Level 2 for Day Trading (+$65k in 2hrs After Spotting Hidden Buyers) transcript

What's up everyone? All right, in today's episode, I'm going to teach a fulllength class on how to spot hidden buyers and hidden sellers on the level two. This is a critical skill that you need to learn if you're an aspiring trader because if there's a hidden buyer, that indicates that someone is secretly trying to accumulate a huge position. And that means they know something or they're short and they're scared that the price is going to go a lot higher.

Now, this morning, we had two stocks that both squeezed up over 200%. The biggest gainer actually peaked at 432% on the day. And on this stock, I identified a hidden buyer early on, and that allowed me to take an early entry and produce a profit of over $65,000 on the day. That is a solid day of trading, and I spent less than two hours in the market. Now, let me remind you, as always, my results are not typical. I've been doing this for a long time.

I funded my first account back in 2001. So, what I want to do today is try to share with you some of those secrets that I've learned to pick up on that I see on the level two every single day that help me know intuitively that it's time to press the buy button or that it's time to get out. At the end of the day, the faster you're able to get into something that's moving quickly and get out of something that's starting to roll over, the more money you'll make.

So, let's go ahead and jump on the screen share and dive right in. So, these are the five topics that we're going to cover today. I'm going to begin with the definition of what a hidden buyer and hidden seller actually are and what they look like. I'm going to walk you through the type of stocks you're most likely to see hidden buyers and sellers on, I suppose, on a daily basis. And number three, I'm going to show you the price zones that they're most likely to occur around.

These are going to be support and resistance areas. Then number four, I'm going to show you how to actually spot them on the level two. And then number five, I'm going to share with you the next steps for those you guys that want to continue learning. The case study from today will be really helpful because you're going to see that these stocks, they have incredible upside potential when you spot those hidden buyers.

But when the hidden sellers come out, that also typically means the move is over. Now, these two stocks, there's two charts right here, and I traded both of these. These are the two that I made the most money on today. The well, they're the only two that I actually traded, as you can see right here for my positions window. These two stocks also both had a lot in common. Similarly priced, similar uh news headlines, so similar catalyst that got them going.

And so we may now be at the beginning of a new theme and this will be something to pay attention to certainly for those of you guys tuning in today for the weeks and perhaps the months ahead. Okay. Now for today's class I have some downloads for you guys. You can download my technical analysis PDF. This is a suite of some of my most popular PDFs right here that cover topics on candlestick chart patterns. uh my technical analysis strategy guide, my trading plan worksheet, my small account strategy worksheet, and my five pillars of stock selection.

I will also give all of you guys a digital copy of my book, How to Day Trade: The Plain Truth. Now, I have a copy of this book right here. This was written um I wrote this two about two, yeah, it's about two years ago. Um now, in this book, there's a picture of me from the late 1990s. This is a picture that was taken um when I was in school by one of my classmates and he wrote on the back of it, "20 years from now, Ross will be living in New York City and working on Wall Street." It was only a couple years later that I funded my first real money account in 2001.

So, anyways, this book is really helpful for those of you guys who want to learn more about my strategy. For those of you guys who have been trading for a while and you want to dig into the kind of nitty-gritty of technical analysis, make sure you download the technical analysis PDFs. Okay. So with that, let's begin number one with a definition of a hidden buyer and a hidden seller. So this is something that is it is the result of a feature on level two.

So level two, and I'll pull up my level two window here. Level two is where we see that what's called the depth of the market or the order book. We see all the buyers and all the sellers appear right here on level two. Now, if I pull up a stock that's not as thickly traded, let's say like Ford, I could put an order on Ford. Um, if I want to buy this, I could put an order right here. And you see my orders underlined right there at 404.

So, my order will go on the book. Now, my default as an active, you know, professional trader is that my orders are always hidden from the market. That's that's what typically you would do. However, uh what some traders will do is they'll have their orders uh displayed. So, if you put an order here on this for, let's say, 50,000 shares, you click the buy button. All of a sudden, that 50,000 share order Oh, it's going to deny that because it's too big of an order.

I put that order there and all of a sudden it shows up right there. See that? See how it changed the level two when I place that order? I place it and then it goes away. Now, it actually filled me 12,000 shares of that order, so I'm going to have to go and jump back out of it, but that's okay. I don't mind that. So, if I jump back out of this, I could put the order for 12,000 shares on the ask. And if I do a visible order like this, what's going to happen is that order is sitting right there on the book.

Now, if I don't want everyone to see my hand, I might choose to have that be a hidden order. And then I'll go like this. It'll be hidden. The order is there, but people don't see it. So, let's say I was selling 200,000 shares. I was selling a huge position. I might not want the whole world to see that I'm trying to sell 200,000 shares. And so you have the right not to display that order. And that's what most people would do.

They would not display that order. They would hide it. And so the problem is if I was selling 200,000 shares here at 303, and I'm just going to bail on that for the little loss. And I don't mind taking that loss just to give you the demonstration what this looks like. But if I had that sell order for 200,000 shares at let's say 1303, when people come in and they start buying, they buy 10,000 shares, they buy 15, they buy 20, they buy 30, they buy 40, what they'll notice is that the price is not moving higher.

