This 9EMA Strategy is Boring, But It Makes Me $27,997/Month transcript

Over the past couple years, I've made a little bit over $850,000 day trading stocks, which is over a 1,000% return on my personal live Charles Schwab account. I trade on Think or Swim platform. I don't use prop for money. And just to be as transparent as possible, you could see my net contributions for this period as well. So, you could see the exact amount that I deposited into the account, essentially nothing. You could see what I withdrew and you could see my investment gain/loss right here.

In this video, I'm going to teach you the exact 9 EMA strategy that I personally trade every single day. Now, the reason you should pay close attention to this video is simple. Both my father and I have made a living day trading in the stock market by keeping our trading as simple as possible. We don't use MACD or Ballinger bands or RSI or stochastics or channels or any of the other fancy indicators that you might find on your platform.

We focus exclusively on price action. Over the next 20 minutes, I'm going to teach you how to set up the 9 EMA on your charts, how to scan for and identify high probability setups using it, and why this single line was one of the biggest game changers within my own personal trading. Let's jump right into the video. So, before I get into the strategy section of this video, it's very important that you understand what the 9A is and why do I use it in the first place.

So, what is it? The 9 EMA, simply put, is a line and it's a line that's calculated by taking the weighted average price over the last nine candles. Now, I'm primarily using the 9 EMA on the smaller time frames. I'm a day trader, so I focus on the intraday time frame. So, I'm using it on the 1 minute, 2 minute, 5 minute, 15 minute, sometimes the 30 minute, and I also use it on the hourly. Now, what does it mean that it takes the weighted average price?

All that means is it's putting more significance in weight in the calculation on recent price action versus a simple moving average. Now, you don't really need to understand the details of the math and the exact differences between an EMA and an SMA. Just understand that I'm using the 9 EMA, the exponential moving average, over the simple moving average because it's putting more significance on recent price action. And as a momentum and trend trader, that's important for me.

Now, why do I use it? Well, it's one of the most widely used trading tools in existence. Algorithm models, hedge funds, retail traders alike, a lot of them watch the 9 EMA. It's a very common indicator that they're using. And so what that does, it creates almost a self-fulfilling prophecy of liquidity and support and resistance on volatile stocks. As a day trader, I want to see what other traders are looking at because that's going to help me make decisions, especially if I have an edge and I have a system and I really know what I'm doing.

I'm going to have an advantage by seeing what other traders are looking at. Now, I also use it because it is the ultimate high momentum trend tool. Unlike a lot of other slower moving averages like the 50 MA or the 200 MA that really lag behind current prices, the 90 MA moves rapidly with momentum. So, when a stock is really trending in one direction, when it has that momentum, you will notice that prices will respect and ride the 9 EMA without actually breaking it.

And that can provide us with interesting opportunities. So, simply put, the 9 EMA is a line that helps me make decisions in the markets. Now, it's very important to emphasize that I am not trading the 9 EMA in a vacuum. I'm not solely relying off of this line for every single decision that I make in the markets. There isn't a single indicator out there that's going to just perfectly tell you where to buy and sell. This is just one component and one criteria within my trading plan.

The key is to combine the 9 EMA with other highquality criteria that I'm going to teach you in this video. So, the first part of the strategy is the stock selection. The 9 EMA is going to be useless if you're focusing on stocks that are sideways and that aren't showing any momentum. The 9 EMA is only really useful for stocks that are actually moving, that are trending in one direction, that are doing high relative volume.

So, every single morning before the stock market opens, I want to put myself in the best possible position to succeed. I want to make sure I'm focusing on the stocks that have a high probability of putting in that 10, 20, or even 30% move after the market opens. And one of the ways that I do that, and you could do this for free, is you go to tradingview.com, click on products, click on screeners, then click on stocks, and you'll see extended hours.

Just click on that and from there you should see pre-market change percentage and you can click on sort descending. It'll give you all these positive numbers and you can click on sort ascending and it'll give you the negative numbers. Now what does this actually scan for? This function scans for overnight changes in price. These are called overnight gaps. In other words, these are stocks that are moving in the pre-market.

And maybe they're moving because of some news that went down or some catalyst or maybe that company reported earnings, but there's something driving the movement of that stock in the pre-market where that stock is doing significant volume. There's significant liquidity. There's juice behind that stock. And those are the stocks that I want to focus on. Now, I have other videos that really break down how I determine which one of these stocks I'm going to focus on.

