Why are so many people pushing for WEN when it appears JACK is positioned for a better short squeeze, am I missing something here?

Already Showing Squeeze Momentum: Multiple sources report JACK shares have surged approximately 45% over five trading days with headlines like "Jack in the Box shares extend rally as short squeeze gathers momentum"

Higher Short Float: At ~35-37%, more shares are sold short relative to float compared to WEN's ~32%

Smaller Market Cap: At $328M versus WEN's $1.64B, JACK requires less capital to move the price significantly—a classic condition for successful squeezes

Longer Days to Cover: 10.6 days means if a squeeze develops, there's substantially more forced buying pressure needed as shorts scramble to exit positions simultaneously

Instagram reel
This guy announced he's bearish on appl right now, so I copied his trade, but the market opened this morning, and appl has a bounce back. Even though I bought my puts for slightly less than he did, I'm still down 40% in a few hours.

What do you guys think? Appl going to go down? Or maybe I'm just regarded.

https://preview.redd.it/fthgcz1itfah1.png?width=2294&format=png&auto=webp&s=65a7bde24fb3087fb76d09f61e7f717640767ad4

Deep tech in mining isn't about replacing the drill - it's about making every drill count. And the signals are getting harder to ignore.

Most junior mining companies already have access to more geological data than they can realistically process.

Drill results, satellite imagery, geophysical surveys, historical reports, soil samples. The problem is not collection. It is how decisions get made from it.

At early stages, exploration teams are constantly ranking uncertainty. Which targets get drilled first, which anomalies get ignored, and which land packages justify another season of spending. Small errors in that ranking process can burn entire exploration budgets.

That is where software layers like NovaRed Mining’s MetalCore platform are positioned.

The company is still early stage. There is no defined resource at Wilmac, no production, and no revenue. It sits in the high-risk category where most exploration stories fail before reaching development.

But the angle being tested is different from traditional juniors.

MetalCore is designed to process geological and spatial datasets to help prioritize exploration targets before drilling. That only becomes meaningful if the system behind it can handle noisy, incomplete, and sometimes contradictory data.

That is where the background of Dr. Olamide Oladeji becomes relevant to how the platform is being framed.

His work spans applied AI, computer vision, robotics, and geospatial modeling, with academic and research experience at Stanford and MIT. Those fields deal with systems that have to make decisions under uncertainty using imperfect inputs, which is close to what exploration targeting actually looks like in practice.

In exploration, the cost of a wrong decision is not just lower returns. It is lost drill seasons and capital that cannot be recovered.

NovaRed is still dependent on fieldwork to validate anything. Drilling, assays, and geological interpretation remain the final gatekeepers. No model replaces that.

What changes is the attempt to reduce wasted decisions before the drill bit ever hits the ground.

The broader pattern is worth watching.

If advanced spatial computing and machine learning tools can consistently improve target selection even slightly, the impact compounds across entire exploration pipelines. Not because the technology removes risk, but because it shifts how early capital is allocated across uncertain ground.

When machine learning meets mineral exploration, the real test isn't the model - it's the margin. If platforms like MetalCore can shrink discovery costs consistently, the junior space starts to look less like gambling and more like engineering. What's your framework for evaluating tech-driven explorers?

So... what do you do if you get punched in the face… by life?

Simple…

You go to a barbershop and shave off all your curly hair… then go next door to a parlor and get a face tattoo…

And then…

You get back in the fight…

Some sound practical step-by-step advice for all of us… from the legendary Iron Mike Tyson.

I ordered hand crafted marinara sauce with ground meat - the true definition of Italian “spaghetti” - atop a bowl of pasta served al dente in the Piazza della Rotonda in the shadow of Emperor Hadrian’s Pantheon…

One of the architectural wonders of the world… in a time of peace and high culture…. A Golden Age… like in Solomon’s day… but before all that… it was chronicled that King David ordered a census and planned for war… but God had other plans…. his son… the next generation… who wrote…

“Above all else, guard your heart, for everything you do flows from it…”

The rights and the responsibility… of that of Citizen with the respect of Kings of a bygone day… the ability to bend and break unjust laws but keep the just one’s….

