294 · Ross Haber - Stock Leaders and Timeless Strategies Still Effective Today
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just watch the leaders, watch the leaders. And that always feels like just a brush off. Okay. Yeah. Great. I'll watch the leaders. Okay. Let me give you the now, right? That kind of thing. But it really does come down to, you know, what, what, 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 a, 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, 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 investing

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 1 to 3 to a 2 to 1 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 TraderLion. 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 in 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 sell 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 at 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. Absolutely.

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 Fellman, who used to be the mid cap portfolio manager of Fidelity's mid cap 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 it, over those years, you know, I had started a,

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 TraderLion started about a little over six years ago, DeepView's about two years in the making. And so-

That's it from kid until now as my hair is falling out and turning gray. 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. 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, I generated a great track record. So when that

When that happened, I was doing very well on 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 were absolutely encouraged to trade as an employee there, however, you had to have your account at StockMart, 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 know what it was and really get it down in detail was a much –

more difficult task than it is today. I would say so while you might hear a lot of people discussing breakouts don't work anymore or canceling is old or that sort of thing, what I would say is this, is it was old before Bill O'Neill started it. It came from Jesse Livermore, Nicholas Darvis, and all of those older traders. Bill basically expanded on it as

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, which, 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 was one of the, I

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's going up 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 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 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 put in a bulletin.

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 said,

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 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. OK, distribution counting distribution days work 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 better.

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 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 even a focus anymore.

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, ahead of 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

I know guys in the business who are extremely successful who have been at it from the beginning who will tell you why, you know, why every why does everybody do it? Because they work as much as I'd like to tell you that, you know, maybe that is what has made it so that distribution days are

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. CANSLIM is the acronym, C-A-N-S-L-I-M, that represents the seven, is it, most common characteristics that...

So 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 market makers, HFT and Algo are your new market makers. Whereas I can tell you there, if you looked at a level two, there were before SOZ 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 corner,

of the bid in 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 everybody was a market maker and now largely, so it makes sense. The HFT and Algo guys are highly dependent on computers

AI. 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, I want to say manipulate without making it a bad thing because they're not doing anything wrong. 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've

I got paid 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, 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

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 work 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 built, that stuff all works. I mean, that's my moneymaker. It was in the night, you know, 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, or how it becomes relevant in a different way. Let's say I'm watching the VIX or other sentiment indicators. I've

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 to me. So 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 IAA investment sentiment, you know, the newsletter writers, bullish bearish.

that sort of thing. And so for, 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, 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

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 can slim strategy? Chat with Traders is brought to you by TastyTrade.

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Awesome question, and I will tell you, extremely important. If you were to talk to Bill O'Neill up to the end, he would tell you it's 70% fundamentals, 30%.

And for him especially, 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 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 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, you know, high quality institutions that the majority of those stocks had value.

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.

Well, we'll hang on there for a second. So anyway, on the earnings front, I'm personally, you know, I've got the basic rules. CanSlim tells you at least 25% quarterly year over year. On an annual basis, you got a little, it's a little easier on the restriction. You're at about 20% for annual.

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 percent 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 that gets rid of all the tiny, low-priced junk. But the high-quality stuff, those were what you're looking for in terms of earnings. I mean, right there, and also, if you put all your money in, if you're going to be putting half your account, and if you're Bill O'Neill, half your accounts, all of your account on

of cash and then the other half is margin. And sometimes he would be 200% one stock

a lot of money, maybe two, or 80-20 split between two stocks. And I mean, that's how we had a huge run up. So I became a portfolio manager at the end of 98, beginning of 99, and got to participate on that 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 80%.

860, if I'm not mistaken, about 860. So we went from about 15 million to 850 million in about two and change. So in the C and the A, the current and annual earnings, does this system factor in whether they beat estimates or factor in forward earnings projections by analysts? Does that matter? So that was never...

let's say part of CanSlim 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. Well, 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, um,

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, yeah.

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, you know, their product turns into, you know, the entire Apple architecture environment, right? If you've got...

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. You can't imagine how unbelievable. And then I really begun to understand. And so you want to understand 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 MagiPen

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, 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, I don't think that's happened yet. But yeah, so you want to make sure that you have a,

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, you know, 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 stand for SLIM? Oh, so yeah. So actually that is supply demand. I got into it. So let me back up. A and C is 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 these magical, beautiful earnings, there's clearly something going on. So that's why I always say at a bare minimum, if the earnings...

