Hello there, everyone. Let me know if you can hear me and let me know if you can see the slide. Wonderful. Beautiful day in New York. Welcome, everyone. My name is Melissa Armout. I own a company called the Stock Swoosh. And I'm here to talk to you today about the trading strategy that I train, that I use daily, and that I personally created. So we're gonna talk about a strategy to win in any market. Why do I say any market? Because sometimes the market is up and sometimes the market is down. So when you're trading, if you're looking for trades that where you need the market's momentum, where you have to have the movements of the market in order to train, you're gonna have a difficult time because the market's volatile, can change directions on a dime, can change directions on any given particular day. So what I try to do each and every morning is look for specific stocks. Thank you, Kathy. And I see some people coming in late. Anybody that has any questions, you can just write it in the room and I will answer the question as we're going along here tonight. I'm the only person that can see the questions and the writing, but I will say the question out loud as we continue. So anyways, I do gaps. And I'm gonna talk to you today about what a gap is. If you've ever thought about trading the market for a living, you know, a lot of people, they come to me, they're doing this for a number of years. They don't seem to be able to make it. They're losing money, they're not consistent. And what I've found is that it's really the lack of a strategy that is problematic for people. They're not focused, they're all over the place, they use too many indicators, they use too many things. I don't do anything with fundamentals. I specifically am focused on technical analysis, okay? Now for those of you who don't know what technical analysis is, technical analysis is using past price data to predict future price data. That's what I do. So I use it in a chart. But I specifically, I'm looking at the gap, okay? And again, I'm gonna talk about what a gap is in a minute. But lots of people that wanna do this for a living end up not being successful why they do not have a specific focus daily, or they deviate from it, or they have too many things that they're looking at, okay, which again is problematic. Thanks again, Kathy. So a lot of people work hard and they study, and they train, and they do class after class after class trying to get this training thing down and they never get there. They never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever get there. A lot of people think they're helping themselves and really they're wasting their time. Now, while it's great that everybody's here for this free webinar, you are not gonna learn my system here today. That would be impossible, okay? My class is 16 hours. You will never learn it in a one hour webinar how to treat. And anyone that thinks that they're gonna pay for a class that's cheap, by cheap I mean anything is less than $1,000, is, you're crazy. You're not gonna learn a good system with an inexpensive class, okay? Even if you come and take my class, which my class is $7,000. And again, it's two full days on a weekend. Even if you come and take that, you're gonna have questions after my class. Training is learning it, it's a skill. You learn it, you do it, you go through the process, you learn more and you do it and you get better over time. So really the whole idea of throwing yourself into it, lickety-split and thinking you're gonna get something really quick, really fast and really cheap is not gonna get you where you wanna be. And I find a lot of people think that they're working hard because they're spending 25 years trying to figure out how to trade and they've done many, many classes even though they're inexpensive, they've done a lot of them. And they've spent a lot of money on classes if they added it all up or they've spent many, many hours trading, they never quite get there and they're frustrated and they're floundering but it's really that they have no idea what they're doing and a lack of focus and they're really focused on just way too many things. And so they're all over the place, okay? I'm not all over the place when I get up in the morning. I know if I like something, I know if I don't, I know if I'm going long, I know if I'm going short, okay? Or if I'm not doing anything, for example, at all. And feel free to write in the room if you have any questions. So anyways, no matter what your goals are to trade, you need a solid strategy in order to achieve them and that strategy has to work, okay? It can't just be whatever, like looking at two intersecting moving averages and saying I wanna go long at everything that intersects on the eight and the 20. It doesn't work like that, okay? There is an analysis involved. There's a thought process involved. As I said earlier, there's a skill set involved in doing what I do. One of the reasons I'm really good at what I do is because I've been doing nothing but gaps, which, and the system I created for 12 going on 13 years. So the longer you do something, the better you get. It's like a sport. The more you play golf, the better golfer you are. If you play a lot anyways. So one nice thing about day trading is you can work from home. I think this is a huge benefit for people right now. We're still in the thick of it with COVID, at least here in Manhattan. 2021, many, many people are still working from home and some people are gonna go back to work. However, some people are splitting it. Some people are going back to work three days a week, gonna be home two days a week. Some people are gonna be home permanently and they're never gonna go back to the office because things have changed now in reference to office space and people working from home. I just had a friend that said they just told him they're permanently now gonna be from home full-time. They could go back, but they decided they didn't wanna spend the money for to lease the space anymore. So you're gonna see that happening and therefore you have the freedom to train in the morning, at least Eastern time zone in the morning when the market opens. If you want to and do your job as well from home too and you can transition into trading full-time if this is what you wanna do. Now, if you wanna trade part-time, that's fine too. Like I said, you can do it one day a week, two days a week or whatever works. But the nice thing about trading is you can make your own hours. And my day trading strategy offers people a career with really full-time pay and part-time hours because I don't trade that long on a day. Now, I may be in options trades where I'm watching them maybe in the afternoon but I'm usually done with my day trades quick early in the morning or I try to be. Unless something's still going and I'll hold it.  But I typically like to be done in the morning and I typically try to be done in the first hour of the day. And obviously when you trade, you have weekends off, okay? I usually look at the futures in Sunday after six o'clock. I saw last night we were down a little. So sometimes I'll check that out. But I like to really have the freedom that I have on the weekends. When I did mortgages, which was my previous job, I worked 24 seven, seven days a week. And it was all the time, holidays, everything. Because when people are looking for homes because I did their loans, people are buying homes, people are refinancing, doing whatever, they're always working along with the real estate agents who are working 24 seven on weekends.  And again, any questions, plop them and write them in the room. Anyways, getting back to what I was saying, trading is good for extra income. It has unlimited income potential, though if you wanna do it full time, but you can't make any money at all, not one dime, unless you learn what to do. Now, while you may have no clue how to trade and make money sometimes, you'll lose that and more if you don't know what you're doing overall.  But steady as she goes, like you're walking down a road when you're trading, getting somewhere with it, constantly working on what you're doing, constantly trying to get better. And I do that myself. I'm constantly, constantly, constantly double triple checking myself, looking at the market, rating gaps, re-rating them. And actually I teach the class the class I wrote that I created, but actually that helps me get better over time as I'm doing it as well. Any questions here so far? I see some new people. But anyways, I view trading as an adventure and it is something that involves risk. Nothing in life that is great comes without taking chances or risk. You have to be willing to push yourself to get to the next level. If you are not willing to push yourself to get to the next level, then you won't get to the next level. And what I have found, and this is one of the reasons, besides the fact that many traders trading don't have a strategy that works or any strategy at all, I also find that many people are not willing to take risk. They say that they are, but they're really not. They're really not. Risk involves not just financial risk where you're risking money in a trade or paying for a class like mine where you don't understand what you're gonna learn before you learn it. It also involves the emotional risk of putting yourself out there emotionally to do something and dream big. Dream big enough that you're gonna do something to take action to create that dream because you have to take action to create the dream. The idea of never doing anything and never taking any action isn't gonna get you anywhere. Life is about taking risks. And you have to take action in your own life to support this. And the universe will support you then when you take those actions. You have to do something to make a difference to change your life circumstances and your trading if in fact that's what you want to do. I'll share a personal story with you right now. I'm in the process of looking for apartments in Manhattan. I could talk for three hours about what I've been experiencing since I started this process. And just recently, even cause I've been spending a lot more time looking recently, but I said to myself the other day, I said, wow, this is an experience. This is an experience that I will never forget. And it's prepping me for to go to the next level in my own life. And I didn't realize that when I started it. I just said, well, I'm gonna look for an apartment. And now a whole new world has opened up for me. A world that I never knew anything about in New York. Okay, in New York City, that's where I live. And it's actually made me start thinking about the process also of going to the next level. There's a threshold, okay? There's a threshold that everybody has to get through. And I think what happens is many, many to get to the next level, whatever that is. Whether it's the next income level, whether it's the next level in your career, okay? Whether it's the next work promotion, whether it's the next level in trading, okay? So there's a cost involved in getting to the next level and it also involves taking a chance and it involves a risk. And so I think a lot of people throw themselves into trading, have no idea what they're doing, don't know what's involved with it.   