Bear Market Trading Strategies and Insights

Okay, everybody, it is 5 p.m. Eastern, 3 o'clock here in Colorado, so it means it's time for us to start here on this beautiful Monday, April 7th, 2025. And it's beautiful outside the market. I would think a lot of people don't think it's beautiful. And in fact, I think today the press started saying the market officially isn't a bear market. That's something that we've known for a while. We haven't called it a bear market. We've been calling it a bearish environment since 595, really, over 100 points ago. What is that? About 18%. So we knew we were in a bearish environment over here that we got a little bit of a reprieve. And then the sellers came back in and they remain in control. And as I mentioned, I put it out as a tweet and in Discord that there's a lot of people out there. What I said was I've seen numerous insightful comments from truly intelligent individuals that I respect regarding tariffs, the markets, and what lies ahead. What I didn't say is I didn't read any of them. I just saw that there were a lot of smart people mentioning things. But as I always like to say, it's all noise. It really truly is. Nobody knows what is going on here, when the tariffs are going to be resolved. Is this going to kick off a new world order to economic systems, trades, and all that? And the supply and demand for stocks, that's what you pay me for, is to translate what I see on these charts and tell you when I think it's safe to buy, when I think it's time to look closer. And then if you're wrong, where to set your stops. And I will remain, my commitment is. that I will remain true to that with the four goals that I always talk about. One, help you make money. Two, help you avoid losing money. And that I take a lot of pride in when the market does this. Three, provide daily education. And four, a positive environment. So those are my goals. That's how I measure what I do. It's not whether I make money in the market. It's not whether you make money in the market. My job is to consistently deliver on those goals. My hope is that you use that information so that you can definitely avoid losing money and hopefully make money as well. I don't talk to people about their individual account performance. I don't share my individual account performance. It's irrelevant to what you do. As I say, comparison is the thief of joy. And there is so much comparison that goes on in the market. So many people... you know, talking with certainty about what's going to happen. The market is going to do this this week. It has to bounce this much this week. By Friday, you'll see it here. I guarantee it. Those people are just making stuff up. And as I said last night, the loudest voices are typically the ones that are the most wrong and the ones that amateurs are drawn to. You know, careful consideration of if-then statements. That's how you look at the market. So you're a fool if you think that you can say, hey, the market made a bottom today because it's the heaviest volume it's traded in a year. If you look back at this volume, yeah, it's the heaviest so far, but so was, you know, that we had heavy volume on Thursday, heaviest volume on Friday, even heavier volume today. What are we going to see tomorrow? Are we going to see something like this? Well, this is the highest volume we've seen, you know, since 2020, since COVID. It doesn't mean we can't see that happen. Look at how this market, the SPY, came down on the heaviest volume right here that day. And guess what? There were people calling that the low on that day. Well, then they were calling the low on this day. And then they were calling the low on this day because of volume. And right here, we were down on lighter volume. So they're talking about the divergence. And sure, there was a divergence. Who cares? So what? It's a time of interest. What do we do in that period? We look at it and we say, okay, a time of interest. Let's look to the shorter term timeframe and see, is it time to get long? Was it time to get long here? No, because it had a declining five-day moving average. Here, maybe for a day trade, okay, because it had a flat to rising five-day moving average, but only for a day trade because it had already been extended from 550 to 560. survive 65 that day. So it had just run 10 points. Always ask yourself, where has it come from? Where does it have the potential to go? I called out a couple of shorts in the S&P last week, and I did not want to hold them overnight. I could look back and say, wow, I wish I held that short that day. But what if it gapped up like this? And all the people who thought, hey, there's going to be good news about the tariffs. So I've got some cushion I can hold on. And then they say, well, that's overdone. I'm going to buy some more. And then, shoot, now what do I do? And they wait till the next day. And then they probably puked it out on the lows this morning. The point is, I always talk about having a strategy. And we talk about strategies. that we can repeat over and over again and if it's not working on the shorter term time frame then it's got no business being a you know held for a longer term time frame it's not this is not a day trading service but we're in a day trading environment so i'm giving you some clues about you know what to look at but realistically with this type of volatility how do you make a call in here i mean sure you can say buy here with a stop under there but then you know, I sold most of what I had right here. And then I sold some here thinking, well, this is stupid. This is no way this is going to continue to hold. And again, it's not about me being a perfect trader. You're not paying me to trade my account. You're paying me for my 30 plus years of experience to distill that down to you so that you don't do stupid things with your money, which I said that last week. And I think it was Mike in discord said, Hey, we need to get that as a coffee mug. So it's kind of interesting that I was just shown. four different designs. Was it four or three? Yeah, four different designs for a mug that says, don't do stupid things with your money. And just to point it out, because I'm not a merchandise salesman, all of the profits, which I think I chose to use the smallest amount possible for for a markup on on any of that merchandise 100 of it goes to uh last year i did for one tree planted which is a company that plants a tree for every dollar you give them um and i you know i gave them a thousand dollars i think i've made like 200 and commissions off this merchandise um i'm gonna do it for saving rivers this year so i'm starting fresh and just giving them a thousand dollars in the name of alpha trends but that's not the point the point is that These little phrases that I say, don't do stupid things with your money, I say them for a reason. It is stupid to buy stocks in a downtrend. And if you're not sure if it's a downtrend, the easiest intermediate term way to find out whether it is or not is what's the direction of the five-day moving average. And if it's below a declining five-day moving average, then it's guilty to a proven innocent. Yes, it seems like it's down too much on Thursday It seemed like it was down too much on Friday and it seemed like it was down too much there for the everyone who caught This bottom here. They most likely bought some in here in here even in here and thought they were a genius The bottom line is we're in a brutal market environment There is not one single person who knows how it's gonna play out longer term My suspicion is as I've mentioned the 200-day moving average just like stocks work when we have a flat to advancing 200-day moving average and then we make a higher high that's not extended this is where that bullish move began from a low risk high probability standpoint that's where it began you say but Brian market began its ascent right here and it did and that was 20 percent later but you didn't need that 20 percent to participate in all this as long as that 200-day moving average is advancing You're going to have shakeouts, but if they shake out down to levels of interest that we've identified in advance, such as the anchor off of this low, then we look at the market and say, okay, maybe that is now going to come into play again. People always ask the question, how long do I keep an anchored VWAP on my chart? Well, I took this anchor off probably a year ago and just didn't think about it until I put this one on. And then when I put that one on ice and we broke below it, I said, well, we got to go back to here. Maybe we have to go all the way back to here. So what about the anchor from this peak? Is that going to be the zone from the peak of the prior bull and bear market run? Is this going to be the zone where it finds buyers? Well, we take a look at other levels of interest and say, well, look at that. It's right about a 61.8% retracement. So it would make sense. But that doesn't mean just stick bids in there unless you're trying to buy the low, which I'm not trying to do and I'm not trying to encourage anyone else to do, except for maybe a day trade here and there. So when we look at these markets, we have to look at them 100% objectively. The smartest minds are out there telling you all of their ideas. I would cringe if I turned CNBC on or Fox Business or Bloomberg or Cheddar or whatever else ones they have out there because there's so many of them now and everyone's doing their daily broadcasts and every single one of them is well-intended. No one's out there trying to give you bad information, but what they're trying to do at the end of the day is to provide information that gets you interested. in viewing their content. I play the same game to a degree and I'm honest enough to admit it. Why do I put out free tweets? Well, because I have a subscription service to sell and I put out tweets that I think are helpful and that are going to get people interested in taking a look at the AlphaTrend subscription. So I run a sale and hopefully some people sign up. And if they don't, that's fine too. By the way, if you are a newer member, welcome, because I did start a sale on Friday. It goes through this Friday or Saturday. I'm not sure. Welcome. Just take your time. Ease into it. I'm sure you have a lot of questions. Look at the frequently asked questions area. There's Discord for stock questions. We'll do another webinar next Monday as a bonus. We don't have a regularly scheduled one, but as a bonus one. to help newer subscribers get up to speed. So be aware of that. And just pay attention to the process and the things that I repeat over and over again, because that's what's going to help you. So I'm not going to look at, we'll look at some stocks. We'll look at Tesla. I mean, Tesla undercut the prior low. When you look at this chart, do you see something that trades with a good cyclical nature to it? Not on the daily, not on the weekly chart. How about the daily chart? It's kind of broken in here, right? I mean, it had that little bounce up, couldn't hold the 20, undercut this low. Maybe this is going to be an important low. Let's say you think it is. Well, if you didn't buy it off the open, maybe you decided, okay, I'm going to buy as it gets back above the VWAP, either here or here with a stop below the low of the day. At this point, I'd say