Hey everyone All right. good morning, Happy Saturday morning! So it's uh, just a little past noon time and I thought I would sit down and do April month in review for you guys and go over the ups and the downs of the month of April. So another month is in the books. We're four months into the year and I thought this would be a good time as always to do the month in review, but also to be here for you guys to answer some questions that you may have as you're thinking about the month ahead, right? We're about to start a new month, so let's you know, let's kind of brainstorm: how can we make this, uh, month of May an even better month in April? Go on girl! All right.

So thank you for everyone who's tuning in. Uh, I like doing these live because it gives me the opportunity to have Q and A with you guys. And so when I kind of pop up and do a live, I mean this will be a much smaller group than you know, Monday through Friday morning show 9 a.m So I'll actually be able to give you guys some really good Q a time. So make sure if you have questions that you're thinking of, save them and we'll do Q and A at the end.

I think what I'll probably do is like 15 20 minutes of April and review and then let's do a little Q A and kind of talk about uh, the game plan for the month of, uh, the month of May so you can see right here, uh, on my screen a couple things First, I wanted to start by looking at the overall market during the month of April. So the overall market the S P 500 during the month of April pretty much was selling off the whole time, right? This was not a particularly bullish month in the overall market. I only traded to the long side and I produced a total gain of one hundred thousand dollars. one hundred thousand, nine hundred six dollars, and twenty nine cents to be exact.

And with that, I have to remind everyone as always, that my results are not typical. I've been doing this for a long time, so the typical result of most traders, well, the statistics tell us that most traders lose money. So I want to remind you as always that I'm sharing these results with you because it's important that you know that if you're going to learn from someone, if you're going to spend an hour or whatever it is listening to some of my youtube videos that at least you know the person you're listening to is actually profitable is actually qualified to make you know any kind of statement about trading and trading strategies. So I am profitable.

This is proven. Broker statements on the website. All my Uh trades have been audited from when I started with 583 until today's date. Uh, well.

uh. let's see. the last audit was as of 12, 31, 2021, but 2017. So net profit beginning? Uh, at 2017 with 583 dollars in my account is uh, 9 million 940.

000. So I am really close to crossing over 10 million in net profit. I crossed over 10 million in gross profit. Um, a while ago, but trying to cross over in in net profit.

Uh, next. But as always, uh, trading is risky. So do uh, trade cautiously and I don't want you to assume that uh, you have a higher likelihood of being profitable because you follow me on Youtube, or because even you're a member of Warrior Trading. We don't track the typical result of our students, so we won't make any guarantee that you're more or less likely to succeed.

All right, so be very mindful on that. So this is where I sit. Uh, 100 000 on the month of April, and about 300 000 in net profit on the year. All right.

So this is where I sit on the year. It's been a sort of slow year, uh, in some ways. so January was particularly slow for me. As many of you know, I made a hundred thousand dollars and I gave back.

Um, all but 25. February was better, March was better, and April was better. And you know, if we look at April, let's see if we look at my, um, my equity curve here. Uh, for the month of April, you'll see that I was actually at about 329 000 and then lost a little money on Wednesday just before the end of the month, which is a little disappointing.

So it has been a little choppier. you know. Profit in January gave it back profit, giving it back some profit, giving it back. Not a really smooth start, but to year.

But of course, I think that we have to look at the context of what's been going on in the overall market. For Momentum Day traders, it's been a little bit more challenging. The market has certainly, uh, since January been on the bullish or on the bearish side. It hasn't been really easy.

So you know that that's the the reality that we're in. Some traders will say, well, geez Ross, why don't you just start flipping short and I'll remind you that, uh, all of my profits this year have been in a retirement account. In a retirement account you cannot shore. So because of my income bracket, I really have to be thinking very carefully about, um, taxable income.

And for me, it just doesn't really make sense to trade, uh, to the short side and then therefore pay income tax on it. The amount that I'll actually keep at the end of the year trading is hard enough without having to give the amount back to the into the Irs that I would have to give back. All right. So this is just, um, you know, something to be aware of.

It doesn't mean you can't trade to the short side, but it's not something that I am focusing on. Okay, so that's kind of high level. So now let's dial into the month of April. This was a good month, but I did have three red days and there's an interesting pattern here.

Um, so this day, um let's see. basically I just went red straight away and then just stopped out. I was like all right, that's it. I can't can't push my look anymore.

So this this, um, Thursday, April 14th was just the worst day of the month I went red, I was never green, I tried to recover, I went further red down 6 thousand and then here I took one more trade thinking I would get myself back to maybe flat and I took about six thousand dollars of risk. The return if it had worked would have been about twelve thousand dollars of profit. therefore putting me green and I went down into the red 12 000. At that point I said that's it, I'm done.

Um, my other two red days were on the 21st here where I was green all day up 8 000 and then took a trade at power hour and lost like 12 grand on it. That was pretty disappointing. All right, So that was not a good day. Afternoon trade did not pay off and then I had, uh, my third red day which was on Wednesday, very similar, was in nice shape and then took a, um, an afternoon trade here and got smoked really badly.

So that was my worst trade of the entire year. And on that trade, we can look at it. Uh, just to sort of highlight it. So that was a 43 000 loss in one trade right here.

