What’s up everyone? How are you? Today we’ve got an extra special midday market recap for you. I talk a little bit about where I’m at on my million dollar journey. From $583 to one million, where am I at right now? I’m gonna talk about that during the midday market recap. I’m also gonna talk a little bit about my journey, getting started trading.

 

It’s now been nearly 10 years since I had a traditional nine to five job and, man, life is good. I love it. I’m gonna talk a little bit about that, a little bit about my strategy and a little bit about some of my students and, of course, I’m gonna talk about today’s trades. One stock I traded today, $960 profit in 30 minutes.

Life is good. It’s summertime, I’m gonna go outside, enjoy the day but watch the market recap. Enjoy it. Leave me comments, questions below, I’ll come back and answer them later today. All right, I’ll see you guys tomorrow in the chat room.

All right, everyone. We’re gonna go over trades from today. Another green day, that’s what I love. $960.84 cents of profit. This is just, kind of, right now low stress trading. I’m not taking big size, I’m not trying to swing to the fences. If I can get 500 to $1,000 a day I’m happy with that and I’m stopping there.

I’m not gonna overstay my welcome in this market. Today I traded for 30 minutes. 30 minutes of trading, $960 and now I’ve got the rest of the day to do whatever I want. That’s the dream, really, is to have that level of consistency.

Now, yesterday I made about $800, so today’s a little bit better than yesterday, but we’re still seeing a bit of choppiness in the market. We’re not seeing the level of follow-through that we saw in May or in the beginning of April.

What I mean by that is, in May and the beginning of April I was seeing back-to-back 3, 4, $5,000 days. We were seeing stocks go up 30, 40%. Right now it feels like we’re seeing a lot of stocks going up 5%, 10% but we’re not seeing those exaggerated moves.

One of the things that we know is that the market can get extremely hot. We can have these really big, kind of, parabolic, irrational moves where stocks just squeeze. They go up and up and up and, as an example, what’d we see last month? We saw IMTE, this stock go from $2.29 in one day to a high of $41.26. That’s crazy.

That was absolutely crazy and that level of exuberance, that got a lot of traders into the market looking for an opportunity to cash in and make some money. Inevitably, what we ended up seeing last month was a lot of really strong momentum and that’s why I finished the month with $75,000 of total profit. It was a great month. I mean, it really was pretty impressive. This month we’re seeing a little bit of a correction in the sense that we’re not seeing those exaggerated moves. When stocks do start to pop up they’re not always holding up as well. They end up fading back down, so it kind of feels like a market where we’re getting one step forward, two steps baack.

This is a market where you’ve got to be really disciplined. You gotta get in, get your profit and get the heck out before you lose it. So that’s what I’ve been doing. I don’t like to compare trading to gambling. There are some similarities when it comes to … you can either be a trader or you can be a gambler. I was talking to a student yesterday and I’m not gonna call you out by name, but he’s doing something that I used to do a lot.

What it is is he’s trading and he takes a couple of trades and he loses money and instead of walking away, he starts to get frustrated and he over trades. He starts revenge trading. You go from being down 3,000 to down 4,000, down 5,000 and then you get lucky. You get a $3,000 winner and now you’re only down 2,000. Then you try to get lucky again, and you’re down 8,000. And you try to get lucky one more time again and you’re down 16,000.

That’s what we call snowball days, right? It’s just, you let it go and go and go and at that point you’re not trading anymore. You’re just gambling. Like I said, I’m not calling him out as a mean thing or anything because I’ve been there and I’ve done exactly that. I did it so many times that I finally got the a point where I was like, “Ross, are you gonna be a trader or are you gonna be a gambler?” Because you can’t be both. You gotta follow rules.” For me, when I got to Las Vegas and I actually do gamble, knock on wood, I’ve never lost money in Las Vegas. I’ve always walked away with more money than I started with and it’s because of a strategy that I use. Now, the strategy that I use is a little bit risky but it works. I follow the rules to the tee.

If I go with $5,000, you know with Black Jack, I start with a $50 chip. If lose then I go to a hundred. If I lose again I got to 200. If I lose again I got to 400. If I lose again I go to 800. If lose again I go to 1600. And then when I win when I’m down 16, I make it back and I go back to breakeven or back to green. You keep doing that as long as the table has a high enough limit, you’ll always get back. You’ll always get back.

