BIGGEST RED DAY OF 2026

What's up everybody? All right. Well, today is a red day recap. It is the biggest red day of the year for me in my Roth IRA and I'm feeling pretty discouraged. I'm bummed out. For those of you guys who are beginner traders, intermediate, even those who have been doing it for a while, I want you to know that the feeling of red days, it always feels bad. And probably the biggest difference that separates where you're at today and where I'm at today is that I I still have red days. Some of them are pretty big, but I've been able to space out how frequently they happen. So that in between these big red days, I'm net profitable. So earlier in my career, I would have three weeks where I'd make money and then, you know, on that fourth week, in one day, I'd give it all back. So, it was three steps forward, you know, one huge step back. And I was break I wasn't making progress. I mean, I'd be breaking even or losing money. And I did an interview a couple years ago with one of my students who'd made his first million dollars trading. And he told me that I well, I asked him if he had a turning point, you know, where all of a sudden things just clicked and, you know, like what could what could students learn or members at Warrior Trading learn from you? Was there a moment where everything clicked and they could just try to experience that for themselves? and he said, 'N no, I wish, but it wasn't really like that. Um, he said his journey from losing money to being kind of break even and profitable was just like it was so gradual. Um, it was just he said it was about sucking a little bit less. Uh, and he's he's like, I'm still suck, you know, but I just suck a little bit less than I did like, you know, a few years ago and that's all the difference. So today I suck. You know, this this is stupid. I'm down. Um, I'll put give you the P&L. $73,000 in one day. It's dumb. Uh, could have bought like, you know, 73 used Subarus for that kind of money. I'd be like a millionaire. That's like that. I'd be like the richest guy in New Hampshire with that kind of, you know, metal in my driveway. So, I feel stupid. I'm frustrated. Um, but you know, look, I think if we look at all the big red days I've had this year, we can attribute them generally to FOMO, the fear of missing out. And today was not really an exception to that. It's funny because you would think, what's there to feel FOMO about? You've had a great week. And if you've been tuning into my daily recaps, you you would know that I'm up I was up this morning about $100,000 on the week. That's a huge week. I mean, you know, arguably one of the better weeks of the year. Um, and then, you know, to have a day like today, like, why did you have FOMO? You were already doing so well. And the reason that I had FOMO this week was because I knew that I was not fully capitalizing on the opportunities that I could have bought bigger positions. I could have held positions longer. And a lot of the stocks I traded went a lot higher after I got out. And it left me feeling like I didn't do a good enough job. And so it was a not as much of a fear of missing out, but a regret that I missed out. And then a fear that I'm going to miss the next one. So then I overcompensate with the next ones, but then you know, for whatever reason, and maybe we can attribute some of that to some things that we'll talk about during the recap, today just they they weren't as clean as they were earlier in the week. Does that mean today is the end of the hot streak? and you know, we're back to scraping the bottom of the barrel on Monday. I don't think so. I think that there's a lot of traders who probably are nicely in the green today. The very fact that I'm red on four out of four stocks to me speaks more to an issue with me than with the market because it's very rare that I'll be read on everything that I trade. That's pretty unusual. [snorts] So, let's break it down. Um, and again, context is important. So, just to set the stage here, I am on my traveling trading station. Um, main laptop, USB monitor. So, working with a little bit less than my typical setup that I would have at home. Um, that did create an issue today in a couple different ways, which we'll talk about as we get into the recap. Um, also context, the market has been really hot. So, for the last 30 days, I've been averaging uh $20,000 per day. So, solid daily average, 71% accuracy, decent profit loss ratio. Have had some few losses. Today was the biggest one by far. Um, with the $52,000 loss on DSY in one trade, which was stupid, but um, you know, it this is where I'm at. So, today I gave back uh 75% or whatever roughly of what I made this week, but I'm still finishing the week in the green. Okay, that's a little bit of a silver lining. Um, based on the $20,000 daily average, I gave back about 3 and 1 half days today. So, again, not great, but all things considered, um, it's tolerable. So, how did today start? Well, um, I sat down this morning at about 6:30 and I looked at the scans and I saw that MB um, was already up a lot. This thing was up like 300%. And I kind of thought, ah, it's a, you know, it's a Chinese Hong Kong company with no news. All right. And it's made this big move. So, I'm thinking traders are they're not waiting to jump in these. They're just um they're they're jumping in a little bit early. And now, everyone who traded it from, you know, 5 in the morning until, you know, 7 has already made their money on it. So, can I really trade it in this area? So, I wasn't totally sure. Uh, it had this really nice squeeze at like 6:00 a.m. right here. So, this is sort of our first big push higher uh on the one minute chart. It dips down here. It comes