And they're back and forth, back and forth, back and forth and this process could go on for eternity. That's why some people never become successful trading. And then they end up as time goes on growing and getting a very negative attitude about trading and a very negative attitude about the markets and money and everything else. Well, having a negative attitude about trading or becoming successful at all trading or wealth or money will affect your ability to succeed. It will affect you in a negative way, which you don't wanna do. So then you work against yourself in your mind by thinking negative thoughts, which is very problematic. So I'm the type of person where I'm very motivated, always wanting to get to the next level, the next thing. So that's just my personality. But if you're somebody that wants to train, you have to get past that threshold wherever that threshold is for you. And again, there's different thresholds. You'll do this thing and you'll get past that threshold, then you'll do well with that, then there'll be another threshold. Do you understand what I'm saying? It's a continuous process, all right? Silver, if you're typing something, I can't see it. There's nothing there. Anyways, where do you wanna be by the end of 2021? Crazy to sound, but I can't believe it. Easter is a week away. Easter is early this year, but when I think about it, I'm like, oh my gosh, it was just Christmas. It was just Christmas a couple of weeks ago, wasn't it? I mean, this is crazy how fast this year has flown. I don't know if that's good or bad, but it seems like 2021 is just rolling on by. And next week is April. So really, when you think about it, we only have nine more months left in the air. That's nuts when I think about it, really. So when you consider shutting down for yourself, I think it's a good idea to create goals for yourself. And I think you said, well, here's where I am right now today, and here's when I wanna be by 12, 31, 2021. I think that's realistic, okay? But seriously, sit down and think, do you wanna be in the same place you are right now or somewhere better than you are right now? Like I do this personally, like I just told you I'm looking for an apartment. Between now and 12, 31, 2021, I wanna be in a better apartment. I wanna be in a better place, okay? If you're thinking this with your trading, you say I wanna have more money. I wanna risk more money. I wanna be making more money trading. I wanna know what I'm doing by 12, 31, 2021. Set goals for yourself. Because if you're one of these people that are floundering, you gotta just be honest with yourself and recognize that within yourself. And just say, I'm floundering. I have no clue what I'm doing.  Be honest with yourself or ask yourself, why are you doing it at all, okay? You gotta have the goal of why you're trading.  I don't think it matters, but you need to know why are you doing it? Just to say you're doing it for the hell of it and then never taking it seriously, you're consequently going to lose. You must take it seriously whether you do it for 35 minutes a day or whether you do it for the whole entire trading day, six and a half hours all day long, which I do not trade all day long, but either way, whatever amount of time that you're involved in the market's trading, you still have to take it seriously. And you have to watch your trades, okay? And so I'm here to talk to people about what I do so that you can make a decision and maybe hearing me will help you make a decision on how you can move forward. Do you want to learn my strategy? Are you ready to move forward and learn what I know? Which again, I teach in a two-day weekend class, but you will have questions after the class. I'm here to answer those questions and I'm here to answer them for people on the phone and in the live trading room. Any questions here so far? Okay, all right, let's talk about what is a gap. So what is a gap? As I said earlier, my strategy is gaps, but I created a system, I developed a system, it's a rating system based on rating each gap that I see and I rate it using a 26-point system. That's the meat and potatoes of what I teach in the class, but just a very basic analysis of what a gap is, I'll go over it with you here today. There are bearish gaps, there are bullish gaps. This is a bullish gap. This was a chart here of Nike. We ended up doing this trade Friday, so I have this chart in here. Nike had a bullish gap. This day here in the 10th, it closed at one price and opened at a different price the next day. It gapped up. So what is a gap up or what is a gap at all? It's when a stock closes at one price and opens at a different price. It can close at one price and open higher or it could close at one price and open lower. So here from Thursday to Friday, Nike gapped down, closed up here around 143, open in the morning around 140. We shorted Nike on Friday. It helps Silver, his question is stuck. I cannot see anything he's writing. I don't know if you wanna help him. It's been stuck for a while. So anyways, that's what a gap is, okay? Everybody with me? So what I developed is a system and I really mastered a skill where I will look at a gap in the pre-market or in the post-market and I will predict where the directional bias that the stock or the market will go based on the gap itself. So I'm predicting the direction. Either something will move up or something will move down. Then I take the trade before the move occurs and that's how you make large profits. So my method is consistent because I can accurately predict where it's gonna go very often by looking at the post-market and pre-market gap. And then again, after the day opens, after 9.30, I either do a day trade or an option or both in that stock. Whether it's going longer, shorter buying a put or a call. Okay? So I have a skill set. I have a lot of skill sets but particularly with trading, I have a skill set to predict market direction, to predict stock direction and I have a skill set to read very quick action that occurs when stocks and the market trades. So if something opens very, very quickly, I can read something within seconds and we take fast entries in trades when we're doing day trades. I can read quickly and act quickly and that is a skill. And it's something that you can develop. You can develop the same skill that I have, okay? And so that's what you would learn. That's what you would learn from me, okay? Also, I'm very good at shorting. Now I do go long and I can make money going long but I prefer to short because I find that shorting stocks has a niche particularly because many, many people that trade the market do not understand how to short or don't do it correctly. And so I'm very good at that too. So I have a skill to really read what is weakness or what stocks we could short that are gonna drop to make money. But what I do is I'm looking to get in the trades whatever I happen to do. Again, day trades options both and I'm looking to get in within the first 30 minutes of the day, okay? So large big moves happen within this period and that's why I wanna get in because I'm trying to get a big move, okay? And you want a big move too. If you short a stock of $10, you have a thousand shares and it drops to nine, how much are you gonna make? A thousand dollars. If you buy a put and it costs you a buck and it drops and it's worth two bucks, what are you gonna make? One buck, it'll be 100% return in investment. So it's the idea of getting the momentum, which is a big move, okay? That's what you wanna get. So I created and developed a system to figure that out, find what stocks are gonna move in a certain direction and then also have a big move. And I created my system and called it the Golden Gap. So the Golden Gap is a rating system that looks at 26 points of the daily chart of the stock. The rating system is a checklist. This is what you learn in the class. The checklist tells you what to look for in the price of the stock. This gives you confirmation and conviction that you can take the trade. Now, not every trade works. I don't have 100% win ratio, but I have a high win ratio and I use something called a stop in my day trades. So the stop is like the insurance that protects me because I know that some trades might lose. So I have a set risk amount that is equal or close to equal in every trade I take. And in reference to options, I let my options trades play out. So if my options trade, if I take it and it's down, I won't kill it. I'll let the whole thing play out. So if the ones that lose lose, they lose in a phone. The ones that win work, they go when they work, okay? But basically when you take an option, the amount that you risk is the stock. You can't lose any more than what you have at risk. Everybody with me? So the points, the 26 points predict the price direction correctly, where I see a stock gapping. It tells you where the money is flowing and why is this important? Why does it matter? So you know what direction to take the position to profit because going with the flow of the money is how you're gonna make money. You won't move a stock despite what everyone thinks based on what's happening with the Reddit people. You are not gonna move a stock, okay? As an individual trader. You have to look and read institutional money. And that's what I look for when I'm looking for a stock when it's gapping. Are institutions