In this video, SMB Trader Ryan goes over the steps to refine your trading edge, how to use a support system and how to refine your review process in order to move yourself forward and continue to grow as a trader. You don’t want to miss this video!
View Video Transcripthi there this is ryan trose with s b
capital if you’re having trouble staying
consistent in the markets it could be
just because your system lacks trading
edge
if you lack that edge you will find that
consistent growth will continue to elude
you
in today’s video we’re going to go over
the steps that i’ve been taking to
continue to refine and identify my
trading edge
we’ll talk about how to use your support
system and how to refine your review
process
in order to move yourself forward and
continue to grow
i hope you enjoy and thank you for
tuning in
[Music]
all right let’s dive into it so the
purpose of doing this presentation is
kind of
i had a string of trading in january
that kind of you know was a product of
reviewing the previous year and looking
at
the way i was trading the things i was
trading you know the psychological work
i was doing
and kind of just felt like i wasn’t
really paying close enough attention to
what specifically i was doing to define
my edge
i was trading spy i was trading low
floats i was trading
a bunch of different instruments but not
necessarily
keying in on what worked best for my
personality
what i was noticing about you know
specific aspects of my trading and i
wasn’t paying close enough attention to
okay what
technically and mechanically do i do
well what fits really well with the way
that
i operate how can i build a business
around
a very specific niche and what do i need
to do to get myself into that niche
and you know we were doing monthly
reviews and bella said
you know you you focus a lot on all this
psychological work which i do and
you know but he he said
you know in your review process i’m not
really hearing you be
very specific about defining where your
edge is
in your trading it’s very important
don’t get me wrong to work on those
psychological aspects
but at the end of the day you could be a
zen-like trader and
if you’re trading the wrong instruments
you’re going to get into trouble and
it’s going to be tough to have a
statistical advantage over the market
so after he said that to me i really sat
down i looked at what
the other guys in my class were doing
looked at my own trading where have i
had
you know object success
what types of symbols and names do i
consistently do well
on sure i might have days where i’ve
gave back a little bit of that profit
doing some other things
but if i sort all of my you know two
years worth of trading down to
what do i do extremely well the product
of that
is what we’re going to discuss here
today and has led me to
at least how i feel to really start to
outperform myself
and start to show some really really
solid consistency that can be grown
um you know without limits and that’s
kind of the point
of everything you know it’s great to
feel like you have a little bit of edge
and
slam around make a few hundred bucks and
you know be consistent making
even a couple thousand bucks but how do
you get to be that
you know six plus figure trader seven
figure trader
what is the groundwork that you need to
lay to do that and how do you
put yourself in a position to have that
foresight and it wasn’t doing that but
after a product of
my journey or review i feel like now i’m
making really legitimate strides to
setting that baseline up for me to be
a very big trader in the future so let’s
dive right into it
so one of the most important things that
i want to key in on is how
there’s an important distinction to me
between reviewing your trading and
revising your trading think about when
you’re
you know maybe in school or throughout
your education careers
you know you write a paper you finish
your paper first draft and you want to
go over that first draft
and you want to review it and in review
you want to make changes and you want to
make adjustments to make it better
what i was doing a lot of the time was
looking over my stats
looking over things coming to some type
of qualitative conclusion where
you know okay i think i did i think i
did this good i think it did this good
okay great review let’s move on instead
of
how do i look at this review process
as an opportunity to really key in on
the things that i need to change
eliminate and improve upon
it sounds wild to think about that but
even after two plus years of trading
the review process never changes in
terms of
you always are going to have to do it
you’re always going to have to get
better at it
and if you do not you know you’re going
to keep doing the same things with the
same results
the importance of turning a quality
review into actional improvements is so
so so huge you need to look at the
things that you’re doing and saying
okay what is the
pathway that i need to take in order to
really put in some actual work on these
things it’s not enough to identify the
problem
you really have to work past that and
start to think about okay
here’s the problem what does the
solution even look like for this
specific problem
one way to really go about that is you
need to approach your stats in your
journals with an open mind
try to take the emotions out of this
aspect of your trading
you know work on your psychological
mindset you know work on meditation
whatever you need to do to get your head
right
but when it comes to reviewing your
training i personally
really need to take the emotions out of
