There's a reason why Xtrades is currently the fastest growing application on the market for sharing financial ideas. With over $2.5 million paid in the last two years to contributors, users are flocking to see what trades the top traders on the leaderboard are sharing in real time. If you're looking to grow your reputation as a trader on the internet, or discuss your trading ideas with other reputable investors, click the link below and get connected with the trading mentor today, completely free of charge. Alright, what's up everybody? This is Alex from Xtrades and welcome back to another weekly trade ideas list. I hope everybody had a wonderful trading week last week. I and myself personally really didn't have that good of a week, but it comes with the territory with trading. I have a little drawdown to make back next week. Nothing I'm not familiar with in my six years of trading, but wasn't the best. That's okay. Going into it with a fresh mind this week. Hope everybody has a good week coming up this week as well and we'll get back to work. Last week I would say there was only about one setup that worked out of our three that we looked at last week and that was Intel. Intel had a pretty good close on Friday and overall close green on the week. FCEX, not so much. It actually faked out over the trend line a couple of times. It was not able to break to the upside as well as UNG kind of having a slow start, although I think that's still oversold and I did buy some shares on it to give it time to kind of fart around it low. So I still feel pretty good about UNG or natural gas in general. Eventually, it's probably going to have a dead cap ounce and I'm still holding that. Just grabbed about 50 shares, just a small position on UNG. But we do have some new setups this week, probably going to be looking at all majority day trades. There might be a couple that have swing trade potential as well, but we'll go into those after we go over our intro here. We go over the economic calendar first and then we go over seasonality and then we'll get right into the charts. So this week's data, we do have some big ones coming in. We have a couple Fed Speaker starting out here on Monday. You can see we have Cash Carrey and also Fed Bowman speaking. Lately though, Fed Speakers have not really had too much impact on the market. A lot of them have different stances on monetary policy and I feel like the only one that really matters the most is Jerome Powell. Everybody's always listening for Jerome Powell. Back in the day or a couple years ago, at least, we did have one other Fed Speaker. His name was James Bullard, but he's not here anymore. He had a pretty good impact on the market when he would talk. It was really just him and Powell that kind of had the most impact when it comes to Fed Speakers or really any random event they speak at. Not so much anymore. So it's always a hit or miss with Fed Speakers, but it's definitely worth paying attention to. You never know what they're going to say and how the algorithms are going to react to their headlines. And then on Tuesday, it's going to be the big one of the week. Nice and early. It's going to be the CPI print. So it's very important that we keep seeing CPI trend lower as well as PCE, which they also pay attention to. CPI and PCE are always the most important inflation gauges in my opinion. And really the thesis has been very simple. We just want to see core CPI as well as CPI in general just go lower. And really any signs of stickiness or that it's not going down. It does kind of take away the odds for rate cuts. And that's when the market reacts negatively. So you want to see the continued trend lower. CPI has been trending lower. I would say the Fed has been doing a really good job bringing down the CPI. Whether you think it's from the rate hikes or not, or you think it's just transitory and supply chains fix themselves and it came down naturally. Either way, when they started raising rates, CPI started coming down shortly after as well, and it's been a cost of downtrend since. So just want to see that trend lower, keep seeing the same thing. Looks like the medium forecast is going to be 0.3 for a core. And it's going to be year over year, 2.9%. And then core CPI year over year, 3.7. So those are your medium forecasts. Either you want to see them come in line, like directly at the median or a little bit below. And then on Wednesday, just more Fed speakers. Cool as being Michael Barr. I really haven't seen them move the market that much. Maybe the fact that it's after CPI that could definitely, you know, have some implications if they speak on the CPI print, basically the day after it comes out. And maybe their thoughts on monetary policy going forward that can definitely move us. But like I said earlier, Fed speakers besides your own power haven't really been moving the market that much. And then Thursday, we do have a couple of things actually that could be worth watching. This Empire State Manufacturing Survey, as well as the Philadelphia Fed Manufacturing Survey that will be worth paying attention to. It really just depends on how extreme the reading is. And then as well as US retail sales, it's probably the most important one compared to these two. Retail sales is definitely probably going to be paid attention to the most. And then it looks like we have a couple more Fed speakers later. It's going to be Fed Waller and also Bostick. And then Friday, we do get an inflation gauge on the producer side. It's going to be the PPI or the producer price index. So definitely pay attention to that on Friday. That's going to be the big one for the day. And then at 10 a.m., we do have consumer sentiment as well. This always usually brings mid-session volatility. And we will see kind of an initial big pop or drop just based off this reading. And it just depends how it comes in. Always depends on the extremes, how far over or how below the median or expected forecast comes in. So that's for the economic calendar. Most important is going to be the CPI. I would say second most important, probably going to be the PPI on Friday. Third most important, maybe the second most important compared to PPI is going to be retail sales. And then consumer sentiment as well. I would say this is also equally as important as the PPI or really anything else. Consumer sentiment really kind of gives insight into how people think about the economy right now. And that also kind of ties back into inflation, expectations and other things. And on to the seasonality real quick. We're going to go over this week. It's going to be February 12th through the 16th or the monthly options expiration. This is going to be a huge expiration. There's a lot of money expiring specifically on this date. As with any other monthly options, the monthly's always have the most open interest. They always have the most volume as well traded. So they naturally always have the most amount of money expiring compared to weekly contracts or anything else. The monthly's are always the most active. So you can see for the last 20 years here, summarized profit is going to be 15% for this period. Winning trades at a whopping 84%, which is really good. Average