All right. So I'm getting settled back in here after the 3-day holiday weekend and I can tell you that it felt a little slow today. So in this episode, I'm going to walk you through how to day trade around stock market holidays. Each year we have about 10 Stock Market holidays.

which means out of 52 weeks of the Year, 10 of those weeks are going to be short weeks because of a holiday. So roughly once every five weeks we are dealing with a short week. and these shorten weeks do have an impact on day trading. Now you might think they wouldn't really make much of a difference, but what's interesting is that so much of trading is based on sentiment, what people think stocks are going to do, and the excitement and the enthusiasm of the potential that a stock may have, especially after seeing some recent stocks make big moves.

So what ends up happening during a holiday is you get this extended sort of resting period. And this is especially true when a holiday falls on a Monday or a Friday and you have a 3-day weekend. First of all, I will tell you that in my entire career of trading, I have taken one week off only twice. So the longest I have ever gone without trading is 5 days plus the weekend on the front and the back of that.

so nine days and it was not easy when I came back after that 5 day just that week off. I felt very very Rusty I felt like I was disconnected I was sort of out of touch and I was like I never want to do that again because being sharp is really important. but you know what that happens on a slightly smaller scale every time we have a 3-day weekend. which is why I don't like holiday stock market holidays I'd rather just trade through it but you know that's not the way it goes.

So what I find is that usually going into the holiday weekend. So this, for example, I'll just give you the example of the Market's closed on a Monday Whether it's for Memorial, Day Labor Day or one of the other big holidays, let's just say the market is going to be closed on a Monday. What we typically will notice is that the Thursday and the Friday before the holiday things already start to cool down now. I Think the reason this is happening is because of traders who are no longer in the market on the Thursday and Friday before the holiday because they've already left for some early travel to go to where they've got to go.

So the result is fewer participants in the market with fewer participants in the market. The total volume is lower, the relative volume is lower, and the volatility is sort of subdued. It sort of calms down. Now there are some exceptions to that and I call them Wild Card days where a Friday can be a wild card day or even uh, Black Friday after Thanksgiving can be a wild card day the Friday after Thanksgiving is always is a early close.

the market closes early and a lot of Traders don't even bother showing up. But of course there's the Traders like me that show up rain or shine and there's many of us. And if there is one stock, that's obvious, pretty much everyone will be trading that. and sometimes you get some really impressive moves and it's just sort of that perfect storm of everyone's focused on this one stock and it gets a lot of eyes.

It gets a lot of relative volume and we get these really nice opportunities. but I say it's a wild card because it's It's sort of unexpected you know can happen, but it's not what I would tend to expect. So this past Thursday and Friday things kind of cooled off a little bit. We had some momentum, but the volume was sort of tapering and I think Also, psychologically, people are like, you know I Don't know if I really want to take on really high-risk trades before the weekend, you know I want to enjoy this weekend I Don't want to be spending the whole weekend dealing thinking about a swing trade that I'm holding because it was a day trade that went wrong.

Now you obviously I always say cut loss. don't be bag holders, but you know some people will and of course some people are swing Traders anyways. but also just the feeling of taking a really big loss right before a holiday. It's not good, but I can tell you it's something that I'm really good at doing.

Why does it happen to me so much that I take a big loss going into the holiday weekend. It's for the reasons I just described of why it's slow. it's slower because there's not as much volume, the volatility is sort of subdued, and so if you try to trade those lower volume days like a regular day, you're probably going to end up getting smoked. What ends up happening is you get into a position there's not a lot of liquidity, you get slippage on your entry, you get slippage on your exit, and you don't get the follow through that you would get on a normal day.

And so it's been very common that on the day going into a long weekend I end up having a big loss and then I spent a whole weekend thinking about it and being annoyed about it. It's it's really it's something to become aware of if that's happened to you as well and if it has happened to you. I would also encourage you to remind yourself that this is I wouldn't I would let you off the hook a little bit on having these losses because I think they're the result of you not adapting to the market, but you're doing what normally works and it would work on most days. But on a day where there's just not as many Traders and there's not as much volume and there's not as much volatility, it's not going to work so well.