back up. It pulls back. It comes back up right here. Um, that second little move right there, we'll zoom in on that a little bit more. Um, I I bought right here. And I got in this just with about 5,000 shares for the break of 16. And the reason I did that was because I thought this would curl. Oops. Sorry. Oh, darn. I just closed that whole window, didn't I? I'll I'll bring it up in a second. Don't worry. So um I So, what I was looking for on that was the breakthrough $16.38. And my thinking was that if we broke 1638, we would go back and retest our high a day. And so, what ended up happening on that is I lost a dollar a share, one whole dollar a share on my first trade. And even though it was only 4,000 5,000 shares, I ended up losing, as you can see here, four $4,000 on it. So that's a kind of outsized loss, you know, I was just like, man, that was a little bit ridiculous. Um how quickly I just lost four grand. And so, you know, that sort of set the stage that today was not going to be super clean. Uh so that was on MB and that was right at about 7:05 as it was starting to curl up uh right here. So sorry. So it was right there and I was looking for the breakthrough 1638 or 1648 and then the retest of our high a day. So I got in and all of a sudden it jackk knifed back down. Did another jack knife right there. You can see that high volume. Then it halts up three times at the open back to 20 before selling off. It halted up here at $19.75 and resumed at 15 bucks. That is ridiculous. That's absolutely ridiculous. So, this garbage. Terrible. All right. So, I took one trade on it. I lost. I didn't take any more trades on it. I also took one trade on CLRO and lost. CLRO yesterday was the stock that I had made like $26,000 on. Um, had a great trade yesterday on this one. uh it pops up right at 7 am and I jumped in and then pull back pull back pull back rode that momentum got some awesome trades. So this morning when it starts squeezing up again, I thought uh that was after hours. It went all the way up to a high of 17, right? So, holy smokes, this thing's holding up. It pulls back and so then it starts to squeeze up here in the pre-market and I jumped in this and I got in at 15 and I added at$,550 and that was way too high. I was able to get out of it, but I lost on that as well. So now you know I'm red on two stocks, CLRO and MB. And neither of them well CLRO was absolutely chasing. That was not a good entry. And MB, you know, it was a curling setup, but a little bit of a risky type of trade to take if I don't have a cushion yet. So that was not great. Um, but don't worry, things turned around for a moment. Uh, and I actually got green on the day and it was on NI. So, Nami has pulled back now, but this one was squeezing up in the afterhour session uh yesterday, so rallying higher. No trades on it. Pre-market, it jams up and rejects back down. Looks like pretty weak. Shorts are probably adding. And then right here, it squeezes through VWAP. And I added on it right there at $7.15. It was a fantastic entry and I sold the whole thing at like 750. So dumb. It goes all the way to nine. It dips back down. I add back right here. It pops back up. Then it dips down. And my last trade of the day was adding right here for the breakthrough 10. Boom. So, I went from zero on it to up 10 grand then or up to up five grand on it. Then to up $10,000 on it, then lost 25 grand on that candle and I'm down $15,000 on NMI. I just kept going back. I had a great trade and then I jumped right out of it. Then it goes further without me, which is exactly what I've been feeling frustrated about. I get back in higher and it drops. But the stock that really killed me today was DSY. So DSY, NAM, first of all, so NMI had this big move, but one issue that it did have with it was that we had this ascending resistance line. So, we had ascending resistance kind of right up in here and it ran into that level. Okay, so I did know that that was an issue. I thought that it would break through it right here. I don't know why I thought that, but I thought it would. I I was [snorts] wrong clearly, but I thought it would. In any case, when it first hit the resistance level here and started selling off on the one minute, the MACD went negative. And so, as the MACD went negative, I just sort of said to myself, you know what? Um, I think this one's going to roll over and I think momentum is going to shift to a different stock. DSY starts popping up. It's below VWAP just the way NAMI was, right? NMI was below VWAP. It breaks VWAP right here and it rips through. SubVWAP ripping through on the break. So DSY starts to curl up and I'm thinking this is the one. And for what it's worth, some of my best trades have been this type of setup where I buy something like this right around the break of VWAP and it explodes through the high. So, I've gotten some really solid trades this year on that setup. I would not say that, you know, never trade that setup again, Ross. That was like that was the huge mistake. That wasn't the mistake. The setup was fine. This was a good setup. The problem was uh twofold. Number one, the stock um yes, you'd have this these two previous highs, okay? Um but it also was right underneath the 200 moving average, which was at like 788. Now, I thought it had a chance to break through that level. Obviously, I was wrong, but I thought that it could break through that level. So, it did have the 200 moving average right overhead as resistance. That created a little bit of a challenge. So, I end up taking a trade on this and I take a trade both in my small account and in my big account. So, this unbelievably does a false breakout right here and literally drops $2 a share from 740 