Learn A Consistently Profitable Strategy To Trade

So, let's talk about trading. And again, we're going to talk today about GAP, specifically about the strategy that I use in the market. Um, I think everybody knows me. My name is Liss Armo. I own my own company called the Stock Swoo and been trading now for almost 20 years. It's hard to believe. Um, but I'm going to talk about how to learn a consistently profitable strategy to trade. In order to make money in the market, you need a strategy that works in any market conditions. Whether the market is bullish, whether the market is bearish, we had a big rally in the market today. We'll see if it follows through. What if it does? What if it doesn't? You have to be able to make money regardless. So, we had a good trade today. Actually, we shorted Apple, which worked, and the market rallied. So again, you need to find something that's you can trade that works in any environment, in any market condition. So welcome. We're going to talk about trading today. We're going to talk about gaps. Again, if you have questions, you can plop the question in the room or you can always email me afterwards at Melissatheswish.com. You can follow me on X, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn. And if you have questions, you can call me 9293200 GAP. So, it's hard to believe. I mean, it is seriously hard to believe that we are really at the halfway point, a little bit more than halfway through the end of 2026. It is shocking actually to me that it is August already. I feel like this year has flown by, but it is a good time to take a break, take a Saturday, take a Sunday, re-evaluate where your trading is at. If you're trading or if you've been thinking about trading, what are you waiting for? You know, it's a good time to get organized with your goals because you still have five more months left in the year to achieve your goals. Some people that are trading with me are retired. They want to make extra money on the side. Some people are trading full-time but haven't yet figured out how to do it or they're not making enough money really or as much as they want to. And some people want to do it for career. You know, there's it's good to write stuff down. I'm firm believer in that. I have a lot of notebooks. I'm constantly writing stuff down. Notebooks, notes, worksheets, on stickies. That's how I set my goals. I write it down. You want to, you know, get involved with something if you're going to trade that has the potential that you can earn the income you want to in the market. Be able to do it. Again, have a strategy that sets up on a regular basis. And if you're thinking about doing this seriously as your career, then you need a game plan. You can't just quit your job and jump into the trading without having any idea what to do because then you will start to gamble. You will basically be gambling. I mean, when I decided I wanted to change careers, it was because I was exhausted. I was working too many hours doing mortgages, and I just really wanted to get out and do something different. And I tell you, it's a it's a complete, you know, 180 degrees difference the career that I have now than the career I had before. One of the biggest reasons is again, I have weekends off. The stock market is not open on the weekends. So, you know, I have every weekend off and the market is only open from 9:30 to 4:00 and I'm doing a lecture with you here right now, but I'll be done in an hour. So, you know, I worked a lot of hours doing my mortgage job. And I think people in general, their employers expect a lot from them nowadays. And it's very different. And if you're retired again, you may, you know, come to the point that your retirement income is really not supporting you the way that maybe it would have 30 years ago or 40 years ago. You know, uh, pensions are not the same and people's retirement accounts are not the same. Social Security doesn't cover your income. If you live in the United States, you get Social Security. it it uh things have changed. Things have changed. I mean, there's a lot of people that retired or they're now working part-time jobs. So, there could be lots and lots of reasons you want to trade, but you got to get serious about doing it and you have to get organized. And I'm telling you that this is something that you can do. Everybody wants everything now, today, yesterday. Everybody is very impatient. But again, you can get to the point where you achieve your goals if you're willing to invest the time, money, and plan. Plan and take steps towards that plan to make it happen. Nobody knows how long it's going to take for things to click for you. Sometimes people do the class and things click for people right away. You know, sometimes people take trades before they even do the class and then they're making money before the class. It's everybody is a different frame of reference. Everybody's coming from a different place. Everybody has a different learning curve that comes to me. The point is though to learn it and do it. And so again, if this is something that you want to do for a full-time career, it's part-time hours. We trade in the morning. We're done in the morning quick and early for the most part. Again, today I helde a little bit a little bit later, which all worked out. But for the most part, I'm done in the morning, usually between 10:00 10:30. So if you want to do other things with your life in the afternoon, again, this is a great career. So what is the type of strategy that I trade? It is called gaps. And I created a system where I coined the term golden gaps because I felt that finding a gap that would have a high odds of working was like finding gold in the market. And that's really how I came up with the idea. So again, why trade gaps? Because there's something that sets up every single day in the market. If you're going to do this full-time and you want to make money Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, you've got to have something that can pay you on a regular basis. And again, training is something that it's really a skill set. It's like if you were playing a sport, you know, you wouldn't just all of a sudden decide you want to play basketball and then get on one of the best teams in the world. You have to practice, practice, practice. That's how trading is, too. The problem is a lot of people practice doing things that actually are not good. So they never really developed this necessarily skill set to actually make money. So for me I developed a skill set to trade gaps and I usually short. Now sometimes I do go long. We did a long today. I have no problem going long but again I'm looking for a gap if I go long. I'm not buying the dip for example. But if you decide that you want to trade for a career and do it, the sky's is the limit for you, you know. So, I mean that the benefit is how long is it going to take you to learn how to do it? I don't know. But the sky's is the limit once you know how to do it. Do you know what I'm saying? Because the only thing stopping you is how much you risk then to for how much you make. And again, everybody wants to make a lot of money. No matter where you live, no matter how old you are, how young you are, everyone wants to have financial success. So let's talk about a little bit what is a gap. So this is a chart of the QQQs. A stock gaps when the closing price is different from the opening price. So every day the US stock market closes at 4:00 and every day it opens at 9:30. So I'm going to go back here just a couple of days. Middle end of July again. Today is August 3rd. But the market closed at one price here. Right there you can see it. It closed green. Was green. We did rally that day. And