 international educational company where she teaches people how to successfully trade the market. Her trading methodologies based on a strategy called golden gaps, which pinpoints institutional money in the stock market. We all know how important that is. Here to present short stocks using this system is Melissa Armo of the Stock Swoosh. Welcome back to Trader's Corner, Melissa. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? We can hear you and we can see your screen. Great. Thanks so much for having me. How's everyone doing today? I'm the only one that gets to talk. You don't have to look at the chat box for it. Well, I apologize before I even get started. I am getting over cold. So forgive me if I end up coughing into the microphone, but we're going to get through it here today. I'm on the mend. Thank you so much for having me. It's a very important time right now to learn about shorting. Why? The market's been falling. In fact, the market's been falling most of the calendar year 2022 and hard to believe it. It's May. I mean, in a few weeks it will be Memorial Day and then it'll be June. And I don't think anyone anticipated that the market would have this type of sell off to start out the year 2022, especially since we had a very bullish year in 2021. In fact, in 2021, even though I shorted, I shorted in 2021 and I'd love to short. And that's what we're going to talk about today. You could have gone long almost to anything last year because the market made so many new highs. You could have gone long strong stocks and weak stocks and made money. So I think a lot of traders are having difficulty this year that are out there on their own because they've never been in this type of market. Now I'm going to talk today about shorting stocks because again, I like to short. I don't know why people are afraid of shorting. We're going to talk about the benefits of shorting. You should know how to short really in any market conditions, whether it's a bullish market or a bearish market. I want to preface this by saying that we are not in a bearish market. So I do appear on TV. Rob just noted that a lot of people on television in their mind are stating that the markets bearish. I disagree. Not the way that I look at it. I do not look at things based on percentages, but we have had a sell off and there have been many, many, many moves that you could have shorted stocks. You could have shorted the market. In fact, you could be the short the market right now. So we're going to talk today. And again, if you have any questions, you can just plop it in the room. This is me if you haven't seen me. And again, if you have questions afterwards, you can email me at Melissa, the stockswish.com or call me at 929-3200 gap. And again, I appear on TV. I was on News Nation this morning discussing inflation. Is that the reason the market's been falling? I think the scares and the fear of inflation is one of the reasons the market's been selling off. But there's actually a lot of reasons the market's been selling off. So let's talk about trading because if you're here, my guess is that you are either currently trading or you are looking to trade the market and you need some kind of direction. So when you trade, you have one goal. It's to make money. And again, trading is not long term investing. Okay, it's not buying a stock and holding it for years and years. Okay, or even shorting a stock and holding it for years, which you can do. This is about taking a trade getting in, getting out. It's about chunking it out. I call it chunking it out because I'm an active trader. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, whether we're doing day trades or options, and we're going to talk today about both, it's about getting a move in a stock or the market and getting out with profit. It's not about holding and holding and holding it forever. Okay, time is something that you have to consider as an active trader. And again, if you're pulling out $500 a day, that's great. $1,000 a day, that's great. For me, it's about the focus, again, in the strategy idea, which we're going to talk about as well. I'm not going to go over every trading here, but this is our year to date result so far this year, which has been phenomenal. Now, you know, on any given year, I'd say my win ratio is between 70 and 80%. Depends on the month, depends on the year, we've had a fantastic start to the year. Again, we've been doing a lot of shorts. We've got a lot of big moves. Okay, so this is 323,576 a year to date, not including the last week because I was sick, actually. But up till the first week of May, we really had a great start to the year. If this is something, again, you're interested in actively trading, these are all equity trades, they are day trades, they are trades on margin, you must have a margin account to have taken these trades. I run a live trading room at every one of these trades I called Live in the Room. It's open every morning, we trade the open between 9.30 and 10 a.m. Eastern Time. Sometimes running out of trades in five minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes. I don't mess around. Now, options is different. I may be in an options trade for a couple of days. I may be an options trade for one day. But I'm doing the weekly options. Okay, so even that is fast, not again, long term investing. This isn't about swing trading, even though you can swing trade my method. I think in this type of market, again, it's a volatile market, you have to be able to take profits. Again, rather quickly, okay? So again, what is your goal? Your goal is to make money. And in order to become successful, you need a system. And more than that, I really think you need a niche. And for me, my niche is shorting. So this happens to be a perfect market to capitalize on what I know. But you know, a lot of people want to train if you're