Day Trading Watch List for MONDAY!

What's up, everyone? All right, so in today's episode, I'm going to break down my watch list for Monday morning and the game plan for the week ahead. April is officially in the history books. Friday was May 1st. I didn't take any trades on Friday. In fact, I didn't come in. I wasn't feeling very well on Thursday, May April 30th. I did come in. I did end up trading, which was good. And then Friday, I was like, you know, I just I can't do it. And so, I I took the day off. And you know what? It's always a little tricky for me when the new month starts on a Friday because Fridays I usually set low expectations. It's the end of the week. It's a time companies are more likely to put out bad news, if anything, because they hope that it'll get forgotten over the weekend. You know, good news usually you put out early in the following week so traders can be circulating the good news for the whole week and continue trading the stock as it goes higher and higher. So, there's some psychology around the type of stocks that are more likely to put out news on a Friday. And you know, we I think we all feel a bit of a temptation at the beginning of the month try to get ourselves in the driver's seat as quick as we can, which means having a couple of good trades. So, there's a little bit more impulse to trade and to, you know, get a few trades under our belt. And that sometimes means reducing the quality standard. That can be the perfect storm for a big loss on the first day of the new month when it's on a Friday. And last week wasn't especially exciting for me. So, we're going to start the watch list by taking a look back at the month of April. It was the worst month of the year for me. And it was thanks, in a large part, to the big red day that I had on Tuesday on Thursday the 2nd. The fact is the month it wasn't a good month across the board. You know, the second week I had a $20,000 red day. I didn't have any good green days that second week. The third week I had two decent green days, but nothing exceptional. The third week I had two decent green days, which was great. And then one no trade day and two sort of empty days or slow small green days. And then last week I had a no trade day on Monday, a red day on Tuesday, a small green day on Wednesday, and then and a decent day Thursday. I can't complain about Thursday, but you know, all things considered, um it was a $92,000 month, which does make it my worst month of the year. So, I I have a lot to be grateful for. $92,000 in 1 month um is um is still very good. Um but, you know, yeah, it's it's less than what I was um hoping for. I was up about 400,000 in January and about 150,000 or so in both February and March. So, 150 in February, 150 in March, and then only 92 uh in April. It's a little shy for me of uh where I'd like to be at. Um but, you know, I I don't want to complain too much. So, um I think there there was um some signs of hope um as we got towards the end of April. One thing that I'll say is that, you know, we look at April and we look at the S&P 500. And so, this right here was March 30th. So, you know, March 30th, we had this big sell-off. And in fact, if you looked at the S&P for the month of April, April was a phenomenal month. We had a great return. Um so, you know, most big, you know, investment banks or whatever that close their books quarterly, you know, Q1 ended kind of sad because you you ended March down uh right here versus, you know, the January um beginning of the year. Uh however, we got this really nice rally in April. And while the S&P rallied, it didn't feel that there was clear direction and clear sentiment uh or a theme in small caps. Uh until we had uh a couple of stocks emerge. We had Bird. um This is the stock that did a transition from sneakers to AI. Okay, it goes up, you know, 2,000% or whatever it was. You know, 1,000% from $2 up to 25. You know, something like that. That's a big move. We had a few other AI companies that put out big news and big headlines in the month of April. So, we got a little bit of momentum there. It was interesting on Thursday we had HCAI which was a no news Chinese stock that gave us a big move. We also had a no news special acquisition company last week that gave us a big move. So, there have been some moves, but it's been it's been a bit inconsistent. And so, I I think that, you know, if you look at my month, I have three red days as you can see right here. I have 1 2 3 4 5 no trade days. You know, and a bunch of kind of small green days. So, the accuracy for the month, well, we could just look at um let's see. Last month, I guess it'll be April, right? So, last month So, look at the detail. Um so, accuracy 65%. Profit loss ratio one to one. My average losers were a little bit bigger than they have been this year. Um so, you know, the decline in accuracy, that hurts a little bit. The average losers getting bigger hurts a little bit as well. So, you know, the metrics weren't as strong in April as they were in other months, but and so it wasn't