 Hello everyone and welcome this is Kevin with online trader central you're welcome to today's presentation Which will be starting promptly in just three minutes. Let's arm. Oh, as your host presenter In three minutes again, thank you everyone and welcome Hello everyone welcome This is Kevin with online trader central and you know what the time to the trumpets that means this time to be in It's exactly 430 in the Boston area here or wherever you may be around the world Thank you Kevin and Kathy and thank you everyone in online trader central Welcome welcome here on this wonderful fall Monday to a lecture that I'm giving my name is Melissa Armand I own a company called the stock swish LLC today. I'm going to talk about making a living day trading Using just one strategy. We're going to talk about the strategy that I trade on a day trader And so welcome if you have any questions you can go to my website. It's www.thesdocswish.com You can also email me at melissa at the stocks swish.com as well if you'd like more information And feel free to follow me on twitter facebook youtube linked in pen interest or skype And I have a ton of videos on youtube actually. I've been calling the market Pretty much regularly for the last year And you can follow and check out any of the plays the days I have on there as well So today we're going to talk about making a living trading Before I start out, I just put this in today. I was watching wall street was on tv this afternoon And this is a great quote and I thought gosh, you know, this really really kind of describes what I like to do in the market This is from gordon gecko and he said at one point the public is out there throwing darts at a board sport I don't throw darts at a board. I bet on short things. This is from the movie wall street I don't throw darts at a board when I trade in fact I don't do trades that I think are 50 50 chance of working or failing I talk about conviction a lot when I trade and when I take a trade I believe with 100 conviction and it's going to work. Now. Does every trade that I take work? No, of course not But a lot of trades that I take work And so it really made me think about my whole philosophy about trading which is The fact that if you want to do this for a living, you're really serious about making money consistently trading Then you can't have the philosophy out there where you're throwing darts at a board Specifically if you're risking an advanced amount of money, we're going to talk about the different trading Levels and the different risk levels today as well The fact is there are a lot of people in the market There are a lot of people in the market some are making money some are losing money some are break even That's why there's a lot of money in the market actually Uh, we know that there's a lot of people in the market because there's a lot of money in the market You see it flowing through the market constantly every day. It's on tv. It's on the internet everybody talks about the stock market Whether people are in it through their 401k or through someone else investing the money or if you're a day trader or a swing trader Or some other kind of trader where you actively have an account a lot of people and most people are in the market So we are here to talk about day trading for a living and a lot of people I get this question all the time and people ask themselves this I'm sure when they think about trading for a living. Is it possible? Is it possible to make a living day trading? The fact is that there's a current belief system that exists right now today, which is that it is not possible. Okay So It's a huge belief system Okay, it permeates everything that anybody ever talks about in any webinar you go to free or paid for classes everything All of these educators are out there and the belief system that they're talking about Which they're constantly constantly reinforcing when they teach classes and webinars is that it is very hard Impossible not really possible To make money in the market for a living So you have to take a step back and look at this from an intellectual standpoint and know Okay, that is a huge belief system Are all belief systems true? No, what makes the belief system true or false? It's what you actually believe Okay, that's what makes the difference So I want you to take 60 minutes Okay, the next time we have left here and imagine the possibility that success is your reality instead of the opposite Instead of imagining that it is not possible I want you to imagine for the time we have together here today That in fact the opposite is possible and that your belief system for the next hour is that it is possible to make money For a living trading This is a picture of me. I just took this this is a selfie a little selfie of me here So you can see what I look like. This is a real picture of me Uh, I just took it myself on my phone. The defining factor for me Um is what really when I was figuring all this stuff out and I was training and I was losing at the beginning I never never never never never didn't believe that I was successful Now I was losing money at the beginning when I started trading when I started figuring out all this stuff I'm going to talk about today and then I trained myself and use and teach But the defining factor for me is that I never bought into that belief system. I just never bought into it. I just never Just didn't pay it any mind. I mean, I didn't even care I mean everything that I went to I was listening to the same stuff as everybody here because I'm young I've only been doing this for when trading for six years online trader essential was around back then I used to kind of listen to all their free lectures to And uh, the market was a different place about six years ago training the trading environment was a different place about six years ago But still tons of people were there and I was listening just like you today And I was listening to all the things that people would say Now I'm teaching. Okay. And now I'm successful as a trader and when I think back when I tried to Give helpful advice to people and mentor people that are coming to me that want to be successful Uh, the defining factor for me is that it was myself. It was actually just myself here. Look at me I'm a regular person and I believed in myself and I believe that I could do it. I never any guarantees Uh, there was no one looked at me and said you're absolutely going to make it I think at some point people did look at me and say you're going to make it But I mean at the beginning and for a long long time You know, everyone was saying because this is the big quote-unquote belief system out there in reference to traders That it's impossible to do. It's just too hard You're never going to make a living doing this and I did have another job the whole time that I was trading and losing at the beginning And I didn't quit that job until I actually started making money trading But my goal was always to jay trade for a living because I wanted to quit my mortgage job I did mortgages and it was around 2008 that I started trading I started realizing that this is something that I wanted to embark on and do And I knew that my you know, I didn't want to do mortgages for the next 10 20 years And I knew it wasn't going to make the same amount of money doing them And I was very successful as a mortgage person and I just Decided that I wanted to change career So for me the reason to do this was always to change careers And I never bought into the belief system that it was impossible And even if someone told me that which my friends some of my friends actually said This is an impossible thing that you're trying to do and this is I mean This is months after me into doing it losing and I still didn't listen to anyone says So I have to tell you that the defining factor and whether or not you're going to make it is really you It's really you Now when we're when we're done here going over some things at the end, I'm going to talk about Some other pieces that you need, but this is the one thing Okay, that defines someone like me who can trade well or someone that isn't doing it Okay, so you're going to