so 4:00 it closed and the next day it had a gap down. So this was approximately around 7:04 and change and we gapped down the next day here around 692 something I think it was. So the price opened lower. Now again this is a chart of the QQQs ETFs. I could have picked any one of a number of charts but anyways we had a gap down. So I developed a system where I will find the gap and then determine if that gap will continue in the direction of the gap which this did and we did play this short. We were actually already short here. Why? This was a gap. The market closed here, gap down, although this rallied first before it dropped. So we were in a little bit early. Now there also are bullish gaps. Just going to go over here again. This is what happened last week on Thursday. This was the 29th. We closed at one number here. Again, I'm on the QQQ's and then we open higher. Okay, so far this is hell. This is around 675 and change and we rally. So, you could have bought this bullish gap. Now, can you go long every bullish gap and short every bearish gap and make money? No. There's many, many times things flip. Here was an example. Closed here, gap down, this flipped. So, again, I'm not going long this, okay? But if you shorted this here, basically it closed with a gain. You would have lost here. Here's another example. We had a gap up here that fell. Again, if you went long here, you lost because the market fell that day. So, you get gaps every day. They're not always good. So, I said, you know what? Let me figure out a way to find the good ones. And one of the reasons I like to trade gaps is because the profits happen fast. For the most part, most of my trades go day trades within the first half hour of the day in and out very quick, sometimes in minutes, maybe an hour. And for the most part, most options that I do go within 24 to 48 hours. It doesn't mean I kill it if the trade takes two more than two days for the option, but sometimes it takes a couple of days, but I'm doing the Friday expirations, which means, you know, that's not that long anyways. You know, I'm not paying for leaps or long-term options. So, even a week or 3 4 days for a trade to have a move is actually pretty quick. Okay, that's pretty quick. So, again, we're not long-term investors. I'm trading. I'm a trader. So, I'm looking for momentum. If the momentum comes in, I'm in the right direction. I'm going to profit whether of a small size or a big size. Same thing for you. If you're in the wrong direction, you're going to lose. And one of the things is again with options trades a lot of people just you know you don't understand you have to get the direction right but you also have to get the timing right too because you always have a fixed date and any questions here from the people that came in late you can plop it in the room. So again, why trade gaps? Because you could do it from home. You could do it from your office. You could do it from anywhere in the world. I have people that are trading options with me. They didn't do the class. They're not in the room. They trade options. They get the trades. They're they're working, you know, they're not even doing this full-time. They're just making money on the side. So, I mean, not everyone wants to trade full-time. You can do it on the side if you want to. But if you learn how to trade the market, the benefit is you can be your own boss and work from home. And again, if you're retired, it's extra income, which takes less stress off of you. And if you want to do this full-time, you can set your own schedule and work just a short time a day for a comfortable income. Again, not everybody has to swing for the fences and make, you know, thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars a week. You could risk $200 a trade. And what would be your goal? trying to make 200 one one to one. Your goal could be $1,000 a week. What's wrong with that? That's $4,000 a month. Again, that's an extra 50 grand a year. That's that's not nothing to sneeze at. Okay. And as an extra income on top of whatever other income you have going on, that's actually pretty good, especially since a lot of people are losing. So, again, there's a trading strategy I trade and teach. It sets up very quickly in the morning. The strategy is gaps. Gaps not only work fast, but they also offer a good riskreward payout. This is important because you need a sustainable trading method if you want trading to be your career. The last couple of weeks in the market, uh, well, really since June, okay, the market has been following. I'm talking about the QQQ's. It's been very difficult for people who just want to go long. They've been losing, losing, losing, losing, losing. I know we rallied today. Do we set the low for a while here? I don't know, maybe, maybe not. But the point is, people were losing since the beginning of June because they didn't know what to do and they just kept buying the market thinking they would keep going up. So again, that's what you're looking for. You're not going to have that every day. You may have that once in a while, but not every day. Not even if you're in the same trend as the market. Okay? So, if this is something you want to do and take it seriously or even do it for a living, you must find a strategy that has number one, a predictable and reliable setup on a regular basis. Something that sets up almost daily. And I'm saying almost daily because you will have some days that might be slow. It's not often, but you might have a day or two in a month that you don't trade. And then you need a big move because if you get a big move, whether you have a small size or whether you have a big size, you'll be able to make money. Okay, any questions here so far from anyone? How are we doing? Okay, going to keep going. Any questions, let me know. So again, we're talking about working, extra money, inflation. We have an unemployment number this Friday that's going to move the market. Could mean the market continues up, makes new highs. Could mean could make the market crash if it's a bad number. Could be, you know, an indicator that the Fed will do something depending on what the number is. We don't know. So lots of days there's lots of economic data and that affects the market, too. Plus, we have the war going on, which again, so far, everybody thinks that the war is going to be over soon. Once again, a deal's going to be made. I don't think that's true. I mean, I could be wrong. We'll see to think positive. But there's a lot of things that affect the market and all of these things are out of our control. Today's world is not the same as 25 years ago, 10 years ago, even six years ago before CO. You know, CO was 2020. It's hard to believe. It feels like it was longer than 6 years ago, but that was only 6 years ago. What we think is a secure job today may be gone tomorrow. And you have no idea how many stories I've heard over the years just since I've had the business with people with trading and different things that have happened with their careers in their life. And I experienced that myself when I was doing mortgages when of course the banks collapsed in 2007208 with the big bailout. I personally experienced that. You know, although things for the mortgage industry were always kind of up and down with getting loan approvals, but that really was catastrophic for the mortgage industry at the time and that wasn't any fault of my clients or the even the companies of the banks that I worked for. We can be great employees, productive, outgoing, hardworking, which I think you know a lot of people are are hardworking actually and it may not even matter to our employer in the end if the company can't keep you on. So sometimes