RED DAY RECAP transcript

What's up everyone? All right. Well, today is the first red day for 2026. One of the things that I've been thinking quite a bit about is that this year is not about having no red days. I kind of came into 2025 with this mentality of trying to have the longest green streak possible. And I did end up having about 73 or something like that. 75 green days in a row. That was impressive. But does it really matter? Because here's the thing.

I had some days during that streak where I was red and I traded all day long just to try to get $1 above the red line so it wouldn't be a green so it wouldn't be a red day. Right? So I was so fixated on not having red days it caused me to become irrational. It encouraged me to overtrade and it rewarded me for overtrading and revenge trading on the days that I was able to recoup from red to green. But ultimately, I finally had a red day.

And it was not a small red day because you better believe on that red day, I fought it out to the very bitter end until eventually the market closed and I had no choice but to accept defeat. I don't want to do that this year. So, I said to myself, red days are okay. It's about having successful red days. I don't mind if I have more red days this year than I had last year, but I want my average red days to be smaller.

I want to feel like I'm having successful red days because I'm walking away at the right time. I'm not overstaying my welcome. I'm not giving into the emotion of revenge trading. So, as I sit here right now, I am in the red. I'm down $4,921.37. I'm disappointed about it. We'll talk about it. Of course, we're going to break it down in in the recap, but at the end of the day, a $5,000 red day is onex one times my cold market daily goal.

It is completely manageable. We look at the perspective of where I've what I've done this week. Had a solid day on Monday, 25 grand, a decent day on Tuesday, no trades on Wednesday, but then another decent day on Thursday. So, you know, the week has been good. Green four out of the five days. Yeah, today's a red day, but it's so much better to stop right here before it gets worse than to let it snowball and become something more than it needs to be.

So, when I first sat down this morning, I was a little disappointed that we didn't have anything on the scans, but not surprised either because we're at the end of the week. It's a Friday and the market's been a little colder. So, I just said to myself, let's just be patient. It only takes one. So, if we go back on our scans here, um let's see. Let me scroll back to the very beginning of the day. So 4:00 a.m. you can see a couple stocks hit the scans.

KUS Icon hits the scans. This one had popped up in the pre-market session early and then pulled back quite a bit as you can see right there. No trades on that one. Then we had Wheeler Investment Trust. This one uh real estate investment trust. This one pops up, sells off. No interest there. IBIO at 7 a.m. The float's a little higher. Feed. This pops up. they're gonna ring the opening bell on Wednesday. I felt like that doesn't really matter.

And then APVO pops up. When APVO first popped up, I was like, "Hello, here we go. A sub 1 million share float biotech stock with news. Yeah, I'm definitely going to be jumping on this one." So, it pops up and immediately I'm, you know, I'm pretty bullish on it just based on the sector and how much it had squeezed. So, it squeezes up here. It pulls back and I pulled it up and I was about to punch it and I hesitated because right here the spreads were a little on the big side, but I should have gotten in there.

So, I missed that move. I got in right here. Now, getting in right here was okay. Um, it did squeeze up to a high of about $14 a share. Now, on this stock, I could buy about 10,000 shares, not much more than that because remember, I reset my account to about $100,000 starting for January 1st. So although I've had a green week, I still can't buy 20,000 shares of a $14 stock. So anyways, 10,000 shares is $120,000. Got in with a little bit more than that, but um not a lot more.

Hits a high of 14. I take some profit off the table. It dips back down. I buy this dip. I stop out here. Uh oh, that's not great. Um then I get back in and I'm looking for this to resolve on the first one minute candle to make a new high. And it was just too heavy here. And there was a lot of selling. This stock squeezed up and then there was a lot of selling. And those sellers just started leaning on it and it started dropping harder and harder.

And it ended up essentially doing a full round trip which was kind of disappointing. I mean, you don't love to see that. So, you know, I was up 9,000 on it. I gave back 30% of my gains. That's disappointing. So, green 6,000, but it was still a green day. could have just walked away right then and there, but I didn't. I kept watching different stocks were popping up on the scanners and we did have this PAVS pop up. Wasn't interested in that.

It's Chinese stock. Um lower float, yes, but very thickly traded and tons of sellers on the level two. So, I said no, I'm not going to trade that. CX, I said no, I'm not going to trade that. A&PA, why did I trade this and how did I lose $11,000 on it? It's a lower float stock. Um, it's too expensive and that was a mistake. But what I saw in this that I liked was blue sky setup over 5475 right here. And as it squeezed up to that level, I bought a,000 shares.

And so on the pre-market chart, intraday chart here, I got in right here. Um, it was actually this break right here that I took my starter, which is a proper one minute pullback, right? Let's be real. That was a fine pullback. It was just a stock that was too expensive and where the spreads were um obviously a bit higher. But in that moment, the volume was coming in. It was the highest volume we'd had all day. And so I broke the ice.

It was a risky trade. I took it anyways. Chinese stock, no news, higher priced. The float was right. It was the leading gainer in the market. And it was a wildcard setup. So I got in. I then doubled my position as it broke through 56, hits a high of 58. I'm holding full size at $55 a share. I'm up 6,000 bucks. I'm like, this is good. It comes back down here to break even at 55, my cost basis. And I was like, well, you know, all right, let's just see what this does.

