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I'd ask a question and they tell me, just watch the leaders, watch the leaders.
And that always feels like just a brush off.
Okay, yeah, great, I'll watch the leaders.
OK, let me give you that now, right?
That kind of thing.
But it really does come down to, you know, what do they mean by that?
Because the real leaders, there's far and few between of the real leaders.
When I'm looking at what I would consider a big group of stocks, I don't know, I think if I look at the entire database right now, I don't know, it's around 11 or 12 ,000 stocks, let's say.
At any given time on a really strong market that's really super broad, my list is about 200 stocks out of close to 12 ,000.
Markets, speculation and risk.
This is the Chat with Traders podcast.
You are listening to Chat with Traders.
Well, Happy New Year.
It's still early enough for me to say that, right?
I'm Tessa Dow, co -host and producer of the show.
This is episode 294.
And before we introduce our first guest of the year, on behalf of my co -host Ian Cox and myself, we wish you a year full of true joy and abundance in your lives and also a year full of intentional action taking in your trading journeys.
And I apologize if my mic is not sounding so great this time as I'm traveling and I'm on a different mic.
A year ago, I stumbled across a quote that goes something like this.
A year from now you will wish you had started today.
A year from now you will wish you had started today.
It hit hard because I knew I'd been stuck in my trading journey letting self -doubt and life's chaos hold me back.
All of last year I pushed myself to try day trading alongside my usual swing trading.
More trades meant more reps and experience but it also meant more failures.
Some days I wanted to quit, but something interesting was happening beneath the surface.
While my P &L still looked a bit rough, I got better at following my trading rules from barely 30 % of the time to nearly 80 % of the time.
My emotions used to run the show, but it's less now.
I started journaling trades, reviewing mistakes, and treating each loss as a lesson.
I discovered that if I had followed my rules and used proper stop losses on those big losing trades that I incurred, I could flip my reward to risk ratio from one to three to a two to one reward to risk ratio at least.
2024 taught me that progress isn't always visible on the surface.
Now heading into this new year, I'm ready to keep pushing forward.
So let me leave you with this question.
A year from now, what will you wish you had started today?
Now let's talk about Episode 294 and who my co -host Ian Cox is speaking with today.
He's currently a co -founder of Trader Lion.
His name is Ross Haber.
With two decades in the markets under his belt, Ross's trading philosophy is built on growth -focused strategies heavily influenced by William O 'Neill.
There, he was part of a small but mighty team that turned $15 million into more than $850 million.
And in case you didn't know, William O 'Neill was a legendary investor and founder of IBD, Investors Business Daily, a true market wizard who passed away a couple of years ago.
You will hear his name mentioned a lot in this interview for good reason.
Combining both technical and fundamental analysis, Ross emphasizes the importance of identifying leaders and strong market sectors and adapting to market cycles.
Optimizing the use of relative strength, moving averages, and volume analysis, and tailoring it to each stock's unique personality, combined with his ability to manage risk through strategic scaling techniques, and cell stops has been one of the cornerstones of his success.
Ladies and gentlemen, we're so pleased to present Ross Haber from South Florida.
Ross, I'd like to welcome you to Chat with Traders.
I am. Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah, great. Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Where are you now and where did you grow up?
All right. Well, I'm actually back where I grew up.
I'm actually right in South Florida, right in between Fort Lauderdale and Miami.
I was born and raised here.
I went to University of Florida, started off as a retail stockbroker after I graduated.
So I grew up in South Florida, went to school in Gainesville, came back down south.
I was lucky my parents gave me my room to live in while I figured it out because I didn't want to go back for a master's.
I got a job as a retail stockbroker at, I think I mentioned to you when we first talked, Oldie Discount, where the first book they gave me was William O 'Neill's How to Make Money in Stocks, right?
So that was the very first book I was given after I finished business school, you know, on the real stock market.
That's not what you learn in school.
And long story short, one of my clients was a big O 'Neill fan, introduced me to the manager of institutional sales there.
So I finished UF 95, February 98.
I was in O 'Neill's institutional sales, building a client list of hedge funds, mutual funds, what have you.
Along the way, one of my hedge fund clients made an offer for me to come run a fund with him.
And so, you know, I was expecting to get walked out the door when I came in to tell my boss at O 'Neill that I was going to run a fund with, you know, XYZ client.
Rather than walking me out the door, I had the luck and blessings of Bill actually offering me a job to stay and run money at the firm.
That is what I wound up doing, building a track record, you know, getting to travel around the country, teach the workshops with Bill.
And that is what ultimately led to my experience running a hedge fund in New York for six years with a fellow by the name of David Feldman, who used to be the MidCap portfolio manager of Fidelity's MidCap Growth Fund.
That's the long and the short of it from, you know, graduating from college to, I guess, hedge fund land.
And then from the time we closed the fund in 2010.
I've just been managing my own money.
And over those years, I had started a newsletter, very small.
I was on Twitter. Let's just say it wasn't really amounting to much.
I felt like I was spending more time than it was worth.
I was in the process of shutting it down when I wound up meeting Ray and Nick and Richard and starting the whole TraderLion and DeepView thing.
So, So, you know, Trader Lion started about a little over six years ago.
Deep View is about two years in the making.
And so that's it from, you know, kid until now as my hair is falling out and turning gray.
So tell us about some of the things that you learned from this first book that you got, How to Make Money in Stocks, which has been around for a long time.
And did you apply what you learned in that book to your own personal trading account?
I did. I mean, that is actually what, you know, that is what got me the offer.
Doing well in the market, applying what I learned from Bill O 'Neill was, was, I generated a great tracker.
So when that, when that happened, I was doing very well in my personal account.
At that point, there was still really no online brokerage.
So there was a institutional brokerage for the clients to trade.
But if you, you were absolutely encouraged to trade as an employee there, however, you I had to have your account at Stockmark, which was the in -house William O 'Neill trading desk, right?
So Bill could check your account.
He had access to everything.
So that was actually what led to Bill considering keeping me around as well as him.
At the time, there was just one of us that would travel the country and do the workshops with him.
And at that point, he had required at least one year of triple -digit performance.
And I had been blessed enough by the 98 through 2000 environment.
And obviously having Bill O 'Neill at my side five out of seven days a week, I did solid triple digits, 98, 99, and 2000.
So yes, absolutely.
And I would say this, I think there's a lot, right, as we've discussed, the methodology has been around out there for a long time.
Lots has been developed since.
The dissemination of information now compared to then is unbelievable right so i mean to to know what it was and really get it down in detail was a much um more difficult task than it is today um i would say so while you might hear a lot of people discussing breakouts don't work anymore or canceling
is old or or that sort of thing what i would say is this is it was old before bill o 'neal started it it came from jesse livermore Nicholas Darvis and all of those older traders.