Paul said with confidence and deep breathes from his chest... “But I was born a citizen...”

The current golden age is marked by influence… by two citizen outsiders… who didn’t wait their turn to run for president…

The true mark of a leader... not controlled by the aristocracy… the one in their mind or outside from two parties with the same country club memberships.

Two men marked by a standard of excellence who have walked with kings “nor lost the common touch…” as Kipling would say…

“Diversity is a strength” as Obama wrote… and we are a country who stays in the fight as DJT taught us on his epic Flag Day Birthday on the lawn of the White House. As our would-be enemies watch an epic stage of American might…. And hide and watch…

Back in the day… Obama made some perhaps off the cuff remarks about DJT in 2011… before the businessman and media mogul had officially trademark MAGA the day after Romney lost to the sitting president... but before all that... he was sitting in the audience of a correspondence dinner... and was embarrassed in public… sitting there with an unforgettable stoic face...

When you have been wronged by a person... or group... it is the default to stay bitter… and yet what of better?

Folks quickly diagnose a post-mortem…. dismiss…. or judge... too early sometimes…

an individual... a country….

who are on the precipice of changing the world... and that have the audacity to become...

refuse to give up… and learn from the peace that comes through strength...

in the fire...

America doesn’t need a postmortem… it just needs the sun to come up the next morning….

Full stop.

A country divided by Adams and Jefferson and their newspaper weaponry during the 1800 election campaign… and then hundreds of years later... now a country they created embarking on a golden age marked by a dichotomy…

of Diversity and Unity

of Candace Owens and Cornell West

of DJT and Obama

All under one banner “The Stars and Stripes…”

Flags are your communication when all else fails… your coms go down… and a yellow tie symbolizing “You see I am in charge…” or a red tie “power” ... Most communication is non-verbal… and an important signal for other countries who dare challenge our citizen’s might.

Sitting in a palace signing a negotiating a memorandum of understanding in Versailles… or no tie at all... around a circle of community leaders in Chicago…. because all politics is local… and folks need to be seen and heard…

“Make America Great Again” and “Yes We Can” are different lines of the same verse in a song of myself… as Whitman might write…

Both men were mocked by lesser folks… aiming to divide and control power….

You can attain power short term in sketchy ways… and yet... to aspire to be an epic historic leader... you need to remember what Michelle said…

“When they go low… you go high...”

What belongs in the past are whisper campaigns from the Nixon campaign... and 100 years earlier to Adam’s and Jefferson... and 1000 years earlier going back to the Garden of Eden.

The Nixon campaign was famous for sending political operatives to the back of pews and community centers to undermine the local leaders and preachers of the opposing party... by gossip...

or in this century... campaign operatives circulating a photo of McCain’s family in a South Carolina primary and calling it “just politics…” or engaging in a strategy of triangulation… pitting both sides against each other until the middle gets tired and goes home…

and yet…

American politics is a full circle spectrum where the folks on the margins… the working class in fly over country… Bernie voters meet MAGA voters…

because they are kin…

and both were hurt by factories leaving local towns to serve the shareholders of multinational companies with no ties to their local communities...

Power attracts like moth to a flame.

And yet…

two uniquely opposite leaders used their power and influence to send a message of hope…

If the founders taught us anything it is that you don’t get it right on the first pass…

And yet… if you lean into your better angels…

You are not the man you were before… you are better…

Presidential palaces and temples to jealous and irrational pagan gods... on their thrones now in ruins... in the ancient cities of Babylon… Persia… Greece…. and Rome… are replaced by a People’s House with a UFC fighting stage on the front lawn…

and the knowledge of ancient wisdom in libraries of Celsus (in Ephesus) and Alexandria replaced by infinite knowledge of AI and by Presidential Libraries… like Obama’s in the Southside of Chicago… a place of community and their infinite wisdom… where folks can put their iPhones down for a moment and share “Our Story”… face to face…

or in a call to rise… past your limits…

to the forgotten man… or even the man with the stoic look on his face... in a crowd…. counted out… but not out…

… in FDR’s monument nestled behind in the cherry groves on the mall around the tidal basin of the Potomac… trees given to America by the nation of Japan... and in their shadows… a cast bronze sculpture of a man with a cane in a chair…

Who talked about fear on the radio… but not as something to fear itself…

His writing is inscribed on the granite monument: “Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.”