The price is not moving higher because there's a wall there. In fact, we'd almost call it an iceberg. There's a huge order that is holding back the price from moving higher. and until that person has sold all of their shares, the stock will not go higher. So, a hidden seller is a real problem when we're trading because if we're looking at a pattern and the pattern looks great, but it comes up and there's a big seller there, the price will not go higher until that seller moves.

And the reality is we don't know how many shares that person is selling. All we can detect right now is that there are more buy orders that have just gone through than sell orders displayed on the ask. So, if I jump onto the whiteboard, I'll just give you a little sort of visual demonstration. So, we've got the bid on the left and we've got the ask on the right. So, let's say we've got 10,000 shares on the ask at $10 or this was $13.3 and we've got um on the bid 12 sorry 13 um 02 we've got also uh 10,000 shares.

Okay, so we've got 10,000 shares on both sides. Now, on the time and sales, the time and sales shows every single order that goes through the market. So if we saw and we would see this in green, the orders going through on the ask. If we saw 5K, 5K, 5K, 5K, 20K, 10K, we were seeing a bunch of green going through the tape, but this order is not changing or this price is simply not breaking. What we know is that more buy orders have gone through than sell orders are displayed.

And that means there must be a hidden order right there. And so that's where we would say, you know, we've got that iceberg um we've got that iceberg order. So, you know, the I guess the top is sort of small like that and there's a whole lot more down beneath the surface than you can identify. And that's going to be a problem. Now, on the flip side, if a stock is selling off, it's dropping and you're seeing all of these orders are in red.

You know, 10K shares, 10K shares, 5K, 7K, 10K, 12K, doesn't matter. 20K, 15K. So you see all these sell orders going through, but the price is not dropping. Now wait a second. If the price is not dropping, then once again, you've got this sort of iceberg situation where somebody is maybe they're only displaying 10,000 shares, but they're secretly accumulating all of the shares that people are selling. Why would someone be buying all of these shares?

It's because they think the price is going to go higher. Someone buys shares because they think the price is going higher and they sell because they think the price is going lower. Now, if someone's buying and selling a 100 shares or 200 shares, we don't really think much about it. But if someone's buying and selling 200,000 shares, half a million shares, these are such large positions that it makes you wonder what does this person know that I don't know?

Now, of course, it's a speculation, but the very fact that they're accumulating or selling that large of a position is enough for me to know that it's better for me to trade in the same direction as them than to try to fight against them, right? So, we're a little fish in the ocean in the market, you know, so to speak, as the ocean. And when you have a big whale moving around, we kind of ride in their wake a little bit.

So, big sellers and big buyers are kind of the wake of a whale. Okay? So, that's what that's the definition of a hidden buyer and a hidden seller. And I want to take it um one step further by actually showing you a live trading archive. Now, I've got a couple live archives that actually a number of them that I'm going to show you during today's episode. So, we're going to get zoomed in on this. I'm going to go full screen.

This is an example of a stock. Um the ticker right here is ADGI. Not that that really matters. Um the price $10.15 right now. It's up about 60% on the day. Okay. And I'm already holding a 6,000 share position at 1029. Now, when I first got in it, I thought 1029 was a good spot to be buying. To give you a little context, the stock had squeezed up and halted going up, which is a mechanism to try to reduce volatility. It resumed.

It dipped for a second and came up to 1029 and I bought it, but then it didn't break. And so right here I have identified that there is a hidden seller at 1029. Now there's something that I know about hidden sellers. So I sell half the position there for a loss because I'm like this is probably this isn't good. But what I know about a hidden seller is that a hidden seller is kind of like a wall. So think of think of a dam, right?

Think of a river being damned up. You've got a dam and this seller is that dam. Now, if that seller breaks, the dam is going to let loose and this thing is going to squeeze. So, watch this up here to 1029. It doesn't break yet again. The seller is still there. Now, in this case, I added which is trading a little bit against the whale, but I added because the stock is up so much and I am predicting that the dam is going to break. when I see the surge of buying coming through at these levels, that's what was giving me the conviction that we were going to get that breakout.

Now, this isn't an example from today. This is a little bit of an older one, but I'm just showing it to you just to help you understand what it looks like when there's a hidden seller. So, now my cost basis is $108. Watch right here. 10 time 101 19 10. Wow, the dam just broke. This just went to $10.95 and I'm up $7,000. So, I was able to correctly predict the breaking of the dam. Now, it's possible that I could have been wrong on this and I would have had to accept the loss.

The good news is that I've been trading for quite a long time. And so, although I'm not right 100% of the time, I have losses just like everyone else and I do share them with you. I do a recap every single day whether it's a red day or a green day. But my accuracy and this is over the course of the last 10 years is 68.6%. Um so given my accuracy you know I have conviction in my strategy. Now if we look just at the year to date just this year my accuracy is actually a little bit higher at 71.7%.

So this year I'm trading at um you know a slightly above average level of accuracy. So although this archive is a little older that gives you a good example of a hidden seller breaking. So in that case I traded with the direction that the stock was going which was that it was going up and even though we had this hidden seller I felt that it was likely to break. So there are two ways to think about this. If you have a hidden seller and the stock is dropping there is no reason that I would be thinking about buying.