yearly profit almost at a full percent at about three quarters at 0.76. And overall just a really high probability that the market could go up this week as they last for a while before we get that negative drawdown here going into March and towards the end of the month in February. To go down to 15 years, probably give us something similar. You can see winning trades the past 15 years that 86% summarized profit at 12%, with a average yearly profit at 0.8%, actually a little bit higher than the 20 year data set. And if we go down to 10 years for the more recent years, you can see we have winning trades at 80%, summarized profit at 8%, average yearly profit the last 10 years at 0.82%. So it's pretty good. Every single data set, 10, 15 and 20 years, all looking pretty bullish, looking pretty good for your last hurrah. The only issue is we're at extremely overbought levels on semis, on indexes, on tech, really anything you could think of, market is very extended to the upside and it's just had a killer run really for the last year now. And that does bring some risk for drawdown and you don't want to enter the top. I mean, nobody wants to enter the top. They usually like discounts. And I always recommend looking at the moving averages and buying at the nine to 21 EMAs at the higher loads. It's better risk to reward and also less drawdown risk as well. And you get a better discount on premium, on options, on shares, really anything if you're buying dips. So right now market's at a 52 week high breakout, which is pretty aligned with the seasonality.  Maybe it's a light pullback. We did kind of get that Monday and Tuesday and we'll go over that and the index is next when we get into the charts. But overall to close out the week, Friday was just killer and we did break out more. Even after that slight resistance on Monday and Tuesday, we were still able to make more highs. And we closed that new highs on Friday as well with SPX past 5,000 right now. It's crazy. But that's for the seasonality, looking pretty bullish for one last hurrah this week. Definitely be a little bit more skeptical though with the data on Tuesday. I don't blame you if you don't want to hold through a big data set like CPI, especially the levels we're at now. Sell the news is real. Even if it's good news, after a data set like that, it can still sell off. So you got to be careful holding through stuff like that. Make sure you buy time on your side. Have at least 30 plus to 60 days of expiration on your options.  And onto the setups this week. So we do have three. Our first one here we're looking at IWM which is a pretty clear bullish breakout. Really last week I liked this a lot better at this demand. You can see that drop based rally demand. I posted this demand in the chat earlier in the week that I was looking for some type of bounce as well as this little one week nine to 21 EMA combo. You can see your nine and your 21 right here. It also bounced from this. So that EMA combo on the one week was also another thing I was looking for besides that one day demand. And it did bounce pretty good. I unfortunately didn't catch it. We did IWM a couple of weeks ago. We took profit on. I as well had a call spread on it. I took profit on that as well. And it pulled back for like almost a week straight right here in this period. We sold in this little area up here. I don't think I got exactly up to the 1.99. So it's probably taking profit at like 1.98 to 1.97 or something, but it was still a pretty good trade. And I really liked this reentry down here. I just didn't get a chance to get into it. So this was a great value area as well as it looked way more discounted than your tax, your semi is really anything. Especially at these levels. I mean, it's just tough to buy NVIDIA 700 plus buy SMCI at the level it's at. Even ARM had like a 50% run after earnings and AI and semi's are just really hard to chase, especially if you like discounts or value areas. A lot of things left the value area in 2022 and 2023.  Cause those laggers when the indexes go down just a little bit, those laggers can go down aggressively as well.  So I'd say IWM has kind of been a little bit of a lagger. You can see here we get a test one, a test two. There's a little test three rejection on this bar right here. If we went down to the one hour, you could see there was actually test one, a test two and a test three. So this downtrend was confirmed and this was official. So now that it's broken out, we want to see a break over 199.41. It's pretty clear. We've closed directly at it. It's pretty simple. It will need to get over this. Maybe if it can make a base off this that'd be even better. And then they can head up to 205. So you're free space on IWM. It's probably just 200 to 205 until you get to this big peak right here. You can probably even mark this as a supply zone as well. This is a rally-based drop supply zone. See it's a rally-based drop. So you can probably mark the 204s as well. Just 204 to 205 as a potential price target. Assuming it can get over 199s to 200. But this little resistance point right here, we will need to break over that. And that's your little free space.  Sometimes you will get setups that do just go straight up after a breakout like this. But sometimes they will come back and try to back test, kind of shake people out, make a little shoulder and then head a little bit higher. It could do that as well. Maybe if Monday it gap down for some reason or really anything, really any early week dip, it could be bought up and give a better discount as well. That way you're not just buying directly at 199s or 200s. But as well, if they can break over that 200, there's a pretty clear break and then probably we'll try to shoot up to the 205s. It has been lagging and there is some meat on the bone. The only issue is with IWM as well is the bonds have been going lower, which means yields have been going higher. And that does kind of bring a little bit of pressure as we saw the last couple of weeks. This is probably due to the TLT going down as well. Usually you want to see rates going lower, yields going lower to see, no small caps and mid caps go up because they're more yield sensitive. So that's for IWM. I'm looking at calls with caution, of course, need to see a break over the 199s to 200s with a potential to dip into a back test, maybe. Not sure if it will early in the week or at some point, but that is another area you could watch if it does that. If it does dip, you don't have to be scared instantly, of course. Just make sure it's holding outside the downtrend line. If it fails to do that, it goes back within. You can look at something else.  We saw it on FCX last week. It broke out, went back down, came back out, went back down. So do that like three times.  