here and you've been trading, a lot of people find it difficult. And again, people are fighting this market difficult. And not everybody makes money in the market. Why? Because it's really a zero sum game. When you are out there in the market, you are going after something, you're not creating something, you're not knitting sweaters and selling the sweaters on the street. Okay, I live in New York City. This is about taking money from somebody else. Okay, you want to be the winner. And in order to be the winner, you have to be ahead of the people smarter. You can't go with the crowd. And at some point, the market's going to back up, started back up a little bit today, we'll see where we go tomorrow. People are going to come in and they're going to buy the market dip. People love to do that. Again, they did that all of last year. While it worked last year, it is not working this year and actually hasn't worked the entire year this year. But I think a lot of people just don't understand that they have to have one specific thing. But that's it. That's all that you need. And once you can master that, then you can make money, which of course should be your goal. But you have to have a system to succeed and you have to follow it daily. It's not just as easy as taking an indicator, sticking it on your chart and then following it and doing that, like buying, always buying support or always short of resistance or moving average. If it was that easy to trade, then no one would ever lose any money. And that's just simply not the case. So for me, I focus on one thing, which allows me to focus on the momentum. Okay, because how are you going to make money as a trader? Trading momentum. If the stock drops $2 and you're short it and have a thousand shares, how much will you make $2,000? And again, we're going to talk about what a short is in a minute. But again, gaps are my focus. And they're very, very, very unusual, I guess is the word, because a lot of people are scared of gaps. Don't understand what a gap is. Even people that I talked to on television that have traded longer than I'm alive, do not understand what a gap is. And that is one of the reasons that I've very accurately read this market. I've been reading the gaps in the market. There are bullish gaps and there are bearish gaps. And we're going to talk about them here today. So what is a gap? A gap is a difference between the close and the open. The U.S. stock market is what I trade and it closes every day at four o'clock and opens the next day at 9.30 Eastern time. Again, market is closed in the weekends. Stocks gap most every single day, including the market. But not every gap is a good gap or what I call a golden gap. So that's a term I point to for my system, because it's like finding gold in the market for me when I find one. So I'm looking for gaps that are predictable. Not every gap is predictable. Okay. So I do this using a rating system that I go through every morning in the pre market. That is where I see the gap. For example, today, the market was gapping down today. Okay. And I'm talking when I say the market, I mean the QQQs or the spy. Now this is a chart through yesterday of the QQQs. This is a daily chart. So what I just said, I said a gap is a difference between the clothes in the open. So let's take a look at it. I'm gonna go all the way back here. Let's go back to this April point. So here was the close one day at four o'clock. This is the QQQs. Then it opened here at 9.30. So what happened? The market gap down. What is this point? This is roughly around 3.46 and change or whatever it was on that particular day. This was on the 8th April 8th. Then the next day, boom, we opened here. It's like roughly around 3.42, 3.41 or something we open. This was on April 11th. So that was a gap down. Now let's take a look at what is a gap up. This here, on this day, here the 27th of April, we closed here at one price 3.15 and opened up here around 3.20. So again, that is a bullish gap. So there are bearish gaps and bullish gaps. I'm looking to play gaps every day. So I'm trying to find the gaps that gap down that are going to follow through to the downside that I could short. Now, does every gap down follow through to the downside? No. No, they do not. In fact, here's one right here that gap down and rally. Here's another one here. This didn't go anywhere. Then it flipped. So what do I do? I get up in the morning. I'm trying to find the ones that are going to hold and then sell off. Now let's take a look at just the last couple of days really here in this market. This was Friday. So Friday we closed, opened lower in Monday morning and sold off. And that was shocking. Now one of the reasons again why it's advantageous to short is because selling comes in and it's panic selling comes in. People get scared and they sell and it happens very quickly. Again, you can get big moves shorting, which is another reason that I think it's advantageous to short as well. This is another chart here. This is a daily. This is a spy. Let's take a look at the last couple of days in this. You can see what happened here. This is going back last week. Okay, this was the six. Then the market closed at one price. Run 410 opened down here where 405 and that was Monday. And then we fell. And actually again, we've been falling pretty much every day this week. Today is Thursday and we got down again this morning. So again, all of this selling is very scary for people and they don't understand it. And they're looking literally at every support area. Is this one going to hold? Let me see. Is this one going to hold? Let me see. Is this one going to hold? Let me see. People are looking at every support to hold which is really silly. People should be looking to play the momentum that's happening right now. And the momentum right now is to the downside. Again, as an active trader, you