And it was on Jcse. So what I was doing on this one? I mean, I could certainly in hindsight question my thought process, but uh, basically I I sat. I had traded it earlier in the day. We had had this really nice bounce from 878 all the way up to 20, which was pretty epic.

It sold off and as it came down here, I was like, okay, we've got two, four, five, six, seven red candles in a row. I'm going to do a double bottom. So I tried to do a double bottom long at 8.78 and what ended up happening if we look at this on sort of the one minute chart. It did pop up, uh, for a second, right right around there.

um, which is where I added it Like nine. The double bottom was eight seventy eight. I added at nine and then added at nine, Forty five and Nine fifty. It was pinned to the hall up at 9.77 so I thought it was going to halt up.

Yeah, what's up You need some? Hey, I'm I'm doing a little video right now. Did you want to say hi to everyone? You want to say hi ladies and gentlemen? No. Okay, okay um so anyways um so I I got along there and added going into what I thought was gonna be a haul up and then it reversed from a halt up and flushed into a halt down at like 8 26 and I was in. I don't remember what my size was at that point, but I was in heavy enough that I was already down like 8 000 or maybe 10 000 And then it resumed a little higher and I was like okay, well it's still close to a double bottom and it still looks like it might reverse.

So I uh, it sells off a little bit more and then I added again. I thought okay, this is the time And then it just kept going lower and I finally stopped at six dollars. And I'm glad I stopped at six I guess because it ended up going down to four. So I stopped about two dollars off of it below and it really did not recover.

I mean, it just didn't recover at all. And you know what's really interesting is, uh, then yesterday or was it Thursday you had something very similar happen also with an ipo. This halts down and basically drops from 50 bucks all the way to four dollars and it didn't recover. So you know I didn't trade this one.

Thank goodness. Of course I learned my lesson, but uh, kind of kind of strange price action. I mean, honestly, somewhat baffling to see a stock drop 88 90 percent in one day. That's not something we typically see that that is, just especially when with no news.

That is really, really uncommon. So something to be aware of for sure. A little bit of a I don't know what. I don't even know what to think.

I mean, it's just clearly there was a huge imbalance on the sell side, just people dumping shares and I really thought it was going to bounce and I was totally wrong. So you know that was my worst trade of the of the entire year. Um, and I'm going to pull up my whiteboard here. so let's make a couple notes.

Um, and this is this. I do this in a way. I mean, that's sort of selfish because this actually helps me. Um, sorry.

so this helps me because I do this and I'm able to like, review my metrics and think about okay, what's working, what's not working and then come up with a game plan. But you know I'll do it with you guys listening in and to the extent it helps you do something similar in your own trading, then. um, then I'm happy for that. So number one, Um, there's a couple patterns.

Um, the first is. uh, so so the first is, um, afternoon losses and that happened twice. and on both of those days, I went from up 8 000 on one to down 36 000 and the other was from up 8 000 to down. uh, four thousand.

So that was twelve thousand and forty five thousand. That was Fifty Seven thousand dollars. Lost trading in the afternoons, just on two individual days. Okay, so that is something to be mindful of.

If I was sitting at 100 grand on the month, I could have improved my monthly profit by 50 had I not traded in the afternoons. So now I'm looking at this as being a takeaway that I can apply to the month of May and maybe it'll help me make 50 more in the month of May through avoiding unnecessary losses. So the rule the takeaway is no afternoon trading and I'll say with one exception exception. The one exception is that if I have a day where I start, you know, whatever it is, 8, 8 Am, 8, 30 and I'm trading all morning 9, 30, 10, 30, 11, 30, 12, 30 Because just because something is still ripping, then that's fine.

I'll trade until I stop. But what I don't want to do is stop for like two hours. Three hours leave the market completely and then come back later. Because when I come back, that's when I am seeming to make these just really stupid mistakes.

So basically, when I walk away, that's it. I'm done. Don't come back. So that's the first takeaway that had I implemented that in the month of Uh, and I am.

I am just highlighting two specific trades, two specific days. But we can actually look at my metrics for uh, day and time and you'll see that I consistently did the best in the first two hours of trading and then you know I had a little bit of profit. You know, whatever. That's fine.

11 to 12. lost a little 12 to 1, made a little one to two, and then this was just destruction from two to three and three to four. So you could also just say hard stop Um, you know, 2 p.m You know, cut off. That would be that.

in this case, the metrics would support a 2pm cutoff. but I think that that still, if you set a 2pm cut off, that would allow me to potentially go, you know, run some errands and then come back at 12 30 and trade for an hour and a half. And I really think that would be a mistake. So okay so that's number one and then number two.

And this is based on the the specific trade on. um, Jcse uh you know. So here's the deal with with trying to do these reversals. Um, you know it's first of all this the there were two reasons you know a couple people have you know, their two cents, their comments on you know how stupid, um you know kind of a trade this was or whatever.

Uh, and in my defense, the double bottom off of 877 made sense for double bottom. And look at what happened the last time it bounced, it bounced epically from 10 all the way to almost a 20.. So the double bounce. The double bottom bounce was a fine setup, but the problem was that I very quickly got caught in a halt down and then I was already down so much I didn't just cut the trade loss, cut the trade loose for like a 10 15 000 loss.