a month that I should have been pushing hard and being aggressive. And yet, you know, because I had taken a few losses, I got stubborn and I definitely dug the hole deeper than was necessary. So, now April is in the history books, but there's lessons that can be learned from how I traded that I can use to carry forward here for the month of May. One thing that I am fortunate about is that I was able to recover um all of my loss from the drawdown at the beginning of the month. So, I did finish in the green for um uh for you know, for the month of April. So, I'm not currently going into the new month in a drawdown. That's not always the case. I know many of you guys, you know, are in the situation where maybe you made money at the beginning of April and then by the end you'd given it back, you're red on the month uh or maybe you were gave back half by the end of the month, whatever. So, you're going into into May with a little bit of a drawdown. And so, if you're in a drawdown, you have to apply the lessons of trader rehab, which I've shared with you guys extensively um and I teach in my classes for members that are warrior pro members at Warrior Trading. But, uh during trader rehab, I put on my trading guardrails. I reduce my share size, I put really tight restrictions on my account of max loss, position size, and how many trades I'm going to take. And I try to focus on trade the best, leave the rest. That's usually been the best path for recovery for me. And so, I followed that trader rehab philosophy until I had recovered uh my own drawdown, which um let's see if we look at the win-loss expectation. Where was this? Um This was my This was my month in terms of uh you know, drawdown and then recovery back up. So, you could see here the recovery was very slow. It was slow because I was trading with smaller share size. Once I'd made back about half the loss right here, I started to increase my share size and that's how I was able to recover more. If I had taken big share size like this during this window and the market continued to be against me, I would have lost quite a lot more. So, reducing share size was a way of limiting how much I would continue to lose. And that's important. You've got to cut your losses. You've got to stop the bleeding. So, my feeling right now is that I don't have any reason to think that May is going to be exceptionally better than April, but the last few weeks, what has been working well has been focusing on trading what is obvious, trading the leading gainer. And when the leading gainer is also a stock that meets my five pillars of stock selection, that's when I've had really good days. Sadly, we've had a lot of days in the last few weeks where the leading gainer was too cheap or too expensive or the float was too high. And so, it meant that if I wanted to take a trade, I either had to lower my standard and trade that stock or maintain my standard but trade a stock that's not the most obvious in the market. And, you know, that that typically doesn't work as well as when you trade something that's obvious. So, I think that it's likely that we'll continue we'll continue to see kind of a bit of hot-cold where one day we've got some great action and we're like, "All right, we're back." And then the next day is crickets. And it's like, "Wait, what happened? Yesterday we had great action." And this is partly just sentiment in the market that traders are a little bit cautious right now. And it's also tied to the fact that there is general uncertainty in the overall market. I mean, we've got obviously the conflict going on in the Middle East, which the S&P 500 is currently, you know, sort of brushing off, which is why the market's up as much as it is. Um USO, United States Oil Fund, however, is also This is an interesting divergence. This was uh the price of oil, US Oil Fund, approximately before the conflict at 80. Now, it's at uh you know, 150. Uh the S&P 500, you know, before the conflict, we were up here around 700. Then we dropped down, and there was sort of a uh direct relationship that oil was going up and the S&P was going down. And now the S&P has rallied, but oil hasn't really come back down. So, that's a bit of a divergence, which is interesting. We have not seen good opportunities in energy sector stocks uh that are small cap companies. We have in past periods of turmoil in the Middle East and energy concerns or crisis or instability, but not this time. Not sure why. We have continued to see momentum on lower price names including penny stocks. I generally have been leaving them alone, but when we've had the you know, even the stock with no news like HCAI, but that you know, well, this one I guess has and some AI theme to it to a certain extent. But when we've had stocks that are obvious that fit well within my five pillar stock selection, I've done well and when they've also had an AI theme lately that's given us an extra boost. So I'm going to continue to focus on those catalysts and my feeling right now is that I'm okay with continuing to have