have the ability to short. To short on margin as an equity trade or you can buy a putt. Buying a putt is the same thing as shorting and that's an option. And we'll talk about that too. So here is also a daily chart of Facebook. Going back to the beginning of the year, Facebook had earnings in February. I'm just this is this is a good example here because you can really see the gap in this one here. The stock closed up here around 320 open down here around 230 or whatever it was. That was a massive gap down. Down here is the volume. Again, here's the close. Here's the open. Again, how do you make money as a trader? As an individual trader, you have to get a move. I call it the money move. You have to get momentum. Now again, this is a daily but you could have traded Facebook here on this particular day. You could have shorted it and got in, got out. Okay. Now actually the other day, I called puts in Facebook. It was a really, really nice call that followed through yesterday and then we gap down this morning. So Facebook has been lower and it's really looked horrible since the beginning of the year along with the market. But when you look at all these stocks that normally affect the market, Facebook, Amazon, Google, everything seems to be selling off. So I mean you could take your pick right now of things to do but some things are better than others and you only need one good trade today. Okay. And you only need one good gap a day to make money and then you could do it as a day trade and you could do it as an option. And again, how do you make more money? It's size. Okay. Size. So all you do is add size to a trade to make more money. A lot of people again are looking at it as throwing darts to the board a crapshoot. I don't look at my trading like that. I'm trying to hit a bullseye every day. I said to myself I can be perfect for 30 minutes a day. It's hard to be perfect for six and a half hours a day. Okay. You can get one trade right. To do 25 trades in a day, you see how the odds work against you that way. It's about taking calculated risk when you're taking a trade. You're trying to find something that has a very high odds of working. Not just throw things all over the place. And I think a lot of people now, again, they're seeing that the market it's been falling and now people are wanting to get it in short but they really don't don't understand the levels. And then of course this is the very time when things can back up and then people lose in the shorts. They go long and this is where people are back and forth. They're going long and shorting the same stock on the same day or even the same week. Okay. You can't do that. You have to have conviction that something's either lower or you have conviction that something's higher. And again my philosophy is you really shouldn't trade if you don't have conviction. So what am I looking for to give myself the conviction? I'm looking for the footprints of institutional money that come into the market or stocks. So what is institutional money? Institutional money is hedge funds. Institutional money is big banks. It's large position traders is professional traders. You're never going to move a stock. Okay. And I don't trade low float stocks or penny stocks just so you know. Anything that we trade is stocks that you know. You know the companies, they report earnings, Facebook, Apple, all the things you're familiar with including the market which has lots of volume. But I'm looking for the footprints of institutional money to come in in the gap itself. Okay. Which I'm seeing in the pre-market or the post-market. Then I rate it. Then I determine if I'm going to buy it or or short it. Okay. And again today we're talking about shorts and which is very timely. Even though this is what I normally do. It's very timely because of the fact that again there's been a lot of short opportunities in the market recently. But institutional money is what moves the market. And again you know what I'm talking on TV people are saying well when are things going to get better? When is the market going to stop selling off? Well that's like saying you know I mean when is it going to snow in New York? Well not anytime soon. Okay. It's made. So it's like people are asking for something that that nobody knows the answer to. The problem with inflation no one has any solutions to. All right. So right now institutional money is not coming in and buying the market. So therefore how would it hold? Okay. And it's not going to come in and buy it until it does. All right. Which is not right now. You could say the same thing about many many other stocks that I could happen to point out. One of the nice shorts. I forget if this is in this webinar or not. That we did was Amazon. It had horrible earnings and that's been a beautiful short. And even though that stock is expensive to do as a day trade it's a very nice stock to trade as options even though they can be pricey they certainly can pay and have really nice return on investments. So institutional money is going to have to come in and buy the market and lift it. Otherwise guess what there's the selling is going to continue. All right. And any questions here you can you can write it in the room. But anyways trading is about money. How to make money as an individual you need momentum. And momentum is how you make money as an individual trader because you have restrictions. You do not have unlimited funds. You cannot buy the market here and wait and hope that it comes back sometime whenever that is. Which nobody can predict right now. Okay. And you shouldn't even be trying to predict quite frankly. Because if you're even thinking like that you're on the wrong side. All right. And you're wasting time. And you're wasting opportunities where you could be trading and actually making money. So momentum is key. Well I mean a dollar two dollars