A man who could not walk taught us to build each day brick by brick into something “more perfect”…

And like FDR both DJT and Obama are men who are calling us to rise… to the better angels of our yesteryear… and hope… again…

… to a Norman Rockwell painting… where the coiled cord kept the rotary phone and the noise of the world away from the dinner table… and all that was left was our family… our prayers… our stories of the day’s adventures… the triumph… the fall… the comeback…

and the in between…

Both men of peace… and of faith… family… who understand the light of America is in our epic celebrations of one nation… and in the quiet strength after our failures… around the fireplace alone with our thoughts… ”guarding our hearts” …

All that and more... made the world a little brighter than the dark ages before…

“Every small effort, every lesson learned and every step forward is shaping something greater...

Yes we can…

… make America great again.

“You’ve got to give what you take…”

“We were made for these days…”

https://www.youtube.com/live/A87ohdXcJtY?is=RxvOT5K-B-0bQkk9

When investors become bullish on a commodity, capital usually follows a predictable path.

First, money flows into the largest producers.

Then it moves into developers.

Eventually, investors begin searching for smaller companies that could offer greater leverage to the same theme.

That is often where some of the biggest percentage gains are generated.

What makes the current environment interesting:

• copper remains a strategic metal
• governments are prioritizing critical minerals
• major producers continue looking for future projects
• new discoveries remain relatively scarce

As a result, the market is paying increasing attention to companies positioned earlier in the development curve.

Names investors are watching:

• FM
• LUN
• ERO
• CS
• KDK
• ASCU
• NRED / NREDF

Key takeaway:

By the time a project becomes obvious, much of the easy upside is often already gone. The market tends to reward positioning before the crowd arrives.

Currently I buy a $6 biggie bag every day for lunch.

If I skip lunch and invest that $6 every day into WEN, that is $180 per month; or $2,190 per year.

My nearterm price target is $23, where the stock was before AI took off. That is 3x today’s price, or an easy $6,570 of profit before compounding.

Because of genetics, I am also 250 lbs over weight currently. I have been gaining about 1 lb per week over the past couple years (because of genetics).

If I eliminate my daily biggie bag (roughly 1000 calories), I should go from gaining 1 lb per week to losing 1 lb per week. So in 5 years I will be normal weight PLUS will have made $33k (before compounding), which is over a years salary for me.

This seems like a no brainer. What am I missing?

1. The P/E of this stock is very low, which is around 13 only.

2. It has more than 7000 restaurants globally.

3. This company hired Steve Cirulis and Bob Wright as the CEO; both are credible and famous industry veterans.

4. Activist and founder of Trian Fund Management, Nelson Peltz, is the largest shareholder, which is likely to take Wendy's private.

Therefore, $Wen is a good stock and will rise strongly.

Crazy stat: MU is up almost 300% this year, and suddenly one earnings report feels like it matters to half the market.

Micron reports on June 24, and Wall Street is treating it like a pulse check for the entire AI trade. Analysts are expecting nearly 1000% YoY EPS growth, driven by tight memory supply and massive AI data center spending. Per FactSet estimates cited by MarketWatch, MU and NVDA are contributing heavily to overall S&P 500 earnings growth. Without them, projected Q2 earnings growth drops from about 22% to under 15%. Per Reuters and MarketWatch.

That is why this report feels bigger than just another semiconductor earnings release.

The entire AI infrastructure story depends on continued spending from Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Meta and others. High-bandwidth memory has become one of the biggest bottlenecks, and MU sits right in the middle of it.

Bull case -> AI capex keeps growing and MU validates the entire theme.

Bear case -> expectations are so high that even a good quarter might not be enough.

Feels like this is one of those earnings reports that could move a lot more than just MU.

Anyone else watching this more closely than GDP or CPI this week? NFA.

Beyond Meat (BYND) seems to be doing a pivot. See: Beyond Immerse Protein Drink

This feels a bit like AllBirds (BIRD) becoming an AI company.