And then you have to know when to walk away. Statistically, you’re not gonna lose 25 times in a row so you know as long as you have the cash in your pocket, you can always get yourself out. So by using that strategy I always walk away with money in my pocket. It’s not a lot usually, it’s just a little bit but one thing that’s really important is to know when to walk away. So at a certain point when you finally do get into the green, you’ve gotta walk away.

Today I started in the red. First trade out of the gates, I lost money on it. That was a little bit disappointing. I don’t like to lose, but I lost money. I lost $700 on my frist trade. On trade number 2, I get back into the same stock and I’m able to recover some of the loss and I’m down … well, let’s just go right into it. First trade SCII. This was right off the watch list and the only comparison there with gambling is knowing when to walk away. That’s really it. And that you can actually do well. People actually do go to Vegas and actually make money because they have strategy. Whether because they’re counting cards, or they have another strategy there are ways to be profitable and then there’s also ways to just throw away all your money. It’s a choice, you can choose. For me with trading, I follow a very strict set of rules and that’s what keeps me in the green. Consistency, consistency. It’s just staying really focused.

Now, with SCII this was on our Gap Scanner this morning. Pre-market high was 432. So it drops down a little bit, but then it starts to surge up. And I said pre-market, I said, “Guys, I am going to buy this stock if it breaks over 432.” That’s where I’m a buyer, right? I said that right away. There was no question that’s where I was gonna get in. So the bell rings and it starts squeezing up and as I saw those buyers, that’s where I started to jump in.

I saw buyers at 27, I jumped in. I added at 30 and I added again at 40, but you can see here that I kept getting partial fills. Instead of getting a full 5,000 or 7,500 share position, I ended up having only 3,600 shares. So I kind of had a small position on this. It didn’t hold up super well which was a little disappointing. So I have this smaller position, I wasn’t able to get filled.

It pops up in that first candle up to a high of 450 and I saw John in the room, who you guys of course know, John [Alten 00:07:49], he took his profit. Instead of adding at 41, he was like, I’m taking profit, I’m selling and he made $400 on the first trade. I decided to add a be a little bit more aggressive. It pops up to a high of 50 and then it drops down and I ended up stopping out on this candle at 410. That was not what I wanted, I lost $700 on the very first trade. At that point I was like, “All right, well, now I have to be careful.” I’m in the red. I certainly want to get myself out of the hole, but the market has been a bit choppy. I have to be really, really careful.” I said to myself, “I’ll just wait, hold tight. Let’s see if it holds up.”

So it’s curling, it starts to pop up a little bit but what you notice is that it pops up and drops down. And then it squeezes. And then it comes back up and again, right here, and it pops up and drops down. But I went ahead and I bought. I said I’m watching this over 430. If it breaks 430, I’m a buyer again. It breaks 430 and I jumped in, but I got filled at 437 and 438 because I was using my hot keys. So I got in a little bit too high but I said I was getting in it so that’s where I got in it. At that point I’m holding with a stop, basically, below this pullback of 406. I’m feeling a little bit nervous because that’s a 30 cent stop, which is $1500. I was like, “All right. Let’s give this a second.” It does a one minute micro-pullback right here, 431, and then boom. It takes off. As it takes off right here, I add … you can see I add, it was like two minutes later, at 448.

So now I’m like, “I’m adding on this because it’s looking to me like it’s gonna break over the half dollar.” So I said, “Guys, I’m gonna watch for this to break over the half dollar.” It hits 450 and then it pops up to a high of 483. Not bad at all. That’s not a bad move, but it was a little bit touch and go and the fact that it had done a false breakout right here, and I was down about $1,000 on it and that would have put me down about 1700 on the day.

I was quick to start selling when it came back up. I had just seen danger and I was like, “All right, I gotta start getting out.” So I sell half at 59, some more at 58. And then I was like, “You know what, I can always get back in.” As it pops up here, it pulls back for a second at 460. As it pops up I add at 465.

