 or CVS news. She's an expert stock market analysis analyst and the founder and owner of international educational company where she teaches people how to successfully trade the stock market. Her trading methodology is based on one strategy called golden gaps which pinpoints institutional money in the stock market. Here to present short stocks for fast profits is Melissa Armo of the Stock Swoosh. Welcome back to Traders Corner Melissa. I know that I am awesome and we hope you are too. Well thanks Rob. Yep I'm doing well. It's a cold day in here in New York City. We didn't get any snow yesterday but I'm hanging in there and we had some good trades this morning and I'm happy to be with everyone today. So if you have any questions you can plop them in the room. I can see down there where people are asking questions in the chat and I will talk about shorting today. I'm going to talk about what Rob said about gaps which is what I specialized today and in general today we're going to talk about trading. So it's a very very interesting market right now. It's in the thick of earnings season. We had earnings this morning on Tesla or last night. We had the reaction of that this morning. We also had IBM earnings out which we shorted today. CVX which is Chevron which is an oil stock that is up today. We went long that today. So it's really a very active time to trade. If you're someone that is interested in trading the market now is the time that you want to be active and in the market. So there's four quarterly earnings seasons a year to trade and many many stocks when they report earnings gap. Sometimes they gap up. Sometimes they gap down. Today we are going to focus on shorts but I want people to know I will go long. Like I said we went long CVX today but the fact is that I do prefer to short. And one of the reasons I prefer to short is that you can get big moves fast. Again we did IBM this morning that's a good example. It had a beautiful sell off today and in fact that stock may still be lower even at this point. So we're going to talk about shorting for fast profits and if you have any questions you can email me at melissathostockswish.com as Rob said I appear on TV but I am around. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube or Skype or call me if you have any questions at 9 to 9 3200 gaps. So I try to put my TV hits when I'm on television. I try to put them on Twitter. Next week of course we have the rate hike on Wednesday so I'm sure I will be on next Wednesday. It'll be interesting to see what the Fed says. Everyone is back and forth thinking that the Fed is going to back off raising rates. One of the reasons we've rallied this month in January only a few more days left in the January but we have rallied this month since the start of 2023. A lot of people optimistic that the downside that the selling that we saw in 2022 is over. I don't happen to think that but we will see. So again next week is a big week for the market and we're having a big week this week too because of all the earnings. So a lot of people ask me this question they come to me they're interested in trading they want to trade part time or full time they generally just want to make money in the market. Sometimes people come and they want to be a professional trader full time to replace their current job. Sometimes people are retired and they're just looking for extra money to make on the side. Sometimes people are working full times and don't want to quit their job love what they do and they just want to invest or trade the market on the side. Options is a good way to do that actually. So say you're someone and you're working and you don't have time to trade in the day trade room live in the room in the morning we open at 9 30. You don't have time to do that. You can trade options because you can put an options trade on and you can put even a sell order so you don't have to watch it and it can be a canceled day order that it could fill you without even watching the trade before four o'clock. So there's many many ways to trade the market. I happen to do both day trades and options trades and we will talk about both today but you absolutely can become a professional trader if this is what you want to do and whether you do it full time or part time it's important to know what to do in order to be successful and again it's January. We're still at the beginning part of 2023. You've got a whole year ahead of you that you can have a great year. You can have a fabulous year. You can make a lot of money this year. It's a new year and that can mean a new you even if you didn't have a good year in 2022 trading or a good year financially for whatever reason because of inflation because class went up whatever the case may be you can have a good year this year and it's time to go for it. Part of part of succeeding in life is being willing to take risk. I'm living proof of that. I've always been a person that's been a risk taker and the more risks I seem to take the more fruitful and more successful I've become. So you know it's not about taking risk for risk sake. It's about taking risk and you look at it and you weigh the pros and cons okay. It's called calculated risk and when you're trading you need to think of it like that too. What are the pros if I would take this trade? What are the cons if I would take this trade? Do the pros outweigh the cons? How much risk do I want to take in this trade? Again is this a good trade? Is this not a good trade? In other words maybe the risk isn't worth it okay. So taking risk in life is important to move forward and if you're not willing to do it then you really don't want to move forward in your life and you don't want to improve your life. If you want to improve your life, if you want to improve your financial situation and if you want to improve your trading then you must be willing to take risk and I've been teaching people now I've had the stocks wish for 10 years it's going on 11 but the 10 year anniversary for my business was last year and in 10 years of teaching people I've taught people from all over the world people think that they want to take risk but they really don't. In fact they're really really scared