So gotta be prepared for that. All right, next we're going in two pen. They do have earnings this week. So I wanted to mention that. Looks like it's on the 15th. So you're gonna want to look at day trades on this mainly, I definitely wouldn't swing through earnings or anything unless you bought a lot of time. Like if you bought six months out or three months out and you really wanted to trade this breakout and hold it through their report with a potential for it to rock it higher because it's been so discounted and so low for so long. It kind of does increase the probability for their earnings to kind of be low balled and they will be, and then, you know, it can go higher. We've seen it time and time again on lots of things. You know, Wall Street analysts, they're set their expectations low. And then, you know, when they actually beat the market acts like it was a surprise, but really they had low expectations to begin with. And that's called sandbagging. So that could happen with pen, not exactly sure. I don't have a crystal ball and I don't recommend swinging through earnings. It's very risky, but if you buy three to six months of expiration on any options or even if you just bought shares or something instead, it's safer than swinging weeklies or lottoes, you know, trying to capitalize on that earnings move. Cause a lot of times, you know, after earnings that can just open flat, it'll crush you, it'll crush your IV.  Cause naturally the market goes into earnings with the expectation that's gonna move a lot, which increases the price. When implied volatility is higher, your premiums also increase. And if market makers are expecting these big moves, they're gonna price it higher. That way they don't get screwed. So after implied volatility gets priced in higher, the event comes out, the implied volatility drops off cause the event is done and it's less risky. So naturally IV drop off is gonna show up no matter what, which is why you need the expected move of earnings to happen, as well as you need your deltas to make up for the IV drop. But pen is pretty clear here. You gotta test one, a test two, try to reject on test three, just breaking out now. So maybe we can see a little bit of momentum on this. Just up into earnings, you know, you have a couple of days to trade it up until Thursday, I think. So there's really only one level here at 24 or 57, that's your most recent peak. If you can get up to that, definitely watch that for a resistance. If it can break over that, you can start looking for the 26, 47s. Although I don't think it's just gonna bust that high up into earnings, you know, in a week. It may take the earnings report to even get any higher than that. So just look for day trades or, you know, quick call scopes on this, something with momentum if this breakout continues. So that's for pen, earnings coming up on Thursday, maybe just stick to day trades up until then, but definitely keep an eye on this breakout because it has been kind of trapped in a little bit of a downtrend. Now trying to break out of that, there could be some momentum. And onto SMH, which is our last setup here for individual tickers. This is also an ETF. I guess in a way, this is kind of an index. The SMH here, I'm just looking for potential resistance off of this upper channel line. It's pretty straightforward. This is kind of contrarian and you are going against the trend a little bit, which is why you wanna wait for some type of one day bar showing that there's a reaction to the upper channel line. Or if you're going to enter directly up here, assuming it doesn't gap up and get outside this channel line on Monday or really any other day. As long as it's staying under this line here and staying within the channel, there's a chance it can reject. Just keep an eye on that. But if you do go into it directly at the channel line, just keep your stop loss tight because if it blows through, you'll wish you did. And there's also another way to go about it. Like I said, wait for a nice little red bar. Something showing you clear resistance. Something like this that will go into something like this the next day. You got a 2% down move after this one little red bar. If you can get something like that, that could give you a pattern down to 195s or 19590. So it could get down there. If it can reject off there, this would be a back test area and it could hold as support. So you definitely wanna watch that. And it will need to flush under that 19590 as well to even go lower. To even think about heading to this little trend line, test one, test two. There is no test three on this. So this trend line is unconfirmed. But eventually I would imagine it's probably gonna test it at some point. You just don't know the timeframe on it really. You just know eventually it could get down here and test this and try to hold it up as a trend because this is kind of the value line. This is where you see the most sides being added at. These are the discount areas. So that's for SMH looking at puts. Obviously you're in validation area. If it just gets way too far outside the channel line and it's just going parabolic, kind of like it is right now, just look at something else. And if Monday for some reason it gaps up over it, that's kind of your signal to just wait for it to get back inside before trying. Just use this line as a trend guide. But hopefully it could see a little bit of resistance. It may take the NVIDIA earnings, which comes up in a couple of weeks I think at some point. SMHs may not have any downside until then, really until all of these semiconductor names get the earnings out. And I believe NVIDIA is one of the last big ones to come out, so we'll see how that goes. And on to the indexes, we're going over spy here. So I mean, it's pretty straightforward. It's been an uptrend here. See a test one, you got a test two, a test three. Made a new demand zone right here. It's kind of a rally based rally zone. Once it broke this higher high right here, this demand zone was confirmed. This would actually be a really good area to buy at if it can pull into this area right here at the 488s or even if it pulled into the trend line, that'd be a nice little scalp area. You could look for calls once it hits the line. But otherwise it's just an 52 week breakout or meltup pattern right now. It really has been like this for weeks. If we add the movie averages, you can see, I mean, a couple of weeks ago, we've been over how it dipped into the nine and 21 and it continued that. And I've just been mentioning to keep using the nine and 21 combo kind of as your trend gauge. As long as it's staying over these, you know, the market can stay really bullish. And it's proved us that for months now, you got a test here, a test here, a test here. You got to pull in right here and here and here as well. So probably sound like a broken record, but just keep using that nine and 21 gauge. Really nothing has changed. MACD is still positive as well. Honestly, it probably will need to get back under 480 overall to even be bearish. 