buying the stock? Are they selling the stock? Are they shorting the stock? And that's everything that I figure out. And then I play with that institutional money. Okay, any questions here so far? We started a little bit late today, so I'm probably not gonna have time to go over, go over the market today, but you know, I usually post videos on YouTube. When I trade the gap, do I always buy or sell stock shares? This could be expensive. Well, first of all, I trade on margin Ramon. Do you know what margin is? Second of all, if you think it's expensive, you can trade the stock using an option. Options are less expensive. Why you pay the cost of the price of the option and you don't have to trade it on margin even though more expensive stocks like Amazon options are more expensive, it's a much cheaper way to trade the stock. Do you know what margin is Ramon? I don't think it's expensive to day trade because you get margin. That's my personal opinion. You could open up a proprietary day trading account with $2,500 and get 10 to one margin, so you could have 25 grand in buying power. So that to me is very reasonable, to be honest with you. If you had a prop account with 10 grand, you'd have 100,000 in buying power. I think that's very reasonable. So I personally don't think it's expensive to day trade equities given all the options available to people to trade the types of accounts that are out there. However, if you can do options, and some people aren't doing options, I have an options newsletter. So it's whatever works for you, okay? You can open up an options account with $2,000.  Anyways, getting back to what I was saying, golden gaps have about an 88% of their move in the first 30 minutes of the day, which is fabulous. Nike was one of those on Friday. I call this the money move. You just play the move each day, boom. Play it, you're done. Take it, get in, get out, done. And again, this is day trading. So we're in, we're out. We're in, we're out. And it makes it wonderful actually to be able to get in and out so quickly and sometimes make thousands of dollars in several minutes. Now this is specifically, we're talking about this, this is day trading on margin. We'll talk about options later. So let's look at some of the day trades that we did. Last week was a good week. This whole last couple of weeks I've been really, really have been good for the day trades. I don't know why we've had some, some really nice moves and things, but this was the day here, apple gap down. Stock closed here, gap down, boom. Day was the 18th. This is apple, it's a daily chart. Here's the gap. You see it close to your gap down. I rated it, rated it good, we shorted it. Entry was $1,290, boom. Risk was $2,800, exit was $1,280, profit was $14,700, why? Got a big move in it, chunked on the size. This was a really good stop too. Now as far as buying power, what if you can't take 7,000 shares? Well, you could take 1,000 shares. Guess what? You still would have made money. You still would have made a couple thousand dollars on 1,000 shares. Why? We got the move. So this was basically a $2 plus move. Again, you have a thousand shares, something moves a dollar, a $2, what are you gonna make, two grand? You have 2,000 shares, something moves $2, what are you gonna make, $4,000? So, you know, you make it work with whatever money you have, but getting back to the original thing that I was talking about earlier, to Ramon's point, work with what you got, okay? If you do not have a big enough account to take 7,000 shares of Apple, take 100, take 200, be content with what you have if you're making money. Green is green, I say. You know what? I just got done telling you that most people are losing. If you can make money Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, by the end of the week, your account is bigger. It's bigger than it was on Sunday. So, work with what you got to build your account up. Here was the Apple day. So, here's the gap. Just wanna really show this here. You can see it. This is four o'clock, this is one minute. Four o'clock close to here, boom, gap down. This is a one minute. Here's the whole sell-off. Doot, doot, doot, doot. This is one where I decided I wanted to hold it because of the fact that I really, really had a high level of conviction in this to continue. Only it's such a good entry in it that I decided to continue with it. So, this was a nice short, okay? Again, stock close to here, gap down, boom. Okay? Any questions about Apple? Let's go to the next one. 316, play of the day was the spy. Now, this is expensive, but you could have bought calls on it. We went long the spy. This was a bullish gap. So, here was the day in here. The irony was we made money going long here and it closed right on the day, which is really funny. Only I could do that. Stock close to here, gap down, we went long, got a perfect entry, perfect exit, got out, boom. Entry was 397, 2500 shares, risk 2750, exit 397.60, boom. Profit was 1500. Very, very, very, very, very nice trade quick in and out. It was 60 cents. Again, I like to be in and out fast. Here's the gap. So, again, this is the one minute of the spy. Closed here, gapped up. We got in here and we got the push, boom, out, done. Done for the day. That's it. So, again, I try to be in and out quick in the morning unless I have a high, high, high level of conviction, which I did have an Apple. And that's one of the reasons that I ended up holding that Apple. Plus, we're up so much in it. I mean, you could put the stop at breakeven and something if you wanna hold it all day as well. I don't typically do that, but you could. Any questions here so far? Let's look at Lily. Lily was 315 that was one week ago from today. Stock closed here, gapped down. It was Monday, it was a gapped down. Entry was 191.60. On a thousand shares, risk was 2650. Another fabulous mover. 188.45 was the exit profit, $3,150. This was a short. This was a gapped down. I rated it in the morning. It rated good to short. We did the trade. Here it was. This is the one minute. Stock closed here, gapped down. Open rally, boom. We're in it, get the drop. Boom. Beautiful trade. Again, I tried to get in and out quick. I try to get in and out of the morning. Remote. Again, I don't know if you understand margin remote because you're asking me questions, which makes me think you don't. So let's go over for remote. Remote is saying how much did it cost? If you have a thousand shares, somebody tell remote. Let me find the out sign here. 191.60 price, somebody tell remote. Gallowhead knows the answer to this. How much margin, how much buying power available do you need to take that trade?  This is really easy math people, but if you don't know how to do this, you gotta get a calculator. You have to buy a calculator and have it right next to you. Gallowhead, do you wanna figure this out and tell remote? Or anyone else, quite frankly? I think you meant to say this, Gallowhead. You need $191,600 in buying power. That is just simple math. A thousand times 191.60. Remote, are you there? So again, this might be a little bit harder for people. How much cash would you need in a retail trading account? Most of them are what? Four to one margin. You would need approximately, I'll say 48 grand. It's roughly around there. It's roughly 48K divided by four. What if you don't have $48,000? Or what if you have a prop account? 10 to one, 10 to one margin, you need a lot less. You need to run 19,000 or 19.6 cash to take this. Ramon, let me know you understand that. And they're asking about margin. These are not hard and fast share quantities. There are people in my trading room that may be taking more size than me. There are people in my trading room that may be taking less size than me. So this is what I consider an advanced trader risk, which is pretty much anything to be honest with you over, I'd say a $2,000 risk. Or even over 1,500 I consider advanced. A beginner, you take under 1,000, even 500. Let me know you understand that, Ramon. So if you took half, if you took 500 shares, you need what? 500 shares with a 10 to one margin, you need roughly around nine grand cash to take it. If you took 500 shares at a four to one buying power margin account, you need roughly what? 25, 24, depends where you have your account. Does that make sense? So you, and you would have made what? 1,500 bucks. So say you were at a prop place and you took 500 shares and you would have needed roughly around $9,000, you would have made what? Around 1,600 bucks, 1,500 bucks depending on how much where you would have got out exactly, okay? That's pretty good. That's pretty good for $9,000 to make 1,500 bucks with nine grand. I think that's the point that you're trying to make Ramon. And I think I just made the point pretty well. I think you're saying you need a lot of money, but I'm saying where are you gonna put $9,000 to stick it in a bank or anywhere and earn $1,500 in interest, nowhere. If you couldn't even put $9,000 in a 10 year CD right now and come away with $1,500 in 10 years, that's how stupidly low rates are right now, even though everyone's saying rates are going up. Rates are stupidly low. So the fact is that if you have money, you can turn your money around and make it work for you a lot better by trading. And again, this isn't investing, okay? This isn't investing. You're not buying and holding and buying and holding. You're in, you're out. You're in, you're out. You're in, you're out. You're in, you're out. You're in, you're out. You get it? Whether it's state trades, whether it's options. Now, I try to let my options work a little bit. I'm trying to look for about 50% with my options, okay? But even that, even that is huge, considering where else you would put your money in a bank or some place for as far as what you would earn on it. So the point I'm trying to make is that you can make big profits when you get the money moves, what you've got to find what stocks you're gonna have the move like, Lily, final stocks you're gonna have the move like Apple, so that you can get in them, makes sense? Success in large profits comes from quality, not quantity in place. The more in planes you have, okay? The, it's not about this money, this money, this money. The key is quality. We're looking for quality, quality, quality trades. Quality trades is how you're gonna make money. Less equals more in reference to the market. And if I take a good trade and I'm in and out quickly, we did Nike on Friday, boom, I'm not doing anything else the rest of the day. I'm just done, okay?  