that because sometimes i look back at
the stuff i’m doing i’m like wow
you know i’m such an idiot like what i
can’t believe i did this i can’t believe
i did that
and as soon as you start approaching
something with too much emotion
it makes it harder to you know pick
yourself up and really attack
what the information is that’s there
some people
you know really need to feel that pain
of mistakes
in order to get to that point where they
can approach things with an open mind
and start to trim the fat one step that
really really has helped me so far
is making better use of my support
system to set
goals that will help me work past
and really attack that those stats in
those journals
in order to come up with some type of
actionable improvements
you know i work with other guys in my
class who have been showing really
really solid consistency and
improving and sizing up and you know
using them as
someone to lean on and say hey i see the
performance that you’re doing right now
how can you help me and how can we work
together
to both improve ourselves you know we
are so lucky to be working at a firm
where collaboration is
you know one of the biggest things that
we have the opportunity to do
there’s a lot of people trading from
home or maybe even listening to this
video who
don’t have that opportunity and need
some type of community need someone to
you know pick them up when they’re
feeling down because listen a lot of
things happen in trading that can make
you feel
really bad and if you have that strong
support system around you
one and if you use it too that is
the first huge step to making some
really really solid
levels of growth if you want to learn
three more real world setups that our
traders use
including the simple setup that we teach
all of our new traders and the setup
that turned one of our traders into a
seven
figure big money earner check out the
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you won’t lose this video you can also
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you’re going to learn more in a couple
of hours from this trading workshop
than from years of online education so i
kind of hinted at what
my process was going to be to you know
completely change my review process
change my trading you know i felt like i
did a lot of the psychological work but
what i was trading wasn’t specific
enough for what i really felt like i had
edge in
so i knew i lacked that specificity you
know i had signs of
what i determined to be potential
success in several different niches
i was trading the broader market names i
was trading the indices
i was trading every ipo that every hot
ipo that came out
low float stocks anything with momentum
kind of flying all around trying a bunch
of different things and
you know having a lot of success feeling
like i could do
you know a lot of different things and
then sometimes having strings of trading
where i’m like okay nothing i’m doing is
working right now
and it felt like sometimes that switch
was happening overnight
what i wasn’t paying attention to was
what mechanically i was actually good at
and how to notice that and move that
into okay
what specifically do i need to trade to
balance out okay what am i mechanically
strong at
i was doing a combination of tape trades
i was doing pattern trades you know a
five minute chart one minute chart
higher time frame stuff and i always
knew that
i was going to rely heavily on top down
technical analysis
looking for big you know levels to get
involved on
but i wasn’t really putting everything
together
in a cognitive way where i could say to
you
hey here’s my edge i can very clearly
define it
this is what i’m going to build my
business on so i needed to narrow my
focus i needed to be able to say to
myself
and say to everyone around me what’s my
training edge what am i great at
technically and mentally
what niche fits best for those strengths
and how do i put all that together
to form a really solid business that i
could come to my risk manager i can
and and come to my team and have a
really really solid reason
for growing it and getting more size
getting access to more risk
because that’s really the end goal you
get the consistency together by putting
all
of your business really specifically but
if it’s not something that can grow
it can end up being kind of a waste of
time so i kind of developed
like a four prong approach to what my
edge was
it took a lot of time to put this
together mentally
but kind of once it happened it really
felt like a light bulb had been
switched on and i’ll talk a little bit
about you know the way i traded in
february
that led to my best trading month that
really
started to make me feel like i was
setting myself apart
from previous versions of myself
the first prong is stock selection so
important and sometimes
it’s so easy to key in on a name and get
stuck in it and
you know not realize okay this isn’t
really even where the opportunity is why
am i paying so much attention to this
for me i really really really need to be
in high are of all names
things with momentum stocks in play
those are where the most ranges the most
volatility is
and the most opportunity to really
follow volume and use my tape reading
skills
couple that with collaboration working
with those like-minded traders i
previously mentioned
who are showing success in that similar
niche
you guys have heard from justin before
you’ve heard from max shark
of course is always trading the stocks
in play
some days i would come into my morning
meeting and i would be the only one
keying in on a specific idea and when