Room for:

(a) AMC/GME 🚀

(b) actual turnaround?

Your thoughts??

After 8 years, 11,000+ hours, countless mistakes, blown accounts, books, mentors and chart reviews, these are the 20 principles that mattered most. I hope they will save you years on your trading journey. This is part 1 of 2 - the next part will be uploaded soon.

You before and after the trading journey

A STRONG FOUNDATION

1. Managing expectations.

When I was 14 years old I thought I'd get a six-pack in a few months. Turns out I was wrong and naive. It took years of training, experimenting and making mistakes before I got the results I wanted. Learning how to trade turned out to be VERY similar.

For some reason, people assume they can become consistently profitable in a year or two. Yet the same people would never dare to think that they can become a surgeon, lawyer or professional athlete that fast. So why is it that when it comes to the stock market, everyone seems convinced they're different? I was willing to work hard, study charts, read books and put in the hours. But what I underestimated was how many different ways there are to be wrong in this business.

• Time horizon - Assume it will take significantly longer than you think. Most people dramatically underestimate how much experience is required before they can consistently make money.

• Experience - Trading is a field where experience compounds. Reading 100 books will never ever replace seeing the same pattern play out hundreds of times in real market conditions.

• Humility - The less experience you have, the less you realize what you don't know. You are unconsciously incompetent. That's one of the reasons beginners often become overconfident so quickly.

The game taught me the game. It didn’t spare the rod while teaching. - Jesse Livermore

https://preview.redd.it/qieqpjarl89h1.png?width=2106&format=png&auto=webp&s=da45a8819dded8ad4f54ad6d2edeb59d30fa5826

2. Learning how to learn.

One of the biggest problems in trading is information overload. There are millions of videos, tweets, books, newsletters, Discord channels and podcasts competing for your attention. The problem is that a big percentage of it is wrong, misleading, fraudulent, or irrelevant. When you're new, you don't know what you don't know, and this makes finding genuinely useful information incredibly difficult.

For years I convinced myself I was improving because I was consuming content. But what moved the needle was doing actual deep work, studying with focus, meeting my trading mentor, studying charts, and going through my setups. Profitable traders might have their own strategies, but they all spend a lot of time going through their watchlist, setups and trades.

• Discovery - Books, interviews, posts, articles, and communities can expose you to new ideas and occasionally provide insights that might just completely change how you think about the market.

• Chart study - This is where most of my progress came from. Looking at thousands of charts builds pattern recognition in a way passive learning never can.

• Trade review - Every serious trader I know reviews their winners, losers, entries, exits and mistakes. The market gives feedback every day if you're willing to listen.

• Finding your style - At some point you need to stop searching for new ideas and start refining a process that fits how you naturally think and make decisions.

You need to study thousands of charts with your setup. - Kristjan Qullamaggie

https://preview.redd.it/4nr35h6sl89h1.png?width=2100&format=png&auto=webp&s=bd13fb934e7cf5e735b866bfe68e2fddac4de0b0

3. A look at the market cycle.

Before trading stocks, I spent years trading FX. Looking back, switching to stocks was one of the best decisions I ever made. Unlike many markets, stocks have a natural upward skew because businesses are constantly trying to grow, innovate and increase profits. Like many beginners, I became obsessed with beaten-down stocks because they looked cheap. I assumed the best opportunities would be ‘hidden’. I was constantly looking for obscure companies and undiscovered ideas that nobody else had found yet. Then I started studying actual market winners and I read Stan Weinstein's book on stage analysis which really changed things for me.

• Market skewness - Stocks have a natural upward bias because businesses are constantly trying to grow. That alone gives both investors and traders a structural advantage compared to other markets like FX or crypto.

• Institutional buying - The biggest winners are almost always accumulated by institutions long before the public notices. Following that money is usually more productive than trying to outsmart it.

• Relative strength - One of the first things I look for is whether a stock is outperforming the market. Leaders tend to keep leading longer than most people expect. This comes in ‘waves’ and will change over time.

• Weinstein Stages - The goal is to get in during a late Stage 1 or an early Stage 2. It will make your life much easier if you simply ignore everything else. Read the book from Stan Weinstein if you have to.