If you have a hidden seller and the stock is squeezing up, the overall momentum is strong and yet there is someone out here dumping shares onto the market. We don't know why. They obviously don't have the conviction that the price is going to go higher. So, what do I know that they don't know? Well, I know the stock has a relatively low float. I know it's a biotech stock with news and it's the type of stock that can make a big move.

So since it's still early in the day and it's already up quite a bit and it's the most obvious stock on the in the market today on that particular day, I thought it made sense that this had the potential to go higher. So maybe in this moment I knew a little bit more about market sentiment than this person who was selling. Now on the other hand, if we have a stock that's really really strong and we have a hidden buyer, now that gives me conviction.

We've got a hidden buyer that's showing support. That's the direction that I'm wanting to go anyways. Now, in my experience, the place I'm most likely to see these hidden buyers and hidden sellers are on the stocks that have the most volume each day because this is where you're seeing that battle between buyers and sellers. If you pulled up a very light volume stock, you're not likely to see a hidden buyer or hidden seller.

If you pull up a stock that has high volume but is just sort of trading with average range, isn't doing anything particularly exciting, you may not it may not bring out high buyers or sellers. However, when a stock is up 200% on the day, anyone who is holding from the previous day, insiders, institutions, they may be inclined to take some profit, right? Or potentially short sellers are trying to trade against the position or against the momentum.

So, the stocks that are more likely to exhibit hidden buyers and sellers are these top gainers. And of course, those are the stocks that I'm trading pretty much on a daily basis anyways because they're the stocks that have the most range. So, if we look at GLTO and today, these two stocks were the leading gainers in the entire market. There were a few others that were up quite a bit, but these two far and away made just, you know, incredible gains.

And what's interesting is that these stocks had uh quite a bit in common. So if we know that we're most likely to see hidden buyers and sellers on the most popular stocks each day, and we also know that those are the stocks I typically would make the most money on, I think it's worth taking a moment just to identify the anatomy or do a profile of these types of stocks. So I have found that the most popular stocks, the ones that make the biggest moves, typically have a number of things in common, including the price, the float, which is number of shares available to trade, the sector, and the catalyst.

So when we look at these stocks from today, they fit they fit right within the profile of the type of stock that I'm typically looking for each day. And the profile that I'm going to share with you comes from over $20 million in trading profits. So, it's not just kind of like my opinion of I think these work, but I'm not really sure. I'm I'm uh entirely certain that for my strategy, these are the types of stocks that do work the best and that do exhibit hidden buyers and sellers, which makes it important for you to be able to recognize them.

So, if you're looking for stocks that have the potential to make bigger gains on an intraday basis, those are always going to be stocks with above average volume. Specifically, five times above average volume is where I make the most money. This is a distribution of my profits on stocks with five times above average volume. And you can see it's it's really no comparison. So stocks with above average volume today. Now, if you look at a big company like Nvidia or Tesla, it would be pretty rare on any given day that they would have five times above average volume than they'd had on a previous day.

So, I'll just pull up a chart on Nvidia here just to kind of give you perspective. Is there any day here that has five times above average volume versus the previous day? Now, this this day here is above average. I don't think it's five times above average. There's a couple days here that are higher. Um, but five times above average, we're not seeing it. Tesla, of course, another stock that trades on often high volume.

It trades on high volume pretty much every day, but five times above average, no. Now, look at move. This is the stock that I trade today. Okay, so this is our a if we if we look at our average, this was a higher volume day here, but our average is very low. And then all of a sudden today, boom, 26 million shares of volume. So yesterday's volume on this was like less than 10,000 shares. So that is a huge swing in relative volume.

Again, relative, it's what's above average for that stock. It's not total. It's above average for that stock. Now, stocks that have higher volume today also tend to be the stocks that I do make more money on as long as they're also five times above average. So, today, for instance, if we look at our scans, we could just run a quick report on um well, so Move right now is trading with 5,000 times above average. 5,000 times.

My minimum is five times. It's 5,000 times. But let's just check the relative volume of Nvidia just for one quick second. So the relative volume here of Nvidia today is 1.15. The relative volume of Tesla today is let's see 1.02. The relative volume of General Motors today is um actually 34. It's a little bit below average. Um let's see. X um well know that they did emerge. Um so let's see. Um PEP Pepsi. Let's just check Pepsi.

Just a couple big companies. Um the relative volume today on this one is 0103. So these are all trading basically on kind of you know a basically average volume more or less. And average volume is not what brings out emotions. What's going to bring out a you know Microsoft trader who's holding a big position to take profit? It's not the stock being up on you know 1x relative volume. It's the stock being up 30% in one day.

But that just doesn't happen with those big stocks, which is why I typically don't trade them. So, number one, stocks should have five times higher volume today. Number two, they should also have high volume today. And I focus on stocks that are gapping up, which means they're moving up during the pre-market session. Why would a stock be gapping up with volume and five times above average volume? It's because there's a breaking news catalyst.

And of course that was the case on both GLTO this morning and glTO had a catalyst a news headline that they are doing an acquisition. So they're buying another company. Move had a headline that they're doing a merger. So they're merging in with another company. They've got another company that's going to merge into them and then they're going to change the name of their operating company. So the surviving company will actually be the name of the company that they're acquiring which is very common.