you put yourself on an island like that
it’s very hard to you know take a couple
losses and then stick with the idea or
attack an idea where you really really
feel like you should be right
because i did wasn’t relying on people
who had more experience than me
who could help me talk through ideas i
was never really hitting those big
trades
because i had no one really to talk
about it with i was just kind of
taking whatever i felt like was the most
amount of money i was going to make on
it
and then leaving tons on the table
taking two bigs of losses trying the
same idea too many times
basically just because especially during
quarantine i mean i was basically just
trading on my own with no support
and i did that to myself so moving
forward
starting in in february i made a
decision to
be as active as i could with the team
trading
every idea that was the big idea in our
morning meetings
making sure i wasn’t involved in
anything with low volume making sure i
wasn’t involved in anything that didn’t
have the risk reward didn’t have the
opportunity set
not trading the overall market indices
when they’re choppy
things like that small little
adjustments that would
set me on the course to really use my
analysis skills and my ability to be
really quick on the tape and scalp
once i got to that point we’re like okay
here’s what i’m focusing on
and i have a group of people who i’m
focusing on this with who can work
together with
me now it does come down to okay how do
i
extract money from this niche i knew
that
my spy trading was where i had the most
edge over the course of my career
it wasn’t really trading spy though that
was the edge
it was using volume profile combined
with technical analysis
to build out really really important
action areas or inflection areas
where price could potentially be support
or resistance
instead of thinking okay you know this
is my level right here
down to the penny i do much better when
i have
potential areas sometimes it’s you know
depending on the
atr of the stock it could be a dollar
range it could be a two dollar range it
could be a 50 cent range
but if i establish that range once price
gets there
now i have an idea of okay i have a
decision to make at this area
what do i need to see on the tape to get
me involved how do i fight for my price
which is the final prong of
my edge how do i fight for my price how
do i use those really good tape reading
skills
to get those entries and exits as close
as possible
so i want to make sure i dived into each
of these prongs a little bit more i know
i just
summarized them but there are little
technical things that i want to make
very clear
volatility is key for me i need to be
trading things with larger ranges
because for me
larger ranges mean more opportunity you
know focusing on
stocks and play themes ipos news
momentum leads to high directional
possibilities
what i do really well is spotting turns
on the tape
when i get involved in those turns i do
well holding size
as soon as i feel like i just mark the
turn and there’s going to be the
potential for directional movement
if i’m trading something that has no
momentum that directional movement will
get me into trouble because
the stock’s consolidating it doesn’t
really have that force
that i need it to have to pull away from
those entries
if i key in on stocks that are doing
that now i have the potential to have
really really impressive risk reward
opportunities because of my ability to
get involved on the tape
so my collaboration you know like i said
there are a bunch of
up and coming top junior traders who
always seem to be focused on a very
specific niche
i needed to be where everyone else was
like i said i stuck to lesser traded
names high betas market indices
and oftentimes regardless of the overall
vix environment
i really just wanted to focus on what
are the names where my collaboration and
idea generation will flow naturally
between myself and my peers how do i
start to work better in a team structure
how do we all build on each other
so that we can all grow because there’s
going to come a time where
you know it’s great for us to all be
making a couple thousand bucks
but these junior guys who i’m
collaborating with are goalless to be
the next
seven figure traders at the firm you
know we are here to
match shark match swing get up to them
you know they’ve been trading
a long time and we want to get to that
point and we have the drive
but if we work together now we’re a team
and now you know we’re working with our
bigger teams
led by those senior traders and the
collaboration is flowing back and forth
we have perspective
more eyes on the prize you know we have
a better overall support structure
we have a better idea of what am i
getting into
and then you know to top everything off
depending on how you are socially
for me camaraderie has always been huge
for my mindset
ever since i played organized sports
fraternity in college
throughout my academic professional
athletic careers being involved in a
group structure where i can
have that back and forth with my friends
and with my peers and with my coworkers
has always been really really important
for my mindset
my confidence my enthusiasm and my
overall passion
so diving into a little bit about
identifying those action areas
volume profile for me is always the root
of my top-down technical analysis
i build out structures from high to low
you know where’s the volume on a daily
chart where’s the volume been on an
hourly
where’s the volume been on the five day
five minute and then where’s the volume
