THIS is why today was choppy...

What's up everyone? All right, so this morning was really tricky. We had a number of round trips. We had stocks that popped up on breaking news, came all the way back down in spite of the news, which is I mean it's not totally unusual. This does happen. It's kind of a symptom of two things. Number one, attention right now has been focused on Chinese stocks with no news. And so a stock with news is kind of being disregarded because it's not Chinese and it has news, right? So that feels backwards and some of these headlines read well. It seems like these are good catalyst. So I'm stepping up to the plate and then I'm shocked that we're not getting this continuation and followthrough. So on the one hand, we are getting a little bit of volume because yeah, it's it's a news headline. It's a good headline and the stock pops up, but then it's quickly flushing. And I think that short sellers are being aggressive shorting things that are outside of the theme which is no news Chinese stocks. So they're not touching the no news Chinese stocks because they're getting wrecked on those. But they are trading to the short side sort of everything else that's a distraction. The problem with that is that what happens when you short a stock that comes out with news and the news is so good that other traders really do start to pick up on it and this stock becomes the leading gainer and is the next one to go up three, four, 500%. Well, you have a short squeeze, but that didn't happen today. It's Friday. It's the end of the week, and clearly the sentiment was weaker. So, let's go ahead and jump on the screen share and start breaking it down. Uh, I just watched this stock CJMBB uh reverse into a halt down. Uh, so we're seeing halts to the downside today, not to the upside. We had uh JM, this one halted to the downside as well. Uh, you know, this is the one actually uh we had a trade on it yesterday. It had popped up uh from 4 up to 682, then pulled back, then came back up after hours, pulled back, popped up pre-market to uh 746, dipped down as it curled back up here. I thought, all right, that's the level, you know, can we get over seven and then through the pre-market high of 746. Nope, couldn't do it. Ended up reversing, halting down. VIVK, this one was a continuation setup. Well, kind of a bounce off the low. So, the issue with this one was we had this big move a couple days ago. Uh, but it came all the way back down. Popped up yesterday, pulled back, and yes, it's been generally trending a little bit back higher, but I just felt like it was in the shadow cast by this big move here, and that there might be bag holders. So, not surprisingly, this one popped up and reversed. Didn't end up working. Then we had AMIX this morning. This one pops up, reverses. Yesterday, I had a headline about a patent. So, I was like, "All right, patent headline. I don't know. This morning they have a headline um you know again pre-clinical study but that's the headline. It squeezes from 350 up to 544. I'm like okay that's a big move and then flushes right back down. So that one didn't work. Um RADX this one popped up on the scanner immediately flushes rallies back up a little bit but not that much. Sky Q, this one was on the scanner. A little bit of continuation then flushing 80VB. This one was on the scanner. A little continuation on light volume and then flushing. So, we had an issue today of dispersed attention, traders focusing on a number of different stocks. And usually when that's the case, it it doesn't work out really well. Um, it's always better when we have all eyes on one particular stock. So, if we go back to the very beginning of the morning, LVWR was our first uh and leading gainer. Little bit cheaper. No trades on that one. Then we had AKAN, a little more expensive, lighter on volume. And then VIVK hit the scans. WLDDS hit the scans, that failed. OCG, this is a Chinese stock, hit the scans, that one failed. So, we really didn't have anything to work with. um ZCMD coming in uh towards 7 a.m. So 7 a.m. uh you know basically I'm sitting tight and I don't end up taking my first trade until all of a sudden we get EXYN on the scanners. Now EXYN really surprised me that it didn't work. I really thought this was going to work. I stepped up to the plate with a bigger position on it. The reason I did that was because it had blue sky at 720. Typically, a somewhat recent IPO that comes out with news and has the highest volume day ever performs better than this. I'm really surprised. It ends up going from three up to five and coming all the way back down to three. So, that was my first trade of the day. Now, I took a big position. I added it and scaled into it. And as you can see here, I was able to get out without too much damage. I mean, this is 900 bucks, but I was unrealized. Nicely in the green, and I didn't lock up any of it right here. And this could have easily, if I took the approach of holding for a bigger move, which I sometimes do. Uh, that obviously would not have worked at all on this setup because it just ended up coming all the way back down. So, that was really discouraging. You know, we had what seemed like a decent headline and it failed. We had the same thing on um AMIX. You know, we had a headline and it