So, these are the breaking news catalysts that brought in that volume and that thus sent the stock up 200 300% on the day. Now, I also know that I make the most money on stocks between two and 20 because they can offer larger percentage returns. A stock going from $2 to $4 is a 100% gain, but but it's up it's up $2 a share. A stock going from $20 a share to $22 a share is only a 10% gain, but it's still $2 a share. So $2 a share being equal in dollar amount move, it's a bigger percentage gain when the starting price is lower.

So I typically make more money on stocks under 20 bucks. Now stocks under $20 and that also have a float of less than 10 million shares available to trade are typically what dominate the biggest percentage gainers each day. So this is a day here where we've got these stocks which you can see the float on all of these is less than 20 million shares. 19 is the highest. So these are all very low float. Float is the number of shares available to trade.

So that's the supply and then the demand is created by the volume and the ratio of the demand relative to what's normal is right here. And then the result is this big percentage change right there. So in order for stocks to make a big move, you need to have an imbalance between supply and demand. Supply is the float or the number of shares available to trade and demand is created by breaking news which then brings in volume which then sends the stock up on the day and then the fact the stock is up on the day with volume and news. more traders start to jump on it, especially when the price is between, you know, 5 and 10 or between, you know, roughly 2 and 20 and the time is between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m.

Now, if it's a hot sector like a cryptocurrency, uh, a biotech sector or maybe AI, that can give even more juice. Now, on this particular example, and this is a stock that had a float of less than a million shares, which is unbelievable. It went up 432% on 300 million shares of volume. Now, I want to jump over to the whiteboard um really quickly and just kind of give you a little um chart of the relationship between volume float and percentage change.

So, if in this case we had a round up to a 1 million share float and 300 million shares of volume and the stock went up 432%. So, what if we had had a 500,000 share float? It was half the size and it was the same amount of volume. The same amount of demand, right? This is demand and this is supply. Same amount of demand, half the supply. I would predict, you know, 864% gain that it would got good would have gone up two times as much.

Now, what if it had had uh what if it had 600 million shares of volume and it was um you know the same 500,000 share float? Then all of a sudden, again, times two, we're now up 1,600%. You know, plus or minus. Now, if this had had 300 million shares of volume, but it had a 10 million share float, then it would have done maybe just 43% on the day, right? So, this is how important the relationship is between the demand, which is represented by the number of shares traded, and the supply, which is represented by the float.

So whenever I'm sitting down each morning, I'm looking for stocks that have the highest likelihood of showing an extreme between supply and demand. That's where we get these big moves. Okay, so we certainly found that today. And these are my five criteria for stock selection. And all of this is documented in the PDF downloads that are pinned to the top of the comments and linked in the description. So if you guys want to download it and use this as a resource, please by all means, you should.

Okay, so number three, where are we most likely to see hidden buyers and sellers? The areas are around predictable support and resistance zones. So on GLTO today, this is the stock today, the area where we had this hidden buyer was right at $12 a share. But what was interesting was we had another one at 13 and another one at 14. So they were at whole dollars, which is very common. It's very common that we see both support and resistance at whole dollars.

They're psychological areas. They're logical points where people put an order. As long as this stays over 12, it's holding a a critical psychological level. And so actually my first trade on GLTO was right here because when it first came down to 12 even though I saw a lot of selling far more selling than we had buyers on the bid displayed to support the price was not dropping. And so I took my first entry at 12. Now it popped up but then it came back down to 12.

That buyer held. It popped up again but it didn't break through a new high. I was a little bit perplexed. It dropped back down and with a big rush of selling, that buyer pulled their order. Either they canceled it or they bought all the shares they wanted and the price went down. Now, if they bought, let's say, a 100,000 shares, for all I know, it could have been someone who was shorting as soon as the price came up here and was shorting more and was shorting more and then was like, I need to buy back all of these shares that I just shorted because this stock is up too much and I'm about to lose.

So, I don't know if it was someone buying to cover a short position or someone buying to establish a new long position, but it was buying. The price drops. It then comes back up here. It dips back down and it once again has a hidden buyer right there at 12. And again, it was the same thing. I saw selling but the but the bid was not breaking. And so right there I added back. I got back in right there. It pops here up to$ 1350.

It pulls back. It gets back up. And now the same thing is happening at $13 a share right here. Each time it dips down to 13, there's a big buyer accumulating shares. And so because I see that big buyer, that gives me a sense of security because what I'm thinking is as long as that buyer holds the price at 13, then 13 or 1290 is my max loss. And so I added each time it came down to 13 with a 1290 max loss. Then all of a sudden it curls here up to 14.

And once again, we see the same thing happening. So now I'm asking myself, who was this who was buying big at 12, who was adding at 13, who was buying again at 14 and all of a sudden here we start to pull away. And we got this squeeze from 1450 to 15,550 to 16,650 to 17 to 18 to 19 all the way up to $20 a share. This is what we call parabolic. I would not have had the conviction to buy this if I had only been using candlestick charts.

Candlestick charts are important and these patterns that I focus on and this is an inverted head and shoulders pattern right here. And then this is the first pullback, second pullback, third pullback, fourth pullback. These are important patterns, but I can't use the patterns alone without using level two. I need both of them. So the candle over candle pattern that I focus on is basically you have a first candle that moves up and then the next candle pushes higher.