have to accept the fact that that belief system That is really really out there is something you're going to have to ignore Now once you accept that and you decide that you want to be successful How are you going to get there? How are you going to get to the point where you can do it? How are you going to get to the point where you can actually do this for a living? You need a plan you need a plan of action You have to kind of say to yourself where do I want to be in a year? Do I want to be at the same place in a year? Do I want to be making this much money in a year? Do I want to be quitting my job in a year? Okay, what is it? And you also have to look and say where do I want to be at five years? This sounds like a fall long time away and I don't care for 25 or 35 or 45 or 55 You know, we all have to kind of plan for the future and I say it's never too soon to do that Even if you're in your late 20s or early 30s, it's a good idea to plan for the future For those of you that live in the us We don't even know if our retirements are going to look like what we thought that we're going to look like You know 25 30 years ago So it is just never never too late or never too soon to plan for your future for where you want to be And do you know what the bigger picture is for what you want financially meaning? Let's just say you're at a job right now and you're not making the amount of money that you would like to be making Maybe the bigger picture is you actually would like to be wealthy in the market But this was something that I had in the back of my head too. Now. I did very well doing mortgages. That's true But I never made enough I always wanted to make more every year. I would want to make more more more more more And then that's the one good thing about the market and it's the one great thing about the market I say, you know, you go out there and you trade well and you're doing it The sky is the limit because every year you should be making more And it should have nothing to do with the environment of the market and we're going to talk about that today as well So it is about having one focus one focus and one strategy This is a picture of the qqqs and what we're going to talk about today is my strategy Which is gaps now. I have a system to figure out gaps the market has been trading down Okay, the market's been trading down for like the last Well, I'd say the whole first week of october it was training straight on down and it was actually gapping The qqqs gap down here and here We were flat here But we gap down here the qs had a lot of gap downs about this first second week of october Now the market's rallying and it's trying to recover and it is going to recover but If you were trading gaps, you could have traded the qqqs or the spy etfs or any etf actually or stock Using my method by reading the gap Now the market doesn't gap every day it gaps a lot more often than stocks On a day the market wouldn't gap Maybe you wouldn't do anything if you traded the etfs of the market only I like to trade stocks which we're going to talk about today But I wanted to point out that you kind of apply a gap method of trading to the etfs of the market And some people like to do this for options trading. I'm not doing options But it's expensive to trade the qqqs strike price is anywhere between, you know, $1900 in the last few months So this is a doing options It would be a different way of risk basing yourself for profitability if you wanted to think about doing that Now let's get back to this idea of focus. Okay. Now remember this is you your belief system now for the next hour Is that you can make a living day trading? What is one of the things you're going to have to be very very focused on? The one thing that you're doing every day because if you're paying yourself and you have to pay yourself And if you don't pay yourself, you can't eat. Okay, then you have to be very focused It takes away this whole gambling methodology And you're focused on what you're doing I drew these circles here. We have a top row and we have a bottom row And the bottom row every circle is red and this is how I would describe real focus in a trader Someone that gets up every day and the circle is red for them. They basically draw their circle every day And monday tuesday wednesday thursday friday they get up every morning. They draw a red circle Now the results Okay, of this red circle will vary Whether they made a small amount of money a medium a lot or maybe they took a loss of the day But every day someone could get up and someone could learn from this trader Actually, this is one of the reasons why people are learning how to trade successfully from me Someone can learn from this trader and someone can duplicate this methodology Uh for success because this person does the same thing every day or is looking for the same thing every day Now you have to know what kind of circle this person is looking for. This is what she would learn from me But it's the same circle really every day That you're looking for and once you learn how to look for that circle You just go and you just do it and you just do it like a machine And you just do it and you just do it every day She can map out here your progress of the focus Now this is most people up here in the top level most people will get up one day and they'll decide to go long Most people will get up one day. They'll decide to go short They'll get out one day. They'll see the market. They'll want to do a buy set up in the daily chart Or sell set up in the daily chart or breakout player climactic every day. They're doing a different direction long or short Sometimes they're doing more than one thing in the day. They're also doing different strategies every day Again, not only every day, but sometimes multiple strategies on each day And so if you were following this trader or watching this trader you would get up every morning You don't you couldn't even predict with certainty the color of the next day circle There would be many many colors every color in the spectrum and then also you don't know how those circles would line up So do you see this person is very focused does this person have a high percentage of making A living trading not as high as this one. Okay, because this person's all over the place and the results will Look like that too. There's no way that they can't because they don't have one thing they're focusing on So it's better to focus on one thing now. That doesn't mean that you can't do more than one thing Occasionally sometimes what if you get up on a day and you don't see your strategy? You might want to do something else, but if you were really focused you wouldn't okay like I don't I only do one strategy But I don't even have a problem with that the problem. I think for many people is they're up here And they're just trying to find opportunity to market every day But the fact is that it doesn't exist like that It doesn't work like that for a level of consistency to pay yourself on a regular basis And what ends up happening is You fall back even if you get to that place where you have the belief system that you're successful and you can do it You have one bad day in here and then you fall back and you're like a lot of people And then that belief system that it's not possible creeps up into your thought processes into your brain And then you totally get off track It's very very easy to do what most people are doing. It is harder to do this for most people It's not hard for me because I live in my own world. I trade by myself I do what I want. I don't listen to anyone else. I ignore other people I taught myself how to do this so I believe in it and I run my own trading room And I'm the only person that talks in it If you were by yourself though in your own office and you're with me in my trading room It would not be hard for you to do this Because I keep everybody focused The problem is that a lot of trading rooms out here are doing a lot of different stuff And it's very hard to be focused And if you do every single trade the moderator does on that day You probably aren't having good results Okay, so it really is about the focus and I think this