480 is kind of your key level or previous all time high all the way from over here. It would need to get under that to even kind of get a real bearish reversal. Short term though, if it could get under this 495, that 495 area is a short term resistance, kind of a breakout point right here as well. So if it could get back under that, that could be a short term bearish level as well. Otherwise this 495 could act as a back test area as well. And you got your trend line support plus the EMA. So overall it's still bullish for now. No bearish reversal, nothing screaming downside here. Just yet other than the simple fact of overbought conditions and really just media. I mean, people are just buying, buying, buying regardless of higher interest rates, regardless of anything. People are just inclined to buy right now. Maybe it's just Wall Street. Maybe it's not really individual investors. Who knows? Usually when it's moving like this, you have a broad market participating. Wall Street, individual traders, money managers, everybody kind of buying into the hype, getting as much as they can before it shakes the bed. So I really don't have a setup for you on this. I mean, it's pretty straightforward. It's just in a meltup pattern. And maybe if it can get back under this 496 or 495s, can get back under this, that'd be a good area to try out some put scouts or something. But otherwise, if it can pull into the nine and 21 combo like it did back here, that's a good dip buy as well or to at least make an attempt. And that's really my only areas I like to buy at, just the nine and 21 combos or some type of back test area like 496, if we can get back into that. You look for a ScoutBot 496s, take it, pull into the trend line at some point, hold it up, that's a good area to try as well. Just anything other than buying into highs or 52 week highs. So the indexes, the setups really aren't that great right now. And I feel like there's been more opportunity for discounts and dip buys and other things lately. So that's for this buy, there's really no setup here. It's just in a meltup pattern, watch that 496.05. It's probably the most recent short-term resistance and there's really no other resistance here. This is uncharted territory, so I can't really give you anything other than this 496, these nine and 21 EMAs and also this overall uptrend line that's lasted a couple of months now all the way from October lows. So that's for this buy, just be careful up here as usual, VIX is very low and there's just no incentive to sell. So wait for a volatility signal if you must before trying to short or if you did start a put position because you thought it was overbuy, buy lots of time, start really small, one contract or something, something small and then you can add later if you ended up correct, add into strength instead of starting big and averaging down later. And on two stocks above their 50 day moving average, this is actually S&P stocks above their 50 day moving average. So this is relative to the spy that we just looked at. We looked at this last week, we were looking at a huge divergence between this and the spy. The spy making all time highs, S&P stocks above their 50 day going lower with really no change from last week. So here's Friday's close. We have Monday, breath was kind of weak. We had a little recovery on Tuesday and three days a chop. So this is just an indicator. It's not a tradeable security. We're just seeing breadth in the S&P 500 and seeing if it aligns with the actual S&P 500 and lately it has been not. So we'll get rid of all the drawings and we'll go over it again. So last week we basically just kind of made a note where you have really clear correlation between S&P stocks above their 50 day moving average and also the spy. You can see when S&P stocks above their 50 day are going lower, you got the spy going lower, you have a short-term recovery right here.  And you see the market's moving really smooth when S&P stocks above their 50 day are also moving with the spy. Well, we started to notice a month ago, the orange line, which is this indicator right here we're just looking at. This started to collapse or go lower about a month ago while spies continued to go higher, largely because of the mega caps and good earnings and basically just the mega caps carrying everything while you have the majority of S&P stocks going back below their 50 day moving average, spies continued to make all-time highs. So there's a big divergence between breadth and the actual index itself. So it's basically the same story. There's no change in breadth from last week. I can even show you again, you have no change. You don't have breadth recovering plus the S&P going up at the same time. You just have breadth stalling out here at lows, making no attempt to go higher and show a little bit more health while the spy continues to march higher and go higher. Now, I have no idea if this is a leading indicator. These things could take months, weeks to play out. You can see the divergence has already lasted over a month. See the indicator going lower all the way back here. And it's just been in a divergence since about January 4th. So lasted longer than a month now. It's just something you want to keep in mind. Usually, you see the best market moves when breadth is in order. You have S&P stocks with their 50 day going higher as well as the market also going higher. It's a, I would say a good sign of strength, in my opinion, especially when it's moving positively correlated as well. Like such, even in downturns as well as upturns, you see the spy has really good moves when it's all in order. Obviously, it still moved up pretty good here, but it's just important to pay attention to just because of the history of this indicator and the spy also kind of moving together.  So the orange line is S&P stocks with their 50 day. And then the regular candles are spy. See how they move so well together. Overall, when they move together, they do good together. And you don't really see any divergence back in 23, back in 2022. This new divergence is kind of more recent and we haven't really seen it in a couple of years. I could probably go back somewhere in the chart, maybe 2020 or 2021. I could probably find a similar divergence of S&P stocks going lower while the market goes higher and eventually the spy kind of leading lower as well because you don't have S&P stocks recovering with it as well. So in a way, this could end up a leading indicator showing us that the stock market is not as strong as we think and if the mega caps go lower, we're kind of screwed on the short term to medium term. So just something to pay attention to, breadth is not recovered while the S&P continues to make new highs. Not trying to scare anybody or anything like that. I'm just showing you the data and showing you what I've seen and kind of how this indicator has always had a relatively positive correlation and has also kind of lined up great with local tops in the spy. As you can see, there's a big pullback here. You have breadth going lower, you have the market going lower. Once it recovered, aligned well with the bottom right here. So, I mean, it works both ways. So this divergence has just really caught my eye and I've been paying attention to it and made me a little bit more skeptical to go along the market up here, that's all. And on to the QQQQ. So last week, we actually had a 430 as our key level, which I thought looked pretty good for like put scalps, and it worked pretty good Monday and Tuesday. If we go to the short term time frame, it's worked really good for day trades. Here's Monday, open, flushed right off 430s. And then also Tuesday as well, flushed off 430s again. So you had two days of downside for put scalps, which is good because that means the market's still respecting technicals, at least on the short term. You can see once it broke out of 430 right here, this is when the market got a little bit melty and then just chopped the rest of the week and the trading wasn't great. And then we have Friday, where it had an even bigger breakout, but arguably it's because we broke over this 430, which was the most recent big resistance. If you wanna even call it big, I mean, this is pretty small. You did have a nice rejection back here. So this 430 was respected for a little bit and that's probably why once it broke over that 430, we had a pretty good move here to the upside because this was like one top, two, three.  