Stock Trading Strategies and Routine

Hey everybody, today is Tuesday the 16th of September and once a month for the ex-subscribers I like to do a webinar, a recorded seminar that is, and try to answer any educational concept questions. The whole idea here is to give you education that you can use in your daily analysis and execution of trades. So first question here is from Gil which is How do you find the stocks do you then watch and share? Many thanks. What I do, and I've explained this in my first book, and it's a common question, but I first look at what I call my, under my personal watch list, I have my master list. And I look at this, really, it's come down to pretty much about once every two weeks or so. On here, I've got all kinds of stocks. So I've got 1,381 names. And when I look at that, I will look at six different time frames. So let me tighten this up. And what I'll do is I will simply go through one by one each of these stocks. And I'll look at them super quick to see if I want to put them on my weekly watch list. I don't really want to put AA on my weekly watch list because it has a declining 200-day moving average. AA OI already is on my watch list, so I like that one. It's got a star next to it. Apple has a star next to it. not because I like it, but because it's something I want to put on my weekly watch list and my daily watch list. That's why they're starred. ABAT is starred because it's a low price name that has had a history of making big runs. I think it's probably a complete garbage stock. I don't know anything about it. It's just my assumption when you see these little stocks that make these runs every once in a while, that there's really not good fundamental story to them. So I just go through them A, B, E, O. You know, I'll look at this one. I'll say, why is this even on my list anymore? It's a little biotech stock. It's falling apart. Just so I'll call my list from time to time as well. Just closed a short in Airbnb today, ABR. I don't know what this one is. It's a dividend payer. So I've got some dividend, you know, high dividend yields on there. So that's how I go through my list. And then I get them down to my daily watch list and I cull down, cull down, cull down. For those of you who don't have these types of lists, you might want to start out with something like the S&P, you know, let's say the NASDAQ 100. So you could go into watch list and I believe they have, you know, NASDAQ 100. And here I'll just list them alphabetically and get used to, you know, just saying, okay, you know, where Where has it come from? Apple just came from 226 to 241. It just rallied 15 points. It broke out to a higher high. Probably time for this one to pull back a little bit. Airbnb, as I just mentioned, covered for a short. Adobe, I'll look at this one. And if I don't see what I need to see on a daily chart, which I do, it's below declining 20, 50, and 200-day moving average. It's a complete piece of garbage that has been 100% left behind in this market. It broke below the anchor from the April low and has been stuck below that. But if I need to see more, what I'll do is I'll go look at the weekly chart. And in fact, I won't even do that because I have a weekly chart on my other screen. I can just pull that down and you can see here I've got my weekly chart up there. So I'll look at it in this way and say, you know, it's clearly in a stage four decline. No reason to watch that. So, you know, look for ideas, you know, liquid leaders to start out. If then you're not finding the names that you think you should be trading, widen it out. Use something like Finviz. And I've done examples of this in the past, where you just go into their screener and open up, I'm not sure how you do it. Let's see all of the screens. So you could say, you know, market cap, dividend growth, we could do a quick, you know, we want the stock above a 200-day moving average. So now we've got 7,385 stocks. And let's see what else do we want price. Let's say we want it over over over five bucks a share. Now we're at 6700 stocks. Average volume, let's say at least over So that won't scroll down. Where did that go? So the point is, there's all kinds of ways to find ideas. Over 500,000. Now there's only 1,800 stocks. Now we're getting down to something not quite manageable, but above a 50-day moving average. So price above the 50-day moving average. Now we just got rid of another 100. Beta, we want to see it over 1. So now we're down to 827 stocks. And you can look at that and, you know, look at these ideas and say, is it important that it's above the 20 day moving average? So 827 stocks went to 672. Maybe you want stock price stocks below the 20 day moving average, but above the 50 and above the 200. So you could say below the 20 and you're going to have a much different looking list here because If we go and look at charts, one, we've got to turn these silly lines off that they do. I forgot how to do that. Turn their technical analysis off. Now we can look in here and say, okay, is there anything we might even want to put on a weekly chart? So here, you know, this stock, AHR, is a super strong stock, but it's below the 20-day moving average. So maybe that's pulling back and worth considering. Same with ALK, Angie, et cetera. There's all kinds of ways to find ideas. But the way I do it again is just to find them in a broader sense. And then each day I call down smaller and smaller lists. I do have some screens I've created in the past, which I look at once in a while just to see if I'm missing things. So I have like here, US common stocks. I've got a simple pullback and I don't give out the formula for this. This is proprietary. So don't bother to ask. but Here, you know, I've got a daily and a 30 minute and I'll look at it this quickly. I'll look at that and say that is a takeover stock. No reason to look at that when they gap up and turn sideways like that. This one, AMBA is already on my list. I like the way AMBA is setting up, by the way, on a longer term weekly chart, but it's below a declining five day moving average. Here ARQT. It's a little biotech stock. There's better quality stocks out there, bank stock. So I'll just I'll go through and say BBBY. You know, is this going to be a shakeout? Maybe set an alert at 1025. So if it gets back up there, then it can continue to move higher. Here's what the weekly chart looks like. So anyways, I hope I answered that question well. Next question is from Janik, or maybe probably Janik. Do you always use a pinch for your entries? No, almost never. The pinch, I've said this numerous times. I almost wish that I never wrote about the anchored volume weighted average price pinch because it's been completely misconstrued by a lot of people. People will say, hey, Brian, look, it's pinching between this and let's say it didn't, you know, didn't drop below that level. And that's okay to notice the pinch between here and there, but it's completely useless. What a nice pinch would be is if it stayed in between this month to date, rallied up to the top and then compressed and then got going. So this bottom VWAP is really too far away to matter. I want to buy the series of higher highs above the flat to rising five day moving average. So I was asked today to discuss the entry in Rigetti that I spoke about last week on Trader TV. Rigetti was right here. just at the 20 day moving average right at this point. And I said, I like this stock. If it can get above this, I actually, what I said was I want to see it pull back in the morning, which it did and then rally. Well, it did that because it was a little bit extended last Tuesday night. And then it pulled back Wednesday morning and it got, it made the higher high above the flat to rising orange five day moving average. That was where I bought stop under here. I've still got a little bit. Those, that's what I'm looking for. More important than the pinch. The pinch is wildly overrated. And, and, and I often see people mentioning a pinch that just does not even exist. They'll say, you know, they'll call this, they'll call this a pinch right here. And well, that might be, that's more of a squeeze or a grab. If it was to do this and tighten up within that range, now it's truly pinching. Here, it's just a big old grab, a big old scoopful. Here, it's pinching. It's tightening the range. And as... Everyone knows from contraction comes expansion. So we want to see a tight pinch. We want to see a tight contraction of range. Harry's question is, what influence does the slope of the anchored VWAP have when entering or exit long positions? Almost zero. I really don't pay attention to the slope. I'm more interested in, do I want to buy Amazon? No. I want to buy Amazon when? Well, if Amazon does something like this, tomorrow it gets rid of this data, meaning the five-day moving average is going to start to flatten out. Now, if the stock pulls back down towards that five-day moving average and does this, well then, do I care about the slope of this volume-weighted average price? It's most likely going to be higher. The slope of the VWAP on the day I enter is most likely flat to higher. If the stock is above the VWAP. You can assume the slope of that VWAP is higher. Mathematically, that has to be true. If the price is above the VWAP, that it has a very small, maybe negligible to the eye, but it is rising. If this price is below the VWAP, well, then the VWAP is declining. So just look at this example here again with that month-to-date anchor. While the stock was above the VWAP, it was advancing. And you can barely see it in here. But let me just try to zoom in a little bit in here. You can barely see it. But the VWAP was declining right here. And it started to decline again in here. Then it went flat. And then it was back and forth above and below. So the answer, Harry, is no. I almost never look at the slope of the VWAP. What I look at when it comes time to entry. So, for instance, on a very short-term chart, do I want to buy as it breaks above the VWAP, for instance, right here, or do I feel it might have extended too much at that point? What I like to