to take risk and they're really just what I would call not not in the frame of mind to be able to be a professional trader. So if this is your life this is your choices you have to be honest with yourself. If you have the big dreams and you want to make a lot of money then you have to be willing to take risk. You know it's okay if you're conservative. I'm not here to judge people if they don't want to trade if they don't want to take risk but be honest with yourself because if you're someone that wants to trade and you want to be successful you are going to have to take risk that is what it is. There's no safety net for people in the market. Every time I place a trade and every time I put a trade on there's a possibility that I might lose that's why I put a stop in when I take a day trade and when I take an option I have a fixed risk okay. I can't lose any more than I risk and you have to assess that based on what the size of your account. Now since we are the beginning of 2023 I wanted to show a big picture here the whole results we had for 2022 in the day trade room. So the day trade room stats this is with an average risk per trade of $2,800 per trade was $651,079 for the whole last year and this this is all the trades we did last year and again most of them were shorts. Now I did move last year so I took a few weeks off so the numbers would have been better if I had traded the weeks that I took off to move but that was something that I needed to do to improve my life and which is what I did last year in November and now here we are and it's 2023 and we like I said have been rocking and rolling so far this year seeing where the market's going to go seeing the volatility and again for those of you that are training if you think the volatility is over you are totally totally off. I know a lot of people think again that we're just clear sailing up to the highs in the market now but I'm not in that opinion whether or not we fall off a cliff again or whether or not we don't I don't think the volatility is over and there's many many reasons for that it's the Fed it's what's happening Ukraine and Russia and again as you know signs of a recession but you you're yourself can empower yourself today to better your life to better your trading you can't control the outside circumstances of the world and things that go on you can't control what the Fed's going to do next week you can control the choices that you make and particularly the choices that you make when you get up in the morning and you decide what you want to do with your life and what choices you want to make when you decide to put your risk on in a trade and risk money trading so let's talk about confidence again something that traders struggle with trainers lack confidence in their ability to trade wealth they lack confidence in their choices of what to trade lack of confidence is usually a result of a lack of knowledge in general there's a lack of confidence traders have just right across the board so it's time to get confident you've got to get confidence in yourself you've got to get confidence in your trading okay and more than that it's really about the replication when you have something that you know it and you understand it and you know you can replicate that result you will feel the confidence many people that don't know what they're doing can make money in the market just by dumb luck that is not what we're talking about here we're talking about you making money more than you lose okay you have to get the ads up the odds up in your favor and how do you do that well you have to know how to trade and if you know how to trade even if you take a loss it shouldn't kill your confidence because you're like okay i understand that some trades will win and some trades will lose but i also believe in myself and i believe in my system and i know that more trades will be winners in the end in the end meaning over the course of a whole year or month or week okay so again what gives you confidence well your attitude is a big deal with it okay you need to be a positive person that goes without saying but i have to say it because so many people tend to go to the negative particularly if you're losing i mean i don't like to lose nobody likes to lose but i accept the fact that this what this is what trading is what active trading is it some trades will lose that's why i put in a stop okay if i didn't if i didn't lose any trades i never have to assess my size or risk and that's not realistic okay so information gives you confidence and then the confidence helps you to do what to make money okay and that's what you're here to do i mean i run the treadmill in the morning for half an hour an hour a day we're in we're out boom we're done i don't mess around and i don't sit at my desk for six and a half an hours a day in trade i'm trading the morning again we're looking for fast trades but we're in and out we're chunking in and out we're making the money active trading day trading even the way i do options in the weeklies is not long-term investing it's not long-term investing i mean if you wanted to buy the market even if we fall if you're in the market long term for the next 10 to 20 years you don't care what happens you believe in the markets higher if that's how you want to look at it and you're a long-term investor that's not what we do okay we're active in and active out if you're an active retail trader so you can alleviate the anxiety of trading by learning what to do and it really can help you get over the hump of the negativity of the days where things don't work in your favor and you're going to have those days okay so learning is important and again if anybody has any questions they can they can plop them in the room so how can you become successful how can you gain that confidence that you need and how can you make your trading dreams happen you will learn a successful strategy first then the money will follow you can take ideas from people and you can take trades then that are positive but you won't do as well even with good ideas if you don't understand what to do that's just a fact and if there's a bad day or a tough day or a losing day you will second guess yourself