It's probably why there was so much enthusiasm once we got over that and it was able to melt up and continue. So unfortunately, I like the shorts the best just because of the resistance and I had no idea if it was gonna break out, but once you do get that breakout and it closed over the 430, you can kind of assume that it's gonna continue to try to follow the trend, right? And you wouldn't wanna go back short until it starts closing back under 430. And that's kind of the rules I've used for years now. You know, I don't really like shorting, right?  If it does look extended enough, I'll try something off of a big parabolic move like this, but I really like the already established levels and that's why I liked the puts last week off of the 430s because this level was already established. And then once it broke over, it kind of loses some interest in shorts and rightfully so because we started melting and continuing the trend. So that was for last week. That was obviously the only setup on the index is that it looked good. By there's really no established resistance like that, at least not like the QQQ. QQQ had a better kind of short-term setup and worked well Monday and Tuesday, but now we're actually broken over that. So we had to look for something else. So for QQQ here, it broke over 430. You have three days of breakout continuation and now trying to come up into the upper channel line similar to SMH. So the SMH chart is pretty similar to QQQ or the NASDAQ. Its waves are almost identical. SMH might have a little bit of a bigger move because semis have moved so much and QQQ is not just made up of semis, but it's similar. You know, they're both in a very similar pattern. The only difference is SMH is already at upper channel line. QQQ is not at upper channel line just yet, exactly. Obviously it doesn't have to get directly there to see resistance or anything like that, but you do wanna see maybe a little bit closer to it before trying to short at it or look for any type of short-term resistance.  There's nothing else. There's no horizontal resistance. 430 was broken last week. It will need to get back under 430s and also break this little new demand zone. This is a Raleigh base Raleigh zone. Once it put in this higher high, this became a demand zone. So if it can pull back into the 430s or this demand zone, it's a good area to try call scalps or maybe try to buy the dip for a couple of days. But that's really about it. I mean, you wanna watch the 430s as a potential dip buy area. Otherwise right now, you know, it's in a meltup pattern, not a great entry to go along and as well coming up into upper channel line. So just mark your upper channel line. Start at this point on the 20th to January 24th and extend your line and it'll bring you up here. So just watch that line. That's really it. There's really nothing else technical wise other than it's already broken out. Your entry to the long side should have been at the 430 breakout if you're going to try. And as well as your short should have been at the 430s when you had two days to do so for day trades. That's really it guys. Just waiting for it to get to the upper channel line, waiting for some type of dip maybe into 430s to give a better discount, something. Something other than chasing into highs or buying into pretty much the worst spots possible in my opinion. But that's the video guys, hope you guys enjoy it. Make sure you like comment and subscribe. Like I said, mark your upper channel line starting from December 20th to January 24th for QQQ. This IWM looks really good. Potential breakout to the upside needs to break over 199 to 200s. You got a pen as a good short term set up before earnings maybe you can get some upside on this breakout. And SMH, similar to QQQ, SMH is actually already at the upper channel line. So look for potential resistance there. Just be careful, wait for confirmation. This isn't a type of parabolic move while AI and semis go crazy. So just got to be very careful, start small. Don't bet the farm on shorts right now. One contract at a time if you must. And that's about it. So make sure you like comment and subscribe to our Xtrees YouTube channel. I love you guys. I'm going to get this chopped up, sent out all that good stuff. So love you guys and I'm out.


Hey everybody, finally I'm live again. I have no idea why YouTube has given me such a hard time and I wanna welcome everybody here today. I wanna thank you for sticking with me there. I know that was a long delay for me to get going, but it's gonna be worth it. I can promise you that. We've got a great group of people today. Hey guys, do me a favor, introduce yourself. The best way to grow a business is to make connections and this is a great place to do it. Everybody on these calls is here to learn how to make money online and you guys should really meet each other, you should talk to each other. You should, you just should. You should, you gotta get to know these people. And do me a favor, post in that chat section that you can hear me. I wanna make sure we don't have any more technical difficulties because I've had some this morning. It hasn't worked this morning unfortunately. So do me a favor and just post it and let me know you can hear me. Don't forget, ring the bell, right? Don't forget to do that. But you can't do that until you subscribe. Hit that big subscribe button down there. When you subscribe, that button will go from red to gray and this bell here will pop open. So make sure you also click the bell. Smash the like button, I really would appreciate that. All those things really matter to my channel. And my channel's doing really good guys. We have our ups and downs on lives because not everybody can show up. And I get it, it's a Friday and people are working and all that stuff. But, you know, a good, a good CPM which is what you make per thousand views on YouTube. Good, thank you, Web Solutions. He just told me he could hear me. A good CPM is anywhere from a dollar to five dollars. And literally a channel has no control over what your CPM is. Like I could do great videos. I could do crappy videos. It wouldn't matter. CPM is determined by YouTube and how much they can sell ads for on your channel. So keep in mind, I just told you, a good CPM, which is what I make, is between one and five dollars. I got up today and I thought there was an error. I really did. My CPM is 29 dollars and 66 cents. Did you hear that? 29 dollars and 66 cents. Normal is one to five dollars. I'm making almost 30 dollars every time a thousand views goes through my channel. That is insanity. And I owe it to you guys because here's why that's high is because you guys are quality.  