see is a tight consolidation and then a break of range, even on the shortest timeframes for my entries. Next question is from Lonnie. First of all, thanks for all you do to help and educate others. You're welcome. I'm glad you… finding value in it. Question is, can you give us an example from start to finish? Uh-oh, this sounds like a long involved process of finding a trade setup, making the trade, and closing the trade. Well, here's what I can do. I can continue with, I put this out in public, RGTI last Tuesday. I said, here's why I like RGTI. The group was strengthening. I mentioned IONQ was the leader. And the RGTI looked like it had a good chance of getting going. So how did I find the trade setup? Well, these are hot stocks, and they're always on my list. And once I see them starting to set up, then I pay attention. So the idea of finding the trade was there. I laid it out in advance for people on, again, on social media. I said, I'm looking to buy it above this level here with a stop. below the most recent relevant higher low. Not this low, but this low right here. So it made the higher high above the flat to rising five-day moving average. It ran quickly. I sold some. I almost always do. And then I maintained up until about right over here on a second third of it, and I'm still holding another third. Am I going to give my stop way down here? I'm hoping I can continue to hold it along with that five-day moving average. Please provide names of indicators, price, simple moving averages, volume weighted average, price levels. Volume is on there, but it's not really a consideration. Notice the volume doesn't come in until well after this smart entry right here. If you're waiting for volume, you're often going to be paying a much higher price. So I look at price, moving averages, Volume weighted average price levels in multiple time frames. I don't have a checklist and I don't really use TradingView for other. He was asking me, can I do this using TradingView as an example? I don't really like TradingView as much as TC. It's not that I don't like it. It's that I've used TC2000 for so long and it's so second nature to me. Whereas I always feel like I'm fumbling around on TradingView. So I really only use TradingView for crypto. Although I am experimenting around with some other stuff. Stuff that looks like this right here. Anyways, those are the types of things... I like TradingView because you can create different things. And what you just saw is simple moving averages and price shadows. That's all you're looking at there. Similar to what I've shared with this, which is, of course, the... the five-day moving average shadows. Green when we're above and it's rising. When we're above the five-day moving average and the five-day moving average is declining, it's yellow. When we're below a declining five-day moving average, it's red. So just... Those types of things. Anyways, so start to, you know, the finish isn't there yet. Airbnb was a trade that, you know, it's on my list. It's in the NASDAQ 100. I was aware it was below a declining 20, 50, 200-day moving average. And I said, you know, if it breaks below here, looking to short it and covered a third right here. And today, it covered two-thirds as it got back above this level for an average of $1.25 on that one, Lonnie. So hopefully that answers that. Hein says, have you ever utilized gamma exposure in your trading strategies? No, never. So that's just a simple yes-no question. And the answer is no, I don't use gamma exposure. Kevin says, Extended and quantifying that. It's not something I've ever tried to quantify. You know, I've been talking about the S&P 500 is short-term extended, but extended doesn't, it's just a word that means it's up a lot and the risks become higher. The more, you know, the higher you go, the risks of a deeper pullback are greater. That's what I consider to be extended. I thought it was extended over here. I thought it was extended here. I still think it's extended. And I think this is most likely, but I'm not shorting because I think that's most likely. I'm looking and saying, here's what's actually happening is we have this pattern of higher lows. So above a rising five-day moving average. So until that's broken, it's not even neutral. So I don't try to quantify it other than to say, listen, we're getting extended here. Look at the way this stock or this market normally trades. Look at this rally. And look at previous rallies. What typically happens when we have rallies of this magnitude? And you can say that one a little bit longer. But we're getting stretched. We're getting extended to the point where this is where we start to typically falter. We pull back price-wise. We consolidate time-wise. Pull back price-wise. Pull back price-wise. Pull back price-wise. And those are the pauses that refresh. Those are good things. So. Hopefully that helps a little bit better, Kevin, but I don't quantify it in terms of, you know, up 3.8% within 36 market hours or, you know, something like that. I don't try to quantify them. I just look at it and I'm a discretionary trader. So I look at it and say, okay, let's use some common sense. What happens, you know, after nine, 10 days in a row of being up. It's just like at the casino, red hits 10 times. Do you think it's going to go 15 times? Maybe it will, but the odds are against it. So what are the odds saying and what do I do with that information? Do I sell short? Of course not. That's just stupid. That's asking to lose your money just because you think it's up too much. There's no such thing as up too much. If the buyers come in tomorrow and for whatever reason, because it's 25, because it's 50, because the Fed says this or whatever, it doesn't matter. Focus on price action is what I'm most interested in. Eric says, is there ever a scenario you do not take the first third off a daily or two? Yes, all the time. And in fact, just last week on X, I pointed out the two-minute exit. A two-minute exit is a real common one for me. I don't think there was one today, but you can look at, let's take a look at a stock that was, you know, Meta or Tesla was up good today. but Um, let's say this was daily R2. It was R1, but let's say it was R2. What I do is as it's running towards daily R2, again, nevermind what it says here, we're pretending it's daily R2. I will either say, listen, we're coming up to daily R2. That doesn't mean necessarily sell there, but it means start to think about oftentimes the stock will reverse in that area. So either sell a third if that's what you want to do, or then use the two-minute exit. The two-minute exit says as soon as it hits that, then the stop goes below this bar. As soon as this bar is closed and this bar begins, the stop goes under here. As soon as this bar is closed and this bar begins, the stop goes under here, meaning you would exit at that point. Now, in this example, it wouldn't have gotten you any more. But in the example from the other day, I don't remember what it was. If the stock did this instead, and these are two-minute bars, then maybe it does this, and then it scares you for a moment but doesn't make that lower low, and then does this, well, then you get out right there on the two-minute exit. You can use the same exact thing, and that was my point the other day, is you can use a five-minute exit when it gets to a perceived level where there might be supply. Maybe it's prior support. Maybe it's daily R2. Maybe it's the anchored VWAP from the peak. When you're at a level of interest where you think, hey, maybe it's time to start minimizing my, you know, reducing my risk a little bit. Don't just sell blindly at that level because it might rip right through there and you get another three, four, five points. Instead, have a strategy. And that's the whole point. R2 is a strategy. It's not the best strategy. If you're not comfortable with the two-minute chart, will then These could be five, pretend these are five minute bars. And the same thing, you know, would happen basically, except you'd be out right here. But if the stock continued to rally, maybe you would have held it through the end of the day. I'm sure you have these emotions or thoughts when you started. Entry day ran up to daily R4 or 5. Wish I didn't sell at the first or third at R2. Well, you know, that's not true. I never wish I didn't sell it at a certain point just because it went higher. I promise that's not how I think. I think, well, I could have made more, but I have strategies to reduce the emotional impact of what you just said. I don't want emotions to override what I do. I've been studying price action long enough that let's say you shorted Tesla right here. You could say, okay. I'm going to use a five minute exit. And that exit would have gotten you out right here, actually on that bar, slightly higher. And then you might have kicked yourself down here and said, well, shit. But, you know, over here, you'd say, well, I'm glad I covered some down there. It's about having a strategy because you don't know it's going to go to daily R4 or R5 afterwards. But the way to make up for that is to say R2 is a level of interest. I Never suggest people automatically sell there. For record keeping and just for calling out a trade, I say look to sell some near daily R2. And that only means start to think about reducing risk. If that stock that ran to R4 or R5, the two-minute exit might have kept you in for that entire move. Ryan's question is, Newbie Trader here. First, thanks for all you do. You've been a great resource. Glad for that. Thank you. Snow was most importantly. How was the snow? He's talking about the trip to Chile. It was amazing on the heliski day the other day. It's spring skiing down there. So it was fun. Anyways, I'd love to have a rundown of how, what, when, where, why regarding all things scanning and curating and organizing watch lists. for the stock of staking and IDing entry points. I'm getting a good grasp of TA. I feel I could get a lot more by being organized, using and organizing my stocks. And he goes on to say, I'm using TradingView if that matters. It doesn't