is an extremely important part That will help define you as a good trader or a so-so trader or a losing trader actually So having one focus helps It helps you to bank money daily and you're going to need to do this if you're going to rely on this for income Also having one focus trading stops it from being a computer game This is something that a lot of people combat even still people that I know in my trading room. They just don't Understand that this is serious and people have to understand it serious and it's not a computer game Okay, it's easy to press the button to take a trade And it's easy to get out sometimes too too soon You have to realize that it's not a computer game And you have to be serious about the exact entry for taking it and exactly so you're taking it out Having one focus helps you stop also when you're up You will be watching the time of the day. You will be watching the reversal times You'll be watching for the targets if you have one focus and the focus is the target for the stock that you're trading And it helps you stop when you're up because you've met your goal for the day It's not about continually going after something all day. You are just trying to meet your goal And that's it. It's like if somebody gave you a project with the office and they said listen as soon as you're done With this project and go home for the day Well, if you finish that project in an hour, you can go home for the day It's the same thing with trading your job is make a certain amount of money and once you do then you stop for the day Just like if your boss if you worked at an office gave you a project He doesn't have any more work to do for you in the day. He's going to pay you for eight hours So finish it as quickly as you can do a good job, but get it done as quickly and expeditiously as you can Do that Also, having one focus helps you do it like a job Because if you keep wanting to trade all day, even if the first trade that you take is a good one and you're up Then it kind of takes away from this looking at like a job. You have one job as a trader is to make money That's your job. You have one job You have one job to get up every day and make money and once you do that make your goal You're done and it's really just looking at it like that I only trade it in the morning occasionally I'll trade in the afternoon But not that often this time of the year actually is a time that I might because it's earning season And there's a lot of stocks that are going to bigger targets In earning season, but for the most part I like to trade in the morning be done I find that is my best most successful time of the day And it helps you to look at this like a job You know, even if you have to like get dressed before you sit at your desk Don't sit there at your pajamas if that helps you actually take it more seriously then that's what you need to do So in order to make a living trading you need the right business plan for me It's my system. It's just my system is actually a business plan a trading plan my strategy My focus everything. It's all in compass. It's the reason I created it this way It's called the golden gap system and it is a 26 point professional bearish gap rating system The purpose of this system is to help you evaluate which gap to trade each morning using a checklist and by gap I mean stock or an ETF. I like to do stocks The reason is because more people have more emotional attachment To companies than they do to ETFs and stocks there for them will have more momentum and bigger plays in them And that's a fact So I know people like the ETFs The you know the precious metals and the markets you can use them for that But I find to get more play in companies The philosophy behind the 26 points is to find stocks to trade that have number one a high probability of directional bias for the entire day Actually, one of the ones today was ncr You can go look at that. I don't have it in the class huge directional bias for the entire day in that stock to the downside Big move on the day again That stock was another example of that today as well early confirmation of my bias in the move Which means an early entry in the train between 9 30 and 10 Precise entries with follow through and a good risk to reward. I'm going to talk about what that means to Now I use a 26 point checklist to train This is my reason for the focus. So I find a stock. I rate it I go through the checklist. It tells me i'm going to watch it It's my top pick or I have two picks usually each day And I will watch to trade one or them both Some days you get three four some days you get as many as you can handle I don't like to do more than two things at a time, but this is a personal choice so That is my focus then and I have it right next to me like on my desk on a piece of paper Just like this picture here and this tells me what I should be doing So I don't have to look all over. This is like the red circle. This is the red circle every day It's just there in a piece of paper Now why trade gaps because of large institutional money? This is why they work so well. This is why they pay well too Because they're creating with large institutional money And by the way, this is a ways reason that the market is higher The sell-off that's happened in the market in the last two weeks is not institutional sell-off The market is going to get bought It is starting to get bought and the market is going to make a new high And it's probably going to happen the next 30 days It could even happen in the next 10 days for the end of the month Because the market will get bought with institutional money and I know how to read that extremely well And the reason that I know how to read institutional positioning and stocks in the market is because I know how to read gaps I think that is one of the best things that you could possibly learn from me If you took my class and if you trained with me in the live room The best thing that you could ever learn from me is this because this is a powerful powerful thing and it will Lend you in the right direction when you start to trade Knowing whether something is a long or short Okay, because institutional money moves stocks. It's what makes gaps And the professional gaps that happen to play out in stocks are formed by one thing and one thing only large institutional money And then you need a way that you've got to know how to play it Okay, because some things are short and some things are long and in order to make money you have to be in the Stock in the right direction So I have a formula that I used to read and qualify the gap I get confirmation and conviction therefore then with the formula that the large institutional money is on the side of the gap And then you play it Gaps are an event and they create a sense of urgency which is again why I like companies And that's an action. It's being forced by participants of the stock This is why gap training is incredibly powerful trading gaps Is a powerful and probable way to trade because you're trading on the side of power Which is what which is institutional money? And as I was saying this is one of the best things I think you could learn from me So the philosophy behind the golden gap system is what to analyze a large time frame To make the trend decision on the directional bias for the gap on the day Because i'm day trading Okay And all large traders of every kind look at large time frames to make decisions particularly institutional traders And one of the other great things about the system is to make entry decisions and exit decisions based on a small time frame Which is the one minute chart This is a high degree of focus and accuracy talk about honing in on a focus Okay, you can't train a smaller chart the one minute chart for time frame unless you're on a tick chart And you actually can't get enough information on tick chart And trust me i've looked at it if there was a way that I could be more accurate on a tick chart I would there actually isn't it actually goes the opposite direction then okay So the highest level of accuracy with the most precision and detail is actually in that one minute chart for intraday Not a tick chart that