The trend is your friend until the end when it bends.- Ed Seykota

https://preview.redd.it/ankktvzsl89h1.png?width=2100&format=png&auto=webp&s=43b52d38b91d64893d46157ec7ee4ebb3889b4c1

4. The only indicators you need.

I got completely lost in the indicator rabbit hole for years. I've tried just about everything. Like most traders, I was convinced there was some magical combination that would finally make everything click. What I eventually realized is that most indicators are describing some variation of the same things: price, time, volume and sometimes momentum. The more indicators I added, the harder decisions became because I could always find evidence supporting both sides of a trade. Indicators are like crayons on the chalk board. It all might make sense in retrospect but few are actually helpful and somewhat predictive in nature.

• Moving averages - I always use the 10, 20 and 50 EMA. I generally don't do anything with stocks trading below the 50-day moving average, and I use the slope of the 200-day moving average as part of my scan criteria.

• Dollar volume - I prefer dollar volume over regular volume because it gives a much better indication of actual money flowing into or out of a stock, making institutional activity easier to spot.

• Simplicity - These days I'm much more interested in removing things than adding them. My overall decision-making improved as my charts became less complicated. I love clean charts.

• MACD - This is optional but you can try to add a 3/9 MACD to more easily spot ‘dips’ to buy up a stock during an uptrend. This is somewhat aligned with Linda Raschke’s method of trading which is based on The Taylor Method.

Price is the final arbiter.- Paul Tudor Jones

https://preview.redd.it/rwiuqtstl89h1.png?width=2108&format=png&auto=webp&s=9cf207dc30f32ce34b6f0e2f0c3565f6e96c49e9

5. The power of simplicity.

I am a big believer in keeping it simple so I hate tools overcomplicating things. Some tools are genuinely useful and I still use some of them (see list of tools at the end). Others were a disaster. In some cases, it took months just to learn a new platform before eventually abandoning it and basically moving on to the next one. (I'm looking at you, Sierra Charts.)

One thing I learned is that most trading software is about as user-friendly as a maze is to a drunk. It throws an absurd amount of information at you and assumes more information automatically leads to better decisions. In reality, it often does the opposite. It’s not exactly helpful if someone tells you there are 4,282,292 trees nearby when you are lost in the jungle. Yet that seems to be how many of the tools and platforms operate.

I realized that good software saves time, but great software helps you make decisions. That's partly why I started building tools for myself. I just got tired of jumping between a dozen tabs just to answer relatively simple questions. Point being, everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Do what works for you, keep it simple.

• Information overload - Most of the trading software gives you more information than you need, not less. The real challenge is filtering signals from noise.

• Decisions - Good software helps you analyze. Great software helps you decide. That doesn’t exist yet but I’m hoping to build it some day if I can get enough support from people.

• Process > Tools - The successful traders and investors are successful because they have a process and execute it consistently. Tools matter, but they're multipliers, not necessarily an edge in itself.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. - Leonardo da Vinci

https://preview.redd.it/6k2es4rul89h1.png?width=2102&format=png&auto=webp&s=941e88e311b4d34ff82eb2f46802b33a0a958b7b

6. Style and personal preferences.

For years I'd discover some successful trader, study everything they did and then try to become a copy of them. I'd read Minervini and want to trade like Minervini. I'd see an interview with some algorithmic trader and try that. Then I'd discover some new strategy and spend months on that.

Looking back, a big part of my journey wasn't finding the "best" strategy. It was figuring out how I'm wired and building a style around that. These days my approach is really just an amalgamation of ideas I've stolen from dozens of traders over the years and combined into something that fits me.

• Personality - Some people are momentum traders. Others are investors. Others are contrarians. Fighting your personality is usually a losing battle. It will take time to find your own ‘style’.

• Principles - Different people use different methods, but many operate from the same basic underlying principles: proper risk management, patience, discipline, good timing, and conviction.

• Your style - The goal isn't to become a carbon copy of somebody else. The goal is to take the ideas from others and gradually build a style that makes sense to your own brain. It needs to ‘resonate’ with you.