you probably want to raise your stop up under here. I don't expect that you're likely to have found the bottom. because we have a declining 5d moving average and it's going to decline decline at a greater clip the next two days and we have all this market uncertainty but i know that some people like to trade the you know get involved this isn't trading really get involved in the markets in this way is if that's your strategy great you know buy as it gets back up through that level set your stop below the low of the day take some profits off especially i don't know where my anchor from this is basically from the tariffs um, right here. And, you know, this stock came right up to the anchor from the tariffs. Um, it was right before the close on, uh, was that on, on Wednesday that the tariffs were announced. And again, that's the only time you'll ever hear me mention the tariffs. Otherwise, you know, is the anchor from the tariffs. That's it. I don't have an opinion about the tariffs. I, I mean, I do care, but from a selfish market standpoint, I don't care. I just want to make money in stocks. as much as I can in the lowest risk way as possible. That's our job in the market. Our job is me, me, me. How much money can I make? I'm not investing in Tesla so I can fund their next battery operation. I'm not investing in Tesla so that we can all have robots in our house. These are trading vehicles for me that understand whether you agree or disagree. It doesn't matter. Know who you are in the market. If you're trying to, you know, create a better world and invest in ESG stocks, one, you're going to lose a lot of money because that was kind of a scam. But, or, you know, I'm not going to buy tobacco. That's fine. You know, don't buy tobacco companies and that's good for you. Who are you in the market? What are you comfortable with? I'm not comfortable buying banks, banking stocks. I'm not comfortable buying, and I made an exception for love. I was going to say commodity-related stocks. I made an exception here, and what did I get? Exactly what I deserved. I deserve to lose. Why? Because I'm a bad person? No, because I made a dumb decision. I started buying here. I added it to it there, and I sold it here. I deserve to lose money because I bought a stock. below declining 5-day moving average. I also deserve to lose money because I broke one of my rules and bought a commodity-related stock. What's the commodity? It's oil. And oil's going down, so it should help these companies, they tell you. Since I bought oil, I'm sorry, not since I bought oil, but since I bought LUV, oil's down 15%. Well, guess what? LUV is down even more than that. The only good news is I was smart enough to cut my losses. The sin though was that I bought below declining five-day moving average. And I thought there was an exception because, hey, the fundamental story, and I got caught up in the bullshit. So, you know, It's easy to get caught up in the bullshit, which is the news cycle. And the news is, of course, that they're going to add $2.50 in earnings. That's more than they earned all of last year. And as much as they earned, the combined earnings would be equal to the earnings that were back in 2021. So why wouldn't the stock go back there? That's not what I was thinking, but why wouldn't it go higher? Well, because we're in a bear market. That's why. And in a bear market. All correlations go to zero. But what about gold? Isn't that a store of value? It is until people panic and they decide, hey, we need to raise some money. I'm not comfortable holding gold. I'm not comfortable holding REITs. I'm not comfortable holding, certainly not comfortable holding biotechs. Just listen to the price action. How negative have I been on the biotechs? How negative have I been consistently? on the Russell 2000. It's not because I'm a negative person. It's because that's what this market is telling me. And my job is to observe carefully, translate it to English and tell you. So let's take a look at some other names and bonds. What about bonds? I thought they were the flight to safety. Well, maybe China's selling them. Nobody knows. That's what I saw some tweets about that. Maybe it's a sovereign nation selling and maybe it's China. Who knows? All I know is You don't buy an extended breakout. The people who bought this gap up on Friday, they didn't ask themselves where had it come from. It came from 89 to 93. It's basically a 4.5% move in a period of just a couple days with a declining 200-day moving average. Pullback is expected here, not to get smashed. I would have expected maybe the bonds were going to do something like this and then perhaps go back. and continue to move higher. But guess what? The bond market had a different plan. And if you don't chase, you won't have to experience this stuff. And if you were involved, if you don't take partial profits, it won't hurt as much. So let's take a look at, we just looked at Tesla. So maybe that's the low for a while and maybe it's not. Maybe it goes and undercuts this shakeout low first. It doesn't seem likely. but it's possible. I'm interested in trading what's likely. Is it likely that it's going to continue higher? I can't say that, not in this market environment. Is it possible? Sure. Is it likely that Palantir drops down to 60? Doesn't seem likely to me, but it's possible because everything's imploding. Now, was it up 5% today? Well, you had to have bought it on Friday to experience that 5%, and you had to experience how much of a... drawdown first thing in the morning was the risk of this worth the reward of that that looks backwards to me that looks like three parts risk one part reward so make the trade your own do what you feels right for you maybe you're okay with gambling and saying I'm gonna buy here oh shit I got a double down and make some decent money and you know what that's fine as long as you get the bounce And as long as you're comfortable with it down here and you can stomach that. I'm 57 years old. I'm not into taking those risks. If I was 30, I'd probably be doing that all day long. And I probably would be looking for alternative ways to fund a new account after I blow up account after account doing that. SMCI has been a popular one. It just continues to be garbage. And it's supposed to be. It has a declining 200-day moving average. NVIDIA was up 3% today. Is that the bottom? I mean, I still think this is possible. I don't think it's the bottom. It's a near-term low that held for six and a half hours. That's all you can say about it now. It's a low that held for six and a half hours so far. Is that something you want to hang your hat on? Not me. We're right at the anchor from the day of the tariffs. How about Meta? It was up $11 today. That's good. Well, is it? I mean, is it just another lower high? Or, you know, is it going to bounce like this bounce and then completely cave in? If so, where is it going to rally to? Maybe the anchor off of this peak. And you know what? That's a good trade. Go ahead and take that trade if that's within your comfort. I look at it and say, I'm happy to miss that trade. I'd rather get involved over here and short it right here with a stop there because the path of least resistance based on the direction of the 20, the 50, and the 200-day moving average is lower. So Meta doesn't look like a buy to me. Neither does Apple. Apple's broken go back and look at last Sunday's video not last night But last Sunday in and there were some really pristine calls in there, and I didn't mean to you know predict the market But they you know I said it's broken these stocks are broken. It's not a buy what are our levels of interest Well, we're below that anchor, so maybe from this high okay? We can say that's a level of interest, but what if that breaks maybe all the way down to 150? Doesn't seem likely, but it's certainly possible in this environment. What if the tariffs continue and it really does cost $3,500 for an iPhone because we have to manufacture them here? It probably ends up being down at $50 per share. It's just another company. It's just another stock. It's nothing special. It's a stock that goes up and a stock that goes down. When it goes down, it's brutal to own it. Wait for the periods when it's going up to own it. When it starts turning sideways and going lower, get rid of it. and wait for it to start going up again. AMD over and over and over again. It's the most requested ticker. I started that StockTwits show in January of this year. And it was from that date. And it was actually, I remember doing the one, I was in Deer Valley. And it might have been the first one of the year. I might have started doing that StockTwits show somewhere over here. But it was the first one of the year. And I remember that what I did was I looked at the 10 most popular stock picks on stock Twitch for 2025. AMD was, you know, it was AMD, Tesla, Apple, all the names you expect it to be. But on this one, I was particularly negative saying, why do people like this stock? It's got a declining 20. It's declining 50, declining 200-day moving average. If they don't scare you out, they'll wear you out. If you want to trade these bounces and that's your game, just understand that that's what they are, is bounces. If we look at I did this earlier today. Where was it? Let me see. I built a chart with a five-day moving average on it. So sometimes I play around and make these charts. Oh, you know what? It was on TradingView. I put a five-day moving average on a 130 minute timeframe and went back and just was playing with it to, you know, with a, so it'd be a 15 period moving average for five days because there's three 130 minute periods per day. But anyways, if you just look at it, this is the most basic things, even right here. I mean, look at how smooth the cyclical nature, I guess, cyclicity. Anyways, look at how smooth it is. Yeah, a little couple hiccups over here, but we had a declining five-day moving average right here. We had an advancing five-day moving average, but did you want to buy when it was extended like that? Maybe it was a chase the gap, wait for VWAP that day, and then you got burned the next day. That happens. That's the shitty part, right? This is the normal part. This is the normal part. This is normal, failing rallies with a declining five-day moving average. It's normal to go sideways and then even gap up. And it's normal to make higher highs and higher lows until something happens that motivates the sellers. And when it's below the five-day moving average, it's guilty till proven innocent again. This shorter-term trend plus this shorter-term trend plus this shorter-term trend and this shorter-term trend add up to this trend here. That's what you're looking at. The sum of the short-term… short-term trends equals a long-term trend. So the short-term trend leads to the long-term trend. So it's broken. It continues to be broken. People will still continue to try to find the bottom in this. One or two of them will get lucky like they did over here. But the people who got lucky right there probably tried to buy here, here, here, and here. Thought they were genius here. Then thought, oh boy, I'm stupid. And the same thing, the emotional chart. goes on every time frame long and short and i'll post that again later amazon what do you think of amazon i think it's a broken