failed. And then we had um MSS which hit the scanners and this one a sub1 million share float recent reverse splits. I thought you know this is the right type of stock and you've got a catalyst here. So all of a sudden this one starts to pull away and I'm like all right it's game time. I jump on it and if you watch the small account recap you'll know that I'm red in the small account which is super annoying. Um you know but but it is what it is. And so on this one, I I didn't get in till fairly high. I was waiting for it to really prove itself, but I got in in this area here. We got this squeeze up and then we had this pullback right here. So, we had this push higher, then this pullback. And so, I was able to jump in and out of it with a fairly big position and I locked up seven grand on it, but I had to jump in and out very quickly. Now, here's the issue. I like Thinker Swim. I like it for the small account challenge. I I've used I've traded it. I mean, you guys have watched me tra do a number of challenges in it. Um, and use it uh for my big accounts as well. And my issue with Think or Swim is that um when the market is hot, you can get great fills and you can do really well and you can make a lot of money. And when the market is cold, I find that I get really bad fills. I get a lot more slippage. I can't get in and out. And so in my Lightseed account, I can be much more nimble. I could jump in, I can jump out, book the profit. But in the uh Think or Swim accounts, I I just feel like the issue has always been that when the market's hot, yeah, I can get in and out, but I feel like it's a little sloppy. Like my it's not precise. It's kind of like, you know, carving a I don't know, a steak or a turkey with a butter knife. Like it works. Uh maybe that's not the best example, but you know, it it it works, but um in in areas where you need to be precise, it it just doesn't quite uh keep up. And so today was the day where it it wasn't able to keep up. And as a result, I didn't perform well over there. And I'm I'm a little bit bummed out. And so that's where I'm kind of feeling a little bit deflated at the end of the week. You know, we had a hot week. We had some good action earlier in the week and then yesterday was cooler and then today things kind of fell apart and um we didn't get good follow-through on anything. Um we didn't get a leading gainer that was clean at the open. We didn't get multiple halts. We just you know we've just gotten chop. I mean now you do have OM but you know I mean I don't know. I guess this is what people are focusing on, but uh I'm not gonna I'm not going to jump jump in this. I worry about these having risk um especially when they go from a penny stock like this um below a dollar the risk of a T12 halt halted pending uh you know review by regulators. So or the exchange. So I'm just whatever it is what it is. Today was not super clean. um would rather have a slow week that finishes strong than a strong week that finishes slow because finishing slow is just not the most like confidencebuilding way to finish the week. But look, it is what it is, you know? I mean, you nothing you can do about that. Just the way the market is. The biggest thing that I could have done differently was cooled off a little bit today, which is what I kind of planned to do. Um but instead, as I saw things moving, I gave into FOMO and was like, "Oh, here we go. This is the next one. We've had big m momentum this week. Yesterday was a really solid green day even though things didn't continue later in the day. It was good pre-market. So, I thought maybe today would be the same and it really wasn't. So, um you know, but again, big picture, I've got more money than I had at the beginning of the week. Making progress. So, life is good. Can't really complain. Today is a green day. You know, I just um look, it is what it is. So, I'll be back at it first thing tomorrow morning or sorry, Monday morning, uh, hopefully we have some, you know, good opportunities next week. And, um, you know, look, the next stock that ends up squeezing up, you know, 2, three, 4, 500% is just going to sort of reignite all that FOMO that's been in the market that's been, uh, creating these big moves. It's been putting short sellers on notice and making them nervous to short anything. Um but you know, seems like today they had a little bit more confidence on the um US companies with news, which again seems quite silly, but that's the state of the market that we're in here today. So with that, I'll remind you as always, easy come, easy go. Trading is risky. My results aren't typical. So please manage your risk. Take it slow. I have a risk tolerance that's different from the others uh perhaps out there and perhaps you. Uh so you may see me have big green days, big red days, you know, the ups and the downs um are all at a bigger scale when you trade a bigger size. So uh for you it's really important to practice in a simulator before putting real money on the line. Take it slow and live to trade another day. All right? So if you're making progress, if you can be green, you know, if not day over day, if at least week over week, month over month, you're doing something right. So take it slow and I'll see you guys back at it bright and early on Monday morning.