matter to me. You can do the same thing in TradingView. But if I look at my watch list and my personal ones, you'll see autonomous vehicles, battery, blockchain, China, clean energy. Corona, that's for coronavirus. Crypto treasury stocks, that's a new list that I made recently. Cyber security, the Dan Ives ETF, data centers, defense, dividend payers, the Dow, I mistyped it, that's the Dow 30. So keep organized lists. So when you look at that, you know, I create these lists and then I'll do, you know, drones, drone stocks, EVs, gaming, genomics. solar stocks, SMR stocks, that's the of course the Oclo, NNE, SMR, CEG, etc. So that's how I do it. And you know, once in a while, if I notice, you know, I typically have like Oclo on my list. If I start to see Oklo move, well, I know what the components, what the other stocks in that group, not necessarily the components, but you could do the same thing. If you're looking at the XLE and you say, hey, XLE, I want to know what stocks are in there. There's easy ways to do that. I don't see I don't do it this way, but you can go into watch lists and let's say search XLE. And let's see, ETF. I don't know how to do it, but there's easy ways, simply because this isn't my process. But you can do a top-down approach like that and say, hey, I'm going to look at all the stocks in the Dow 30. Let me look at the Dow 30. and so it says I'm not it's so stupid because I don't pay for the DJI but so I made my own DIA uh Dow 30 which is the components of the DIA which is the Dow 30. So if you want to look through those and say, hey, the Dow, or if you look at that, you might say, hey, ExxonMobil, that looks interesting. Intel, that looks interesting. I bought that back today. CVX looks interesting. Hey, what do you know? Two energy names. So maybe I should be looking at the XLE. And that's the way you want to get your lists. You want to have your master. So the way I have my master list, as I described at the beginning of this, is that. I'll look through that and I'll kind of look, I don't really look for themes, but I notice themes. So it's not that I'm looking for SMR stocks, small modular reactor. I'm not looking for small modular reactor stocks, but in my look at my list, I noticed that OKLO and SMR looked interesting. So if I know that those ones look interesting, it means I want to go take a look get light beer, light bridge, whatever you call it. I know that I want to look at NNE, that these are stocks in that group. So that's, you know, how I do it. And it takes time. It's, you know, getting organized and creating these lists. And how do you curate and create the list? Well, sometimes I'll go, you know, AI has made it so much easier. AI, you can just say, what stocks are involved in small modular reactor? in the, you know, trade it on U.S. exchanges, and it'll give you a list. So a question from Emil says, can you give an example of an anchored VWAP pinch candidate that might break to the downside and what you'd like to see? So, you know, here, again, the pinch is highly, highly overrated. It's not part of my process to look for. So if I look at stocks that are short candidates, that doesn't look like a good one. BYRN, the 20-day moving average is starting to rise, so I don't really like that one. Let's say Cracker Barrel, which is kind of interesting because it's in the news. But I'm not looking at it as a pinch candidate. If I was looking at a pinch and say, okay, well, I have to put a, you know, it's not pinching. So I can't, Emil, I can't give you a good example of that. And I would say that trying to focus on pinches is the wrong approach. Just like I would tell you, trying to just find cups and handles or head and shoulders is the wrong approach. You want to notice what's going on on multiple time frames and say, this stock is in a downtrend. Well, it's clearly in a downtrend, but the intermediate term trend, well, the downtrend was broken. We had these lower highs and lower lows. We had a declining five-day moving average. Now the five-day moving average is flat to rising. Does that mean I want to buy it? No, because we still have a declining 20- and 50-day moving average. So the trends are not aligned, meaning I just want to leave this stock alone. There's so many other stocks out there. Why try to force something on a stock showing me mixed messages? Masood, I hope I pronounced that right. When you're getting ready to buy your shares on a particular stock that satisfies your buy zone, do you buy all at once or average down close to your stop zone? I am typically buy all at once. Now, I don't do buy zones, okay? I do buy above a level. So for instance, RGTI, we can talk about that. I want to buy a 100, you know, 100, 150% position right here. I will typically go, let's say my risk unit is, let's just say it's a thousand dollars. You know, I might say, okay, my risk unit is a thousand dollars and my stop's 50 cents away. So that means I should trade 2000 shares. But I really like this one. So I'm going to trade 5,000 shares and I'm going to sell that first thousand shares pretty quick, either a daily or two, or as it's, you know, running past daily or two on a two minute exit. Um, so in other words, my strong suit is that my entries are, are my strong suit. So I don't look to buy in a zone. I'm not looking to buy. near the 50-day moving average. I want to see it bounce from the 50-day moving average, get above the five-day moving average, and be a buyer here with a stop under there. This is the first higher high above the flat to rising five-day moving average. So that tells me the new uptrend has the potential to take hold here. The daily time frame says we've got a 20-day above a 50-day above the 200-day moving average. We're in a long-term uptrend. So this is where those trends become aligned. This is where the buyers are either going to prove they've got it or it's going to break that lower low. And if it does that, well, then I don't want to be involved because it's likely going to break down and fail. So I buy all at once. It doesn't mean that's the proper way for you. Pablo says, which settings would you use in the Finviz scanner to find stocks that are interesting or will be interesting to trade? Well, so again, you know, more questions about scanning. and Let me see. Did I? I must have closed that out. What did I do with that scanner? Is it on here? No. Let's see. Let's pull up FinViz again. And I mean, you know, what's interesting to me might not be interesting to you. I've done examples before of where I've created screeners in here of earning surprises. So an earning surprise, and I don't remember where to find. uh, what I looked for, but these are, let me, let me find a different one, uh, dividend yield. So on a dividend yield stocks that trade over 400,000 shares with a dividend over 4% USA only, and it's optionable. So these are some stocks that trade, you know, what's interesting. If you find it, you know, dividend stocks, interesting. There you go. Uh, I did a pullback scan, which Okay, so the volatility for the month is over 2%, above the 200, price above 4, average daily volume at least a half a million. It's down on the week, but the 20 is above, it's above the 20-day moving average, it's up on the quarter. So these are pullbacks within uptrends. Maybe that's something you're looking at. And while I created these things, I never, like I haven't pulled this one up in ages. I don't know if it gives me good results or not because I'm already looking at enough stocks that I don't really need the scanners. But those are some ideas here tonight about different scanning techniques and what to look for. Chris says, thanks again for another insightful webinar. These have helped my trading approach greatly. Glad to hear it. My question is on the five-day moving average. When you're looking at the five-day moving average, do you focus on the overall slope or is it moving from flat to rising? Looking for your insights. Well, you know, I want to see, you know, so for instance, after a pullback or, you know, when it's, when it's pulling back in here and it's below the five day moving average, I just look at it and say, okay, this is where we were five days ago. That means tomorrow it's going to continue to decline. I'm not going to watch this one tomorrow because it's likely to fail. But as we start to replace this data with this data, I say, I start to anticipate the direction of the five day moving average. So it may still be declining, but I look at it and look back and say, okay, once it gets rid of this data and replaces with this, well, the five-day moving average is going to get dragged higher. And if it makes that higher high above here, I'm betting it will find the momentum to do that. So it might not even be advancing at the time I buy it. Most of the times it is, but it's also not just the higher high above the flat to rising five-day moving average. Because let's say the higher high was made right here, just for argument's sake. I would look at it and say, wait a minute, it just ran from 15 to 16.75. I don't want to be a buyer there. So let's say, in other words, this was the five-day moving average. Would I want to be a buyer as it gets above there? No, because it expended too much energy. But as it consolidates for a day or two, and then looking at it, and if this was the five-day moving average, I would absolutely be interested in buying here with a stop under there. So it's about anticipating the direction of the five-day moving average as well. Scott says... I'm curious about your workflow. For example, when do you prep your charts for all the stocks that you follow, not the indices? I always be appreciative of any details you might find to organize your day and manage your attention. Here's a pretty brief rundown of my typical day. When I turn my computer on, I immediately turn on all my trading platforms before I go downstairs and get a cup of coffee. I want to know that my trading platforms are up, that there's no problems with TC2000, with Thinkorswim, with Interactive Broker, with TradingView. I want to know everything's working because