I got stubborn and and so I think that the issue here, um, is usually I do the best. Uh, when I'm trading stocks that have strong momentum, right? Stocks that are really obvious stocks that a lot of people are watching, those are the ones I'm typically going to do the best on. This was hitting low of day. You know it's not on high day momentum scanners, it's it's on low a day scanners, but not that many people are scanning for that.

so it's at low of day. There were other things moving. There weren't enough people watching this to catch the bounce. I don't know why it bounced so well at 11 25.

I mean, it wasn't a terrible idea for a double bottom bounce, but as soon as it didn't work, I should just let it go. And one of the problems with these is that when you're trying to time reversals, they they're not always super forgiving because what can happen is all of a sudden it. so you catch the beginning of a bounce and then it starts to sell off again. And when it starts to sell off again, it's very obvious it's weak, There's only sellers, and so if you're also needing to sell and unwind a big position, you're gonna get a lot of slippage.

You're gonna get bad fills and or you're gonna get caught in halts down. Inversely, if you did this to the long side, you tried to short something coming up for a double top. Maybe there's two dojis and you're like this is a clear double top and then it pulls back and you're like, okay, good and then immediately it rips through and halts going up. Oh no, now we've got a problem.

It's probably going to gap higher now. I'm really going to get smoked on this short position and it's going to be really hard to unwind it because there's only going to be buyers. No one's going to be selling because he off off it goes. So that's kind of bringing me to my uh, you know, sort of just general rule of thumb.

but um, focus on trading. Um, with the trend. So yes, I can make some money trading reversals. I certainly have made some money trading reversals in the past.

whatever how you know. Having said that this month, my biggest loss and the biggest loss the entire year was trying to time a reversal and I just I just don't think that we're in a market where I should really be probably doing that. I think the market is generally too bearish when something is weak, people are not stepping up to the plate. And so I think if I could focus on trading with the trend which is just generally going to be momentum trading trading stocks going up and I can avoid trading.

Um, in the afternoon. I think that going in to the month of May I could be set up potentially to have my best month of the year, right? The trend is looking good. I'm definitely moving in that direction. Uh, based on my my year to date of sort of how it's looking.

So that's something that I'm going to need to focus on. At this point I'm sitting at 300 000 on the year, my fees and commissions have been about 25 of my profit. I'm up 400 000. But then you take away fees and commissions so I'm up only.

So I've spent a lot of money on fees and commissions and that's because this year has been so choppy. Uh, if we look at the detailed and then the the win loss, it's just this equity curve has been so choppy. so you know this creates a lot of grinding and that burns a lot of commissions and that's not. That's really not what I want to keep doing.

So having said that, uh, I've been on a nice run since mid March here. Uh, until I caught that one loss on Wednesday, the 36 thousand dollar red day. Okay, so now we have to talk about sort of the psychology of bouncing back from these kind of red days because one of the things that you know it can can happen to traders is that you one red day turns into a a snowball of red days. So basically, uh, from about March 15th? um, you know, whatever.

till April. Whatever that day was, I was doing well and then one day I lost. kind of like that much. you know that was minus a 40 grand.

We'll just round up minus 40 000 and I had made from April 1st to here. you know about uh, 130 000. So I gave back. you know, a third of my month.

Basically whatever. about a third of the month in one trade. So now what I have to do is I have to focus on rebuilding. So I did make back 12 000 on Thursday and I didn't take any trades Friday so I'm still down.

You know, about 28 000 versus the high And obviously I want to make my way back up here. What I don't want to have happen is like two days forward and then another big step down. The the way this could happen is if I try to take a lot of risk. Let's say on Monday to try to make back.

you know all of this loss in one day and it goes wrong. It goes terribly and I lose another 30 grand and it's the first week of the month and I could see that happening because I've done that type of thing before. So my kind of feeling is that until I've made back about half of this initial loss, I have to be trading with a bit smaller size and being a bit more conservative. And that's why I didn't take any trades on Friday.

You know I just didn't see anything that really was strong enough and I generally feel like you know if I can't take a good 10, 15, 20, 000 share position, it's like not even worth it because what sometimes happens is I'll jump into something with like 3 000 shares, 4 000 shares. Next thing you know I'm down a dollar a share and I'm like oh my God. So I averaged down and I trade, try trade my way out of it and I turn what was really not even a great trade into it. the biggest loss potentially of the the week or the month, or the year.

So focusing on stocks that I really think are strong and then therefore I'm confident taking bigger size on. Not that I'm wanting to take like the biggest size ever, but just if it's not, if I can't justify taking like 20 000 shares of it, then there's a part of me that's like maybe there's a reason, I if there's obviously a reason I don't feel confident getting in with that size, maybe I shouldn't trade it at all. That's not always the right thing because sometimes you do have to kind of test the water. But if there's something that's holding me back, then I have to trust my intuition.

So for the next few days, um, I need to just try to slowly rebuild and until I've made back about half and then I can start to kind of take the take risk back on and be a little bit more aggressive as I come back through the high of sort of my high of year. So that's kind of where I'm at right now because what I don't want to do is continue this grind because then again I'm going to be burning commissions and then all this time kind of making back losses. You know I'm I'm spending money on commissions, I'm I'm still below the high the previous high and this is where you can just start to churn or or you can start to get emotional and have another you know big drop down and then you're really getting gonna get yourself in a tricky situation. So my thought right now I had.