Okay, so what we know and let me grab my whiteboard here. What we know is that going into the holiday weekend typically the Friday is oops. Friday is a little bit slow, so things start to slow down here on Friday and then we have Saturday we have Sunday we have Monday and so then when we come back on Tuesday This is this is why I'm not I'm a day trader, not a calendar artist. Uh, we come back on Tuesday And now, where's the Fomo? So here's the thing.

a a good degree of of trading. It's based on sentiment. It's based on what people think a stock is going to do, the exuberance, the excitement, and so when you don't have that, then people aren't really enthused to press the Byy button on anything. they're like, uh, I don't know I'm just going to kind of wait to see what happens.

And so today was a perfect example of that. There wasn't anything to really feel Fomo about from yesterday the market was closed way back on. Friday I can't even remember that far in the past Friday I don't know I can't remember what moved I Don't think there was anything and there probably wasn't because it was the day before the holiday weekend. So now you're going back to like.

Oh well, what was hot last Wednesday and Thursday and so part of my workflow was, you know I pull up my scanners and I was checking. uh, continuation scans. So I go over to my little toolkit here and I pull down um, the continuation scanner and I'm like. all right.

Well, what were some of the stocks that were strong in the last you know? session? I'm like, all right, Gmbl and a few others, but the fact that I have to go through and remind myself of those just is really evidence of the fact that it's not at the front of the mind. and that's true for probably all. Traders So we're starting this new week on: Tuesday Everyone's confused because you know it's a Monday Well, it's it's really. Tuesday It's going to be a short week and we don't have a stock that's kind of I don't know the the the Momentum stock that's going to give sympathy momentum to other stocks.

So we're starting the week almost on just like a clean slate. But the problem with that is that if there aren't any really strong headlines, then nothing is going to kind of start to open up. And the day after a bank holiday isn't really the day that we're going to see a lot of big headlines for most companies, especially when it's a big holiday like Christmas or New Year's or something like that. You know if it's a holiday at a different time of the year, maybe it's less of a big deal that news would come out the next day, but around a big holidays the day after.

Christmas Putting out earnings. A lot of these corporations are. they're on vacation, they're traveling. You know what I mean Like they? they don't.

They're not putting out headlines that are really solid at this time of the year, so that can further sort of exasperate the slowness that can occur during the holidays. less really strong catalysts, fewer traders in the market. Nothing really to have Fomo over. So the result is that a lot of Traders kind of sit on the sidelines.

So this morning as I was breaking the ice with my first trades, you know I was kind of like I'm going to go slow I'm just going to take it slow because I don't know. You know, why push it. There's nothing really super super obvious here I Could probably just call it a no trade day, but I'm going to break the ice and take a couple trades and I I I had had a Green Day make some money today. We'll go over those trades in a few minutes, but you know you multiply that kind of just mentality across all the Traders out there.

and now I sort of visualize that you know you have however many Traders 100,000, Traders or or 500,000 and all these Traders are trading. you know Let let's say you know this is their their normal share size and they're all trading like way down here. They're not being, you know, a fraction of their normal share size, not being aggressive, not jumping on stocks. They're moving quickly.

Nothing as a result is moving quickly because it becomes this sort of positive feedback loop or negative feedback loop. and this is the this is the reality of the market when things are hot Traders Jump on. The funny thing is you know sometimes people don't they'll ask me Ross How did you you know? is there a way to find the stocks that you trade before they make the move? Like how could I have found that stock yesterday and I'm like you couldn't have I mean you would have been shooting in in the dark. You would have been guessing there's no way to know what stock is going to be hot tomorrow when you're a day trader.

I mean unless you know a company's going to put news out, but even if you know that they're going to put news out like they have their earnings date, you don't know if it's going to be positive or negative. So there there's really no way to know what's going to happen. So what I end up doing is I it's the chicken or the egg what comes first I wait for the stock to start moving and once it starts moving then I'm like okay, this is something I'll jump into. So my strategy of momentum trading or Trend trading is very much buy high, sell higher.

All right. So we're looking at basically I wait for the stock to already make that first Spike and then pull back and then this is where I'm getting in. you know, right here. first pullback, second pullback, then maybe it pulls back again and then I get in for the next leg.

Up right just is just a very rough you know drawing. But you get you get the idea. So if we don't have this first that first Spike then for me there's no trade. And so today was a day where those first spikes that we had.