if I've got a problem, I'm going to sit down and fix that problem first. I'm not going to wait till the market opens and start complaining on Twitter, hey, is anybody else having problems with Thinkorswim today? It's like, you're just figuring this out now. You're not a real trader. Forget the personal commentary. That's my process and that's why. Because it's a professional approach. An amateur is going to roll up at 9.30 Eastern, turn their computer on and say, hey, anybody else having problems with thinkorswim? Well, you're already way behind. So I look at that. Everything's working. It's looking good. I'll take a quick look at my open positions to see if there's anything weird going on in the pre-market. If there's not, then I'll go. I used to feed the dog. I don't feed the dog anymore. But I'll go make my coffee, go stand outside for a few minutes, stretch a little bit, just kind of, you know, get my mind straight. And then I'll come back upstairs. I'll start going through my setups, the stocks that I think are likely to trigger for the day. I'll look at then, you know, I'll look at those and say, okay, are any of those moving? Anything unusual I should be aware of? No. So it always starts with price action. And then I'll look at my emails. Then I go in and delete like half of my emails, wondering why I don't unsubscribe to half the emails I get. The other half that I open, they will be, I'll put off anything business-wise till way later in the day. But I'm interested in headlines. So I'll look at the... I'm trying to look, you know, so for instance, at the end of the day, I'll look at the daily rip, the StockTwits letter, because they do a nice, concise job of saying, here's what stocks moved, here's kind of what's what happened. I'll look at the in the morning, I'll look at what's the name of that company? Let me look at my trash. um let's see you gotta go to so in the morning i get emails from uh axios markets wall street breakfast um i get a couple ai ones morning brew short squeeze is what it's called and i'll look at those and i'll see okay what you know they're all talking about the same stocks most likely They'll all be talking about the Fed tomorrow. So I'm not going to read any of these stories about the Fed because I don't care what their authors have to say. It just helps me form the sentiment for the day. That's right. Fed is today. That's what's going on. Then I'll look at my sheet and say, any interesting earnings coming? No, nothing coming. Well, we've got a couple of IPOs, which are interestingly being priced tomorrow. We've got StubHub and we've got this other one, Waterbridge. WBI. I don't know what Waterbridge does, but their bankers are JP Morgan, Barclay, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Piper Sandler. So they're all the major investment banks. Tells me it's a well-distributed amongst serious money in the market. So I'm going to pay attention to that IPO. I'm going to pay attention to StubHub as well. So I go through my list and say, okay, The day before, my lists were my A list, my B list, and my C list. So during the day, so what I'll do first thing in the morning, if my stocks aren't moving, then I will start to set alerts. If I'm looking at a stock like Intel and I think, hey, I want to know if it breaks this high. What is that high? That high is 2546. Well, I'll also want to know if it breaks below 25. I bought some of this today. So if it breaks down to 25 and if I'm not paying attention, I want an alert to tell me because I'm not always paying attention to every single open position I have. Throughout the day, I will manage my alerts, basically. I set a ton of alerts each day. I manage those alerts, and if it pulls back to 25, it doesn't mean I'm going to do anything. And then it starts to bounce, I'll say, okay, let me reset that alert. If it comes back down there, I want to know, because now it's hit it twice, and maybe it's going to break down. Otherwise, If it breaks down through it, I might sell the stock and then, you know, forget about it. But that process of going through the stocks during the day, you know, continues. And I adjust stops. I adjust alerts. I don't really pay attention to Twitter during the day. Sometimes I do a little bit. I'll just like if my Twitter, what do they call that? tweet deck is open and there's, um, some people are talking about tickers. Then I might look at the ticker, but I'm, I, I don't, I try not to consume any news during the day because I tend to, uh, be reactive to it out of boredom. And I know that's a weakness of mine. So, you know, another weakness of mine is trading in the last hour and a half, two hours of the day. I'm generally not a great trader in the last two hours of the day. So that's when I begin my work for the next day is I'll start, you know, of course, I'm managing my positions and I have a lot of charts open. So I have all my open positions on a chart somewhere on one of my screens and I'll set alerts there, too. But I'll start going through my list, compiling my list, going through a list of, let's say, 260 stocks and getting it down to 30 stocks and looking at those 30 stocks saying, OK, why am I looking at this stock? Well, I'm looking at, you know. NNE because I'm looking at SMR. I'm looking at OKLO. And that group is hot, just like the quantums were hot. I want to know those. And then I will start to make little notes about those. I'll put a hash mark next to the one that I think might be the lowest risk, highest probability trades to bring to AlphaTrend subscribers and kind of repeat the same process over and over again day after day. That's the thing is it's about having processes and strategies and not just saying, hey, that stock's up. Should I sell it? Should I buy it? What's going on? Should I chase that one? I don't like to leave things to emotion because emotion is the enemy. For me, it is that I will get emotional if I have the television on and they start talking about the stock. I haven't had CNBC on in years, not years, I promise. It just doesn't interest me. It's not that it's bad, but it just doesn't interest me. And I know there's, you know, it will cause me to potentially become, you know, feel like, oh shit, hey, I could make money off that real quick, trade out of boredom. That's why I don't look at Twitter either. It's not that I don't respect the people on there. It's that I just don't need the noise during the day. Price tells me everything I need to know. I don't need to listen to a journalist's opinion about this stock or that stock. Again, so the morning emails I get, I don't read them. I skim them. And I'm trying to say, okay, everyone seems to be talking about China today or whatever it might be. Well, I'm not really interested in China, so I don't care. Boom. Easy enough. Everyone's talking about energy names. Well, there were those energy names. Maybe I should take another look at those and mention them to the subscribers or whatever. Anyways, Jose says, when anchoring the VWAP to a specific event, is it more accurate to use volume-based candles instead of time-based candles? Well, my favorite candles are bar charts. So I don't use candles at all. I just don't like them. Bar charts are much, much cleaner. Anyways, so... So Jose says, I currently use this approach in the futures market due to extended hours, but I'd like to understand the theoretical and practical implications of choosing one over another. Well, the anchored VWAP is the combination of price, volume, and time. So I don't need volume bars. I've got volume built in. So I've never even considered using them, Jose. They're just not something. really of consideration to me. William says, I wonder if you'd be willing to give me some brief coaching feedback on a trade I believe I was the victim of a shakeout on. I entered Tesla on a 30-minute time frame. T-S-L-A. The definition of a shakeout is it went down, you sold it, and then it went back up without you. I entered on a 30-minute time frame after I got back above the daily VWAP on 9-5. So 9-5 is right here. It got back above the daily VWAP, so you most likely entered right here. I'm not going to look at your chart, by the way. In fact, I have it so the charts don't show. Because I don't like looking at other people's charts, I've got my way of looking at them. So anyway, it's not a problem. From there, Tesla moves sideways before shaking me out. Well, if your stop was under here, yeah, you got shaken out. It was... the question is, you got shaken out. And it had this high, and then that failed, so I would have said you probably should have sold right here, in fact, long before getting shaken out. over here because it looked like it wanted to continue and it failed it made a lower high and lower low at this point though realistically the light is yellow because it's above a rising five-day moving average but it's made a lower high and a lower low Here would have been, if you felt like you got shaken out, that was the proper place for a re-entry with a stop under here. The next day it does that. Would you have been shaken out here? That's the question. So this was particularly frustrating because it went on to explode 20% higher. Well, you feel like you got shaken out here, but again, you could have re-entered here. You could have re-entered on other areas. Chase the Gap or wait for VWAP right here on the 10th. That was the next best entry to what you had. That was probably the best entry because if your stop was under here and if you didn't adjust it until... it took this high out, then your stop was here. And then as it rallies up, I would have suggested you raise your stop to here. So anyways, I hope that helped William. Zach says don't read this on the, okay, so. That'll conclude it. Thank you, everybody. I think I went, so we went 46 minutes. Thanks for all the great, great questions. This is your format for educational concept questions, not necessarily feedback on individual stocks. So thanks for not sending in a bunch of emails saying, can you look at this stock or that stock? I hope this was helpful and we'll do it again next month.

