How to Actually Start Investing As Market Crash In 2026?!

The NASDAQ market is less than 1% away from correction territory. What's going on, guys? It's Ricky with Techbook Solutions, and I love the amount of messages I've recently received of beginners wanting to start investing. And that's exactly why I am making this video. I hope that I can point you in the right direction. And if you have a little bit more experience and you're watching this video and you feel like I left some things out, please share it down in the comment section. I would love for beginners that are watching this video that can also maybe learn something from your opinion and or your take. So again, feel free to comment down below. I really hope that you learned something new and if you do, please consider dropping a thumbs up on this video and subscribing if you feel like we earned it. So what exactly do I mean that the markets in correction territory? Well, that means that it's a 10% drop from recent all-time highs. And as of right now, again, markets are down more than 9% from recent all-time highs. Uh, actually for a short period of time on Friday, we technically entered correction territory for NASDAQ's QQQ, which is the one for one NASDAQ ETF. So, there's a few things that I quickly want to explain. I want to try to do them in order. Um, but I don't want to over complicate this video. So, let's go ahead and just jump right into it. in the comment section of this video. I'm going to be using the Weeble trading application. It's the trading application that I use. You don't have to use it, but it's commission free. I've used it for years, and I've never had a problem with it with depositing funds, my funds staying safe, and then withdrawing my profits. Again, if you want to use the same trading application that I'm using, you can invest, you can trade, it's commission free. They are offering new users right now 12 free shares. Right? So, I want to show you this very quickly. 12 free shares just for signing up. And I have a playlist I'm going to link in the comment section of this video that will show you step by step on how to sign up for Weeble, how to use how to buy and sell a stock to become more familiar with the actual platform itself. And then you'll actually be able to watch one of our recent live trading sessions. So again, if you want to watch that, please watch it after this video, but it's going to be linked in the comment section of this video. I just don't want to do that in this video when I already have a playlist for it. Right? So, it's it's four different videos. The playlist is going to be linked down below. That's the first thing that I wanted to answer. The second thing, okay, well, what's the difference between buying, you know, into the NASDAQ market, which I think is a great, you know, option for most people, let me make that very clear, or the S&P 500, a little bit safer, right? If we look at spy, which is the S&P 500 ETF, a little bit less volatile, less just exposed to mainly tech. Um, so if you wanted to play it super safe, I would say spy is definitely more of the alternative. You can look at past performance yourself. Um, and then QQQ is the NASDAQ 100, which again has more of a focus on tech. So it does tend to yield a greater return. Um, but also it's more volatile. So, as you can see, um I I think you can't just look at the positives, but you have to look at the the negatives as well, right? From recent all-time highs, uh spy is currently down 3%. Okay, but you know, if it recovers, it only offers, you know, 3 and a half% supposedly, right? Who wants to make three and a half% is what you might be asking. Don't be distasteful, right? 3% is great, especially if again markets do tend to recover, they're often more bullish than bearish. And if they recover within a month or two and they do make 3%, that's still a very attractive return by just being invested in an ETF like SPY. Yes, uh Kikq offers a greater return uh about 10% from current lows if it does recover, but then remember it's exposed to more volatility because it's more concentrated on tech focused stocks. tech or AI are more of the companies that are getting hit pretty hard right now. So again, with more potential profit every time that someone presents you something of like, hey, I think this stock is going to offer a 50 or 100% ROI. That is not a normal return. Normally, and most of the time, it tends to yield with greater risk. That doesn't mean that you can't take it. It just means that you have to be aware of it and asking yourself, can I tolerate it? So hopefully you put yourself in a position in which you can. The reason I'm talking about this is that some beginners might not understand that these ETFs although you know like this was a a pretty bad day like the top three worst day for the NASDAQ market in 2026. I want to use it as an example. I I don't want to lose you here. Please pay attention. QQQ down 3.47%. That's technically a very bad I mean when it was down like 4.2% 2% 4.5. That was like one of the worst days. Top two, top three of 2026. Okay, that's one of the worst 3 to 4%. Make sense? Why am I saying this? Because again, I don't just want you to be fixated on well profit. Let's focus on profit, Ricky. I'm here to make money. It's also about things can get worse before they get better. So, you can buy the dip now because markets are cheap. But what about next week? We have more earning reports about to be released, right? We have midterms. We all know that Trump can be a wild card. What happens if he doesn't if Republicans don't win midterms? That's a conversation for another time, right? Um and still more inflation concerns. FOMC rate decision is going to be early December. If they raise rates, that's not bullish. Can market stomach it? Right. There there's things that can still act as further negative catalysts. So the reason I'm showing you QQQ and at one of its worst days, well, let me show you