We did have a few stocks that popped up, but they didn't hold and so we saw these moves where we had the first Spike And you know, by the way, sort of my criteria of stocks that I'd consider generally between 2 and 20 up at least 10% High relative volume, preferably with news and with a float of less than 20 million shares. So today you know we had a stock that, um, you know, we had several that sort of met that criteria. They initially pop up. oops, this, this one's dead.

uh, whatever. I'll just do it in blue. So they initially pop up, they pull back for a second, and then they drop all the way back down. It's like it Just there wasn't.

People weren't confident to buy and I think short sellers maybe were a little bit more confident to lean into some of these to the short side. But even if they weren't, the lack of buyers by itself is a problem. So we saw a few of these stocks that popped up and sold off and it would have been very easy to get into that sort of habit of okay today's you know I'm coming back after the holiday weekend I'm fired up I'm ready to trade I want to have some nice big trades and you're ready to swing hard and then you just strike out. you miss miss once Miss twice Miss Three times you're out.

That could have happened very easily today. and here's what's super frustrating. like today. For instance: I You know I didn't schedule as many meetings for today because I was like, well, you know it's day after Christmas I don't I don't have as much I need to do uh so I ended up having more time to be here in front of the computer.

which means this would have been a great day for something to have made a big move because I'm here. but you know that's not happening and it's probably you know the the day is not over yet, but it's probably not going to happen because it's the day after the holiday. You know the Market's kind of Colder So the worst thing? I could do is go red and then overcompensate by trying to trade all day long on a day when the Market's cold? Wouldn't it have made so much more sense to trade all day long on a day when the market was hot which might have been like last Tuesday or Wednesday or something like that Now of course. luck of the draw.

Oh well, that was the day I had a doctor's appointment and you know, but I had to run this errand and so I wasn't here when the market was moving. And listen, I Get it. All those things happen to me too. That's life you're not going to get every single day.

But the real moral of the story here is that there are windows when the market is where you can expect it to be hotter and there's Windows where you can expect it to be cooler. and I typically expect it to be a little cooler during the holidays on short weeks, especially when you a 3-day weekend. So for me, 3-day weekends I just sort of always figure coming back on that Monday or that Tuesday or whatever it is that the Market's going to be a little soft. you're not going to have you know any real fomo or like super exaggerated parabolic moves most likely.

and there's probably not going to be fantastic news headlines CU You know, yeah, who puts out news headlines on the day after? Christmas so it may just end up being a little bit of a Miss Now it doesn't mean that there aren't some opportunities, but you have to sort of approach this as like what is the right, um, aggressive level aggressiveness level for me to be trading on this kind of day. Is this the type of day where I should be going in with 15 25,000 shares or is this a day where I should just move in and out with you know, 3 to 6,000 shares, a relatively smaller position that's easy to get in and out of. and I think today the right move was to trade with slightly smaller size because what we the problem that we had was that we had some volatility, but then we didn't have the liquidity or the volume to support getting in and out with big positions. So that's where you would have had the issue of you're getting in, you're getting a lot of slippage on your entry and then it sort of stalls out and then you you bail out.

Then you got a last slippage on your exit and with 10,000 shares, if you lose 20 cents just due to slippage, that's 2,000 bucks. Plus you lose maybe 20 cents from your entry to where you decide to sell. Now you're down four grand and it can happen so fast so you know, so that's sort of the problem. So today I trade a little more conservatively with smaller size I would have loved to have been able to hit it out of the park and have a great trade, but there was nothing that was really strong enough to Warrant me stepping up to the plate and the couple that were initially starting that that ended up being stronger initially I was cautious on because we had seen a couple of these false breaks false breakouts earlier in the day and so I just thought, you know I'm not sure and I just knew that if I dug myself a hole I most likely wouldn't have an opportunity to recoup the losses I just sort of figured that's the way it would be.

now it. It was certainly was possible that we would have had a stock that had great news today and held up really well and if we had then that would bode well for the rest of the week. That would mean probably tomorrow I could be even more aggressive and sort of Base my risk a little bit on. well.

we had a lot of volatility on the you know yesterday so that makes sense. We might have it again today. All right. So now let's look at some of the Um trades that I took today.