has the opposite effect then if you start to go to the ticks Using the daily chart to make the decision for the stock pick allows for accuracy in the direction And then using the one minute chart allows for good risk to reward trades with accuracy So now let's talk about risk to reward a lot of people say well How much money can be make doing this with risk to reward? What let's talk about what I consider a good risk to reward trading a bad risk reward trade A lot of people are scalpers at day trade. They find this is the only way they can get by Okay, I know it. I you know, I know it. I've been there What is a scalper? Well, for example, most scalpers they just don't have good risk to reward trades What do they do most scalper traders have to take multiple trades equal one risk unit Okay, that means if they risk a dollar they were trying to make a dollar But most scalper traders have to risk a dollar and then they make like 25 cents or 50 cents Gap training is more profitable than scalping. I'm not a scalper But I understand a lot of day traders are scalpers because I feel like it's the only way they can make it Or rebate traders too But gap trading involves quick moves like a scalp, okay? So it's that intensity that you get like in a scalp of the move But gap trading has a better risk to reward than scouts There's still fast trains though, but you're getting more momentum and a better risk to reward So a good risk to reward trade is risking $1 and making $1 At a minimum and a good risk to reward trade also has the potential to make $3 or more at the target So in other words, if I take a trade and I am risk a dollar and I make a dollar I'm up a dollar in the train. I don't kill it. I have a target, but the target is always more than one Okay, I'm not taking a train where the target's one A bad risk to reward trade is one where you risk one lot and you only make half or less than half of the one risk unit It's like not worth my time if I see that I won't do a trade like that And this is what a lot of scalpers do they do it anyways But trains that make less than one risk unit do not resolve the profitability over the long call Also, you have to take a lot to make up the difference So the key is a system where you can make mostly profitable good risk to reward trades and also less trades The idea of taking less trains with more profitability is a better idea For for anyone whether you're doing this for a living or even part time Then taking a lot of trains for a little bit Because as soon as you're in the trade as a scalper and it goes against a little bit You want to take it out and then if it goes on to work you miss the whole move And the train may not have been doing anything wrong But you're just in that scout mode and you got to get out of that and learn what to have conviction And it's actually going to move and continue with the momentum because sometimes things back up on you That's how it is markets a good example that right now markets falling down Nothing goes a straight line up or down forever This is part of understanding trading and it's whether you're on a one minute chart or a daily chart same philosophy Same type of movement and things Okay Now there's three trading levels tier one as a beginner That's you if you just do the class even if you have a lot of money has nothing to do with that You just did the class you're brand brand new tier two is intermediate This is where you've done well at the beginning level. You are in this in between stage You're starting to do pretty well and you feel like you can step it up a notch Step three or tier three is advanced. This is when you know, you've made it You can risk a good amount of money. You are making money consistently over at least a six nine month period or more And you know, you're at the point where you could actually pay yourself for living Whether you want to quit your day job or not is up to you So now where you're at at any point in time and be willing to adjust yourself accordingly along the way What does this mean if you start at a beginner jump to an intermediate But then start having trouble with yourself You might have to go back to a beginner level. It doesn't mean you won't progress It means that you have to take a step back and figure it out if you're not doing something Right, like if you're back in that scout mode again or something and you're not getting the most bang for your buck in your trades We're going to look at one trade here today. It's just one trade But we're going to look at all the different levels of this trade, particularly Is a trade in juniper. This is friday Juniper is a great gap and in fact lies in the room in the morning I say some the best things that I say actually are in the trading room, which is just me As raw as I could be reading the pre market And I read the market in the morning and I read my stock picks where my gaps after I read everything And you know there was I said there was it's not any reason to do anything else today with juniper Now juniper ended up going to the target. Does every stock go to the target every night? No, actually juniper went to the first target and the second target And this was a really nice play Juniper gap down Okay, this is the night before appear on thursday night It closed up here 21 something and opened down here around 20 10 ish or whatever it opened. Okay So the stock gap down overnight A gap down a dollar or so Okay So juniper was a short I rated it according to my system and you were looking for a setup trade in juniper You would take an entry short in juniper. This is a one minute chart down here This is a volume bars Over here is the price you would enter and those one minute in here short And you would put a stop over here And you would be in the trade now the first exit was in here And the second exit was down here into the target actually this went to 19, but A second exit was like 1915 into lunch So if you weren't beginner trader and you did juniper and you had a small account. Okay, this is not a large account You are risking 60 bucks on this trade. This is you you're brand brand new You take the trade the same trade as As I would or anyone whether they're intermediate or advanced, but you're a beginner You short 600 shares of this your risk is $60. I use a hard stop Is a hard stop there if a straight stops out it goes over the stop you're losing 60 bucks. That's it First exit though it did hit 1950 you get out of half Second one 1915 get out of half it did go down to 19 though profit then on exiting in portions was 381 So the risk to award in this trade by getting out of halfsies and halfsies is 381 If you took the whole trade you got almost a dollar out of it If you held the whole thing down to the low To the target which it went you could have made 600 bucks, but let's say you're conservative Okay, you don't know what the market's doing in the day You get out of the first exit the second exit and you make 381 dollars. This is still a 6.35 our trade That's a really good trade. This is a great trade. Okay So that's really the right way to take a position in something and Maximize it for what would be your income You don't want the whole thing to go against you if it comes on down in here You don't know for sure if it's going to get to the target or not So you're doing the conservative approach Getting it at the first target which drops on down and getting out the rest down into the drop Okay But it all stems from what it all stems from juniper itself, which is a gap trade Now let's look at intermediate if you could risk a little bit more 150 And I say 150 is an intermediate risk Okay, could be between 100 150 200 dollars could be intermediate Same exact trade shorted it on the one minute chart 1996 Exited the raft first drop second drop This trader risky 150 dollars made almost a thousand dollars. This is a great trade This trader did not hold the whole position down to the target Did not even exit the second exit at the target, which was 19, which it did get to Again a nice trade this trader made 952 dollars. This trader is not risking some crazy amount of money here. Okay 150 as an intermediate Will