again people feel like things are completely out of their control. If you feel like everything's out of your control, you're going to feel like you know a victim to the circumstances of the market or your job or the economy and you're going to make wrong choices for yourself. You may not control the unemployment number, what's going to happen with the war or anything else, but you can control your own decisions what you make for yourself. Maybe it's not the decisions that you wanted to make for yourself. Maybe you thought things should be easier for you at this point in your life. Especially if you're retired. I hear this a lot from people. They're retired and they're like frustrated and upset or angry. Things should be easier. Prices are too high. You've heard it all before. You know, or if you haven't, I'm telling you, if a company has poor management, they may fail and has nothing to do with you. Or your industry might fail. Again, that's what happened with the mortgage industry. And it's nothing to do with you. You are a skilled person with a great mind and you can work for yourself in the market. You can again everybody's a different skill set. So maybe it takes you xyz amount of weeks or months or years or days. So what at least you get on the right path and you start doing it and you then you create your own security. You understand your own job security, your own financial security. Then it's up to you. Then you're not a victim to the other circumstances of things that happen. Then you have more money coming in and when gas prices go up and prices of everything go up because of gas prices, then you can still pay for them. and you can still live. You can create your own opportunity by taking upon yourself to learn how to trade the market and make money trading. And to be honest with you, it's fun. I mean, it really, really is fun. It is fun trading and making money. It's really fun. Honestly, I don't like losing. Some trades I do lose, but for the most part, I win. And it never stops being fun. Never. So, again, it's something that you've got to get into and decide if it's something you want to do. If you're not, if you've never traded before, you don't know what I mean. If you never made thousands of dollars in a couple of minutes, you don't know what I mean either, you know. But um you will if you if you do it, you know, but all through the years whenever I started trading, whenever I was trying to figure everything out, I knew that I only needed one good trade a day to make money. One good gap, that's all I needed. And then I developed a system because I realized that one quality strategy is all you need. So I've been doing the same thing since I started. Although when I started, I didn't know what I was doing. I developed the system myself. But one quality strategy is all you need to learn to pay yourself in a regular basis in the market. Knowing one good strategy you can replicate over and over for profits can really change your trading world. If you're someone that jumps around a lot from thing to thing to thing, you're going to have a problem. You're going to have a problem because you'll never really have 100% conviction in anything. And when market conditions change or flip-flop, then you're really going to have a problem going long, going short, going with the market, getting the market wrong, you know, which a lot of people did, I think since June. Having one powerful strategy that pays you will open up your eyes to the true profit potential of the market. The market can offer you a real lifelong career if you have a strategy that makes money consistently. Again, what strategy can offer you these things, golden gaps? So, let's talk about it. What is a golden gap? Again, this is a term I designed myself and a name I made myself. A golden gap is a gap that moves in the direction of the gap. So, I'm never doing the reverse. Okay. Who makes golden gaps? Institutional money makes and creates these gaps. Big money in the market. Just pull up Apple since we did that today. Oh, we did a Friday, too. I have these trades in here. Let's go back to Friday. This was the 30th. Apple closed at 33343. Okay, it had an earnings and then a gap down here and opened at 304.81. So this is whatever $30 plus. So again, I got up in the morning, rated the gap, this gap rated good to short. So that's what we did. We shorted it. We'll talk about this trade here in a minute and we did it today too. And you could really see here today where we came all the way down um almost broke Friday's low. This is this was a short today, too. So what made this gap? Institutional money. That's what made that gap. Now, is every gap created with institutional money? No, absolutely not. And that's how I developed the system to figure out which ones were and which ones weren't because I knew if I could find institutional money, whether it's buying a stock or selling a stock or shorting a stock, it would be easier for me to get in with any any position size I wanted to 100 shares, a thousand shares, 10,000 shares, whatever, because the big money would move the stock and then I would just decide where I want to get out. In the case of a bullish gap, institutions are buying the stock. Okay, good example of this today again is the spy. If you went long in the spy today was a bullish gap and the market got bought, almost made new highs. Therefore, the stock moves higher in the trading day. Again, the spy is an ETF. You can trade gaps in ETFs. It's still a gap. Okay. In the case of a bearish gap, institutions are selling or shorting the stock. That's what we did in the Apple. Therefore, the stock moves lower on the trading day. Again, if something is falling, you have to be short or in a put. If something is rallying, you have to be long or in a call. You don't want to be long something that's falling. Again, this is the antithesis of what many people teach. They want to buy the dip. If you're buying the dip, guess what? You're buying something that's falling. Why would you do that? Why would you do that? Okay, so the golden gap is about high probability. Anything that can put the odds in your favor to trade is going to give you an edge. And that's what you need because there's too many people out there and too many people trading and too much money in the market and too many people taking positions. It's opened up so wide now. Again, people don't even need 25,000 of a margin account. You could trade with a small account at any broker virtually nowadays. And there's so many out there plus prop accounts. The Golden Gap system gives you an edge because it uses a rating or scoring system to pick the stock to trade. So, this is again I was talking about the fact that I like to write things down. This keeps me on, you know, target to not just do things willy-nilly to guests to go with the news or the television or whatever. This is a writing stuff down, going through the rating system. Again, this is what I do every day myself and this is what I teach in the class. This is how I make the picks. It keeps me organized and it keeps me on point because again then I could say well I think this is lower or higher because it rates this many points and then I can go back and refer to that and then I can see why I think that's going to happen and then when the market opens up then I take the trade either as a day trade or an option. But again, I'm the worksheet, the points tell me what to do, so I don't have to guess or go by a feeling. I think we're going to rally today because I think the war is over because Trump said blah blah blah. Well, you're guessing or trading on a Trump tweet or something which could fail. Do you know what I mean? And then you're all over the place. It reads the price of the gap and using technical analysis on an advanced level pinpoints which stock to trade that day and what direction. So you follow it and then you do it. The high probability is in the quality and detail in the rating system. 