also, again, this is also an extreme example, but why not just that the risk of investing in an individual company is at there's more exposure to risk to loss. Intel is a really good example of this. Down 28% in one day. Think about that. Onethird of its value. Oh, but Ricky, this thing offers greater potential profit. Well, sure. I hope so, because investors in just 24 hours lost onethird of what they were invested. Imagine you had $100,000 in this. Now you have a little bit more than 70k. If you had a million dollars, now you have a little bit more than right 700,000. Again, put yourself in positions that you can stomach when you're invested. This is the point of what I'm making. Even even with like individual companies like MSTR down 7.8% on the day. SanDisk down 13.4%. Again, these are bad days. Don't get me wrong. Like these are but just like it's a bad day for the NASDAQ market. The reason I'm explaining this to you is because when you're making the decision of what either individual company, individual stock to invest in or what index, maybe QQQ, SPY, right? What ETF, the NASDAQ, the S&P 500? When you're trying to make that decision, it's not just about how much money you can make, but then also to understand how it can move at its worst or at at one of its worst, 13%. Think about this with whatever it is that you're thinking about investing. What if you were to lose another 13, 15, 20%. That is a possibility for when investing. And again, individual companies because there's individual exposure. You're the the whole benefit of investing into QQQ or SPY is that they're baskets of companies, right? It's a handful of companies under one index that makes up that company. So instead of you trying to nitpick and be diversified, you just invest into SPY or QQQ and it's already diversified. That is the benefit or the luxury of investing in those ETFs. And it's not just those, but I don't want to overwhelm you, right? There's SPY, there's QQQ, there's also an ETF for Bitcoin that's not leverage. I wouldn't recommend any leveraged ETFs. There's also some for gold. There's also some for specific sectors, semiconductor, right? airlines, aviation, sorry, the list goes on. There's VU, VO, very popular one. The reason I'm saying this is when you make the decision of, hey, Rick, not me, right? I mean, hey to whoever it is that you are, I have $10,000 I want to invest. How am I going to split this? Maybe you want half or 75% because you do see the benefit of being invested during an uncertain time, right? Maybe I want to allocate half of my $10,000. You have to decide this, right? These are just made up percentages. Half or 70% into more of a basket, right? More of a QQQ and an SPY. And then you give yourself 30% of it, right? $3,000. And then you can come up with a number. I would say less is more. So, pick one, two, maybe three different individual companies that you believe in, that you want to invest in, uh, that you would take time to learn more about. And then we'll talk about position size management in a little bit. Do you get what I'm saying? You could go allin on an individual company, on an individual stock, but as you can see, and and there is no question, right? Because as you can see, it comes at a greater form of risk. And I just I love this example because I can show you ba based off of recent activity that you know it's a 13% draw down. But there is no question of course right the reason it sold off so much is also it's it's had amazing returns recently. And if it does recover to previous highs of nearly 181900 that's about a 63% return. And if it returns to previous all-time highs that's a 103% return. I get it. It's attractive. But remember past performance do not mean future results. So you might want some exposure. And here let me get really speculative. The AI infrastructure stocks cororeweave right there's Irene. There's NBIS. What if Coreweave actually eventually right months from now or years from now actually does recover to previous all-time highs? It's been hit pretty hard, right? 231%. But again, what has it recently lost? Let's look at its recent selloff. Right? This is just from the past what is that five to six months 60%. You do not get greater potential reward or potential for profit without great risk presenting itself to some degree. I just want you to see Oh my goodness. I just realized I wasn't sharing my screen. We have core right here. Sorry for losing you there. What I was showing you is from recent uh all-time highs to the pullback 60% draw down. But of course, if it does return back to previous all-time highs, um it has about 227% that it does offer. So obviously incredibly attractive in the idea and in the dream that it does recover. That is not guaranteed. That is why again I think it's useful and important to give people the option to invest into speculative plays but to do it with a dollar amount that maybe is a little bit more easy to tolerate. So that's why again if we're looking at the big picture maybe 50 to 70% into more safer and more diversified basket of assets or ETFs like UKQ spy VU or you can pick that and then whatever you choose it could be 30% or 20% or 40% or half invested and handpicked into individual companies. That's the first thing that I wanted to talk about, right? Um the big the big names right now that have gotten a hit pretty hard. I mean, there's a handful of them. Intel, for me, fundamentally speaking, Intel has never been there. That's my opinion. You don't have to agree with me. Intel has had an amazing price performance for 2025 and 2026 because Trump promoted it as that the US took a 10% stake on it. I think it's an absolute uh meme stock. It's been a failed company for years. It just got reignited because of all these partnerships. But yet, again, it's in no position to not be delivering with its earnings. Its fundamentals do not align with its current valuation. That is my take on it. So, I've always viewed it more