So, I highly recommend watching those. Make sure you also watch my free 10 plus hour trading course. I break these concepts down in there as well. You could find that in the description under this video. But the point is, you want to focus on stocks that are actually showing momentum, that are doing volume, that are trending. And you could scan for those types of stocks and all sorts of ways. I just like to scan for gaps every morning.

That's my own style. Now, how do I use the 9 EMA? Well, let's first talk about when you shouldn't use it. If you see the 9 EMA like this where it's sort of like waving around and price action is super choppy and sideways like this, it's going to be useless. There's just no point of using it in the first place. The 9 EMA is only going to be useful when a stock is trending. And what you want to see is the 9 EMA trending like this.

You want to see a positive slope. You don't want to see it flat. And what you're looking for is you want to see whatever stock you're looking at to respect the 9 EMA. You want to see it touch the 9 EMA consistently and actually trade off of it. Maybe it touches it via a retracement where it pulls back to the 9 EMA. Maybe it consolidates into the 9 EMA and then breaks out from it. But in other words, you want to look for stocks that have had multiple touches on the 9 EMA.

And you want to see whether those touches actually resulted in a move to the upside. And the more touches you see, the more reliable the 9 EMA is for that specific trend. So it's really simple. You want to see the 9 EMA under price, trending higher, and you want to see this trend actually respecting the 9 EMA. And the same thing applies if it's a downtrend. Let's say the 9 EMA uh let me make it actually orange. Let's say the 9 EMA looks like this and you're looking at a downtrend.

I like to short all the time. I would say 60 to 70% of the time I'm actually looking to go short. That's just kind of my personal preference. But if I see that price action, you know, is really respecting the 9 EMA in these moments, I can actually use the 9 EMA to time my entries or really, you know, focus on those time periods where it's close to the 9 EMA and look for a setup, look for an opportunity. So, the very first use case for the 9 EMA is for stocks that are power trending.

And power trends don't happen every single day, but when they do happen, you want to be in the position to actually capitalize on it. And I will say some of the easiest money that you can make in the markets, and I hate using that phrase, easy money, because there's no such thing as easy money. But when you have experience, when you do have an edge, some of the easiest money you can make is finding a stock that is power trending in one direction and riding the trend, finding ways to enter in to that power trend using the 9 EMA.

And I want to show you an example, but before I do that, let's talk about how to set it up on your charts. Just go to indicators on whatever platform you are using and look up exponential moving average right here. Moving average exponential. Click on that. It's going to pop up in the top left corner and you're going to see EMA 9. Now on a lot of platforms, it'll actually come preloaded with nine. But if it doesn't, make sure you change the length of whatever EMA it is to 9.

And for me personally, I actually like to, you know, make the line a little bit thicker. And I like my 9 EMA to be orange. Now, this video is primarily about the 9 EMA, but I also use the 9 EMA with the 20 SMA. So, the 9 EMA is like my shorter term moving average, and the 20 SMA is like my medium-term moving average. And I also use the 200 SMA, which is like my long-term moving average. So, I have a short-term, medium-term, long-term, and it's a really good balance.

So, in this video, I'm going to also probably talk about the 20 SMA as well. And everything that I taught you so far in regards to the 9 EMA applies the same exact way with the 20 SMA. That's what I love about them, right? I use both of them in the same exact way, and they both give me different information. But let's talk about the MRNA. And I'm going to go back to this day right here. Now, I didn't catch this trade, but I still think this is a really good example where the MRNA had an overnight change in price where it gapped from like $63 to $115 and then it rallied all the way to $174 within the first like couple hours of the day.

But if you go to the smaller time frames, let's start off on the 1 minute. You can immediately see how effective the 9 EMA is and the 20 SMA is, which is this blue line in terms of how it tracks this strong uptrend where right here prices moved up, retraced right into the 9 EMA. Now, something to keep in mind, and I think some people might even type this in the comments, and they'll say, "Hey, that doesn't work." Because these moving averages are lagging, and it's not going to be obvious when you're actually in the trade.

Here's the thing. When prices are moving, let's say right here, close to the 9 EMA, let me kind of draw it. When prices are moving close to the 90 EMA, you don't need to see a perfect touch every time. You're right. The 90 EMA is going to be lagging a little bit where as it's dropping, it's not going to perfectly touch price every time. But even if prices are like this distance away from the nine or maybe it's even like right here where it's kind of close to the nine, but it's not quite touching, that's fine, too.