26 points seems like an enormous amount of detail, but it only takes about 5 10 minutes to rate one gap. If you're new, it takes less than 5 minutes once you become experienced with the system. So again, when you're trading and you're used to doing it over time, then it it becomes faster. So the Golden Gap system is a 26 point professional bearish gap range system. I developed the system to have high odds because I'm thinking if I want to be consistently profitable, I need the odds in my favor. How am I going to get the odds in my favor? I need a gap that rates 20 points or more. I always take it in the direction of the gap. I feel if I get that, then institutional money is going to be with me. Then it is making the gap. And again, not every gap is made with institutional money. The whole purpose of the system is to help you evaluate which gap to trade each morning using a checklist. Again, it keeps you organized. you write it down. It's on a piece of paper. You do it and then you go back and re refer to it and in that way then you stay on track. Whereas I find a lot of people are trying to guess direction of the market, trying to take trades with the market. Sometimes they get it right, sometimes they get it wrong, but it's not consistent. Very often the market will gap up and fail. Okay. Now today we gapped up and rallied, but that's not every day. That's not every gap. Just like every gap down doesn't sell off. So, the point of using a checklist is to help you have higher odds and a higher probability of success because when you take a trade, you're risking money. There is no getting around that. You know, a lot of people want to get into these prop accounts. Now, I don't know if anybody here is trading a prop account. There's there's a lot of them out there. I don't know what ones are legit, what ones are not legit. You've got to do your own research and your own due diligence. But I will tell you that some might not be legit. Okay? I mean, if you want to trade at a real retail broker and trade your own money, that means you got to risk it. The benefit is when you make money, it's yours. It's yours right aways immediately. You can take it out the next day. So again, if you know you got to take risk to make money, which people say they want to do, but I find people really don't want to. People say, "I want to trade. I want to trade. I want to make money." But then when it comes to the time to take risk, they don't really want to. Well, then well, then you don't really want to do it. You know what I'm saying? Because you the payoff comes from being able to take the risk. However, you can't take risk just for risk's sake. You follow me? Because that's gambling. You say, "Well, I'm going to gamble. I'm going to go, you know, I'm going to go to the roulette table. I'm going to put going to try red. and I'm going to play three times red and then I'm going to play three times black and you know whatever. No, I mean this is a highly skilled thing that you're sitting down at your desk and going through 26 things to determine how it totals what direction you want to do it and there's a thought process to it. It's not just oh the earnings were good it's going to rally or oh the earnings were bad it's going to fall or again the market's up because the war is over which I personally don't think is going to end up being the case. I said that months ago when they did the ceasefire, but it doesn't mean we're not going to rally right now. We could rally for the next week. We could rally for the next month and then it all could fall apart again. Do you know what I'm saying? So, but but none of that has anything to do with you deciding what to do on any particular day. You can't just trade the news or tweets. Any questions here so far? How we doing? Does everyone know how to chat? You go to chat, then you have to go down to new chat, and then you have to go to my name and pick my name to chat. Joan knows how to do it. If anyone else knows how to do it, I'm not seeing any other chats here. Nobody has any questions. Okay, so um where were we? Okay, how do you find gaps? There's they're everywhere. I mean, there's lots of gaps. There's no shortage of gaps. Now, I prefer to look for bearish gaps. So, most days I'm looking for gaps to the downside. If I don't find any good gaps, then I'll look for bullish gaps. But, I mean, there's gaps all over the place. You can find them every day. Again, the markets open 5 days a week, close on the weekends. So, we have a gap pretty much every night and something. Now, it's rare, but you might have like a neutral gap or a nothing gap, in which case it closes and opens almost at the same price point like right here. So, most things gap though every day, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to go in the direction of the gap, follow through, or even flip. A lot of people think gaps fill themselves. If you played Apple to fill the gap, you're down. You lost. It did not work. Okay. So, again, I don't do anything with that. So, a lot of people say, "Well, how many gaps do you get then?" Again, in earning season, which we're in right now, we could get three to five a day. In non-earning seasons, we could get three to five a week. Okay? But there are gaps for other reasons. Right now, it's earning season. There's a lot of gaps because it's earning season. Most stocks gap on earnings. You don't know if it's going to be good or not till it gaps. You don't know if it's going to be up or down until it gaps either, but this is the busiest time of the year to train. Now, in between, yes, we still got gaps. It could be sector gaps, could be with economic data, like I was talking about the unemployment number Friday, could be something like with the war news, but it's not as busy as right now. It's a very busy time. So, a quality gap is one that rates high enough to trade based on the 26 point rating system. So again, I also trade options. Some people just want to do options. They like them. You can get in and you can just pay the cost and you don't have to worry about having a margin account necessarily for the buying power. People think it's cheaper. You are correct that it is. I mean, this cost of a spy right now is very high. So, I mean, doing a spy option is cheaper if you're buying a call, for example, than just going long the market. But I do options and day trades, okay? Or margin trades. So you can use the system to do options. Again, with options, you got to get the direction right and you got to get the timing right. Because if you get the timing wrong, guess what? You're going to lose. Even if you get the direction right. And sometimes, to be honest with you, that stinks. It stinks. Sometimes I'm in a trade, I'm like, I know this is going to go. I know this is going to go. I know this is going to go. And I and I run out of time. Sometimes then I do it again. So again, it's tricky to get the timing right. That takes experience and a skill set as well. But the thing that you need behind you to make money in options is momentum for sure. Everyone's worried about this thing, that thing, losing time, value, the delta. Listen, if you get momentum behind you, you're going to make money if you're in the right direction. if it goes fast enough. Again, the whole point of momentum is something that moves big that moves big. So, I'm looking and saying, "Okay, well, this is moving pretty big, fast." So, again, it's kind of funny looking