Bill basically expanded on it, added more detail to it.
I think the big thing we all know, for example, about Jesse Livermore, I mean, you could say what he did didn't work right because he ultimately wound up killing himself after a ton of losses.
So anyway, I think I'm getting off track.
If you could take us back in history to this famous trader, Jesse Livermore, and share with us, how did he get so wealthy?
How did he get so famous?
And maybe even how he failed in the end and how that ties into the book, How to Make Money in Stocks.
Sure. So that one with, you know, so that's required reading from O 'Neill.
If you start there, everyone in the firm is, you know, you've got to read his book.
But Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, I think, is probably the most well -known, you know, Jesse Livermore book.
And it discusses really from the beginning of the stock market, Jesse He was one of the he was a young kid.
He was one of the guys who actually changed the prices up on the chalkboard right as you know, this was before the ticker tape and all of that.
And so as he was one of the guys responsible for changing stock prices as the market went on throughout the day, he noticed certain patterns.
Right. Basically, what what's going up continues typically continues to go up and what's going lower often continues to go lower.
right? The whole basis behind trend following and understanding the direction of the general market, which O 'Neill has developed a very specific methodology for.
It's one way. There's a million ways to do it.
So, and fortunately enough, we had him put together in a book, those observations, what he was noticing.
At the end of the day, though, he did not have a specific system for managing risk, right?
So, Jesse Livermore, if I'm not mistaken, I think, on the stock market crash of 1929 and made himself either $100 or $200 million, right?
They blamed him for crashing the market.
At that point in time, that was an insane amount of money in today's dollars, as you can imagine.
The problem was is he would make that much money and then give it all away and then make it again and then give it all away.
And in the end, he wound up divorced and unfortunately putting a bullet in his head.
So I would say Bill's big contribution was at understanding that was the big you know so i think he had the buying part down but managing risk is a big part of what bill has added to it and you know what i would say is this you know from what bill has discussed in his book to where we are today there's
tons of tricks so i have taken what he's taught me and made it my own but no doubt i've put my fancy new rim on on bill and jesse livermore's wheel i don't think i've created anything new i think there's a lot of guys out there that have taken that style of growth trading and made it the foundation for what they
have made their own.
I don't want to start with one name and then forget guys out there, but there's tons of guys out there with books that sell off the shelves that are super popular on Twitter that have won those United States Investment Championships that I could confidently tell you have all based their methodologies
around that style of growth trading.
So I would say this, during that time, it was much easier, okay?
Accounting distribution days were like a short -term sell signal.
I could almost tell you flawless.
I felt like a magical genie doing it.
I couldn't believe it just continued to work.
And while I would tell you that that largely no longer works, and while I still look at distribution and apply it in a different way, there are other things, for example, that I continue to use that work.
On the flip side, relative strength, new highs.
ahead of price, understanding exactly what that is and when to use that, that works as good today as it did in 1890.
And I can tell you we'll continue to work in another 100 years.
So you mentioned that some things don't work like they used to.
Why do you think that is?
And why do some things work and some things don't work over time?
And do things that don't work now, do they come back in favor?
Is it, is it like a cycle?
How does that work?
I'm going to give you the fortunately and unfortunately, again, I've been around long enough.
Like I would say not long enough to know if it's necessarily a cycle for all of them.
However, I would say there are things like that, that work really well once and that I have never seen work again like that.
And I can think of other things unrelated to canceling that used to be the big hot thing that no longer work or are even a focus.
And there are others that will work really well in certain environments and then certain things that I have observed to just work.
Related to CanSlim, like I would tell you, relative strength, new highs have had a price.
Not related to CanSlim that I know is built into most of the guys who are algorithmic or high frequency traders, would be Fibonacci levels.
Why? I know guys in the business who are extremely successful who have been at it from the beginning who will tell you why does everybody do it, because they work.
As much as I'd like to tell you that maybe that is what has made it so that distribution days are less effective, I can honestly tell you that isn't what happened with fib levels because fib numbers still work as good as they always have.
And from what I understand, and maybe this has changed because it's a conversation I've had several years ago, but from what I understand, the reason that, you know, that is built into most of your HFT and algorithmic programs is because they simply work.
So, yeah, so I don't think there's a single answer.
I think it just depends.
So you mentioned CanSlim.
Tell us what CanSlim is.
Let's go down and describe for our audience the components canceling is is the acronym c -a -n -s -l -i -m that represents the seven is it most common characteristics that so what this is what bill o 'neill did is he did a study of the most common characteristics to all of the biggest winning stocks over time
you know starting back let's say late 1890s i know he's got the guy i'm still tight with the guys who continue who have continued to do that research up until today I don't know where they are with it but they have told me over and over again that in terms of price and volume interpreting price and volume
the way that it works nothing has changed I mean sure the rules of the game have changed I would tell you that the old you know market makers you know hft and algo are your new market makers whereas but I can tell you there if you look at a level two, before SOS Bandits showed up on the market, there
was one electronic communications network, Instanet, INCA.
There was no Island, ARCA, or any of that stuff.
And to have an Instanet machine, you were typically a large institution.
Otherwise, if you looked at a level two on the top left of the bid and top right was Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan, Stanley, JP Morgan, you name it.
Now it's just a bunch of UCNs.
You have no idea who's there.
All of the big brokers are at the bottom.
And so what I'm telling you is all of those guys who used to actually pick up a phone and talk to each other in the late 90s, early 2000s before, you know, everybody was a market maker and now largely, you know, so it makes sense.
The HFT and Algo guys are highly dependent on computers, AIs.
So before, when you had a bunch of young guys on the phone playing games within the rules to quote unquote, and I don't want to get a whole thing, at least short term trick investors, you know, I want to say manipulate without making it a bad thing, because they're not doing anything wrong there.
You know, when I say manipulate, they're manipulating, they're doing their job trying to make money for the firm.
I learned all of this on the retail side, because I worked at a discount firm where we I got paid splitting my splitting the spread with the market maker.
So I was explained very clearly by these guys, what they were doing to make it look like a stock was weak in the morning that they were really going to buy and vice versa.
Now you just have computers operating with those rules in nanosecond speed, right?
So it's a different game, but the same game with different rules.
And that's why ultimately it all still works.
And here, you know, I would tell you this, I can't watch the leaders, right?
The action of the true leaders of the market and understanding rotation from into and out of leadership, what a very strong market looks like, how many stocks it takes to really get a trend, a sustainable trend, I should say, up and running versus how many stocks it takes to maintain a strong uptrend
that is petering out.
Those things that I learned from Bill still worked like a charm today.
And so that's the stuff that I employ.