I don’t have to turn you into me! I have to turn you into you!  - Master Shifu

https://preview.redd.it/24iagzgvl89h1.png?width=2104&format=png&auto=webp&s=59cbd1d37916266cd922ba3ad364a69ebe4fd22c

WHAT ACTUALLY MOVES STOCKS

7. Understanding market conditions.

One of the most humbling realizations I've had is that you don't get to dictate market conditions. Ever. You can't control whether your setup works today, tomorrow or next week. This isn't like a normal job where you exchange time for money. As my mentor likes to say, it's feast or famine.

I often compare trading to surfing. You can have the best surfboard in the world and be the most skilled surfer on the planet, but if there are no waves, you're not catching anything.

No matter how good my scanners, watchlists or entries are, if market conditions aren't supportive, very little works. On the other hand, when conditions are right, leaders act well, breakouts hold and money flows naturally into risk assets. One thing I've noticed is that setups working or failing is often a market health indicator in itself. If setups aren’t working, be very careful.

• QQQ - This is the first thing I check every day. If it's trading above the 20 EMA and 50 EMA, conditions are generally bullish. Above the 10 EMA often signals a particularly strong environment. Below the 20 EMA, and below the 50 EMA, I don’t trade basically. Above all, I want to see a positive slope on the moving averages.

• IWM - Small and mid-cap stocks tend to tell you whether institutions are willing to take risk. When the Russell 2000 is outperforming, speculative setups generally work better. When it's weak, I become more cautious.

• VIX - I like seeing the VIX below 15. Lower volatility tends to create a healthier environment for momentum and breakout strategies. Personally, I avoid trading when the VIX moves above 20.

• Breadth - If 8 out of 11 sectors are declining, that's usually not a great sign. Strong markets tend to have participation across sectors, not just a handful of names carrying the indexes.

• Success rates - This is probably the most important one. If good setups are repeatedly failing, I don't need the news to tell me something is wrong. The market is already giving me the answer.

• Price action > News - I do enjoy reading the news, but I pay far more attention to price action. In my experience, the market usually knows something long before the headlines catch up.

There is a time to go long, a time to go short and a time to go fishing. - Jesse Livermore

https://preview.redd.it/kdvb0iewl89h1.png?width=2104&format=png&auto=webp&s=92ac68841dfaa792bdc0173350d17c9fb0164d86

8. Sector & industry rotation.

There are two primary ways I find stocks. The first is through scanners that filter roughly 6,000 US stocks down to a manageable watchlist of about 100 stocks give or take. The second is by following what I call momentum leaders within the strongest sectors and industries. Why? Because stocks rarely move in isolation. Money flows through the market in clusters. First a few stocks start moving. Then a theme starts working. Then an entire industry starts showing strength. Then a sector starts attracting attention. True leaders automatically separate themselves from the pack but stocks move together in the end.

Once I started paying attention to sectors and industries (e.g. by looking here) instead of just individual stocks, finding opportunities became dramatically easier because I stopped fighting where money was already flowing.

• Industry leaders - I always want to know the top 5 stocks within a strong leading industry. That's often where the biggest opportunities are. When you see a new industry on the 1W or 1M, pay attention.

• Sector rotation - Money rotates between sectors. Understanding where capital is flowing to and from gives you a huge advantage because you're no longer guessing where leadership will come from.

• Spotting rotation - Each day I like to look at sector and industry performance across the last 3 months, 1 month and 1 week. This helps me identify emerging themes before they are obvious to everyone else.

• Following strength - Instead of asking what stock might move, I prefer asking where money is already flowing. More often than not, that's where the next opportunity comes from.

You want to own the leading stock in a leading industry. - William O'Neil

https://preview.redd.it/rz2uus4xl89h1.png?width=2100&format=png&auto=webp&s=6b7b49fd20137a25b6cbb75d8200890227aa8400

9. Why winners keep winning.

People love hunting for bargains. This is especially true in the stock market. We assume a stock that's down 70% must be a better opportunity than a stock making new highs. But the market rarely works that way. The truth is that the strongest stocks often become even stronger. Stocks making new highs frequently keep making new highs. On the other hand, stocks that are weak and beaten down usually keep falling, often much further than anyone thinks possible.