this trader make a thousand dollars or so every day risking 150? No, no, it won't But he will some days because he will get the gap, right? He will have conviction in it He will take the correct entry. He will position size himself correctly And he will have conviction to hold at least half of it down to a bigger number And the trade's already going. He's up in the trade. Okay And he knows what he's doing and he's a good trader. He will get trades like this He will get trades like this a couple times a month And you see how you can start to put together this idea of believing That it is possible to day trade for a living to turn that belief system around There is nothing like money to turn that kind of belief system around. There's nothing like profits There's nothing like what I call common trades where you have a train and you make over thousand dollars in the train And it's and it's a trade you're not in like that long I call those common trades whether it's a thousand two thousand three thousand dollars Every trader that day trades needs to have trades like that It helps you get conviction and confidence that it's something you can do for living Because even if you have one bad day as a day trader if you are used to having common days or have common days You can see how You know, you can pay for the loss and the bad day And all your expenses to trade commissions room fees everything else and still pay yourself So you need to have those days like that And it is possible to have days like that even with an intermediate risk But you have to know what you're doing and you have to be good And this is what i'm teaching people to do But juniper was one of those ones you could have made almost a thousand dollars And you didn't even have to risk a lot of money and you didn't even have to hold the whole thing into the target Okay And feel free to ask me questions as we're going along in here I know i'm talking talking talking, but if you have questions just pop them in the room Now let's just say if you're an advanced trader You're an advanced trader you are Doing this for a long time. You have the type of account where you could take a sizable position in a trade You take six thousand shares of juniper you risk ten cents You get the same exact trade as the beginner and the intermediate same entry same exit out of half And out of half in the second drop You could make thirty eight hundred dollars and a trade like this where you didn't even hold the whole thing to the target Now you had to risk six hundred dollars. This is an advanced risk for two reasons One to take anything where you're up over four or five thousand shares is really what i call advanced Particularly at this price point And you have to have about a hundred twenty some thousand in buying power as well to do something like this So you really have to have an account that can withstand this risk as well because if this trade would fail You have to be okay with losing six hundred dollars on the day Now it did not fail though. It ended up going on to work And this is a really really nice trade that you didn't even hold the whole thing down to the target If you had taken the whole position at ninety six and held it down to nineteen if you had that much conviction It could stomach the wiggles and jiggles on through until you got to the number and you were in it all day It actually didn't drop to like quarter four in the afternoon to this number But you could have made almost six thousand dollars in it risking six hundred bucks If you had enough conviction to hold it through all day I don't like to trade all day, but You could have done it on juniper I mean you could have been in the stock all day and made almost six grand You had to risk six hundred dollars to do it though moved almost a dollar So again, it is not whether or not you are beginner intermediate advanced as far as what you're doing It's the difference of the money that you're making which makes the difference for you to be able to pay yourself for a living How do you get to the point where you can take a six thousand share position? How do you get to the point where you can risk six hundred dollars in a trade? You know you've got to know what you're doing Having the focus knowing that you yourself will follow that circle the red circle routine every day Now a lot of people ask me how many gaps you get per week during each quarterly earning season You get three to five quality gaps are more This is each day Now during non-earning season you'll usually get three to five quality gaps per week I'm usually looking for one a day in non-earning season, but in earning season you get a couple every day Sometimes you get a lot whether or not you play them all or not is up to you You can play as many as you want as many as rate per the system A quality gap is one though that rates high enough to train based on the 26 point rating system If there are multiple highly rated gaps then you can take more than one trader gap pick per day Each trade is on its own and should be managed accordingly meaning if you decide to take a trade And you are in that trade Then you're in that trade and you want to take a second trade a third trade each trade is on its own You're not taking one trade and then killing that Because of another one or so and so forth each trade Has to be looked at on its own. Is it working? Is it holding the stop? Is it doing anything wrong? Is it not doing anything wrong? What's the target? What's the risk to your work? Okay So you would have to be in a position where you could take if you're an intermediate trader If you wanted to take three trades you'd have to be able to risk $450 at one time in that Time period okay, because they're all setting up within the first half an hour of the day And if you can do that according to size of your account you can do it But you have to be able to do that because each trade has to be on its own accordingly Okay Now a lot of people ask me this question to hear about leverage Leverage is really margin. I call it leverage. It's really margin or buying power that you get from the broker What is leverage? Leverage is the use of a small initial investment credit or barred funds to gain a very high return in relationship to one's investment Or to control a much larger investment or to reduce one's own liability for any loss So how do you use leverage in your trading account to your manage? That's what's going to enable you to actually day trade for living is the leverage and the margin you're going to get from a broker Whatever broker you choose, whatever broker you use, they're all going to give you leverage The leverage is different You have to talk to them and find out the size of the accounts But that is how you're going to be able to day trade for living. Otherwise, everyone would need the cost cash equivalent of Any trade that they would take Now how are you going to protect yourself from losses stops? You're going to put in hard stops of limit order And you're really going to just use something that's called money management You stop to determine your entry and risk amount and you have a certain amount that you're risking for the day as well That you're stopping out meaning if you are down a certain amount Let's say you took those three trades all at once and you risked 150 on three at once and none of them worked Which was be unusual. Let's just say it happened. You'd be down 450 then Okay on the day if that's your cutoff you would have to stop for the day And that's part of money management money management also means stopping when you're up Like if you take a good trade like juniper, that's it. You're done. You don't do anything else There's no need to do anything else Whether you were a beginner intermediate or advanced trainer if you did the juniper trades If you got the whole thing in the first exit or if you had to eat it out There was no reason to do anything else. You made your goal for the day Okay, your goal for the day was three And as soon as you're up to three you're done. That's it Now leverage helps you make money if you know how to train. That's the good thing about it And equity leverage is