It's not going to be perfect every single time. Keep that in mind. But if we go back to this exact moment and I can actually select that exact bar, you can see in this case prices were essentially touching the 9 EMA and the 20 SMA is a little bit below it. Now the reason I like to use the nine with the 20 is because look at this example. The N, you know, price has hit the 9 EMA, but we're super far away from the 20. The 20 is lagging way too much compared to the nine.

And that's why I like to use the 9 period exponential moving average that I explained earlier in this video. But in this case, we literally touched the 90 EMA and then we continued higher to the upside, right? And this stock in this case right here touched the 20 SMA. And you see that little kind of area between the 9 and the 20. I call that the buy area. I like to see prices retrace a little bit below the nine but above the 20.

So, this is a, you know, this could be a really interesting amplifier and criteria that I'll look for in a potential trade. In this case, we're consolidating 90 EMA starting to kind of curl. It's respecting the 20 and we have that next move right here. We retrace right into the nine. Boom. Started to pop. Now, notice how as soon as the nine started to go sideways through price, that's when the trend started to slow down.

So, that's important. As soon as we start to break below the nine and it starts going sideways, that's your sign to maybe avoid price action because things are starting to become a little choppy. Now, these are the setups off the one. It's very important to always look at multiple time frames. So, in the morning, I'm primarily focusing on the 1 minute and two uh two-minut from 9:30 a.m. to I would say 10:00 a.m. Now, after 10:00 a.m., I'm starting to look at the five minute as well.

So, let's look at the 2-minut time frame and see how well prices were respecting that 9 EMA. So, at this point, we're still a little bit far away. And that's the importance of looking at the one minute, the smaller time frame to see if there's an entry here. But right here, we moved up, pulled back right into the nine. Moved up, pulled back right into the nine. So, you could essentially look at multiple time frames and see, okay, on the two-minute right here, we are consolidating and we're kind of retracing into the nine.

Let's see what that looks like on the one minute time frame. Well, on the one minute time frame, we're right into the 20 SMA on the one. That's an interesting, you know, piece of alignment, right? Prices are aligned there. We're on the one minute, we're basing right into the 20 SMA. On the 2-minut, we're right into the 9 EMA. And I'm looking for that type of alignment when I'm using moving averages on multiple time frames.

Let's take a look at another example of a power trend. In this case, it's actually a trend to the downside. This was on the Shopify where it gapped from 173 the prior day and the next morning it opened at 157. This was a 9% gap down. So that was the catalyst for the downtrend that I'm going to talk about. And we'll start off on the 5minut time frame because this was a setup that occurred around 11 a.m. Now notice how the Shopify was going sideways in the first couple hours of the day.

But notice every attempt to move higher failed because the 9 EMA was almost kind of curling and really pushing prices lower. And it continue to consolidate into the 9 EMA and into the 20 SMA as well. And you could see at that exact moment prices were almost like intersecting where the 9 EMA was really kind of moving into the 20 and they were quite literally about to intersect. And that's when the breakdown really triggered.

So that's another way you could use both of these moving averages. And from there, the Shopify essentially power trended all day to the downside. And you could see why I use the 90 EMA with the 20. I don't use just one or the other. Right? You can see the 20 MA there's kind of a lag here. Prices are not really respecting the 20 at all because it's far away, but they are really respecting the nine. Now, this is the five minute time frame.

If you go to the smaller time frames, let's say the two-minut, you could really see that. You could basically see every single touch of the 9 EMA or the 20 SMA, or if prices went into that area in between the 9 and the 20, we saw a continuation of a downtrend. Now, of course, that's this is not going to happen every single time, but I just want to show you how to use these moving averages when you do identify a power trend to the downside.

So, you could look at the five and look at where prices are hitting the nine or the 20. You could look at the twominut to see where prices are hitting those moving averages. You could also look at the one. So, by combining multiple time frames together and looking for those moments of alignment, that's where you could really spot those high probability setups. By the way, it's one thing taking all of these concepts and trying to figure out how to apply it by yourself, but it's another thing when you're with a professional trader and you're watching him apply all of this information in real time.

And that's exactly why my students see life-changing results. It's because they're learning how to trade by actually doing it with their mentor. I am personally live trading and teaching and mentoring at the same time. So I share my screen, my execution, my wins, my losses, my entries, absolutely everything. And I'm breaking down my exact thought process as I'm taking the trade. And I think that's the only way to learn any skill set.

