I took 24,26 individual day trades and I produced just under 122.5 million in gross profit. Those results are not typical, but in today's episode, I'm going to extract the data from all of those trades to share with you the strategies that are working in today's market and to give you guard rails that you can Implement in your own trading today. These are the rules that I follow that have led to my success as a Momentum Day trader. So we're going to jump right in with rule number one: Knowing the day of the week that I make the most money and my goal as a Trader who is trying to produce consistent income is that I finish each week in the green I understand that not every single day will be a green day I'll have some red days, but at the very least I want to finish each week in the green and I want to finish each month in the green.

And of course I want to finish each year in the green. So what I do on Monday morning because I'm starting from zero is I ease into the market slowly I take a few trades just to dip my toe in the water and if I find some success I start to lean in a little bit. so generally on Mondays I produce a smaller profit I'm building a cushion for the week. on Tuesdays if Monday was good I step up to the plate a little bit more and on Wednesday and Thursday I am at Peak Performance before I cool off going into the weekend on Friday I don't want to screw up on Friday and get give up 4 days of progress.

so I reduce my risk and that's partly because I want to go into the weekend with some confidence feeling good like I Finished the week strong. A big part of trading is maintaining the head space. It's the mental game. One of the things that I've learned in all of my years of trading is that the people who make the most money are the ones who need it the least.

and this is a really frustrating and sad reality. But it's the case because people who don't need the money are not desperate. They're not as likely to give into the emotions of fear and greed. They're just able to trade from the genuine interest of trading the market.

And so unfortunately for Traders that aren't in that place by default because you're not rich already before you start trading and I certainly wasn't, we have to kind of fake it till we make it. Which means we have to do everything possible to preserve our mental game to keep ourselves focused. And that means knowing when to push hard and knowing when to ease off the throttle. Rule number two: the time of day to trade and knowing when to quit.

So if you asked me 3 years ago, Russ what's the best time a day to trade I would have told you from 9:30 until about 10:30 in the morning 1 hour. It's the opening range and the reason the open historically has been such a strong time of day to trade is because that's when stocks are reacting to breaking news that came out overnight. However, in the last few years, what we've seen is that as soon as a company has news and news headlines often come out at 7:00 A.m. at 8:00 A.m.

and at 9:00 A.m. that as soon as the news is released Traders are jumping on because they don't want to miss that opportunity and so as a result the window has actually gotten bigger. Currently, my window where I make the most money is between 8:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m.

It's a 2hour window now I can start trading as early as about 7 prior to 7 a.m. We don't see a lot of volume and one of the reasons is because a lot of the commission free Brokers don't even let people start trading before 7:00 a.m. So 7: A.m. is when volume starts to come into the market and then I found that after that opening range, you know around 10:30 11 it really cools down and it's slow for the middle of the day.

now. Historically we've had what's called Power Hour that's from 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. going into the close and that's when we do see some increased volatility.

but it's more from investors in swing traders who are establishing new positions and closing positions based on the daily charts that are just getting ready to form. So active day: Traders Power Hour In my experience has not been the time when I perform the best. My window of opportunity is from 8:00 A.m. to 10:00 A.m.

Knowing that if it's 9:45 and I haven't taken a trade yet I know that my window is closing, so it's really important to know when to walk away. Walking away sooner is one of the biggest lessons I wish I had learned earlier in my career. The reality is if you have a goal of making $200 a day 50,000 a year or 400 a day 100,000 a year as soon as you hit that goal, there's nothing wrong with packing up and walking away so many Traders hit their goal, keep, keep trading and then slowly give it back until they finish the day in the red. An important lesson to learn is to to walk away, especially when you're coming to the end of your window when you make the most money.

And for me it's between 8:00 A.m. and 10:00 A.m. Rule number three: know your sweet spot or your strategy when I started I had a small account and I couldn't afford to buy 5060 $70 a share stocks. My goal was to buy a $5 stock and sell it at $550 for 10% gain.

It's very hard to get a 10% gain day trading 50 60 $70 stocks. It's not impossible, but it's pretty hard Where I found the most opportunity was on the lower price stocks and my sweet spot where I make the most is between 5 and 10. Generally speaking I will trade between 2 and 20, but I found under two I don't make a lot and over 20 I do make money trading and certainly there were examples like GameStop that was over 20 and I did well on that, but those are the exception, not the norm. So on a day-to-day basis I know the sweet spot for the momentum strategy that I trade and stocks generally between 2 and 20 and specifically between 5 and 10.

Rule number four: Throw away most of those technical indicators cuz the majority of them are garbage I Learned this the hard way. I spent a number of years early in my career trying to find the perfect combination of technical indicators and there's a lot of people out there who sell technical indicators and what they're selling, in my opinion, is the dream of the Holy Grail an indicator that's right, 100% of the time that never has losses. But let's face it, that's not reality. And and even if there was an indicator that was really, really good, it's only going to be as good as the trader who adheres to it because if you don't follow every single signal, your success is going to really differ from whatever that indicator says it could possibly do.

