This $CBRS daily was probably one of my fav setups this month and has been holding prior bar highs for over a week. (I had highlighted it in real-time so don’t yell at me “hindsight”) Let’s dissect together. Why did I like this setup so much? Pros and cons of it?

Given the inability of the AI names to bounce on Friday and into this week, I was skeptical of being long and had been flat the names all of this week. With today’s rollover, I now have no interest in any longs and, if anything, am looking for sold levels to short looking for the leg lower. This is how dynamic trading is. In a span of a week I went from bullish to neutral to now bearish. A few scenarios would get me long-biased again, the best of which would be a second larger and more capitulating leg lower in these names.

Later today we are having a firm-wide trader meeting at @smbcapital. A few teams and a couple handful of traders have been struggling. This aligns with what I’m hearing from other desks as well as those on the retail side. Only fair for me to highlight both the successes AND the struggles of the traders I work with as I try to convey the authentic truth of being a trader. On the SMB call we will discuss what has been working well, what hasn’t been, and how best to adapt. Soliciting feedback across teams and individuals. Here is the main message I will be conveying to their traders which I think is useful for all to hear: IMO, the most common issues I’m seeing is that traders are getting overly involved and over-allocating risk to situations that had potential but never unfolded optimally. $BWET is a name that got extended, but never enough to take a real stand. The breakouts in $QQQ or certain single-stock names had solid charts but the breadth beneath the market was awful. We still had yellow lights flashing in certain areas. The recent AI sell-off was extended and had its moments, but it lacked the intraday flush or intraday setups to size into anything. When these setups have unfolded suboptimally, traders have continued to stay involved and allocate risk in a refusal to acknowledge that the setup is not as good as it had the potential to be. I’d argue this comes down to maintaining an objectively high level of subjectivity. Selectivity is staying in your lane and waiting for the setups in your playbook that match the current regime. Unlike w poker, nothing is forcing you to play or to take a subpar setup. Essentially, you have a good hand and want to place a bet, but if the flop pans out suboptimally, you fold. A lot of traders have not been emotionally willing to fold and not play the hand. Good trading is recognizing that there might be some positive signs, but then avoiding or sizing down when it doesn't fully line up.

Can we start a thread with our worst chart executions ever? I remember early on, I was trading Leap Wireless and I bought the exact high of day and sold the exact low of day for size. @seanvid knows… I also bought the all-time high print in a biotech on an M&A headline. That was fun.

DO TECHNICALS PREDICT THE FUTURE AND “FRONTRUN” NEWS? Over the last year or two, I think I’ve done a decent job calling out some pivotal moments in the market with a pretty solid hit rate. The top in BTC, the top in quantum/froth, the DRAM crack, among others. I don’t delete tweets or cherry-pick my calls, and I’m certainly wrong plenty of times and take losses like everyone else. In my course, there’s a full record of my market thoughts, documented in my weekly market prep videos. So what exactly does that mean? And perhaps more importantly, what doesn’t it mean? First, no trader knows what’s going to happen. Everything is probabilistic at best and total noise at worst. But there are specific moments in time when the odds can become meaningfully skewed in one direction. I don’t believe technicals somehow “frontrun” the news. What I believe is that technicals help reveal the prevailing sentiment of the market, and that sentiment is the lens through which new information gets interpreted. Think about it. Why did semis sell off alongside SKHY on its earnings? And why did SKHY respond so poorly to its numbers? To some degree, because sentiment was already rolling over, and that deterioration was showing up in the charts. Why does the market suddenly sell off so aggressively on a hot inflation print? Because investors have grown increasingly concerned about oil prices, persistent inflation, and what those pressures mean for interest rates. Why aren’t we seeing the same enthusiastic responses to positive AI headlines that we saw previously? Because investor sentiment has shifted. People are growing increasingly skeptical of the enormous spending and whether the eventual returns will justify it. As a dumb day trader, it’s impossible for me to fully understand any one of these themes, let alone all of them. But what my experience and expertise in technical analysis allow me to do is read the collective footprints of the market’s largest participants, expressed through price action. Those footprints can reveal changes in positioning, conviction, and risk appetite well before the underlying narrative becomes obvious to everyone else. And that’s what makes technical analysis so powerful to me. Price action can tell you that something is changing, even when you don’t fully understand why it’s changing. It can reveal that buyers are becoming less aggressive, that good news is no longer being rewarded, or that sellers are gaining control. None of those observations guarantees what happens next. But when multiple pieces of evidence begin pointing in the same direction, the odds can become increasingly favorable. I don’t believe technicals predict the future. I believe they provide a window into changing market sentiment, which influences how the market responds to whatever comes next. And if you’re able to recognize those subtle shifts before they become obvious, you can sometimes find moments where the probabilities are meaningfully in your favor.

5 SIGNS YOU SHOULD QUIT & 5 SIGNS YOU SHOULDNT I received an email that this video helped a trader decide to stick it out a few more months. That trader finally had his breakout and is so thankful he didn’t quit right before it clicked. 15 years ago I was in his same position, but I had a podmate that convinced me to stick it out another 6 months and doing so was the best decision of my life. Here are the signs to help you find the decision right for you: 5 signs you should consider quitting trading * Trading is seriously damaging your mental health or your relationships. * You want professional results but aren’t dedicating the time or building a structured process to improve. * You repeatedly break basic risk-management and trading rules without making tangible progress on your discipline. * You’ve lost your passion for the work and desire to improve for a sustained period. * You realize you wanted the money and lifestyle you were sold more than the actual work of trading. 5 signs you should keep persevering * You can identify tangible improvements in your discipline, execution, or emotional control, even before they show up in P&L. * Trading concepts are starting to click, even if you still need more practice to execute them in real time. * You enjoy the challenge, and pursuing trading is helping you build better habits and become a better person. * Setbacks motivate you to review what happened and take concrete steps to prevent the same mistakes. * You have a defined improvement process and consistently turn feedback into changes quickly.

I talk a lot about how dynamic trading is. The probabilities change every bar much like in poker when each successive card is turned over. Today is one of those pivotal price action days where the likelihood of major sectors having put in a lower high increased significantly.

SEP ‘26 TOP OPPS September was an ok month. Nothing too amazing, but handful of solid headlines and decent baseline activity. As always, these opps are dissected and explained every month as part of my course. 9/3 $SPCX 9/11 $ETH 9/14 $BWET | $PANW 9/21 $MRNA | $SHOP 9/22 $RCL $BWET 9/24 $GEN / $GDDY 9/30 $LQDA / $UTHR