It is about quality, this is another thing that I do that's unique. I am focused on quality and a lot of people are trading all day long, many, many day trades, all day long until four o'clock, I don't do that. But I do use a checklist to determine which stocks I'm trading, like the Lily. I look at the Golden Gap 26 point checklist, I rate it, I determine which one I'm doing. It is professional bearish gap rating system. I also have a bullish class too, but I find the bearish class is more popular because I do do more shorts than longs. So the bearish class is this weekend, March 27th and 28th. The purpose of my system is to help you evaluate which gap to trade each morning using a checklist, okay? And that helps you determine what to do. The whole philosophy behind it is to find stocks to trade that have number one, a high probability of directional bias for the entire day, big moves in the day, preferably in the morning, early confirmation of my bias in the move between 9.30 and 10 a.m. and precise entries with follow through and a good risk to reward, which obviously is what you want. I find one to one is a good risk to reward for day trades. Sometimes we get many, much, much more, some bigger ones like the Apple, okay? Nike was bigger. I got out a little early in the Nike. I don't have that in here, but Nike had a huge move. Now we, I also do options. I wanna go over this Facebook option. This is a daily chart of Facebook. This really had a nice rally. Today it got almost a 300. I've been liking this long for a long time. We had an early entry in this. We got, we had some beautiful trades in this Facebook. I didn't do it in the last two days, but we got this very early on. If I had done this out longer, I might still have been in it, but I did short trades in this. I called 270 calls March 4th in the Facebook. And let's go to March 4th. March 4th was here, okay? So stock closed here, gapped up, rallyed. Then it closed here, gapped up, rallying. Then it closed here, gapped down, fell. Then it closed here, gapped up, rallying. And then it took off like a rocket, broke out in here. Really nice move. I'm gonna go back. It was really cheap though, actually. $3 was the cost sold at eight. So the risk was what? 7,500. This has nothing to do with margin. It has nothing to do with margin at all. This is the full on amount. If you want to risk an advanced risk, which this definitely is. And you could have taken one contract. You could have spent $300. You could have taken two contracts. You could have spent $600. Either way, it was a beautiful profit. And you could have made $12,005. You would have had to hold through this because you see how wiggly jiggly it was before it went. For those of you that are not familiar with what I do, sometimes I call trades and you do have to be patient. And sometimes they go the same day. Sometimes they take a little bit of time to situate themselves. But the return on investment in this trade was 167%. It was a great call. I knew this was higher. And I saw what it did the last two days and I just didn't get that move up to 300 if I had called these out longer or whatever. That same day, a little bit later in the day, I called another one in the Facebook. Oh, wait a minute. This is the same one. No, my assistant didn't put the right one in here. Hold on. Let me see if I can find it. This is the 275s. Oh, shoot. Here, let me see if I can find the 275s. He put the numbers for this in here, but not the trade. Crap, it's gonna take me too long to find it. I'm telling you, this was the 275s. So now you know. Oh no, that's the next one. This is the beginner. Hold on, let me see. He does have the 275s in here. Sorry. Oh, this is the beginner risk. Okay, he did this for me. If he only did take two contracts, boom, would've spent $600, sold at eight, profit at 1,000. So this is a beginner risk right here. You're not gonna lose more than 600. And this is not on margin, it's just cash. Anyways, the same day later, I called, well, not much later, the 275s. This is the one that I was thinking. So I called a second Facebook. I saw it was gonna get to 270, 275. This one was cheaper, cost was two bucks. Same day on the fourth, then it had the breakout. Breakout was only 11th, we did this in the fourth. Cost was two, sold at four, it was a nice trade. 100% return investment. And again, your risk should be the same or equal to the same in every trade you take. So I risk more in my options because I like to do more expensive ones sometimes. And I also like to hold overnight to get the bigger overnight moves. But this was 100% return investment. If you bought four, 800 bucks. Could have made 800 bucks, nice trade. And really it took a week, but that's not the end of the world.  I'm usually not doing them out longer than that. Or like I said, I probably would have done something longer for the Facebook to get it up where it just went today. But I typically try to do them smaller time frames for the cost, because I'm looking for the move to happen pretty quickly. Any questions and options while I have these up? Any questions at all in options? Anyways, the Hong Kong subject of philosophy of everything I do with gaps is looking for institutional money. That's what the points are about. So why trade gaps? Why do they work so well and pay so well? Because gaps are created with large institutional money. That is what makes the gap. The professional gaps that happen and play out and stocks are formed by one thing and one thing only, large institutional money. Therefore you need a way that will help you pick the correct direction to play the gap and then confirm that the large money will flow with it, which is what you want. And Facebook is a great example of that actually. By having a formula to rate and qualify the gap, you get confirmation and conviction that the large institutional money is on your side and then you play it. Gaps are an event and create a sense of urgency. The sense of urgency is what? People are either buying or selling, all right? A Facebook today actually even, let me see if I can pull this up for today. Facebook today even almost looks like panic buying up into that area of the 300. Really, people were running it up. It sold off into the close, but that's rare where you get panic buying but that can happen too. But either way, when you have the event and action is being forced by participants of the stock, this is why gap trading is incredibly powerful. Trading gaps is a powerful and profitable way to trade because you are trading on the side of power and that's how you can make money as one individual, whether you take 100 shares or whether you take 10,000 shares of something. There are many, many different people trading the market of all kinds of different shapes and sizes and account sizes. So you will get there if you want to risk more over time but first you have to get good, okay? So what's the whole philosophy behind the golden gap system? To analyze a large time frame to make the trend decision of the directional bias for the gap. All large traders of every kind look at large time frames to make decisions, particularly institutional traders. To make entry decisions and exit decisions based on a small time frame, that's what I do in the one minute and we're just talking about it earlier. I'm quickly in and quickly out and that has a high degree of focus and accuracy. I like to do those trades fast for the day trades. I'll give options more time but I'm looking for bigger moves in those so I have to give them more time. And I'm using the daily chart to make the decision for the stock pick which allows me accuracy in the direction and then I'm using the one minute chart to allow for good risk reward trades with accuracy. So that's the whole thing that I'm doing. And it's really about the strategy. I mean, if I focus on that and don't deviate from it, I won't make money. And it doesn't mean that every trade that I take wins. I have some trades that lose but I focus on the system every time knowing and having the confidence that more trades will win than lose as long as I stick to the system. For example, today I did no trades. There was no trades that met my criteria. I didn't trade. So it's very disciplined. I didn't make any money today. I didn't lose any money today. I'm sure I'll do something tomorrow but some days I get up, there isn't anything that rains well so then we don't do anything. So it has to do with really staying consistent and focusing on that strategy and not deviating from it the way you see the results, the results of what you're doing. But trading the market's fun. It's exciting. Every day is different. I mean, I have no idea what tomorrow will bring. I have no idea what I'll do tomorrow and it really does keep you on your toes. I truly believe the one individual who can trade the market successfully is a career. As long as you have a dependable method, you do have to have a good attitude. You won't make money with a good attitude and no system though. I'll say that. Can you screw up trading if you have a bad attitude and a good system? Absolutely.  What do I mean? Not getting out of a trade, getting big issue about a trade, for example. But the central structure to trading results must be a strategy with a solid foundation that is based on accurately reading price action and I'm doing that in technical analysis. It's the technical analysis in the gap. For me, it's the details. Accuracy counts on all fronts. You have to have a quality strategy, a good risk to reward, the right entry, the correct size, proper exit, okay? And again, you're not always gonna get out the high of the day.  I could have held Nike much longer, much, much, much longer. I did a good job with Apple. I did a good job with a spy actually too.  