or second guess the system and then you will have a hiccup or maybe give up or quit and so it's really about the understanding of the knowledge to move forward all right and learning what to do saves you money and time in the long run all right saves you losses in the market and really for me at this point in my life and I knew this for a long time but again as the years go on it becomes more important to me time is money for me the time that it takes me to do something you know that I need to condense and I you know like I paid people to pack my home before I moved the time I didn't want to take the time to do it I paid people to pack that was worth the time okay I paid people to do things for me okay because the time that I can spend trading and making money is more important I can make more money doing that in a condensed period of time so time is money and again as you get more wise and you go through life you really truly understand that so when you come and you learn something from someone and you pay someone like me for a class you're paying me for my information but you're also paying me for my time so that it doesn't take you years to learn how to trade it took me about three years to develop my system that I do now and I've been trading for it'll be 15 years this year so again time is very important and you don't want to waste it and you've got the whole year to be successful if someone could tell you right now right now that in five years from now you be a millionaire if you're not you might be you might be a millionaire right and might be millionaires among us right now some of you may be making money and are here just to hear some new ideas but if they're successful making a lot of money in the market that's great if you're not and someone could say you could make millions of dollars in your training in five years from now what would you would you do anything you needed to do to get there would you say oh five years is too long off no it's not I mean look at where we were with COVID here we are and all the way the world goes so fast time is going so quickly next week is February in in a few months it's probably going to be the summer so time goes really fast set your goals be committed to your goals okay be committed to your goals and you can get there all right so let's talk about training let's talk about stocks and let's talk about the market many stocks and any given debt have no strategy to trade as a day trade that's fact remember trading is not long-term investing when you trade the trend someone sent me an email today after I sent out my marketing list email and was giving me tips on a stock that had a dividend I didn't look at it I don't care I'm not investing money long term for dividends that's not what trading is this is taking a train getting in and getting out if you shorted IBM today got the right entry got the drop got in and out and made a buck and to the downside if you had 5,000 shares of that and you got a dollar out of it which you could have gotten at least that out of today or many many more moves it had several setups today if you got a drop and a 5,000 shares to the downside in a short in the IBM today you would have made what 5,000 dollars okay that's not long-term investing you would be in and out okay so one strategy is all you need to make money in the market and the thing is that a lot of people as I said just are flip flopping up and down and don't have the focus and don't have a strategy and are all over the place with what they're doing people want to do bitcoin they want to do all kinds of different things futures equities options pick something and get really really good at it and then you can go and learn other things but if you never get to one thing you're gonna have a hard time ever being successful because one thing is really all you need okay so let's talk about gaps so this is a chart back from last week okay the beginning of January back from mid 2022 okay this is the QQQs we had a rally July August of last year I don't know if anyone's trading that if they remember it the market fell off in October so the last one the QQQs in the market was October 13th down in here snug as a bug we didn't quite reach 250 we have not touched down that point since now we haven't gone broken through that area okay again that was October of 2022 this was last week today we're up around here I know we're trading right the second but we're up around here given the days out here today's January 26th so my strategy is based on stocks gapping or the market you can use ETFs ETFs gap the QQQs I refer to the Qs as a market but the market gap so you can have gap up so you can have gap downs let's take a look at a gap down the QQQs closed here gap down this was middle of December so a gap is a difference between the close and the open the Qs closed here one price and open lower at a different price okay so this was a short and we did short this okay this was the middle of December now there are also gap ups I was talking to you were only about CVX okay let's look at a gap up in the market this closed here this gap up so again it's a difference between the close and the open the closing price on this day was around 260 and change the opening price of the QQQQQQQQ is here was around 270 whatever in change this rally okay you could have gone long here actually I did not but you could have could have got in and out That was back in November. Okay. So a gap is essentially the difference between the close and the open. But as I said, I prefer to short. But the strategy I do is based on gaps because I'm only shorting gaps. I'm not shorting anything in the world. Okay. So what is a gap? A stock gaps on the opening price today is different than the closing price of yesterday's trading. A gap is a break in price action from one day to the next. Okay. Simple. Can you short every bearish gap? No. Can you short every gap up? No. Do gap fills work? No. While people talk about them and sometimes they work, they do not work consistently to make money. Sometimes anything works. Okay. Sometimes you can go along a penny stock and make a lot of money. I wouldn't suggest doing it. Okay. So again, the idea of