down to $5.40. It dropped $2 a share in one candle. Unbelievable. And I lost $52,000. So, I mean, yeah. I look, I don't I don't know. You know, I I was being too aggressive. I was taking too much share size. Evidently, you know, being aggressive and taking big share size had been paying off this week. But clearly today, something was a little bit different. you know, NAMI was struggling a bit. Um, you know, a CLRO and MB, those ones weren't working out as well. So, it's like there was all this pent up FOMO in the market and I was victim to it as well. Um, you know, look at YJ. This one, this one ends up going from $2 to 14, now back down to three. So, this is the market we're in. And I just, you know, I kind of was on the wrong side of the moves today where I wasn't really trading the front side. MB, was I trading the front side of the move on MB? And the front side would be during its first it really it's like first push higher. And so if we look at this, the first push higher on MB. Sorry, the chart's kind of funny. Um, was from $4 up to 1820. I was not trading the first push higher. I was trading back here. MA N AMI. Well, that one started after hours yesterday. So, I was definitely not trading the first push. Now, this was clean. Um, but then it ran into ascending resistance up here and I should have just I should have held this position longer and then not gotten back into it. But because I sort of had FOMO that I sold this way too soon and anyways, so that was that was bad. And then and and it all was on the back side of the move and DSY was also on the back side of the move. So today I didn't get a chance to really trade anything on the front side of the move. I was trading setups that were curling. Um you know granted yesterday CLRO was a curling setup. Um I didn't think this was I I sort of thought this was the backside of the move. You had this big move here but then it curled. But as it went through the new high a day it was sort of you know became a new section of front side move. it was making new highs. N AMI, you could argue, was quite similar. Um, so it's a shame that it didn't work out better and that I lost on it. Uh, but you know, it is what it is. Now, CLRO today, the trade on CLRO this morning was not this was definitely the backside. I mean, well, look, again, if it had broken through the high and really pushed higher, but I knew it was more expensive, just not not an ideal setup. So the curl on DSY, you know, look, I mean, that could have broken through a new high, but for whatever reason today, we just I kept trying to anticipate what was going to happen and then it wasn't quite happening. And then if it did go higher, I was just adding way too high. So now definitely a challenge today was trading on my traveling trading station. So So okay, so we've got sort of two issues. one was trading with a pretty high degree of FOMO. Um, not wanting to miss moves, chasing them. And even though I've had a really good week today, I found myself getting frustrated. I was frustrated when I lost on CLRO and I was even more frustrated when I lost on MB and I was starting to feel like there was we were not going to get anything to trade. That's that's how I was feeling. So, those trades on NMI, let's look at the time, cuz a trade on CLRO and MB were both at 7:00 a.m. So, I sat from 7 a.m. 7:05, whatever that was, like right around 7 a.m. all the way to 8:35 approximately cuz when was this trade? This was 8:20. Okay. So, I sat for like an hour and a half almost in the red and I wasn't really sure N AMI would work because this big rejection candle that we had had right here. So, I did jump in it and I jumped out quickly because I thought that was going to be resistance. So, when it went all the way to 970, I was like, gosh darn it. And then I said to myself, you know what? So many of these trades this week had been way stronger than you expected and they just kept going higher. And that's why I justified getting back in even though it was really high because others during the week had kept going higher. But then this one didn't, right? So, what's the deal? I don't know. Well, the entries that I took when I got back in higher weren't really that great. I mean you could see on the five minute but even if you look on the one minute chart the issue was that we kept having these topping tails. So it was just like topping tail topping tail topping tail and then this rally back up. I mean it just how do you really make sense of that? This rally back up which was the one that I then took another loss on. I you know I just Yeah. I don't know. But clearly there were sellers up around this level. We don't know why. It could have been the company selling, you know, are we going to find out they did an offering? Who knows? Maybe, maybe. We'll never know. But it wasn't clean and I should have stopped trading it. And I managed to go from green $10,000 on Nami to red 15 grand. So now, you know, for a moment I'm green on the day, but I'm still like, where's the one that's really going to work? And it just wasn't happening. And I kept trying to push it. I kept trying to take more trades. I wasn't giving up. I was getting stubborn. I was getting frustrated and then finally I got completely smoked and so yeah I mean th this was a day where things really fell apart and you know trying to trade on the traveling trading station and trade in the small account at the same time that's that's something I really need to put some thought into because what keeps happening and this has happened a number of times this year so I started the small account challenge Well, I've been doing small account challenges all year, but um during the summer, I have this small