stock it has the potential to find buyers down near this area. What is this area? This is approximately 152. So maybe it goes and undercuts this low in the next week or two, and then you get a bounce and treat it as a bounce because V bottoms aren't the norm. That's not the norm. What's the norm? We rally up to the declining 200-day moving average with a big rally from 100 to 45%. And then boom, from 145 down to 83. It gets cut in half almost. So down 45%. And then what? It rallies up to the declining 200-day moving average. Big rally from 85 to 115, 30 points. That's a 30% rally, 35%. But then it drops down to 87, 88. And then we start to see the 200-day moving average flattening out. And guess what? Maybe you had to chase it in here. Maybe you didn't buy it at all. Maybe you bought it right here as the buyers retook control. And then you held it. And maybe you got shaken out right here. And maybe you reentered there. I don't trade the long-term timeframes. But it's the same analysis as every single timeframe. What's Coinbase doing? It's broken. It's in a downtrend. What about Mister? I saw a headline and they're writing down $5 billion loss or something. I mean, I don't follow it. I read headlines. I've read a lot of headlines. Tariffs move, send stocks on rollercoaster ride. Okay, cool. How does that help anyone? Anyways, this one is down to the 200-day moving average. Do I think it's going to hold? Depends on what you think of Bitcoin because it's directly correlated to Bitcoin. Bitcoin looks broken. We'll take a look at that in a few minutes. Um, anyways, I guess I should get to some of the questions here. Let's just take a look at Netflix real quick. Netflix has been doing reasonably well. What is the definition of trend? Higher highs and higher lows. So we have a pattern of higher highs and higher lows, but then what? Then we see a lower high and a lower low. And guess what? Hey, what's that? That's a head and shoulders pattern. All a head and shoulders pattern is, is a prior period of higher highs and higher lows turns to a lower high and then a lower low. It's just a shifting of higher highs and higher lows to lower highs and lower lows. It's just starting a new downtrend maybe. Maybe it gets stuck in here for a little while if it's a strong stock and it can withhold, but it's more likely to do this and then do this. And do you have to buy the low? It would have been nice to buy down there, but it could have continued lower. Instead, it rallied. So what? Even what if you bought it right here for your long-term account? Are you getting out? Depends on what you want to listen to. Do you want to listen to everyone who tells you it's a great company and it's going to come back? Or do you want to listen to the stock and say, in the history of Netflix, is it unusual to see very large drawdowns? And. The next one could bring it something like this, and that would be well within the norm. Are you comfortable holding it down to $600? That's not a price target. It's just an observation based on previous percentage moves that even if you go way back here, it doesn't look like much. But from $575 down to $1.50, that was its anchored VWAP. It gets back above it right here. That's where it's a buy. You should have sold here as it made. the lower highs and lower lows and then maybe you got back involved in there maybe you didn't maybe instead you did this let's move this forward a little maybe you bought someone here or you know maybe you bought that breakout and sold out quickly and didn't see the stock go from five to two and a half down 50 and then down from four in a quarter down to two and a quarter down 45% and then it rallies to five and a half six and then from six down to two and a half it's not these moves are not unusual and What is your comfort level for your time frame? I run a swing trade service the same concepts are applicable to every single time frame when did the buyers sellers regain control of Amazon right here they regain control. How did it happen? Well, we had this pattern of higher highs and higher lows above rising 5-day moving average. Then we saw a lower high. Then we saw a lower low. What about the daily timeframe? We saw this pattern of higher highs and higher lows. Then we saw a lower high. Then we saw a lower low. Actually, it's so much later on these daily charts, but this is where the sellers regain control. Would you have bought in here? If you did, you were fighting the direction of the five-day moving average. The sellers have been getting in control from 970, and I see no evidence that they're losing control. So that will be the last stock I look at because there are some questions here that I want to get to. And that's the point of these is to answer your educational concept questions. So first one is from Joe. And Joe's got two, so I'm going to answer his one. Brian, I trust all is well at the end. I missed the memo. When are you going to go back to showing the so what he's pointing out to is the daily picture that I would post with the stock symbols. the name of the company, the sector, the PE, the dividend, the short float, short ratio, beta, earnings date, and some guidelines. I'll go back to that when the market, I think, is in a better position for swing trades. Right now, we're not in that position. So I'm not providing that, Joe. And actually, it looks like he asked the same question twice. So I'm going to delete that. Justin says, how do you differentiate between a failed breakout and a continuation of a trend high or high as it's happening? Is there a certain percentage that the next higher high should reach? No. So, for instance, in January, February rather, if you go back to this day in particular, I said, this is great. We've got a breakout. The market is making a new all-time high. And we've got to be careful, though. We've got to be careful that if this is a failed breakout, how will we know? We will know. We won't know for certain. But we're certainly going to get to the sidelines right here. So it's about multiple timeframe analysis, Justin, is that we don't know it's a failed breakout, but we know that failed breakouts can happen. There's a lot of misdirection around the beginning of the year. And in this case, what did we see? We saw a pattern of higher highs and higher lows above a rising five-day moving average turn into a lower high with a rising five-day moving average. The five-day moving average flattened out. We made a lower low. And then what did we see? We saw lower highs and lower lows, maybe a little bit of a higher high there. But do we trust that higher high? Not with a declining five-day moving average. And that was the place that if you go back, I guarantee if you look at this day, February 21, and go back and look at the video, I'll say, we have to be really careful. This is the potential from a failed move comes a fast move. Let's wait and see how it behaves. Down here is what I'm sure I was saying at the year-to-date anchor and the anchor from the election because those are important. Just because we're here doesn't mean that I thought we were going to do this, but we're on the alert that that could happen. I didn't actually think it was going to happen, and definitely not at this magnitude and velocity, because we had these levels right here at 596. So 596 right here at the top end of this. I was thinking, well, maybe we're holding the year to date in the anchor from the election. But as the market continued to break lower and more aggressively, that's when we knew it was failed for real. And that's where it wasn't too late to sell and move to the sidelines. Good question. Let's see. Nolan says, I know you manually scan the market for yourself for stocks. However, would you be able to discuss how one might use a screener to weed down the market and consist of many thousands of stocks that trade over 500,000 shares? I'm not going to do that tonight. Maybe I can do that next Monday. I'm going to leave this. I'm going to forward this to myself and put a note on it. Answer next week. So I'd rather talk about some of these other questions right now, because right now everything's broken anyways. There's nothing worth scanning for, most likely. So I will answer that one next week, Nolan. Greg's question is, question, can I make real money as a swing trader in a bull market? And if so, specifically how? Yes, by riding the trends above the rising five-day moving average. Please note, I'm an inexperienced trader to even contemplate shorting stocks. I'm just beginning to learn how to chart. I've parked about 50% of my holdings into tips, mutual funds for long-term, blah, blah, blah. Do you see upside trading opportunities for someone like... me to have over the next three to five years of history repeats three to five years absolutely i mean you know if history repeats the last bearish environment lasted for about a year right so maybe in a year we'll have this thing figured out and you know if you know what i've been drawing in for instance on the semiconductors um i doubt my drawings exist anymore because i've deleted them but what i had been drawing in is something that looked like this, that actually looked like this, that I thought was maybe three to six months away. And I thought we're going to maybe come down and do this. And then perhaps we could begin to move higher again. And that would have put us into the fourth quarter of the year. And what I would be looking for is what I always want to see is that, let's say that's the 50 day, here's the 150 day. And the 200-day might look like this. And then those shorter-term ones would move higher. But that's how it typically moves. It's not how it always moves. You had this COVID, which was unusual. Is the tariff thing going to be unusual? Or is the whole world economy shifted and broken for now and going to need to be refigured out? We've got a lot of missing pieces of this puzzle that just fell on the ground. How are we going to figure out which piece goes where when we're missing a bunch of the pieces? And that's where it seems right now. No one's lifted up under the couch to see if there's a piece there that might complete the puzzle. And no one's going to look for that piece of the puzzle for three months or six months or figure out that that is important. But that's where we are in this market is we've got major, major indecision. confusion, chaos, and we're going to continue to see some large volatility. You can't get excited in either direction. You might feel like the hero for a moment if you buy one of these triple longs in the morning and you're up 15% and you decide you're so smart, you're going to hold it overnight. And then somewhere, one of these 50 countries with tariffs opens their mouth and says, F you to our leader and maybe we gap down. I don't know. What are the scenarios? What are the good scenarios? The good scenarios, I'm not even going to the good scenarios are price goes up and it holds above the VWAP. So we hold some. We take some partial profits off. In a couple weeks, maybe in a week and a half, maybe we get a flat to rising 5D moving average, but we're below the 20 and the 50. So maybe we do some swing trades with half size. Those are what we're going to be looking for. Generally speaking, Michael says, generally speaking, should shorter-term traders avoid