If you think about it, a $5 stock can be incredibly expensive while a $500 stock can be incredibly cheap. When I started studying historical winners, I kept seeing the same pattern. Names showing exceptional relative strength often continued outperforming for months and sometimes years. Meanwhile, many of the stocks that looked cheap stayed cheap or got even cheaper. One of the biggest shifts in my trading came when I stopped asking what looked undervalued and started asking where the market was already showing me strength.

• Momentum - Unless I'm looking for a short, I like to see momentum. I want stocks outperforming the market and showing more buying than selling pressure. If a stock is acting well while the broader market is struggling, that's usually information worth paying attention to.

• Fundamentals - I primarily focus on accelerating sales and earnings growth. Ideally the company is also profitable and generating strong returns on capital (ROE). But above all I want to see acceleration. Institutions pay for growth.

• Uptrend - I want the stocks making higher highs and higher lows while trading above rising moving averages. My favorite names usually have a strong slope on both the 50-day and 200-day moving averages, which often signals sustained institutional demand over a longer period.

Buy high and sell higher. - Nicolas Darvas

https://preview.redd.it/eh27xruxl89h1.png?width=2102&format=png&auto=webp&s=defb8c9a306ab5719debf09731fbd0a183011125

10. How I scan for stocks.

Now that you learned a thing or two (hopefully) the question is, what should you look for? One thing that took me far too long to understand is that there are really three ways to evaluate a stock and you always need to be able to ‘scan’ the market and find stocks. This is a must.

• Technicals - Shows you what the market thinks. The chart is a visual representation of supply and demand. Whether a stock is weak or strong can often be determined from the chart alone.

• Fundamentals - Shows you how the business is doing. Revenue growth, earnings growth, margins, cash flow, and profitability help paint a picture of the underlying company mechanics.

• Relative Strength - Shows how a stock compares to everything else. A company can have great fundamentals and a decent chart, but if there are 50 better opportunities in the market, why own it?

Once I understood those core market concepts, the next challenge was finding opportunities consistently. That's where scanning comes in.

Just so you know, there are about 6,000 stocks listed in the United States. I’d say about 3000 of those are illiquid, low-quality, speculative garbage or businesses you would never want to touch. That’s also why I didn’t even include them on my platform. They are basically nuclear waste.

Here are some of the things I scan for:

• Uptrends - I primarily trade momentum, so I want stocks making higher highs and higher lows with rising moving averages. Ideally the 20, 50 and 200-day moving averages are stacked correctly and sloping upward.

• Combos - These are stocks that have at least 25% quarterly sales growth, 40% yearly growth, 150% more volume than the last 20 days, and are in an uptrend. This is heavily inspired by O'Neil's work.

• Leaders - Momentum leaders are usually stocks that move as a cluster in a particular industry or theme. These are the potential giants of tomorrow that I want to have on my radar as early as possible.

I then get a list of stocks and go through that list. I usually have two lists, one is about 100 stocks I want to keep an eye on, and the other is a list of my top 10 stocks for the week. Once I go through the charts I look for the following in most cases, which are my ‘basics’.

• Linearity - Above all I like to get in stocks that just have a very beautiful move to them. The charts are nice to look at, clean, with orderly pullbacks, and they are respecting the moving averages.

• Volume - I want to see either a Pocket Pivot or very high volume on a candle that breaks out of a tight range. Volume needs to be there. I want to see high volume on legs up, and low volume on pullbacks.

• ADR - Ignore slow stocks completely (<4% ADR). You want stocks that are fast enough to give you good gains (>4% ADR) but not too wild and volatile which will just lead to getting stopped out (>8% ADR).

After this, which yields me around 100-150 stocks, I look for stocks that are set up according to one of the setups that I like to look for.

• Setups - With the exception of my mean reversion setup, I look for tightness to enter and look for bases, VCPs, wedges, and flags. I do not care for anything else, unless I’m deliberately experimenting.