at this today, but we're going to go over an options trade we did. Here was the trade Wednesday the 22nd. We did the QQQ700 expired last week. So, let's look at the gap the 22nd. Oh, this was the one I was telling you about. It was this one here. So, the market closed here, gap down, got in the trade. See where we are here? Snug as a bug. Bought the puts. So, I'm buying a put to enter it. Selling it to exit it. Okay. Then the next day, it gapped down. Boom. Look at that. So, you were in the money here right aways day two. So, you had to take it. You had to hold it. You were down in the trade when it rallied because remember this is a put. This is a short, but you got up in the morning, then boom. Okay, now I'm also showing this one because this one went crazy crazy big and I didn't hold it. So, I mean, I'll talk about that in a minute after I go over the trade. Um, Walter saying, "You're right about Iran. Trump is more interested in the business deal. He's working the national security, so we'll have these perennial cycles of war and peace. The only thing Trump has is good luck." Someone actually said to me today, which I thought was kind of interesting, which I have to bring up in the room tomorrow. someone said this is h like this is the same thing that happened a couple weeks ago and basically she was right you know she was right so again remember when we had that rally whenever that was beginning of May or something so who knows we could go straight up from here for a month and then we could fall and collapse again but at some point this will come to a head I don't know what the outcome of that will be though so that's that's the other thing so it's very difficult to think about going long and holding for a sustained period of time. Personally, again, I'm not long the market here. I I'm not. And if I do go long the market, I probably am going to just do it as a regular trade where I'm in and out where I'm in and out. Like, I didn't do the spot today. I could have I could have. And if I had, I can tell you right now, I would have been out before the close because I don't want to get caught caught in something that goes against me because I don't have 100% conviction this is over. Just like Walter said. So, there's other people out there that agree with me that this may not be the end of this thing. Anyways, this came here. Now, I want to show you. So, I didn't got out and I'm going to show you the trade, but I want to show you here. This kept going all the way down. So, we did the 700s here approximately above where the price of the 700 number was. And look where it went. This was really ridiculous. Crazy where it did it. So, this moved like $45, $50 from the point we did it in the money. I didn't hold it all the way down here. I'll tell you, I just didn't because this is actually momentum. It may look a little funky because it's not a big fat red bar, but if I move this up here and went boom and just drew it, it's the same thing because again, this fell. It just took it overnight in the gap. Same same point, same philosophy. So again, we did this trade here in a Wednesday. Cost was 950, which you could say, well, that's expensive. But listen, I'm telling you, the market's expensive. So 10 contracts was an advanced trader risk. Again, looking for 100% or as close as I can get it. Next day it was up, got out, made 89%. That's a good solid trade. What if you did one? If you were $950, you could have made $850 bucks. You would have had to hold it overnight, get in, get out. So again, the whole point of trading is momentum. Whether the momentum comes in on the day like this big fat red bar here, you could have short it or it comes in overnight in the gap. It doesn't matter to me. It doesn't matter to me if I'm doing options. Now, if I'm doing a day trade, I have to get out that day. I have to get out that day. So, here you would have lost as a day trade because it didn't go in time. It fell into the close but ran out of time. Okay? So if I'm in a margin trade, I'm not holding it overnight. This is fine. This is I can only the most I can lose is this is my risk. So if I'm really willing to let it ride, again, we talked about taking risk, you let it ride. Now, if you're like, "Oh my god, that's too much." Again, do one. Do one. Any questions about that. So we're I'm looking for good riskreward payout. I'm trying to get good riskreward. I'm trying to get a good return on investment in options and a good riskreward in day trades. For every amount you risk per trade, your goal is to make at least that back in each trade. That's what we're trying to do. Whether it's an option, whether it's a day trade, if something goes to a larger target, which that Q trade did, I just didn't hold it. Do you understand what I'm saying? But if it goes to a larger target target, you can make much more. What you could have done was you could have done two, but out of one, held one. I don't usually split my positions like that, but that's a personal preference. It's not a rule in the system. How you choose to money manage is part of your overall money management plan as a career trader. You decide that. You can ask me what I think or ask me for advice. But trading is ultimately about making money and booking it on a consistent basis. So for me, I'm like, "Okay, I'm going to take this trade, get out, then I'm going to do another trade, then I'm going to ride it." That's usually what I do. I call it chunking it. Chunking it out. Take the trade, get the move, get out. Take the trade, get the move, get out. That's what I do. But you could have held that. Okay. Having solid profitable trades with good riskreward on a regular basis will eventually help you take more size. I think that's important, too. The more you're green, whether it's 50% or 89% or 120%. That helps boost your confidence. And again, some trades go, you know, three to five times what you risk, sometimes even more. We were talking about momentum. We were talking about control. We were talking about institutional money. Again, that's what happened there with the market. It seems crazy now after today's rally, but really that sell-off still happened. Again, it all has to do with timing and money management, but you're still not going to make money even if you have great money management if you don't get the direction right of the pick is going over here to the market. So, basically, this is where we ran up to today. So, it seems like that, you know, you're like, "Oh, that happened." But I mean again, it did happen. It did happen. So all we did is come down and go back up. That's all we did really. That's all we did. Everybody's getting excited. This is all we did was fall and then reverse back here. So I mean again, this doesn't mean that anything's going to stick with Iran, that the rally is going to continue. Maybe it does, maybe it does. I don't know. But we'll see. But think about it. Just think about the whole philosophy of what I'm trying to say. How do you make money trading? It's not impossible. If you get the direction right, you understand you'll make money. Okay, that's fine. Well, how do we get the direction right? Well, we're looking for big money because if you've got big money behind you, even if you have retail traders going against the direction of the big money, the big money will roll on over those in those little baby traders. So again, that's why it's so critical. And if you don't have institutional money on your side, you're not going to get the momentum. So it's not going to move. You're going to be in a trade and you're like, "Oh god, this isn't moving. This isn't moving. This is a pain in the butt. Why isn't it moving?" You You know what I mean? If you've ever been in trades like that where you feel like it's not moving, it's stuck. It's a snail. It makes complete sense that you have to find institutional money in order to be successful. Any questions? Here's another one. Um, we did the spy. Oh, this was the same day. 7:22. We did the 740s here. Closed here. Gapped down. Bought the 740 puts. Got up in the morning. Boom. Drop. Boom. Again. This was the 22nd. This was the 23rd. Fell. And again, I really didn't hold this either. And I could have. Cost was $4.20. Sold at $ 950. Profit was $10,600. 