today
using those historical high volume areas
to build out those inflection points
and then i laser into the tape for those
specific areas
this process can be used to fade trend
and it also can be used to follow trend
you know i’m looking for price to move
from high volume areas
through low volume areas looking for
price discovery
just overall trading with a flow that’s
following the money that can actually
move the market
as opposed to chart patterns that
honestly anybody can learn in their
sleep
further all of this following that
really really big volume
is how you can frame where directional
momentum might actually come from
the people who move the market are going
to be putting volume to work
at certain areas and if you can
recognize that you can hire
you can have a higher probability of
determining where
real real momentum can drive from and
then when it comes down to you know how
do i read the tape
you know i’ve done videos where i show
specifically you know what i’m looking
for
you know it really all comes down to
getting a feel for the specific thing
that you’re trading
recognizing patterns you know are there
sticky areas on the tape you know
where it kind of pops up you know wicks
through a couple little prices
a couple whole numbers maybe but in
general just really can’t get
through where it is you know it feels
heavy is a good
term that we always use or you know it
feels like they’re really pressing up
against this area
feels like there might be a breakout
soon prices
areas that price struggles to accept or
reject
i love to use key psychological levels
you know big whole numbers
especially in stocks with high retail
participantship
you know in gme recently it often will
hold and or have some type of big
movement around
very key psychological levels 200 300
250 225 220 anything down to those whole
numbers
for some reason size has been moving on
around in those areas
and if you’re quick enough and you
recognize you know what does it look
like when
you know when they pop something above
200 bucks and then re-offer down
underneath 200 bucks right away
you know how quick can i be to get
involved in those technical turning
points
and that’s been really important to
getting
bigger size better risk reward
and working into positions where you can
actively trade around
um a core from you know major turning
points on the day
so what does all this lead to in
february
it led to my best month p l the date i
had the smallest number of losing days
in my career
my win rate improved from 46 percent
over the last two years to 52
on the month my winner to lose a rate
was over 1.5
my mindset is drastically improved i
feel like i have the ability to stay
much more mentally flexible
and when you’re in that natural flow
state you feel your size grow
without really having to force it
if you force size growth you almost
always are going to run into trouble
but if you recognize in the moment high
risk reward opportunities
and size naturally to that risk reward
number
that’s when you start to feel yourself
flow and really generate solid
risk reward returns again you know i i
should put a disclaimer in and say
this current market that we’ve had has a
ton of opportunity
um and some really really
solid momentum names you know gme cciv
all really good examples but at the end
of the day there’s always going to be an
ebb and flow of opportunity
and there will be months where they’re
on paper this amazing opportunity
but if you’re not in the right condition
to trade those opportunities a really
really
solid environment could still lead to
trash p
l because it really does come down to
what are you able to do
so i wanted to go over one of the best
trade examples i had last month
it was in gamestop it was on february
15th
everybody knows it was extremely in play
high arval name
momentum all over the place for me after
coming to this conclusion it was
of course the thing that i need to be
involved in had the highest opportunity
of any other thing that we’ve seen in
you know probably six months
so i wanted to you know have us take a
look at
what the volume profile structure looked
like on the day
leading into the trade opportunity that
i saw
all these levels marked right on this
chart are
fully developed from bulges and in the
volume profile so peaks and valleys
you can see where the volume has been
distributed throughout the day
that’s how i organize where i’m
potentially going to want to be getting
involved where i’m going to have to make
trade decisions
what the overall structure is where
potential drives of momentum can come
from
so i went back and i did you know on
demand i wanted to go back and see okay
what were things looking like
i remember what levels i traded at
because you know i could look back at my
executions which i’ll show on the next
slide
but looking back in review where should
i have been making these trade decisions
at
and how do i do you can see early on in
the morning you know opens up
170s completely collapses to 100
you know huge momentum based move
grinds up traps shorts wicks around
you know wix 150 collapses
trap shorts trap shorts comes up stop
run
trap shorts trap shorts trap shorts and
then you can see as soon as it breaks
155
the volume structure was so so thin here
off that first
three four minutes of the day that as
soon as it broke that 155 area
vacuums through all the way up to 185
and then starts building out this really
really dense
collection of volume that ends up being
the high volume note of the day where
the most volume has been done right
around like 172.