And to kind of, you know, make it my own, I've sprinkled in some Stan Weinstein, right?
So I've got my early buy points, what I call consolidation pivots instead of base pivots, which are much earlier up the right side.
And if I can combine that with my relative strength, new highs or relative strength line leading price that I all came from Bill, that stuff all works.
I mean, that's my moneymaker.
It was in the late 90s when I started, and it is to this day.
Over time, I pay attention to what used to work and still doesn't, what works maybe differently, and what used to work, stopped working, and might work again, right?
Or how it becomes relevant in a different way, let's say, watching the VIX or other sentiment indicators, right?
I think there was probably a time where put call was really a great timing tool, depending on the environment.
Now, in and of itself, it doesn't do much.
And this is just one thing.
So yeah, I've learned about all of those contrarian sentiment tools from Bill, whether it be put call, the VIX, the IIAA investment sentiment, the newsletter writers, bullish bearish, that sort of thing.
And so each one of those things used to be an awesome tool in and of itself.
Whereas now I find that if I am going to watch those sentiment tools, I want to see at least three of them at an extreme.
Right. So if I don't see at least three at an extreme, if I just see a spike in the VIX or just a spike in the put call and I'm not seeing confirmation for at least a couple others and we're not near extremes on all.
I will always defer to watch the leaders.
What are the leaders telling you?
How many setups are there?
What groups are they in?
You know, are they later in their moves?
Right. We learned from Bill O 'Neill in CanSlim.
And I got off that topic.
C -A -N -S -L -I -M is the acronym for all of the most common characteristics to those big leaders.
Right. C, current quarterly earnings.
A, annual earnings.
N is your new product.
Let's talk about the first two letters, the C and the A.
And what do they stand for and how important is this in the CanSlim strategy?
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Awesome question. And I will tell you extremely important.
If you were to, you know, talk to Bill O 'Neill up to the end, he would tell you it's 70 % fundamentals, 30 % technicals.
He, and for him, especially he, you know, I was there, I watched it happen.
That guy put massive amounts of money into one or two stocks.
He did that only with your highest quality, most liquid names that, so it's not, so let's start with C is your current quarterly earnings and A is relevant is your annual earnings.
He discovered that.
Now what is your biggest winner?
So a big winner to him, it couldn't be, it had to be institutional quality For starters, meaning a Fidelity or an AIM mutual fund has to be able to buy the stock, a big fund.
It can't be a thin little $5 thing that trades, you know, a half a million dollars total volume a day.
That doesn't really.
So it has to be a stock that is can be bought and sold by a legitimate hedge.
I'm sorry, mutual fund.
Right. So it can't be a tiny little thing and it has to have.
And so he noticed as long as it was of that quality buyable by high quality institutions, that the majority of those stocks had quarter.
So it's going to be year over year quarterly earnings growth, meaning not fourth quarter compared to fourth quarter, but fourth quarter this year compared to fourth quarter last year.
So that's year over year quarterly growth.
And that eliminates your seasonality and all of that stuff.
So that is how at least I was taught to look at quarterly growth.
And so if you buy the book, it'll tell you you want to see at least 25 % growth for the most current three quarters.
And you learn that's a bare minimum.
I require triple digit growth, preferably accelerating triple digit growth.
Now, there's very few of these, as you can imagine, right?
Because then I'm going to have my rules for annual earnings, right, from the book.
And if we move on to N, right, that N stands for new product.
So we'll hang on there for a second.
So anyway, on the earnings front, personally, I've got the basic rules.
CanSlim tells you at least 25 % quarterly year over year.
On an annual basis, it's a little easier on the restriction.
You're at about 20 % for three years.
Obviously, more is better.
Triple digit is better, harder to grow annual earnings at a triple digit rate than quarterly, obviously, right, especially over a long period of time.
but 70, 80 % of the biggest winning stocks, you know, met the criteria that he came up with, right.
And he basically went through every stock out there, you know, the database of whatever it was at those times and figured out of, you know, the stocks that made the biggest moves of institutional quality.
I'll always throw that out there.
And, you know, that gets rid of all the tiny, you know, low price junk, but the high quality stuff, those were what you're looking for in terms of earnings.
I mean, right there, if you're, and also if you put all your money in, if you're going to be putting half your account and, you know, if you're Bill O 'Neill, half your accounts, all of your account on cash.
And then the other half is margin, right?
So, and sometimes he would, you know, be 200%, one stock, a lot of money, maybe two or 80, 20 split between two stocks.
And I mean, that's how, you know, we had, we had a huge run -up.
I was one of, you know, So I became a portfolio manager in at the end of 98, beginning of 99 and got to participate on that, you know, 98 to 2000 run.
We started with around 15 million bucks.
I want to say a little less and finished up in March of 2000 with 860, if I'm not mistaken, about 850.
So we went from about 15 million to 850 million and about 2 and change.
So so in the C and the A, the current and annual earnings, does this system factor in whether they beat estimates or or factor in forward earnings projections by analysts?
Does that matter? So that was never, let's say, part of canceling in the book.
However, I think if you were to go talk to the IBD folks now or me or just about anyone, that that has definitely become part of it.
So if you were to go check out the latest edition, the orange, how to make money in stocks wallet, I don't remember.
I don't remember if it talks about analyst estimates, but I will tell you that is definitely an important part of it.
So while, again, it may not be in the textbook, it absolutely plays into what I'm doing.
And I know many of the guys who are employing the strategy overall, or at least on a basic level.
Okay. And then what does N stand for?
All right, so N is either a new product, new service, or new management, right?
So with Apple, it was the beginning, you know, we all remember the original white iPod with the disc on, right, the gray disc, and that is what morphed into our iPhone 16 with AI and better cameras than, you know, we probably ever used to have as a camera in general, right, or a video camera for that matter.
And so a new product, new service, new management, what that's going to do is help solidify, again, the quality of the company you're looking at.
Because you can have a smaller company that comes across, let's say, in a technical cycle.
I'm going to use a big, huge winner, iOmega, right?
The big hard drive stock way back when.
It's irrelevant. It's out of business now, right?
It's irrelevant technology now.
So there are those, right?
The iOmegas that pop up with something new, it's a huge success, and then it becomes an irrelevant technology, and maybe it gets bought up, or they move on to something else, or it's something like an iPhone that their product turns into the entire Apple architecture environment.
It took me a long time to finally get myself a MacBook, but once I opened that MacBook and it connected my iPhone, I couldn't believe it took me that long.
Like it's it's you can't imagine how unbelievable.
And, you know, and then I really begun to understand.
And so it doesn't you want to understand the, you know, the type of company you have.
But it is very important to know that the service or product that that company has is something that, you know, the phrase we use changing the way we work, live, play or communicate.