using multiple-day VWAP strategy if price is under the five-day? Not for short sales, you shouldn't. We're below a declining five-day moving average. So, you know, if we rally up to the two-day, you know, it found supply there a little bit. I mean, today's too volatile for this stuff. But, no, it's the same long or short, Michael. Adrian says, question for the webinar. Did I already answer a question from Adrian? I guess not. I just want to make sure everyone has. Oh, you know what? I missed a couple. Let me answer Adrian's first. Looking in retrospect on this market sell-off for a long-term portfolio holding SPY, what do you think would have been the time to sell off? I mean, I guess I answered it with the… the previous question of a failed breakout. So somewhere in here or here would have been the time. That's not my timeframe, Adrian. So I don't really feel comfortable giving answers on that timeframe either, but I would have looked at it as I did from the intermediate term perspective, and I didn't want to own any spy right in there. So I have to go back. Sally had one. Actually, that's a different type of question. Dustin says, Brian, I want to thank you for sharing your market wisdom. I've been training for five years. A rule that fascinates me and saves me a lot of money is the rule of daily R2. It forces me to be patient with the market open, reduces me from getting whipsawed all over the place. Question is, have you used daily R2 to make money on the short side and switch your thinking? No, never. I never short a daily R2. I use daily R2 for longs. when I have a long position and it goes from $42. up to $43.27 is daily R2 and it starts to stall out there. I sell a third and I hold my two thirds because the primary trend is higher. I'm not looking for scalp trades against it. And when it's above daily R2, it's probably above the daily VWAP. So absolutely I do not. I wouldn't even consider it. So that's a counter trend trade, Dustin, for short term. And again, I'm interested in the swing trades. So I'm not interested in fighting the direction of the intermediate and primary trend. Because if I'm long, it means it's above a rising five-day moving average. And ideally, but not in the next couple of weeks, we won't have this. Ideally, above the rising 20, 50, 100, 200-day moving average as well. Crystal says, she's not saying, she says, I'm referencing when you mentioned that we are in cash. we should still be making 4% on our cash. Is that pulling out of the account, putting something like a high-yield saving account, or putting our cash in a safer stock that brings that kind of dividend? Right now, I'm 100% in cash waiting for this market to heal. Crystal, every brokerage firm has some kind of money market account that you should be able to either manually move it over to or that it automatically sweeps. I know that Interactive Broker automatically sweeps. I know that a lot of them don't. automatically sweep it. They leave it in that account to earn 25 basis points. And then they use your money for that 4% and they, you know, 4.5% and they pay you a quarter percent and they use your money to make 4.25% for them. So that, you know, that's just the basic numbers, but that's kind of how it works. So I don't know what brokerage you work at, but I would say, you know, call the broker and say, what higher yielding safe. alternatives do you have for my cash holdings? And they might say T-bills or some kind of T-bill fund where you don't have to hold it for 90 days, but you have daily liquidity based on the 90-year paper. So I'm not an expert in those, but that's the type of questions you want to ask them. Donnie says, should I worry about... Wash sales, for example, if I make a trade and get stopped for a loss, but I potentially want to get long again within 30 days. I'm not a tax guy, so I'll just tell you what I do is that I am marked as a professional trader. So I used mark to market accounting, which means there is no wash sale. You just add up all your buys and all your sells. That's something you need to talk to you about with your accountant. The other thing that I do to even make the job easier is that most of my day trading is in my IRA. There is no paperwork in an IRA. You put your money in, and when you take it out, that's the taxable balance. They don't ask you how it got there. They just say, okay, you've got this many dollars. You're taking that many out. We're going to tax you at your rate here today on that. So. I am most aggressive about day trading in my IRA. I don't recommend that for everyone. I only recommend it if you're actually making money day trading. So most of my day trading is done in an IRA because I'm pretty good at it. I make money. If I wasn't good at it, then I would say you're better off trading it in your regular cash account because there, at least you can write your losses off against gains. Whereas in an IRA, there's nothing to write off you just lose it and you lose your tax advantage on that money so donnie that's a question for an accountant hopefully that leads you in the right direction mark says well that's a long email let me see if i can scan it quickly for a question i honestly just don't see a question in here i don't see a question mark mark from Seattle in case you're wondering who I'm talking to. Again, if you read the description of the webinar for questions, it is, please be concise and let me know what the question is. I just don't see a question here. So you've got a goal is to learn to actively manage a smallish Schwab account using thinkorswim. day trading, profitably hold stocks for a moderate timeframe. We're fortunate, however, retired. See, I don't see the question. I see a lot of statements. But I don't see any questions, Mark. So I can't yeah, there's no question in there. I can't really help you with that. And with that, we are actually at the end of the questions. So it is 3.44 p.m. here. I'm happy to look at any stocks you guys want to look at. And I won't do my normal thing. If you want to just type in a symbol, I'll take a look at it. As I always say, what I'm always trying to do is look for swing trade opportunities. And I typically answer a question about a stock from a swing trade perspective. Crystal says, thank you for answering my question. Your methods have taught me proper risk management and that has saved me so much. And I'm thrilled to hear that, Crystal. That's great. You've got to protect what you have before you can make money. And a lot of people are learning that lesson the hard way right now. I'm glad you didn't have to do that. I was able to share my experience with you so that you could avoid that. Are there any other questions? Anybody, feel free to type it in. Right here, Target Therapeutics. You know, it's pulling back. It's coming down to the anchor from the election. But, you know, overall, it's an uptrend. But near term, it's, you know, got a declining five-day moving average. So it's guilty till proven innocent. Longer term, it's an uptrend. I would dare to say it's extended. I still own, I sold half of what I own for my wife. I don't know what I'm waiting for. I'm kind of feeling stupid that I haven't, but I think I'll probably, you know, if it breaks down any further than about here, I'm going to probably sell the balance. And, you know, her cost basis is 22 or 24. So I've been holding it since, I think. I've been holding it since in here, actually, maybe right here. So yeah, near term, it's lower highs and lower lows. Do you trade any of your crypto besides Bitcoin? Not when the market's declining. I mean, it's a Bitcoin game. That's where the liquidity is. In fact, let's switch screens. The last two times I did this, though. in a webinar, it wouldn't show what I was looking at. So we're at the end of the webinar. I'm going to try to switch it over to trading view. I don't expect you're going to be able to see my screen. I hope you are going to be able to, but I'd like to hopefully not have that problem. Let me see what happens. I've just done shared TC2000, fingers crossed. Can you see Bitcoin on your screen right now? Anybody? Just a why? No. Well, that's technology for you. I kind of suspected that. And now if I go back to TC2000, it won't show that either. So the visual portion of this is now concluded. But the answer, do I trade anything other than Bitcoin? Yes. I also trade Ethereum and Solana. But as I've been saying for weeks, my crypto account is 100% cash. I have no interest in this market. My suspicion is that Bitcoin will continue down towards about 69,000 and give up the entire rally since the election. But I'm not trading it to the downside. I don't short cryptos, except for intraday if there's nothing else going on. Let's see. Barris says, Brian, thanks for the education. Can you please talk about shakeouts? Are there any methods to minimize getting shaken out other than wider stops? No. there are not. And in fact, what I would say is just be careful of what you buy. In other words, if you see a breakout in the TLT, did those people get shaken out or did they get trapped because they didn't consider how it got there? If you have low risk entries and you have your stop, shakeouts occur, but it begins with a smart entry. Not chasing stocks and not chasing them intraday and thinking that, oh, wow, the futures just spiked 20 points. There must be news coming. This is going to end the trade war. You can't think like that. You've got to look at it and say, okay, it's gone. It's gone without me. That's just the way it goes. So it begins with a smart entry first, Barris, and then honor your stop. Not use a wider one. That's actually the worst thing you can do. And that's what the market has, you know, that's been the message of the market the last two months is honor your stops. Any thoughts on US Steel? Yeah, people seem to like it, but I don't trade commodity-related stocks. It is not a new discovery. It was at 36 this morning. It's at 44.50 on the close. You're not the first one to figure this one out. And if you look at the daily chart of this, and I don't mean that in a demeaning way at all, Tom, I'm just saying, just ask yourself, where has it come from? and look at the history of the stock i know you can't see my screen i pulled it up here on a daily chart but it's just i mean it's super choppy how many times has it had five point moves and then give them back in the next three to four days and this was much bigger than a five point move so if the if the personality of the stock makes sense to you trade it in as low a risk way as possible but because it's so volatile i don't see a low risk way to trade it um jason says i know Not a buy right now, but is GH setting up? I mean, maybe it is, but just like every other stock I've been mentioning, today's relative strength is tomorrow's selling candidate. Every relative strength stock, maybe there's a couple, but most, 90% plus of all the relative strength stocks that we've spoken about and I've warned about, they fail. And they fail miserably. Would not be surprised to see Guardian health down at $28 per share doesn't mean that's what it looks like on the chart It looks decent on the chart, but everything that looked decent three weeks ago. It looks like shit today So I just say be very careful. Well, it looks like that's the end of our questions