Now I’m thinking, if it breaks over 475 there might be a chance this thing hits $5. So I’m starting to think there’s a little more potential. End up selling at 464. I add at 483. Sell at 484, 482. It just kinda felt like I kept buying this at a high a day, it was dropping down, it wasn’t holding up very well. Finally, on my last trade, it now does this little false breakout here.

After all those trades, I was up about $500. $500 of profit is pretty good and I was thinking this might be a good time to walk away. Let’s just see what it does. So it drops down and then pops back up. I didn’t buy it there because it had just done this false breakout on the one minute chart so I’m just like, “I’m just gonna watch this.” It then drops back down to here, to this area, and as it curls back up I saw this as an ADCD setup.

Remember, point A is below the first pullback. B is the high. So A, B, C is the low and this low cannot go lower than this first point. So A, B, C and now we’re a buyer if it breaks over this price right here. 75. That’s where I got back in. I got back in at 74, anticipating the break at 75 and there was a 20,000 share seller. It goes 20,000, 19, 18 , 17, 16, 15, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10, 9, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, boom. And it pops up. When it pops up like that, usually they break through high of day. I wanted to see this go over 85 and get into the 90s immediately.

When I saw it pop up in the 80s and started to see resistance, I didn’t like that and so I started selling. I sold half at 79, I hit the bid. I hit the bid again at … or, sold on the ask. Got filled at 81, that was kind of lucky. And then sold the rest at 480 and 477.

With that, I made another $400. So I went from being up 500 to being up $960. It was a false breakout as you can see, but you can still profit if you’re quick. Now, you can see it’s starting to crawl back up a little bit. It may be worth watching but it just feels like this is a stock that is not giving really big wins. It’s a little bit here, a little bit there. I’m up almost $1,000 on it and I’m gonna consider myself happy with that because I started the day down 700 on it, so this is when I know to walk away. You have a choice.

You can walk away now and if this ends up going to 5.50, $6 what would you say? Well, jeez, I left so much money on the table. I left money on the table. Or, you can give back your profit and then leave broke, basically. And that’s kind of the two choices, you’re either leaving money on the table or your giving back profit. You can’t have it both ways.

For me, I’d rather leave money on the table and walk away with profit. I’m not trying to hit the lottery and make a million dollars overnight. I will make a million dollars trading and it’s over the course of lots of small wins. $1,000 a day times 1,000 days. Maybe $2,000 a day times 500 days. It will happen, it’s just a matter of time. Someone asked the other day on YouTube where I’m at with my $583 challenge.

I started with $583 in my account on January 1, 2017. Less than 600 bucks. I did that for a couple reasons. I had a really good year in 2016, I made about a quarter of a million dollars and I was at a point where I was like, “What’s next for me?” I feel like I need to challenge myself, I need to do something more than just the same old, same old. I need to test myself and we had so many students at the time, and we still do, emailing, saying, “Ross, I have $1,000. Is that enough to start trading?” All right, whatever. “I have $1,500. Is that enough to start trading?”

And I always said yes it is and I had done a couple of small account challenges before where I start with $1,000 and turned it into $10,000 or whatever. But they were just short little challenges. And so I kind of thought, “You know what, I’m gonna test myself and do a true small account challenge. I’m gonna clear out all my profits, put all my money away, and start over. Start over with 600 bucks.”

I actually put 700 in the account on December 25th or something, December 27th. January 1st they take out $115 in fees, for platform fees, so I end up starting with $583 on January 1, 2017. What I did was, I focused on trading the same strategy I trade every single day. Consistency. Base hits. And so on those first couple of days I had $600 in my account and remember, because I was trading with an offshore broker, I was not restricted by the PDT levels. There’s a number of offshore brokers you guys can choose from located in the Bahamas and Jamaica, there’s a couple in Europe.

They’re not places where I would probably want to put my life savings, I want to keep most of my money in the United States. But for the sake of this challenge I was like, whatever, I’ll put 600 buck over there and we’ll see what we can do. So I put my 600 in there and I start trading. I can day trade as much as I want and I have margin. And so what I focused on was trading stocks between $3 and $4 because that was the price range where I was able to buy the most shares. The broker that I was with, they didn’t allow margin on stocks under $3 and I wanted to be able to use that margin, that buying power. So, stocks between $3 and $4 I was able to buy about 700-900 shares of, so I would buy 900 shares and as soon as I was up ten cents I sold and took the $90 or profit. On my first day I made $124 trading, with one trade.