three dollars four dollars five dollars big moves that you need in stocks. And this is very important for equity trades for day trades. But it's also very important for options. And if you've ever traded options. You know that not only do you have to get the timing right in an option. You've got to get them move. When it comes in and it flurries and you get the big move in. And that's when you're looking to get out of the trade. But you have to get into it before the big move happens. Which is what I'm looking to do. And I'm doing all that analyzing in the morning when I'm looking at the gap. And again I'm looking at the gap on the daily chart. Okay. And the daily chart. Now here's another daily chart. Netflix. Okay. What happened with this guy here. Let's go back. This was April. Stock closed up here. Again. Beautiful green bar that happened here and closed at three fifty. And then all of a sudden out of nowhere it had earnings. And what did it do. It collapsed. Okay. So then the next day this was the 20th. The stock opens down here around 245 and change or wherever it was. This was a nice big seller. So the stock dropped in here. Well more than 20 points. Okay. And then it kept falling. And now again I didn't look with this where this was before the webinar here. But I mean it broke 180. This was just continuing down down down. So again you could have done this as a day trade. Got in and out. You could have done this as an option. Got in and out. You could still be in it. Okay. And again what am I looking for. This. This is the gap. Now we have another little guy over here. Okay. This is a gap too. So some gaps are big gaps that I will do. Some aren't. Some are little baby ones. Okay. Either way I'm looking for the gap to play it no matter what. Okay. And again this is money in here if you're doing it to the right side if you're shorting it. So again like I was saying momentum is very very important. If you have a thousand shares of a stock and you short it and it drops a dollar you won't make how much a thousand dollars. I don't know why people that are traders prefer to go long. I've never been in that camp when I started trading. I learned how to go long and short and I loved shorting because short moves happen very quickly. But a lot of traders do prefer to go long. You're not going to survive this market if you do not learn how to short and you must learn how to short correctly and there is a skill involved to that. But again it's the move a dollar two dollars. If you have a thousand shares of a stock and you short it and it drops ten cents how much will you make a hundred dollars. Well that's fine it's profit but which would you rather make. So again I'm looking to trade big moves. The gap is telling me when I rate it and it rates well that a big move is going to come in. We're not scalpers okay. I feel that it's very difficult for people that are scalping to make money or trade stocks with size. You will end up not being able to cover your losses okay. If you're scalping you've got to get the big moves and again there's plenty of them. There's plenty of them out there. Oh here I do have Amazon in here. This is just a phenomenal chart right now. Again very unexpected very unexpected gap that happened on the earnings and it was something that we played. So this is a daily chart of Amazon going back to December. Look where the price was even. This is all the way back November December last year the stock was at thirty seven hundred dollars. And again I don't know where it is right now the second today but it's nearing two thousand. Quite a tumble for this. I mean really almost half the price has dropped that's incredible when you think about it. And where the stock has gone since twenty twenty even since covid. So up here you can see this where we closed up here close to twenty nine hundred then it had earnings then a gap down here at around twenty six hundred of felt. This was something again I don't day trade Amazon it's very pricey to do that even on margin and very spreading but it was a beautiful put and you could have done it and got the move boom. And in fact there's another gap here you could be in this here and a gap down again yesterday too. And I'm sure a gap down again today with the market. Again I don't know where this is trading right now but this is what you would have wanted to short. Okay again a put in an option is a short the momentum is doing what the momentum is going down. The momentum is going down. So people are looking for support levels why. Why. That makes no sense. The momentum is down. Okay this is the move and if you don't get this you should be looking to go along it. Okay you missed the play. This is the play. The play is a short. Okay any questions. Let me see if I can see where the questions are. How do I read institutional money flowing up or down. Going through my process which is a checklist. I'm going to talk a little bit more about that. Sorry I just found the questions now. I just saw that button. Anyways the key to day trading stock successfully is using a system. So you have to trade a system that sets up daily. Alright every day or most every day with a high level predictability in the directional move. Again can you short every down gap. No. Can you go long every down gap. No. Can you go long every up gap. No. Can you go long. Can you short every up gap. No. So I'm looking for the one specific that's going to follow through in the direction okay. And again we're focusing on shorts today. Trade a system that works independently of the market and does not need the market with it to work. So I'm looking for something that doesn't need the market. I've been doing shorts as long as I've been trading focusing on shorts even though I will go long since 2008. So that's a long time to only do one thing which is gaps. However that being said if the market