But I make money, so that's all my job entails. Doing the best that I can. Getting the right pick. That's something that I'm focused on. Getting the right entry. I'm focused on that too, okay? Any questions here? Big money is power, that's for sure. And you have to learn how to read it. You have to learn how to predict it. Where is it going to go next? Is it going to sell? Is it going to buy? Being successful in the market takes detail on a certain level of precision. Remember when we were talking about that earlier about the floundering? When you're floundering, you for sure are not detailed at all. It can make a huge difference in your training and making money.  And again, going back to what Ramon is saying, don't risk more than you can afford. What's wrong with that? That's normal. Even people that have millions of dollars have to work within the confines of what they have available. No one has unlimited funds. Not even Warren Buffett as wealthy as he is. Now while he could probably borrow, borrow lots of money from banks, plus what he has cash, but really it's not unlimited. I mean, when you think about it, think about what happened back 2007, 2008. You had massive, massive companies and huge big banks that were in financial crisis. So everyone has to work within the confines of what they have, big or small. It does not demean you to risk small amounts in trades. In fact, it's a very intelligent decision if you have a small account.  It is not demeaning to take a small risk. If you have a small account, that's the smart thing to do. You saw the downfall of some of the hedge funds that took, that mismanaged their positions in the GME that were short. They had a lot of money, but that didn't mean that they made the right decision. They made the wrong decision. They should have exited that trade that they were down in far before that the trade went against them as much as it did. Okay? So being smart, having the right skill set, the money's gonna come for you. It may not come as fast as you want or it may come as fast as you want. You don't know.  And this is something that I've developed over the years, as I said. So when you do the class, it's like a window into my brain of how I'm looking at something. It's a window into my eyes. This is how I see this. And then I explain it to you. And you say, oh yeah, I see what she means. I get it. I can see what she's saying there, and so on and so forth. But without a good strategy, you're never gonna make a dime in the market. Overall, and that's all that counts. You're every year, every year, if you're losing, I just don't know how people do it. I just don't know how people do it with no level of conviction and no commitment. You're never gonna get there without commitment. And I've had my business now for a number of years too. And it's amazing to me how long some people are following me and they have not signed up for my class. It's actually shocking. I say to myself, gosh, these some people are just really non-committal. And I just don't get it. That's my personality is I'm all into something or I can't be bothered with it. But there's many people that trade the market and they're all the ones that lose that are non-committal. I say, if you wanna be successful, you must commit yourself to doing this and give it your all. It doesn't mean seven days a week, 24 hours a day. It means learning what to do, paying for the class to learn what to do, someone like me from my time information and knowledge. And then it means focusing 100% of your attention when you're in a trade. Whether you're in one trade or 10 trades, you must focus on them.  You can't ignore it. You have to set your alarm at certain times. If I'm in a day trade, I do not tend to walk away from my computer, but I'm in and out usually so quickly that that makes that impossible too. So you have to pay attention, okay? The market isn't gonna do everything for you. You're in control. You're in control. You're in control of your own success. Any questions? So here's this question Ramon was bringing up. How much money do you need to do this? Well, you have to have buying power if you want a day trade. If you wanna do options, you can up and up a cash account. You don't need buying power to do options or you could set up a margin account for options. If you wanna referral for broker email me, there's prop places, there's retail places. You take my class, the golden gap course, you're gonna learn my system and what I know and then I'm gonna help you along the way by answering questions and explaining things to you and going over them in the room and talking to you in the phone. I see Shelly here. I've had many conversations with Shelly. Shelly is new. Shelly is doing options. Shelly, are you there? Yeah, Shelly is new. Shelly is only options newsletter. She hasn't done the class yet. Shelly is trying to figure it out. She's working through it. You need a trading account wherever you wanna go. That's up to you. The software is up to you and you don't need to buy any special scanners. We can go wherever you wanna trade. You can make charts look like mine pretty much anywhere. Because it's really about focusing on the right information, which is what? It's in the technicals, it's in the gap, it's in the chart. You have to have access to charts if you wanna learn what I do. I mean, that's number one, but really any place you can make your charts look like mine. Any questions here so far? So what some people think is a lot of money is not what everyone thinks. And vice versa, what do I mean? Ramon thinks that taking a thousand shares of what we're talking about, Lily, is a lot. Well, some people don't think even if you had the full cash amount, some people don't think $191,000 is a lot Ramon. Some people think $9,000 is a lot. Some people don't think $9,000 is a lot. Do you know what I'm saying? Everyone's coming from a different place and a different perspective. And that's the one interesting thing I think that I've learned through my life, living in many, many different places and now also talking to many, many different human beings on the planet. I talk to people in different countries with different monetary systems and exchange rates. And I'm in the US and I live in Manhattan, one of the most expensive places to live in the planet. So I have a very, very unique perspective about seeing how everybody looks at things differently. And it's really taught me a lot about people. And it's also taught me a lot about money, but it has a lot to do with how you think about money. Get to the point where you respect it. You respect it. And when you're in a trade and you're up and you get out and you feel good about that and you parlay that feeling of booking the money into another book and so on and so forth. When you get out of a trade and you feel bad when you make money, that is a terrible thing to tell your brain. It's telling your brain that booking money is bad. And why would you think that? Well, I had somebody email me the other day. They're a set of themselves that got out of Apple II early and he felt bad. I said, don't ever, ever, ever say that again. You're giving a message out there to your brain and to the universe and the market as well that what you did was bad when what you did was good.  A lot of times it has to do with changing your perspective and how you're looking at things. But again, you won't make money without a good strategy even if you have a good attitude. You gotta have the strategy. Gotta have the strategy so you know what you're doing. You have to read a chart, right? If you don't know how to read a chart, you shouldn't be trading at all. And I find a lot of people have no clue what they're doing and you know what gives me the most perspective of that because I really don't go into details with people on the phone that ask me questions about the class and reference to charts. I mostly have noticed that through the years when I participate in these webinar events. Like I get invited to do this thing, that thing. I'm doing one on Thursday. Doing another webinar Thursday. And I hear other people talking, you know, different things, whatever. Before and after me, usually when I'm on the mic, right before or right after, whatever. And I say, gosh, geez, you know, these people are looking at things like totally wackadoo. Or they have so many different things on their charts. They look like a planetary solar system as far as their indicators.  No wonder people get bogged down. I try to keep it simple. I'm really very, very, what's the word? Common sense. Common sense when it comes to trading. I think traders try to think they're gonna make a lot of money being tricky, tricky, tricky. It's really just about common sense and simplifying it for yourself. And part of that is the focus too. And you have to have a plan for booking the money. And again, that is your goal. That is why you're doing it. In order to make brief profits, you need the right business plan, sit down, figure out how much cash you have, figure out how much you can consistently risk, don't risk difference amounts on the trades, and also figure out how many trades you can take a day and how many trades you can take a week. If I call five options trades on Monday, and you can only take two that week, then you're only taking two until you get out of the two. And so on and so forth, okay? You have to set some guidelines for yourself and you need to follow those guidelines. It's risk, how many trades you're taking, when you're getting out, okay? Again, whether you're doing it as an option or a day train. Any questions here so far? You're doing this for results. If you're not seeing results, it's very difficult to keep going. One, you will lose cash. And two, you will lose confidence in yourself. There's nothing like making money to help your confidence. So sometimes when I have a bad day or a bad week, I have this amazing ability to then turn around and then the next day or the next week have a huge week. I get frustrated with myself if I have a bad day, that I wanna go after it the next day and make even more to prove to myself that I really have the skill set, which I do, but I very often am like that within myself. Whether it's day trades or options. And so it's interesting. It's, you have to focus on making the money to build your confidence.  So you gotta work on those things at the same time. And sometimes that's challenging for people. I'm here to help people do that, but it's gotta go hand in hand, okay?  