Not personally knowing who you are. They don't know that. But they value you guys that much to where they're willing to pay that amount of money to reach you guys as an audience. So that is crazy. I cannot believe I'm almost at 30 dollars when it's supposed to be from one to five dollars. And I owe it to all you guys. I really do. Ty Ann's introducing herself. She says she does copywriting chat box, conversational chat box in the elderly care space. So guys, if you need somebody who's doing chat box or I don't know, maybe she's freelancing, maybe she's not, but contact Ty Ann, right? She's right here. You can meet her. I know her online. She's a friend of mine online. So make sure you do that. And let me get to the subject matter. The subject matter today is five e-commerce landing page fundamentals that you have to know, okay? And I know that is our subject matter today, but if you have questions about anything else whatsoever about starting, running and growing online business, please do me a favor and post that in that chat section. If you're watching this after I've been live, posted in the comment section so that I can help you out. But you know, guys, these landing pages, they're so important. There's not a single copywriting recipe or a silver bullet that's gonna double your conversions overnight. It doesn't work that way. What you need to do is you need to nail down some fundamentals, which I'm gonna give you in this video today. And when you do that, you can keep tweaking them and you can keep getting better and better results. So that's how it's gonna work. So what I'm gonna do today is I'm gonna teach you how to do that. You can just level up those skills and you can keep applying them and you'll keep getting better and better results, okay? So that's what we're gonna do today. Like I said, if you have questions about that or anything else, you know, you want to put that in the chat box, put it in the comment section there. And then that way, you know, I can help you out. Now, so when we're talking about all these fundamentals and things you need to do, what does this have to do with landing pages and copywriting? You know, I found time and time again that myself and my clients, you know, landing pages, product detail pages, FAQ pages have way too much in common with that first shopping experience and not enough of the elements from a second type store. So you want to have that. In other words, they have way too many elements that are too much text buying for a visitor, excuse me, a visitor's attention and not enough clarity in their message. So you want to be clear. Too much copy breeds confusion and confusion does not convert, okay? So you really want to keep it simpler. I see people just putting so much on these landing pages and what it does is it confuses people. It gives them too many choices. Your website visitors don't have time to figure out where the shoes are or where the survival food is, okay? They want to know instantly. So imagine your website is a physical department store. You walk in, you're on a mission, you want to buy a specific item. What is the first step you take? You probably look around the store for signs, other displays that represent the type of product you're looking for. So your website visitors, they do the same thing. They land on your site, they look for keywords that align with their mission. Why are they there? What are they doing there? That's what they're looking for. James has finally got sound in Savannah. Man, I'm sorry about the delay there, James. I really am. It's been tough today. Okay, so when they're in your site, if anything pops in their way, they immediately brush it off or they leave, okay? Anything that doesn't align with their interest gets ignored, okay? They leave. If something is too difficult or persistent, they may just leave altogether because it's tough, okay? So depending on the strength of the motivation and time pressure, you may take the time to roam around a brick and mortar store, but sometimes you just want to run in there, find what you want and get back out again. Your website has to allow people to do that, okay? It's pretty rare that you have time to roam around. I mean, I never, I don't say never, but rarely do I go into a store and go, I think I'll just look around for a little bit. Just walk around. The only time I ever do that is after lunch, when I maybe just want to spend five minutes walking around with my wife and I don't really want to buy anything, okay? I'm just there because I'm trying to, you know, get some steps in, right? I'm trying to walk a little bit, trying to get my body moving because I sit at a desk all day long and work on a computer. The right amount of copy on a page is the exact amount that it takes to get the job done. Nothing more, okay? So don't think of this as you just trying to stuff a whole bunch of information on a page. That could be really detrimental to you. So I want to talk about these five fundamentals. First one, every page is potentially a landing page. Yeah, even your FAQ page could be a landing page. Number two, every page should have one primary objective. That's it, that's it. Number three, every element and word on the page should support that objective, whatever you've decided it is, okay? Number four, the language used must be familiar and intuitive to the visitor. And number five, the next action to take must be obvious and attractive to the visitor. And I'm gonna break down each one of those, okay? Landing pages aren't an opportunity to talk about yourself or pat yourself on the back. And I see this too much. They are a place to convey an understanding to your visitor, address their specific problem and present your way as the best way to improve their current situation, okay? So at the heart of every single transaction that a customer makes, there is a problem of some kind that the future state is what they're looking for, okay? So your job by proxy, and I'm getting a message from my software here, I'm gonna wanna make sure it's going okay. If you have a dropping connection, please let me know, guys. I think I'm gonna change my software altogether. I'm not liking the software, I'm not feeling it. It's given me a hard time and I've looked at StreamYard, I think I'm gonna go to that. So when you're communicating with your visitors in your target market, you have to describe the problem and the solution with words and graphic elements that are easy for them to understand, okay? That is so very important to do. If you do that, you're gonna get good results, okay? If you don't do that, you're not gonna get good results. You gotta present a clear path for your visitors to take. You gotta run enough tests and you'll discover an interesting phenomenon. Results aren't always obtained by changing the words on the page. There are times when you need to get rid of the words entirely, okay?  