This is the simplest candlestick chart pattern that there is. Candle over candle. One candle goes up, next candle pushes higher. Now when we're trading momentum, I'm typically buying micro pullbacks. So a candle pops up, maybe two candles pop up, two in a row, whatever. I wait for the first one to go red and then boom, I'm buying right there. Now, sometimes in this setup, we will see a hidden buyer down around the support level of the pullback, which is why it didn't go further down.

It came down here and then all of a sudden it stopped going lower. There were buyers that were holding this up. So, I like to buy typically when the first candle makes a new high, just as a rule of thumb, unless I see that very clear visual sign of a hidden buyer. Now, in this case, we look for that resolution higher. Now, a little bit of a bigger pullback is when we have two or three red candles before the rally up.

We can still look for that same hidden buyer off support. It's also very common that this will occur like around $12 for existence for for example, which is a uh whole dollar. So, psychological support right there, resolution back up or the ABCD pattern where it pulls back, it pops up, it pulls back again, and sometimes it comes back to the exact same low, which shows hidden buyers. Or sometimes it's around an ascending resistance or a half dollar or a whole dollar.

And even without level two, these are patterns that I like trading. First candle to make a new high, it's a candlestick pattern. First candle makes a new high or a break of this pivot. These are candlestick patterns I trade every day. However, without level two, you're at a disadvantage because you may end up missing some of these signs that uhoh, there's a hidden buyer down here, right? Or there's a hidden buyer right under this level, which we get that pullback and then that next leg through.

Or there's a hidden seller right here and that's creating the wall. And so, these are just a number of candlestick patterns that you'll see me trade on a daily basis, breaking below the VWAP and then back above it. But what's important is that we're using the level two because what the level two does is it's helping give us a prediction of what's coming next. Candlestick charts are historical. So if we have this just as an example, this little pullback and then the surge higher, this is a pattern that we love.

Right now after we get into that p we get into that trade, what do we want to see happen? We want to see large green candles. We want to see the price moving higher. We want to see big buyers. That's what we want to see after we get in. And the the last thing we want to see are large red candles, the price going down or big sellers. Now, the big sellers and the big buyers, we can spot those on the level two. The price going up in the size of the candles, well, that's going to be after the fact.

So, level two is giving us in my view, it's like looking through the the it's look using candlestick charts is like looking in the rearview mirror while you're driving. It's showing you everything that's happened. And yes, that's helpful to have context. And that context can help us make a prediction of what is going to come, a reasonable prediction, especially if you've been doing it for a long time. But for me, level two is like looking out the windshield because now I'm seeing orders coming at me.

So now I'm moving around them. I see that big hidden buyer. And let's just say right here there was a hidden buyer at um 8.91 that each time we had sell orders this order just stood there. Then all of a sudden it's like we've got a support level here or you see a hidden seller at 9003 and each time we see buying this thing doesn't budge. We've got a hidden seller right there. So the level two then helps me predict is this going to go higher which will then be reflected on the candlestick chart or is this the high of day right now and it's just going to go lower.

So candlestick charts are historical record and level two is the future. All right. So the time in sales of course is a record of every transaction that occurs. Now in the old days they had uh traders who were called tape readers and this goes back even to the late 1800s. traders would be reading the tape and they wouldn't have quotes like this. They wouldn't have the level two because of course the market wasn't digital and they weren't able to see this.

What they had was the transaction record that recorded every single trade that went through. So they could see the opening and closing prices of the previous day and they could see the ticker tape. And traders actively traded buying and selling using ticker tape machines. And they would have these clubs that people would go to and certainly people had these in their offices as well. Well, very wealthy people would where they could watch the quotes streaming all day long and they could actually plot out.

This is crazy. It's crazy to us at this point, but what they would actually do is they would track begin tracking the ticker tape early in the day and they'd be like, "Okay, so the low is, you know, $14." And then they'd see it go to 14 and a quarter, 14.5, you know, and then so they'd be like, "Oh, and the new high now is 15." And right now we're pulling back. We're back at 14, you know, whatever 50 just for example, and then it goes back up.

Okay. Well, it looks like it's going to break through here. So, they're actually plotting a chart by hand to try to make a prediction of what's happening. Technical analysis is not is not new. It's just more sophisticated today, thanks to technology, than it's ever been. And this gives traders who master technical analysis and reading the level two, it can give them an edge in the market. Now, there is a spectrum of thin to thick markets.

On the left here, we've got a thin market. And this is uh evident in the fact that the bid is 4660 and the ask is $50 a share. So, you've got a nearly three and a half point spread, $35 a share between the bid and the ask. And then all the way over here, you've got just a one penny spread, and you've got several buyers on the bid and several sellers on the ask. Now, I typically end up finding myself trading stocks that are kind of in this range.

They're a little bit on the thinner side. They're not they're not too thin, but they're also not too thick. This is usually where we end up seeing some of the bigger moves. So today, for instance, uh Ford is thickly traded, which is predictable because there's such a huge level of supply. The float is so big that it creates uh more congestion move. However, you can see the spreads are jumping around on this. This one's moving around quite freely.

GLTO spread actually right now um is a little tighter only a one cent spread. I would actually almost say that it seems like there's selling pressure here at 51. So this is interesting. Yeah, it's it's sort of slow right now. Um the volume is a little bit more sort of sporadic but a little bit um at a time of the day when I think traders have probably mostly made their money and are sort of taking it off the table and and not actively trading it.

