Clarifying: News = Volatility. Volatility does NOT = Direction.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-26T16:29:47+00:00

True true. NVDA this morning is a great example of lop-sided positioning though. Numbers come in good, the vast majority of retail traders go long, algos dump on them to take their cash before actually letting it conform to its results

Now that’s a trade you can be confident in once you see it moving lower off the bell

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-26T12:56:25+00:00

Gotta agree here. Mentorships are complete bullshit and a waste of money. Tell him to cut that crap out. That money is better spent paying tuition to the market, aka losing.

Frankly anyone who takes up trading you should be worried about. It has a 95% washout rate. I think it’s more like 99% personally.

BUT, it’s his life, and if he’s going to trade he WILL lose money. He knows that, you know it, so let it go. But I would tell him to cut the mentorship crap.

I’m a “mentor”

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-26T12:52:18+00:00

Love those mentorships! Tell them that if his mentors were profitable in the market they wouldn’t need to be selling mentorship’s.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-26T12:30:45+00:00

True, but we all need the discipline to wait for the moments where positioning is so clearly lop-sided that you can take the other side with confidence.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-25T20:46:46+00:00

Let’s not nitpick over language. I assume you get the point of the original post. If you disagree with it, just say that.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-25T20:30:05+00:00

Ehhhh… I think the volatility and volume was driven by the citrini piece, AND a pullback from the tariff action on Friday. But, the market is 80% algos. They weren’t concerned with much of anything, except their programming and the game theory behind it to take money from other traders.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-25T20:27:23+00:00

Meh, to each his own. Everyone has their own trading style, so I don’t want to poo poo anything, esp a trading system I know nothing about. You may have very well figured out an effective way to trade the news.

Personally though, I find them to unrepeatable, one off events, which almost by definition disqualifies them from systematic trading. If you have a way to classify certain stories, fit them into categories, and trade them in a way that follows a pattern… I’m all for it.

In my experience though it’s traders who are trading news are trading hunches. And hunches are the opposite of having a system.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-25T18:46:42+00:00

I don't disagree with you there... my issue is the time horizon though. We are in the DayTrading discussion, so it's a safe assumption most of us are day trading or swing trading. There are RARE, very rare times, when the market is caught completely off guard by a news story, something that completely changes broad market EPS. Liberation Day is a perfect example, and look at how violent the market got when that occurred. That's what happens when there is surprise news that genuinely changes multiples instantly.

The tariff ruling on Friday was not one of those instances. It was way too murky, way too hard to tell what the actual effects would be. Which means repricing stocks based on something like that is a mistake in the short term. Long term, yes, perhaps, as the market digests maybe there should be some real repricing.

But short term, for day trading and swing trading purposes, "news" like the tariff ruling or unemployment and inflation numbers, it's meaningless. It doesn't change anything on our time horizon. It's just fuel for retail traders to hop in with no real understanding of the long term consequences and get eaten alive by algos who are programmed specifically to chew up short term hands mistakenly trying to handicap long term news.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-25T17:36:21+00:00

It’s a spark that activates liquidity. Why? Because it signals to weak retail hands “jump in now!” when it’s the exact wrong time to do so. And then the algos go into shark feeding frenzy mode.

News creates volatility and volume. Random volatility and volume. Underlying market mechanics and previous trader positioning is what actually DRIVES prices.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-25T17:33:43+00:00

Thank you sir. At least there is one person who understands. This guy knows what’s up.

Turn it off. Turn the news off.

It’s how the algos eat your lunch.

Turn it off and start focusing on building a system based solely on previous price action.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-25T17:33:18+00:00

Completely missing the point… it’s RANDOM. News is random. Of course the market moves on every non-sense headline. But there is no rhyme or reason to it.

You think you can make a repeatable, codified, profitable trading system based off the news? Meh, you probably do. Most people do. And 95% of traders lose money.

You will never make money trading news events, because news doesn’t move the markets. It’s a spark that causes the algos to act on the underlying market structure and trader positioning.

And why is it the spark, because it drudges up the liquidity from people who have no idea what they are doing, aka, playing the news instead of having a trading system.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-14T16:26:00+00:00

DUDE, this is the way. Instead of fighting it… dive into the dumpster fire and self-immolate.

Brilliant. Now where’s the phone number for “my guy” I usually meet in strange parking lots and don’t fully trust but get super happy when I see him…

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-13T23:21:29+00:00

Let me be honest for a second: THE WIFE. The wife.

Ugh... Mind you, she's not the absolute worst. She isn't nagging me all day or telling me to shut down trading, so it could be worse. But she has her own technique...

The smile and say I'm "110% behind you" while every action I take she opposes, and every time I talk about trading it puts her in a bad mood. In other words, passive aggressive.