That Facebook train was down before it had that move. And I know some people just were really upset with themselves. They killed the trade before that trade went and they knew they missed out on a lot of money, but they lacked the confidence to let the trade play out. So it's hand in hand with the confidence. But if you ever have questions, you can always call me. You can always email me. Shelly knows, Shelly does that. Shelly's only options letter. Anyways, what's the good risk to your payout? Just in general, this is day trades or, you know, options. One to three is fabulous. On a daily basis, we're looking for one, but you can get much, much higher trades. When, earnings season typically, when stocks go to dream targets, right now we're at the tail end of earnings season. Easter, like I said, is next week. The next earnings season starts in the middle in the middle of April. So when stocks have earnings, they typically gap. Again, I don't know if they're gonna gap up or down and I don't take stocks into the earnings, but we have a busy season where you have big, large moves in stocks and earnings. Like Nike was earnings. It had a huge move. It was a beautiful day trade that was earnings, okay? So that's the time to be looking for piggy targets. That's the time to be looking for bigger moves. Or if you have the market with you. Any questions here so far? Kathy, I'm almost done. If you can let me continue a little bit here since we started later, let me know. Is that okay? And it was getting back to what I was talking about in reference to working from home, where people are at, job security in today's economy. Today's world is not the same as 25 years ago or 10 years ago or even five years ago. What we think is a secure job today and it'd be gone tomorrow. I mean, this has never been true since 2020, since COVID. It's unfortunate. Now a lot of jobs are coming back. I was laying on my sofa watching a movie yesterday. I saw for the first time and I can't even months, a year. I saw four planes. Four planes on a Sunday afternoon go right over my head. Just laying on the sofa, I thought, geez, I'm like, wow, air travel really is back. I live in one of the busiest sections where there's all these different intersecting airports. JFK, LaGuardia are right here and I've seen no air travel. So jobs are coming back and that's good for the economy. That's good for everybody. That's good for markets. That's good for companies. But it's the kind of time where you could, it's never too late to have a fallback. It's just never too late to have a fallback idea or the idea of extra money because we can be great employees, productive, outgoing, hardworking and it may not even matter to our employer in the end if the company can't keep you on. And that is what has happened in these COVID times and it's been frustrating for people. People are frustrated. People have had enough of this. They want to get back to life. They want to get back to work. They want to get back to being productive. Talk about confidence. If you can't get up and go to work, as great as it is if the government sends you a check, it's, you know, you're not going to get rich in government subsidies. I'll tell you that right now. And they never come in time for people either. And the reality is that, you know, it really working and being productive and being an engaged member of society and producing something and being a part of the workforce helps your confidence level. Even if you're going to work, you know, at a fast food restaurant, it's you're a productive member of society. People need that. They need that to feel good about themselves. Trust me. I used to manage people. I used to manage people at the bank. I managed tellers. They were minimum wage. You know, you need to be a productive member of society. That's another thing. That's another thing. Banks still here in New York City are fully open if you can even believe it. It's crazy. Any questions here so far? So many things in New York are closed.  I think April 1st, they're coming back 50% for indoor dining. But that's, it's, you know, it's slow. But anyways, it's a mind over matter. It's a mind over matter. Again, you have to stay positive. You have to have the confidence. It doesn't mean that every trade's gonna work. Some trades will lose. And when you have been losing trade, that's when you're challenged. When you make a mistake, that's when you're challenged. Nobody's challenged when the trade works. I call trade, it goes within seconds like Nike.  You don't, you don't have to have, you could be the most insecure person in the world. Anyway, you know, you're not gonna become confident with that. You, you have, it's doing it, learning it, understanding it and how you deal with the losses. The days where you are down in a trade, are you gonna come back and make things worse?  And I go back and I look at it and say, did I do something wrong? Did I make a mistake? What did I see here? Did I not see something in the market or whatever it is? And then you learn and you get better. And that's how you gain confidence too, okay? You're challenged when you take a trade that loses if you know what to do to not let it get the best of you. Any questions? Anyways, we were talking about share size a while ago here, about a half an hour ago. The money comes easy once you know what to do. If you can splop on the size, but I definitely make myself available to people. I try to do my best to help people. You can use a system for day train, swing training and options trading. And again, it's the same system no matter how you're doing it. You're just taking the trade in a different way if you're doing an option versus if you're doing a day trade. I like doing both because sometimes we'll have a busy time for day trades. Sometimes not as busy for options or vice versa. So I like having the flexibility of doing both to be active, active in the market, active in my trades, active making money. But it's really how much you're risking versus where you're looking at the gap itself. You're looking for one-to-one ideally. I think 50% is good with an option. If you risk $1,000 and make 500, I think that's a good amount.  Probably not, no. Yes, you're up green, but I would give the trade a chance to work, okay? Especially if you have time in it, which again, I'm trying to call out the weeklies or two weeks, but you have to be consistent. Consistent with what you risk, consistent with your shops, consistent with your strategy, okay? Learning is important. This isn't rocket science. This isn't brain surgery. You can learn it. You can ask me questions. I think learning is important before you risk money. I think that once you start to trade with real money, after you do the class, you start to see how you feel with it and you're going comfort level and then things come up that you may have questions about and then you realize, oh, I have a question about this or I don't understand this or whatever. Things that you didn't know before when you were just taking the class when you're actually doing it. But learning is a big piece of it. It's the knowledge. The knowledge helps you hold a trade like Facebook. You say, wait a minute, I know the buying is going to come into this. Man, I was really right about that. If I had known it was going to go to 300 by today, I would have taken that out longer. I mean, I knew the buying was coming into Facebook. It was a great trade, but man, did it really come in. It really came in. That's not just rocketed. More so than anything else, even the market. If you're ready and want to be successful as a trader, learning what I know and learning it from me is your greatest chance for success because I'm really here in my apartment right now, for now, still during COVID and I'm taking special time to talk to people, to help them, to be in the room, to go over stuff in the room. Like the days like today where we don't train, I'll go over questions. We take the time, I teach. I really am trying to develop people into good traders which has been successful. I've developed many, many people into becoming good traders. In fact, I had some very nice emails at the end of 2020 where people didn't re-subscribe to the room with the options there. They said, Melissa, I'm doing great. I don't need you anymore. I mean, that says a lot about one, my system and two, how well people are doing with me that they feel confident enough to go out and do it on their own. Everybody has a different learning curve. Again, it is not, you should not feel bad if it takes you longer than others to learn. This is not a contest between you and other people. The same thing with the amount of risk. This isn't a contest. Who can risk more money and who can make more money and who can learn it the faster? You should only be concerned with yourself. That's it. What do you need to understand better? What is not working for you?   Are you over trading? Are you not at your computer, at your desk at the right times that you need to be watching what's going on? Or whatever, whatever the case may be. Do you not understand the market? Do you not understand a gap at all? Any questions here? The more focused you are in your own success and invested in your own success, the better you're gonna do, okay? It's about empowering yourself. And I'm here to teach the information and knowledge to help people get that. That is my role as a mentor. So the key into the system is in the 26 points. This is how I'm able to predict the moves, the stock makes so accurately, including the market. Including the market. So the class is called the Golden Gap System. It's one strategy is all you need to be successful in the market. You do not need a general overall broad base view to make money. Tons of people have that and fail all the time. I was very focused on making money and I think that's how I developed the system even though it took me three years. So learn how to read institutional money and price patterns and gaps and you don't need to do anything else. Because if your reason for doing this is to make money, this will make you money. So the class is this weekend, March 27th and 28th. If you want to sign up, I would not wait to the last minute because I've been running a spring special and I already have people registered. The class is nine to five. It's 69.99 US dollars. If you're interested, email me for the forms at Melissa at thestockswish.com. Now I do a combo, which includes the trends and the Golden Gap. The trends is Tuesday, March 30th. Combo class tuition is 74.99. The spring special that I was just talking about I'm running through Friday is trains for the options letter and the day trade room free with the class through July 4th. Same price. Normally you pay a price for the options newsletter and the room. This is a good deal. So this is good because you get the earnings season. So like I said, earnings season starts again in April. She'll get all the options trades and all the day trades through earnings season. Any questions from anyone here? So far, I went over. Thank you everyone for staying. Shelly, do you have any questions? And anyone else? Ramon, do you understand buying power? Steady Eddie, I see you there.  