trading in the market consistently for the rest of your life, five years from now, one year from now for the next six months and not pitting away all of your profits is not to have one big trade and then lose in the rest. It's to have many, many, many, many, many, many trades that win and is something that you can replicate over and over time under any market conditions, whether the markets bullish or bearish. Okay. And this year so far, again, it remains to be seen. It remains to be seen. While many people think that the market this year is going to rally and continue higher, it remains to be seen. It's truly in the year to even make that prediction. Okay. So let's again talk here. What is a gap? A gap is the difference between the close and the open. Here's Tesla back here in December. Tesla closed here, gap down, fell. Again, this was a short. So another one here. This closed here again. This is a daily chart. So it's a daily chart of Tesla closed here, gap down here. Again, open at a lower price and fell. Now here is a gap down here that failed at rally. So this closed here open, lower and rally. Now, if you were in a put, you would have been up money in the morning in the open here and got out, boom, broke the profit. But as a day trade here, this did not work to the downside. Rally. This was the whole month of December, actually even November December, Tesla was selling off. Remember that? Elon Musk was selling his stock. He bought Twitter and it was really tanking. Okay. So my focus is on gaps and specifically bearish gaps to short. So right now, everyone wants to short everything since 2022, except for the last two weeks. All of a sudden, now all the people that were very bearish in the last part of 2022 now everybody wants to go long. First of all, should he be shorting everything? No. No. Why? Because in reality, the market is still bullish. Does that mean you should be going long here? No, not necessarily for long term. You could, you could do many, many day trades. Day trades long. Okay. But I do want to point out that as bearish as people were, even at the end of 2022 before the January rally, the market was still in an uptrend and it is still in an uptrend now. So again, if the market's going to recover, it is not confirmed yet for me. However, I wouldn't be surprised at all if we drop off again. But a lot of people are saying we are out of a recession and that the Fed is going to back off raising rates. So they're just buying into the market. But again, we're a far, far, far cry off the highs. So I plot this in here. This is the last time that the market made a brand new all time high. It was the spy and it was the beginning of it was more than a year ago. Actually, it was the beginning of 2022. So that's how 2020 started out the year. And then here's how we ended down in here. So we had a really weak, you know, close to 2022. So it was a good year short last year. But this year so far has been a good year to short to why you can short stocks and the market even in uptrends. But what you have to keep in mind is do not trade without a strategy. Do not take ideas from strangers. This is difficult for people. People want free ideas. They go to free webinars like today and free trials and they want to get ideas from strangers. The fact is it is extremely important to get to know someone first. You shouldn't take strange ideas from strangers. Okay, you don't know why I'm taking my trades unless you've done my class. You can't short everything. Like I said before, get to know someone first. I have a YouTube channel that has thousands of videos. And as Rob said, I'm on TV, you can get to know me by following me for a while, watching my videos and seeing my personality. See what I do. See if what I do seems like a good fit for you here. That's the purpose of coming to lectures like today to listen to people that you don't know and listen to them and see if anything that I say resonates with you. Okay, taking ideas and risking your own hard-earned money from strangers is just not a good idea. And again, wealthy people sometimes do that, sometimes do that, but for the most part, they don't. They take advice from people that they know, not strangers. Okay. So again, you want to think like people that are successful, people that are wealthy, people that not have just $1 million, but several million dollars. Okay. Any questions here so far? So again, if the market is still in uptrend, why short? Because you can get selling and downside moves, like an IBM, again, good example, because we did it today, you can get downside moves and virtually anything. Okay. When something's at zero, I wouldn't short it. It can't go any lower. I wouldn't short it at a penny. I will I don't do penny stocks at all. If it's under a dollar, I wouldn't do it either. But essentially, you can short anything at all anytime, whether it's strong or weak, because really, anything can go down. All right. And short moves happen fast. There's less chance for hiccups as the day goes on. That's another very important thing. Again, we're living in times where the news comes out, we're in a 24 hour news cycle, seven days a week. Things happen all the time. Things happen over the weekend. They just don't show up in the market until Monday morning. But the benefits of shorting is having a niche. So for me, my niche is not just gaps, but it's also shorting gaps. And in particularly, it's reading the one minute chart and doing fast trades of the one minute to get it out very, very quickly, like we did today, like I said, in IBM. Now, this was a 15 minute chart of the QQQs back from this one day that we collapsed. This was in January 18. Again, panic is the reason that moves happen fast to the downside. And you can make a lot of money quickly shorting because panic is something that sets in for traders for individuals, even for hedge funds, when they panic or something is happening. Again, it could be news related. It could be earnings. It could be something that happened with the Fed. It could be anything, okay, anything that would happen that would create a sell-off. So this was up at one point, which is the QQQs was the 18th. And then we failed and we rallied