Right. Sometimes that will go on for years and years and decades.
Sometimes it'll be a flash in the pan kind of thing with technology, you know, and sometimes it'll be, you know, it can be the biotech.
Remember Regeneron with macular, what is it, macular degeneration.
I think the eye, you get a shot in your eye now.
It's expensive. I mean, what a great, great thing for them.
It's a few thousand bucks.
You get a shot in your eye and you go from blind to being able to see.
Right. And that's that's that, you know, so that's never going anywhere.
That's a new technology.
You know, everyone's going to want to be able to see until something right, newer and better comes along.
and makes that shot irrelevant.
I don't think that's happened yet.
But yeah, so you want to make sure that you have a very sound service or product behind those sales and or earnings, right?
Earnings are ideal and there are, and we can get it.
I don't want to get too far into, but there are times.
And again, this is a kind of a development outside of the book where, I'll tell you, a stock may not have those massive quarterly and annual earnings, but there are times where the big institutions put a premium on not even massive, powerful sales, but just steady, consistent, stable sales.
So stable revenues get a big premium from large institutions as well.
I'm just throwing that out there, right?
Because if you ever hear me talking about a leader that doesn't have the earnings, check out the sales.
That's usually going to be the story.
So then the S in can slim, does that?
Oh, so yeah. So actually that is supply demand.
I got into it. So let me back up a and and see this quarterly and annual earnings and sales and revenues along.
So let's back that along with your quarterly.
Like I said, you want to minimum was 25 % year over year quarterly growth.
I'm looking for triple digit.
Same sort of thing for sales.
So at a bare minimum, you want to see sales supporting those earnings, right?
I don't mind if I see super huge, stable, solid sales and funkiness going on with earnings.
That's why we look at non -gap versus gap so I get an idea of what's going on there.
However, if I see phenomenal earnings and sales that don't support that, that immediately raises a red flag, right?
If you got no money coming in and, you know, these magical, beautiful earnings, there's clearly something going on.
So that's why I always say at a bare minimum, if the earnings aren't there, they're not solid, or they look at, you know, you've got triple digit here, but then a loss and then solid double digit growth here followed.
As long as I, you know, if I'm looking at 4, 3 .7 billion this quarter, 3 .9 billion the next, 4 billion the next, then 3.
Right. And I'm just seeing a steady march from 3 .6.
And I'm seeing estimates look for it to slowly be at 5 and 6 billion, you know, going out into 2026, let's say.
That makes me OK with volatile quarter over quarter earnings.
However, if I saw earnings that look spectacular and these tiny little quarter -over -quarter revenues, that's a problem.
So what does the S stand for again?
So S, that stood for supply and demand.
And I would say, Bill would even tell you this.
He might even discuss it in the latest edition.
I would say prior to 2000s, when I, you know, that 98 through 2000 run, your ideal stock to have an explosive move would be more of the mid to mid to big cap areas or even small to mid, you know, meaning the smaller float and the smaller shares outstanding is just easier to move a stock up, especially
if it has big earnings and a big story.
Now, not so much. Now it's gotten to the point where, I mean, you can see these really big cap super liquid names.
If they've got something going on in the powerful earnings, they can move like those smaller float, smaller shares, outstanding stocks used to.
So I would tell you, and again, I haven't talked to them about this one in particular, but I would bet if you were to confirm it with the IBD folks, they would tell you that That is the one part of the acronym that matters.
I'm not going to say it doesn't matter because supply and demand is supply and demand.
It's easier to move a stock with less shares than more.
However, since the 2000s till now, the stocks that Bill would typically shy away from because they would move too slow because of their size can now move like they were much smaller.
Why that happens, I don't know.
It's just one of those, right?
So we just know that there's no reason to stay away from super large cap stocks because a Google can rip to the moon just like, let's say, a Shake Shack can, which obviously is a much smaller stock, or a Lululemon when it's newer and under high demand.
Something like that's going to typically move a lot sharper and faster in a shorter amount of time than an AMD or one of these really, maybe not even that one, an IBM or a G or even a GE, one of these bigger, slower, high -priced, super liquid names.
Not so much the case anymore.
You know, my guess is if you put AI, quantum computer story with GE, especially a GE spinoff or something, it'd go to the moon.
Doesn't matter. As far as the supply and demand thing goes, I don't even take that into consideration anymore, as long as there's momentum in the stock.
and I see that it is moving, and especially if I can look to the left historically and see that it's something that has had super sharp moves in the past, I don't care how many shares are outstanding.
What about the L? So that is leader or laggard, which is a big deal.
So the system basically, ultimately following the can slim set, you're trying to find the strongest stocks with the best can slim fundamentals, which we're going through now.
So I want the stocks with the highest quality canceling fundamentals that are the strongest stocks in the strongest groups, right?
And that's the technical part.
So again, just separating that as we're going through this, these are the fundamentals.
So leader or laggard, and that's why I'm saying this is more of, it's both quantitative and qualitative, right?
On a quantitative basis, it's very easy to separate out the leaders by earnings, price performance, relative strength versus your laggards.
From that perspective, it's very easy.
But leaders versus laggards, you want to understand more generally, what are traditional growth stocks, right?
Because when I see today, I look at what led the market today, or just on a very short term basis, I can look and see.
I have a watch list of all of the sector ETFs that I sort by price percentage changed.
And if you look, it was gold, Bitcoin, and I can just tell you, and a heartbeat, Builders software.
And for whatever reason, small caps and the industrials rallied today while the NASDAQ acted a bit weaker.
And so I'm constantly keeping track of that to see rotation and leadership, that's a very big thing.
So what is leading, let's say quantitatively, at least price performance wise, and then when I'm looking, are those groups that I consider growth or defensive?
And then if they are growth stocks, when I go look at those stocks, I'm immediately going to look at the top five or 10 highest relative strength stocks in those groups to see are they of that pan slim quality?
And if they are, what do they look like on the charts, which we haven't gotten to yet?
And, you know, what cycle of their overall move are they in?
Am I looking at a group of stocks that are coming out of early stage bases that look like there's, you know, they have similar patterns, tons of accumulation, great earnings, so on and so forth, right?
Is the rest of the sector looking good or are we looking at gold stocks, utility stocks and, you know, is it a flight to safety sort of thing?
And it's this balance of rotation back and forth and where, you know, understanding where everything is in those groups, you know, and what they are relative to the market.
That's a little long and convoluted, so please redirect me.
Yeah. So, okay. So let's jump to I.
Okay. So there we go.
Institutional sponsorship is the I.
And very basically, Do you want to see increasing sponsors?
So let's get to the why institutional sponsorship is important.
The majority of the activity, I'm going to tell you, 70 percent plus of the volume is coming from the institutions.