Many thanks. What I do, and I've explained this in my first book, and it's a common question, but I first look at what I call my, under my personal watch list, I have my master list. And I look at this, really, it's come down to pretty much about once every two weeks or so.

On here, I've got all kinds of stocks. So I've got 1,381 names. And when I look at that, I will look at six different time frames.

So let me tighten this up. And what I'll do is I will simply go through one by one each of these stocks. And I'll look at them super quick to see if I want to put them on my weekly watch list. I don't really want to put AA on my weekly watch list because it has a declining 200-day moving average. AA OI already is on my watch list, so I like that one.

It's got a star next to it. Apple has a star next to it. not because I like it, but because it's something I want to put on my weekly watch list and my daily watch list. That's why they're starred. ABAT is starred because it's a low price name that has had a history of making big runs.

I think it's probably a complete garbage stock. I don't know anything about it. It's just my assumption when you see these little stocks that make these runs every once in a while, that there's really not good fundamental story to them.

So I just go through them A, B, E, O. You know, I'll look at this one. I'll say, why is this even on my list anymore? It's a little biotech stock. It's falling apart. Just so I'll call my list from time to time as well.

Just closed a short in Airbnb today, ABR. I don't know what this one is. It's a dividend payer. So I've got some dividend, you know, high dividend yields on there. So that's how I go through my list.

And then I get them down to my daily watch list and I cull down, cull down, cull down. For those of you who don't have these types of lists, you might want to start out with something like the S&P, you know, let's say the NASDAQ 100. So you could go into watch list and I believe they have, you know, NASDAQ 100. And here I'll just list them alphabetically and get used to, you know, just saying, okay, you know, where Where has it come from? Apple just came from 226 to 241. It just rallied 15 points.

It broke out to a higher high. Probably time for this one to pull back a little bit. Airbnb, as I just mentioned, covered for a short.

Adobe, I'll look at this one. And if I don't see what I need to see on a daily chart, which I do, it's below declining 20, 50, and 200-day moving average. It's a complete piece of garbage that has been 100% left behind in this market. It broke below the anchor from the April low and has been stuck below that. But if I need to see more, what I'll do is I'll go look at the weekly chart.

And in fact, I won't even do that because I have a weekly chart on my other screen. I can just pull that down and you can see here I've got my weekly chart up there. So I'll look at it in this way and say, you know, it's clearly in a stage four decline. No reason to watch that. So, you know, look for ideas, you know, liquid leaders to start out.

If then you're not finding the names that you think you should be trading, widen it out. Use something like Finviz. And I've done examples of this in the past, where you just go into their screener and open up, I'm not sure how you do it. Let's see all of the screens.

So you could say, you know, market cap, dividend growth, we could do a quick, you know, we want the stock above a 200-day moving average. So now we've got 7,385 stocks. And let's see what else do we want price. Let's say we want it over over over five bucks a share.

Now we're at 6700 stocks. Average volume, let's say at least over So that won't scroll down. Where did that go? So the point is, there's all kinds of ways to find ideas. Over 500,000.

Now there's only 1,800 stocks. Now we're getting down to something not quite manageable, but above a 50-day moving average. So price above the 50-day moving average. Now we just got rid of another 100. Beta, we want to see it over 1. So now we're down to 827 stocks. And you can look at that and, you know, look at these ideas and say, is it important that it's above the 20 day moving average?

So 827 stocks went to 672. Maybe you want stock price stocks below the 20 day moving average, but above the 50 and above the 200. So you could say below the 20 and you're going to have a much different looking list here because If we go and look at charts, one, we've got to turn these silly lines off that they do. I forgot how to do that. Turn their technical analysis off. Now we can look in here and say, okay, is there anything we might even want to put on a weekly chart?

So here, you know, this stock, AHR, is a super strong stock, but it's below the 20-day moving average. So maybe that's pulling back and worth considering. Same with ALK, Angie, et cetera. There's all kinds of ways to find ideas. But the way I do it again is just to find them in a broader sense.

And then each day I call down smaller and smaller lists. I do have some screens I've created in the past, which I look at once in a while just to see if I'm missing things. So I have like here, US common stocks.

I've got a simple pullback and I don't give out the formula for this. This is proprietary. So don't bother to ask.

but Here, you know, I've got a daily and a 30 minute and I'll look at it this quickly. I'll look at that and say that is a takeover stock. No reason to look at that when they gap up and turn sideways like that. This one, AMBA is already on my list.

I like the way AMBA is setting up, by the way, on a longer term weekly chart, but it's below a declining five day moving average. Here ARQT. It's a little biotech stock. There's better quality stocks out there, bank stock. So I'll just I'll go through and say BBBY.

You know, is this going to be a shakeout? Maybe set an alert at 1025. So if it gets back up there, then it can continue to move higher. Here's what the weekly chart looks like.

So anyways, I hope I answered that question well. Next question is from Janik, or maybe probably Janik. Do you always use a pinch for your entries?

No, almost never. The pinch, I've said this numerous times. I almost wish that I never wrote about the anchored volume weighted average price pinch because it's been completely misconstrued by a lot of people. People will say, hey, Brian, look, it's pinching between this and let's say it didn't, you know, didn't drop below that level.

And that's okay to notice the pinch between here and there, but it's completely useless. What a nice pinch would be is if it stayed in between this month to date, rallied up to the top and then compressed and then got going. So this bottom VWAP is really too far away to matter. I want to buy the series of higher highs above the flat to rising five day moving average.

So I was asked today to discuss the entry in Rigetti that I spoke about last week on Trader TV. Rigetti was right here. just at the 20 day moving average right at this point. And I said, I like this stock.

If it can get above this, I actually, what I said was I want to see it pull back in the morning, which it did and then rally. Well, it did that because it was a little bit extended last Tuesday night. And then it pulled back Wednesday morning and it got, it made the higher high above the flat to rising orange five day moving average. That was where I bought stop under here. I've still got a little bit.

Those, that's what I'm looking for. More important than the pinch. The pinch is wildly overrated.

And, and, and I often see people mentioning a pinch that just does not even exist. They'll say, you know, they'll call this, they'll call this a pinch right here. And well, that might be, that's more of a squeeze or a grab. If it was to do this and tighten up within that range, now it's truly pinching.

Here, it's just a big old grab, a big old scoopful. Here, it's pinching. It's tightening the range.

And as... Everyone knows from contraction comes expansion. So we want to see a tight pinch. We want to see a tight contraction of range.

Harry's question is, what influence does the slope of the anchored VWAP have when entering or exit long positions? Almost zero. I really don't pay attention to the slope. I'm more interested in, do I want to buy Amazon? No.

I want to buy Amazon when? Well, if Amazon does something like this, tomorrow it gets rid of this data, meaning the five-day moving average is going to start to flatten out. Now, if the stock pulls back down towards that five-day moving average and does this, well then, do I care about the slope of this volume-weighted average price?

It's most likely going to be higher. The slope of the VWAP on the day I enter is most likely flat to higher. If the stock is above the VWAP. You can assume the slope of that VWAP is higher.

Mathematically, that has to be true. If the price is above the VWAP, that it has a very small, maybe negligible to the eye, but it is rising. If this price is below the VWAP, well, then the VWAP is declining.

So just look at this example here again with that month-to-date anchor. While the stock was above the VWAP, it was advancing. And you can barely see it in here. But let me just try to zoom in a little bit in here. You can barely see it.

But the VWAP was declining right here. And it started to decline again in here. Then it went flat. And then it was back and forth above and below. So the answer, Harry, is no.

I almost never look at the slope of the VWAP. What I look at when it comes time to entry. So, for instance, on a very short-term chart, do I want to buy as it breaks above the VWAP, for instance, right here, or do I feel it might have extended too much at that point?

What I like to see is a tight consolidation and then a break of range, even on the shortest timeframes for my entries. Next question is from Lonnie. First of all, thanks for all you do to help and educate others.

You're welcome. I'm glad you… finding value in it. Question is, can you give us an example from start to finish? Uh-oh, this sounds like a long involved process of finding a trade setup, making the trade, and closing the trade. Well, here's what I can do.