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 four, 3.7 billion this quarter, 3.9 billion the next, 4 billion the next, then three point, right? And I'm just seeing a steady march from 3.6 and I'm seeing estimates look for it to slowly be at five and 6 billion, you know, going out into 2026, let's say.

that makes me okay with volatile quarter over quarter earnings. However, if I saw, you know, earnings that look spectacular and these tiny little quarter over quarter revenues, right, that's a problem. So what does the S stand for again? So S, I would say, so that's,

for supply and demand. And I would say, you know, 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 big cap areas or even small to mid, you know, meaning the smaller float and

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 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 Google can rip to the moon just like, let's say,

A Shake Shack 10, 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, or maybe not even that one, an IBM or even a GE, one of these bigger, slower, high-priced super liquid stocks.

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. It's

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...

So ultimately, following the CAN SLIMs, 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 CAN SLIM fundamentals that are the strongest stocks in the strongest groups, right? And that's the technical part. So again, let's start 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, you know,

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, you know, you don't want to, 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, you know,

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, you know, five or 10 highest relative strength stocks in those groups to see, um,

Are they of that hand slim quality? And if they are, what do they look like on the charts, which we haven't gotten to yet? And 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 they have similar patterns, tons of accumulation, great earnings, so on and so forth? Is the rest of the sector looking good? Or are we looking at gold stocks, utility stocks? And 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 was 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, 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% plus of the volume is coming from the institutions. The idea is to find the best stocks. So A, not only do you want to find stocks that the institutions support,

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 I comes in. And 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

He looked at the, 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. You know, 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 indicators 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, you know, 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 bull 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 bull market or significant uptrend. And so what's the difference? And this is where I say the learning, the health,

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 panic.

You know, bear markets have some of the biggest rallyback 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 Morvot that put him out of that, you know, OK, it's just a two or three day thing that can die. That is fantastic.

After doing all of the tests, looking at all of the market bottoms, this was backtested, 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, well, not now, but 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 mean, I'm not, I'll tell you right now, I've got pushed to cash towards the end of last year, just based on my system, a lot of what I have. In general, I use the 21 days simple moving average as a line in the sand for me. So once, you know, the stocks start breaking and a lot of depending on,

Personality of the stock is a very big deal. So if I'm using a 21-day moving average, the stock has to be a stock that actually respects that average. Otherwise, I'm going to pick another one. In many cases, I'll find stock. 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 what

where 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, some 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 three to 5% sell stop and never look back again, right?

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% and I'm on day trading buying power. So I mean, and maybe that's come with age, right? 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? You know, if you were to follow the trend

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 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, right? You know, it takes the third and fourth breakout, but after they fail, assuming they were a canceling stock that broke out of a first, you know, what we would call an early stage base, even though it took the third or fourth breakout, the failures never took it more than seven 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 is their max sell 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. So for that reason alone, you never want to let a loss get more than seven or eight percent away from you because it's harder and harder to remember. You know, you lose 50 percent. It's 100 percent gain to to get even again. Right. And so the further you get below seven and eight percent, the faster that become that that sort of flip flop happens. So question, do you think canceling 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, whereas, 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 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. 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. The big, bad, and there are, 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.

chart of that stock. It looks impossible to lose money on, one of the best stocks out there. And the thing goes straight up. I have probably traded, I've traded it countless times, and the thing steals 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? Even if Bill was buying it and kicking butt, so that's why I would

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 100 traders 100 winning trades in a row and 90 percent 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 IBD50 ETF. Do you know of any others that are traded? And if not, why? I will tell you this. Most funds hide their chart guide.

Okay. I'm going to tell you no joke. Okay. So at my fund, I was the chart guy. We had four fundamental analysts that were with us for two of the six years because I guess my partner, David, had the fundamentals down pretty solid. He was very lucky. He was taught by

Jeff Vinnick, who was the portfolio manager of Fidelity Magellan Fund way back when. If you look him up, Jeff Vinnick, 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.