speculative. I would feel more comfortable myself if I were to invest heavy in an individual stock for it to be one of the bigger names. That's my take. That doesn't have to be you. Google right also has recently seen u a decent draw down right from highs of 408 to current lows of 279. The sell-off can continue but it's oversold enough that I have began to start buying and adding more for my investment account and my kids. They each have an investment account and I buy in a very tasteful way. We'll talk about position size management in just a little bit. I just wanted you to see some of the names. Amazon also again a very sub substantial drop uh recently after reporting earnings. Um Amazon's a very strong player, very bullish over a long period of time. So anytime it does sell off, I always try to do my best and in you know adding a little bit to that. Uh then we just talked about SanDisk, right? The thing I wanted to show you is that also Apple. I brought this up because Apple currently has the largest market cap in comparison to the other Mac 7 companies or any other company that's publicly traded. And I find Apple to be so interesting. Some people view Apple as boring. I view Apple as consistent. While overall markets are freaking out because of capex spend and um you know all these hyperscalers heavily pouring money and going negative in their free cash flow to try to be winning the AI race. Apple's just chilling, right? Yeah. Maybe it's not trying to completely disrupt the overall market. Maybe that can bite it in its butt in the future. But as of right now, I mean, just zoom out. They've been so consistent. So anytime, and that's the one thing I just respect about Apple so much. They might not be super sexy or disrupting the space, but they're also not incredibly volatile. I view Apple to be kind of a class of its own. So when Apple does sell off and if there are negative catalysts, I normally tend to feel more comfortable buying the dip on Apple in comparison to others. There are many times I see a lot of these Mac 7 companies, the hyperscalers getting hit very hard because of fear concerns about overspending and AI and the entire market's in the red. But Apple is either break even or very slightly in the red. It like doesn't get bothered by the rest of the noise. And I love that. It's nice to have kind of like a safe haven in comparison to the rest. I just wanted to chat about that just a little bit. Um, I wanted to share this with you because I posted it yesterday on my Instagram. This was for the month of October. Um, and it shows my win rate of 86.36%. Um, and again, this is you would have access to all of this information yourself if you use the same trading application that I'm using. Uh so with a total of six uh 22 different names, I've had three losers for the month of October and 19 winners. Um if you're part of my LPP team, you probably know why. And it's because of my position size management. Um I would say it single-handedly has saved me to be able to get out and in the green. Um doesn't mean that I have to make a ton on those positions. Um, and I'll explain that in just a little bit. But again, if you want to use, like I said, the same trading platform that I'm using, it's the first link in the description down below. So, you can also get that sign up bonus of 12 free shares just for signing up and having a qualified deposit of $100. As long as you deposit your uh have an initial deposit of $100 in your trading account, you'll earn 12 free shares. With that being said, um position size management, I believe, is so important. Let me um I talk about this in the playlist that I'm going to share with you guys in the comment section, but I want to explain it very quickly. Um I think one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of beginners make is that let's say that you're trading or investing or you want to trade or invest with uh $10,000. Uh normally what is the approach? Okay, I have $10,000. I I'm just going to keep it simple. I want to buy QQQ. I'm going to buy $10,000 of Kikq as much as I can all at once. Well, what happens if it keeps on dipping? You're just sitting on your hands. You're just hoping that it begins to recover. Remember, you're a beginner, right? So, some people that are experienced, they're like, "Well, what do you mean, Ricky? They just have to wait and markets eventually will recover." I get that. It's so easy to say, right? It's not easy to do because when you're just getting started, what are you doing? You're looking at your screen all the time. You're paying attention to it. You're overwhelming yourself. It becomes more emotional because now you've gone allin. The thing that I like to do and we talk about it in our LPP lesson library and our daily live sessions is if I enter a position before confirmation and early on and I do the same when it comes down to investing or trading. I try to position myself in a way that if I am wrong, I'm in so light that it's not going to overwhelm me or discourage me or shake me out of needing to get out. Right? Because the big mistake that a lot of beginners make is they'll buy with everything initially and if it does get worse before it gets better, you have no option to do anything. And having no option is not a good feeling, right? How can you prepare for volatility and to tolerate a downturn? You prepare by not just having a light enough position, but by having the option to buy more if you want to. I do believe that at least for mentally speaking, having the ability to add more if I deem it to be, you know, valid, it's a great position to be in. Right? So instead of buying in with 100% initially, we talk about it, we talk about it in the lesson library. Uh it's called three stages of a reversal. If the overall pattern on the larger time frame is still actively selling off, if it's still a descending setup, normally I don't like to be invested with a trade or with an investment of whatever