first and we collapsed. So this is the 15 minute of the QQs on January 18. And you can see the red bars here depict what they depict the panic and the selling. Okay, so what am I looking for? I'm looking for institutional money, big footprints of money in the market. Okay, I'm looking for big traders, hedge funds, banks to take positions in the market. And there's a lots and lots of lots of those in the market. So I'm only doing stocks or trading ETFs that have a lot of volume. That's one thing too. Now, I did mention CVX, which is up today. One of the other bullish gaps that we did do to the upside was MS. This is a great, it was a great example of institutional money, a stock that got bought. So this had earnings, stock closer, it got debt, it went long, it worked, it rallied. So this was an example of institutional buying. Okay, it was a bullish gap up. This was Morgan Stanley, it was one of the few banks that had gone earnings to start out earnings season last week. We also, like I said, had been doing Tesla in December. This is an example of institutional money selling the stock. They were selling it nearly, nearly the whole month of December. I mean, it was just like so many gaps in Tesla in December, it was ridiculous. We were doing it a lot. So again, don't make trading hard, trade with the power, trade with the power money, not against it. Many, many traders think in order to be successful in order to make a lot of money, you have to do something tricky. It's not about that. It's not about the trickiness is going to get you the money. It's about the thought and the process of the thought and going through what you're looking at in the price to make a decision ahead of time. What's really happening here? Is this getting bought or is this getting sold off or is this getting shorted? Okay, it's not about the trickiness. It's about the thought process and like I said earlier, many traders don't have a thought process that they go through before they take a trade. Okay, I know what I'm trading, what I'm doing before the market even opens. I don't get in it. I wait for the setup but I know what I like and I know I'm not going to look at it and I know what I'm going to do before 9 30. Okay, so my process starts in the morning when I get up in the pre market. That is what I'm going through it and what I'm rating the gap. Okay, so if I don't like anything before 9 30, I know I'm not trading that debt and then I talk and teach in the room where we're going to go over but it is about making it as easy for yourself as you can because we're not going to get away from the stress of risking money and if you find risking money, stress fall right now and you want to do it, you want to do it, back off your risk. Take it down a notch. Okay, and take your expectations down for yourself too. Okay, because if you're so stressed out trying to make XYZ amount of money in such a short period of time, you're not going to do yourself any good by stressing yourself out. Okay, you're the one that has to take control of your emotions and your thoughts. Any questions here so far? So let's learn a method to spot institutional money. That is what I do every day. I'm looking to trade with it. IBM got dumped today. CBX is getting bought. You see the difference? Make your trading life easier so you can make money on a regular basis. You have to make money on a regular basis if you want to trade for a career and actually you have to make money on a regular basis even if you're doing it part-time because you're going to run out of cash, you're going to run out of money if you're losing and again that doesn't benefit you at all and no one wants to lose more money than they need to or pay more for things than they have to in today's environment. Even wealthy people are being frugal right now and thinking about what they're spending money on. Do I need this? Do I need that? I'm sure you're like that if you go to the grocery store right now with a cost of food. Do I really need these chips or whatever you're buying because costs of food have gone up so much they've skyrocketed. Some things are up 200, 300 percent. Eggs is one of them actually still. But what I'm looking at is following the moves that institutional money makes in the market and then I'm capturing those moves on a small time frame and a small period daily. So a bank flow of money going in a certain direction is when we lose the market. Stocks creates momentum and sets the trend in charts. When you're looking for institutional money you're really reading the side of power in a stock. You want to be in the side of 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. Again a lot of people are buying Tesla in September, in August, even in October and then it collapsed. Okay people are buying it right now. Well is this the turn? You know today for Tesla I don't know but I know that again if you're not looking at the right things if you're just buying every dip you're going to get crushed. Okay that could very well happen with people in Tesla today. So if you learn how to read the footprints of big position players before the momentum occurs, again which is before the gap, you can take the position in the right direction and get out after the move happens for profit. But you have to understand how to trade the side of power and you need to know how to find it. Okay it is very important to find it because this power has the ability to pay you. And very easily, like I said, like not easy is not not stressful. Okay knowing how to read what institutional money looks like is essential for making money and you can win big trading on this side of power. So for me I have one focus, one focus daily. I'm focusing on gaps, I'm focusing on shorting and that is all that I do. I'm looking for institutional money in the market. We do do options and we do day trade short. This was a trade we did in Tesla. It was a put. It expired on the 13th. I have a newsletter. I sent it out in January 15th. We did the 110 puts. Here was the trade. It cost 6.25. That wasn't crazy expensive I don't think. And again you could have made almost 50% return on investment. You're in and you're out. You could have done one contract that spent 625 dollars and then you could have made 600 bucks. That's not that bad of a trade. It's actually a nice trade. Okay. I know I meant not 600 dollars. So 1250. 