So 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 fund to fund investors that were very interested in what I had to say. And there were others that didn't wanna 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, you know, his mentor, you know, 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, you know, David would be like, Ross, yeah, you don't have to come to this meeting. You understand, right? Right. Because they want, 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, you

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. You know, 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. You know, I'd call big hedge fund, mutual fund, whatever it was. Oh, the chart guy. And some 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

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 a job like you're saying, 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 builds 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 braver and younger and I would try and emulate Bill, I'd have my account 200% long, you know, and

180% of my money in this stock and 20% in that one, or 170 and 30, I don't have a penny left to spend. And that would look absolutely insane to the average guy, especially an institutional where they're like, it looks stupid. It looks dangerous. Ross, you're in two stocks. These things could fall apart. But

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. 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 I've been, you know, are also very good at that. I'll tell you one in particular, you know, 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 criticism talks about market timing dependency. This method emphasizes buying during uptrends and exiting during market weaknesses, 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 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 because

And I can tell you with the utmost confidence that it is not impossible to time the market. If trading's cut, 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

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?

either buy yourself some index ETFs, or if you really want to get fancy, you can get yourself a Morningstar subscription and find the stocks with the best long-term five-star ratings. It 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 buying high, buying 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 loss.

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, you know, was one of the more brilliant guys at Fidelity. I've had a lot of luck, you know, running into the right people along the way. So I would say this, I'm smart enough, but

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, um,

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, if you do get the rules down and, you know, you have the time and patience to be able to do it, the number, you know, the numbers have worked out well for me, you know, and hence I'm still able to survive in the business knock on wood.

Excuse the last interruption here. This is Tessa. We hope you're enjoying this episode so far. If you love the podcast, please give Chat with Traders the best review you can on whatever platform you're listening from. This will help us to keep the episodes coming. Also, if you haven't subscribed to our email list, please hop on to chatwithtraders.com and click on subscribe so we can keep you posted of information that may be of importance. Thank you. Now back to the chat with our guest.

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? Nope, I absolutely, I mean, there are times where, I mean, 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. I usually wind up sorry from doing that. So I have a rule. 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 want to 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 the 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 the 21, it goes to the 50. I'm usually selling at least a third, if not half, depending on.

where that stock is, right? How much has it run? How far extended is it above its short-term moving averages? You know, so on and so forth. So 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 days simple, unless it's a stock that shows me it respects the 23 exponential, right. Which is just a hair below, but I'm, it's very personality based. So yeah, I'm no longer, I'm scaling out. Um,

I'm not using a five or an eight day 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 other areas, maybe I'll get out. But nine times out of 10, when a stock breaks a moving average, I let it go.

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 enforce all stops because in a bull market, a lot of times you'll get that last five, 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, I want it to, as long as it doesn't undercut below of that close, right? So let's say we close below the 21 data 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 if,

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 like 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 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 nows of the world while i you know and and because of their personality the way they view things um which is going to be totally different than me and they'll they'll be able to make a fortune doing that i may um do

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 way

got washed out. But if you start to watch and understand a stock's personality, the breakouts all still work. I've watched and wondered, like the ones 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 can't say. 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 nine weeks and 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. 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 me, 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. Okay. Yeah. Great. I'll watch the leaders. Okay. Let me give it to you now. Right. That kind of thing. But it really does come down to, you know, what, what, 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 a, 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, on a

really strong market that's really super broad, my list is about 200 stocks out of close to 12,000, right? Okay, so this is a good question, follow-up question here. How often or do you know of people who will say, well, five or six of the seven were met by these stocks? And so that should be enough. Or

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, right, I will anticipate. And so this is all part of it. So let's say I see XYZ quantum stock breaking out, right? Now I'm looking at the, 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 the

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 are looking, 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, okay, this looks like it, it has a very similar reasonable sound story. Their revenues are X, Y, Z on a relative date, you know, and that sort of thing.

And 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 under, you know, to get a feel for the different personalities of stocks, how rotation looks as a market is putting in a bottom, as it's put, you know, going through a powerful uptrend as it's topping. Really, that is what's helped me more than anything else.

The rote 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 is coming into quantum and gold and flowing out of what I can see it. So today, when money is 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 bottom going into, 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

And I'm constantly going through, you know, that's all I do all day is make, uh, make lists and re 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 25. Well, great. Um, uh, Ross, well, to wrap things up, um, anything you've been working on lately, kind of outside of the direct trading that you've been talking about? Um, yeah,

We're constantly working on content at TraderLion. DeepView related is ours. So we've got some new releases coming out over the first quarter. DeepView, 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 can slim 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. Oh, dude, thanks for having me. I really appreciate you. Yeah. Great. How can our listeners get in touch with you?

My email would work, Ross at TraderLion.com. And, you know, either of the websites, TraderLion or DeepView, if you ever have questions about DeepView, that one's, if you send it to hello at DeepView, I'll wind up seeing that as well. So hello at DeepView.com or Ross at TraderLion.com and I will see your message. Fantastic. Thanks for coming on the show. All right. Thank you so much, Ian.

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