I'm glad I had one good day on Thursday and I I was disappointed there wasn't anything that looked good enough on Friday for me to trade, but that's fine. That's the way it sometimes goes. So coming back in on Monday I'm hoping that we have, you know, a nice gap scan or something that looks really good so I can jump in, get a couple trades, get green in the first two hours, which is when I've been doing the very best, and then probably that's it. at least for the next few days, probably for the whole month.

The whole first week of the month of May just trade those first two hours to build a cushion. You know, because this is one of those things where I was showing in my metrics. uh actually. uh, I can't remember what day it was, but I was showing that that if you look at my day and time uh and we can, we can go back to all.

just start at all times so we can rather than look at like a small window. This is like all time. so looking at all time I make the least amount of money on Monday and then Tuesday is the second least and then Thursday Friday Wednesday Thursday pick up and then Friday slows back down. And this is.

this is a psychological. This is a reflection of my psychology as a trader because on Mondays with no cushion, you know I I play a little bit more conservatively. I try to get green. I don't push it as hard and I just try to, you know, kind of get myself started for the week.

and then if I've had a good day Monday, I'm going to be a little more aggressive Tuesday. If I've had a bad day Monday, I'll be conservative Tuesday and then usually by Wednesday I'm in a place where I can start to get aggressive. Wednesday Thursday my strongest days of the week, and then it kind of cools off again on Friday as we come into the weekend, you know, yesterday was a Friday where I didn't take any trades at all because I just didn't feel like there was anything that was, um, you know, worth taking the risk on. So this is also a pattern that you would notice if you looked at weeks of the month.

So the first week of the month, I'm going to be a little bit more conservative because I'm thinking about it the same as I would think about an individual week. It's the beginning of the new month. You know, I want to build a cushion. I want to get myself in the driver's seat.

So let's take it slow. and so you know, it's possible that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, next week, we could have something that is phenomenal that just goes totally bananas and I'll try to be as aggressive as I can on it, you know, But at the same time I'm still in the back of my mind going to be thinking it's pretty early in the month and I need a, you know, I kind of need to hit my hit my numbers just to kind of get myself feeling good. So anyway, so what I've been able to do here uh, just looking at my metrics has come up with sort of two game plans for the month ahead and I would encourage you guys to do the same thing. and that was mostly looking at the calendar.

I mean, looking at the total profit for the month? Um, you know there wasn't really anything that stood out. My I was averaging 5 000 a day. Uh, two of the days I went red, I was over 5 000 and then ended up going deep into the red. So like that was probably, you know, stupid.

But I'm not gonna just stop trading when I hit. You know, five thousand or ten thousand Because at the same time if I do that, I'll never have days where I go up to 50, 60, or 70 000 or higher. Uh, profit loss ratio about one to one? average? Um, Winners 1500 average Losers: 1500. Accuracy was only 61 percent.

That's actually lower than the previous month, which is kind of interesting. I'm not exactly sure why, um uh, why that happened, but let's see, we can generate this report. So my accuracy? actually, no, my accuracy was almost the same 61. Um, let's look at.

um, let's look at February I I thought my accuracy was higher in February or in March, but um, obviously not 228. Okay, so Generate so accuracy was a little better in uh, February. But of course I made less money so made less money because my average winners were smaller and my average losers were the same. So average losers have been kind of the same these months.

I guess I didn't check with what they were for March. So let's just look at March. So March average losers. Average winners were smaller, but average losers were also smaller.

so kind of. Both were smaller. And if we go to February or sorry, January, we can look at this month versus the month of January. And let's see generate report January.

The accuracy was 72, so that was substantially higher. Profit loss ratio was terrible. I had a couple of really big losses and my winners were not that big, so this was really a sort of sore spot for the month of January. The losses were twice average what they were this last month.

so May was the best. sorry. April was the best month. Uh, so far of the year.

and uh, I've just got to kind of keep my head down and see if I can keep that going And hopefully I can. So let's see. um, what am I looking for? Uh oh, Distribution trade by month, right? So here we go: So January, February, March, and April. And if you're curious about what I started doing in 2020, 2020 was when I started doing Dip trades.

So I'll put a link uh, top corner to my Dip Trading video. I would be a big advocate of a trader learning Dip Trading. Let's see Dip Trading. However, I'll say that it's um, it's easier.

It's easier said than done. One of the challenges with Dip trading is that, um, let's see. let me just put this up here. One of the challenges with Dip Trading is it requires a pretty high degree of intuition.

So let's see. So that's the Dip trading. Um, video right there. And now I'll also say that 2020, Um, you know, because of Covet and everything else provided.

A There was a huge boom in uh trading. So many more people came into the market and all those people that resulted in a much higher level of volume. And we just saw with higher volume the ability to get in and out with huge positions. liquidity was better and we saw some really big parabolic moves.

So that was. That was a combination Dip trading. Learning that new strategy and then combined with the market being as strong as it was was sort of the the perfect storm for having a really incredible year in 2020 and in 2021. But in 2021, it did make a bit less.

Um, although I continued to Dip trade, I did make a bit less. and in 2022, Here I am also making a bit less despite dip trading. but part of that is also related to the condition of the overall market. We're now in a a market where for the past oops, for the past three months, four months as you can see, the S P 500 has been, uh, you know, coming back down.