account challenge that I'm doing with Think or Swim. And Think or Swim on my computer is a bear. It uses so much in the way of resources. Um and so what happened to me twice today, and it's happened many other times during these challenges, is my computer just gets completely jammed up. And so all of a sudden, I've I'm just um I've got no response. My keyboard's not responding. I can't click on Windows. Nothing's moving and I'm I'm jammed up. And part of that is because I've got Lightseed on my computer. I've got DAS on my computer and I've got Thinker Swim because I'm using D to execute through Thinker Swim. But I need Think or Swim Up in case DAS goes down. So I've got three platforms all consuming data plus I've got, you know, multiple charts and scanners. So I've got Chrome, I've got Firefox, then I've got my uh screen uh recording and screen um share like the streaming software. So all of that uh is contributing to feelings of frustration because there is nothing more frustrating than when your computer jams up and freezes and you're in a trade and it's just you can't see anything. And that happened today and it happened on the trade on NMI and it was a winner. I I pressed the sell button. I had no idea what the price was and all of a sudden I saw I was up 10 grand and I was like whoa that was awesome but I but at the same time I was like what's going on in my computer? So I'm going to have to make a decision. I've got some more travel um coming up this year and I have to make a decision when I travel which account I'm going to focus on because I cannot run all this software on this laptop at the same time. Now this is a nice laptop. You could probably hear the fan running. It sounds like a jet engine. It's a good laptop. It's probably three or $4,000. The problem is not the laptop. The problem is I'm trying to run too much high, you know, resource intensive software on it. So, that's a problem, you know, managing trying, you know, when the market's going really well, I can trade in both accounts. I buy in both. The market keeps going higher. I'm green in both. It's like easy. But when things start getting tricky, um, I'm in one and now it's stalling out and I'm like, well, I don't know. I'm just gonna hold that for a second because I do think this is still going to work. And then I add in the other account and then they both then it rejects and now I'm trying to manage losses in both sides and the computers. That's when things get pretty bad. Now, that's a situation you might think is very specific to me because you're probably thinking, oh, I only use this one platform. Um, but if you have an older computer and it's lagging, then every time that happens, you're probably feeling frustrated the way I was today. And when you start to get frustrated, that is going to contribute to your emotional disposition for the day and your ability to have discipline and to follow the rules. So, you want to try to reduce um as much as possible the these types of things are going to upset you and cause you to be maybe more apt to make mistakes and have lapses in judgment, which happened to me today. Um, you know, my max loss is that I don't want to lose more than I make in one good day, but in one trade I lost $52,000. And that one I mean, that's like way too much to lose in one trade. You know what I mean? like that just cra that's that's that's really bad. I've had worse but that's really bad. So um so definitely from today I need to be um you know it it's it's hard for me. I I really enjoy doing these small account challenges. They are fun but they are a challenge and maybe not in the way that you would expect them to be. Uh but it's just the reality that I you know that's just the way I'm doing them. And if I did only the small account challenge for the last, you know, 30 days of trading, I would have a lot less profit to show for it because, you know, I can't buy 30 40,000 shares or 50,000 shares in the small account. Uh, you know, even including today's loss, I'm still much better off by trading. Oops, my video turned off. Anyways, I'm still much better off by trading in multiple accounts at the same time. um when it goes well uh and and this summer has been going well, but days like today unfortunately happen. And so yeah, today I'm, you know, I'm frustrated. I'm disappointed. This is not a good way to finish the week. Okay, so we can recognize that FOMO is a big contributor. Probably being on the traveling trading station and not sleeping super well last night were additional contributors. I probably shouldn't have been multi- you know dis dispersing my attention across um you know these different plat trading platforms which don't help my computer and also you know the different accounts. Okay, so that's one fairly easy action item for um upcoming days and uh weeks and certainly when I'm on my traveling trading station in um you know the FOMO FOMO creeps up on us and when we're in a really hot market there is a degree of FOMO and you can harness it to encourage you to be more aggressive and jump it a little bit more quickly but it's a very fine line and today I went on the other side of it and I I suffered some losses as a result net end of the end of the week, end of the month, I'm still doing well, being more aggressive when it's hot, but today was a setback for sure. And so I think there are some things that I can do to help um minimize the likelihood of this happening as badly in the future. And one of them is making the decision of, you know, certainly when I'm traveling, which account to focus on. So for the coming uh for what am I going to do for next week? Uh well the small account is not currently in a draw down. Uh today was day 