actually fine. I know there's lots of leverage out there for forex and things And some of it is crazy and some of it is actually dangerous for the forex leverage But the equity leverage that most brokers give you is what I would consider quote unquote normal if there is such a thing And leverage is actually a good thing if you know how to train all intelligent traders use leverage and use it to their advantage Leverage gives you buying power to take a position without needing the full cash value or cost of stock out right to purchase it A lot of people don't understand this about day trading But it is something important and you need to know it because if you think you need to have $250,000 state trade you actually don't okay Now let's go for this example here with juniper to short 6,000 shares of juniper Instead of needing it would have been 119 760 and real cash is what you would have needed to take the position at 1996 per share The advanced trader only needs to leverage equivalent of the position in buying power or margin for a retail account This would equate to 29 940 dollars. That's what you would have needed to take a 6,000 share in position of juniper on friday For the beginner intermediate trader with only 600 to 1500 shares the first two examples would be less than that But i'm just showing here's how leverage helps you So if you have this much money you can take a trade and make $3,800 in juniper Otherwise you would need this without the broker. So we need brokers in order to give us margin and leverage That's why you're going to have a good broker to trade with And do you see how this is a nice amount of money? To be able to actually make $3,800 on 30 grand. That's a 10 percent return on the day That's a 10 percent return one trade one and one day That's Really really good. You're not going to earn something like that as a scamper And if this you're not going to earn something like this in a certificate of deposit at a bank or savings account Or really anything now you don't get trades like this every day, but you get enough of them You get quite a lot of them in earning season And that on top of everything else in between is how you pay yourself because You are looking at one thing as one focus. Otherwise, how would you ever know to do this? How would you ever know to hold this? How would you ever know what the targets were or anything to do with this? How would you ever know To do anything right with this at all if you didn't have a red circle every day where you're looking for a juniper every day If that's in fact what you do Now let's talk about position sizing and leverage the position size you're taking a trade depends on The amount of money you choose to risk based on your level which is beginner intermediate advanced You're putting your stock and the trains based on using a required monetary risk amount Using hard stops mean you're only risking that portion of money So your risk is not on the position sizing It has to do with the money amount which has to be equivalent each time You're sizing and taking the share size and know how much share size to take based on the monetary risk Which that needs to be the same And you need leverage and buy and power to take a position But it has nothing to do with the amount you're risking on the trade Okay, you're deciding on each and every trade you take what your monetary risk is and it should be roughly the same each trade So if you're in the intermediate you're risking 150 150 150 And if you're advanced you'll be risking 600 dollars in every trade And if you're beginner 60 bucks on each trade or 50 or whatever you decide smaller amount The only difference between a beginner trader intermediate trader and advanced trader though Is size That's really the only difference and and it's experience A trader cannot risk more money per train and take size until they know how to accurately trade over a period of months This is the experience part However, trading with size is the goal One play though with size can make your whole week as you can see by the juniper Two or three great plays a month can make your whole month. This is really the nice thing about trading gaps Unlike scalping or anything else that you would do as a day trade a couple of good quality moves per month Make your month and in between you are trading And you are taking the gaps and whether there one are or two are some days You're chunking out the rest of your month and you've got a couple goodies in there that really make your month Now example here trading with size 200 shares of a stock that moves a dollar Was 200 bucks like if you stayed in the juniper for the buck move if you'd had 2000 It's $2,000 for the dollar 20,000 shares could you take 20,000 shares in the company sure even with a small account it was cheaper $20,000 profit like you could take something that was four or five dollar strike price Now the difference is Only the size Which equates to what the risk amount Which equates to what your level that you're on and how do you get to that level where you could even risk $600 in a trade Is you are making money consistently and when you're making money consistently you can risk more And when you're risking more you will make more and when you're making more then you can possibly make enough to pay your Self for a living and I don't know how much you need to pay your bills But this is something that you would have to sit down and decide for yourself Ultimately though the trading with size is the way to make a living trading. I mean I've always knew this. I just always knew this. I knew this from day one I always traded with size from the get-go at the beginning It was not a good idea for me because I didn't know what I was doing at the beginning But I always knew it and I always traded like this from day one This is something that makes a big difference. It just does. This is how you have common days This is how you get motivated to get up in the morning and do it the next day And when you have days you make 2,500 3,000 4,000 dollars in a trade There's there's it's you're on a high you're on a high the rest of the night Get up the next morning and you're excited about trading and this is how you do it Trading with focus is a way to make a living trading which for me is the checklist Which I talked about earlier. It's the reason that I'm able to stick To my plan because I have this right next to me every single day all organized and written out And this is my business plan. This is my structure to do it Now how much to risk to make a living day trading? Let's talk about this briefly I'm I'm just going to use an average of what people consider making a living which is $100,000 a year Although some people don't need this to pay their bills. Some people need more some people can use less But I'm going to use an average of this If you use this as your goal You want to make $100,000 a year an average risk unit of $250 per trade is suggested to make it But once you're good, okay at holding the targets using $200 risk unit could achieve this goal You have to be very good to do that. So I think $250 is a better risk amount You would be in that range where you're you're above intermediate at the beginning of advance But you don't have to risk actually $600 per trade to make 200 to make a hundred thousand a year You you could be fine with risking $250 If you're doing all the right things rating the gaps taking the correct entries sizing yourself And not scalping them which is holding them for moves a momentum moves Once you get up where you're risking $500 $600 a trade you're making more than $200,000 a year So you don't if you have $100,000 a year pays your bills You don't have to risk, you know $500 $600 a trade Now let's look at some examples here Let's just say you you want to make 500 bucks a day it equates to $2,500 a week $500 a day $2,500 a week is 130 a year. This is a living For many people $78,000 a year is a living. That's $300 a day or $1,500 a week $1,500 a week $1,500 a week this $1,500 a week is not a lot of money for a day trader to make and yet Many many people buying the belief system and it's impossible to do And they can't