would turn again I want to be clear the market is not in the downtrend it's just not even though people are saying that it's not about percentages to read it. But I will say that if you have the market with you you will get larger moves. Okay that's one of the reasons why you're seeing these beautiful sell-offs and Facebook and Netflix and Boeing Boeing's another one I don't think I have this chart in here because you're getting the market so they're just having bigger moves to bigger bigger uh bigger targets. Okay. So success or failures everything to do with the quality of your system that's what you have to focus on. So for me it is about again having a niche to look at what the gap and if you don't have a niche to trade it's going to be very difficult for you to be successful not just in this market but in any market for me is looking at the institutional money. How do I do that I get up in the morning in the pre-market I decide what I'm trading in the morning before the open and I rate the gap. That is the process I go through it is a 26 point rating system that is how I determine if the institutional money is buying it or selling it and that is what I teach in my class it is 26 points and that may seem like a lot of things but once you learn it and know how to do it you can do it in about five minutes or so. Here is another one that we did that was recent this continued uh actually I saw this yesterday this continued but this had a nice move right out of the gate this was last week may fifth this was eBay okay so again stock closed up here around 54 and change gap down here to 51 and fell this went much bigger than I even anticipated okay we had a nice option in it got in got out but it kept going it kept going again trading also is not about having everything as a piggy target because you will lose money if you're constantly looking for the low of the day exiting a short your job is to get the direction right which we did here okay this was not along with a short to get the best pack which we did here too because it had a big move okay this is a big move for this stock how do I know you can tell you could just look at the chart here going back to the last couple of months this is one of the largest bars on the chart this one and then this one over here now this was a gap down here that failed okay so this closed here gap down rallyed failed that was back in February this one did not fail okay this is the one that we did so again how do you make money shorting it's a simple concept when the stock price drops when the market drops and you say well how do how do I do it if I don't have a margin account again you can buy a put which is essentially a short in an option so anyone can short as long as you have an account set up to short retail traders and professional traders can both short and do short and again if this is something that you don't know how to do you better learn you're going to have a hard time this year if your if your strategy which by the way this is not a strategy that is consistently profitable if your strategy is to buy every dip or buy every support you are going to lose in fact you're already losing this year and really that's something that's not a strategy that consistently works it worked last year like i said at the beginning simply because of the fact the market was extremely bullish but that's not something you should be looking to do year over year over year okay now i was talking about day trades here's an example of a day trade that we did this was a nice little one this was etsy so again this was earnings stock close to your gap down dropped now this may not look like much but actually this was money okay down here is the volume this was a good move a solid move you do it you get in and you get out so we shorted this at ninety four dollars thirteen hundred shares and is an advanced trader risk which means the risk was two nine ninety you can take half okay you could have taken two hundred shares if you wanted to this is sort of a pricey stock not crazy expensive i don't think exit was ninety forty again talking about momentum one two three four dollars okay this is three dollars plus we're in and we're out we were in out of this trade pretty quickly i'm going to show you the one minute chart in a minute so i trade on the one minute so i get up in the morning in the pre-market see the gap right at using my twenty six point checklist then i wait to the market opens don't trade in the pre-market and i take the trade into the open sometime between nine thirty and ten a eastern time if it doesn't set up by ten i'm not doing it so really i mean my trading room isn't open all day again i think people give money back as they trade all day this was a beautiful profit four thousand six hundred eighty dollars and again one of the nice things about this is it was fast so it was this day this day here on the gap that was the fifth and here's the trade so again this is a one minute so before we were in the daily you can still see the gap here on the one so here's where close the night before for a clock boom open in the morning here nine thirty again down here's the volume here's where we shorted it got the drop boom this wasn't even a low of the day exit because again you know you get the move you get out that's i mean this is good money even if you would have half the size i had in there you could have made over two grand so this is it in and out boom done done before nine forty five a.m okay now if you're going to trade on margin and go to a retail place a retail broker they're going to give you four to one margin and there is there's requirements for the number of cash that you need at a retail place if you want to go prop you can go prop and you can get 10 to one margin and again they have different requirements for cash but there's so many places now that people can go