The chart pattern is showing that it's just consolidating right now. So I think there's just not as much activity going on on this one. So now I want to show you um another live trading archive to give you an example of um these hidden buyers and hidden sellers. So, I'm going to show you a couple of IPOs. Um, initial public offerings are really interesting because when we have initial public offerings, there's often a high degree of hidden buyers and hidden sellers.

And the reason is because there are people that got in before the IPO that are eager to sell and they hide their shares. So, and this includes big institutional traders. So, I'm going to go full screen here. Now, this is an IPO from a few few years ago. I have a few that I'll show you, but just to give you kind of a um an just one example. So, uh we're waiting for the IPO to begin. And so, before the IPO begins, we see quotes.

So, it's showing $150 a share right here. And there's another stock that's moving up that I'm trading. And then, oh, oh, all of a sudden, right here, the IPO is has begun trading. So, initially right here, I'll tell you when I see my f the first hidden seller. So, there's a visual seller right here at 149. Right. 149 you've got a 50,000 share seller. It's not hidden. It's just a big sell order. So it goes down to 15 to 8 to five.

And look, people cut in front. So it doesn't break. That's interesting. That's not uncommon. So people saw that big sell word and they're like, I don't know. Comes back up. It's having trouble breaking through 49. So 49 is now at the very least resistance. Look at and right there there this is a hidden seller at this point at 49. More orders have gone through and it should have broken. So now we have a hidden order at 49.

But what happens when it breaks? If it breaks. If it breaks that's the water breaking the dam. So watch 46. Right now a hidden buyer perhaps. Well, a visual, not a hidden buyer, a significant buyer of 76,000 shares at 45. So, someone's accumulating and they're not hiding their order. They want the market to see how much how many shares they're buying. Maybe that sends a message to the market. I have coni conviction in this.

Look at how many shares I'm buying. So, there back to 46. Back to 46 on the bid. 47. So, it's kind of jumping around. Now, we're coming back up towards that 49 level. I actually put my order at 4909. So if it comes up to that level, I could buy. I'm thinking about buying if it breaks that level because I'm thinking that that level is going to be a little bit like a dam. 48 4850. I sent the order already to anticipate it.

Here we go. Is it going to break 49? There's 4935. 4943. $50 on the ask. 150 and a 270,000 share order. That's a big sell order. 260 240 220 19 14 13 Is it going to break? See, it's funny because it almost breaks and then people start to sell right in front of it and it reloaded. So, we just had a reload where the seller was about to break and then they added more shares. That is bearish. That's not a good thing. That's not what you want to see.

So now we've got this resistance up here at 150. Let's try again. Coming back up to 150. Back up 150. If it breaks, that's the damn. Now I sell because I don't think it's going to break. I'm a little bit nervous. That sell order is too big. And right here, look at all the buying going through at 150. And watch what happens. There it goes. 152. Now we're at 152. 152. 152. 15230. 15250 153, right? So, this is where things start to open up 15 and then it drops back down.

So, people take some profit. Now, this is obviously a little bit of a higher price stock, but it's it's so common that you see this type of stuff on these higher price stocks. Well, and the IPOs, specifically the IPOs, but usually these IPOs are higher price, the ones that are hyped up. This is the Airbnb IPO, so it was really hyped up. There were a lot of insiders that wanted to take profit. you know, this is the day where they get to cash out and sell to all the retail traders who are still buying.

So, you know, this this is a big deal. So, this is this just was an example of um the Airbnb IB IPO, which, you know, was a good one. So, let's see. I've got another one here that I want to show you. Um so, let's see. Let's see about this one. So, this is an IPO from this year. And this one's going to be a little bit different. This this was a day um I remember being in the red on this day. So, circle IPO. This is an IPO that's in the crypto space.

Um so, let's see what we get. Okay, so we're waiting for the IPO to begin trading and right there it begins trading and I end up jumping in right here for the break of 71. There's 71 on the ask and I'm looking at the halt up which is 7590. You can see there's a little hidden seller. Right now it's 71. Goes to 72. I take a little profit off. Do we see a hidden seller right now? This is just quite strong. I I don't really see any obvious hidden sellers on this.

There's visual sellers. You can actually see them. They're not hidden, though. There's a big seller and it just blew right through it. So, that ends up being And you can see right now I'm up $17,000 on the stock. Um, this ends up being, you know, a pretty impressive move. Let's see. So, it ends up being halted for a little bit, then it resumes trading. Where's this end up going to? Oh, so I end up making $36,000 on that.

This thing basically just goes straight up. So, that's maybe not the best example of a um, let's see, of any hidden buyers or sellers. We can look at the um, Door Dash IPO. This is another one that was pretty hyped up. A lot of people were talking about it. There were a lot of insiders on this one that, you know, we're in uh before all of retail, so they want to take the opportunity to cash out. So, let's see. So, let me back this up.

So, it just began trading. We have a high of about 184 again, higher priced. So, I end up taking a starter there, and I'm looking for the break through the high. goes to 8450 85 there's a stack of sellers so I see that stack of sellers 50,000 shares seller 85 what happens to that some people cut in front of it drops all the way back down to 180 which is a huge swing $5 swing now it's coming back up to 85 the seller is still there but 38,000 it breaks and the dam breaks and it goes up to 86. 86 on the ask.