Second day I did the same thing. I got into a stock with about 1,000 shares, as soon as I was up ten cents I sold. $100 profit, made 150. Third day, same thing. Got into a stock, 1200 shares. As soon as I was up 15 cents, took the profit, I was up 180 bucks. I did that again and again and again. As the account grew I was able to take bigger and bigger size, so by day 10 I was up to, I don’t know, maybe from 500 I was up to like 7,000 or 8,000. On day 44 I broke over $100,000. So what was the difference between the $100 of profit on day one and the $10,000 I made on day 26? I made $10,000 on day 26.

The only difference then was I could take bigger share size, that was the only difference. I wasn’t restricted to taking only 500 to 900 shares, I was able to take 10,000 to 15,000. That was it, that was the only difference. There was one other difference. The other difference was that because I had built up a cushion, I felt comfortable being a little bit more aggressive.

When you’ve got 500, 600 in your account, you take the profit when you’re up ten cents. But once you’ve built the account up to 40, $50,000 you might not take profit when you’re up 10, 15 cents. You might say, all right, this one … the market’s really strong, I’m gonna hold it and maybe we’ll end up seeing a 30, 40 cent winner. You learn, once you have been doing this for a while, when to hold it and be a little more aggressive and when to step back. And so, in 45 days I made $100,000, from 600 bucks. So, you know, who here has $600?

It’s not a question of how much money you have. Being a successful trader doesn’t require a lot of money. In fact, the only thing it really requires is that you have a strategy, that you have a set of rules that you follow every single day. And what you realize is that a lot of the traders out there, whether they’re on Twitter or Facebook or YouTube or wherever they are, we’re all trading pretty much a derivative of the same strategy, a variation of the same strategy. We look for volatility, we look for momentum. Mike trades a little bit differently from me. He likes to short stocks, he likes to trade higher priced stocks, but he’s still looking for volatility. He’s looking for stocks that are gonna move 5-10% a day, that have potential to make these big 2, 3, 4, 5 point moves. I’m looking for the same thing. I just trade lower priced stocks because that, for me, is how I built my account. When I first started trading, that’s how I built my account. And even though now I’ve been doing it for years and years and years, that’s what I’m really good at.

Sometimes traders will say, “Ross, if you’re so good at trading small caps why don’t you trade large caps?” Or, “Ross, if you’re so good at trading to long side why don’t you trade to short side?” Or, “Ross, why don’t you start trading Crypto or Forex?” And I kind of think of it as, my instrument is … let’s just say it’s the banjo. I play the heck out of that banjo and you’re asking me why I don’t play the keyboard more often or why I don’t play the drums more often. Yes, these are different instruments, they’re all very similar but they have nuances. Just because you’re really good at the banjo doesn’t mean you’re gonna be really good at the guitar. Yes, it’s all music so you could say it’s all the same. Forex or stocks, futures or small caps, large caps or small caps, long or short. They’re very similar but there’s differences and you get good at what you’re good at and if you’re a master of one thing that’s all you really need to have to be successful. So every single one of you right now, you’re one strategy away from being a profitable trader.

For me it was just a matter of getting that one strategy where I was really consistent and then with that consistency followed the confidence. With the confidence came the the comfort taking bigger share size and then came the bigger profits. That’s how it is with trading and for me, obviously, there’s been a lot of ups and downs. But at this point, that $583 account is at $603,000. Obviously my goal is to turn it into a million dollars.

And when I do I’m gonna be giving myself a pat on the back and it’ll be just the proof that you can become a millionaire in the market with as little as $600, 583. It’s not about having a lot of money. It’s not about having a degree in finance, I don’t have a degree in finance. It’s not about coming from a Wall Street family or working on Wall Street or whatever it is. It’s just about having a strategy, a set of rules, and you guys are all in the place, for most of you, where you’re working on learning the strategy, developing the strategy.