And immediately it drops and I'm down $5 a share. Dropped to $50 and I stopped out and I lost $5 a share on 2,000 shares. So, yeah, I ended up losing $5.50. I lost $11,000 on 2,000 shares. Thank goodness I didn't have 20,000 shares, but of course I couldn't have afforded that. And that that's also a reminder of I couldn't afford to make a huge mistake on this. Yeah, $11,000 is a pretty bad mistake. It's the biggest loss of the year.

Um, it's not going to help my profit loss ratio. Obviously, that goes without saying. And it's a reminder on higher price stocks. I suppose we could. And someone said, Ross, did you break your rules? And I said, 'Well, it's um not exactly because I have my five pillars of stock selection, but it's not a rule that I only trade stocks that meet all five pillars. I will often trade stocks that have um four of the five pillars, but don't have breaking news because we often see big big squeezes even without news.

So, you know, breaking news is important, but it's not required. Chinese stocks, they're risky. I, you know, approach them knowing they're risky, but I st will sometimes trade them anyways. And then a stock that's higher priced, that's the one where it's like that was a wild card move. The the price was the biggest risk factor. So, if we look at my profits from last year, you know, does it does it warrant me trading higher price stocks?

I mean, you know, these were all the trades here between 20 and 50, um, 175, and they produced a total of $85,000 of profit last year. So, I don't know. I mean, this could have been a wild card setup that squeezed to 60, 65, and 70 and gave me a 25, $30,000 winner. And then we'd say, Ross, you know, you how'd you know that was going to work even though the float was or even though the, you know, price was higher? like you know that that's and and it's like congratulations that's a great trade and when it doesn't work it's like you're a you didn't follow the the five pillars of stock selection so it's it's tricky and it's easy for you to think about that yourself too is you give yourself the pat on the back when it works but when it doesn't work you're beating yourself up this was a higher risk trade I took the risk on it I probably shouldn't have in hindsight I certainly shouldn't have but in the moment I felt like this had a chance of being a wildcard stock being that it was the leading gainer and it was a blue sky setup and it's a Chinese stock and we've seen Chinese stocks that have gone from $50 a share to $200 a share in one day.

We've seen that. So that was the basis for thinking this maybe had the potential to do something big. There was nothing else that felt like it looked better. And so I I took the risk and I took the loss. And in hindsight also you could say I could have held it and then gotten back out break even up here and I could have. But that's not a good idea. it's important to cut the loss and and bail and and that's exactly what I did.

So, um in any case, at this point, um you know, look, it it's a red day down $4,900, but it's tolerable. And I think that's the the important thing to keep returning to is get out earlier than you feel like you should. And and I'm leaving right now. I I still part of me is like, I could easily make back five grand. And I'm like, "No, but this is the time to walk away. Is today the day to dig deep and, you know, trade more?" No, it's not.

I'll I'll I'll know that definitively when I'm down 15 or 20 grand. I'll be like, I definitely need to walk away and I wish I'd walked away sooner. So, I'm going to walk away now even before I feel like I really need to. I'm not at max loss. This isn't that big of a a red day, but it's better to just walk away now before it gets worse. Uh, and then next week if I have even a decent day on Monday, this loss is completely water under the bridge, you know, 2x green day on Monday is $10,000. 2x the cold goal, another 25 $30,000 day and yeah, this is gone.

So realistically, um, I think this is this is my comfort zone of taking losses that are less than 10,000 are successful red days. Um, now it's possible I could have a red day where I'm doing really well and then suddenly I mismanage my risk and I lose like 30 grand in one trade and it happens so fast that I'm down 25,000 on the day or whatever it is. 30 grand and it would still be a successful red day if I stop right then and there.

Although I would have to discuss, you know, how I managed to lose that much and why, you know, my risk was not in line with what I was expecting to risk. Um, and I think that unfortunately what we will see is that the outsiz losses are usually one of two issues. Either I'm trading a higher price stock and I lose a lot more dollars per share than I was expecting, which is what happened today and could have been much worse if I had a bigger position, or I'm trading [snorts] huge share size, like 50, 75, 100,000 shares or more, and I just get I get caught in like a jack knife, and I cannot unwind the position fast enough, and then that's where I'm I'm really going to be um in a bad position.

So those are the those are probably where my two losses biggest losses will come from this year. Um certainly getting in something like an algo spike like APVO getting in at the top of a move like that too high and then not being able to unwind it is, you know, certainly a possibility as well. Um but in any event, I'm going to lock it up here and the best thing for me to do is to shut down my platform. I'm going to close it down right here and not look at any stocks for the rest of the day. because if I keep looking at the market and I see something, it'll be very tempting for me to trade, especially since I'm not down uh all that much on the day.

So rather than wait till I'm down 10,000 or 20,000 before giving up, I'm just going to give up here. And I know it sounds defeating to say I'm just going to give up. But I actually think that this is a day that I should give up. I I should give up and just throw in the towel and try again on Monday. Today is not a good day to keep pushing. So, I'm going to throw in the towel and that's it. So, a reminder as always, uh, that trading is risky.

Easy come, easy go. I'm going to put links to a couple recent uploads that have been popular right here. So, I hope you guys check them out and I will see you live streaming back at it Monday morning at 700 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. All right, I'll see you then.