So this has been the that was the peak right there. Uh, and I made a hundred thousand dollars in those first two weeks of January or first week of January or whatever it was. And then we started to pull back. And so, unfortunately, I am not making as much money in a bearish market as I did in a really strong bull market.

But I'm still making money. I'm still at 300 000 on the year, so I'm not. You know, I'm not that worried about it. it's just I'm aware that it'll be.

I'm sorry. it'll be better in some years than in others. and that's um, you know that's one of the things. Um, that's completely outside of my control.

You know I. The market is what it is, so I just have to do the best I can to trade the market environment that I'm in and when it's a little colder, it's it's I'm gonna make a little bit less, but it doesn't mean I won't make anything. so you know I think that's probably true if you look at the long term for a lot of a lot of different businesses that you know you'll have conditions that are going to be better or worse. So some years are going to be better, some years are going to be worse.

You look at the real estate market. Some years for the real estate market have been a lot better. Some years have been terrible. So you know if you're a realtor, you what can you do? You're going to make a lot more money when the real estate market's hot and you're going to make less when it's cold.

So save some for a rainy day if uh, you know you're in that business and it's the same with trading. Okay, so uh, so with that, let's do some Q A here. Um, so that's the first, uh, half hour or so. So thank you guys for um, being tuned in And by the way, thanks for those who have hit the thumbs up.

Uh for this surprise Youtube live on Saturday. Appreciate you guys! So let's see. Um so Cole says. Since the cold market for the most part, do you find yourself scalping more with tighter stops? So not.

well. I guess in a way what I'm doing, it's not necessarily tighter stops. I try to keep my stops kind of the same, but I'm taking profit faster And so the result is my winners are smaller, right? But at the same time in this market, you know you've got to take your profit when you have it. So if you don't, you know you're going to see it disappear.

And so that's going to get me in that mindset. Taking that profit quick And one of the things that's really frustrating, you know, for me, is when I see a stock that goes totally crazy and I'm like I had such a good position on it. You know, three dollars a share ago and I took it all off the table. But for every one of those, there's probably 10 others that go up that same amount where I took my profit.

and then you know, go choppy. They either roll over, they just go choppy. So you you just learn that you got to take the profit off the table. And you know I: Yes, when it's hot, you want to try to let those winners ride a little bit more.

When you just feel like you know you've just got that wave of momentum, just that that powerful sort of tide behind you. Then yeah, you want to ride that momentum. But if it's not there, it's not there. And and you know again, we've had some good trades, but if I think back at some of the best trades of this month, um, well, let's see.

Let me look um for a second here. So I'm going to move this back down. So this is the Dip Trading video, so check that out if you're interested. I'll put a link at the very end here.

Um, so you can check it out after you've done the Q: A Uh, but some of the best stocks? Um, this this, um for the month of April? let's see, Um, Instrument. So we had um, Imac, Gns and Casa. Those were, um, some of my biggest winners here. So Imac right? right? right? So this was one where we had and this is, you know, So typical with these types of stocks, we have these sort of moments where you get these big moves and then that's kind of like it.

So this one gave us a big move from a dollar 20 to 320 and then that was. it. didn't even hold up. same day Gns.

Now Gns provided a little bit more. This one did have a pretty nasty sell-off right there, but right in here on these two days ipo and it goes from 12 to 36, drops back to 12, back up to 35 and then it kind of petered out and it actually ended up doing something really similar to what the other two did. So again, that's a third one for that pattern. Casa, third biggest winner on this one.

Let's see, this was a kind of two day move here. This one. This one held up quite well. From 380, it kept going all the way up to seven.

Uh, sst, You know, with small cap trading, what you're generally going to find is that You know, we get a couple of a couple of days where we can trade these and I don't remember where I traded it. Maybe on this day here, but you know you get a couple days where you can trade these and then they kind of. You know they go back to being not very interesting. So what's interesting when you look at their volume on the daily is they'll have these spikes with huge volume and then the volume is gone, right? So they have a catalyst.

They have a news event that brings in a lot of volume and then that's it. Nktx, Viru, Spfm. So anyways, just a few of the the top winners. Um here.

All right. So let's see. Um, Um, so I'm just uh, looking at the questions here. So how many trades do I take per day on average? So well, I guess we could look at what the actual we could do the math here.

So it says I took 279 trades. So that's going to be about 12 trades a day. Approximately right? so that that's going to be right now. Um, I I'm a big advocate for beginner traders, focusing on like one to two trades a day.

Just get in, get green, get out. If you're red, you're red. whatever. But just get in, get out, and be done.

Don't over trade, so I'm a big advocate of that, but that's for someone who's been doing it for a long time. You're going to trade more actively, so some days you might see 15 20 opportunities. Another day you might only see three to five, but it looks like my average is 10 to 12.. So that's where I'm averaging right now.

and Jeffrey given Bear Market. Do you adjust? uh, buying size to help manage risk? Um, a little bit. But the thing is, when we have something, you know we have something like Ida or Idai. When we have something that's strong, you know if we have something that's moving, I'm gonna be aggressive.