And like I said, when you go on YouTube and all these other places, we’re all pretty much trading a variation or derivative of the same basic strategy so what you need to learn are the foundations. Obviously that’s what we do here more than anything, is we teach. That’s because we want to help empower you guys. It’s been so incredible over the last year and a half as I’ve been growing this account, watching some of you guys growing side by side with me. Going through the classes, getting on the other side, trading profitably, making money, seeing students cross these big thresholds. The hundred K club, breaking over 250,000 or 500,000. It’s really awesome to see.

So anyways, that’s the update on where we’re at with the $583 challenge, it continues. The IRA account that I’ve set up with Lightspeed, I’ve moved it now from Interactive Brokers to Lightspeed. The IRA account … I took money from the $583 challenge and made contributions into my IRA so when I’m trading in the IRA, that is also part of the same account. All the profits from the IRA go towards the million dollar challenge right now.

That’s what it is, it’s the million dollar challenge. So whether I’m trading the IRA or my main account, both those profits contribute, they’re going in the same direction and yeah, million dollars, that’s the spot. But a month like this is not giving me … these are small days. $900, it’s fine, I’m happy with that. It’s summer trading. Being your own boss is what this is all about, I’ll take the 900. But remember, I made $58,000 in three days the first week of May. When you’ve made $58,000 in three days, or at the end of November when I made $78,000 in two days, when you have those types of profits, making 700, 800, 900 a day is just kind of a small day.

I’m happy for the profit, I’m happy to be green more than anything, but we’re in a market where you gotta take base hits. We’re getting lots of base hits, we’re not getting those big, big moves, we’re not seeing that exuberance. Typically when we have these types of slow periods and cold periods, it lasts until we see a stock that really takes off. Last summer we saw a lot of traders, I think, leave the market to go trade Crypto currencies because Crypto currencies were so hot last summer. But this summer they’re really not that hot so I think traders will most likely stick with the market. Some of them might end up starting to trade OTC stocks. We could keep those on watch, I personally don’t trade them but sometimes you’ll see OTC stocks come into play. Sometimes you’ll see penny stocks come into play. The thing with trading is that, because we’re all trading a variation of the same strategy, we’re all looking for the same thing, we’re looking for volatility.

We’re like sharks in the market, we’re looking for these opportunities. If you’re seeing them on stocks between $3 and $7 that’s where all of the sharks are gonna be. That’s where everyone is, trying to get a piece of the action. If that moves and the feeding is over on stocks between 15 and $20, that’s where we’re gonna see the action. Sometimes it’s on stocks between 30 cents and 50 cents. Right now it’s not really in any particular spot.

We had SCII, kind of familiar name. GLMD yesterday, a higher priced name. HEAR, a little bit of a higher priced name. But not seeing, for me, a really good opportunity. So, you know, I’m okay with just grinding, a little bit of profit here and there, being consistent. That’s kind of what it’s about for me right now. All right, today is the 106th of the year, finishing up $960.84 and that good.

Now, before we wrap up for today, this is obviously, whatever, June 13th and I’ve been hearing through the grapevine that some of the kids are having their last days of school. You guys know I go to the chiropractor and, for whatever reason, there’s always kids there so I hear them talking about how it’s the last day of school, summer break, blah, blah, blah. It makes me think back on what it felt like, first day of summer. The first day of summer.

You got the whole summer in front of you. You got these three months in front of you and you get to stay up late and it’s just that amazing feeling of you don’t have to get up early, you don’t have to go in to school or whatever it is, high school, college. For me, the feeling that I have as a trader, that is basically that feeling of every single day feels like the beginning of summer. It’s now been almost 10 years since I worked a traditional 9-5 job. Almost 10 years.

The last job that I worked that was really a traditional was when I was working in architecture and design in New York City and so, for me, it’s like, to think about that, 10 years of not having to answer to a boss. Not having to go in to a 9-5 job, every single day feels like first day of summer. I love it. I know you guys who are just getting started, a lot of you guys are feeling that way, too. You know, it’s like once you start realizing the potential you just get hooked. I think for me, even on the days when I lost money … and I’m sure some of you guys are red today, for whatever reason, even on the days when I lost money I would just get more and more excited because I would see that, yeah, just as quickly as I lost that 500 I could have made 500 if I was a little bit of a better trader. So it kept motivating me to become better and better and better and now I’m where I’m at.