no trade days in the month of May, but on days when I trade, I only want to take trades when I really feel like I've got 90 90% 95% conviction that I'm going to make money on the trade. And so I will step up and I'll trade big size when I like the setup. And so there's sort of two different schools of thought here. One is, you know, kind of trade smaller size and take lots of stabs at everything because maybe you'll have something that you didn't really expect would work. It's not really a perfect setup, but it ends up working. And the the concept there is kind of diversify, right? Rather than being all in on one good setup, just take lots of trades and you know, some because it's true. Sometimes you have stocks that you didn't expect to work and they work out well and I sit on the sidelines and I miss them. But on the other hand, all of that trading ends up churning commissions. You're getting in, you're getting out. Well, for me for commissions. But it also subjects you to risk and potential loss. And I find that I do better rather than being diversified across lots and lots of trades, being concentrated in areas where I have high degrees of conviction. And if that means in a colder market that I'm taking fewer trades, you know, so be it. And that's kind of what I'm facing right now. And it also means during a slightly colder market, I do have to take slightly smaller share size versus the hot market because liquidity across the board is a bit lower. And this is the reason why when the market's hot, there's, you know, probably four or five times as many opportunities and I can probably take two times or three times as much share size. And so I can make, you know, five times, maybe sometimes 10 times as much money. And when the market's cold, I make, you know, sometimes a quarter of what I made when it was, um, you know, hotter or less because I have to there's fewer setups and I have to trade them with smaller size. But we did have some good setups last month and, um, unfortunately, I dug myself a hole at the beginning of the month being too aggressive on stocks that I had no business trading that aggressively on. I just got stubborn. It was emotional. And dug myself a hole, then had to check myself into trader rehab. Then when we had good opportunities, I was in rehab, so I couldn't make as much money on them. And that's just, you know, the cost of making those mistakes. So, each time you make that mistake, you remember, "Wow, okay, that was a that was like a double cost. Not only did I lose money, it was the opportunity cost in the weeks following. I need to really not make a mistake like that again." And I probably won't for a period of time. And then after a long stretch of doing quite well, I'll get a little complacent, a little sloppy, and it'll happen again. And this is the ebb and flow cycle that we're all on as humans and, you know, as people trying to trade the the markets which are ever changing. So, my plan going into Monday morning is to be totally dialed in on this top gainer scanner and the small cap high-day momentum scanner. Watching when I first sit down, what stocks are currently obvious in the market and what is the theme. And then watching the stocks that are hitting the scanners to see do we have news and what is the theme associated with these headlines. If a stock pops up and becomes obvious but it's not within my kind of wheelhouse based on price or flow or maybe the catalyst then I'm just going to sit on the sidelines and I'm I'm prepared to be patient. I am grateful that I'm not in a drawdown cuz it could have very easily, you know, been the case. So, I'm going to say that the reason I'm not in a drawdown is because I've been focusing on trading high-quality setups and being aggressive when there's something that looks good and then just completely sitting on sidelines when there's nothing else. So, that's been paying off. I'm going to continue doing that. If I had been doing that through the entire month of April including the first 3 days when I went red $75,000 I wouldn't have had that big drawdown. So, I need to get May off to a good start and it's going to be by focusing on quality over quantity. All right, so that's the game plan. Now, for those of you guys tuning in on YouTube, if you want to watch over my shoulder as I'm trading, you want to hear my market commentary, you want to see my orders, my entries, my exits, where I'm getting in, where I'm getting out. I stream while I'm trading each morning starting at 7:00 a.m. So, I'll put a link for a 2-week trial. It costs $20. That'll give you access to my feed plus it'll give you access to this software right here for charting, scanning and breaking news. So, check it out. The 2-week trial link is posted at the top of the comments and in the description. I'll be streaming tomorrow morning at 7:00 a.m. Thank you guys as always for tuning in. Reminder, trading is risky and my results aren't typical so please manage your risk and always practice a simulator before putting real money on the line.