The words sometimes, you can add conversations or revenue by subtracting or distracting confusing elements on your page. So that's very important to understand that. Here's the golden rule for a landing page copy. If it doesn't need to be there, get rid of it. Get rid of it, you're wasting space, okay? There's a place for everything and everything in this right place. We've always heard of that, right? So what we need to do is have the right elements on that page. Let me get another sip here. Tyane says, is it recommended to do cartridge pages before you have a website live? You know, that's a really good question. And for those of you who don't know what CARTRA is, it is a digital marketing software that does emails, landing pages, sequences, videos, courses, memberships, everything, all at one place. So what you can do with CARTRA is you can put up a page pretty quick. An opt-in page, a sales page, a video page, whatever you want, you can do that really quick. So to answer your question is, if you don't have a website and you wanna start marketing online, I would recommend you trying it out in CARTRA first. And here's why. Let's say I've selected, I wanna sell bells. Okay, I got a bell ready, I wanna sell this bell. And I wanna build a website all around different kinds of bells, okay? It could be doorbells, it could be desk bells, it could, whatever, my whole niche is bells, okay? That's my thing. And I haven't sold any yet.  It's gonna take me a long time to build this whole site around my bells, okay? If I go to CARTRA, I can put up a sales page in a matter of probably an hour or two, a sales page. Now, why is that a little bit better? Well, because if I put it in CARTRA, I can test it out and see if my bells are gonna sell. All right, sell bells. Oh, I got all these rhymes going on. So if they sell on CARTRA and it's converting and I make it money, then I can build the website. So I would say if you don't have a business already started, you don't have a list, you don't have any of that, I would start off testing in CARTRA first. I would definitely do that. Why go through all the headaches and the problems of building an entire website around something, okay? And then it doesn't work and you built a website for nothing. So that's what I would recommend to you. So let's move on with this training. I hope that answers your question. Let's recap what I've learned, okay? Or what you've learned, okay? About creating compelling sales pages, okay? So first off, let's revisit the five landing page development principles, okay? First, every page is a potential landing page. Every page, good. I'm glad you got that part I in. I saved you some time basically. Number two, every page should have one primary objective. I know in the beginning I would send people to pages and I would have like eight different products for them to buy on that page and I wasn't doing well, I wasn't converting well. My thinking was if they had more choices, there's more chances of them buying something. That is just the opposite, it doesn't work that way. Number three, every element and word on the page should support that objective, okay? And guys, if you're not writing these down, come back and watch this later on. But these five elements are super important. Number four, the language must be familiar and intuitive to the visitor. You don't wanna talk over their head. You don't wanna talk below what they know either. You've gotta hit that sweet spot. And number five, the next action to take must be obvious and attractive to the visitor. So whatever it is you want them to do, if you want them to buy, if you want them to opt in, if you want them to watch a video, it's got to be obvious and attractive to the visitor, okay, that's super important. Now, you've gotta ask yourself, which of these fundamental rules are your pages violating? What are you going to do about it?  Here's the magic phrase to the visitor, okay? It's gotta work for the visitor. Regardless of what other additions or alterations, subtractions you make, avoid relying solely on your own perspectives and opinions. You know, sometimes I'll talk to my wife about that, and she'll say something to me, she goes, well, I wouldn't buy that, or I don't think that, or that really turns me off, or I like that a whole lot. It doesn't matter. It's irrelevant what you like. It's irrelevant what you want. What's relevant is what the data says, what your audience wants. It's easy to assume that because you are your own customer, okay, that you know what's important to them, but your gut feelings can only get you so far. You need data. In the end, the real world consumers are going to decide whether or not they buy your product. And I'm willing to bet there are way more variables or edge cases to consider than you're able to come up with during a brainstorming session.  You're gonna have to test it.  I would say 50 to 100, or 5,000 to 100,000.  And these people should be in your target market.  I see this time and time again. I see people posting in groups, e-commerce groups, or business groups. What do you guys think of my logo? What do you guys think of my landing page? That's not their target. That's not their target audience, okay? If they have a particular niche, odds are the people in that group are not in that niche. You're asking the wrong people. But if you have the right people, if you have the right audience, ask them a few questions. What's the first thing that grabs your attention on this page? Write this stuff down, guys, or take some notes, or come back and listen to this later, but this is really important. Ask them what grabbed your attention on this page. Next thing you wanna ask them, what do you think this page is designed to do? This'll be shocking for you. You designed it for one thing and they're gonna answer it in another direction. You'll be like, no, that's not what it's supposed to do. Next question you wanna ask them, what about this page is confusing or off-putting to you? Now this may hurt your feelings, so what? We're here to make money, okay? So there's certain things they're not gonna like. What about this page is attractive or that you like? Tell me about that. What would be the first step after landing on this page that you would want to take, okay? And if it's not what your goal is, you've messed up, okay? So we wanna ask them that. How do you think this page can achieve its goal more reliably? And you'll get some good answers there. Make sure you're asking this of your target audience, okay? Super important that you do that. Now, if you have any questions about landing pages and what I've gone over so far, please put that in the chat box there. Please, please, please do that. I will tell you that since we're getting close to this move to Texas, I'm not going to be able to do as many lives in the morning.  