do it and they don't do it. They don't do it because they don't believe how to do it They don't believe they can do it and they don't even try to do it They'd rather just talk about how it can't be done. You got to get over that Now let's just say you're here and you just 150 a day if you can prove to yourself you can make $39,000 a year For one year you keep your day job Just prove yourself you make 40 grand in your trading. I guarantee you will have so much confidence in conviction in yourself. You will have Totally disassociate yourself with that belief system that it can't be done That you will be prepared then mentally to risk more the second year of your trading then To get up to the next level and risk 300, you know Dollars 250 300 dollars in your trades and get to the point where you can actually make 100,000 a year All right, just prove to yourself that you can consistently make money over the period of 12 months And again, you're doing this in a short time of the day To be able to make 39,000 a year extra income working part-time hours is actually really good Because if you have your regular job plus this is extra money that you didn't even count Now to be able to make 130,000 a year Working part-time is is actually great or any anything even remotely over that Okay, because it's a small time investment every day for the amount of money that you would actually make Now I briefly talked about this earlier This is something that I created. I was just talking in the room one day And it's called the stocks with trader success wheel This is the wheel of the pieces of the pie that you need to be successful This is the strategy part the strategy part in here is the gap The gap the 26 point rating system This is what I teach in the class this other very large part Not as large as the strategy that you need to be successful And this is if you want to make it as a as a career Is the entry the entry the entry the entry the entries which gets you the good risk to award it Which gets you in and profitable even trades if don't go on to the target Uh, this is what allows me to make money so consistently Honing in on the entries and I teach this in the class as well And the third piece here, which is not a large as piece is the strategy of the entry is the end for money management In this resides also your own belief system about yourself and trading It's all together in there because if you have a poor belief system that you can't make money doing this Even if you have this and this you'll you'll be in your head too much and screw it up This is about having Discipline if you want to call it that but it's really just about what you believe If you believe that you have the power to be successful trading you will and if you don't believe you will you won't You won't Because you will take a great trade and you will screw it up and I've seen people do this I don't do this. Okay. I am way past this point But at the beginning when I first started out, you know, I struggled with this as well for myself back and forth Back and forth back and forth. I think everybody does you have to work it out in your head I always knew personally I was successful But I was back and forth with my money management stuff Sometimes holding things too long or getting out too early and you got to work it out You find a happy media and once you know where the targets really are in stocks You will see them go to the targets time and time and time and time and time again Just like juniper and you will not be surprised and then you will come to an agreement between yourself Which you can live with which is that you're never going to get out of the whole thing and hold the whole thing Done of the full target and get out of the low of the day in every trade There will be trades you do that. There are trades that I do that They are what I call perfect trades on whole and complete where I do everything right And I'm capable of doing that you will do that too if you learn my system and some of the trades But in between there will be trains where you do not hold the whole thing And you trail in the rest and you'd get out of half and a profitable still Or you get out too soon and it goes on to a bigger target, but you're still up for the day Okay, and the goal as a trader as I said is to make money That is your number one goal and it's to take good risk to award trades and part of money manager means not being a scalper not risking one risk unit and making a quarter of a half You are in it for the game It's not an all day game, but you're in it to win it. You're in it to make it You're in it to do it. You're in it for the money and that's how you're going to pay your bills Uh jimmy's asked me a question here. Can you train our array funds with your broker? I have no idea You'll have to ask them They'll know though I expect not as most will not allow someone to short with IRA funds. Again, I have no idea Someone else asked me that too and I I a long time ago and I told them to talk to their broker But you know what somebody told me somebody told me that they did do it Somebody told me you can't and somebody told me they did it and I said, you know what just call a broker Because I don't I don't really know and I don't want to tell you the wrong thing There are so many things the brokers have That are so strict with compliant rules You have got to ask them and specifically with an IRA account So you really really have to talk to the broker if you have a situation where you're not sure if you can short Because my system is mainly shorting now Can you use bullish gaps for the system and flip them? The answer is yes I had a client that recently did the class. He asked me about that He hasn't done any long since he did the class because he can short, but I know he's going to Um and I did call a long last week And I think he did it so you can flip the points for the bullish and you could do bullish gaps Now I'm you know, I like the shorts. The reason I like the shorts is they move very fast That's my only reason I really like the shorts because I don't like to be in a trade for a long time But I know people are asking me about it I know people are doing it and I will say that in the live trading room If I call a long it's really good because I don't talk about longs that often And if I happen to see one and if I happen to comment on it Write it down and do it because the thing is that I just don't care much for longs personally And I can see them really well, too That's one of the reasons I've seen what the market's going to do But I just don't like to do them personally as much as the shorts But if I happen to pick a long It's probably pretty pretty amazing or I wouldn't feel the need to talk about it So you could use the system for longs even if you can't shorten your broker account in your IRA, but you got to check with them And it was getting back to them. This is these are the critical pieces These are the critical pieces that you need to be successful as a trader Whether you're a day trader swing trader or court trader really doesn't matter You need all these things for all the above me all the things on any level you're at You know all these things about how much money you have it really does not matter And people constantly constantly want to talk about how much money they have and how much money I want to make You got to get out of your head about the money The money will come once you know how to do it. Well, it will come in droves once you know how to do it Well, by the way, and so you've got to just get out of your head about it I know it's challenging if you've been at this for a while But take my advice So one other thing I want to talk about time of the day investment for the strategy People say well, how long does it take to do this to rate the gaps? I start the room in 8 30 Honestly, I start looking at stuff as soon as I roll out of bed But if as long as you give yourself 30 minutes 45 minutes, that's enough prep time before the open I wouldn't I wouldn't start situating everything and rating stuff any, you know past nine o'clock You want to be at your desk by nine at the latest 8 45 is better You