What's up everyone? All right? Well we're finishing up the week here with another small green day. Today was a small day you know this week was kind of funny because I sort of expected Tuesday coming back after the long weekend for things to be kind of slow and they were I would say I would rate Tuesday if we look at the P&l um that I had on Tuesday By the way, this is my, um, my 90-day Equity curve here so you could see I've had a dip uh dip and I'm almost recovered from the draw down that I had during the last week of December. So I'm coming back up which is good buying the dip and hopefully I'm making my way back up here real soon. Who knows? maybe back up to here? So uh, anyways, let's see um on Tuesday I ended up locking up just under $6,000 of profit after fees and commissions which was a solid first day of the year and I mentioned um that I was not expecting that at all.

You know it's like first day back I was kind of like dipp My toe in but you know what, it just takes one and we ended up having a couple of nice moves and so you know I would say on a scale of 1 to 10 Tuesday was like maybe a five. you know it was good I look I I had a great day but also it wasn't incredible and the stocks I traded didn't end up really being a lot stronger later in the day. Lbph did go a bit higher, but you know it wasn't It wasn't perfect so it's a pretty good day and then came back in. Tuesday Morning Boom Another Solid Day: 37 $100 net profit Thursday Boom $4,000 net profit.

that's after fees and commissions and so just like that, that's $113,000 in 14,000 in three days. Three days of trading now today? Uh well. I don't have as much to show for today today. I uh at my at my most let's see, let me move this over.

Um, there you go at my most. I was up. uh $1,300 and then I lost 700 on Nexi and I was like, you know what? I think this is a good about to walk away I don't want to push it I would rate today as a two on a scale of 1 to 10 and the reason I would give today such a terribly low rating and I don't mean to be critical, but um, but I'm I'm going to be the judge here and I'm going to say this was a A this day gets a score of a two. It's because our Gap scanner.

we didn't have a lot of good gappers. that was the main issue. so this morning we'll look at the actual Gap scanner. Um, Ross's top Gappers.

So this is a scanner that stops up dating at the open. so this is a a screenshot of time what the market looked like DSS would disregard that because it was a reverse split all right so that that one I'm going to forget about. So the leading gapper was Aimd aimd All right. Well, you can see um I end up trading that So let's look at Aimd aimd uh was a stock that had a move that began early early.

so if we look at the F minute chart, you'll see that. um, this stock kind of started its move I don't know. Well, it even sort of started perking up a little bit after hours and at 6:00 a.m. it was like popping up, pulled back, went higher, and so when I was sitting down at 7 a.m.

it was down here. Honestly, this was 75. I have no idea where this volume came from. it just all of a sudden broke vwap and was like right back to the high.

The thing is right here, under 450. The problem with this stock was it was crowded and I've had some people asking me Ross when you say something is crowded, can you describe what you mean? Sure. So we're going to pull up the Whiteboard here. Uh, generally when I'm looking to stock, I'll I'll use phrases like thickly sorry, thickly traded, thickly traded or crowded I don't know why I'm writing this, you can.

It's better just to listen to me. All right. So thickly traded, crowded And what I generally mean is that when we're looking at the level two, the bid in the ask what we see is a stock is like 234 and it's You know, there's like 10 sell buyers all at 234 and then it's 235 and there's another 10 buyers at 235 So it's very congested. Now Stocks Can be very congested when they're trading um in consolidation.

So what we often see is a stock makes a big move. It pulls back and then through this sort of area. Here it can be very congested. This is where you're having a lot of sort of accumulation and distribution people are buying.

People are selling. You know? Let's just say the stock is up 100% right here. So if it stays up 100% for 5 hours, Essentially, anyone who has been in for a while that wanted to sell had every opportunity to sell and get out and take profit. So like no one else is really kind of selling at this point.

Now, as long as the company's not selling because they're doing a secondary offering, Um, and anyone who's kind of wanted to short has had the opportunity to short. So if it's still holding up, then what we sometimes see is this Breakaway here and so it can go from being very thickly traded to and thinning out as it pulls away. But but other times we'll have these stocks that become thickly traded and they just do a slow fade. You know Traders Don't really.