I can continue with, I put this out in public, RGTI last Tuesday. I said, here's why I like RGTI. The group was strengthening. I mentioned IONQ was the leader.

And the RGTI looked like it had a good chance of getting going. So how did I find the trade setup? Well, these are hot stocks, and they're always on my list. And once I see them starting to set up, then I pay attention.

So the idea of finding the trade was there. I laid it out in advance for people on, again, on social media. I said, I'm looking to buy it above this level here with a stop.

below the most recent relevant higher low. Not this low, but this low right here. So it made the higher high above the flat to rising five-day moving average.

It ran quickly. I sold some. I almost always do.

And then I maintained up until about right over here on a second third of it, and I'm still holding another third. Am I going to give my stop way down here? I'm hoping I can continue to hold it along with that five-day moving average. Please provide names of indicators, price, simple moving averages, volume weighted average, price levels. Volume is on there, but it's not really a consideration.

Notice the volume doesn't come in until well after this smart entry right here. If you're waiting for volume, you're often going to be paying a much higher price. So I look at price, moving averages, Volume weighted average price levels in multiple time frames. I don't have a checklist and I don't really use TradingView for other.

He was asking me, can I do this using TradingView as an example? I don't really like TradingView as much as TC. It's not that I don't like it. It's that I've used TC2000 for so long and it's so second nature to me. Whereas I always feel like I'm fumbling around on TradingView.

So I really only use TradingView for crypto. Although I am experimenting around with some other stuff. Stuff that looks like this right here.

Anyways, those are the types of things... I like TradingView because you can create different things. And what you just saw is simple moving averages and price shadows.

That's all you're looking at there. Similar to what I've shared with this, which is, of course, the... the five-day moving average shadows. Green when we're above and it's rising. When we're above the five-day moving average and the five-day moving average is declining, it's yellow.

When we're below a declining five-day moving average, it's red. So just... Those types of things.

Anyways, so start to, you know, the finish isn't there yet. Airbnb was a trade that, you know, it's on my list. It's in the NASDAQ 100. I was aware it was below a declining 20, 50, 200-day moving average.

And I said, you know, if it breaks below here, looking to short it and covered a third right here. And today, it covered two-thirds as it got back above this level for an average of $1.25 on that one, Lonnie. So hopefully that answers that.

Hein says, have you ever utilized gamma exposure in your trading strategies? No, never. So that's just a simple yes-no question.

And the answer is no, I don't use gamma exposure. Kevin says, Extended and quantifying that. It's not something I've ever tried to quantify. You know, I've been talking about the S&P 500 is short-term extended, but extended doesn't, it's just a word that means it's up a lot and the risks become higher.

The more, you know, the higher you go, the risks of a deeper pullback are greater. That's what I consider to be extended. I thought it was extended over here. I thought it was extended here.

I still think it's extended. And I think this is most likely, but I'm not shorting because I think that's most likely. I'm looking and saying, here's what's actually happening is we have this pattern of higher lows.

So above a rising five-day moving average. So until that's broken, it's not even neutral. So I don't try to quantify it other than to say, listen, we're getting extended here. Look at the way this stock or this market normally trades.

Look at this rally. And look at previous rallies. What typically happens when we have rallies of this magnitude?

And you can say that one a little bit longer. But we're getting stretched. We're getting extended to the point where this is where we start to typically falter.

We pull back price-wise. We consolidate time-wise. Pull back price-wise.

Pull back price-wise. Pull back price-wise. And those are the pauses that refresh.

Those are good things. So. Hopefully that helps a little bit better, Kevin, but I don't quantify it in terms of, you know, up 3.8% within 36 market hours or, you know, something like that. I don't try to quantify them. I just look at it and I'm a discretionary trader.

So I look at it and say, okay, let's use some common sense. What happens, you know, after nine, 10 days in a row of being up. It's just like at the casino, red hits 10 times.

Do you think it's going to go 15 times? Maybe it will, but the odds are against it. So what are the odds saying and what do I do with that information? Do I sell short?

Of course not. That's just stupid. That's asking to lose your money just because you think it's up too much.

There's no such thing as up too much. If the buyers come in tomorrow and for whatever reason, because it's 25, because it's 50, because the Fed says this or whatever, it doesn't matter. Focus on price action is what I'm most interested in.

Eric says, is there ever a scenario you do not take the first third off a daily or two? Yes, all the time. And in fact, just last week on X, I pointed out the two-minute exit. A two-minute exit is a real common one for me. I don't think there was one today, but you can look at, let's take a look at a stock that was, you know, Meta or Tesla was up good today.

but Um, let's say this was daily R2. It was R1, but let's say it was R2. What I do is as it's running towards daily R2, again, nevermind what it says here, we're pretending it's daily R2. I will either say, listen, we're coming up to daily R2.

That doesn't mean necessarily sell there, but it means start to think about oftentimes the stock will reverse in that area. So either sell a third if that's what you want to do, or then use the two-minute exit. The two-minute exit says as soon as it hits that, then the stop goes below this bar. As soon as this bar is closed and this bar begins, the stop goes under here.

As soon as this bar is closed and this bar begins, the stop goes under here, meaning you would exit at that point. Now, in this example, it wouldn't have gotten you any more. But in the example from the other day, I don't remember what it was. If the stock did this instead, and these are two-minute bars, then maybe it does this, and then it scares you for a moment but doesn't make that lower low, and then does this, well, then you get out right there on the two-minute exit. You can use the same exact thing, and that was my point the other day, is you can use a five-minute exit when it gets to a perceived level where there might be supply.

Maybe it's prior support. Maybe it's daily R2. Maybe it's the anchored VWAP from the peak. When you're at a level of interest where you think, hey, maybe it's time to start minimizing my, you know, reducing my risk a little bit. Don't just sell blindly at that level because it might rip right through there and you get another three, four, five points.

Instead, have a strategy. And that's the whole point. R2 is a strategy.

It's not the best strategy. If you're not comfortable with the two-minute chart, will then These could be five, pretend these are five minute bars. And the same thing, you know, would happen basically, except you'd be out right here. But if the stock continued to rally, maybe you would have held it through the end of the day. I'm sure you have these emotions or thoughts when you started.

Entry day ran up to daily R4 or 5. Wish I didn't sell at the first or third at R2. Well, you know, that's not true. I never wish I didn't sell it at a certain point just because it went higher. I promise that's not how I think.

I think, well, I could have made more, but I have strategies to reduce the emotional impact of what you just said. I don't want emotions to override what I do. I've been studying price action long enough that let's say you shorted Tesla right here. You could say, okay. I'm going to use a five minute exit.

And that exit would have gotten you out right here, actually on that bar, slightly higher. And then you might have kicked yourself down here and said, well, shit. But, you know, over here, you'd say, well, I'm glad I covered some down there. It's about having a strategy because you don't know it's going to go to daily R4 or R5 afterwards. But the way to make up for that is to say R2 is a level of interest.

I Never suggest people automatically sell there. For record keeping and just for calling out a trade, I say look to sell some near daily R2. And that only means start to think about reducing risk.

If that stock that ran to R4 or R5, the two-minute exit might have kept you in for that entire move. Ryan's question is, Newbie Trader here. First, thanks for all you do. You've been a great resource.

Glad for that. Thank you. Snow was most importantly.

How was the snow? He's talking about the trip to Chile. It was amazing on the heliski day the other day. It's spring skiing down there.

So it was fun. Anyways, I'd love to have a rundown of how, what, when, where, why regarding all things scanning and curating and organizing watch lists. for the stock of staking and IDing entry points. I'm getting a good grasp of TA.

I feel I could get a lot more by being organized, using and organizing my stocks. And he goes on to say, I'm using TradingView if that matters. It doesn't matter to me. You can do the same thing in TradingView.

But if I look at my watch list and my personal ones, you'll see autonomous vehicles, battery, blockchain, China, clean energy. Corona, that's for coronavirus. Crypto treasury stocks, that's a new list that I made recently.