31. It's a tiny green day. It's a little easier to jump in and out in the small account but whatever. So it's not in a draw down. So on the one hand I could um I I could you could argue that um maybe I just put the small account on the shelf for you know all of next week and I just focus on my main account. I just try to stabilize kind of and and the approach with the main account would be I don't think this is the end of the hot streak today but I took a big loss I don't want a second big loss on Monday so I have to focus on building my cushion before I take higher size bigger size so rather than starting swinging out of the gates the way I did today and have been this past couple hot weeks I need to start with smaller size on Monday if I can build a cushion and we've got great action then I can size up and I may be able to make back the loss from today within a couple of days and that would be fine. But if it ends up being cooler, it's going to take longer. So during, you know, right now I need to focus on just chipping away with small green days, building confidence, and not having repeated big red days. You could also argue that maybe it's better just to leave the big account on the side for a few days. Focus on the small account which is less emotion. It's going well. I can't really take that much size. So even if I lose in it, the amount that I would lose is kind of not really as material. Uh and that maybe is just a good way to kind of center my emotions for a couple days. Uh and I think that would be I mean neither are wrong. Uh, I don't know which one is best. Um, I suppose the part of me that says I should not only focus on the small account is the part of me that still is holding on to a little bit of that FOMO that if you just trade in the small account next week, you're just leaving your big account in a draw down and that doesn't feel good. You're making zero progress whatsoever. I would rather take small size and have, you know,5 or $6,000 green days, you know, most of next week and at least feel like I'm moving in the right direction than to focus on the small account and kind of abandon the big account for a week. So, you know, I don't know if that's a I don't know. I have to think over the weekend about if that feeling that I have is based on an emotional reaction or if I or if I feel like that's actually a good decision. So, I'll make a decision over the weekend. Um, and then going into next week, I do feel like at least in the big account, I need a couple days where I can just stabilize. Um, and I suppose you could argue that I could just trade for like half an hour and then put it on the side and then trade in the small account for the rest of the day, but I don't really like doing that. I feel like I kind of need to be I don't know, that doesn't work super well for me. Uh so in any event, um I have some thinking to do over the weekend on how I'm going to uh proceed next week. But generally after a big red day, I size down until I've recouped about half of the loss. So that would be keeping my share size smaller, about a quarter or half of my full-size positions. So that would be for me between 10 and 20,000 share full size until I've recovered about half of the draw down and then I can start to size back up. Um it's possible I could recover half the draw down in, you know, one day of really good action, but it might take longer. Ultimately, when I'm when I'm at home, uh and I'm well rested, I'm usually a pretty good judge of if today's a day I should be aggressive or if I should stay more conservative. Uh unfortunately it has been consistently the case that when I'm traveling my judgment's a bit impaired by the all the variables that come with traveling. Uh and yet I still would say that net at the end of the day if you looked at all of the days I've been on my traveling trading station I by far have made more than I've lost. I'm very confident in that. Now, I haven't actually tracked all of those days, but I've traveled so much. If I was read consistently whenever I went away, I would I would certainly know about it. I've had some great I've had some great vacations uh where I've done really really well. I had a $60,000 week in St. Martin a couple years ago. Um had some phenomenal trades um on an island vacation in 2021 or 2022. you know, traded really well in Europe. Um, really enjoyed the schedule there of trading in the middle of the day when it's really hot and then having the evening to go out and, you know, so it's just also true that less than ideal internet, computer bandwidth issues can contribute to a sense of frustration and that can create the perfect storm. And today it it struck. So, this is my red day recap. It's disappointing. Uh, but, you know, it's not going to be the last red day of the year. Um, it's not as big of a red day as I had in my uh the same account last year, which was $173,000, I think it was. So, you know, look, this is just part of trading. And no matter how long you stick with it, you'll still have days like today. So, it's important to learn how to process them so you can come back and get back on the horse, you know, get back in the saddle. All right, so that's it for me. Thank you guys for tuning in. I'll remind you as always that trading is risky. My results aren't typical. And there's no guarantee you'll find success whether you trade with me or you learn on your own this week. Um, I still am up $25,000. Um, it's a good week, big picture, but uh obviously finishing here on a bit of a sour note. So, I'll be back at it Monday morning at 7:00 a.m. and I hope to see you guys. Um, certainly I'll see you in the comments here on YouTube, but I'll also see you in the chat room on Monday.