the dollar amount it is that I plan to invest or trade with. I don't like to have more than 20% I'm okay with entering positions early. That's my take. That doesn't have to be yours. I do think it's safer if you wait for confirmation of a reversal. And what that means is when markets are no longer actively selling off, but actually beginning to recover. We have a saying of it's easier to be late to a rally than early to a sell-off because again, you can't predict the bottom. So, let's not pretend. So, but if I choose to make the decision of getting in early because you can't predict the future and it's a fair enough price where I want some exposure here for myself or for my kids, right? Then I'm okay with buying in with 20% of what I intend to invest. And remember, if we have the $10,000 like we talked about earlier and half of that or 70% of that is supposed to be invested in QQQ, then I have whatever that dollar amount is $7,000. I need to figure out what 20% of that is, not 20% of the entire account. Because remember, you're most likely going to be making these decisions based off of where you want your exposure. And then once you find that individual stock or that basket, then what those percentages then mean. Does that make sense? So the reason why if it's 20% is that if it does continue to sell off week after week, you can then begin to revisit. Okay? Are we significantly getting worse? That's not a reason to add more to it because again that is where we talk about the reversal, right? You don't want to add fuel to a fire. If you see that something is actively losing money, you don't want to just pour into it. Now, if you decide to, okay, I want to add 10% more, that's a decision that you have to make. Normally, that's not ideal for beginners because the initial entry, in my opinion, is the only initial entry you get before confirmation. If you have a little bit more experience and you can you know what you're doing and the risk-to-reward ratio still makes sense, then that's fine, right? But when buying the dip, let's say that I end up wanting to go long here, I expect it to, you know, go back to previous highs. Obviously, there's more downside potential. So, this is my initial buy. But if it continues to sell off, if you're a beginner, I would not add more. So, you have to decide, do I want to buy more now or do I want to wait and then buy when it's, you know, confirming that reversal? If you do buy in early and it continues to sell off, you just have to stomach it. You have to acknowledge that, hey, it was a rule that I made for myself. I went in initially with 20%. That's my initial exposure. Don't break my rule. Now I wait for confirmation. Or you just manage and mitigate risk. Yes, it sucks taking a loss, but it's better to take a loss with just 20% exposure than 100% exposure and then have a full-on loss. The reason I share this with you is the reason the win rate can be so high is because when you take position size into consideration and your initial position is small and you might take a small loss, it's easy to cut losses on that. Move on. Wait for that reversal to happen and then once it does, then you can step on the gas and then it goes from being a loser to a winner. They're easier to recover from. Don't dig yourself in a deeper hole that doesn't need to be dug. Right? You're creating these rules and these systems because they're all just made up, right? But you're creating these criterias for you to have structure and intention with your trades and investments. That's all you can do. And you'll see it's not going to be perfect your first time at it, but you just would hope that it begins to make sense and you make adjustments, you know, as time goes on of like, hey, I really didn't like buying the dip early and having to tolerate all of this selling pressure or the sell-off before it actually got confirmation. I would rather just wait for confirmation next time. Great. Now you know that you're not the type of trader and investor that feels comfortable buying the dip before confirmation. I love that for you. We're all wired in different ways. Acknowledge that. Maybe for you, you are a little bit more risk adverse, right? Um at that point, it's yeah, I had no problem buying the dip early. I knew it could sell off and it did and it didn't bother me. I waited for confirmation, then I added more to it. And even then it you you know, you can look back and be like, um, it didn't recover as quickly as I thought. So maybe I added too much too early on, which is a common mistake I make and a lot of people make as well. So maybe go in lighter and the lighter you are normally the more comfortable you feel cuz remember you still got more money to work with. And having more money and more options of I can buy more is a great feeling because you know that you're not allin or stressing that it needs to work. That is a stressful position when you have no option. So again, when you put yourself in those stressful positions and know it's no one else's fault but yourself, learn how to manage that position size, right? And then the full-on confirmation, once that full-on confirmation happens, that's when I feel, you know, I'm all in on the position andor as much as I want to be to feel comfortable with it. Remember, for most of you, if this is the first time that you're ever choosing to invest or to trade, this is your first time at it. So no reason to over complicate it. Keep it as light as possible. Enjoy the experience. It can get worse before it gets better. But that is the beauty behind it. You're getting real exposure with real money with real companies, but you do it with a dollar amount that not only you can stomach and afford to lose, but that you can actually tolerate so you don't get shaken out, right? Um, what's the last thing that I wanted to talk about? talked about brokerage, talked about position size management, the difference between the buying and the selling and then