Cyber security, the Dan Ives ETF, data centers, defense, dividend payers, the Dow, I mistyped it, that's the Dow 30. So keep organized lists. So when you look at that, you know, I create these lists and then I'll do, you know, drones, drone stocks, EVs, gaming, genomics. solar stocks, SMR stocks, that's the of course the Oclo, NNE, SMR, CEG, etc.

So that's how I do it. And you know, once in a while, if I notice, you know, I typically have like Oclo on my list. If I start to see Oklo move, well, I know what the components, what the other stocks in that group, not necessarily the components, but you could do the same thing.

If you're looking at the XLE and you say, hey, XLE, I want to know what stocks are in there. There's easy ways to do that. I don't see I don't do it this way, but you can go into watch lists and let's say search XLE. And let's see, ETF.

I don't know how to do it, but there's easy ways, simply because this isn't my process. But you can do a top-down approach like that and say, hey, I'm going to look at all the stocks in the Dow 30. Let me look at the Dow 30. and so it says I'm not it's so stupid because I don't pay for the DJI but so I made my own DIA uh Dow 30 which is the components of the DIA which is the Dow 30. So if you want to look through those and say, hey, the Dow, or if you look at that, you might say, hey, ExxonMobil, that looks interesting. Intel, that looks interesting.

I bought that back today. CVX looks interesting. Hey, what do you know? Two energy names. So maybe I should be looking at the XLE.

And that's the way you want to get your lists. You want to have your master. So the way I have my master list, as I described at the beginning of this, is that.

I'll look through that and I'll kind of look, I don't really look for themes, but I notice themes. So it's not that I'm looking for SMR stocks, small modular reactor. I'm not looking for small modular reactor stocks, but in my look at my list, I noticed that OKLO and SMR looked interesting.

So if I know that those ones look interesting, it means I want to go take a look get light beer, light bridge, whatever you call it. I know that I want to look at NNE, that these are stocks in that group. So that's, you know, how I do it.

And it takes time. It's, you know, getting organized and creating these lists. And how do you curate and create the list?

Well, sometimes I'll go, you know, AI has made it so much easier. AI, you can just say, what stocks are involved in small modular reactor? in the, you know, trade it on U.S. exchanges, and it'll give you a list. So a question from Emil says, can you give an example of an anchored VWAP pinch candidate that might break to the downside and what you'd like to see?

So, you know, here, again, the pinch is highly, highly overrated. It's not part of my process to look for. So if I look at stocks that are short candidates, that doesn't look like a good one.

BYRN, the 20-day moving average is starting to rise, so I don't really like that one. Let's say Cracker Barrel, which is kind of interesting because it's in the news. But I'm not looking at it as a pinch candidate.

If I was looking at a pinch and say, okay, well, I have to put a, you know, it's not pinching. So I can't, Emil, I can't give you a good example of that. And I would say that trying to focus on pinches is the wrong approach.

Just like I would tell you, trying to just find cups and handles or head and shoulders is the wrong approach. You want to notice what's going on on multiple time frames and say, this stock is in a downtrend. Well, it's clearly in a downtrend, but the intermediate term trend, well, the downtrend was broken.

We had these lower highs and lower lows. We had a declining five-day moving average. Now the five-day moving average is flat to rising. Does that mean I want to buy it?

No, because we still have a declining 20- and 50-day moving average. So the trends are not aligned, meaning I just want to leave this stock alone. There's so many other stocks out there.

Why try to force something on a stock showing me mixed messages? Masood, I hope I pronounced that right. When you're getting ready to buy your shares on a particular stock that satisfies your buy zone, do you buy all at once or average down close to your stop zone? I am typically buy all at once.

Now, I don't do buy zones, okay? I do buy above a level. So for instance, RGTI, we can talk about that. I want to buy a 100, you know, 100, 150% position right here. I will typically go, let's say my risk unit is, let's just say it's a thousand dollars.

You know, I might say, okay, my risk unit is a thousand dollars and my stop's 50 cents away. So that means I should trade 2000 shares. But I really like this one.

So I'm going to trade 5,000 shares and I'm going to sell that first thousand shares pretty quick, either a daily or two, or as it's, you know, running past daily or two on a two minute exit. Um, so in other words, my strong suit is that my entries are, are my strong suit. So I don't look to buy in a zone. I'm not looking to buy.

near the 50-day moving average. I want to see it bounce from the 50-day moving average, get above the five-day moving average, and be a buyer here with a stop under there. This is the first higher high above the flat to rising five-day moving average.

So that tells me the new uptrend has the potential to take hold here. The daily time frame says we've got a 20-day above a 50-day above the 200-day moving average. We're in a long-term uptrend.

So this is where those trends become aligned. This is where the buyers are either going to prove they've got it or it's going to break that lower low. And if it does that, well, then I don't want to be involved because it's likely going to break down and fail. So I buy all at once. It doesn't mean that's the proper way for you.

Pablo says, which settings would you use in the Finviz scanner to find stocks that are interesting or will be interesting to trade? Well, so again, you know, more questions about scanning. and Let me see. Did I? I must have closed that out.

What did I do with that scanner? Is it on here? No. Let's see.

Let's pull up FinViz again. And I mean, you know, what's interesting to me might not be interesting to you. I've done examples before of where I've created screeners in here of earning surprises. So an earning surprise, and I don't remember where to find. uh, what I looked for, but these are, let me, let me find a different one, uh, dividend yield.

So on a dividend yield stocks that trade over 400,000 shares with a dividend over 4% USA only, and it's optionable. So these are some stocks that trade, you know, what's interesting. If you find it, you know, dividend stocks, interesting. There you go.

Uh, I did a pullback scan, which Okay, so the volatility for the month is over 2%, above the 200, price above 4, average daily volume at least a half a million. It's down on the week, but the 20 is above, it's above the 20-day moving average, it's up on the quarter. So these are pullbacks within uptrends.

Maybe that's something you're looking at. And while I created these things, I never, like I haven't pulled this one up in ages. I don't know if it gives me good results or not because I'm already looking at enough stocks that I don't really need the scanners.

But those are some ideas here tonight about different scanning techniques and what to look for. Chris says, thanks again for another insightful webinar. These have helped my trading approach greatly. Glad to hear it.

My question is on the five-day moving average. When you're looking at the five-day moving average, do you focus on the overall slope or is it moving from flat to rising? Looking for your insights.

Well, you know, I want to see, you know, so for instance, after a pullback or, you know, when it's, when it's pulling back in here and it's below the five day moving average, I just look at it and say, okay, this is where we were five days ago. That means tomorrow it's going to continue to decline. I'm not going to watch this one tomorrow because it's likely to fail.

But as we start to replace this data with this data, I say, I start to anticipate the direction of the five day moving average. So it may still be declining, but I look at it and look back and say, okay, once it gets rid of this data and replaces with this, well, the five-day moving average is going to get dragged higher. And if it makes that higher high above here, I'm betting it will find the momentum to do that.

So it might not even be advancing at the time I buy it. Most of the times it is, but it's also not just the higher high above the flat to rising five-day moving average. Because let's say the higher high was made right here, just for argument's sake.

I would look at it and say, wait a minute, it just ran from 15 to 16.75. I don't want to be a buyer there. So let's say, in other words, this was the five-day moving average. Would I want to be a buyer as it gets above there?

No, because it expended too much energy. But as it consolidates for a day or two, and then looking at it, and if this was the five-day moving average, I would absolutely be interested in buying here with a stop under there. So it's about anticipating the direction of the five-day moving average as well. Scott says...

I'm curious about your workflow. For example, when do you prep your charts for all the stocks that you follow, not the indices? I always be appreciative of any details you might find to organize your day and manage your attention. Here's a pretty brief rundown of my typical day.

When I turn my computer on, I immediately turn on all my trading platforms before I go downstairs and get a cup of coffee. I want to know that my trading platforms are up, that there's no problems with TC2000, with Thinkorswim, with Interactive Broker, with TradingView. I want to know everything's working because if I've got a problem, I'm going to sit down and fix that problem first.

I'm not going to wait till the market opens and start complaining on Twitter, hey, is anybody else having problems with Thinkorswim today? It's like, you're just figuring this out now. You're not a real trader. Forget the personal commentary. That's my process and that's why.