What right? Why not? Because it's obviously this was this one went up like 200 percent. So I it's more of wait till something is really obvious and then pedal to the metal. So that means maybe more days where I'm not trading that much or more days where I'm kind of starting with small size thinking maybe I'm going to get in the zone and then then I just kind of don't. So I just it's sort of like it's like nothing really opens up and then every now and then there'll be a day where something really goes bananas and then that's when I can step up to the plate and be aggressive.

Which I definitely was on Idia, and I was on some of the others as well. Uh, so let's see. So thanks for that question. Um, when I started out, did you take quick profits or let your winners run? I took quick profits So that was that for me was absolutely the way I did it.

I got in, I got out, I got in, I got out. and yeah I would regret sometimes seeing a stock continue higher. But for me I had to pay the bills. So if I was in and I was up 100 200 bucks, I took that money right out because I knew that if I made 50 000 a year that would literally change my life.

So that's 200 a day. So I took my profit quick. I couldn't afford to hold for a bigger move and I would you know get a little envious when I would see someone out there who traded the same stock and I was in at a better price and somehow they made like you know so much more than me because they took bigger size and they held for the whole move. But you know those are people that were further along in the learning curve and could afford the risk of you know that also going back to zero on them.

I couldn't afford that when I was getting started. can you plea please detail your fees and commissions compared with other brokers? So my fees and commissions. uh I spent 4 500 in commissions. So each time I press the buy and sell button I have a commission to my broker and then I spent 22 000 on Ecn fees In the month of uh, April.

So if I traded at a different broker like let's say, I traded at um, I don't know. Uh, what's a broker if I? Well, if I traded a Td Ameritrade I wouldn't have had either of these. You have no commissions and no fees. so holy moly that's 25 000 bucks.

The problem is, and I've traded with Td Ameritrade. The problem for me is that I trade very quickly and when I see something moving, I get aggressive fast. I start scaling in. So that's punching the buy button if I I might take a starter of 3000 and this will be totally based on intuition.

If I see something and it's like 650 on the ask and I punch it for 3 000 shares. and the next thing I know I see 675 and I punch it again for 3 000. The next thing you know, you're seeing seven, I punch it again. Now that time, maybe for six thousand, then I see Seven Twenty Five.

I do another three thousand, Seven Fifty. I wanna make sure that I'm getting filled right at those prices, because when a stock is moving that fast, you can get a lot of slippage. And it's just pretty much a fact that when you're using direct rounding, your order execution is going to be significantly faster. and so I feel like those seconds make a difference for me.

I have openly shared that I think that it makes more sense to use a direct access broker like the one I'm using. You do pay for it through the form of fees and commissions, but I feel like it's worth it for for it's not worth it on every single trade, but it's worth it more than I feel like it's not. You know there are. There were some trades I took this month where I was like I could have easily taken that trade with Td Ameritrade and probably made an extra couple hundred bucks because of the fee and commission on that trade.

But then you know you've got to have multiple accounts set up and with enough money to be able to really trade the way you like to trade. So I have 900 thousand dollars in the account that I'm trading in right now. So well. it started the month with 800 something, so the account's up more than 10 in one month, which is great, but you know I have that large amount of money in there.

so if I end up seeing a 75 stock that I really like and I want to buy 10 000 shares of it, I can afford to do it. You know? So then if I did that with Td Ameritrade now I've got a lot more money. I mean, I have to split the accounts. I have to sort of figure that out.

It's an Ira account so I can't just add more money. I've got to grow it so I don't know. I the So. The biggest thing there is that there's free commission brokers.

and those are brokers that do payment for order flow right. They sell your order flow so your executions. I mean, we've all heard about this stuff and the games that market makers play, so you're subjecting yourself to more of that. with a lot of the free commission brokers, and with a broker where you can route your order independently, you're typically going to get better execution.

So it's not to say that I don't know traders who have made over a million dollars using Td Ameritrade. We have, uh, 10 students right now who have made over a million dollars at Warrior. I'll remind us always that we don't attract sticklers out of our students, but we voluntarily give students the opportunity. If they want to get a profitability badge, they can.

We've got 10 that have gotten the million dollar badge and let's see one, two, three. Definitely three of them. 100 are using Td Ameritrade and I don't remember on the other. So I mean at a minimum 30.

So it's not to say that you can't use Td Ameritrade and potentially be successful, right? Um, you know, I'm not going to make any guarantee that that'll happen, but I I'm used to what I'm used to, but I I do question it because I've been spending a lot of money this year. a bigger percentage than I've ever spent before on fees and commissions. and so it's you know. But then I know some people that have they're using Td Ameritrade with Das Trader Integration and you know it's It's an improvement over using regular Tv Ameritrade, think or Swim, but it's not going to be as fast as you know.

Das connected with a direct access broker. So yeah, so that's a that's a long answer to your question. But um, you know, but that's it. Let's see.

so Td can be slow when it's volatile, right? And especially in the first two minutes of the day when we have these big whips. You know, the stocks that flush down and then pop up. And I mean that that's when you really want to make sure you're getting really good order fill. So um, so you're saying you're paying per share? You'll pay a lot less if you trade per trade.

I do pay per trade with Lightspeed, I am paying per trade. That's the commission. The fee is the Ecn fee that's passed on from the route that I'm sending the order through. So that's the Nasdaq Nicey uh, Arca route fee.