We haven't called it a bear market. We've been calling it a bearish environment since 595, really, over 100 points ago. What is that?

About 18%. So we knew we were in a bearish environment over here that we got a little bit of a reprieve. And then the sellers came back in and they remain in control. And as I mentioned, I put it out as a tweet and in Discord that there's a lot of people out there. What I said was I've seen numerous insightful comments from truly intelligent individuals that I respect regarding tariffs, the markets, and what lies ahead.

What I didn't say is I didn't read any of them. I just saw that there were a lot of smart people mentioning things. But as I always like to say, it's all noise. It really truly is. Nobody knows what is going on here, when the tariffs are going to be resolved.

Is this going to kick off a new world order to economic systems, trades, and all that? And the supply and demand for stocks, that's what you pay me for, is to translate what I see on these charts and tell you when I think it's safe to buy, when I think it's time to look closer. And then if you're wrong, where to set your stops.

And I will remain, my commitment is. that I will remain true to that with the four goals that I always talk about. One, help you make money. Two, help you avoid losing money. And that I take a lot of pride in when the market does this. Three, provide daily education.

And four, a positive environment. So those are my goals. That's how I measure what I do.

It's not whether I make money in the market. It's not whether you make money in the market. My job is to consistently deliver on those goals.

My hope is that you use that information so that you can definitely avoid losing money and hopefully make money as well. I don't talk to people about their individual account performance. I don't share my individual account performance.

It's irrelevant to what you do. As I say, comparison is the thief of joy. And there is so much comparison that goes on in the market.

So many people... you know, talking with certainty about what's going to happen. The market is going to do this this week. It has to bounce this much this week. By Friday, you'll see it here.

I guarantee it. Those people are just making stuff up. And as I said last night, the loudest voices are typically the ones that are the most wrong and the ones that amateurs are drawn to. You know, careful consideration of if-then statements.

That's how you look at the market. So you're a fool if you think that you can say, hey, the market made a bottom today because it's the heaviest volume it's traded in a year. If you look back at this volume, yeah, it's the heaviest so far, but so was, you know, that we had heavy volume on Thursday, heaviest volume on Friday, even heavier volume today.

What are we going to see tomorrow? Are we going to see something like this? Well, this is the highest volume we've seen, you know, since 2020, since COVID.

It doesn't mean we can't see that happen. Look at how this market, the SPY, came down on the heaviest volume right here that day. And guess what? There were people calling that the low on that day.

Well, then they were calling the low on this day. And then they were calling the low on this day because of volume. And right here, we were down on lighter volume.

So they're talking about the divergence. And sure, there was a divergence. Who cares?

So what? It's a time of interest. What do we do in that period? We look at it and we say, okay, a time of interest.

Let's look to the shorter term timeframe and see, is it time to get long? Was it time to get long here? No, because it had a declining five-day moving average.

Here, maybe for a day trade, okay, because it had a flat to rising five-day moving average, but only for a day trade because it had already been extended from 550 to 560. survive 65 that day. So it had just run 10 points. Always ask yourself, where has it come from? Where does it have the potential to go?

I called out a couple of shorts in the S&P last week, and I did not want to hold them overnight. I could look back and say, wow, I wish I held that short that day. But what if it gapped up like this? And all the people who thought, hey, there's going to be good news about the tariffs.

So I've got some cushion I can hold on. And then they say, well, that's overdone. I'm going to buy some more.

And then, shoot, now what do I do? And they wait till the next day. And then they probably puked it out on the lows this morning.

The point is, I always talk about having a strategy. And we talk about strategies. that we can repeat over and over again and if it's not working on the shorter term time frame then it's got no business being a you know held for a longer term time frame it's not this is not a day trading service but we're in a day trading environment so i'm giving you some clues about you know what to look at but realistically with this type of volatility how do you make a call in here i mean sure you can say buy here with a stop under there but then you know, I sold most of what I had right here.

And then I sold some here thinking, well, this is stupid. This is no way this is going to continue to hold. And again, it's not about me being a perfect trader.

You're not paying me to trade my account. You're paying me for my 30 plus years of experience to distill that down to you so that you don't do stupid things with your money, which I said that last week. And I think it was Mike in discord said, Hey, we need to get that as a coffee mug. So it's kind of interesting that I was just shown.

four different designs. Was it four or three? Yeah, four different designs for a mug that says, don't do stupid things with your money.

And just to point it out, because I'm not a merchandise salesman, all of the profits, which I think I chose to use the smallest amount possible for for a markup on on any of that merchandise 100 of it goes to uh last year i did for one tree planted which is a company that plants a tree for every dollar you give them um and i you know i gave them a thousand dollars i think i've made like 200 and commissions off this merchandise um i'm gonna do it for saving rivers this year so i'm starting fresh and just giving them a thousand dollars in the name of alpha trends but that's not the point the point is that These little phrases that I say, don't do stupid things with your money, I say them for a reason. It is stupid to buy stocks in a downtrend. And if you're not sure if it's a downtrend, the easiest intermediate term way to find out whether it is or not is what's the direction of the five-day moving average. And if it's below a declining five-day moving average, then it's guilty to a proven innocent. Yes, it seems like it's down too much on Thursday It seemed like it was down too much on Friday and it seemed like it was down too much there for the everyone who caught This bottom here.

They most likely bought some in here in here even in here and thought they were a genius The bottom line is we're in a brutal market environment There is not one single person who knows how it's gonna play out longer term My suspicion is as I've mentioned the 200-day moving average just like stocks work when we have a flat to advancing 200-day moving average and then we make a higher high that's not extended this is where that bullish move began from a low risk high probability standpoint that's where it began you say but Brian market began its ascent right here and it did and that was 20 percent later but you didn't need that 20 percent to participate in all this as long as that 200-day moving average is advancing You're going to have shakeouts, but if they shake out down to levels of interest that we've identified in advance, such as the anchor off of this low, then we look at the market and say, okay, maybe that is now going to come into play again. People always ask the question, how long do I keep an anchored VWAP on my chart? Well, I took this anchor off probably a year ago and just didn't think about it until I put this one on. And then when I put that one on ice and we broke below it, I said, well, we got to go back to here. Maybe we have to go all the way back to here.

So what about the anchor from this peak? Is that going to be the zone from the peak of the prior bull and bear market run? Is this going to be the zone where it finds buyers? Well, we take a look at other levels of interest and say, well, look at that.

It's right about a 61.8% retracement. So it would make sense. But that doesn't mean just stick bids in there unless you're trying to buy the low, which I'm not trying to do and I'm not trying to encourage anyone else to do, except for maybe a day trade here and there. So when we look at these markets, we have to look at them 100% objectively. The smartest minds are out there telling you all of their ideas.

I would cringe if I turned CNBC on or Fox Business or Bloomberg or Cheddar or whatever else ones they have out there because there's so many of them now and everyone's doing their daily broadcasts and every single one of them is well-intended. No one's out there trying to give you bad information, but what they're trying to do at the end of the day is to provide information that gets you interested. in viewing their content.

I play the same game to a degree and I'm honest enough to admit it. Why do I put out free tweets? Well, because I have a subscription service to sell and I put out tweets that I think are helpful and that are going to get people interested in taking a look at the AlphaTrend subscription.

So I run a sale and hopefully some people sign up. And if they don't, that's fine too. By the way, if you are a newer member, welcome, because I did start a sale on Friday.

It goes through this Friday or Saturday. I'm not sure. Welcome. Just take your time. Ease into it.

I'm sure you have a lot of questions. Look at the frequently asked questions area. There's Discord for stock questions.

We'll do another webinar next Monday as a bonus. We don't have a regularly scheduled one, but as a bonus one. to help newer subscribers get up to speed. So be aware of that. And just pay attention to the process and the things that I repeat over and over again, because that's what's going to help you.

So I'm not going to look at, we'll look at some stocks. We'll look at Tesla. I mean, Tesla undercut the prior low. When you look at this chart, do you see something that trades with a good cyclical nature to it?

Not on the daily, not on the weekly chart. How about the daily chart? It's kind of broken in here, right?

I mean, it had that little bounce up, couldn't hold the 20, undercut this low. Maybe this is going to be an important low. Let's say you think it is. Well, if you didn't buy it off the open, maybe you decided, okay, I'm going to buy as it gets back above the VWAP, either here or here with a stop below the low of the day.

At this point, I'd say you probably want to raise your stop up under here. I don't expect that you're likely to have found the bottom. because we have a declining 5d moving average and it's going to decline decline at a greater clip the next two days and we have all this market uncertainty but i know that some people like to trade the you know get involved this isn't trading really get involved in the markets in this way is if that's your strategy great you know buy as it gets back up through that level set your stop below the low of the day take some profits off especially i don't know where my anchor from this is basically from the tariffs um, right here. And, you know, this stock came right up to the anchor from the tariffs. Um, it was right before the close on, uh, was that on, on Wednesday that the tariffs were announced.