I guess just taking profits, but that's covered in the playlist, right, of when it does begin to recover or get close to previous all-time highs, you can make the decision of, you know, choosing to take profits whenever it is that it makes sense to you or if it goes below a specific point. Um, in the LPP lesson library, if you end up joining our trading group, um, we talk a lot about risk-to-reward ratios, always making sure that your potential for profit is significantly greater than your potential for loss. But I feel like that's more for traders, but also investors. Um, but that's something that we cover in the lesson library. Um, it's just making sure that if you get to your threshold of, hey, I'm getting to the point where I'm I'm losing either percentwise or dollar-wise what I expected to make um, or getting close to that. I don't feel comfortable clo, you know, holding it any longer. Even if it's just 20%, I just want to close it and then maybe wait for confirmation moving forward. Then then do that, please. The last thing that you want to do is add more to a losing trade that's already stressing you out. If it's not stressing you out and you feel comfortable, then again, I'm not talking to you. I'm talking more to the people and you know who exactly you are, right? If it's becoming a very distasteful experience and you're not stomaching the volatility that well, then again, this is why I just go back to the idea of stop buying individual companies and then maybe just buy safer plays. just invest long term by the dip with a dollar amount you can tolerate. Focus less on trading. Focus more on just investing um in diversified ETFs, right? Spy, QQQ or, you know, VU, whatever it is that you want to. Um but trading is not for everyone. The stock market, I also agree to be investing or trading personally, is also not for everyone. it it is so much easier to to relive after you've experienced it than it is to actually go through it. So, you know, you can look back and be like, "Yeah, you know, I should have just always been invested and, you know, but there's these moments in time during these drawdowns that it feels like an eternity." And the pressure, the stress, um the mind games, it is so much easier said than done. But again, as you can see, market direction has been in our favors long-term. We don't know how bad this correction can be. If it's just going to be short-lived or if it's going to be if we go on the week time frame, um like in 2022, um a 12 month stretch of just selling pressure of markets making lower lows and lower highs all year long, right? you don't know. So again, begin to choose what platform you want to use. If you want to use Weeble, it's the first link down below. And in the comment section, I have a playlist that will show you step by step on how to open account, how to buy and sell on it, and then one of my live trading sessions. Second, with a dollar amount that you feel comfortable with, decide, do you want to invest in a basket of companies to be a little bit more conservative, a little bit more safe, less volatility, or do you want to invest in individual stocks or a hybrid approach where it's a little bit of both? And then the last thing we talked about is the importance of position size management instead of trying to go all in all at once. And in my opinion, making it a kind of um an aggressive experience because now you're just expecting the market to recover. I think that this is where you could really make the difference and you can put yourself in a position to succeed by just being able to tolerate whatever volatility presents itself, right? And that's it. Um obviously the market's much more complicated than just this. We're talking about pretty picture either draw downs or recoveries. You will see that, you know, days feel like weeks, weeks feel like months, but I think market sentiment has a lot to do with it. Right now, there's a lot of fear. There's weeks that feel like nothing can draw down the market. And then there's sometimes like right now that feels like nothing can cause the market to stop free falling. It's it's funny how market sentiment shifts so quickly and it's never shifted so quick in my opinion under like under the Trump administration. It could be a tweet, it could be an attack, it can be an update, an economic report, earnings report, and there's big shifts. So there it is a volatile market. So like I I've said over and over again, position size management is such an important thing. So again, um, all the links are down below. I did talk about it in this video. It's my learn plan profit team. They get to watch me trade live every morning right at market open. Uh, it's a onetime payment. It's lifetime access. We have an October sale that ends tonight. It breaks down to less than a dollar. 30 cents a day. So less than a cup of coffee. It's if you want to. So, if you want to check it out to learn more, we also have a recent live session on the homepage that you can watch before you decide to join and sign up. But the sale for October does end tonight at midnight. So, if you want to take advantage of that discount before the price goes up again tomorrow, it's the second link in the description down below. Onetime payment, lifetime access, and make sure you get that discount right now. Everything else is linked down below. I really hope that this video can encourage you to start investing, but to do it in a calculated way that makes sense to you. I want to see you win. Not because I hope you get lucky, but because you took action, you planned it out. You positioned yourself to tolerate volatility. And regardless if markets do go lower or begin to recover, it's going to be an enjoyable experience because you've positioned yourself to tolerate that type of movement. So, I'm excited. So, appreciate you guys' time. Hope that your thumbs up like always. Let's make sure that we end the year on a green note. Take care, team. And happy