to and trade and the nice thing about trading on margin is that you can trade and you don't need hundreds of thousands of dollars to trade a stock like this even with this type of size okay so anyways this was a good one and this continued to we did not do this another day but you see this continue that continued as well we did not do an option in that here's another day trade we did this was April 29th intc this feels like a long time ago now where the market's been but this closed up here around 46 and changed opened down here in the morning around 45 ish fell dropped boom down here's the volume again you want to take it get in get out so the answer was $45 4500 shares risk was 2925 exit was 40 for 40 60 cents it's profit profit was 2700 let's take a look at the one so again in and out is the whole idea with day trades then you don't have to worry about news or FOMC minutes or something happening with the White House and talking you just take it and you get in and you get right out here where's the close up here again this is a one minute stack opens here we're in it boom get the drop out done again done way before 10 10 a.m. in the morning now that did keep going okay that didn't that did continue and again these trades I called live in the room if you decide to join you would be a room participant and then you get the live calls there was something else I was going to say we were talking about prop oh I know what I wanted to say so again you have to have the ability to short okay so when you go in and you press it and you press short how are you covering the trade you can press buy or you press buy to cover and again if you've never shorted you can practice you can practice with 100 share lots you can practice on a demo you can learn how to do it short moves happen very very very very fast okay they happen very quickly they happen very fast that's why I'm looking to do them again in and out in the morning again it's selling okay it's institutional selling it's a dump okay boom where people are dumping their shares and so we're capturing that and I have I'm all prepared in the morning sometimes as early as six o'clock in the morning I might send out an option straight I'm all prepared in the morning what I want to do and what I want to trade way before the open so the more prepared you can be before the open the shorter time you're actually in the market and again if someone told you you can make five thousand dollars in five minutes or five thousand dollars trading for six and a half hours what would you rather it's it's just a no-brainer okay it's just an absolute no-brainer but the whole concept and philosophy behind this is about panic so panic is fear fear creates selling we're having selling right now in the market and in stocks because a lot of companies that reported earnings or it's still earnings season but a lot of the major companies already reported all the financials all the banks Amazon, Google all the big companies in tech have reported they're they're not giving good outlooks okay because of increased prices costs of things they're they didn't give good outlooks so people are afraid that the economy that the economic growth is going to slow down and what does that really mean it entails a recession okay so a recession is when the economy slows down that combined with the possibility of higher taxes and higher interest rates is creating the panic and the fear all the good times are all the good times are over everything's going to get worse from here kind of thing now again the market is still in an uptrend does this type of fear and panic last forever no but for someone like doing something with what I do it doesn't matter it doesn't have to last forever we're in and we're out okay you short INTC or out whether it keeps falling forever for weeks and weeks and days or months it doesn't matter we we got the money and we got out of it okay same thing with the market same thing with the market but again someone's asking how do I look for the institutional money I go through a rating system this is what you would learn in my class my class is a two day 16 hour class okay so I go through this process and I pinpoint the ones I want to do so I might have you know 10 things to look at in the morning and then I narrow it down to one or two and those are the ones that I watch to do on the on the day I do rate the market every day which is how I've been rating that the market would sell off in fact we started shorting the market actually at the end of 2021 but even I didn't anticipate that the market necessarily would still be trending at this point selling off even in May but it doesn't matter to me that it is or it isn't because I get up every day and look at it so again I'm an active trader I get up every day it's like how can you possibly plan or think what's going to happen a week from now two days from now two weeks from now two months from now you shouldn't even be worried about that you should be worried about right now today remember I said to start at the beginning you have one job your job is to make money who cares where the market's going to like everyone says where's the bottom where's the bottom where's the bottom I don't know and I don't care okay and you shouldn't either you're actively training making money right now the bottom should not matter to you it's like if I said what are you having for dinner Monday night you can't tell me that if I said what do you have for dinner tonight you might be able to tell me that or maybe even can't it's lunchtime here in New York so again it's very easy to see where something's going right now shorter time frame rather than longer time frame okay and again I don't think anyone could have anticipated we've seen this type of move this year we couldn't have anticipated COVID so there's a lot of things you have to know you can't anticipate