So those are separate. So I if I went to per trade or per share if I went, so I'm already on per trade. If I switch to per share, the fees on the commission side would actually be higher. Okay, so let's see.

Um, thanks for those tuning in. We're doing a little Q A here at the end of the April month in review. Do you have any suggestions for someone who starts who tends to start out with a very good winning streak than tends to end up giving it back? Um, by getting sloppy So you know. I mean honestly, I think that this is something that a lot of traders go through.

so if we look at you know kind of on the whiteboard here I would say you know it's very common for a lot traders when they're in sort of early in their careers. A little bit of beginner's luck, right? a little bit of beginner's luck and then they start losing some money and then eventually you get into this place where you know you have a nice winning streak and then you give it back, you have a nice winning streak and then you give it back another nice winning streak and then give it back. and so you're kind of in this you know, kind of sideways zone here where you're not really making a lot of money. If you're taking money out of your account to pay bills, then you know your account balance is going down and then the next phase out of that is when you start kind of going like this.

you know, like whatever. this isn't like the best equity curve, but you know you kind of start making like a little bit of progress and then going sideways and then having these days where you give it all back And so the goal is to try to space these days out as much as possible so have them happen less frequently. Have the amount that you lose on those days becomes smaller because you develop a sense of awareness that this feels like one of those days where things are just going to get a lot worse. So I should just stop here.

And then when you do that, you're going to have these days where you drop down. But now you're dropping down half as much and then you rebuild. You drop down again. but again, dropping down only half as much you rebuild.

and then you're making that progress. net profit. So it's really developing a sense of awareness that that's a pattern that you have and you've got to try to dial in. Why is this happening And what are some red flags? What are some warning signs that I'm you know, coming in, potentially to another one of these uh, patterns again.

So let's see. Um, right and that is correct that I can't um, short in a retirement account. So because because of my tax bracket and again, if you're in a lower tax bracket and you're trying to make two hundred dollars a day in the markets, it's 50 000 a year and you're gonna be. It's gonna be short-term capital gains either way, but you're making less money then.

Yeah, you could short if you want to, you know. But remember, availability of shares to borrow a short sale restriction are going to make it a little bit more difficult. So you know if you're paying to reserve shares, then that's going to cost more you're not going to be able to use, you know, Td Ameritrade for shorting most small cap stocks. They're not gonna have shares available to borrow, so you're gonna have to get into a Um, you know, a broker that is a little bit more catering to short sellers and those usually have higher balances.

So Jet says I have a really bad habit of averaging down with full position on losing trades and it's turning my small losers into big losers, right? So having just done exactly that, uh, you know, earlier this week, Um, you know. One of the things that I often say is that the best trades work basically immediately. You know the best trades. You get in immediately, you're in the green because you just your timing was right, you saw the right pattern, you got it, and it just worked.

And so there is something to be said for setting an automatic like 15 stop loss on a small cap. Because for the most part I mean aside from ones that have a big spread for the most part, if it goes down 15 or 25 cents for my entry, I kind of screwed up the entry and and it's not to say that I won't right now probably hold and give it a chance to come back up. But more often than not, if you're trying to focus on discipline, you know having those stops I think is valuable because then it just takes you out. It's sort of no emotion, you're out of the trade and then you can always get back in.

If you're trading with full size on every trade you take, then those losses you know if it stops you out and rips right back up can be very frustrating. So that is going to have to be focusing on. You know, what are your metrics telling you what's your accuracy? If your accuracy is not strong enough and you keep you know just getting stopped out again and again and again, then you need to focus on, uh, trade selection and choosing better entries because you're you're not dialed in as much as you could, but you don't want to be in the habit of averaging down because you know it works and works until it doesn't And then you have a massive loss and it could be a loss that blows out your entire account right? so you don't want that to happen. Yeah, so mainly I focused on 10 20 cent winners and I honestly, I still do that.

I focus on getting base hits. That's base hit trading. 10 15 20 cents. These are relatively small trades.

Um, I hosted a, um, a Ted Talk. Uh, it was the second one. I believe it was the second one. Uh, with Ted the who's the head of trading psychology here at Warrior Trading and we talked specifically about the importance of taking these small base hits versus going for home runs.

Uh, I don't recall. I know I have a link somewhere. Um, oh, you know what I could do. I can give you the link to the video where I mentioned that I'd be hosting the talk and then you can go.

And on that video, there's a link where you can go actually watch the Ted talk so let's see and you can pause it. You can, you know, take as much time as you want to watch it Ted talk here. so I'm just going to post that right there for you guys. Um, we'll just make a note here.

let's see. Um, Okay, so yeah, check that out if you want. Because I did. I did talk quite a bit about the focus on those 10 20 winners versus trying to hit home runs.

But yeah, averaging down is usually a stubbornness thing. And you know, sometimes sometimes you can get stubborn and it can pay off. And you know. Okay, but it feels like it's it's not a good habit to be in and more often than not, it's not going to pay off.

And if you really get stubborn and you have something that drops like absolutely crazy or whatever keeps squeezing, you could do some really bad damage on that kind of day. So you know me taking a 38 40 000 loss, whatever on that day. You know that that gave back a third of my month, so that was a significant amount to give back in one day. But you know all things You know, all things you know.