There's a hidden seller at 86 right now. It was not able to break 86. So then people get out. It drops back down. If it comes back up, people might feel comfortable trying it again. So sitting green, $6,000 on this stock um at the moment. Hidden buyer down there at 180. So now we've got a hidden buyer that should that typically would have broken 180, but there was a hidden buyer down there at 180. So see there's more selling than than it's still holding.

So that's where I see a hidden buyer. This would have been an excellent place to be buying a dip right down here. Now the only problem is the spreads are so big on this. How close to 180 you could have actually filled is is another question. Now if it breaks 180, the dam's going to break going down. So, I put in the order 186. Just watching the high at this point. Not wanting to take the risk down here. 18150 on the bid.

Dips down to 180. 180. Again, that hidden buyer is still holding it up at 180. So, someone is accumulating shares at 180. That's what I'm That's what I'm recognizing. Now, this is four years ago. Today, I might have been well, I don't know. It's $180 share stock. These ones are risky. I think this one, yeah, this one ends up breaking that level, then it comes right back up, which is so annoying. Sometimes that's called a liquidity trap, where a market maker will pull their order, they let all the people sell, dump shares, and they buy them back at a lower price, and then swing it back up just like that.

That's classic and it's so annoying when you see it happen and you fall for it, but it happens. So now 18 189 190. So we saw so we saw a little bit of that hidden buyer hidden seller stuff there. Now some people would say um Ross given that people can hide their orders on the level two does it negate the value of level two? And I would say no it it does not. Yes, there are traders that can hide their orders, but you can visualize when orders have been hidden.

So, since you can visualize that and you can see those hidden orders, to me, it it just gives me more insight and it makes me think there's a big player either buying here or selling here. Now, before I walk you through your next steps, let's look at my trades from today. This is a great case study because we're going to pull up these couple of stocks and these are I mean, this is really impressive. So, right now, Move is up uh 332% on the day.

It just peaked uh just a moment ago at $2123. Yesterday, this stock closed at, let's see, $4.77. Wow. Okay. GLTO. This one's pulling back a little bit right now. Yesterday, it had a low of um about $4.95. Today it had a high of just under 27 uh yeah right around $27 a share. So I want to show you GLTO first. Now first you know maybe first question is how did I even find this stock in real time. So of course I sit down every single morning at 7 a.m.

Eastern Standard Time. Those of you guys who are members at Warrior Trading, you already know that. Those of you guys maybe interested in doing a two-eek trial, I'll put a link for that in the description of this episode as well. During the twoe trial, you can watch while I'm trading. And you actually have access to this same software right here that I'm using, Day Trade Dash, for charting, scanning, breaking news. You have your own installation.

When you log in, you can pop it up. You can set up your charts. You can rearrange stuff, you know, set it up exactly how you like and save your layout. Now, when I first sat down this morning, I looked at the scans that began at 4 in the morning, which is when pre-market trading starts. And I saw that there were a couple of stocks that had popped up. IMT, you know, this one had made a move on the early side, but it didn't end up holding up super well.

It popped up and then rolled over. SX also popped up and rolled over. So, I was like, that's not so great. Then I saw SHFS, it popped up, rolled over, and went red on the day. So, I was like, that's terrible. And then all of a sudden, right here at 7 a.m., GLTO pops up. And what I first thought when GLTO popped up was here we go. Just like SHFS, this is probably going to pop up, drop down. I bet it doesn't even hold.

That was what I was thinking. You know, why would this hold? The last two that popped up didn't hold. So, you know, what's going to be different about this one? So, it's some, you know, I'll tell you, the reason that I show up every single day is because you just never know. Um, Friday actually, um, was a no trade day for me. There was not a single setup in the market that I liked. I didn't take a single trade. And then today, I'm up $65,000.

I could have said after a no trade day on Friday, ah, it's not even worth showing up on Monday. No, no, no, no, no. I show up every single day. So, when GLTO first popped up, you can see the chart here. It squeezes up to $10 right there. Goes sideways. Then, it pops from 10 up to 12 and hits a high right here of about 13. Now, I'll pull up my orders so you can see them in a little bit more detail. One of the things that was a little tricky about this is that on my first trade, I went red.

Now, that's not what I like to have happen, but that's what happened today. But down and not out. Being a trader, you're going to have losses. It's about keeping the losses in check so you don't lose lose too much and being willing to get back on the horse. So, I got back on the horse. So, my first trade was at $12 about $49. I had seen the hidden buyer down here at 12 and I jumped in to anticipate the break through 1250, which is a psychological level of resistance.

So, I was looking for the break through that whole dollar. Now, what ended up happening was it popped up here to a high of about 1271. It dips back down to 12. The hidden buyer was still there. So, I was like, "Okay, this is good. We still have that hidden buyer. I could feel good about that. It ends up flushing and as you can see, breaking below 12. I stopped out right here and I took the loss. I was a little confused because we had that hidden buyer, but it broke.

So, I just thought, well, I better get out." Then it comes back up right here. And as it comes back up, this is around 7:07 in the morning. It rallies back up. I saw that hidden buyer back there at 12. And I added as soon as I was able to get filled, which was $12.17. So I was in uh right here at 1217. We end up popping up to a high of $1348. That was fantastic. So now we're up at 13. uh it dips down and I end up adding back on this right around 1340.