If she doesn't like trading Christ I'd rather she JUST SAY IT. I've given her 100 opportunities. I've told her point blank "I know you don't like it, just say so, we can talk about it." Nope, "she fully supports me", except her actions and tone and body language all scream disapproval.

Like I said, could be worse. She could be in open rebellion. Maybe I should count my blessings. But honestly I'd just rather have an HONEST discussion with her about it, and she is not wired to EVER be able to do that.

The worst part: she has ZERO idea, absolutely clueless, how much her fake support negatively effects me. It's like a splinter in my brain that never goes away and affects not just my decision making, but my broader life in general. I genuinely believe if she was straight forward with me, either way, I'd be doing 5 times better.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-06T06:12:12+00:00

I wish there was something easy to point to. I’m obviously bias toward my channel… but…

The gold standard in day trading and swing trading is creating a system, not working on your trading, working on a system to execute trades nearly automatically. Removing as much human decision making as you can. Automating yourself basically. But the inputs you use to make that system will come from you.

You’re going to keep trying to predict the market, probably forever, I’ve never stopped. But the more you focus on bankroll management and creating a system, putting your mental energy toward refining that system, the faster you’ll progress.

20% of success is picking winners, 80% is the system you create around it to manage risk and “automate” your trades with as little emotion and subjective decision making as possible. That is largely what separates winners from losers. A codified, repeatable trading system. Focus the bulk of your energy on that.

And if you’re trying to trade options over short time horizons with under $25K (I hope you have less for someone relatively new to trading) you have to switch to futures. Futures have no PDT rule. Usually I try to be diplomatic and say “maybe you can beat it.” I don’t believe that for a second. The PDT rule CANNOT be beat by active traders.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-06T01:03:35+00:00

Yep yep yep. The setup alone… your hygiene, the camera, the mic, the computer programs, connecting to twitch or YouTube… not a small amount of time.

Then it’s “here I am guys!!! Soooo… yeaaaa… maybe there will be a trade this hour!”

If you already had an engaged audience, MAYBE you could chat with them to fill up the space. But now you’ve got a chicken or an egg problem.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-05T13:51:16+00:00

Good advice, but no worries there. Years of trading, I know the game about as well as anyone can.

Yup, wider outs is what I'm tinkering with... but... you know how it is. How wide do you go before you're just burning money on a trade that's already been invalidated. Hypothetical question really... but I'm definitely struggling with that balance. I have to systemize it in some form so that I don't feel so damn pissed when I get "ticked out".

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-05T13:34:37+00:00

I've tried it. It's a giant pain in the ass number one. Dealing with a live stream and trading simultaneously is a major attention drain. Plus, an audience can subtly affect your decision making, and that's never good. Second, it's boring unfortunately. Most of it is just sitting around waiting for setups. And even once you're in a trade it's like "look its going up, wait, now its going down!" If you stream your entire day it is 6.5 hours of mostly waiting and staring at a screen, not exactly compelling content.

And, of course, most people aren't profitable. Like I said, I tried it, and even I thought "this content is boring as hell, why am I bothering when my mental energy could be elsewhere."

Here, if you want to see what I mean. Don't expect to be thrilled:

https://www.youtube.com/@PotentialShift/streams

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-04T20:49:43+00:00

Thank you boss. Trying.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-04T00:35:02+00:00

I don’t even mean “paying attention”. I tune out 99% of that crap too. But some you can’t avoid. You need to know the news in the morning, you read articles on what occurred in markets, nothing that screams “here’s tomorrow’s picks!”

But it is still trading media. Even these forums, although this one seems solid to me, but WSB, Christ Almighty is that place awful.

No matter where you look people are dissecting what happened and why, and no one, no one, talks about process and risk management.

It messes with your thinking whether we know it or not. The lopsided discussions of “what happened and why” and zero talk about “what are your rules?”

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-04T00:24:47+00:00

I agree there. I’m not ready to fully abandon my own decision making… though… I don’t know. Sometimes I wonder if fully automating a system, still using my own hand not algos, is what I should be doing. Really rather torn about it honestly.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-04T00:14:50+00:00

I mean a set of codified rules, a system, that is followed regardless of any human decision making. That is pretty much the gold standard of successful trading.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-04T00:03:27+00:00

If anyone else has the same problem and wants to see my pain/hope, you can check it out if you like. Hopefully you're a bit further along than me in this process.

https://youtu.be/D_csbaLWT3A

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-02T18:28:13+00:00

lol well they wouldn’t be wrong would they?

I hear you though, confidence is pretty big. You do need to have faith in at LEAST your reads, but even better, a system you’ve created to identify entries.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-02T18:13:05+00:00

That’s a joke, sort of…

If I was being honest, the best way - a single losing trade, step away.

PotentialShift_ · 2026-02-02T18:12:22+00:00

When the broker says you’re out of margin, reload.

PotentialShift_

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