The idea is to find the best stocks you want.
So, A, not only do you want to find stocks that the institutions are increasing their positions in quarter over quarter, which you can also see depending on what database you have access to.
Ideally, you want to see high -quality institutions accumulating shares quarter over quarter.
In a stock, that's early in its move, right?
Because there does come a point where institutions have been accumulating quarter over quarter, and a stock is late in its move, and it might be telling you something else.
But you do want to see that large investors are accumulating your stock along with everything else.
And so that's where the eye comes in.
And I believe, you know, this is just something that's stuck in my head from sitting and meeting and meeting and having tons of conversations and doing the workshops with Bill, where he would tell you the S is fairly irrelevant these days.
He did put a ton of importance on institutional sponsorship, especially the quality of the institutions that are accumulating your shares.
He looked at that. That was a big deal to him.
I'll just leave it there without going on and on.
okay and then the last m and that is the market right the general market is it going up or down that's where you know we can discuss the follow -through day which was the technique bill used to determine well it was the let me say the quantitative side of determining the direction of the market there's a qualitative
side that is equally if not more important so m is the direction of the market.
And I'll give you a direct Bill O 'Neill quote.
He was a big baseball analogies were his favorite.
He'd tell you getting the direction of the market right is 50, at least half the ballgame, I think, is what it was.
Because if you don't have the direction of the market right, three out of four stocks follow the general direction of the market.
If you don't have that right, nothing else matters.
And how do you determine, I mean, what kind of technical indicator do you use to determine market direction?
Largely, the two indexes that I was taught to use by Bill and William O 'Neill, we all called them Bill, just to clarify, was the NASDAQ and the S &P 500.
Those are the two that matter.
So he looks at the NASDAQ volume, and believe it or not, S &P price versus NYSE volume, that is what he used.
He found that I get more relevant for whatever reason.
So let's just make that clear.
It does kind of make it a pain in the butt sometimes to have to specify different volume for your S &P chart.
But if you're ever wondering when he's counting distribution days on the S &P, he's using NYSE volume, not the S &P 500 volume.
But anyway, so if a market is in a downtrend, using either one of those indexes, either index, the NASDAQ or the S &P, has to have a follow -through day.
They don't both have to have one.
And what a follow -through day is, is when a market is falling and in a downtrend, you will be watching for the first day up.
And once you get your first up day in the middle of the market free -falling, that's your day one.
And you are going to count days until you either follow -through and a follow through day ideally happens between days four and seven after that first day up.
So the market needs to be up at least one point seven five percent on more volume than the prior day.
Volume doesn't have to be more than average.
It doesn't even have to be big.
It just has to be bigger than the prior day.
So an ideal follow through day, I say, happens on days four through seven because equally valid follow through days have happened on day 17 and 23.
And so then you go, well, that's great, right?
Because what I'll tell you is there's never been a new ball market or new uptrend ever in history that wasn't preceded by a follow through day.
However, and this is the big however, not every follow through day leads to a new ball market or significant uptrend.
And so what's the difference?
And this is where I say the learning, the, you know, the health breadth and that rotation of leadership makes all the difference.
That's why I always say, watch the leaders.
So I can tell you, you know, when you're in a sharp downtrend and you will get right.
So it makes it very difficult.
And this is why we're on day four through seven.
Days one, let's say days two and three, it's not uncommon to see a bear markets have some of the biggest rally back days for one, two or three days before they roll over and die again.
So for Bill, it was that fourth day on that 1 .75 % on Morvaud that put him out of that, you know, OK, it's just a two or three day thing that can die.
That is, you know, after doing all of the test, looking at all of the market bottoms, this was back tester, right?
It wasn't just an observation.
He actually had me, Mike Webster, Charles, and everyone that came before us and everyone that's there, you know, well, not now, but, you know, go through and test all of this.
So the deciding factor is going to be, it's always going to come down to the qualitative, right?
It's very easy. Everyone can figure out when a follow through day happens based on the quantitative rules.
And then it's going to be what do leaders look like?
How are they acting?
How broad are they?
What stages are they in?
And that sort of thing.
And that will always, always, always be the difference.
I'm not going to tell you I can get every single follow through day, right?
Which ones work, which ones fail, but I can give you a great idea of which ones are going to work and which ones aren't based on action of the leaders.
How would this system characterize the current market that we're in on January 14th, Well, I'll tell you right now, I got pushed to cash towards the end of last year, just based on my system, a lot of what I have.
In general, I used the 21 -day simple moving average as a line in the sand for me.
So once, you know, the stocks start breaking in a lot, depending on personality of a stock is a very big deal.
So if I'm using a 21 -day moving average, the stock, it has to be a stock that actually respects that average.
Otherwise, I'm going to pick another one.
In many cases, I'll find many stocks just happen to respect that 10.
And when they break it, they'll fall to the 21.
And if you want to get fancy, I have found when they break the 21 simple, the 23 exponential will pick them up.
Same thing when stocks I have found break the 50 day simple, the 65 day exponential will pick them up and I will make.
But what I'm getting at is depending on the personality of the stock, I have a very specific line in the sand relative to my performance in the account in that stock and where it that stock is overall in its run versus where I would expect from it.
So my understanding that part of the process of acquiring stocks through the canceling method is connected to the concept of scaling in.
Yep. So how much to scale in and when I mean, how do we scale in?
So this is one of those things that I'd say still works, but much less so than it did in 99.
In 1999, you could buy breakouts, chase strength.
I would even tell you in 99, if you refused to chase what looked like an extended name, you were just left in the dust, which is a bad habit to pick up 20 years ago because sometimes it still seems to take over my brain and I will tend to buy something more extended than I should.
Anyway, so in that respect, things have changed.
It's certainly not as easy.
You can't just buy any growth stock with a song you can, right?
If they're liquid enough and you get it in the right environment on the right day, you can buy a breakout, set yourself a 3 % to 5 % sell stop and never look back again.
That, I would say, doesn't happen so much anymore.
I would say over the last 20 years or so, it has gotten significantly more volatile.
There was a time where I felt like I'd be on 200 % margin and I needed another 200%.
Now, when I'm 130 % long, I feel like I'm at that 200%, you know, and I'm on day trading buying power.
So, I mean, and maybe that's come with age, right?
You know, I started with O 'Neill when I was 26, now I'm 53.
So, you know, maybe that's part of it.
I like a whole lot less aggravation now.
I definitely, so that doesn't work as well anymore.
I would not suggest waiting for a stock to break out and then adding higher, right?
If you were to follow the book by the rules, let's say you found a cup and handle base and the pivot point or the buy point on a cup and handle base is when the stock goes through the high of the handle on big volume.
And that used to work phenomenally well.