1250 for two contracts. You could have made 600. So let's look at the chart of that particular day that I called it. It was January 5th. Oh yeah it was the day here. It was the day here before this move which I talked about earlier. So you see where this is here. Closed here. Gapped down. Called the trade. Boom. Gapped down to the morning. You see it's through the strike. You see that. So again the advantage of doing options is what? You can capture overnight moves overnight with a fixed risk. Because for example if you're taking two contracts of Tesla and you spent 1250 dollars if even if this trade goes bust and goes up gaps up say against you you can't lose any more than this. If you're in a swing trade you have an unlimited risk essentially. You can say well I have a stop here and so and so and if I do a swing trade I'll get out there that's you may not be able to. You may not have time. Does that make sense? Excuse me. Someone's asked me about institutional money. I'm seeing it in the gap. Okay. That's the process that I go through in the morning in the pre-market. Now you also have gaps in the pushed market. Like Tesla gap was last night. By post market I mean after four o'clock. Okay. But I am only trading during live trading hours between 9 30 and 4. So gaps have huge opportunity because they spot power money. So gaps are created with large institutional money. That is what makes the gap in the first place. The professional gaps that happen in plant and stocks are formed by one thing and one thing only large institutional money. Therefore you need a way that will help you pick the correct direction to play the gap and confirm that the large money will flow with it. 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 they create a sense of urgency. Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. So that creates the panic. You get it? Thus an action is being forced by participants of the stock which is what? To sell. Okay. So you're shorting that then. This is why gap trading is incredibly powerful and trading gaps is a powerful and profitable way to trade because you're trading the side of power money. Again we're talking about shorts today but this you could say the same thing to the upside and that was a good example of that because we went along that stock and CVX is too. Okay. In fact CVX is going to make a new high like soon. Okay. So find gaps and rate them using a checklist. Gaps have to be qualified. The checklist tells you what to look for in the price of the stock. This is the meat and potatoes of what I do. This is what you come and learn from me. This is Goldman Sachs. This was back on the 17th. It feels like a long time ago now. It was less than 10 days ago but it was I've done a lot in the last nine days but anyways this closed up here then it had earnings then it gapped down then it rallied then it fell boom. Again what would you have done in here? You would have wanted to be short. You could have got in, got out. You could have got in, got out. You could have got in, wrote it down, got out. Boom. Done. Okay. Again we're not looking to trade all day. There are some days I might if I have the market with me but again think about the benefits of shorting. Yeah again you can video something in five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. You can be done every day by 10 o'clock and go on with the rest of your day whatever you happen to do. It's a nice lifestyle if you want to work part-time because you can trade part-time hours and make full-time income and you can also replicate income that you've had from other sources or pay for the over-cost of things right now that you're paying more for. Everyone is paying more for everything right now. Housing too that's the problem. Alright housing has gone up. This is across the country really across the world and if you didn't make money in 2022 if you didn't then you didn't short. I mean I can't be any more blunt than that. The market fell in 2022 and if you were buying every dip you had a horrible year. We don't do that. I don't buy dips. And if you didn't short in 2022 you didn't make money and you were crazy not to learn how to short. And even now as I was saying earlier that I have a niche there will always be the case 10 years from now like I said I've had the business for 10 years I've been trading for almost 15 fast forward if I'm still teaching people 10 years from now if I which I may not be. I may have my own television show on TV and I may not be doing this but if I am teaching 10 years from now okay and actively trading Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday in my room talking to people daily I will always have a niche to short because many traders for whatever reason prefer to go long. So if you learn how to short and if you learn how to short well you will gain a niche it will always be the case and the only explanation I can say for that which is valid is that people just prefer to go long because it's easier for them to understand and many people also trading the retirement account and they can only go long in it but guess what you can buy a put which is essentially a short in a retirement account and again I appear on TV with many money managers people that manage people's money and they're all going long for people's retirement accounts and investments so they're not experts on shorting so when I'm calling the market to fall or a stock or whatever the case may be they're touting what they want to see because because they have people that are long and they're trying to get people to invest money with them for the long term now I pointed out earlier that the market is still in an uptrend the market still in a bullish trend it is could it break this year it might yes it might but the fact is that a lot of people are betting the market is going to scream right up to the highs I'm not in that camp okay so I teach a class it's once a month it's called the golden gap this is a 26 point rating system the pinpoints the direction of power money