Every single day trade you make should have the exact same steps to it.
Step 1: Enter a trade as a short or a long play after the market confirms your entry.
Step 2: Set your two stops to exit the trade (50% at the first stop and the rest at the second stop).
Step 3: If the trade is going in your favor, you sell some of your position into the move upward (in 0.125 increments) and move up your stops to the previous breakout points.
Step 4: Rinse and repeat until you on your last lot or you get stopped out.
If you aren't doing this, I suggest you take these steps and put them somewhere.
Write them on a sticky note and put it on your desk. Print out this article. Get a tattoo of it.
I don't care how you do it, but you need to engrain these steps into your head on every trade you make.
So, with this in mind, let's take a look a trade today that you could have made and break it down step by step.
We're going to analyze a pre-market trade on QQQ and show you exactly how you could have made money this morning...
Even before the markets opened.
I've said it once and I'll say it again...
Your trading day doesn't start at 9:30 am. It starts however early you want it to start.
That means, if you're up and ready to go at 5:00 am, you can start putting trades on.
As long as there's volume out there, you' have an opportunity to make some money.
That's exactly what I did this morning with Lifetime members of the Warlock's World this morning in our pre-market earnings session.
As you can see in the image below, the steps don't differ all too much from the steps you would take from a normal trade...
In step one, we bought QQQ when it was breaking VWAP at 8:09 am ET at 315.25.
You'll notice that step two from before is lumped in with step one.
That's because in the pre-market, you have to use a mental stop. Stop orders can't be executed during the pre-market and will instead just trigger an exit on the position for an undesirable exit.
The next thing to do in step two is two sell out of your position a little bit at a time as the stop moves up.
At this point, I intend to mentally move my stop up to the initial point I bought it at so I can at least lock in a winning trade, no matter how small.
I'll then use the VWAP as my out for the rest of my position if the stock breaks down from this point.
You'll notice that the stock never made it back to our original VWAP breaking point and continued to trend upward through the pre-market session.
It dipped a little bit, but never actually went back to our original buy price. Then it ripped all the way to 316.30.
This is where the third step comes in, and how it differs from normal trading.
Usually when you trade a stock, you move up your stops and use that as your total exit to the trade.
You can do this in the pre-market with mental stops. BUT the big thing is that you want to exit your entire position BEFORE the markets open.
You have absolutely no idea what lies in store for you once the opening bell rings.
I usually give a good rule of thumb to get out by 9:25 am ET just in case there's any delays from your broker's end.
Plus, that gives you enough time to stalk a new trade and ready yourself for a new setup.
Following my own rules, I would have exited the trade at 316.10 - nearly a dollar move before the markets even opened.
Even if I had the last fifth of my trade left, at 200 shares that exiting with a $200 profit plus all the profit that was made on the way up.
For many people, that's a day's pay. And that's what I want you to be a part of.
In the Warlock's World, I'm targeting trades like this all the time.
And if you aren't a part of it yet, I want you to join us today.
As always, let me know if this was helpful or if you wanted me to cover any topics in particular. You can let me know by sending me an email to [email protected].
Have a great weekend!
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