And I would have to tell you now with the volatility, while that stock still works within In the realm of the rules, and I don't know how detailed you want me to get on this, meaning that I have seen stock, they will break out, fail.
It takes the third and fourth breakout.
But after they fail, assuming they were a canceling stock that broke out of what we would call an early stage base, even though it took the third or fourth breakout, the failures never took it more than 7 % or 8 % below the buy point.
And the reason I say this is because that 7 % to 8 % that you hear all of FinTwit talk about as their max doll stop, and a lot of it comes from how to make money in stocks.
So there's one reason for that.
That 7 % to 8 % is mathematically where once you start losing more, once you start getting close to 9%, 10 and more, the bounce back becomes significantly harder.
But that's only the first reason.
And so for that reason alone, you never want to let a loss get more than 7 % or 8 % away from you, because it's harder and harder to remember, you know, you lose 50%, it's 100 % gain to get even again, right?
And so the further you get below 7 % and 8%, the faster that sort of flip -flop happens.
So a question, do you think Cancelium is a good system to automate?
No. Why is that? I just don't.
I honestly, I think maybe you could it would take consistent updating based on the environment.
I don't think you could turn it into a black box.
I think we've not. I think many have tried and it just doesn't.
There's too much. Qualitative analysis to confirm the quantitative for the computer to do it for you.
I'd say environment makes a big difference.
the personality of your stocks.
And what I was getting at, progressive exposure, and I'll keep it very simple, whereas Bill used to talk about you buy a breakout and then you add a little more, up 2 .5%, and then you add more up another 2 .5 % and you let it ride.
In today's market, that's a great way to get yourself absolutely shaken out and beat up your account to have the stock ultimately never fall that 7 % or 8 % anyway.
So there's a lot of that goes on.
There's a lot. So that's why I'll tell you the environment, the kind of stock you're picking, and then based on its personality, how you're buying it makes a difference, right?
So there's going to be certain stocks that I buy on strength, certain ones that I accumulate on weakness.
I mean, I've gotten to the point now where the personality of a stock is of key importance to me.
I'm only trading for me because I figured this out over time that tight liquid stocks that respect their moving averages and have an ATR of so little are perfect for me.
And I'll give you a perfect one.
I always go to it. ServiceNow, N -O -W.
Look at a weekly and a monthly chart of that stock.
It looks impossible to lose money on.
One of the best stocks out there.
And thing goes straight up.
I have probably traded.
I've traded it countless times.
And if things steal money from me, I can't trade it.
You know what I mean?
So that's what I mean by personality, I can pick the best stock in the market and lose money trading it every time, right?
With, you know, even if Bill was buying it and kicking butt, like, you know, so that's why, you know, you were, and this is a whole part that isn't discussed at length, but I think is the whole psychology of trading, right?
I can put you in the room next to Bill, you can try and copy him and there are so many things that can go wrong.
He could give a hundred traders, a hundred winning trades in a row and 90 % of them will lose money.
So I did a little search for funds, which trade this can slim method because it's been around for so long.
And it's probably very well known given how long the book has been out.
And I only was able to find one fund, one ETF called the IBD 50 ETF.
Do you know of any others that are that are traded?
And if not, I tell you this most funds hide their chart guy.
Okay. I'm going to tell you no joke.
Okay. So at my fund, I was the chart guy.
I, um, we had, uh, four fundamental analysts that were with us for two of the six years because, um, I guess my, my partner, David had the fundamentals down pretty solid.
He was very lucky. He was taught by Jeff Fennick, who was the portfolio manager of Fidelity Magellan Fund way back when.
If you look him up, Jeff Fennick, he was kind of a big deal.
He's the one who taught my old partner, David.
It was kind of cool.
So Jeff actually invested in our fund.
And so in running that, so let me tell you, so I wound up becoming David's partner through William O 'Neill, right?
He was a Fidelity Portfolio Manager and client of O 'Neill.
He actually paid to speak to, I don't want to start blasting out names, one of the bigger guys at the firm.
And so that's who he tried to hire away, someone above me who didn't want to leave.
And so I was introduced to David.
But here's what I learned.
So even though he was a big growth investor and had a huge respect for what we did.
Right. He wanted a chart guy.
But there are so I don't think I could name you another guy or at least that would say it in public that they look at charts.
It's like I can't tell you how many meetings where there were plenty of meetings where there were institutional guys.
Right. We had a lot of fun to fund investors that were very interested in what I had to say.
And there were others that wanted didn't want to hear a word about charts.
In fact, it would have scared them away.
And what we did was very, very largely based on what I did, which Mel did very well with what David learned from his mentor, Jeff, whereas mine was Bill.
And the combination of his fundamentals with my technicals, right?
The chart guy worked magically.
We did very well. But I will tell you, there were meetings where David would be like, Ross, yeah, you don't have to come to this meeting.
You understand, right?
Right. Because they want the chart guy will send them running and they think it's like this hocus pocus.
They don't want to hear about this line and that line in the volume and more than anything.
And I'll tell you, this really became a big deal and related and unrelated.
But after, you know, Bernie Madoff and the whole big crash in 2008, they don't I mean, if you don't have a fundamental guy with, you know, a Harvard, five guys from Harvard with, because when something goes wrong and inevitably it will, and you wind up in court, they don't want the hocus pocus chart
guy getting laughed at by the judge.
They want a smart guy from, you know, a big fund and Harvard Business School that can tell you coherently why they picked that investment based on numbers and not this line and that line.
Are you with me? So that actually, so I would tell you this while I am aware of because being in institutional sales, you will find out that.
So I used to be on the phone calling.
It's different. I was smiling and dialing, talking to guys.
And you're like, oh, William O 'Neill.
Oh, you mean the chart guy, right?
It's funny. I'd call big hedge fund, mutual fund, whatever it was.
Oh, the chart guy. And some people you could get through to and explain, yes, the chart guy, but let me explain to you how and why it's important and it could help you and why it is worth understanding supply and demand, in addition to all of your Harvard fundamental education, which I'm not poo -pooing
at all. It's fantastic.
However, it goes hand in hand with the technicals.
The guys who combine both do far better.
I would say this, so the technical part, I think a lot, you know, is used by many and not talked about because it's looked at as, you know, hocus pocus that they don't want to admit to their clients.
I'm just being honest.
And yeah, I mean, if you were to go out as a young guy and try and find at a job, like you're saying, at like a can slim fund, good luck.
You might find a few small hedge funds if you really look hard, but it is.
Yeah, so that is exactly right.
So while a lot of the technical knowledge is applied, there are very few guys out there that, and if you think about it, what Bill's whole thing is looking at historical earnings.
Every fundamental analyst out there is on a spreadsheet right now, projecting earnings three, six, and nine months out.