Buyers don't really step up because it's not that exciting. it's not really. moving, it's just it's grinding. So crowded.

thickly traded grinder. um so what was it? Um I have a bunch of sticky notes here. bzi bzi this is this is thickly traded. it's crowded.

It's a grinder. and I did make a little bit on it, but it it really was not an easy stock to trade. Um, Nexi is not a grinder. Nexi is more thinly traded 14 Cent Spread that one can move.

um, you know. but uh, and then what was the other one? U yeah no, those are the two I traded. So so anyways. um, but I managed to lose on Nexi even though it was maybe a bit more thinly trade in the type I would like.

But when I first pulled up, um a IMD uh or yeah, a IMD I I was just like man, this thing is, it's thickly traded. um, big buyers on the bid, big sellers on the ass, 25 million shares of volume and I pulled up the level two on it and I was just like you know I just don't think this one's going to make a big move. So I watched it right here at around the half dollar and I was like I'm not going to get in right here. This is right into Resistance double Top but it ended up pushing a little higher, it drops down and then it pops back up.

but I didn't trade it in here. That was the only spot. Maybe that I feel like I missed and then it ended up fading off of that level. So no trades on aimd um second stock.

So then my first trade of the day was on. Um, bzi Bzi. All right. So this one I broke the ice on this at about $230 it was actually um, right here at sort of the beginning of the move.

Um, it popped up here to a high of 240 and I got in about 228. It pops up and it comes back down I lost 500 on the first trade. so right there I lost 500 bucks I I I thought it was going to continue and just be like one of those ones. It really opens up but it didn't Anyways, it breaks here as you can see and it breaks again right here as you can see I had a really nice trade I sort of sat out cuz I was like I don't know.

this feels like sort of cheap thickly traded again. but once it broke over 60 I took my first trade or well, I got back in there for my second trade and so as it squeezed up I got in at 60 I got out at like 65, made 300 bucks. So now I'm down 200 from down 500 and then I got back in for the break of three and I did that. with 10,000 shares, we got a nice break of three It goes up to 320 and I was like boom I'm out, locked it up.

went from red on the stock to Green uh at the open Chop Chop Very very choppy. quite risky. it tries to come up again. Jack Knives reverses sort of choppy.

so really there was a little bit of action pre-market Uh, but I'll say that um to today today was a two because this is a stock that you know was a little cheaper and even though the float's relatively low at 10 million, it's got 63 million shares of volume. It was a grinder. It was a grinder. So leading gapper, leading gapper over here.

that one's a reverse. Split Second Leader: It just was. wasn't clean. It was also a grinder.

Our CAC this was a special acquisition company or still is a spa. Um, the news was that they um, cancelled a meeting um to approve the business combination with Setjet. So I think they've already disclosed that they were going to be that there's the proposal to merge and obviously that caused the stock to drop substantially. and now that they've cancelled that meeting, the the price has gone back up.

Essentially Spaxs trade at $10 until they've merged. but when they've when there's news of a merger, the price can go up. If people are like O, this is exciting. They're going to merge with Like Truth Social and this is you know, a chance to get in on that.

People bought that up or they're like oh, set Jet no no no no and then they sell it. So anyways meeting has been postponed I don't even know that it's like permanently canceled I think it's just postponed. but anyways so so it goes back up but it's been more or less sideways. see so it's it's There's kind of no trade there so that's that one.

Um so that's off the list. This one was a grinder. Bnz is a grinder. Drma is cheap SGD is just been a a cheap grinder stock and and that's it.

That's it. That's that's the that's the top of the scan you know and if the the my best days are when the top of the scan is is strong I've got some stocks on it that I can do well on. that was the case on Tuesday Tuesday Wednesday and and Thursday you know yesterday was was good. it wasn't fantastic.

So I would say you know this Tuesday was like a five Wednesday you know, maybe like a four I even think yesterday was like a three even though I did okay. The problem is it's just these: Grinders cheap stocks are tough to make good money on so you know I kept my head above water today. Um, trade in the small account yesterday and today day. We'll recap those in the next episode.

but it was tough because um, no leverage on Aimd. Uh, didn't Trade this one. of course, no leverage on this one, right? It's too cheap so was kind of restricted in that ability to take good trades. and um, you know it's it's tough.