Gallagher, are you back to trading? I'm thinking that you are. Ramon gets buying power. That's good. And again, if you have specific questions, just call a broker. Any broker would be happy to explain to you all about margin. Bogey, I see you there. One day Bogey will take my class before I retire. You gotta be available between 9.30 and 10. If you could come in a couple of days, Jay, just email me. I'll send you the trial. You can come in for one day or two days. The idea of the trial is just to get a feel for what we do to see if you think it's something that you're interested in. Steady Eddie, saving up. You get it free. You get the options that are rim free with the class till July 4th. With that much time freeing the rim and the letter, you'll know if you want to continue doing day trades, which is what we do in the room, or you'll know if you want to continue doing options, which is the options newsletter. Both are separate subscriptions. So within those many months free, you will know if you want to do both, if you want to sign up for both, if you just want to sign up for one, or if you think you can do it on your own. You don't have to be in the room at all. You don't have to be on the options newsletter at all. You're gonna learn in the class how to rate the gaps and you can trade by yourself. The benefit of being in the room is that I'm calling the trades live and giving my market update daily. The benefit of being in the options newsletter is, again, I'm calling the trades in the newsletter too. So the benefit is you're getting my calls, which is an overlay layer for you to, again, make it easier for you to learn and do it as you're going. But you will learn what to do that you can trade by yourself. The support of the room, I think is beneficial. And the support of the newsletter is beneficial, again too, to get my picks. But you don't need them. But yes, there's a price after that. Thanks Kathy for staying. Kathy's gotta go make dinner for her husband. Gallahad's trading small. Gallahad, I hope you heard what I said earlier. There's nothing demeaning in trading small. It does not demean you to take small size. I think that's something that you've struggled with over the years. That is something that you shouldn't feel embarrassed about. If that's what it is, that's what it is. It's, you know, you'll get to where you wanna be over time. But if it bothers you so much, taking 100 shares is something, it's almost like you're trading like an angry monster. Cause you're mad that you can only take 100 shares or whatever the case may be. You're upset.  Then you're trading like an angry banshee and see the market reads that too. It's all your energy about what you're doing. You have to feel good about it and you have to feel happy that you're doing it and excited and it's fun and it's glorious if you're mad when you're trading. Oh, I hate that I cannot take thousands of shares. I can't take 7,000 shares. Damn it.  Be happy that you can trade it all. There's people that don't even have a job. They're homeless. You know what I'm saying? Feel grateful for what you have that you could even come to me and even have taken the class and Gally, how do you've done the class? So you can come back to the room anytime. You're happy, good. And caties, cats are gonna be happy. I have never heard of someone walking a cat in my whole life, Cathy. I've heard of walking dogs. I haven't heard of walking cats. That's a new one. That's a new one to me, Atlanta. All right, have a great night, everyone. And if you wanna try, email me. If you're interested in the class, email me too. Very good.


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Here we are in our custom zero homepage going into the new company file we set up in a prior presentation that being get great guitars and prior presentations we set up the company file and now we want to be entering the beginning balances into the system as well as the foundational items necessary to make the data input forms that are in the plus item up top as easy as possible to populate. Now these are the beginning balances we're going to enter into the system not with one big journal entry but rather going to each account you like one at a time and looking at the specific needs related to each of those accounts. Now with the inventory account here we have a specific issue with relation to it and that is going to be the inventory items if we're tracking those within the zero system in a perpetual inventory method to put those in we have to use items or inventory items that will support this number by inventory items if we're tracking it within the system. Now before we actually enter the inventory items which are probably the most difficult items to enter into the system let's first think about service items. The service items represent things that we sell that are services that don't have an underlying inventory component so we don't have to track them in inventory but they're going to be input in a similar fashion and they are easier to input than the inventory items so then we'll go into the more difficult inventory items following the service items. So in other words if I go back on over to zero over here the service items primarily are designed to make your data input for the invoices and the money in receive money which are which are kind of like the cash register type of transactions easy. So if you imagine someone like out of cash register saying they're going to receive money and they're trying to input that into the system well to do that I have to enter a bank account. So let's go up to that again if you imagine that they're going to have an invoice and you're trying to make the invoice as easy as possible to populate you would like down here for them to be able to select the item so instead of just creating the item as you go that's going to be much more complex you want the item in the system.  So for example if you're a bookkeeper and you're able to say hey look I'm gonna charge people for however many transactions I happen to do so that you have a quantifiable amount then you can set up a service item that represents that number of transactions which will populate the amount for the work that was done in that format. Otherwise you can try to fill people if you're in like a job cost service industry like a like a CPA firm or a tax firm or law firm you can have a different billable rate for the different individuals that you are billing for and that's a common way that you would have that as well and again you would set up the service items so that you can just select those items possibly when you're actually doing the billing process. So let's go through that setting up the items we can go to the business drop-down and we want to then go into the products and services products and services and so we're gonna be looking at the service items you've got the little video that you can use to have the service item here we can enter the service items one at a time so if you just have a few of them you can say new item and this is the population screen you have a code you've got the name if you're tracking the inventory in the system then you're gonna select track inventory so we'll talk more about that later tracking inventory makes it more complex of a thing to be doing with these ones we're not tracking inventory because we're just talking about service items and not inventory items purchase add item to bills purchase orders and other purchase transactions now if you're talking about non inventory items you might not even have purchase type stuff you're only gonna have the sales stuff where you have add items to invoices quotes and other sales transactions you've got the sales price the account that's gonna be hit when you put that into the system if there's tax related to it you've got the tax rate and then the description that way whenever you make an invoice this will populate basically automatically however we have many of them we want to enter so so this is our list here and so if you have a lot of stuff you're gonna enter into the system you might want to import it using a CSV file or a spreadsheet so that's what we'll do here so to do that and this could work with different things as well you might have a similar system if you're importing a lot of customers you're importing a lot of vendors your inventory inventory items that we might be importing we might use a similar type of process instead of doing them one at a time we can pull that information in you can imagine getting this information from your prior accounting software possibly possibly exporting it to an Excel worksheet and then trying to put it into your current system in this fashion or you might just find it easier to populate this in an Excel worksheet than to do each of these one at a time in this kind of format so let's go to import and I'm gonna say import items and it says prepare file to import download the template and add your items to update items already in zero export items to CSV and edit them in spreadsheet existing items will be uploaded when the value in item code matches the code of an item that already exists up to 1000 items can be imported each time so here's their template here their tips don't change or delete the column headings enter the account code only enter the tax rate exactly as it appears in zero if you're adding tracking inventory items enter both the inventory asset account and cost of goods sold account codes okay so let's go ahead and download the template so notice that that there's two ways that you might do this if you have