So I try to keep it simple I took away all of those excessive indicators, all those custom indicators and I brought it down just to the basics. In a way, this felt like I could see more clearly because all those indicators created this lens where I was getting this analysis paralysis, too much stuff was going on and I couldn't see what was right in front of me. So by taking away those indicators and focusing simply on the N9 moving average exponential the 20 EMA the 200 M volume weight at average price, volume bars, and maybe throwing on the Macd moving average convergence Divergence indicator Keeping it simple is so important because at the end of the day, what you really want to be focusing on are the Candlestick patterns themselves. If you're overlaying so many indicators that you can't even read the charts, well, you're done screwed up.

You got to go back to basics. So I encourage you to keep it simple and focus on what's most important important: the candlesticks and of course the actual depth of the market which is in level two. You're not even going to see that on the chart. So as important as charts are for identifying patterns, ultimately, where I'm executing trades is on the level two number five.

when I break my rules I tend with 80% likelihood of losing twice as much as if I had stopped the moment before I broke my rule Now I've done a lot of tracking on breaking rules, breaking rules in trading. What does that mean? Well, I have a rule for instance of a daily Max loss but every now and then I'll get emotionally fueled I'll say no I'm going to take one or two more trades, but with an 80% likelihood I will double my loss on the day if I keep trading. so I really have to stick to cutting it at my Max loss and I encourage you to do the same now. I Have also found this true: when when I break another rule which is knowing when to walk away.

So when I am trading on any given day, I'll make money, have some winners, have some gains, and naturally I'll have a couple of losses. So at what point do you walk away and at what point do you continue trading. My rule of thumb is that if I give back more than half of my day, I walk away, at least with profit in my pocket. Yes, the glass is half empty, but at least it's half full because I have more than I had two hours or earlier.

So I stop if I've given back half I can't tell you how many times I've given back half and I said I'll take one more trade I set up for a hail Mar pass and I end up giving back the other half I still had and going red on the day doubling the initial loss. So with Statistics in my favor knowing the metrics that if I continue trading when I break rules I'm likely just to continue to lose. it's helped me be a more disciplined Trader so I really encourage you in your own Trading When you set rules, you have to stick to them. There's no sense in having rules if you're not going to follow them.

So setting rules of Max share size max daily loss Max weekly loss you know at what point do you walk away if you've given back half Etc Set the rules and follow the rules. Now all the rules that I created were from my own experiences just of realizing that if I give back more than half I get emotionally triggered I'm not really as dialed in as I as I was beforehand. I could probably change that rule to a a give back 40% but it's easier to remember half than 40 because you know you know you're up 5 grand. So if you're up only 2500, you know you give him back half.

The numbers are easy, keep it simple, but follow your rules. Number six: If it's not obvious to you what stock you should be trading, then there is not an A quality setup and there's no reason to force trades. You do not have to trade every single day and on days when you trade sometimes you'll take a couple trades. You might make a a little lose a little.

it's it's just not a day where anything is really happening and if there's nothing that's obvious, the best thing to do is to walk away. I find without question I make the most money when I'm trading the stocks that are obvious and if we think about that in terms of stock selection, my requirements for being interested in trading a stock of course I Want to see the price between 2 and 20 I'd like to see if the stock has news I'd like to see that it has high relative volume I'd like to see it's already up at least 10% cuz I found that stocks that are up 10% have the highest likelihood of continuing higher and I want to see the float is under 20 million shares. That's my sort of five criteria for a good Supply demand imbalance. And if there's not a stock that meets those five criteria and is super obvious, then the best course of action is to wait.

until tomorrow, the market will be here. There is no sense in forcing it. Number seven: Track your metrics and analyze your trading data. Everything I've shared with you today is the result of me analyzing 24,26 trades worth of data I know without a doubt the time of day when I make the most money.

the day of the week that I make the most money, the months of the year that I make the most money which by the way I tend to make the most money from October November December January February March with the exception of June in 2020, which was an incredible year, but that was again an exception, not the norm. I Found that summers are typically slower, but if I didn't have my data showing me that I might think it. but I might think a lot of things but I wouldn't know if they were. Fact this trading data that you have is accessible to you.

There are secrets in there. in fact, it was in my own trading metrics early on that I discovered even though I was losing money in whole, there were aspects of my Trading where I was making money. So if you looked at all of your metrics and you saw wow I make money on stocks between 5 and 20 but then I give back all the profit. When I trade stocks over 20, you would now know there's an action item I can take from this information which is to stop trading stocks over $20 a share, do that for a month and then see what happens all of a sudden.

Now you're a profitable Trader You know these things. You would think they would just occur to us, but when it's right there in the data, that's when it becomes the most obvious. So I encourage you to track your analytics, monitor your data, and always look for opportunities to become a better. Trader This is the reality with trading.

This is a marathon, not a Sprint It's a lifelong career and even though I've been doing it for a really long time, I still feel like even I can get better and I can learn from other Traders out there. you'll never be a perfect Trader There is no such thing. There's always room for improvement for those of you who are at the beginning of your learning curve. Hit the thumbs up and check out this episode right here that YouTube thinks you're going to love I'll see you for the next one real soon.