So finishing the day in the green I hit a high of I think it was maybe like $1,500 I'm up 713 right now so nothing to write home about. Um and I'm actually read on Arbb the stock is up 214% right now it's in fact the biggest uh I think it's the biggest gainer in the Market at the moment. Uh, it is 24 15% Uh, but I'm red on it. It's a shame I I was green but then I gave back that profit and went red so we could look at Arbb first.

Uh, this one. As you can see, it's kind of a messy chart. um, pre-market It squeezed up here early at about 7 a.m. and I saw it at that time and I saw it on my phone I was check just checking the scans on my phone and I was like well I see this Nice move but it's a cheaper stock I don't usually love this price range I'd prefer f a little higher, you know, 5 to 10 um I saw it go up to about 75 right here 275 and then I refreshed my phone a few minutes later and it was like down here at two bucks and I was like wow that pulled back a lot.

It pops up here I Had no interest coming up here, so what we ended up sort of having is this descending resistance and a bit of a wedge forming. All right, so this almost looks like a piece of pizza. Um, so we had this little wedge forming here and then surprisingly at the open it broke out and squeezes into a halt up. This was a pretty clean Gap and go setup I didn't expect it uh I really didn't but anyways, it halted up and then there were trades on resumption.

So the trades on resumption include uh, dip and rip dip and then the rip on the resumption. And then there were some micro pullbacks here. Another breakout right here through 75 on the squeeze up to this high and right through the top. I got myself to up about $1,500 but I traded it fairly conservatively because I just wasn't sure.

it was a little thickly traded. There were some big sellers on the ask and I was like I don't know I just I'm not sure now. the volume profile was pretty decent. high volume on the green candles, light volume on the red candles but anyways, it hit this 450 level.

it pulls back then. I took my biggest position of the day which was 9,000 shares right here. I was in at like 437. it hits a high of 445 or 443.

I was looking for the squeeze through 54 and you know the continuation I Thought we were just starting to open up but of course it drops down. so I stopped out and uh on that trade I actually went from up uh, about 1,500 on the day and I was green on a Arbb before that to red on the stock and actually a read on the day I was down like $15 so that I was like oh man gosh, that's annoying. um but I ended up getting as you could see here, some trades on iinn a trade on back and a trade on SXP and then a little bit later um I got back a couple of Trades uh on this. oh it was right here as it was curling back up.

But you know what? This was kind of a close call because even though I got this trade as it was curling back up not two minutes later, it has this candle here where it drops in one candle about like 50 cents a share which is a 10% drop. I mean this is pretty significant. So anyways, this ended up just kind of stalling out And it's kind of funny because at this point here it was like this stock is up 300% but it's like not even moving, it's just going sideways and someone asked like what's the deal with that and I was like well shorts aren't bailing out and forcing, you know, buying and covering Longs are not feeling confident buying? um, you know. But also short shorts aren't really hitting it super hard and Longs aren't bailing out cuz it's holding above Vwap.

So right now it's holding right above support and it's going to do one of two things most likely I mean I guess it could do one of three things. It could go sideways for the rest of the day and for for forever or it'll break Vwap going down or it'll break Vwap going up. See, it's not hard to be a meteorologist. You just lay out the options and and say it like that it'll be one of these three things and then everyone's like wow, this guy knows a lot, but that's kind of.

You know this a reality. So I had no interest trading it. In any case, unless it got back Above This sort of 450 level because I just knew that in this range bound area, it would be difficult to trade. So it ends up breaking Vwap bare flag, selling off more and at that point the Longs give up selling Longs are giving up here.

shorts are adding to positions and now it's below VAP and that's that. So that was Arbb. All right. So you know, kind of a typical day after a holiday day after stock market holiday.

Um move and I managed to go red on it. I See Baos here. Moving up the scans this is this is very typical. This is how much volume does this have? Um, it's very light on volume.

It's less than half a million shares of volume. 300,000 shares of volume. You know it's kind of grinding higher, but let's look at the level two on it. Um, you've got an almost 20 cent spread here, right? 17 Cent spread so and then the spread Titans for second.

but it's because there's a seller that came in. This is almost the illusion of hotness. Yes, it's up 66% but you can't I Don't think it's really reasonable to expect that you could have traded that or made a lot of money on it because it's not. It's not really that liquid you can't get in and out.

it's it's just not really that clean. So that one any Wass anyways is on the scanners. No trades on that one for me. Um, so the first trade of the day for me was actually on X SXP So so SXP hits my highay momentum scanner this morning and it pops up I looked at it I was like okay, it looks decent.