so when looking at this trade if i’m
operating under the thesis that
okay what is gamestop done so much it
has trapped both longs and shorts
you know it trades a little bit like an
opposite stock whatever you think it’s
going to do in any given moment
it’s probably going to do the opposite
for me
i had seen it do so many times a big
momentum based move consolidate the move
put in you know a wedge a bull flag
some type of really tight consolidation
that ended up
trapping retail longs trapping you know
institutional long strapping anybody
who’s looking to buy who’s been long the
whole day
and now looking to press that position
for breaks to high into the afternoon
if this move fails the potential for all
these people
who’ve been buying all day to have to
make serious trade decisions
is going to be what can have the
potential to drive price lower
of course i’m operating you know on this
day with a short bias
i’ve been short biased gamestop the
entire time just because
you know it doesn’t make sense for it to
be whatever price it is and
you know i i’ve been following you know
the reddit situation
you know people buying and holding and
hoping that to squeeze us to a thousand
it’s just important to recognize that at
any given day
and every any given daily chart run up
the the participants
are completely different every single
time and that can change
what you might think can happen you know
i don’t know whether institutions are
still so heavily short this that
it has the potential to really run up
again but i do know that
on this given day if i can get involved
against these highs or even against 175
in a short position
and it fails and starts pressing up
against 150 155
everyone who brought this breakout on v
on big volume
potentially is going to have to to puke
and if they puke
this can lead to something much bigger
because i don’t think any of these
people who bought today
are really you know diamond hands and
are going to hold this
so moving into the actual trade we come
up we’re sitting here pressing pressing
pressing
i think i started showing you that chart
right around here
and then wicks up 180 holds 180 comes
back down to 170
and then just starts tightening up
really really really really tight
in that situation you know we just
looked at at the volume profile
situation
as it tightens up and it gets closer and
closer to a 50 percent
odds trade if it breaks out
all these people are right everyone from
all day is right shorts are screwed
it’ll probably go to 200. if this fails
the psychology of the trade becomes
how hard are these people going to be
able to hold if the situation starts to
change drastically
i know that this can get wiped out in
almost a tick
you know just think about it a wedge
breakdown happens all the time
obviously it’s going to take out the
consolidation to the downside that’s a
little bit intuitive
160 psychological level is there i think
they’re going to flush that
that’s all what i was thinking about
before the trade and i was using those
volume profile levels knowing that
where i really wanted to get involved
was i knew there was low volume in here
if it dropped 165 it was probably going
to vacuum to 155
i thought it could potentially you know
go 150 155
get a little bit of a dip get bought up
then maybe it would have to roll over
from there 145 to 140
you know first pull in of the break
above view app break above the morning
you know late at late morning highs
all these levels that i started building
out if i established a core from here
i was going to want to trim and trail
maybe short pops trim
short pops trim short pops and see if i
could take
this to clear out this entire range
because i don’t think these people have
been buying really have what it takes
to hold this above view app so when we
dive into it
put on this the short position with
really tight risk reward
you know at this point as it tightens up
like this i’m risking 175
that’s the real stop obviously is at
least 180
probably high of day but like i said if
you are tight enough
and good enough to get the entry on the
tape
you know if you get stop 175 maybe try
again
the trade that i was looking for was a
momentum breakdown
where if i’m right it won’t wick against
me at all i’ll settle in it’ll break 170
and it’s going to go off to the races
so as soon as it got really really tight
i slapped in short
and i said i’m not going to touch this
until it drops 160.