The motivation for me to keep working despite the losses and despite the setbacks was that knowledge that, once I get to the other side, every day is the first day of summer. I’m not gonna have to ever go in to a 9-5 job again, I won’t ever have a boss again and that’s great. Now, as I say that, now I’ve got a team of 30 employees that work for me and that call be boss.

Well, actually, I asked them to call me Daddy and they don’t, so they call me boss. But, we got a team of 30 that every single day they come in and they’re now … they now are working a 9-5 job and so I try to be a really good leader for them and give them a job where they’re really excited to come to work every day. Where they don’t feel like it’s a 9-5 job like the one that I used to have, that I think about as being a nightmare. Of one that I would be just so angry that I had to go to.

I think we’ve done a good job of that, I think for the most part that everybody on the team is excited to come to work and they do love what they do. Some of them are also learning how to trade, because they see this opportunity and they’re like, wow, okay, this is pretty cool. I see Ross doing it everyday and I want to learn more about it. But the truth is, trading is not for everybody. Trading requires you to be willing to take some risk and that’s not for everyone and I get that.

My wife is totally risk averse, she would never want to trade stocks. She just wouldn’t want to do it and there’s a lot of people like that, so I get that this is not something that’s for everyone. But for people that are … that they’ve either owned their own business or have been wanting to be self-employed or freelance, that kind of have that independent streak to just want to do it yourself? This is a great opportunity, being able to trade, because it’s one of those things that you can totally do on your own.

But, like anything else, it’s nice to have a little bit of help when you’re getting started and that’s where you guys have that choice. Do you want to reinvent the wheel and try to figure this out all out on your own or do you want to be part of a group where we’re all doing this together and we’re doing it as a team? Where you don’t have to reinvent the wheel. I can show you the strategy that I use every single day and you can start trading it in a simulator tomorrow.

That’s kind of the goal for me and you can see, this is our trading simulator right here. I went the route of trying to reinvent the wheel mostly because, when I got into the market 10 years ago, it was just very, very different. Technology was different, the platforms weren’t as good, access to really good information just wasn’t really there. If you wanted to figure out how to really trade, you just kind of had to do it on your own through trial and error.

There were some people out there selling courses and DVDs but a lot of them were the green screen. Someone superimposed standing in front of a mansion or Ferrari. You know, it just felt like you can’t … I just didn’t feel like I could trust any of that stuff so I went through to try and reinvent the wheel and it took me two years of trial and error. Reality is, right now, if a hundred of you guys say, “I’m gonna try to figure this out on my own”, 90 of you will fail, 10 of you will succeed, only five of you will be making enough money to actually quit your job. And the five of you that make enough money to actually quit your job, you’re gonna be trading a strategy almost the same as my anyways. You just had to take this really, really long path to figure out that the stocks to trade every single day are the ones that can move 20-30% and the pullbacks are the best entries and that this is the place we get in, this is where we set our stops.

So you can take that path, that really long path, or you can learn the strategy that I trade every day. That’s where you guys have that choice. If some of you relate more to Mike’s strategy, you like trading the large caps and that’s okay, one of the things that we talk about is that trader profile. Are you a trader trying to build small account? Are you a trader who’s trading with a retirement account and you’ve gotta be more conservative? Are you focused on taking lots of trades every day or do you want to just take one, two, three trades a day?

There’s some variations there but, at the end of the day, we’re all trading in a very similar way. It’s just kind of adjusting for your risk tolerance and stuff like that. So, anyways, a little bit of a longer midday recap here for today but some of those questions on YouTube got me thinking. So, if you’re watching on YouTube, you’re watching on Facebook, throw the questions down there below and I’ll come back and answer them and maybe it’ll get me inspired for something I’ll say tomorrow or Friday.

All right, so, that’s it for me. I hope you guys have a great afternoon and I’ll be back first thing tomorrow morning, around 9:00, 9:15 for pre-market analysis. All right, I’ll see you guys in the morning. Oh, hey, I didn’t see you there. I was just working on the dream board for my next home run trade. Hopefully it comes soon but make sure, until then, you subscribe to get email alerts anytime I go live or upload new videos. Until then, happy surfing.