I am live again tomorrow and I'll let you know probably on Sunday night, about next week. And the way I'm gonna let you know is if you go to my channel and you look and see some live scheduled, you'll know I'm gonna be there on Monday morning, but I do have a lot of stuff to get set up and I really apologize if I can't do it for about, it'll be about two weeks. We're actually, gosh, it'd be more than two weeks, about two and a half weeks. Now, I still will post videos Monday, Wednesday, Friday. You're gonna get those, don't worry about that. But as far as the live goes, since I have all these other things scheduled, it's harder and then when I'm on the road traveling, it's incredibly hard. But what I may do, if you guys are interested and put it in the chat box there, put it in the comment section, I may chronicle some of my travels on the road and go live and just show you guys what I'm doing. If I can do that, I think I can do that on my phone or something like that. I don't know, I'll see what I can do there. Maybe I can go live when I'm on the road. But if you ask those questions of your audience, you're gonna get the answers you need. All you have to do is ask the right questions. I heard Elon Musk talking the other day and he said that any problem could be solved. Any problem, there are no problems that couldn't be solved. The problem is knowing what the right question is to ask. The problem is knowing what the right question is to ask. Because if you get the right question, there's solutions to everything. There's solutions to everything. To write landing page copy that converts and generate more sales from your website traffic, you need to follow these five fundamentals I just shared with you. Make sure every word on the page is there to help your visitors get closer to the solution that their specific problem is. Okay, you gotta do that. Don't throw up roadblocks like pop-ups or sign-up forums or discount banners that aren't gonna help them get there. Now, if they help them get to that point, yeah, you wanna use them, okay? And I use all those things. But what you wanna do is kinda lay out these breadcrumbs to help them get to the destination faster and more reliably. Let's see. Time to see. Totally understand, yes, look forward to seeing updates on the road. Oh my gosh, I'm dealing with the banks and the builder and everything today. And I'll share with you guys something. We ran into another roadblock yesterday. They poured the concrete for the whole house and in the garage, and inside the concrete, they had these things called tension cables and one of them cracked the slab in the garage. Okay, these things happen, these things break. This is something that happens. It's called a post tension, something I can't remember. So now what they have to do is break up that garage floor. They have to pour all new concrete there, redo it. So that's gonna delay us. And I told them they can't delay us from moving because we gotta move anyhow. So if they have to work on the garage while we're there then that's what they're gonna have to do. But what they did say is since they had to do that, we have two different carriages. We have one car garage and we have a two car garage. They're gonna epoxy both of those for us because the concrete will look bad actually. So they gotta cover it up, but they're gonna epoxy it for us. And they're also gonna epoxy our patio in the back of the house, which is about a freebie of about $10,000. So I'm pretty happy about that. So we're getting that, but it does cause a little delay and maybe a little inconvenient for us. But you know what, things happen. Let's see, not sure best places to find my audience to ask in groups. So many you can't solicit in. Well, what I would do is look at some of your competitors, Ty Ann, that's the first thing I would do. Who do you know that is doing something similar to what you want to do? Go look at what they're doing. Go look at how they're marketing. Go look at how they're selling. If they have a product you can buy or service they can buy, you buy it. Buy the product, see what their funnel is. See what emails they send you. See if they have Facebook groups. If they have Facebook groups, you can go into their Facebook groups and you can see the ads they run under the transparency tab. You can do this with any Facebook group. You can see the ads they have run, the ads they're currently running. So you can do that on any competitor on Facebook. So that's a great way to go about it. So actually the information is there and you can reach these people. You just gotta look at your competitors. When you go to their web pages, look at what keywords they have there. Look at what their meta titles are. Look at what their descriptions are. And you can do all that by going into the code on the page which I can't show you on here, but basically you can look at the source code of any page and you can tell what they've put in there. That gets them to rank. Also search your terms on Google. This is a great way to find your competitors.  Those are your competitors. Those are the people that are ranking for the stuff that you just searched for. Great way to find it. So I hope that helps you a little bit. That's a great question there too because I didn't know in the beginning. And then I finally figured out all those things. I could find all my competitors, see what they were doing. I could do some of the same things. And that's just borrowing information is all it is. Let me get another step here real quick. So guys, that's what I got for you today. I hope it was good. I hope it helped you out. I hope it's something that you find you can use. You guys are super helpful to me because you ask great questions. If Tyann didn't ask those questions there, I wouldn't have got on my little rant about how to find your competitors and how to copy what they're doing and all that other stuff. So you guys make these sessions. If it wasn't for you, this session would be worthless. Well, nobody's listening to it, right? But since you're here and you ask these really insightful questions, and so many of you guys are good at this. I have so many regulars from Siddharth to James, to Paul, I could call out a lot of these people. Thank you bunches, sure, no problem Tyann. And you guys really help a lot of other people. And think of it this way, when you ask a question, whether it's in this chat section live, whether it's after I do a video and it's in the comments section, you are in fact helping other people because that very information that I answer to you is information that other people can use. So super, super important. So that's what I got for you. I hope you guys had a good session today. If you did, if you enjoyed it, give me a thumbs up, subscribe, ring the bell, turn on all bell notifications if you're notified each and every time I go live, or I upload a video, please do that. Don't forget the comments in there. I've got a free course in the description section after this is live. Once it's posted, if you look at the description section, there's a free course there, a $97 course. You can opt in and get it absolutely free. There's a lot of links to different things I do, a lot of different products, books I recommend. Go right into that product description and find that stuff and click on some of that stuff, use some of those things. These are all tools I've used or currently used or books I've read, and I highly recommend all of it. So there you go. I think that's it. Guys, have a great day. I will see you tomorrow morning on Saturday. It's 10 o'clock West Coast time. I don't know what time it is for you because I don't know where you're at. So I'll see you guys tomorrow at 10 a.m. Talk to you later.