For those curious, my basic scanner is surprisingly simple:

• ADR: 4-8%
• Market Cap: $300M+
• Liquidity: 100K+ dollar volume
• Trend: Rising 50 and 200-day moving averages

Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. - Seneca

https://preview.redd.it/2oup86uyl89h1.png?width=2100&format=png&auto=webp&s=febd36e3013425c83633968a8136751fc2324b9c

PART 2 COMING SOON

I know this was a long read, so if you made it this far, thank you.

I hope there is at least one idea in here that will make you look at the markets differently from now on. Looking back, most of the lessons that moved the needle for me weren't particularly complicated. The difficult part was figuring out which lessons actually mattered and then applying them consistently over a long period of time.

Just for the record, none of these are affiliate links.

PS: If you made it this far, consider sharing this with others.

BONUS

Make sure to check out this, which is built based on the principles shared in this post.

RESOURCES

How Trading Really Works (slides)
How Trading Really Works (youtube)

BOOKS

Reminiscence of a Stock Operator - Edwin Lefèvre
How to Make Money In Stocks - William O’Neill
How I Made $2 Million in the Stock Market - Nicolas Darvas
Principles of Professional Speculation - Victor Sperandeo
Trade like a Stock Market Wizard - Mark Minervini
Market Wizards - Jack Schwartz
Dao of Capital - Mark Spitznagel

YOUTUBE

Stockbee
Qullamaggie
Trading Lion
Roaring Kitty

TOOLS

TC2000
Spiceliner
Finviz
TradingView

PEOPLE

Jeff Sun
Qullamaggie
Mark Minervini
Evan Evans
Dan Zanger
Lone Stock Trader
Jim Roppel

BONUS. A TLDR for the lazy lurkers

1. It takes way longer than you think. Expect 5–10 years, not 1–2.
2. Studying ≠ learning. Focus on setups, charts, and understanding.
3. Stop buying garbage. Follow strength, ignore the "cheap" stocks.
4. Most indicators are noise. Simple charts lead to better decisions.
5. Keep your tools and platforms simple. Build a process for yourself.
6. Trade your personality. Build a style that fits you, not your hero.
7. The market comes first. Great setups fail in bad conditions.
8. Money moves in sectors. Follow where capital is flowing.
9. Strong stocks get stronger. New highs often lead to more new highs.
10. Scan for quality. Uptrends, growth, volume, strength, and liquidity.

Maybe it's just what I'm seeing online, but it feels like a lot of the biggest winners over the last couple of years came from people who had strong conviction in a small number of ideas.

Meanwhile, diversified portfolios have often produced solid returns, but not the kind of gains that generate excitement or get shared everywhere.

Of course, concentration comes with much higher risk and plenty of stories don't work out.

Still, it makes me wonder where the balance should be between protecting capital and maximizing upside.

How concentrated is your portfolio right now compared to a few years ago?

With how much information and access people have now, it feels like retail trading has evolved a lot.

People have better tools, faster execution, more data, and way more shared ideas than before.

At the same time, the speed of decisions also seems much higher.

Ideas get hyped, traded, and forgotten very quickly.

It makes me wonder whether all this access is actually improving results, or just increasing turnover without improving long-term outcomes.

Do you think retail traders are becoming more skilled over time, or just more active?

So I was digging through 13F filings and noticed Renaissance Technologies quietly picked up a position in Beamr Imaging (BMR).

Yeah. That Renaissance. The Medallion Fund guys. The ones who turned $10k into the entire GDP of a small island nation using math the rest of us will never understand.

Now look — Jim Simons may be gone, but the quants he left behind don’t just randomly buy micro-cap Israeli video compression companies for fun. These people eat eigenvalues for breakfast. Every position is a signal.

And what does Beamr actually do? Their CABR technology compresses video with zero quality loss — which is quietly becoming a massive deal for AV pipelines, AI training data, and data center cost reduction. The kind of boring-but-critical infrastructure play that quant models love.

Float is tiny 100k order might send this to the atmosphere, Institutional accumulation is just starting. And now the smartest money on the planet has a seat at the table.

Could be nothing, a rounding error in a $65B portfolio.

Or maybe the machines know something.

Not financial advice. I hold 8,888 shares because it’s lucky according to my last Chinese hooker. Do your own DD.