by reading the price it's what I go through in the morning and if you want to trade effectively and efficiently not just be buying every dips or trading the trend then you need to do something different you need a niche because if you're going with the trade of the crowd of traders many people lose okay it's just just the way the market set up it's like uh it's just set up that like a like a pyramid almost where you have like a like a point at the top it's actually I just mentioned television it's very similar to television there's a misnomer out there that every single person that appears on tv is rich or makes a lot of money I'm telling you that's not true I know that now because I'm in the industry so television is actually very similar to financial advisors investing in training not every financial advisor is wealthy either that's another misnomer it's like very much like a pyramid so you have the people at the top that are making lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of money and then you have many many different people all along the way down to the bottom okay there's a hierarchy in television and there's a hierarchy as well in financial advisors and there's a hierarchy as well with traders okay so you want to be at the top or at least aspiring to be at the top and as I said earlier you need confidence to do that and you have to be ambitious these are my God-given personality traits if you're not someone that is confident and if you're not someone that's ambitious but you want to be like you sincerely want to be you can develop that with inside yourself it's experience it's education it's all those things to develop it with yourself it's not like I can give you a pill that you can get up tomorrow morning and all of a sudden be this confident person risk $3,000 make $3,000 like that which in some cases it could be someone's whole account you know you can develop these things that's my whole point and the process is learning is the process and part of it also is knowing yourself learning to get you know yourself as you're going through this process too but you must have an image and I can't stress that enough and too many people don't okay so success requires a plan for me it's a 26 point checklist I rated the gaps in the morning there were two gaps I liked I liked IBM to short I rated it it rated well it worked I liked CVX to the upside I rated that that worked too so again you can do one thing a day you can do two things a day you can do options you can do day trades you can do both okay but it's the idea of doing the prep work which for me is the checklist that I do ahead of time checklist keeps you organized and focused having a checklist forces you to look at what you should be looking at and chart and stop to make the correct direction having a checklist helps assist you with directional bias having a checklist keeps you on track to reach your goals a checklist is a plan of action everyone that puts money in the market should have a plan of action and a checklist on a professional level all high income career field specialists have checklists if you are someone that is a pilot or if you are a surgeon you have a checklist before you operate on someone okay this is not hard to think about it's just the concept is sometimes your people just they just don't get it and again people are trading blindly taking ideas from strangers it's just not a good idea okay it's like walking across the street in New York when the light is red you could get hit by a car it can't come around the corner and hit you so it's not a good idea there's a reason the light is red stop wait okay follow the rules and have rules I mean I created my own rules so I follow them and if you don't have any rules then you can come learn my rules but you need to follow them so this was one week of trading golden gaps this is the day trade room this is not the options this was last year this was a full week of trades I could have put this week's of trades in here I told you what we did today so the profits was 23,445 this was a week that we did day trades this was a short so we did test sub this was on 12-12 we shorted it I told you we did that a bunch of times last year 175-20 we shorted it and it was 171-65 profit was 35-50 with a risk of $2,900 you could have taken less than 1,000 shares you could have taken 500 shares you could have made half this it's the idea that you size yourself based on the size of your account and this is a day trade on margin so you need a margin account to do this trade so let's look at the gap 12-12 was here take it up closed here gap down fell boom we did it worked got in got out okay that actually continued lower so again you're looking for you know big moves big moves big moves and stuff a dollar two dollars whatever it takes this was cbx now this was actually a long you can actually this is funny now because this is like I just told you we did this today this was 12-13 we went long this let me see where this gap was here we went long here interesting so we went long more than a month ago and we got in and out of a here 173-40 and so was 174-07 and actually looking at this now that's how it closed in the day but this was higher yeah this was higher so this was so right now like this is up around here like right now today what was earnings so this is the first earnings since actually this move but this we went long on 12-13 and then on 12-14 we didn't do anything no gaps met my requirement no gaps met the system I didn't rate anything I didn't like anything I didn't do anything that day and then on 12-15 we did the QQQs entry was 282-10 shares was 2,000 risk was 2,800 your risks should be the same are close to the same whenever you trade you take as well so again a dollar two dollars move out again we're looking for fast moves if you're risked 2,800 you could have made 3,300 this is a day trade this is a trade on margin again we did this on the 15th so this big fat bar here we talked about it before closed here gap down fell off a cliff so if you didn't want to do the QQs because of the price point here on margin you could have bought a put we did do puts too but I like to do options and day trades and