126% return investment. What if you did three? Again, turning your money over more than 100% is a good trade. You book it, take the next one. Okay? And you could have done one, could have spent $420, still would have turned it over 126%. And again, this is not the best best exit. I don't always get the best exit. My goal is not to hold something to a piggy target for every trade. My goal is to make money. Okay? So, you can do this every day. That is what you're trying to do. I think we're talking about risk. The better you get, the longer you do it, the risk doesn't bother you as much. That's the best thing I can say. Like I've been doing this a long time. Like I don't get in my head about it. Once you start to get in your head about it, then all goes wrong. Then you start to gamble. You know what I mean? Like if you believe in yourself, you have confidence in yourself, you have confidence in the strategy you're using, which I do. I mean, I obviously do. I've been doing a long time and I invented the strategy. But I don't really I put my stop in when I do my day trades and I have my risk my options but I don't it doesn't get in my head. Obviously I have to take risk to profit but I don't overthink it. I don't worry about it. Do you understand what I'm saying? I know that some trades going into it are going to lose. But I also know and have enough confidence in myself that I've been doing this long enough that more trades I take are going to win than lose. So if you're in your head too much about the risk, if you're too worried about spending the money, then you're going to screw up. And you say, "Well, how do you get over that?" Well, you know what? Start small because you will gain the confidence even with one contract, a 100 shares, so that you can get to the point where you can be more like me, where you just don't even think about it. You're just doing it and you're focused on what you're supposed to be focused on, which is again the chart, the gap. Do you know what I'm saying? The rating system, not all the other stuff. But you know a lot a lot a lot of people are just so focused on taking risk and the risk and then they get scared and they do crazy things. You know what I mean? Does that make sense? All right. So let's talk about Apple again. These are day trades. Uh we did this. Well here this was today's so this is a one minute chart. Here was today dropped fell. This is a one minute. We entered the trade at 307 short. This is a margin trade. Added at 306. Average price was 30650. Really nice drop. So I'm looking for a dollar or more here. And I got more than three bucks. Almost four. Very nice trade. And I had a good size of this. 5,000 shares. You could have taken less. You could have taken a,000 shares. I don't always do an ad in every trade, but I did. $18,500 profit. So, here was the trade. Short, add drop out. Done. Boom. Actually, that came down, I think, and broke into the close. If I had held that, I think I would have made more. Let me look. Well, close. No, it got down to 30268. 30256. So again, every morning I'm looking for this every morning. Every morning, every morning again, and then you just do it and you get in, get out. Now, this is a margin trade again. We did this on Friday. Uh here was the one minute stock closed here, gap down. Here you can see the gap, shorted it, got in, boom, got the drop 303.99, added it again the same price, so it didn't hurt my price. And I actually was in this trade for quite a long time because I really thought it was going to get to 300. I was I had to wait all afternoon, but it it paid me. It paid me. But here was the trade again. I thought this would go here early in the morning. It was like 30 cents off the low here in the morning, but it paid. So this again was a short. If you were long here, you lost. Okay? And again, you could have done a put. Could have got in and out in a in a put, too. So whether you want to do options or day trades or whether you want to do both, the idea is to find the best pick. Get the direction right and let the trade play out where the momentum comes in to carry your trade where you're up and then of course you have to get out. Okay. Now, if you're in the trading room, I'm calling the trades live. you would have done those Apple trades with me if you were in the room if you wanted to do them. But this whole idea where people think, "Oh, I just can't do it. This is so impossible. You know, I've been trying for years and there's no way." No, that's just not true. You can make thousands of dollars a week doing it. And you don't have to risk my size either. Again, I've been trading for a very long time. You can risk a small size and still make money. There's just there's so much money in the market. Most people lose because they don't know have a good system. And even though some days they make money, they lose more than they make money because they're not consistent with the system that they use. Again, I bet a lot of day traders made money today because the market rallied. So they went long and people probably went long stuff or bad stuff. People just went long anywhere. But it doesn't mean it's going to work tomorrow. Do you follow what I'm saying? So I mean again, when the market's power trending, whether it's up or down, usually stocks go with the direction of the market and then it's easy to make money. But a lot of people don't get the market right every day. But many retail traders prefer to go long. So what will happen if this rally doesn't hold? What will happen if we sell off again? What will happen if the cues which are lagging look nowhere like the spy and nowhere near the highs continue to fall with the one sector that's crashed with SanDisk and MU and AMD and INTC. Again, the market will not continue higher then and then people will lose lose lose. So people had a rally today. Whether it sustained continues or it was a relief rally or a fake out, I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't care. All I do is get up in the morning and see what to do and then I take the trade and I do it. And again, that's the easiest thing to do because again, trying to figure out what's going to happen with Trump or the war or anything 6 months from now, 3 months from now, who's going to win the midterms, what's going to happen in January 2027, what's going to happen with the Fed? Are they going to raise rates? Are they going to lower rates? We're not psychics. We don't even need to worry about any of that stuff to trade or make money. I'm we're not I'm not a long-term trader. I'm taking a trade. I'm shorting Apple. I'm getting out. That's it. Boom. 