Just if you're going to be realistic here and and sort of be practical, it's not really that bad, you know. So if you think about like what are some of the worst you know trades. I've ever had the worst mistakes I've ever had as a trader. You know I had a day where I lost 275 000.

That was the worst day I've ever had. But when that day happened, I had already turned a less than 600 account into like six million dollars. So you know it was kind of like I, I never leveraged myself to a point where I could lose everything. You know, I don't have the full 10 million in my account times four times leverage so I can day trade with 40 million dollars.

Now there are some people that would do that and just use leverage to the extreme and just try to grow the account like crazy and some of them are gonna out trade me and do better than me. But you know one of the things for me is I never want to empower a trade with the ability to end my career. And you know, if you took a 20 million dollar position in an account that you'd grown to 10 million and then it got halted and they did an offering and it opened down 70? you're down 12 million dollars right there. Just like that, you know you've you just gave back your entire career in one day.

I can't. I can't let that happen. So I make a lot of you know mistakes. I have a lot of losing trades, but their damage is very minimal because I don't keep enough money in my account or trade it on leverage, which would position me to potentially have those types of catastrophic mistakes.

And so you know, being down 38 000 on that trade I had I think it was 16 000 shares. you know, eight dollars a share. So I only had like a hundred. And you know, thirty thousand dollars in the trade of an account that has 900 grand, you know? So even then even I I'm even moderating myself within the hard limit which is my account size.

I can't exceed my account size, but even then I'm not doing though, I'm not trading the whole account. The only time I might would be if we happen to have a particular day where you had something like Gamestop that was higher priced and going totally crazy and I might take a fair amount of risk on that day. But I I would certainly be thinking about. Is this a stock that I have to worry about halting and opening opening down 50 And usually that's not something you have to think about too much or worry about too much? So I just you know, it's just something to be mindful of.

All right, So let's see. Um, I'll do a couple more questions we've got. Um, about five more minutes here for Q A Thank you by the way for those who have tuned in a little, uh, later and wanted to see what was going on we were doing April Month in review: Hundred thousand dollars for the month of April of course. No, You're right, my results are not typical.

Trading is risky. Most beginner traders lose money, We don't attract a different result of traders in our community. so we make no guarantee that you will find success as a trader or be more or less likely to succeed than the average trader out there. And if you find someone that's making you a guarantee, sure, go sign up to them.

But I think you'll find that, um, it's not going to be. It's not going to be all that you think it will be. So does the pineapple shirt help my help me trade better? You know I was wearing the pineapple shirt when I lost the 43 000. So I was going to say yes, but now I'm beginning to not be so sure.

I don't worry about wash sales in a retirement account. You do not have to worry about wash sales period in a regular account. You do unless you apply for Mark to market accounting and declare yourself as a day trader. which I did.

so I don't have to worry about them in that account either. If you are curious about taxes for traders, taxes for trading, I can give you a link to that video as well. Let's see, it's not tax advice, but just sharing with you what I've learned from my experiences. For some reason I'm having a really hard time with Youtube.

Uh, a watch sale is watched. Exempt wash sales mean you can't write off the loss against your gains taxes for traders. So we I talked about it in that video. so I i it's a question should I trade a simulator or real money online? So I would trade a simulator? Of course at a certain point it's important to start building the emotional um conditioning that comes with having to have losses with real money.

So it does make sense to start putting real money on the line but with small size. All right. So so you have the buying power to take 3 000 shares of Tesla? Um no I don't think I do. Um, Tesla's 900 a share.

So in that account with 900 000 I could buy 1 000 shares. At 900 a share, that'd be 900 000. So it would need to go up 15 points for me to make 15. 000.

Meanwhile, a stock that goes, you know, from seven to seven fifty, I could easily take thirty thousand shares of and be up fifteen grand in a much shorter period of time on a fifty cent move versus needing to get a 15 point move. So my percentages are always going to be in return higher on the lower price stocks. You know it's not to say there won't be some times where you could be. Look at Tesla and think whoa, All right, you got 100 point move Today I could have made some good money.

I've seen it um, you know for sure and thought that I'm just gonna put the video here. trading in taxes, taxes. All right. So that's uh, post in the comments.

but yeah again, like you know, there's some traders that you know get into the habit of kind of trading those higher higher price stocks because they move. But uh, they're They have a big range, but I just haven't really gotten into that. and I I do try to be thinking about when I'm trading. Is this the type of stock that members at Warrior Trading are going to be interested in? Because if I start trading Tesla, what I start hearing a lot of people say is Ross I can't afford this This is your commentary on Tesla is useless to me.

I can't afford it and most small account retail traders they're not going to focus on Tesla. You could trade options on it, but with the spreads you're it's It's tough. So all right. Well uh, we are at the end of the hour so thank you guys all for tuning in.

I'm gonna put up my disclaimer again as a reminder that trading is risky and um, I'll put a link to the video on uh, Dip Trading right here in the top corner. So Dip Trading if you want to learn more about that strategy. That was a game changer for me when I was getting started. so big advocate of that And um, I hope to see you guys here for the morning show first thing Monday morning right around 9 00 a.m and I hope you hit the thumbs up for this broadcast if you enjoyed it.

Alright, thanks so much and I will see you guys back here on Monday. You.