and plan on everything so you live in the moment and my ability to be able to read live price action the moment is really also something that is a skill that I've acquired over years of trading in this very fast environment which is the one minute so that one minute chart really tells me and sets the tone for what's going to happen on the day but I'm seeing all of that by looking at the pre-market action by looking at the gap and again the gap is telling me whether the large institutional money is going to continue to sell it off or it's going to come in and scoop it up and buy it okay so gaps are created with large institutional money that's what makes the gap in the first place you never have a gap like you had in Netflix without it or Facebook or even intc or ebay okay the professional gaps that happen to play out in the 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 a lot of people think gap feels work they do not sometimes you can do a gap feel and make money but it does not work consistently and I think what happens is people sometimes play a gap lose money get scared of it and then they never want to do it again no you just don't know what you're doing there's just so much opportunity there to trade gaps and it's it's actually fun to do it if you know how to do it simply because of the big move that you can have and so fast it's really the idea of getting the quick move even in something like ebay that was an options trade that you could have done and got out the same day and of course everybody loves those sometimes I'll do an option and I hold it for a couple of days or it takes a day or two to go but sometimes I go the same day because that was a big move like I said for the stock in ebay but really everything I do looking at the checklist really makes common sense because we think about it this idea panic this idea panic which has taken hold of things when they gap really you know again it's common sense because of the fear factor let me see there was a question there uh the losses I can we're at the beginning I have the losses in the uh I can go back the losses are in parentheses at the beginning was one of the first slides where I showed the results where I said I have between a 70 and an 80% win ratio so what does that mean you say you come to me of every 10 trades you take figure seven are going to win and three are going to lose so in the stats at the beginning the losses are in the parentheses of course I have losses I sometimes question when people ask me things like that because we were just talking here about common sense if you ever go to somebody again they tell you that they never have any losses that's not common sense people and if you expect that you're never going to have any losses then quite frankly you have no business trading every single trade that I take I have to assess the risk you're rich to be the shame on every trade that you take and you should be able to afford one loss or two losses whatever it is nothing is 100% not even my system and I've been doing it like I said for 14 years you must understand that some trades will lose now while there are times where I get in a role and I think right now is one of those times where it feels like every trade is working it doesn't mean that I don't size myself it doesn't mean I ignore my rules it doesn't mean I don't use stops and if you think that there's ever a system out there that doesn't work that's foolish it's just foolish if you live in reality and understand that you can make money in the market consistently using a good strategy you will do well if you do not have piggy piggy targets if you don't oversize yourself if you don't risk too much if you don't go off the rails blow off your account you can make money a lot of people just don't have a good system I mean that's just a fact but again this I this whole fantasy idea that you are never going to have a loss is completely insane and I think people people just are so desperate for something that never loses because they've been trading for umpteen years and have lost money and then they want one trade or one system to get all their losses back for the last 20 years or whatever it is that's that's not reality you have to set yourself on your path and say just like this arrow I'm making money I'm taking 10 steps forward and 3 steps back 5 steps forward and 1 step back and you're making progress and week over week month over month year over year all of a sudden you know you're profitable and you have money and you can even do it for a living if you want to do somebody told me the other day this was the last class I had that he listened to somebody and they said that they never had any losses and I and I and I said that was that was ridiculous to even believe so you really you have to come to terms with reality and again it's just it's just common sense okay anyways let's get back to shorting people get scared they get scared when stuff goes down they get scared when their investments go down they get scared when stocks go down shorting gives me a niche because we're shorting against the panic and the fear particularly guess what high net worth individuals I live in New York because a lot of high net work the individuals in New York a lot of very very wealthy people that live in this city and they're selling their investments and they're buying real estate I know that because I'm working with two real estate agents right now that work for southern bees and they told me that so you know when you have these extremely wealthy people like I'm talking 100 million or more billionaires when they're worried about their investments and they want to put their money into hard assets and they're selling their some of their portfolio that tells you a lot okay it tells you where we could be headed into the latter part of 2022 and possibly into 2023 so I mean again