want to start in with me at 8 30 good You don't want to roll out about a 9 25 and start trading Unless you're relying on me to do everything and just come into the room and you rely on me to do the whole thing There are some people that do that because of the time zone But I say you're gonna have 30 45 minutes and we're into prep before the open and then about 30 45 minutes to trade Okay, tell you get in the trade wait for the trade to set up take it get out That's you know your time investment on the day So it's not a big time investment on the day, but I'm just giving you some idea because people always ask me about it Do you need a specific broker to get filled in the shorts? You need a broker that has good short access a lot do Every once in a while you'll get one that doesn't though you can email me jim and I'll refer some brokers to you So let's talk about job security in today's economy. What is your future career plan in your current job? Let's do you have a current job What's your future plan for that job to stay in it until you retire? Then after that, what is your retirement plan and are you getting annual raises at your position? Are you making more money year after year and not only that are you happy? Are you happy with your career at the amount of time and effort you put into it each day? It's time to do what I call forward thinking. It's forward thinking We all have to do this everyone everyone. We have to do forward thinking. What is forward thinking? It's planning or tending to plan for the future forward looking And I'm talking about in every direction. I'm talking about next month Next quarter next year 2015 five years out. You are forward thinking now to plan for yourself You are planning for the future. You are planning for your future. How you want that outcome to be So know that if you buy into this belief system that you cannot be successful as a trader as a day trader You are forward thinking yourself into a black hole of utter disaster and non success failure. Okay Basically So you want to plan for the future for success as if you were already there Okay, build it and they will come whatever, you know, the saying is You want to plan that you will be successful, but you do have to have a plan to create that to happen So you have to believe it and you have to have a plan of action to create that to happen Because self-reliance matters in today's world this idea thing well deal with it later. Well, you know, this that the other thing All kinds of stuff can come up and can happen that you did not anticipate But if you are self-reliant and you have a plan of action, you'll be far far better off than the guy next to you Now I also get to ask this question. How long does it take to learn the system? It depends exactly where you're at right now with your own trading if you're brand brand new Sometimes it's the best thing because you don't have any negative Things in your head But you're going to have to learn how to read charts and all that basic stuff for me If you've been training for a while know the basics of chart application and how to press the buttons But are totally screwed up in your head with the strategy and don't know what you're doing with gaps You don't have a strategy at all you're going to have to learn that for me So it's hard for me to say how long it's going to take to learn the system I find that some people learn it like that Okay, they just learned it right like that Like the one person wasn't able to be in the room today. He emailed me. I bet I know what your top picks were He was right. He had them exact and he wasn't even there. He just did the class. Okay, that guy's gonna make it So there are some people that just Take everything that I teach them and suck it up like a sip And they just run out and start making money right away so they can do it Then there's some people that I need to work with and I'm willing to work with people I believe that everybody has a chance to make it But I believe you have to take responsibility for yourself and think about some of the things I talked about today Which is that you've got to believe that you can you have to believe that you can Okay It's part of it The power of the gap is what creates the huge opportunity and a very short time frame for these trades to work And you've got to learn the right knowledge to make money trading so you can trade for living If this is what you want to do It's ultimately that you're learning how to day trade like a professional like as if you were getting up and getting dressed Every day going down a wall street pretend That's you you would take it that seriously you would study and take it that seriously and everything that you would do And you would be that serious every single morning when you trade I remember that you can do it as possible has a lot to do with your attitude So empower yourself today if you want to learn I teach a class. It's called the golden gap course It's a complete system to use to trade it teaches you the 26 point rating system the entries the exits the targets It's a full two-day course on how to strategically find pick-and-play stocks to professional bearish gaps Again, you could flip the points for the bullish Jim was asking about that Retakes are free the first time you register you can retake it anytime in the future for free The class is online. It could be anywhere in the world and take it classes this week in october 25th and 26 Saturday and sunday 9 a.m. To 5 p.m. Eastern time cost of the class is 29 99 You can email me at melissa at the stocks wish dot com if you would like to sign up and register I will say that having a mentor really helps which which I am Because you can email me and ask me questions, and I actually You know do want people to make it? I know that you can and I generally take an interest in the people that are my students Now I also teach another class called the trends course. This is the 28th and 29th This is more about longer term trends in stock charts if you're swing trader or trader Classes classes 999. This is the 28th and 29th from 12 to 4 And again, if you're interested in this you can email me I'm running a special for october if you want to do both classes some people already signed up for this It's 34 99 for both classes the long-term trends class And then the golden gap class which teaches you how to day trade you learn everything in the gap class to day trade If that's what you're interested in doing that's all that you need Uh, you will save 500 dollars though if you want to do both And you can email me there kathie you put my information in the room If you're interested in signing up I remember falls a busy time to trade where there's lots of gaps. It's going to be tons of stuff this week There's tons of stuff tonight. I didn't look at anything tonight Someone tell me really quick what cmg is doing Just wonder if it's gapping up or not or gapping down or what it's doing Does anyone have any questions really quickly? And one more thing I'm doing a question and answer session tomorrow Tomorrow 11 a.m. If you're interested if you have more questions as we run out of time here at 11 o'clock tomorrow I'm doing a question and answer session Where you can just come and ask me whatever questions you wanted back gaps of the class Okay, or trains It's from 11 to noon tomorrow in my live trading room the password is swush If you don't know how to access my live trading room with that password Email me. I will send you the link. There is a video on youtube where I talk about this It is october 21st, which is tomorrow and tuesday people are following me for a while and have questions Or if you're brand brand new here tonight and have questions It's going to be an open forum questions and answers tomorrow for one hour I'm going to give my time after I'm done trading for anybody that would like more information Actually parry they're going to cut me off here at all I treat essential email me that question and I'll write you back I went upset kevin tonight All right. Thanks everybody. Thanks for coming. Have a good night. Email me with questions. Sorry Email me if you need anything else Thanks