Making Adjustments: "The fact is this market is a Trader's Dream and a Swing Trader's Nightmare." Recognition of the underlying environment is the utmost important aspect in trade management for me. I spent Friday and most of the weekend maniacally going over all of my trades in the chop. What I was consistently finding was my entries were giving me traction - but I was constantly giving 4-5R winners back breakeven. The major adjustment has to be quickly trimming winners and not caring if they go higher without me, because the data is showing me that more often than not, they are coming right back at me. "Sometimes I am taking advantage of the volatility in buying shakeouts, sometimes I am getting taken advantage of in holding too much size for a swing." OK - I need to keep focusing on buying shakeouts, but I need to scale out of these things when they begin to look pretty. Came into the day looking to buy the semi puke - not for a days long swing trade - but to manipulate an inefficiency the market is offering. If you noticed last night into this morning on this app, the crowd couldn't have been more pessimistic. This is when you buy in this market. Sell when they're excited again. $SMH closed way overbought above its 5ema at $632.50 just 5 sessions ago. Coming into the day, it is opening below it's 50 day at $578. If I am short semi's, I am looking to completely cover that trade into this morning's weakness. This lead me to have conviction in a semi long. So instead of SMH I wanted to buy the best semi coming into a support level which was $AMD, which was retesting its prior all time high that it had not tested since it broke out. So when AMD began flushing off the open I was buying small feelers trying to find a bottom, looking to really load up when it reclaimed intraday VWAP then give confirmation add through new intraday highs, which is exactly how it played out. Now in most of my recent trades I was going up 4-5R and giving it right back. So my goal in this trade is not to execute a perfect swing trade, I don't think semi's look healthy in the slightest going forward -- but to simply take advantage of a market inefficiency. So I began trimming 4R into prior day lows which was the first resistance. My target for the trade was only 595 into the overhead 20ema which may begin to act as resistance if semi's give up the bounce. I don't want to be apart of that trade, I want to be in and out, make my money on the opening bounce back. Get those first trims off, move my stop to breakeven, winning trade on our hands. From there Q's nearly fill the gap in the first 45 minutes. This is my cue to begin thinking about exiting stage left. My goal in this trade is not some big market bottom swing trade, it's simply to buy an oversold bounce and sell it into strength. So when that broad market selling begins, I completely sell my AMD into strength 592ish and lock in a ~4.5R winner. Surely not retiring off this one, but I wasn't putting myself in a position to give it back either! This stock is higher without me, I don't care in the slightest because my goal of the trade was to just buy the oversold bounce, sell into strength, book some PnL, positively reinforce the adjustments I'm making, and leave the session with my head held high. Maybe in the next efforts I only sell 2/3 and just keep a breakeven stop and let the rest run. But in real time I didn't have the conviction this and the Q's would actually continue higher seeing rates get bought up along with oil ticking higher. That is something I will determine in review. For now, content with the adjustments in taking advantage of the shakeouts, trimming into strength better than I had been, and overall executing the choppy market playbook in a great opportunity with size. All of your answers are sitting right there for you in your trade review. 🫡

5% of Qullamaggie's breakouts carried 100% of the profits.. @CFlanders7 says that "the top 10 trades made my entire year …" @stamatoudism says that "You need 10-15 good/outlier trades to have a great year" @SRxTrades says that "My top 5 trades make up for more than 50% of my YTD profits" So, where is the edge? In hitting our stops, or finding those outliers..?

Since starting to swing trade, the majority of the time I’m taking losers almost daily while a couple winners in the background continue to work. Would be easy to lock them in to make any particular time frame look/feel better. I’ll never forget Qullamaggie saying, “I’m in a drawdown the majority of the time.” Mentally tough to handle drawdown, drawdown, drawdown, big winner, drawdown, drawdown, drawdown, big winner but that’s how it works. Either have to get on board or find something else.

The biggest improvement for me over time has been understanding that not every moment in the market is equal. Opportunities come in windows. Most traders dont recognize the windows they are just focusing on setups. When its easy and "everyone is making money" the key has been approaching that window extra aggressively because I know the window will close again. And when it closes making sure I step back and understand I cant trade like I was when it was open.

I had a pretty good idea that the top 10 trades made my entire year. I went back to my data to see just how close it was. Top 10 trades = 127 risk adjusted R Total risk adjusted R return for 2025: 129 So yeah, remove the top 10 trades and I am break even.

‼️WEEKEND STUDY SESSION: how many days until we know we have a winner? WHY "Some of the best setups either go right away, they go straight up.. but sometimes they don't. Sometimes they come down and are very close to stop you out. And sometimes they stop you out and then go." 299 of his 828 breakout entries hit the stop on entry day. 440 on the second day. The 245 that were still open after day 5 add up to +1,555R on the 10-day exit. Everything that closed before adds up to -562R. So the losers are cut fast, and the profits are in the rest. What we don't have is the win-rate post ante, day by day. I know our overall winrate, but I've never checked the winrate on day 2, 3, 4 or 5. THE WORK (2 to 3 hours) 1. Open 30 breakout entries in date order. 2. On each chart, look at the entry candle only. Write down two things: did his stop hold through the day, and where it closed against his entry, in R 3. Move to the close of day 3. Same two things. Then day 5. 4. Then find the exit. 5. Count. Of the trades still open after day 1, how many ended green? Same for day 3 and day 5. Then the second count: on day 1, could the ones that ended big be told from the rest by where they closed? WHAT I'M AFTER Four win rates: one at the buy, after day 1, after day 3, after day 5. I have the first one. If the other three move the way I think they do, it changes how I sit through day 2. I have borrowed stil concept from someone who trades intraday with great success, who doubled his avg. gain in a setup because he cut his losers faster.

True or False: A trader who follows every rule in their trading plan can still have a losing month.

Sell into strength or let it run? Whatever you decide comes with a side effect This is the first data I have seen that says how big that side effect actually is 👇

As Bill told me once… (say it out loud with your best Bill voice😉) “Mike, you always have to stay flexible & bend like a tree in the wind” My version…don’t get set in your mind that it’s a bull, bear, chop… markets can change character QUICKLY Keep an OPEN mind to change

Would love to see this same video but with the winners only. Just so I can see how many of them spent time under the breakeven level and for how long before breaking out. Great work as always!

Weekend study results are in! What did Qullamaggie's 89 biggest breakout entries (5R or more on the 10-day exit) have in common vs the ones which got stopped out? 1. A big move first: up 50% or more before the base 2. Then a base of a week or more 3. Bought above the 10-day SMA But we knew that, and these 3 factors didnt really make a difference between winners and losers.. What made an actual difference: 4. A steady move up, not a spike at the end 5. Stock quiet the last month: up less than 2 ADRs 6. No big gap that morning 7. Market had not just run: QQQ up less than 5% in a month Now, the questions is; is this actionable?

Microsoft rose 25% in three days A $4 trillion company. 50+ analysts. The most efficiently priced asset on earth. And it moved like a biotech Hedge funds spend $3B on alternative data - still got it wrong I explain why, and how we can profit 👇

Sell all by day 5 or use trailing stops . Momentum burst are 3 to 5 days moves, using 10 day moving average on a move of 3 to 5 days just does not make sense mathematically. Moving averages for trend following setups.

Introducing Churning and Chatting, my new trader interview series. 20 years of trading, from the 2008 financial crisis to retail hyperscalping in the 2020s. Meet an ex-MBC prop trader, Knish, whose entire MO is to finish green every single day. churningandburning.com/2026/…