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour a day. You follow me? It's a lot easier to take to day trade than to be in stuff long term. Any questions? Saw some people come in late. Any questions for any anyone? Again, you need a plan of action to win every day. It has to be strategic. This is a great slide. It's the mouse trying to get the cheese. He's got a helmet on. He sees the danger. And that's where you have to go after it quickly and get the cheese, which is get the train, get the money, get out fast, quick. You put the stop in. That's your helmet. And then the money you're up. You take the cheese and eat it and get the money. Book it. Then you don't have to worry about Trump tweets or anything else. That's literally you're grabbing the cheese. You're grabbing the cheese. And again, your protection is your stop and you're you have a plan of action not to run in circles here around this but to get the cheese. Just like I say, my plan of action is one trade done, two trades done. So the whole philosophy behind the golden gap 26 points is what? To analyze a large time frame to make the trend decision of the directional bias for the gap. All large traders of every kind look at large time frames to make decisions, particularly institutional traders. So that's that's what I'm doing when I'm rating it. To make entry decisions and exit decisions based on a small time frame of the one minute chart, which has a high degree of focus and accuracy, all those trades in Apple were on the one minute. It moves fast and moves quick. Using the daily chart to make the decision for the stock pick, allows for accuracy in the direction. And using the one minute chart allows for good risk-to-reward trades with accuracy. So personally, I love trading fast at the one minute chart. I mean, I I'm very good at it. I talk fast. I trade fast. I My brain works very fast, so it's good. But if you're in the room, I'm calling the trades. So, you have the benefit of taking the trade with me if you're in the room with me when I call it. Um, I don't know what you meant there, Matt. Are you talking about the mouse? Uh the only difference between a beginner trader, intermediate trader and an advanced trader is size. So a trader cannot risk more money per trade and take size until they know how to accurately trade over a period of you know days or weeks or months, whatever, whatever you feel comfortable. I think right now it's okay to trade size because it's earning season. It's busy. However, trading with size really should be your goal so you can build up your account and risk more. Even $1,000 is a really good risk. One play with size though can make your whole week. Two or three great plays a month can make your whole month, especially with options. I mean, we've really seen this. Again, if you have 200 shares, you can make $200 with a dollar move. 2,000, you can make 2,000 with a dollar move. So, a dollar is I'm trying to shoot for a dollar. Again, the amount you choose to risk must be in accordance with your individual risk parameters and the cash that you have and can risk in your account. Again, 8,000 shares of a stock is a dollar. If it moves, you know, you're up $8,000, $4, a thousand. I mean, again, the it's there are stocks that we trade that do this all day long. All day long, all the time, everywhere. The price points vary. If you don't want to do a margin trade, if you think the spy is too expensive, you can do a put, you can do a call. Okay, that's up to you. So, the Golden Gap course teaches a strategy and how to trade gaps. The course teaches a 26 point rating system to find the best stock to trade each day. If you come and take my class, this is what you're going to learn. Then you get up and do it yourself every morning. The course also teaches the students how to play this uh how to play it on the day, which is how to enter it and how to exit it. Now, while you're in the room, yes, I'm calling it. I'm giving the numbers with the stop and the entry and the exit, but you will learn how to do it yourself. The course teaches students chart analysis and technical analysis on an advanced level. So, the way that I look at charts is a little bit different than most places. Again, I told you I'm not buying dips and a lot of places that's what they're doing. I'm playing the gap and I'm actually playing it in the direction of the gap. I'm also not doing it for a gap fill, which lots of people do. So, it's a checklist. You go through one, two, three, four, five, six. You rate it. Total them up. Again, if you had done this with Apple, you would have said, "This is on. Let's do it." I didn't do anything else Friday. I liked it. Again, I chose to wait, but I really thought 300 was going to hit. And I was right. I was right. So, I mean, if you get up and you see five things, you can do five trades, [laughter] whether you do them as an option or a day trade. So gaps are just very useful tools because they help you determine where are the directions going to go. What what am I talking about? I'm talking about where the money is going to go. If there's buying coming in, money is coming in to buy the stock, the price is going to move up. If money isn't coming in, if people are selling it or even shorting it, the price is going to drop, which case then you have to be short, too. And again, when I total the rating system, that's what helps me figure this out. Any other questions here? Now, again, some people want to do longerterm trades. They want to do leaps or they want to hold options or they want to just swing trade. This is just experience and I'm not doing swing trades. But I will say my system again looks at institutional money. So much so so that 90% of the gaps I trade have followthrough for swing and core trades. Why? Because the golden gap 26 point rating system is a very specific and detailed read of the price in a gap. Uh one thing is example on the top of my head was Netflix where we shorted that all the way down. I'm not in that now but that you could have just shorted it as a swing trade for months. When a stock rates over 20 points per the system, the chart is damaged. Again, I'm talking about it to the downside as a short and selling continues to come into the chart to push the price down for further moves lower. So, if you don't want to do an option for a week and you're like, I want to take this to a bigger target or I want to give myself more time, want to buy it out, or you just want to do it as a swing trade, you can. More selling to more shorting means more momentum for you to capitalize on the first day and beyond if you know how to find spot and rate the gap per the golden gap rating system. Let me pull up that Netflix just see what it did today here. Probably rallied with the market a little bit. Again, we we were doing this for a while. So there you see it at least in the $100 price point area. So you could have just shorted it. So again, while I'm not doing swing trades that this is another way that you can use the system. So the point though is that institutional money continue to move it down in the downward direction. Okay. So again, the market is something that you may want to be looking at specifically if you look at stocks in your retirement account and you can use it to help you decide to get out of stuff. The market has gapped down and it's falling. You're like, "Well, maybe I want to exit this trade. Maybe I want to sell." Maybe you're in long and you want to sell it. Okay. Now, I get this question a lot, too. It's something I probably don't talk about enough, but I am teaching regular people. Like, regular people, some of them have never traded before or certainly have no idea what I do. Normal regular people can learn how to trade the market. It's true. I didn't know what I was doing when I started trading. I just taught myself. But now I teach regular people and I am teaching people that sometimes have traded before, sometimes that have not. Some are young, some are old. Some of the people I'm teaching have a lot of money and some don't have that much money. Some people I'm teaching know nothing and some have been stock brokers or have traded the market for over 20 years, but they don't know how to read a chart. They don't