 everyone and welcome. My name is Melissa Armell and I own the Stock Swoosh. And I wanted to talk a little bit about preparation. Preparation leads to success. Why? Because if you are going to day trade the market and have absolutely no idea what you're going to do on that day, what stock you're going to trade, what direction you're going to trade it, what you're going to do as far as a strategy or setup, then you're not prepared. And the chances of you making money in the market are zero. So you want to be as prepared as possible. So part of that preparation for me is going through my process of rating the gap and filling out the gap worksheet every morning that I have for my 26 points before I trade. So I have a rating system and I prepare each day by filling out the worksheet well before the open. Now, what else helps me prepare? Going through 26 points. I mean, some people say, well, that's a lot. Once you do it, do it, do it, it becomes habitual. And you can go through the points very quickly in a few seconds or a few minutes. If you're new, it may take you five minutes to go through all of them. But the thing is that that is really getting you prepared. If I could go through 126 points in the morning to be prepared, if I had that many points figured out, I would. The more prepared I am, the more money I'm going to make. And the higher odds of success I have in my favor, most people that trade the market, and this is true, 100% true, most people that trade the market do not prepare enough before they trade. And most people do not put the amount of preparation that I put into trading beforehand. So even people that do prepare ahead of time do not go through 26 points. I don't know anyone that looks at that many things before they determine that they're going to trade in the day. That's a huge amount of things. So when you were sitting down preparing, part of that may be having your desk all set up, closing your office door, having breakfast, having a cup of coffee, scanning, looking at the market, checking the news. All of those things can help you prepare too. And putting yourself in the right mindset, get making sure you get enough sleep. But for the actual stock pick to decide what you want to do before the open and having all of that concrete in front of you situated, decided in a worksheet is incredible preparation. And it really, really helps you know what to do next. Because when the market opens, when 9.30 comes, if you are all over the place and you don't know what you should be focusing on, you will get distracted. You will get distracted by noise, by the phone, by a text. You will look at several different stocks that will all look good. And you won't have any set thing where you have your eye on. I call it 100% conviction. But in my mind, that decision making, that full-on preparation that I do before the open is really one of the biggest keys to my success. And it's the 26 points. It's determining what stock I want to do, which is in my system that I prepare for. But all of that process helps me become successful on a live day after I decide to do the chain. Or if I decide there isn't anything good. Also, some days you get up, you look, you scan, you go through the process, you rate the gaps, there isn't anything that meets your criteria. Guess what? Then you're prepared not to trade, which is even something you have to prepare deciding your mind ahead of time, too. Because a lot of times you look at things and you look at charts and you think, well, this looks really, really, really, really good. But it's not. It wasn't good before the open. It's not good now. You've got to set yourself up to be as prepared as you can to be successful when you're trading the market. And I'm telling you, preparation is key. The more prepared you can be to trade, the better off you will be. And sometimes when I see something at night, if something, if I see a gap at night, which I don't always look, okay? Because I usually like to rate the gaps in the morning, but every once in a while, I'm anticipating something, working in the way that I wanted to in the evening and I will look at it at night. And then I'm even, then I have a whole night in my line to prepare for the next day. And that's amazing. So the key to everything I'm telling you is be prepared, go for it once you see the setup in the live day, but the preparation is key. So if you'd like more information on what I do in my class, I teach a class that's called the Golden Gap course. The class is August 18th and 19th from nine to five Eastern time. Cost of the class is 54.99. The class is online.