They couldn't give a rat's butt about what they did last quarter, the quarter before, and the quarter before that.
So when you tell them that you don't even have to predict anything, you can just look at what they've already did.
They want to hear none of that.
I'd like to jump into some of the criticisms about CanSlim.
One criticism says, CanSlim prioritizes growth stocks with strong earnings and sales growth.
This can lead to an overexposure to highly volatile stocks, particularly in bull markets.
I'd like to get your take on that.
It absolutely can. This is what I'd like to say.
I think the stock picking is the easy fun part of it the part that matters is risk management position sizing although i would say risk management could be a whole big book in and of itself if you are not careful about what you were doing how you were buying and where you were buying and i used to tell
people this there was a point you know especially back then when i was uh braver and younger and i would try and emulate bill i'd have my account 200 % long you know 180 % of my money in this stock in 20 % in that one or 170 and 30, you know, I don't have a penny left to spend.
And that would look absolutely insane to the average guy, right?
Especially an institutional, they're like, it looks stupid.
It looks dangerous, right?
Ross, you're in two stocks, these things could fall apart.
But the way that I bought them, I'm actually managing risk and have much better control of my risk than your guy that's buying 120 different stocks, you know, diversity.
Are you ready for this one?
Diversification is a hedge against ignorance.
And I know that can sound egotistical, but as long as you are managed, and this was, I learned this from Bill, as long as you are buying those stocks right, right, you are starting at the beginning, building exposure progressively, correctly, ahead of time, it is absolutely possible to continue to do.
I can tell you from this year alone, my business partners who are also very good at that, I'll tell you one in particular, he does an incredible job of, again, he's taken the methodology, made it his own, and I have yet to see anyone do it better.
another uh criticism talks about market timing dependency this method emphasizes buying during uptrends and exiting during market weaknesses uh requiring precise market timing yes it does right and it's funny you know i'll tell you i did you know not harvard but university of florida business school
where yeah we read a random walk down wall street and you'll inevitably have a professor if not more than one tell you that it's impossible to time the market and i can tell you with the utmost confidence that it is not impossible to time the market.
If trading, you've got to treat it like your profession and not like the casino.
I would say if you don't have the full time to dedicate to it, I mean, at the end of the day, listen, Warren Buffett will tell you the same thing as Bill O 'Neill, and he even has this in his book, right?
If you don't have the time to really dedicate to it as a profession, your best bet is to buy funds, high -quality funds, and ETFs.
Buffett, who's the complete opposite, he's a value guy.
He's buying Goldman Sachs when it's beat up in 2008 based on fundamentals, not the charts.
But they'll both tell you 90 plus percent of the professional money managers on Wall Street don't beat the market.
So what makes you think you're going to be able to do it part time by the you know either by yourself some index etfs or if you really want to get fancy you can get yourself a morning star subscription and you know find find the stocks with the the best long -term five -star ratings doesn't matter what they've
done over the last one three and five years you want to know what these guys have done the last 10 15 20 years and you just keep buy them high buy them low listen i've done it for my brother who hates risk.
And honestly, it is so aggravation free.
Sometimes I wish, you know, why don't I just do that and add 10 years to my heart?
You know what I mean?
The older I get, the less aggravation I'm into.
So yeah, I mean, I've been very lucky.
I think I've done a very good job of doing incredibly well when the market's been good.
And I've never sustained a terrible drawdown.
Following the rules has always gotten me out somewhere in and around the top.
But it's been my career.
I have the luxury of having Bill O 'Neill hold my hand and teach me every day for five years, right?
And then go apply that running a hedge fund for six years with a guy who was one of the more brilliant guys at Fidelity.
I've had a lot of luck running into the right people along the way.
So I would say this, I'm smart enough, but if I can do it, I know everyone says this, anybody can learn to do it.
I'm not off the chart brilliant, but smart enough to understand and determined and patient enough to do the work.
But I will also say nobody is immune to having a tough time when the market is great.
I've watched Bill O 'Neill struggle and how he handled it to come out of a tough time.
I got a little bit squirrely, let's say, at the end of last year and shaved a solid 20 % or so off the top of my account.
You know, in my opinion, underperformed on a market in a market that I should have done much better at in last year.
However, over time, if you do get the rules down and, you know, you have the time and patience to be able to do it, the numbers have worked out well for me.
And hence, I'm still able to survive in the business, knock on wood.
Thank you. Now back to the chat with our guests.
When the system got you out of the market back in December, you said, do you scale out of the market or is it all in or all out?
No, I scale. I absolutely.
I mean, there are times where there's very, very rarely a time where I'll just push the button and sell everything.
I used to do that and I learned that that rarely does, you know, I usually wind up sorry from doing that.
So I have a rule. You shouldn't, don't buy a stock unless you know exactly where your sell stop is and why.
And that means if you're wrong and if you're right.
You know, you want to know, have an idea of where you're selling on the way up and if you're wrong on the way down.
I tend to use moving averages.
My goal used to be like Bill because I've watched him and David Feldman, who's still holding a giant position in Apple from 2010.
And even with him holding my hand, I can't do it, right?
So there's a difference there, whereas me, I'm looking at the personality of a stock.
If I notice a stock nine times out of 10 when it breaks, it's 10 -day on big volume, goes to that 21 or 23.
And then when it breaks to 21, it goes to the 50.
I'm usually selling at least a third, if not half, depending on where that stock is.
How much has it run?
How far extended? Is it above its short -term moving averages?
So on and so forth.
to where I used to try and hang on to a position as long as it was still profitable above the 50 -day moving average.
In my old age, I have changed that to the 21 -day simple, unless it's a stock that shows me it respects the 23 exponential, which is just a hair below.
But it's very personality -based.
So yeah, I'm no longer, I'm scaling out.
I'm not using a five or an eight -day you know, moving average, which some people might.
So I'm usually between the 10 and 21.
I get a break of the 21.
If it's super huge, and let's say it's broken in other areas, maybe I'll get out.
But nine times out of 10, when a stock breaks a moving average, I let it be for that day.
And then the very next day, if it doesn't, if it undercuts the low from the prior day, I just get out intraday.
Otherwise, I'm usually waiting till the end of the day to and four sell stops, because in a bull market, a lot of times you'll get that last 5, 10 minutes of the day that just saves everything.
So I'm always trying to give the trend the benefit of the doubt.
So in general, unless it's like one of those big breaks, I wait for the second day.
And if it undercuts the low from the first break, I'm out intraday.
I don't wait for the end of the day because I don't want it to break and then wind up at the 50 day.
Otherwise, if I want it as long as it doesn't undercut below of that close, right?
So let's say we close below the 21 day today on a stock.
I'm not selling the remainder of my position.