know what a gap is. They don't know how to short. Whatever your experience level is currently, if you're not having the success you want or not having any success at all with the market of losing, then it's time for you to step back and evaluate. don't continue doing the same thing getting nowhere which is exactly one of the things I think is the danger of people thinking the market now is bottomed out for the rest of the year that may not be the case and then people are going to end up losing losing losing again buying the dip is not a strategy sometimes it works but more times than others it doesn't end of the calendar year again getting into the fall getting into this time of the year is a good time to try to reorganize learn new information and become a more skilled and profitable trader Okay. Um, I don't know what you mean by 2.2%. Matt, you're talking about Netflix. I don't make trading decisions based on percentages if that's what you're asking me, just so you know. Um, this was a testimonial. Anyways, you can trade, you can make money on a regular basis, day trades and options. And if you want to do this for your career, again, I decided to do it and I just jumped into it. But I was a real risk taker back then, you know, and I didn't know what I was doing. So, a lot of people, they say they want to do this, but they don't understand that you have to be willing to take risk. But I'm telling you, it can really pay off. If I wasn't willing to take the risk that I did, it wouldn't have never paid off for me, you know? So, that's the thing. Sometimes in life, you have to be willing to take chances. So there's a lot of potential in the market for success and I'm helping people to do that through the class and teaching them what to do and then of course you know calling the trades in the room. Um any other questions here? Netflix was up 2.2% today. Okay. Yeah, I figured it would be up because the market was up. I figured I mean most things rallied today with the market but it doesn't mean you should have gone long necessarily. Do you know what I'm saying? Although I think the spy was a good long today. I I I mean I think it was. It almost made new highs. Now what else do you need to be successful besides the golden gut course? I call it the four C's. You need clarity. What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Do you want to trade full-time? or do you want to just extra money on the side? Get clear with your goals for doing this. You also have to be confident. Maybe you're not confident in this system until you do it. But you have to have confidence in yourself. You have to say, you know what, I'm going to figure this out. I'm smart enough to figure this out. I can figure this out. I can do it. And sometimes that takes work. There's a lot of books out there, a lot of videos, a lot of self-help stuff that you can help to to help you. I think when people are starting something new, you need to build your confidence and you also need conviction. This is you get this from seeing me call trades in the room and having them work. I mean, that's something that just I think is is hard to explain, but um one of the biggest trades we had in the past month was Tesla. And if anybody was in the room with me that day, Joan Joan Joan was there I think. Although I don't I don't think he did the trade. Joan Joan was too new. You know, if I you hear it in my voice when I talk, when I have a lot of conviction in somebody and then to see it play out the way that I called it, I think that really helps people with their conviction. And then of course the commitment, the commitment that you have to learn, understand, ask questions, get up in the morning early enough to trade and do the work, go through the ratings, do it, pay for the class, understand it, be committed to learning, be want to get better, want to get good. You get good at trading, then you can make a lot of money. You You're not just going to make a lot of money without getting good. I mean that when I decided I wanted to do this, I understood enough to understand that. Do you know what I'm saying? So again, I teach a class once a month. It's all the pieces of the puzzle that you need. It's the entries. It's the exits. It's the system in totality. Again, it's how to read institutional money in the gap, but it's the rating system that tells you how to do it. So, my class is called the Golden Gap course. It's a full two-day course on how to strategically find, pick, and play stocks that are professional bearish gaps. Class is online. You can be anywhere in the world and do it. I teach the class usually once a month. So the class for August is August 22nd and 23rd 9 to5 Eastern time. It's always a Saturday and a Sunday. Always a Saturday and a Sunday again because of the fact that people, you know, work usually during the week and then I can focus on teaching because I trade during the week. So the cost of the class is $6,999 and I'm doing a Central Park package if you're interested. at Central Park. It's beautiful. This includes the combo. It's the Golden Gap course, the trends class, and that price is $7,999. But I'm doing a package which includes the room, the market report, and the options newsletter free for one year and two mentoring sessions for one hours with me. And this is going on through Friday. Any questions? Some people I recognize, some people I do not recognize here. How are we doing? If you don't know how to train uh to chat and want to ask a question, you can always email me here. you haven't figured it out. For those of you that have not chatted again, some of you I recognize, some of you I do not recognize. Does anyone have any questions? Very interesting time to trade. I will say that and definitely going to be a busy week. Lots of economic data this week and then lots of earnings too, you know, I mean, which is great. But, you know, being in the room is invaluable because I'm calling the trades in the room live. I think it's very helpful for people. Um, and again, whether you want to do day trades or whether you want to do options is up to you. It's two 1-hour mentoring sessions, Matt, which you could do before the class or after the class, but probably after the class will be more beneficial for you if you have questions after the fact, like, well, I didn't understand this or something. But if you want to do them before the class, there's time because the class is not for three more weeks. So, anybody that joins this week will have the benefit of actually trading in the room with me that they can make money before the class because the class is not until the 22nd and the 23rd. So, that's up to you if you want to jump in and start trading already. But again, it's, you know, you got to get in the right path. I just cannot stress this enough. And I think again over the years I ve I just, you know, I'm lucky I guess in the sense that I knew I only needed one good thing to make money. I never jumped around a lot. I never was that I just never did that. I knew I only needed one thing. So I think the problem is people jump around too much. They they they just are jumping around from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing to thing. They always want this get-richqu thing. And that's not what this is. You're going to learn something. You're going to gain the skill. Hopefully, you will do my trades while you're learning it and make money while you're learning it so that you can get good that you can add size and do it yourself. You know what I'm saying? Good questions. Listen, if you're interested in the special or the class, email me at melissatheswswish.com. Have a fabulous, fabulous, fabulous evening and a good week trading.