it takes out 160. you know looking back
at those levels i really should have
waited for
150 to 155. that was kind of
the area volume where i felt like it
would really actually have a reaction
didn’t do didn’t take it all the way but
you know took the 160 flush
took off a decent amount of my size
casually sat through here
collapses again and like i said that 140
to 145 area
anywhere somewhere in this consolidation
was the next main level to watch
comes up you know big vacuum move take
that profit there
and then from then on it’s basically
just how do i trade this range now
shorting pops covering dips and just see
where they’re willing to take this thing
short it short a pop cover momentum
short again cover momentum short pops
tightens up you can see it kind of form
like a little bit of a wedge here
tightens up takes 145 out trimmed a
little bit
got short again in this consolidation
small enough size i was able to
sit through a little bit of a wick we
get the great collapse
and then you cover the whole thing into
uh morning lows
so now looking back this has those
levels in it this is the area that
of low volume that i had my i had
matched up we get the vacuum through
there
you can see how price reacts at all
those levels that i built
out and all those levels that i built
out were before
the price action
we get the big we get responses here one
two three times
get response here the first time wipes
that zone out
once it wipes the zone out like that you
know i would have eliminated this
comes up comes back into these areas
around 130
reaction comes back up retests this
pivot high
retests it again re-tested that previous
area view app
collapses you can see it hit that volume
area and the technical area again
and then fades all the way and
eventually takes out the low
so the whole idea here is my edge is
really augmented by using these levels
and not just taking technical levels
because think about if you just take
technical levels
so you draw the line right here well
there’s volume
hidden in this range that’s really
going to allow you to get tighter
entries and exits
and that’s kind of the basis of the way
that i trade and and the basis of
where my edge lies and using the tape to
get
really really tight risk reward and
opportunities like this now think about
if you’re risking five points
the entire trade ended up being 70 plus
points
on that initial entry and because i
started with a core and i traded around
the core
and i was never out of the money
throughout this position
just trading around that initial however
many shares
of a core and then working the position
um
making sure to be patient shorting pops
because i had all these really really
great technical levels
from the morning so what do i do going
forward
you know we just kind of came to the
conclusion that what the changes that i
made showed drastic improvement
led to my best month how do i continue
to build on that
and make sure the steps that i’m taking
move me forward
and not backwards main key
do not deviate from your edge there will
be stocks that
look like they opera offer opportunity
the market might heat up things are
always going to happen
that can get you off of your game
and get you to focus on something that
you’re not supposed to be focusing on
i need to stay exactly where i am
continue to work on these things
and grow that business
in that growth i want to do it naturally
let the risk reward opportunity size me
up let the volatility size me up
don’t all of a sudden come in one day
and be like you know what i’m trading
twice as big today because i i’m
confident i feel like i need to do it
take each set up for its own worth and
if it looks like it offers really high
risk reward
that’s the ones you size into and it
will show you
the look think about that previous trade
for example you know if gamestop is
trading in a range of 10 points
i’m not going to all the sudden look to
try and get 70 points on a breakdown
the volatility structure and the higher
time free momentum will make it clear
what you should actually be looking for
as long as you build out those technical
skills outside of trading specifically
i need to build and continue to improve
upon a routine that complements my
trading
you know am i working out every time i’m
supposed to be
how’s my daily structure you know am i
eating at the same times am i
in that routine am i doing my review are
my alarms going off to
set my temperature checks am i am i
really
taking the time to focus on where i am
at mentally because i’ve spent two plus
years doing all that work
now that i’m tying that together with
being in the right stocks
and trading with edge how do i make sure
everything i’m doing in my trading
business complements each other
and then once you come to that
conclusion for me i’m just able to go
into each day with excitement now
i don’t wake up thinking oh no am i
going to lose today or oh no am i going
to keep what i made yesterday
take the opportunity reward yourself for
the work that you do mentally and
technically
and be excited to have the opportunity
to do this job
some days it might feel like it’s really
really hard
but those moments of success are what
make it feel really worth it
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* no relevant positions