Let's say I've already sold half below the 10.
And I treat all the moving averages like this.
I'm just using the 21 as the example.
The second day, as long as it doesn't force me out undercutting the low of the close below.
And you'd be surprised in a great market how many times this rule keeps me in a stock, giving it a chance to close one day below And then using the low of that day as my stop for the rest of the position, it's amazing how many times that keeps me in a great stock by a hair.
So given how long the canceling method has been around, for many decades, wouldn't it lose effectiveness over time because so many traders know about it?
You would you would think so.
And I think really what it's done is it's made it.
So you have to it really requires you to do some observation and making it your own around your personality.
And what I mean by that is there are guys that are going to be able to trade the service now is of the world while I, you know, and and because of their personality, the way they view things, which is going to be totally different than me.
and they'll be able to make a fortune doing that, I may use it a different way.
So I would say in the beginning where you could just kind of follow the rules of the book, honestly, and get away with buying the bridesmaids, let's say, right, as they broke out because it was a leading stock that did a similar thing.
I think the easy got washed out.
But if you start to watch and understand the stock's personality.
The breakouts all still work.
I've watched and wondered.
I will look and see, OK, this stock broke out and failed twice or three times and it finally worked on the third or fourth time.
And I'm constantly looking, going back to see after it broke out, did any of the pullbacks come to that 7 % to 8 %?
And I get so many times, it doesn't now so technically that means you could still be holding that stock now whether you should still be holding it is a different story because while that stock may still take another failed breakout or two before it finally works what if it takes um nine weeks and you
know you're missing everything else that's working now right so there's a lot of that also it does force you so there is that proactive, okay, I bought this stock, I expected it to do this, it's not working, it's time to move on, right?
So again, a lot of it does take time and experience.
Bill would tell you it'd take you at least three years to really get it down and do well.
I would say it takes getting a few cycles under you.
I can't tell you how many times I heard the best guys tell, rut.
I'd ask a question and they'd tell me, just watch the leaders, watch the leaders.
And that always feels like just a brush off.
OK, yeah, great. I'll watch the leaders.
OK, let me give you now.
Right. That kind of thing.
But it really does come down to, you know, what do they mean by that?
What are because the real leaders, there's far and few between of the real leaders.
When I'm looking at what I would consider a big group of stocks, I don't know, I think if I look at the entire database right now, I don't know, it's around 11 or 12 ,000 stocks, let's say, at any given time on a really strong market that's really super broad, my list is about 200 stocks out of close
to 12 ,000, right? OK, so this is a good question, follow -up question here.
How often or do you know people who will say, well, five or six of the seven were met by these stocks?
And so that should be enough.
Or do you just simply wait, patiently wait until you find all seven criteria?
Oh, no, no, no. So I will absolutely.
So with time, I will anticipate.
And so this is all part of it.
So let's say I see XYZ quantum stock breaking out.
Now I'm looking at the quantum, I'm just making this up, the quantum stock group.
And I see the next five or six top RS stocks with some earnings that are, you know, have a reasonable price and liquidity to them are forming similar patterns, appear to be showing signs of accumulation, high relative strength.
And let's say it doesn't quite have the earnings yet, but it does seem to be a new, young, growing company.
And it does have the story.
And the analysts aren't looking for it to earn money until the middle of 2026.
That's still fine enough by me.
If I can look at it and go, OK, this looks like it has a very similar, reasonable, sound story.
Their revenues are X, Y, Z on a relative, you know, and that sort of thing.
And I, yeah, I will absolutely in it.
And wow, look at this pattern.
It's nice and tight here.
It's doing all, you know, so I have very specific things that we look for that indicate accumulation where, I mean, that's a big part of what I was getting to buying breakouts.
Textbook breakouts is a very difficult thing to make happen now.
Yet that I think is, I'm not going to tell you the effectiveness of being able to just get away from buying, get away with buying a breakout and having immediate success.
is much lower now than it used to be.
However, those breakouts still seem to ultimately work.
They just not as quickly for one reason or another.
So yeah, it takes a lot of, you know, that's why with the time, I'd say three, even five years, a couple cycles to get a feel for the different personalities of stocks, how rotation looks as a market is putting in a bottom, as it's going through a powerful uptrend, as it's topping.
Really, that is what's helped me more than anything else.
The road process, because I'm, again, I'm very lucky.
I love it, so I consider myself very lucky that I wake up, I do it on the weekends as well.
Saturdays and Sundays, I'm running screens.
I'm constantly tabbing through charts.
The good ones, I'm adding to a list.
I'm drawing alerts.
The bad ones, I'm taking off my list.
And by the nature of that process, It's impossible for me not to know where the money's flowing and going, right?
So when money's coming into quantum and gold and flowing out of what I can see it.
So today when money's coming into, you can pull them up, look at the building stocks and some of the software as it tries to shape up off the bottom with the IWM and I guess like Bitcoin today and the gold stocks.
So I immediately go and look, okay, so the, okay, maybe we've got, it looks like a double pot I'm going into.
Do we have what looks like a legit undercut and rally could be going on in the software sector?
And then I might go into the software sector and break it down by industry groups, right?
Security software, database software, whatever it is, and see what are the top performing or the highest relative strength stocks in those groups doing.
And I'm constantly going, you know, that's all I do all day is make lists.
And if you saw the amount of alerts that I set and reset on a daily basis, you'd wonder how they didn't put me in a loony bin 20 flagged.
Well, great. Ross, well, to wrap things up, anything you've been working on lately kind of outside of the direct trading that you've been talking about?
You know, we're constantly working on content at TraderLion, you know, DeepView related as ours.
So we've got some new releases coming out over the first quarter.
Deep View, that should be awesome if you're into the charting and screening thing.
And then very related to this, I started and I have put on hold for the time being because things have gotten busy, but I am working on a CanSlim modernized course, which is going to be all of everything that I do that I've noticed that I have found different and new.
So everything that I employ that I find like like we're discussing that still works now.
And then all the stuff that I have added to make it work better for me.
Thank you, Ross, for coming on chat with traders.
Thanks for having me.
I really appreciate you.
Yeah. Great. How can our listeners get in touch with you?
um my email is would work ross at trader lion .com and um you know either of the websites trader line or deep view if you ever have questions about deep view that one's if you send it to hello at deep view i will wind up seeing that as well so hello at deep view .com or ross at trader lion .com and i will see
your message fantastic thanks for coming on the show all right thank you so much again you've reached the end of this episode of chat with traders but rest assured there are more episodes loaded with real market insight and zero hype on the way soon so to stay updated with each great new release subscribe to the podcast and itunes and we'd love it if you'd leave
a rating and review we'll catch you next time on chat with traders Thank you.
Thank you.