It's by actually doing it. And that's exactly how all of my students learn how to trade through real life application. So, if you're someone who's serious about trading, you want to expedite your journey of becoming profitable, you could apply for my mentorship in the description under this video. It's a serious, tight-knit group. It's for people who actually want to go allin and become consistently profitable traders.

So, if that's you, you can consider applying. And if not, make sure you watch my other education in my free 10 plus hour course and my other YouTube videos. Now, let's say you do identify a strong power trend either to the upside or to the downside. And let's say prices are approaching the 9 EMA or maybe even the 20 SMA or maybe both. Does that mean you should immediately slam by and enter into that trade? Absolutely not.

Like I said earlier in this video, the 9 EMA is simply one criteria that's in my trading plan. Now, it's my job to combine that one criteria with the other qualities that I look for in a high quality and high probability setup. And now I want to teach you those criteria and I'm going to make this simple. It's going to be quick, but let's get into it. So now it's important that you understand what setups I trade. I trade breakouts and I trade retracements.

So let's say I identify a trend, prices move up, they consolidate, they correct, they base over time. I will look for a breakout opportunity to ride the direction of that trend and take advantage of prices moving to the upside in this case. And I also trade retracements. A retracement is a correction through price where prices move up, they dip. This is a buy the dip opportunity and I'll find a way to enter as a retracement and ride the continuation of that trend.

Now, there are thousands of breakouts and retracement setups that occur every single day in the markets. We need to learn how to decipher between the highquality ones and the lowquality ones. So, let's learn that. And first, we're going to talk about the retracement setup. Now, following a rally higher, you want to look for three or more consecutive red bars in a row. Now, it doesn't always need to be perfect. It doesn't always need to be exactly three consecutive red bars, right?

Sometimes it's going to be four, sometimes it's going to be two, sometimes it's going to be five, especially, you know, this really depends what time frame you're looking at. But the main point of this is you don't want to see Christmas lights. You don't want to see a sloppy retracement. You don't want to see red, green, red, green, red, green, red as it's retracing. You want to see red, red, red, red, and ideally it's right into that 9 EMA or the 20 SMA.

Number two, you want to look for stocks that have retraced 40 to 60% into what I call this golden zone. Right? So, this is 0% of the move. This is 100%. You want to see it retrace about 40 to 60% of this move to the upside. You don't want it to retrace here because that shows a lot of weakness. That's an over 60% correction. You also don't want it to retrace right here because that suggests lack of correction. That suggests that prices might actually fail on the first breakout because they haven't corrected enough there.

We haven't actually seen these buyers uh take enough profits. Right? So, this is really important. You want to see a 40 to 60% correction. You don't want to see a stock that moves up, retraces here, and then you buy here. This is a huge mistake. Most of these setups are going to fail. And similarly, you don't want to see a stock that moves up, retraces just a little bit, and then you're buying this first mini pullback to the upside because it's most likely going to pop and then fail on you.

Okay? So, that's really important. Those are some of the qualities that I look for in a retracement setup. Now, how do I actually enter into these retracement setups? Well, at the bottom of this retracement right here, right? Ideally, the 9 EMA is also right there. You want to look for these types of candlesticks. You want to look for either narrow range bars, dogee bars, and if it's a buy opportunity, you want to see a bottoming tail.

If it's a sell opportunity, a sell setup, a retracement where you're going short, you want to see a topping tail. And the way that you enter it is simple. You enter above the highs of this entry bar, stop loss below the lows. Above the highs of the dogee, stop loss below. You could basically just place your stop loss be uh below the lows of this entire retracement. So, wherever the low is of this retracement, just place your stop loss here and place your entry above one of these entry bars if if there is one.

Right? And you want to make sure that a high quality retracement setup has one of these entry bars. Now, that's what I look for mainly in a retracement setup. In terms of a breakout, I'm really just looking at the quality of the consolidation. I don't want to see a sloppy base. I don't want to see lots of bottoming tails or topping tails where it's up, down, up, down, up, down. I want to see a tight base. The tighter the base, the better the base.

I also don't want to see a big topping tail on a bullish base because that's an attempt to move higher that failed, right? that's actually bearish. It's a failed breakout. I don't want to see failed breakouts. I don't want to see tails. I don't want to see choppiness. I want to see as tight of a consolidation as possible. And our entry for a breakout is directly over the highs of the base, stop-loss directly under the lows of the base.