Um, there was some news out on it I'm pretty pretty sure there was some news out on it this morning and oops, I went back too far. So I jumped in this. um, it was. It was actually kind of interesting.

Um I took two trades on this. So my first trade on this I got in. Uh, basically right here at about 441 it goes up to 450 and then there was an 880,000 share seller on the ask. Okay, so it hits 450 and this this was honestly I mean I was like this is ridiculous.

So the stock squeezes up it I said 450, it hits 150. it hits 150 and there's an 8,000 share seller up there. Maybe it was 151, but there was an 880,000 share seller there I think it was I think it was 51 one all right. So I saw that and I was like you know what I'm just going to get out so I got out I lost $50 on the first trade so minus 50 bucks on my first trade on it, it pulls back for a second and then it comes back up to 51 and when it comes back up the seller goes 80 and then it's 70 and then it's 60 and then it's 50.

And the reason is because people were buying shares, people kept buying and so as it start started to thin out and it went down like10 9876 I pressed the buy button for 3,000 shares I was like I'll take a 3,000 share trade. let's just see what happens and it broke 51 and pops up to I think it was 169 or something like that and I took the 350 off the table. Uh gave me a net profit after the two trades of 309 bucks. whatever.

So I guess I made you know plus 360 on the second trade and I'm up. you know, $310 approximately So that was fine, but this was a really big seller here and what I thought was interesting was the fact that this stock has had like good news out for all of like 30 seconds and there's already an 880,000 share seller who is putting that sell order out. you know and you could say oh it's it's a short seller. Well first of all, you have to be able to borrow your share.

It's pretty darn quick to do that. And second of all, I don't know if it's I mean that seems like jumping in with an 880,000 share short position to start I don't know. That seems kind of even for an aggressive Trader that's a really big position. What if this thing ripped to 2 250, you'd be down 80 grand.

So it makes me think that I don't know, you know it's either a market maker or somebody who somehow was expecting the news and I don't know who that would be, but it seemed a little suspicious. so I wasn't very interested in it. Beyond that, it sold off and really, it's sold off. Um, pretty much pretty much all day.

So this one is red on the day so no good. only made 300 bucks on it. Uh, the next trade was iinn iinn this one. Um, this one was on the scans this morning early and it sold off all day and they announced a secondary offering.

uh, right around um, like 215 today. So this was the ultimate like in um, adding insult to injury. Not only is it selling off, they they do an offering so the stock starts to squeeze up. As you can see goes from A140 up to two and on this one I was like I don't know I just watched SXP fail.

a Rbb is the leading gapper but at that time it didn't look very good I was kind of I was sort of pessimistic I was like I don't think this one's going to work I don't like it, it's too cheap I I don't I I really don't even think it. it's going to work at all. Um, you know, but sure enough it breaks $218 goes to 220 230, 240 and I took a starter at 240 again. I think it was like 3,000 shares.

it goes up to 250 I sell it I get back in like 265 it goes up to 275 280 I sell it. It does a little micro pullback at about 286 and I said I'm not going to buy that I think it's probably going to have sellers up around three. It ends up breaking and going all the way to 307, then dipping here and going up to 320. and anyways I I made 900 $175 on it on relatively small positions I was fine with that I you know and at that point I was like all right I'm having a pretty good day.

This is this is shaping up um but then I proceeded to lose it all on that Arbb trade and the one that put me back uh in the green was BAC back. Well this plus the couple of trades on Arbb a little later in the morning so on back this one. um started to pull away as you can see right here up through uh 4 450. So we had a nice trade on the break of the half dollar and then a break of the whole doll five.

Nothing to get super excited about but made 500 bucks on on this move right here. So basically just kind of scraping by with some small wins today. Nothing super exciting. um you know, but that's fine it.

Listen, you know what? I've got $700 more in my pocket than I had at the beginning of the day. This is the the irony here. or I don't know if that's what it is, but it's the it. It always seems to be the days that I can be here all day, nothing happens and then the days that I have to do something, we get action.