And again, that's the only time you'll ever hear me mention the tariffs. Otherwise, you know, is the anchor from the tariffs. That's it.

I don't have an opinion about the tariffs. I, I mean, I do care, but from a selfish market standpoint, I don't care. I just want to make money in stocks. as much as I can in the lowest risk way as possible.

That's our job in the market. Our job is me, me, me. How much money can I make? I'm not investing in Tesla so I can fund their next battery operation.

I'm not investing in Tesla so that we can all have robots in our house. These are trading vehicles for me that understand whether you agree or disagree. It doesn't matter.

Know who you are in the market. If you're trying to, you know, create a better world and invest in ESG stocks, one, you're going to lose a lot of money because that was kind of a scam. But, or, you know, I'm not going to buy tobacco. That's fine.

You know, don't buy tobacco companies and that's good for you. Who are you in the market? What are you comfortable with? I'm not comfortable buying banks, banking stocks.

I'm not comfortable buying, and I made an exception for love. I was going to say commodity-related stocks. I made an exception here, and what did I get? Exactly what I deserved. I deserve to lose.

Why? Because I'm a bad person? No, because I made a dumb decision. I started buying here.

I added it to it there, and I sold it here. I deserve to lose money because I bought a stock. below declining 5-day moving average.

I also deserve to lose money because I broke one of my rules and bought a commodity-related stock. What's the commodity? It's oil.

And oil's going down, so it should help these companies, they tell you. Since I bought oil, I'm sorry, not since I bought oil, but since I bought LUV, oil's down 15%. Well, guess what?

LUV is down even more than that. The only good news is I was smart enough to cut my losses. The sin though was that I bought below declining five-day moving average.

And I thought there was an exception because, hey, the fundamental story, and I got caught up in the bullshit. So, you know, It's easy to get caught up in the bullshit, which is the news cycle. And the news is, of course, that they're going to add $2.50 in earnings. That's more than they earned all of last year.

And as much as they earned, the combined earnings would be equal to the earnings that were back in 2021. So why wouldn't the stock go back there? That's not what I was thinking, but why wouldn't it go higher? Well, because we're in a bear market. That's why. And in a bear market.

All correlations go to zero. But what about gold? Isn't that a store of value? It is until people panic and they decide, hey, we need to raise some money.

I'm not comfortable holding gold. I'm not comfortable holding REITs. I'm not comfortable holding, certainly not comfortable holding biotechs.

Just listen to the price action. How negative have I been on the biotechs? How negative have I been consistently? on the Russell 2000. It's not because I'm a negative person.

It's because that's what this market is telling me. And my job is to observe carefully, translate it to English and tell you. So let's take a look at some other names and bonds. What about bonds?

I thought they were the flight to safety. Well, maybe China's selling them. Nobody knows.

That's what I saw some tweets about that. Maybe it's a sovereign nation selling and maybe it's China. Who knows?

All I know is You don't buy an extended breakout. The people who bought this gap up on Friday, they didn't ask themselves where had it come from. It came from 89 to 93. It's basically a 4.5% move in a period of just a couple days with a declining 200-day moving average. Pullback is expected here, not to get smashed. I would have expected maybe the bonds were going to do something like this and then perhaps go back.

and continue to move higher. But guess what? The bond market had a different plan.

And if you don't chase, you won't have to experience this stuff. And if you were involved, if you don't take partial profits, it won't hurt as much. So let's take a look at, we just looked at Tesla.

So maybe that's the low for a while and maybe it's not. Maybe it goes and undercuts this shakeout low first. It doesn't seem likely. but it's possible. I'm interested in trading what's likely.

Is it likely that it's going to continue higher? I can't say that, not in this market environment. Is it possible?

Sure. Is it likely that Palantir drops down to 60? Doesn't seem likely to me, but it's possible because everything's imploding.

Now, was it up 5% today? Well, you had to have bought it on Friday to experience that 5%, and you had to experience how much of a... drawdown first thing in the morning was the risk of this worth the reward of that that looks backwards to me that looks like three parts risk one part reward so make the trade your own do what you feels right for you maybe you're okay with gambling and saying I'm gonna buy here oh shit I got a double down and make some decent money and you know what that's fine as long as you get the bounce And as long as you're comfortable with it down here and you can stomach that.

I'm 57 years old. I'm not into taking those risks. If I was 30, I'd probably be doing that all day long. And I probably would be looking for alternative ways to fund a new account after I blow up account after account doing that.

SMCI has been a popular one. It just continues to be garbage. And it's supposed to be. It has a declining 200-day moving average. NVIDIA was up 3% today.

Is that the bottom? I mean, I still think this is possible. I don't think it's the bottom. It's a near-term low that held for six and a half hours.

That's all you can say about it now. It's a low that held for six and a half hours so far. Is that something you want to hang your hat on?

Not me. We're right at the anchor from the day of the tariffs. How about Meta?

It was up $11 today. That's good. Well, is it?

I mean, is it just another lower high? Or, you know, is it going to bounce like this bounce and then completely cave in? If so, where is it going to rally to? Maybe the anchor off of this peak.

And you know what? That's a good trade. Go ahead and take that trade if that's within your comfort. I look at it and say, I'm happy to miss that trade.

I'd rather get involved over here and short it right here with a stop there because the path of least resistance based on the direction of the 20, the 50, and the 200-day moving average is lower. So Meta doesn't look like a buy to me. Neither does Apple. Apple's broken go back and look at last Sunday's video not last night But last Sunday in and there were some really pristine calls in there, and I didn't mean to you know predict the market But they you know I said it's broken these stocks are broken. It's not a buy what are our levels of interest Well, we're below that anchor, so maybe from this high okay?

We can say that's a level of interest, but what if that breaks maybe all the way down to 150? Doesn't seem likely, but it's certainly possible in this environment. What if the tariffs continue and it really does cost $3,500 for an iPhone because we have to manufacture them here?

It probably ends up being down at $50 per share. It's just another company. It's just another stock.

It's nothing special. It's a stock that goes up and a stock that goes down. When it goes down, it's brutal to own it.

Wait for the periods when it's going up to own it. When it starts turning sideways and going lower, get rid of it. and wait for it to start going up again. AMD over and over and over again. It's the most requested ticker.

I started that StockTwits show in January of this year. And it was from that date. And it was actually, I remember doing the one, I was in Deer Valley.

And it might have been the first one of the year. I might have started doing that StockTwits show somewhere over here. But it was the first one of the year.

And I remember that what I did was I looked at the 10 most popular stock picks on stock Twitch for 2025. AMD was, you know, it was AMD, Tesla, Apple, all the names you expect it to be. But on this one, I was particularly negative saying, why do people like this stock? It's got a declining 20. It's declining 50, declining 200-day moving average. If they don't scare you out, they'll wear you out. If you want to trade these bounces and that's your game, just understand that that's what they are, is bounces.

If we look at I did this earlier today. Where was it? Let me see. I built a chart with a five-day moving average on it. So sometimes I play around and make these charts.

Oh, you know what? It was on TradingView. I put a five-day moving average on a 130 minute timeframe and went back and just was playing with it to, you know, with a, so it'd be a 15 period moving average for five days because there's three 130 minute periods per day. But anyways, if you just look at it, this is the most basic things, even right here. I mean, look at how smooth the cyclical nature, I guess, cyclicity.

Anyways, look at how smooth it is. Yeah, a little couple hiccups over here, but we had a declining five-day moving average right here. We had an advancing five-day moving average, but did you want to buy when it was extended like that? Maybe it was a chase the gap, wait for VWAP that day, and then you got burned the next day.

That happens. That's the shitty part, right? This is the normal part. This is the normal part. This is normal, failing rallies with a declining five-day moving average.

It's normal to go sideways and then even gap up. And it's normal to make higher highs and higher lows until something happens that motivates the sellers. And when it's below the five-day moving average, it's guilty till proven innocent again.

This shorter-term trend plus this shorter-term trend plus this shorter-term trend and this shorter-term trend add up to this trend here. That's what you're looking at. The sum of the short-term… short-term trends equals a long-term trend.

So the short-term trend leads to the long-term trend. So it's broken. It continues to be broken.

People will still continue to try to find the bottom in this. One or two of them will get lucky like they did over here. But the people who got lucky right there probably tried to buy here, here, here, and here.

Thought they were genius here. Then thought, oh boy, I'm stupid. And the same thing, the emotional chart. goes on every time frame long and short and i'll post that again later amazon what do you think of amazon i think it's a broken stock it has the potential to find buyers down near this area. What is this area?

This is approximately 152. So maybe it goes and undercuts this low in the next week or two, and then you get a bounce and treat it as a bounce because V bottoms aren't the norm. That's not the norm. What's the norm? We rally up to the declining 200-day moving average with a big rally from 100 to 45%.

And then boom, from 145 down to 83. It gets cut in half almost. So down 45%. And then what? It rallies up to the declining 200-day moving average.