The tighter the base, the better the base. And of course, ideally, you want to combine this with the 9 EMA rising and under prices. So, as soon as we see that consolidation into the 9 EMA, that's where we can look for that breakout and time our entry right above the base. And if you need help organizing the qualities that you look for in a highquality retracement and high-quality breakout setup, feel free to use this graph that I created.

And it breaks down a bunch of the features and criteria that I look for in both of these setups. Let's take a look at an example. And this was a trade that I caught on September 18th, 2026 on the Xen. And this made me about $1,200 in the morning and then I ended up giving back some profit later in the day. But let's talk about this first trade that I took on this stock. And the reason I traded it was because it was an overnight gap down.

It gapped from $57 the previous day and it opened at around $44 the next day. This was a 23% gap down and I saw that this stock was already trending to the downside. It gapped down and then it continued that bearish momentum. And I took this about 15 minutes into the day as a one minute breakdown. I saw that the stock dropped. It consolidated at the lows right into the 9 EMA. And notice how it didn't quite touch it, but I don't need it to touch every single time.

Right? This is good enough for me. And I placed my entry below the base, stop-loss above the base, and I was able to catch this move to the downside. Now, let me talk about my management. I was going five minute bar by bar where I was continuously lowering my stop loss to every single one of these five minute bars highs. Right? So this is my original stop. From there I lowered it to this candlesticks high. Then I lowered it to this candlesticks high.

Then I lowered it to this high. And then I eventually got out right here above the highs of this bottoming tail. And that bottoming tail suggested that the buyers were starting to take control. So, as soon as we took out the high of that bottoming tail, I got out and I exited my trade. Let's look at one more example. And this was a trade that I intentionally did not take earlier this week. And I want to break down why I passed on this opportunity even though it actually ended up working.

This was on the GRML and this stock had an explosive rally this past week where it gapped from 283 on this day. Next day it opened at around 730, popped all the way to close to $12. Next day gapped up again and popped all the way to like $18. Now I identified a fiveinut retracement setup right here. And I actually passed on this opportunity because it was a really deep retracement. We learned that we want to see a 40 to 60% retracement into the golden zone.

In this case, we retraced like over 100% of this original rally. But take a look at how well the 9 EMA is acting as support for this stock. And you see how the 9 EMA is almost like curling under prices. That's exactly what I want to see on retracement opportunities or breakout opportunities. I want to see the moving averages curl under price where every attempt to break below the 9 EMA was actually rejected. And then eventually my call on it was over $14.

I did have some students take this and make money. And the stop loss was right here. Or alternatively, you could have placed your stop below this tail at $13.20. And of course, the stock absolutely exploded to the upside to $18. And I want to highlight this curling feature, right? I like to see the 90 MA curl, but I still passed on this setup because it was a deep retracement. And on top of that, it was right into resistance.

It was right into the 200 SMA, which for me is a long-term area of resistance. Right? This is a line, you know, it's mainly used for support and resistance. It's a long-term moving average. It was right into that 200, which I thought was going to act as an area of resistance. Now, take a look at the setup on the previous day. And I just noticed it actually. We had almost like a I don't want to say perfect because this is kind of a sloppy consolidation, but we consolidated right into the 90 EMA.

Notice again how it's curling under prices. And I don't know if if I would have taken this. It's kind of a lowquality breakout. There's a bunch of tails, kind of choppy, but it would have been over this base, stop-loss directly below. And yeah, there's going to be opportunities sometimes that I pass on that end up working. But for me, as long as I follow my plan consistently, most of the time I know I'm going to avoid the lowquality setups and I will capitalize on the high quality ones.

I hope you found a lot of value in this video. And if you want to learn how to apply all of these concepts and material in real time with me personally, you could apply for my mentorship in the description under this video. The reason why my students see life-changing results is because they learn how to trade by actually doing it with their mentor every single day. So, I share my screen, my execution, my wins, my losses, my entries, my exits, my thought process.

I'm mentoring as I am live trading. So my students are learning through real life application and I think that's the best way to learn any skill set. It's by actually doing it. This is a serious program where I take you under my wing. I give you the methodology and the foundation and from there we apply that foundation together in live trading. This is a tight-knit group. So if you are serious, you want to potentially go full-time, just click the link underneath this video. you'll be able to apply and hopefully we could work together and I can help you become that profitable trader you want to be.

If not, make sure you check out my other YouTube videos. Make sure you check out my free 10 plus hour trading course. Thank you so much for watching and also make sure you subscribe to this channel. Make sure you leave a comment with some feedback and make sure you like the video. Thank you so much.