I saw that we had this hidden buyer right here. I added and we got this squeeze up to 14. It holds 14 right here and I added for the break of 1450 and then all of a sudden we got this parabolic squeeze up to 20. Now right here during this pullback I didn't take that trade. I missed that candle. I'll tell you why I missed it. If we jump over to the one minute chart that those first trades were using level two and they were on the 10-second chart.

And on the one minute chart, we had this big peak right here. We dipped down. We then popped up and reversed. And I was like, I don't know. We're a little extended. We've got a couple of topping tail candles. The MACD is starting to kind of curl against the trade. The volume is declining. This is a risky spot for me to be a buyer. And I said, you know what? I'm up nicely on the day. I don't think I'm comfortable taking the risk.

It ends up going from $17 all the way here up to 26. I didn't expect this. I would have expected it in a hot market, but we haven't really been in a hot market. So, I definitely left some money on the table on this one. Then it dips all the way down, dips down, dips down. As it started to curl up right here, I drew this trend line connecting these two highs there and there. And I said, I don't think it's going to work because it has ascending resistance.

But if it can hold above that level, I'm a buyer. Guess what? It goes and holds above that level. I'm a buyer right there. And we ended up not getting the big move that I wanted. It squeezes up uh to about 23. And I ended up because the first one minute candle made the new high, having a small profit, but then when it broke below that level, I had to stop out. Now, as we came towards the open, it curled back up again, pulled back again and again, but this just became too risky for me to trade.

Now, the stock move was very interesting. move pops up initially right here at about 8 8 am 805 it pops up and then it goes red on the day a full reversal and I was disappointed because the float on this one is 658,000 shares it's a very low float stock with a news headline and then all of a sudden here it rips back up and right here micro pullback right there for the break of 13 a pop up to 14 a dip down a pop back up I didn't really trade it very well here the the topping tail s it just wasn't pulling away.

And then all of a sudden right here it rips. As it breaks through the high a day, I took a smalls size position, but we got a huge move and that gave me some nice profit. It then dips down, it rips up, topping tail reversal there, rejection, sells off, and then all of a sudden here we start rallying back up. So this it's great to see that these are holding up. It's great to see they still got staying power. And for both of these, spotting the hidden buyers on the level two and the hidden sellers definitely a gamecher.

Definitely something you need to study. One thing that I want to comment on is how days like today are so important when you look at your profit at the end of the year. It can just be, you know, a few individual days that make up 20, 30% or even more of your profit on the entire year. I mean, think about it. I'm up $65,000 today. 10 days like this is 650 grand. That's a huge amount of money. So, just looking at my top 10 biggest days this year, they they exceed 20% of my total profit on the year.

I've had several $200,000 green days this year. So, now if we just look at the last I'm going to do detailed overview. Um, if we look at the last 30 days, the last 60 days, the last 90 days, you'll see that I suffered a really big loss back here in October. And following that loss, I put myself into what's called trader rehab. I said, listen, it sucks has happened, but it is what it is. Put it behind you, water the bridge, and now what you got to make sure you don't do is keep losing.

So, you got to just turn turn around and start chipping away small green days. So today being up $65,000 is the biggest green day I've had in over a month. You know, the last big green day was way back here with $138,000 in the green. So all of these days I just had to show up every single day even though I was in trader rehab and I had to trade with small size because my first order of business was recovering this loss.

I had done that by this day here and then I had two backto-back red days. Fortunately, they were small red days. But following those two red days, I had a couple of no trade days. It was very slow. Just these last few days, we're talking about $2,800, $3,800, $3,900. But I still showed up because you just never know. I didn't see today coming. But I knew that because the market had been colder that short sellers were getting confident and that it wouldn't be a surprise if there was a stock that they let get away from them.

They get short and all of a sudden, next thing you know, this thing starts squeezing and boom, you've got a big move on your hands. I think that's what happened on GLTO and I think that's what those hidden buyers were. I think they were shorts covering and then we led into this just parabolic squeeze. And, you know, I've seen stocks that have gone, you know, not just from 5 to 10 to 15 to 20. I've seen stocks that have gone all the way to over $100 a share.

So, these these moves today, you know, the these were solid, but they're not going to be anything that, you know, I really look back on um you know, at the end of the year and I'm like, "Oh, that was that was the best day." You know, we've got $200,000 days. We've got a number of days that are just in the last 90 days that were substantially bigger. Today was a good day. Nothing crazy. It wasn't the best day of the year, not the worst day of the year, just something in between.

But, you know what? I keep showing up every day. And I encourage you guys to have that same approach to keep showing up every day and just keep learning as much as you can. So your next steps if you want to keep learning is to download my technical analysis PDF guide, to download the copy of my bestselling book, How to Day Trade: The Plain Truth, and to make sure you check out some of my recent uploads right here on YouTube that are deep dives into how to start trading, small account trading strategy, and the setups that I'm trading every single day.

I want to thank you guys for tuning in. I hope you if you enjoyed this episode, you hit the thumbs up, subscribe to the channel, and I'll see you for the next upload real soon. And I'll remind you as always that trading is risky. My results aren't typical. So, please manage your risk and always practice in a simulator before putting real money on the line.