Because it's a professional approach. An amateur is going to roll up at 9.30 Eastern, turn their computer on and say, hey, anybody else having problems with thinkorswim? Well, you're already way behind. So I look at that.

Everything's working. It's looking good. I'll take a quick look at my open positions to see if there's anything weird going on in the pre-market. If there's not, then I'll go. I used to feed the dog.

I don't feed the dog anymore. But I'll go make my coffee, go stand outside for a few minutes, stretch a little bit, just kind of, you know, get my mind straight. And then I'll come back upstairs.

I'll start going through my setups, the stocks that I think are likely to trigger for the day. I'll look at then, you know, I'll look at those and say, okay, are any of those moving? Anything unusual I should be aware of?

No. So it always starts with price action. And then I'll look at my emails. Then I go in and delete like half of my emails, wondering why I don't unsubscribe to half the emails I get.

The other half that I open, they will be, I'll put off anything business-wise till way later in the day. But I'm interested in headlines. So I'll look at the...

I'm trying to look, you know, so for instance, at the end of the day, I'll look at the daily rip, the StockTwits letter, because they do a nice, concise job of saying, here's what stocks moved, here's kind of what's what happened. I'll look at the in the morning, I'll look at what's the name of that company? Let me look at my trash.

um let's see you gotta go to so in the morning i get emails from uh axios markets wall street breakfast um i get a couple ai ones morning brew short squeeze is what it's called and i'll look at those and i'll see okay what you know they're all talking about the same stocks most likely They'll all be talking about the Fed tomorrow. So I'm not going to read any of these stories about the Fed because I don't care what their authors have to say. It just helps me form the sentiment for the day. That's right. Fed is today.

That's what's going on. Then I'll look at my sheet and say, any interesting earnings coming? No, nothing coming.

Well, we've got a couple of IPOs, which are interestingly being priced tomorrow. We've got StubHub and we've got this other one, Waterbridge. WBI. I don't know what Waterbridge does, but their bankers are JP Morgan, Barclay, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, Piper Sandler.

So they're all the major investment banks. Tells me it's a well-distributed amongst serious money in the market. So I'm going to pay attention to that IPO.

I'm going to pay attention to StubHub as well. So I go through my list and say, okay, The day before, my lists were my A list, my B list, and my C list. So during the day, so what I'll do first thing in the morning, if my stocks aren't moving, then I will start to set alerts.

If I'm looking at a stock like Intel and I think, hey, I want to know if it breaks this high. What is that high? That high is 2546. Well, I'll also want to know if it breaks below 25. I bought some of this today. So if it breaks down to 25 and if I'm not paying attention, I want an alert to tell me because I'm not always paying attention to every single open position I have. Throughout the day, I will manage my alerts, basically.

I set a ton of alerts each day. I manage those alerts, and if it pulls back to 25, it doesn't mean I'm going to do anything. And then it starts to bounce, I'll say, okay, let me reset that alert.

If it comes back down there, I want to know, because now it's hit it twice, and maybe it's going to break down. Otherwise, If it breaks down through it, I might sell the stock and then, you know, forget about it. But that process of going through the stocks during the day, you know, continues. And I adjust stops.

I adjust alerts. I don't really pay attention to Twitter during the day. Sometimes I do a little bit.

I'll just like if my Twitter, what do they call that? tweet deck is open and there's, um, some people are talking about tickers. Then I might look at the ticker, but I'm, I, I don't, I try not to consume any news during the day because I tend to, uh, be reactive to it out of boredom.

And I know that's a weakness of mine. So, you know, another weakness of mine is trading in the last hour and a half, two hours of the day. I'm generally not a great trader in the last two hours of the day. So that's when I begin my work for the next day is I'll start, you know, of course, I'm managing my positions and I have a lot of charts open.

So I have all my open positions on a chart somewhere on one of my screens and I'll set alerts there, too. But I'll start going through my list, compiling my list, going through a list of, let's say, 260 stocks and getting it down to 30 stocks and looking at those 30 stocks saying, OK, why am I looking at this stock? Well, I'm looking at, you know.

NNE because I'm looking at SMR. I'm looking at OKLO. And that group is hot, just like the quantums were hot.

I want to know those. And then I will start to make little notes about those. I'll put a hash mark next to the one that I think might be the lowest risk, highest probability trades to bring to AlphaTrend subscribers and kind of repeat the same process over and over again day after day. That's the thing is it's about having processes and strategies and not just saying, hey, that stock's up. Should I sell it?

Should I buy it? What's going on? Should I chase that one?

I don't like to leave things to emotion because emotion is the enemy. For me, it is that I will get emotional if I have the television on and they start talking about the stock. I haven't had CNBC on in years, not years, I promise.

It just doesn't interest me. It's not that it's bad, but it just doesn't interest me. And I know there's, you know, it will cause me to potentially become, you know, feel like, oh shit, hey, I could make money off that real quick, trade out of boredom. That's why I don't look at Twitter either. It's not that I don't respect the people on there.

It's that I just don't need the noise during the day. Price tells me everything I need to know. I don't need to listen to a journalist's opinion about this stock or that stock. Again, so the morning emails I get, I don't read them.

I skim them. And I'm trying to say, okay, everyone seems to be talking about China today or whatever it might be. Well, I'm not really interested in China, so I don't care. Boom. Easy enough.

Everyone's talking about energy names. Well, there were those energy names. Maybe I should take another look at those and mention them to the subscribers or whatever. Anyways, Jose says, when anchoring the VWAP to a specific event, is it more accurate to use volume-based candles instead of time-based candles? Well, my favorite candles are bar charts.

So I don't use candles at all. I just don't like them. Bar charts are much, much cleaner.

Anyways, so... So Jose says, I currently use this approach in the futures market due to extended hours, but I'd like to understand the theoretical and practical implications of choosing one over another. Well, the anchored VWAP is the combination of price, volume, and time. So I don't need volume bars.

I've got volume built in. So I've never even considered using them, Jose. They're just not something. really of consideration to me. William says, I wonder if you'd be willing to give me some brief coaching feedback on a trade I believe I was the victim of a shakeout on.

I entered Tesla on a 30-minute time frame. T-S-L-A. The definition of a shakeout is it went down, you sold it, and then it went back up without you.

I entered on a 30-minute time frame after I got back above the daily VWAP on 9-5. So 9-5 is right here. It got back above the daily VWAP, so you most likely entered right here. I'm not going to look at your chart, by the way.

In fact, I have it so the charts don't show. Because I don't like looking at other people's charts, I've got my way of looking at them. So anyway, it's not a problem.

From there, Tesla moves sideways before shaking me out. Well, if your stop was under here, yeah, you got shaken out. It was...

the question is, you got shaken out. And it had this high, and then that failed, so I would have said you probably should have sold right here, in fact, long before getting shaken out. over here because it looked like it wanted to continue and it failed it made a lower high and lower low at this point though realistically the light is yellow because it's above a rising five-day moving average but it's made a lower high and a lower low Here would have been, if you felt like you got shaken out, that was the proper place for a re-entry with a stop under here. The next day it does that.

Would you have been shaken out here? That's the question. So this was particularly frustrating because it went on to explode 20% higher.

Well, you feel like you got shaken out here, but again, you could have re-entered here. You could have re-entered on other areas. Chase the Gap or wait for VWAP right here on the 10th.

That was the next best entry to what you had. That was probably the best entry because if your stop was under here and if you didn't adjust it until... it took this high out, then your stop was here.

And then as it rallies up, I would have suggested you raise your stop to here. So anyways, I hope that helped William. Zach says don't read this on the, okay, so. That'll conclude it.

Thank you, everybody. I think I went, so we went 46 minutes. Thanks for all the great, great questions.

This is your format for educational concept questions, not necessarily feedback on individual stocks. So thanks for not sending in a bunch of emails saying, can you look at this stock or that stock? I hope this was helpful and we'll do it again next month.

Transcript for:Stock Trading Strategies and Routine

Transcript for:
Stock Trading Strategies and Routine