This just can't really make a lot when all the stocks are are cheap like that because I don't get the buying power and that's what I want? uh is you know, a stock between five and 10? ultimately. So I think we might have gotten a couple? Well, Nexi. So so so Nexi I gave back profit on Nexi, right? So this one was in the right price range. Um, but the problem with Nexi was that you know it's not day one of the move.

Day one was back here. Um, that's usually what I'm going to do. The best is on day one. this is a bounce day and it did bounce nicely.

It halted up at the open on light volume. it opens kind of dip, rip jumps around and I started trading this. Um, let's see I took two trades on it and I actually lost on both of them. So my first trade on it was um, let's see where was it um no, it was right.

it's right here now. I got to look at my um, oh no. okay I'm sorry. so it opens.

It hit a high of 744 right here and I got back in for the break through the double top. It broke by 10 cents and then dumps right here down to seven bucks. that's annoying. Then it goes up higher right here and I got back in right here and it again.

It breaks by like 5 cents and then it drops again. So I got caught on this one twice. very obnoxious I don't know. just was choppy and you know what, It's kind of what I get it's it didn't have high relative volume.

it was not the it was not an obvious stock I forced it I shouldn't have traded it at all I should have just said you know what, today's a two. it's not hot, don't push it. So that trade was at like 10: a.m. or something.

um right before 11 something like that So you know it doesn't really matter. No, maybe it was a little earlier, but it it really doesn't matter. So it was just it was just a very choppy stock. and as I look right now that's our Gap scan our top gainers, there's nothing moving right now I Don't feel like I'm missing anything by saying you know it's whatever.

12:30 I'm going to call it a day. so I stuck around I gave it a chance for things to move, but it's just it's not happening today. So the days I want to dig deep and stay longer are the days where it's like, you know, a seven, or an eight or nine when we've got some really serious momentum and things are, you know, really moving days like today. It's just too easy to get chopped up and give back profits, especially if you force it.

And and I did force a little bit did get back some profits. But anyway, so after fees and commissions, today is a very small green day. but uh, but green is good. So closing down the platform I'm going to lock it up and live to trade another day.

I'll be back at it on Monday So you know I'm looking forward to a full week next week. we've got a full week. Five trading days in a row. Uh, we haven't had that in a couple weeks.

so uh, that'll be nice. Hopefully we get, you know, some good gappers at the end of the day. I'm going to do the best on days when the leading most obvious gapper is not a penny stock, when the leading obvious gapper is a 90 Cent stock, a $1 stock, even a $152 I don't usually do well in those when the leading gapper is a six 7, 8, 10, 12, 15, $20 stock and it's up 80, 90, 100% or more. It's got news.

that's when I usually do well because those stocks have bigger ranges so the dips can give you swings back up. You know you can get nice breakouts when it moves higher. That's when things really get exciting for me. So that is what I'm looking for.

and while I wait for it I need to be careful that I don't dig myself a hole I am just now as you saw from my um, my P&l here or my um, my reports I am just recovering. you know, kind of getting back up here. It's okay to have red days look red days happen. but you know I'm making some nice progress.

um I'd rather go sideways for a couple days and be patient patient, you know, kind of wait in the tall grasses for that next stock to show up and then you know, hit that, get some nice trades and you know, start making some better, better, better progress ultimately. and I I thought a bit more about um, you know the daily goal stuff that I was talking about earlier in the week. Um I I Want to now? No. so let me throw this at you.

um I I I'm I'm not sure about this, but I was thinking about a daily goal of um, my daily goal is to not have a snowball day, to not have a day where I spiral to not have a day where I just screw everything up I wonder if that's like going skiing and be like my goal is to not hit a tree and you're like, you know, then you hit a tree. You know what I mean like where you're fixating on the thing you don't want to have happen and then it happens. but at the same time trading is risky. We know that and if I sort of set the intention and remind myself every day that look, trading is risky on any on any given day.

in a moment of impulse I could slam an order for 25,000 shares and be down $2 a share until a Hal down or something and be down 50. Grand You know what I mean like I have if I have the money in my account and I give into that impulse, it could happen. So if I focus on discipline and self-control and my daily goal rather than being making a certain amount of money is more on like capping loss and my daily goal is to follow my Max loss even you know that might be a simpler way to do it because at the end of the day the thing with having a daily goal is you really? So there's two trains of thought here on this. um, one is that you really are like powerless to what happens in the market.

