions based on that if that helps. Anyways, getting into the end of this here of a few more minutes, you can trade and make money. And I think right now in this economic times where people are feeling a lot of uncertainty, they're in fear. People are in fear about the future. In fact, if you rewind back to 2020, people have been in fear now for going on two and a half years. People were in fear about getting COVID and rightfully sell, I understand that. And now people are in fear about their financial future. You gotta get out of the fear. You can't control about everything that happens in the world, but you can control your own life and you certainly can control what you do with your own cash and your own money. And you can control what you do for a living. A lot of people are in these uncertain times and they're feeling fear and it's just gonna feed the fear. So time is very precious. You get up every morning and if you are motivated and you were determined to be successful the trader, you can do it. It could be easy for you. It could be hard because you might have had some mental things that you have to overcome. If you've been trying to trade for years and you've been losing, you're not helping yourself by being in fear and you're not helping yourself by staying in the fear either. Work for yourself. Think positive for yourself. Think positive about the future, okay? The whole world can go to hell and you can still have a good life. It's all about your frame of reference. It's different for every single person. And trust me when I say I live in Manhattan, I see all kinds of different things going on every single. I see the poorest people in the world, homeless people in the street and the richest people on the planet. So the fact is that it's all about your frame of reference but you got to believe in yourself and whining and complaining isn't gonna get you anywhere. You can whine and complain that you took a class, you didn't learn how to trade and you wasted money. You can whine and complain that you lost for the trade and you went along the market and it failed. You can whine and complain all you want. That's not gonna get you anywhere. It's not gonna get you to move forward. Pull up your bootstraps and be determined to do it and you can learn how to do it and I'm teaching people how to do it. So don't waste time trading without getting anywhere. It just makes no sense. This is a testimonial from Darryl. Let me see if there's any questions. Any other questions here before we are done? Some testimonials and again, if you'd like a trial for the trading room for the rest of the week, you can email me at Melissa, thestockswish.com. I look at a 26-point checklist on do this in the morning. This is what you've learned in the class from me. It also teaches the entries. You can empower yourself and learn how to trade. It is a complete system which I teach in this course. It's a full two-day course on how to strategically find, pick and play stocks that are professional bearish gaps. The class is online. It's this weekend, September 17th and 18th. 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern Time class is online. It's $69.99 and well worth every penny. If you wanna sign up, you can not sign up through the website. You must email me to register. My birthday is this week. So I'm doing a birthday special through this week. If you're interested in signing up, you can sign up by Friday and receive the training from the newsletter free to the end of the year. So you get all my trades, pretty much the options and the day trades at the end of this year free if you sign up for the class this weekend. Any questions from anyone? Before I go here, I think we're done a little bit early. Great presentation, thank you. And again, you know, I don't have time today because I have something I have to go to this afternoon. So I don't have time to watch TV. I'm probably gonna be on Fox the end of the week. I could be Wednesday, Thursday, but I'm probably gonna be on Fox News on Neil Kavuta's show on Friday to discuss markets if you wanted to tune in at four. The reality is that a lot of people had been pumping up the market in the last week or really even since June 16th that that was gonna be the lowest for the market for the year. I'm not predicting that that's not. I'm not saying that that is either way. I don't know, maybe June 16th is the low for the market for the year. Maybe we break it, I don't know. Either way, I don't care, okay? We're chunking it out. We're active traders, we're in, we make the money, we get out. We're in, we make the money, we get out. This isn't about long-term investing where we're gonna buy the market here and hold it until 2030. That's not what we do. And if you're an active trader, you shouldn't be doing that either, okay? Who cares if the market's at the low of the year on June 16th? Who cares if it breaks it? If you're in today, short, in stuff, you know, you're up, okay? If you're trying to go along this market today, you're losing, okay? If for an individual person right now, this second, that's all that matters. And it's a similar thing with the economy. You could not predict every single thing that's gonna happen in the future. Whether or not Kathy would is right that we're gonna be down to levels of inflation down to 2% in the next six months or whether she's wrong has neither no bearing on any position that you should take in a trade. And while I get that people love fundamentals and they love to look at the numbers and they love to look at the stuff, if you focus on price action and you focus on the momentum and doing what you should be doing on the particular day to make money, you're gonna be okay and you're gonna be fine, but you gotta know what to look for. Thank you for the happy birthdays. Do you need a special software to determine the type of buyer? No, you can trade it at any broker, anywhere, any prop firm or any retail firm, you need a live charts, a live level two, you got a pre-market data, that's it. Any questions or if you wanna travel to the rim for the rest of the week, email me at melissabestoxwish.com. Thank you so much.