And today's a day where I easily could have fallen into that sort of trap of overtrading or trading everything that popped up. So like if we look at um, the past couple hours we had BOS pop up. Um so that one I already showed you we had RGS pop up RGS Uh, this one popped up a little while ago, again like a light volume, kind of just moving higher. Uh, you can see some other stocks on the scans here that was RGS uh Baos right, talked about that one.

um CB us I didn't look at this one. Um, but yeah, another one kind of similarly. uh MOX this was another one. uh, really nice move on this one.

from six bucks all the way to 12, but nonetheless on very light volume so probably not many people would have bought it here before the move and I wouldn't have either, you know? I So this is the thing. I I would I I understand why some people don't get this type of trading, but I I'm not going to buy it right here because I have no indication that it's going to start to pull away right? It could just keep going sideways all day long. I wait for it to start to pull away like to Halt up for instance and then you know, dip and rip for the next leg higher. So I always wait for a train to start to leave the station and then I jump on the momentum.

That's kind of I Think one of the rules. An important rule of thumb as a momentum Trader is that well, you need something moving. you need momentum. so I'm not trying to anticipate so much like I will do some trades to anticipate like buying a dip for to anticipate a break through a half dollar whole dollar on a stock that already shows momentum.

but I'm not I I Rarely will try to buy something thinking it's going to have momentum I Suppose the rare instances that I would would be well see. even then, the only way I see. a stock is because it's hitting my scanners and if it's hitting my scanners, it's already starting to move up. But the times that I'll jump on a stock faster that's hitting my scans will be during a period when the market is hot.

So then a stock that's hitting my scanners, it's either a biotech or has the the similar float or it's a similar price of what's been hot. I'm going to be faster to jump on that again. that's not something we're going to see usually during stock market holiday kind of. Windows that's more of when things are really hot.

Um anyways we also had Mullen today muln um I know some people were talking about this quite a lot and they're like oh this is going to this one's going to be the one and and I wanted it to be I I had High Hopes I was like yeah I mean I I like the idea you know look this thing went uh two days ago or whatever it went from, this was on Thursday when I was out. um it went from 750 up to 18 bucks right? of course I'm out and makes that huge move today though. how much is Melen up right now? it's up 12% It's never really been up much more than that today. like maybe 15% the most.

It's not obvious nobody's really looking at this and although you could have traded it with small size and kind of jumped in and jumped out, it really wouldn't have been super easy to do. Yeah you what? No, that's funny. so yeah. so anyways.

um anyway, so um, sorry, sorry about that. so um, so yeah. so Mullen ends up um, you know, today, it's just not obvious I mean look, even if it pops up a little bit at the end of the day here, this is just not obvious. Nobody cares about it.

I can't change the fact that I missed it on the day it was hot I should not overcompensate for missing it on the day it was hot by trading it like crazy on a day when it's bouncing a little bit. but the daily chart is really at this point garbage. So um, anyway, so that was that was Mullen and yeah I just I Think generally speaking, there were traders that were sticking around all day long, trying to trade anything moving, turning a bunch of commissions for those that have commissions burning, turning a bunch of shares, but not getting a lot of Roi on it because there's not a lot of clean volatility today and there wasn't a lot of liquidity. So I think the right thing to do on these holiday weeks is to scale things back a little bit, at least until you see signs of something really opening up and moving quickly.

And then at that point, okay, maybe we've got a wild card scenario and it's time to pel to the medal and be aggressive and capitalize on the opportunity. that could happen, but it's the exception, not the norm. So I'm going to be a little bit more cautious this week and I'm just going to expect that things will be a little bit slow and you know what? This is the holiday week right now that we're in. So I'm just going to try to, you know, keep my head above water, slow and steady.

Couple more green days like I had today is great and I'll be back at it first thing tomorrow morning. So as always I hope you hit the thumbs up I hope you're subscribed to the channel and I'll see you back here for the next episode tomorrow. Make sure as always you remember trading is risky. My results are not typical.

Don't try to blindly follow me or anyone else and practice in a simulator before you put real money on the line. All right, take it slow and I'll see you back here tomorrow for my recap.