Big rally from 85 to 115, 30 points. That's a 30% rally, 35%. But then it drops down to 87, 88. And then we start to see the 200-day moving average flattening out.

And guess what? Maybe you had to chase it in here. Maybe you didn't buy it at all.

Maybe you bought it right here as the buyers retook control. And then you held it. And maybe you got shaken out right here. And maybe you reentered there.

I don't trade the long-term timeframes. But it's the same analysis as every single timeframe. What's Coinbase doing?

It's broken. It's in a downtrend. What about Mister? I saw a headline and they're writing down $5 billion loss or something. I mean, I don't follow it.

I read headlines. I've read a lot of headlines. Tariffs move, send stocks on rollercoaster ride.

Okay, cool. How does that help anyone? Anyways, this one is down to the 200-day moving average.

Do I think it's going to hold? Depends on what you think of Bitcoin because it's directly correlated to Bitcoin. Bitcoin looks broken. We'll take a look at that in a few minutes. Um, anyways, I guess I should get to some of the questions here.

Let's just take a look at Netflix real quick. Netflix has been doing reasonably well. What is the definition of trend? Higher highs and higher lows. So we have a pattern of higher highs and higher lows, but then what?

Then we see a lower high and a lower low. And guess what? Hey, what's that?

That's a head and shoulders pattern. All a head and shoulders pattern is, is a prior period of higher highs and higher lows turns to a lower high and then a lower low. It's just a shifting of higher highs and higher lows to lower highs and lower lows. It's just starting a new downtrend maybe.

Maybe it gets stuck in here for a little while if it's a strong stock and it can withhold, but it's more likely to do this and then do this. And do you have to buy the low? It would have been nice to buy down there, but it could have continued lower.

Instead, it rallied. So what? Even what if you bought it right here for your long-term account? Are you getting out?

Depends on what you want to listen to. Do you want to listen to everyone who tells you it's a great company and it's going to come back? Or do you want to listen to the stock and say, in the history of Netflix, is it unusual to see very large drawdowns?

And. The next one could bring it something like this, and that would be well within the norm. Are you comfortable holding it down to $600?

That's not a price target. It's just an observation based on previous percentage moves that even if you go way back here, it doesn't look like much. But from $575 down to $1.50, that was its anchored VWAP. It gets back above it right here.

That's where it's a buy. You should have sold here as it made. the lower highs and lower lows and then maybe you got back involved in there maybe you didn't maybe instead you did this let's move this forward a little maybe you bought someone here or you know maybe you bought that breakout and sold out quickly and didn't see the stock go from five to two and a half down 50 and then down from four in a quarter down to two and a quarter down 45% and then it rallies to five and a half six and then from six down to two and a half it's not these moves are not unusual and What is your comfort level for your time frame? I run a swing trade service the same concepts are applicable to every single time frame when did the buyers sellers regain control of Amazon right here they regain control. How did it happen?

Well, we had this pattern of higher highs and higher lows above rising 5-day moving average. Then we saw a lower high. Then we saw a lower low.

What about the daily timeframe? We saw this pattern of higher highs and higher lows. Then we saw a lower high. Then we saw a lower low. Actually, it's so much later on these daily charts, but this is where the sellers regain control.

Would you have bought in here? If you did, you were fighting the direction of the five-day moving average. The sellers have been getting in control from 970, and I see no evidence that they're losing control. So that will be the last stock I look at because there are some questions here that I want to get to.

And that's the point of these is to answer your educational concept questions. So first one is from Joe. And Joe's got two, so I'm going to answer his one.

Brian, I trust all is well at the end. I missed the memo. When are you going to go back to showing the so what he's pointing out to is the daily picture that I would post with the stock symbols.

the name of the company, the sector, the PE, the dividend, the short float, short ratio, beta, earnings date, and some guidelines. I'll go back to that when the market, I think, is in a better position for swing trades. Right now, we're not in that position. So I'm not providing that, Joe.

And actually, it looks like he asked the same question twice. So I'm going to delete that. Justin says, how do you differentiate between a failed breakout and a continuation of a trend high or high as it's happening? Is there a certain percentage that the next higher high should reach? No.

So, for instance, in January, February rather, if you go back to this day in particular, I said, this is great. We've got a breakout. The market is making a new all-time high. And we've got to be careful, though. We've got to be careful that if this is a failed breakout, how will we know?

We will know. We won't know for certain. But we're certainly going to get to the sidelines right here. So it's about multiple timeframe analysis, Justin, is that we don't know it's a failed breakout, but we know that failed breakouts can happen.

There's a lot of misdirection around the beginning of the year. And in this case, what did we see? We saw a pattern of higher highs and higher lows above a rising five-day moving average turn into a lower high with a rising five-day moving average.

The five-day moving average flattened out. We made a lower low. And then what did we see?

We saw lower highs and lower lows, maybe a little bit of a higher high there. But do we trust that higher high? Not with a declining five-day moving average. And that was the place that if you go back, I guarantee if you look at this day, February 21, and go back and look at the video, I'll say, we have to be really careful.

This is the potential from a failed move comes a fast move. Let's wait and see how it behaves. Down here is what I'm sure I was saying at the year-to-date anchor and the anchor from the election because those are important.

Just because we're here doesn't mean that I thought we were going to do this, but we're on the alert that that could happen. I didn't actually think it was going to happen, and definitely not at this magnitude and velocity, because we had these levels right here at 596. So 596 right here at the top end of this. I was thinking, well, maybe we're holding the year to date in the anchor from the election.

But as the market continued to break lower and more aggressively, that's when we knew it was failed for real. And that's where it wasn't too late to sell and move to the sidelines. Good question.

Let's see. Nolan says, I know you manually scan the market for yourself for stocks. However, would you be able to discuss how one might use a screener to weed down the market and consist of many thousands of stocks that trade over 500,000 shares? I'm not going to do that tonight. Maybe I can do that next Monday.

I'm going to leave this. I'm going to forward this to myself and put a note on it. Answer next week.

So I'd rather talk about some of these other questions right now, because right now everything's broken anyways. There's nothing worth scanning for, most likely. So I will answer that one next week, Nolan. Greg's question is, question, can I make real money as a swing trader in a bull market? And if so, specifically how?

Yes, by riding the trends above the rising five-day moving average. Please note, I'm an inexperienced trader to even contemplate shorting stocks. I'm just beginning to learn how to chart. I've parked about 50% of my holdings into tips, mutual funds for long-term, blah, blah, blah.

Do you see upside trading opportunities for someone like... me to have over the next three to five years of history repeats three to five years absolutely i mean you know if history repeats the last bearish environment lasted for about a year right so maybe in a year we'll have this thing figured out and you know if you know what i've been drawing in for instance on the semiconductors um i doubt my drawings exist anymore because i've deleted them but what i had been drawing in is something that looked like this, that actually looked like this, that I thought was maybe three to six months away. And I thought we're going to maybe come down and do this.

And then perhaps we could begin to move higher again. And that would have put us into the fourth quarter of the year. And what I would be looking for is what I always want to see is that, let's say that's the 50 day, here's the 150 day. And the 200-day might look like this.

And then those shorter-term ones would move higher. But that's how it typically moves. It's not how it always moves.

You had this COVID, which was unusual. Is the tariff thing going to be unusual? Or is the whole world economy shifted and broken for now and going to need to be refigured out?

We've got a lot of missing pieces of this puzzle that just fell on the ground. How are we going to figure out which piece goes where when we're missing a bunch of the pieces? And that's where it seems right now.

No one's lifted up under the couch to see if there's a piece there that might complete the puzzle. And no one's going to look for that piece of the puzzle for three months or six months or figure out that that is important. But that's where we are in this market is we've got major, major indecision.

confusion, chaos, and we're going to continue to see some large volatility. You can't get excited in either direction. You might feel like the hero for a moment if you buy one of these triple longs in the morning and you're up 15% and you decide you're so smart, you're going to hold it overnight.

And then somewhere, one of these 50 countries with tariffs opens their mouth and says, F you to our leader and maybe we gap down. I don't know. What are the scenarios? What are the good scenarios? The good scenarios, I'm not even going to the good scenarios are price goes up and it holds above the VWAP.

So we hold some. We take some partial profits off. In a couple weeks, maybe in a week and a half, maybe we get a flat to rising 5D moving average, but we're below the 20 and the 50. So maybe we do some swing trades with half size. Those are what we're going to be looking for. Generally speaking, Michael says, generally speaking, should shorter-term traders avoid using multiple-day VWAP strategy if price is under the five-day?

Not for short sales, you shouldn't. We're below a declining five-day moving average. So, you know, if we rally up to the two-day, you know, it found supply there a little bit.

I mean, today's too volatile for this stuff. But, no, it's the same long or short, Michael. Adrian says, question for the webinar.

Did I already answer a question from Adrian? I guess not. I just want to make sure everyone has. Oh, you know what? I missed a couple.