I mean the market could be hot or it could be cold. today could be a two or it could be a 10 and that'll be what it is is. there's nothing I can do about that. The only thing I can do is trade what's in front of me.

so if the Market's cold you know like it sort of was today. I'll do the best I can and I might still only make 500 bucks if the Market's hot I might do the best I can and make 10,000 or 20,000 or more. So how much I make is not really something I feel like that's super within my control which is kind of funny because obviously I'm the one trading. so it is to a certain extent based on skill and intuition and experience.

but then once you have all that, it's waiting for opportunities. you know, like you could be an amazing Hunter but or an amazing fisherman or woman or whatever. but but if, but if you know there's nothing there, there's nothing there. So I think for me.

Um, so that was sort of the one train of thought that being focused on a daily goal isn't super helpful because it's kind of like it just almost highlights every day the fact that well, it's really not in my control because if I hit my goal I should not walk away I never do that I don't walk away when I hit my daily goal because if I walked away when I was hitting my daily goal I would be capping my profits now. I'll say that for a beginner Trader and this is sort of the second school of thought for a beginner Trader I Do sometimes encourage, get green and walk away because it's important to build a track record of consistency and so many beginner. Traders Will go back in and and just give back profits. So it's really important that if you have it, walk away.

but for someone with more experience once you have some profit, just cuz you hit your daily goal, to me, is is a reason to walk away. If you hit your daily goal. in three trades, this is a day. The Market's hot.

This is a day if any. there were a day to push it and just because you're short on your daily goal. So today, let's say I'm short on my daily goal. Should I keep pushing it? No, today's a two.

Why would I push it on a day like today? I should be patient, buy my time, and then push it on a day when it's hot and let that day make up for today being slow. So I actually should factor that there'll be a small handful of days that far exceed my goal and the that maybe 20% of my trading days each year will contribute probably 80% of my profits. and then there's everything else. the rest of the days which are going to be kind of slow base hit days just stay green, don't do anything crazy and and so I would say it's very possible that actually I could spend the majority of days below goal and then a small percentage of days where I'm like triple the goal or double the goal.

So the goal is kind of. Maybe it's sort of not helpful. Uh, and that's what I was starting to kind of think that it's not that helpful. but I do absolutely at all costs have to cap my downside I have to cap my losers so you know could my should my daily goal be.

it feels negative to say oh my daily goal is not to lose more than 500 today or a th000 or 5,000 or whatever it is that feels negative because you're focusing on the negative. But as Traders we do have to manage our risk. So maybe my goal is to rate each day early in the day and ask myself what is the quality of today on a scale 1 to 10 And if today is a two then on days that are twos I know that I should walk away early and not push it. On days that are fives, you know I mean look we could.

We could get very detailed, but on days that are like you know today's a two Today days that are like zero to three is sort of. You do one thing. days that are, um, you know, four to six you do another and days that are 7 to 10 you know this is. these are the days that are probably going to contribute.

You know, 80% of my profits for the whole year. The remaining profits are probably going to come from days like this 15% and honestly, you might even be able to argue. Let's do some funny math here that, um, 40% of my profits are going to come from here. Wait a second now.

I'm no mathematician, but that's 120. But then let's just say that minus 20% comes from here. Oh, it does equal 100. Gosh, this guy.

He's always. He's always thinking one step ahead so you know what if that were the case now? I Don't know because every day last year I wasn't keeping a calendar of like a 1 to 10 score. So I actually don't know it's a hypothesis and the only way I could know it is if I start tracking it and let's start doing that today. and let's do it for the last four days this week.

So we'll do it for these four days and then we'll keep evaluating it as as the week goes on. and the goal isn't to come up with the rating at the end of the day. The goal is that in the middle of pre-market I Don't know. Sometime between you know, seven, maybe sometime between 8 and N 30 I'm able to kind of come to a rating and that will be based on you know what's the Gap scanner look like? How did my first few trades play out And you know how are things feeling today? So let's see how that correlates to profitability.