your information this is the template if you have your information in a spreadsheet already you might try to save this spreadsheet as a CSV file you might go to the file tab up top and save as and try to convert this to a CSV file which is quite easy to do a comma deliminated and then upload it however it's likely that your headers are not exactly the same as the headers on the example file so so another way that you might do it is you might take the example file and just copy and paste what's on your worksheet to match the headers on the example file you can't really see the headers right now because this is a CSV file instead of an Excel file but we can select for example these columns I'm gonna double click up top and so there's there's our headers and so there we go now I can add some formatting to it but the formatting will be deleted when I save it as a CSV file so sometimes it might be easier to save it as an Excel file and then save it again as a CSV file once you're done formatting it so let me show you how that might look you might go to file save as and then I'm gonna go to the old desktop desktop and we're gonna put this into zero these are gonna be the inventory items notice it's saving it as a CSV file even though I opened it in Excel I'm gonna save it as an Excel file so it will put my formatting in place just temporarily until I get my formatting the way I want it then I will change that back to a CSV file all right so here we have it now one thing you might do is wrap the headers because that might make it a little bit easier to see so I might wrap the headers which is that which is a something that won't be in the CSV file won't pull through but it's useful that wasn't wrap wrap is there it is so now maybe I can get all these kind of on a on a page hold on a second I'm gonna make them all the same size here there we go all right so there is that all right so then we have the item code we've got the item name we've got the purchase description so we don't really need a purchase description yet because we're not purchasing the service items that's really for the inventories items we got the purchases unit price again purchasing isn't really what we're gonna have here for the sales items this is where it gets more complex for inventory another purchase account purchases tax rate sales description sales unit price so we need the sales description we need the sales unit price we need the sales account the sales tax rate we don't we possibly don't have one I'm gonna imagine we don't have one here I will deal with sales tax in future presentation inventory account and then cost of goods sold we don't have any inventory of cost of goods sold we have to deal with either all right so I'm not gonna have any item code I'm not gonna have and then the item name I'm just gonna copy in these columns as we go now these are very generic names they sound more like like if I was a dealing with a car or something then a guitar shop but we'll also deal with other service items later when we get to when we get to imagining that we have guitar instructors which will mirror a system that you might have in like an accounting firm or law firm but for now just to get some items in there we're gonna use these I'm gonna copy this and I'm just gonna put that in the description boom make this a little larger there's that and then that's gonna be the the item name I should have put it in the item name let's put it there and the purchase description it doesn't really matter I'll put it there but I don't really need it the sales description is what I need I'm gonna put the same thing there that's what's gonna show up on the actual sales area and then the the sales price the sales price I have here are gonna be these so I'm just gonna copy the amounts of the price from my worksheet this is how much we're gonna sell them for so sales sales unit price and then the sales account now I want to make sure I pick up the proper account from my chart of accounts so I'm gonna go into my chart of accounts here let's go into the drop down and say where's my chart of accounts under business and then we want to go down to the I'm sorry accounting and then go to your chart of accounts and let's check out what they gave us for revenue accounts it's kind of cool that they give us this little breakout up top which is a little bit easier to kind of jump over to revenue over here and then we have sales now normally sales is used for inventory items oftentimes so I'm gonna have service that's the name of the account so I'll just copy that here will they let me copy it I'll just service I could spell service without copying it that's not to service it's not beyond my spelling capabilities is it sales account possibly it is possibly it is sales tax inventory asset account we don't need an inventory and we don't need cost of goods sold so the only question is on the item code should I put the same thing in the item code on the name let's put this in the item code to we'll just have the same item code because that's this is the shorthand thing that that pulls it up and this is the the item title the full title and in the purchase description we don't really need but it would be basically the same here sales description that's what's gonna actually show up on the invoice in the description the sales receipts and so on so let's save this and I'm gonna say how do I say where's my save button save it and then I'm gonna say save as and save it as a CSV file converting it from this point to a CSV file the format used to upload to zero so I'm gonna say file save save copy browse I'm gonna put it in the same place but this may this time make it a CSV comma deliminated file boom shock a locker let's save it auto save for yeah here alright let's close it up now I put it into this file so if I go into this file now I've got hold on it's not there okay so here they are so this is my actual Excel file and this is the CSV file so you'll notice when I open the CSV file it looks similar but it's not exactly the same it's it'll erase the formatting so you see I opened it up and it basically took all the formatting away because that's the cleanest file in essence to be able to upload to not mess zero up when it's trying to upload it so let's go ahead and upload it now so I'm gonna go back on over here and we're gonna go back into our our products and services and then simply upload our products and services let's import items and import we downloaded so I'm gonna select the item boom and there it is so the CSV file is showing up so let's pull that in inventory item save it and it's giving me an error saying my sales account service isn't a valid code from the chart of account so I think they want the code number so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go back into my chart of accounts and say all right chart of accounts let's check that out I'm going back to my revenue say k so so service I think they want the account number 4 3 0 0 let's go back on over here and say sales account 4 3 0 0 let's try the account number because I I put service I spelled it right didn't I I knew it I didn't spell service see service and I'm gonna copy that down let's try that let's see if it gives me another error save as a little trial and error to see if it gives me an error double error on that this is gonna be numero trace this time and then we will give it another shot give it another shot all right so back on over here we're gonna go to the we're gonna go back to the products and services and we will then go into the import items and select inventory item 3 and cross the fingers there it is import summary foot 404 items will be imported all right do it do it 0 you go 0 so if I go into that there they are here's the code here's the diagnostic here's the sales price so if I go into these items here I can archive it or I can delete it if I go into to them says your product service has a new look so here's the purchase here's the description sales price sales account latest transactions down below so it gives us a nice little summary of the transactions and then we can edit the item if we so choose and now we see it in that format we saw before where we have the diagnostics you know I just put a generic thing no inventory tracking we don't really need the purchase stuff at all because we're not gonna be purchasing night these items but it's not really gonna hurt anything so we'll leave it checked off sales items sales price there's the account at one of the code or the number we're not gonna deal with the taxes for this one we might get into sales tax in the United States which is similar to like a usage tax in other parts of the country it so there's a similar concept to it but I'm gonna imagine here that we have the tax on the inventory items and not the sales on the service items so we'll talk about sales tax later and then we've got the diagnostic so this didn't do anything to the actual financial statements because they're not inventory items but it does make it easier for us when we enter an invoice for example to populate the invoice because now we should be able to select the item here and the item should be driving the amount so you can imagine then when you do your billing or when you have someone else doing the billing that it should be straightforward if you have your items set up properly and again I would recommend if possible to move away from just a simply billing rate based on hours if you can like bill based on what was done if you can quantify your billing so that you can you can easily figure it out you can show exactly what you did to the client and possibly have someone else do the billing process because they can quantify you know the billing on something other than just hours but sometimes you can't get away from the hours and again you make your service items for hourly service or something like that and you just got to count the hours and bill out the hours so this this leads into the next step which we will do which is the inventory items which has an added level of complexity if we have beginning balances already because the inventory items and cost that we have on our system should add up to this amount and we should be able to generate a sub ledger report showing those inventory items by item that will tie out to what's on the balance sheet