Let me answer Adrian's first. Looking in retrospect on this market sell-off for a long-term portfolio holding SPY, what do you think would have been the time to sell off? I mean, I guess I answered it with the… the previous question of a failed breakout. So somewhere in here or here would have been the time. That's not my timeframe, Adrian.

So I don't really feel comfortable giving answers on that timeframe either, but I would have looked at it as I did from the intermediate term perspective, and I didn't want to own any spy right in there. So I have to go back. Sally had one.

Actually, that's a different type of question. Dustin says, Brian, I want to thank you for sharing your market wisdom. I've been training for five years.

A rule that fascinates me and saves me a lot of money is the rule of daily R2. It forces me to be patient with the market open, reduces me from getting whipsawed all over the place. Question is, have you used daily R2 to make money on the short side and switch your thinking?

No, never. I never short a daily R2. I use daily R2 for longs. when I have a long position and it goes from $42.

up to $43.27 is daily R2 and it starts to stall out there. I sell a third and I hold my two thirds because the primary trend is higher. I'm not looking for scalp trades against it.

And when it's above daily R2, it's probably above the daily VWAP. So absolutely I do not. I wouldn't even consider it.

So that's a counter trend trade, Dustin, for short term. And again, I'm interested in the swing trades. So I'm not interested in fighting the direction of the intermediate and primary trend. Because if I'm long, it means it's above a rising five-day moving average.

And ideally, but not in the next couple of weeks, we won't have this. Ideally, above the rising 20, 50, 100, 200-day moving average as well. Crystal says, she's not saying, she says, I'm referencing when you mentioned that we are in cash. we should still be making 4% on our cash.

Is that pulling out of the account, putting something like a high-yield saving account, or putting our cash in a safer stock that brings that kind of dividend? Right now, I'm 100% in cash waiting for this market to heal. Crystal, every brokerage firm has some kind of money market account that you should be able to either manually move it over to or that it automatically sweeps.

I know that Interactive Broker automatically sweeps. I know that a lot of them don't. automatically sweep it.

They leave it in that account to earn 25 basis points. And then they use your money for that 4% and they, you know, 4.5% and they pay you a quarter percent and they use your money to make 4.25% for them. So that, you know, that's just the basic numbers, but that's kind of how it works.

So I don't know what brokerage you work at, but I would say, you know, call the broker and say, what higher yielding safe. alternatives do you have for my cash holdings? And they might say T-bills or some kind of T-bill fund where you don't have to hold it for 90 days, but you have daily liquidity based on the 90-year paper. So I'm not an expert in those, but that's the type of questions you want to ask them. Donnie says, should I worry about...

Wash sales, for example, if I make a trade and get stopped for a loss, but I potentially want to get long again within 30 days. I'm not a tax guy, so I'll just tell you what I do is that I am marked as a professional trader. So I used mark to market accounting, which means there is no wash sale.

You just add up all your buys and all your sells. That's something you need to talk to you about with your accountant. The other thing that I do to even make the job easier is that most of my day trading is in my IRA. There is no paperwork in an IRA.

You put your money in, and when you take it out, that's the taxable balance. They don't ask you how it got there. They just say, okay, you've got this many dollars.

You're taking that many out. We're going to tax you at your rate here today on that. So.

I am most aggressive about day trading in my IRA. I don't recommend that for everyone. I only recommend it if you're actually making money day trading.

So most of my day trading is done in an IRA because I'm pretty good at it. I make money. If I wasn't good at it, then I would say you're better off trading it in your regular cash account because there, at least you can write your losses off against gains. Whereas in an IRA, there's nothing to write off you just lose it and you lose your tax advantage on that money so donnie that's a question for an accountant hopefully that leads you in the right direction mark says well that's a long email let me see if i can scan it quickly for a question i honestly just don't see a question in here i don't see a question mark mark from Seattle in case you're wondering who I'm talking to.

Again, if you read the description of the webinar for questions, it is, please be concise and let me know what the question is. I just don't see a question here. So you've got a goal is to learn to actively manage a smallish Schwab account using thinkorswim. day trading, profitably hold stocks for a moderate timeframe.

We're fortunate, however, retired. See, I don't see the question. I see a lot of statements.

But I don't see any questions, Mark. So I can't yeah, there's no question in there. I can't really help you with that. And with that, we are actually at the end of the questions.

So it is 3.44 p.m. here. I'm happy to look at any stocks you guys want to look at.

And I won't do my normal thing. If you want to just type in a symbol, I'll take a look at it. As I always say, what I'm always trying to do is look for swing trade opportunities. And I typically answer a question about a stock from a swing trade perspective. Crystal says, thank you for answering my question.

Your methods have taught me proper risk management and that has saved me so much. And I'm thrilled to hear that, Crystal. That's great. You've got to protect what you have before you can make money. And a lot of people are learning that lesson the hard way right now.

I'm glad you didn't have to do that. I was able to share my experience with you so that you could avoid that. Are there any other questions? Anybody, feel free to type it in.

Right here, Target Therapeutics. You know, it's pulling back. It's coming down to the anchor from the election. But, you know, overall, it's an uptrend. But near term, it's, you know, got a declining five-day moving average.

So it's guilty till proven innocent. Longer term, it's an uptrend. I would dare to say it's extended. I still own, I sold half of what I own for my wife.

I don't know what I'm waiting for. I'm kind of feeling stupid that I haven't, but I think I'll probably, you know, if it breaks down any further than about here, I'm going to probably sell the balance. And, you know, her cost basis is 22 or 24. So I've been holding it since, I think.

I've been holding it since in here, actually, maybe right here. So yeah, near term, it's lower highs and lower lows. Do you trade any of your crypto besides Bitcoin? Not when the market's declining. I mean, it's a Bitcoin game.

That's where the liquidity is. In fact, let's switch screens. The last two times I did this, though.

in a webinar, it wouldn't show what I was looking at. So we're at the end of the webinar. I'm going to try to switch it over to trading view. I don't expect you're going to be able to see my screen.

I hope you are going to be able to, but I'd like to hopefully not have that problem. Let me see what happens. I've just done shared TC2000, fingers crossed. Can you see Bitcoin on your screen right now? Anybody?

Just a why? No. Well, that's technology for you.

I kind of suspected that. And now if I go back to TC2000, it won't show that either. So the visual portion of this is now concluded.

But the answer, do I trade anything other than Bitcoin? Yes. I also trade Ethereum and Solana. But as I've been saying for weeks, my crypto account is 100% cash.

I have no interest in this market. My suspicion is that Bitcoin will continue down towards about 69,000 and give up the entire rally since the election. But I'm not trading it to the downside.

I don't short cryptos, except for intraday if there's nothing else going on. Let's see. Barris says, Brian, thanks for the education.

Can you please talk about shakeouts? Are there any methods to minimize getting shaken out other than wider stops? No. there are not. And in fact, what I would say is just be careful of what you buy.

In other words, if you see a breakout in the TLT, did those people get shaken out or did they get trapped because they didn't consider how it got there? If you have low risk entries and you have your stop, shakeouts occur, but it begins with a smart entry. Not chasing stocks and not chasing them intraday and thinking that, oh, wow, the futures just spiked 20 points.

There must be news coming. This is going to end the trade war. You can't think like that. You've got to look at it and say, okay, it's gone.

It's gone without me. That's just the way it goes. So it begins with a smart entry first, Barris, and then honor your stop.

Not use a wider one. That's actually the worst thing you can do. And that's what the market has, you know, that's been the message of the market the last two months is honor your stops. Any thoughts on US Steel?

Yeah, people seem to like it, but I don't trade commodity-related stocks. It is not a new discovery. It was at 36 this morning. It's at 44.50 on the close.

You're not the first one to figure this one out. And if you look at the daily chart of this, and I don't mean that in a demeaning way at all, Tom, I'm just saying, just ask yourself, where has it come from? and look at the history of the stock i know you can't see my screen i pulled it up here on a daily chart but it's just i mean it's super choppy how many times has it had five point moves and then give them back in the next three to four days and this was much bigger than a five point move so if the if the personality of the stock makes sense to you trade it in as low a risk way as possible but because it's so volatile i don't see a low risk way to trade it um jason says i know Not a buy right now, but is GH setting up?

I mean, maybe it is, but just like every other stock I've been mentioning, today's relative strength is tomorrow's selling candidate. Every relative strength stock, maybe there's a couple, but most, 90% plus of all the relative strength stocks that we've spoken about and I've warned about, they fail. And they fail miserably.

Would not be surprised to see Guardian health down at $28 per share doesn't mean that's what it looks like on the chart It looks decent on the chart, but everything that looked decent three weeks ago. It looks like shit today So I just say be very careful. Well, it looks like that's the end of our questions

Transcript for:Bear Market Trading Strategies and Insights

Transcript for:
Bear Market Trading Strategies and Insights