this was a nice move and again I always get these questions are you always at the best side is it no I like to get in and out of the morning if you held this you can take it over here see where this went it came down in here to 276 and change you could have made more holding it this day I did not do that I think it's easier to hold options actually than day trades all day day trades you have a fixed time you've got to be out by four options I'm doing the weeklies entry on this day 1216 short of the market again closed here gap down fell okay entry was 276 ex was 27310 great trade almost three dollars got in got out and again this was on December 16th so this closed here gap down rallied we got in it got the drop boom got in got out done did this continue down past where we got out of it too yes could have even made more in this but to reach 2990 and make 6670 is a fabulous day trade this is on one day just in the morning and you could have taken half the size and again you could have done an option if you didn't want to do in a margin because of the price point okay we also did this by this was Friday this is a Friday in December 38525 boom get the drop huge trade okay 381 50 just a fabulous trade so 2200 shares was a risk of 2970 I put the stop in so I'm not going to lose more than this but it worked here was the day and this may not even look like much but it was just such an expert entry and we had the momentum on our side again selling momentum shorting to the downside this closed here gap down rallied we got in got the drop got out did this continue yes where did this go this came down here close to 380 this is stupid money I rock thank you it's the it's the expertise though John it's the expertise to know that I can go after this particularly since we sold off every day the week before like I mean you know to just keep going after it you know but plopping on size like this or even more size whatever you want to take whatever you can afford has to do with understanding what to do knowing that you could predict that this is going to fall on and it's not going to rally okay and that is where the learning process comes into it with the rating system and then taking the entries and trading on the women in chart which I said is something that I'm an expert in doing too but that's what we did today so all the time that I spend doing the prep work in the morning allows me to take the fast trade to be announced so this is all me getting ready to trade and this is the time I spent trading so actually I don't spend that much time trading I spend time prepping so the more time you spend preparing and thinking and processing and the analyzing the more money you're going to make and you don't have to be in the trade that long okay and then you don't have to worry about volatility and all the things that can mess up your trade that can go on during the day okay so if you want to trade for a living you need a high winning strategy good money management and preferably a good mentor to follow now you can come take my class and learn from you and go out on your own but I think following me and understanding me during the process when you're learning is important it will help you do better and you can ask me questions so if you want to consistently make money in the market the only way that will happen is if you have these three things and again fast trades is about chunking it out this is a long-term investing okay long-term investing is not active day trading all right you are chunking it out you get in get out get in get out get the move get out you're out the money get out thousand dollars get out two thousand dollars get out three thousand dollars get out and you have to be able to react fast to do that okay I don't care if you're doing auctions or day trades you know you don't want to mess around particularly in this type of environment really really really you have to know what you're doing show empower yourself to trade I teach a class again I teach this class once a month the class is called the golden gap course it teaches a 26 point rating system to find the best stock to trade each day the course also teaches you how to enter and exit the stock on the day the course teaches price analysis and technical analysis on an advanced level this is what you come and learn from me the 26 points how I rate the gap how I make the daily picks how I take the entries how I take the exits okay and it's a full day full on class that I do once a month okay it's a full two-day course on how to strategically find pick and play stocks that are professional bearish gaps this is my expertise and that's the reason you come and learn from me the class is also online so if you're interested in the class the first class of the year actually is this weekend it's january 20th and 28th 90 to 5 p.m eastern time class is online the class is 69.99 a year and again if you can't do this weekend and you're interested the february class is in a month it's february 25th and 26th so that's a month off but I am doing a class this weekend if you're interested you can email me at melissa at thestockswitch.com to register I am doing an earnings season special through tomorrow it's for the class this weekend but if you can't do the class this weekend you can sign up by tomorrow and do the february class I'm fine with that and then you can get in the room because I'm offering the trading room free through the end of 2023 with this special but it ends tomorrow 127 so this is a good deal because normally I charge the room on top of the class the class tuition is 69.99 and everyone pays the same so I'm seeing we have a little bit of time here that I can answer questions for people I can pop up my charts and I don't know if I have to take the clicker thingy off that to do that or not but does anybody have any questions for me here's my email if you want to email me before I pop up my charts Melissa you are right on schedule if you want to answer a few questions feel free but if not you know I've got Tony waiting in the wind for us I'm sorry no it's a 45 minute slot no I've got him right on time like you said oh wonderful thank you so much for having me have a wonderful day