we're taking advantage of that I'm not a billionaire someday I hope to be but we're taking advantage of that by we're shorting that scaredy-ness the scaredy-ness the panic of people okay and whether or not we're really continual or not it doesn't matter right now for us we're just doing it playing it every day as it comes it's about perception okay the perception of what's happening anyways we were talking about options one of the pros of doing options is you can trade options with as little as $2,000 you can open an account you don't need a margin account to trade options and you can also get overnight moves in an option we've been getting a lot of overnight moves in the market in other words I'll call a strike and then we'll get up the next morning and we're gapping down through the strike that's happened a lot this year so we here was the ebay the ebay we did the $50 but and here was the move we looked at the chart this was really nice advanced trader risk of 8,080 contracts that cost a buck this was so cheap shoulder to $50 profit was $12,000 return and investment was 150% this is a newsletter I sent this out at 7.13 in the morning that day you can't take the trade till the open and it set up and it worked and it went and it went that day but you still actually could be in this and it continued I don't know where it was yesterday but I know it was past the point I got out of it really nice trade again the 50 strike it's still through it right now the beginner risk you could have taken $1,000 risk and return investment was 150% again nice trade in and out the same day remember an option say you don't get out you want to hold it that's fine but every time you don't get out of a trading you're up 100% or more I mean 100% is my goal you know 150 that's great okay Rob is telling me only a five minutes let me just let me just skip this was a nice one we did in Google let me skip to my information here towards the end and then I'll take some questions I didn't realize what time it was thank you Rob anyways you have to win more than you lose I was talking about that for me looking for one to one one to one in my trades and really looking for consistent trade selection and how do I do what I do looking at the point system and that tells me what direction to take it because that's how you're going to make money okay you need a strategy to trade you need a daily system with rules you need a method and structure to enter the picks this was the INTC and then you need monetary goals and I think it's good to break it down by weekly okay so it's a reliability and doing one thing but it should be based on calculated risk not risk for risk sake and if you get up in the morning and somebody doesn't meet your criteria then you don't do it and again it's the focus on doing one thing I'm very deliberate about what I do I'm not wishy washy and I think a lot of people are very wishy washy about their trading and you can't be like that and you have to stake on one thing but you know if you're all over the place with your trading that's probably why you're not successful you've got to stay focused so if you decide you want to come and learn from me I will teach you my method, my system, the checklist, my entries, the targets pretty much everything that I know which I teach in a class that I teach once a month and it's called the Golden Gap system you do not need an overall general based of the market you do not need to read earnings reports I don't look at fundamentals everything I do is based on technical analysis the checklist everything the points are on the daily chart and then I take the entries in the one minute so my class is called the Golden Gap course it's next weekend not this weekend May 21st and 22nd class tuition is $69.99 the deadline to sign up is Thursday May 19th it's 9 a.m to 5 p.m eastern time I'm offering a special for this webinar if you want to sign up by tomorrow you would receive the trading room and the options that are free to the end of 2022 it's a long time if you decide you want to sign up you'd have to email me for the forms and sign up people are doing very well again I will have these these times where I get in a roll but it doesn't mean that we never have lost as we absolutely do and you have to understand that with trading it is about consistency consistency in trading it's not about the idea of never losing and I think once people show green green green green green green they get over that they get over that and they get over this idea of chasing losses because it's very difficult for people if they've gone weeks and years of trading and showing massive losses it's hard for them to wrap their head around the idea of actually doing something that works but it is possible I have people that I've taught that have never traded in their life and actually the last class I had a gentleman that I taught that's doing very well he's 80 years old I said you're never too old to learn something new so he did the class in April he's making money he's he's absolutely thrilled so you know it doesn't matter what age you're at and I think right now with the way the world is anything that people can do to earn extra money even if it's $300 a day it'll help you I think I made the time cut off you're fine you feel free to run a minute or two over you know put your offer up and I know you're there but that's why I have the polite reminders in the private chat that's okay that's okay any questions don't just say scroll down anyways if you have questions you can email me at melissathestockswish.com you can go to my youtube I have tons of videos there again be careful out there people if you're trading think about what you're doing in this market and thanks for having me melissa thank you so much for being a guest on our show that looks like a great strategy to use right now with these conditions we're seeing