And if I can then start to begin to develop a Keener sense of what today's rating is, then I may be able sooner to be able to make decisions about how I should trade for the rest of the day, whether I should keep trading for the rest of the day, or whether I should just stop. Now one thing that we know is that at any time a stock come out with news right now 5 minutes ago or in 5 minutes, a stock could come out with breaking news. It's huge and the stock could go from zero to up 300% in the next hour. It's out of my control.

There's nothing I could do about that that could turn a day from a 2 into a 10, you know. But in my experience my best days start strong and then just continue to get better. It's not typical that a day is a total dud and then all of a sudden out of nowhere something goes crazy. You know that that those chasing those anomalies is going to be tough because they're random, so I'm not going to worry too much about that.

I'm going to focus on the window when I trade the best. Uh, and that's also the window where I have the highest Roi on my time because something I talked about several times in in recent episodes is that it's not my goal to trade and sit in front of the computer here for, you know, 12 hours a day. It's actually kind of funny because my neck has been hurting and It's like hurting right back here and I was like you know I was like why is my you know, why is my neck hurting like what's going on and I was like well maybe it's a decade of sitting like this going from Monitor to Monitor to Monitor because that's how I basically sit like all day long now. I you don't see that right now because I'm looking at the camera but as I'm sitting here I'm sitting in my chair and I'm just going like this and like this and like this now.

I have monitor here here and then I have these ones that are up here. this is a monitor here. There's another one right here now. I said I would not be using these for trade trading right now which is true I'm not using them for trading I'm using my laptop this old one here with three broken keys and I'm using this monitor here which is broken and I'm using it for my because of the small account challenge Now I'm choosing during the small account challenge to trade in both accounts.

So the small account I'm trying to take you know, a Tra a couple trades a day if I can depending on the conditions of the market and then I put that aside and then I'm trading in my big account. you know, so that's kind of my idea. but as a result, you know I have this funny setup. But but yeah, it's not, it's just maybe I could find a better way to arrange this all.

but um, maybe if I was sitting a little higher up I Could you know this desk kind of has a anyways I maybe this isn't interesting to you, but um, it's not my goal to sit here for eight hours a day. Physically, it's just not healthy. It's is not what I want to do. Uh, so the time the window of the day where I have the highest Roi is between 7: a.m.

and 10: a.m. Really, that's that's kind of my window. So I'm going to rate the day based on around 7 8, 900 a.m. between 800 and 9 how I feel this day is in that window and yeah I would say uh I would say we had.

we did have some good action on um on Tuesday I was really really pretty pleased. um I was surprised but Tuesday was good. uh Wednesday was good Thursday was a little slower I did well but it it wasn't really that great. it was one stock that kind of.

Anyway, so yeah, so yeah, that's I'm going to rate those days and then I'm going to rate today as a two and um, we'll see how tomorrow plays or next week plays out and maybe, um, maybe there's something here and maybe this will be helpful for you as well. So it's a little bit of a different way of thinking about it, but let's see, let's see where it takes us all, right? So thank you guys for tuning in. Thank you for hitting the thumbs up! If you haven't already checked out my Small Account Challenge episode one: make sure you check it out. A lot of questions about the broker I put a link in the Uh comments and I'll pin into this comment of my my top Brokers that I think are kind of the best uh small account broker International broker free commission broker and then like active Trader Us broker So I have four Brokers are sort of on my top list U I have accounts with uh, three out of the four one of them I don't have an account with because well I explained it in the blog post.

doesn't really matter, but um, it's really for international Traders at least in my opinion. so um, or maybe some short sellers but anyways nonetheless. Uh, thank you guys for tuning in I Hope you enjoyed this episode I hope you hit the Thumbs Up And subscribe right now we're at 3,600 thumbs up and I said once we get 10,000 I can upgrade this monitor so that's not on this video. The thumbs up are on the video that's in the series.

So if you haven't already hit the thumbs up, please do it because I cannot wait to replace this monitor. This is the next thing I need to replace so please hit the thumbs up. Help me get a new monitor hopefully I don't know. Maybe by the end of next week or the week after I can get a new one.

All right and I'll see you guys back at it on Monday morning. Have a great weekend and reminder as always in case you didn't know, trading is risky. My results aren't typical I've been trading for a long time I Have a lot of experience so manage your risk, take it slow and practice in a simulator before you put real money on the line. I'll see you back here Monday morning.