The Big Dawg Trade
The Big Dawg Trade
The Big Dawg Trade
No relevant positions
With this trade you will know what to look for, be armed with a
trade with edge, and know how to trade it. Without it you will be
floundering along, confused what to be trading and whether you
do in fact have an edge in a trade.
And then two days later, with the same trade, he made.... nearly
$150,000. In one stock. In one trade. Using this trading pattern.
I proudly and happily tossed away my previous presentation and
crafted a new presentation for Singapore. This is one powerful
trade. And it is one trade that is scalable so you can keep pushing
for a larger PnL in the right setup.
Big Dawg was not from an elite college. He didn't have trading
experience before he was hired by SMB. We taught him this
trade, which we now call The Big Dawg trade. During weekends,
he used Excel to study this trade to give him confidence in this
trade. It was measuring well based on his study. He was exposed
to this trade, he experimented with it, he studied it, and then he
mastered it.
Imagine how amazing that is. A future star trader, sitting in our
training room, absorbing a setup, that he will one day master and
forever change his trading career. Heck forever change his life.
Wow!
When Big Dawg was starting to break out, I would take a look his
PnL before a mentoring session, see that he was modestly
profitable, teach, then sit back into my trading station on the
trading floor and BOOM! Big Dawg’s PnL would explode. He had
massive size, was in the money, and was in a trade that was
working beautifully. He had this knack for huge profits, while not
taking much heat on the trade. This trade setup allows for this.
What I mean by that is that you don’t have to risk large losses to
make large gains. You don’t have to draw down greatly to make
large profits, that is, if you time the trade correctly.
Okay, so how do we find this Big Dawg Trade? What are the
variables that make up this Big Dawg Trade?
Stock In Play
Holding above or below VWAP
Elevated RVOL
Technical Breakout on longer time frame
Tight consolidation intraday
Area where you can spot you are wrong
New Catalyst: new product and growth stock
Capture the meat of the move
Get Big!
Stock In Play
A Stock In Play is one that has a fresh news catalyst. The news is
unusual and unexpected to the market. Generally you can spot a
Stock In Play by searching for stocks that are up or down 3% or
more in the premarket, with elevated premarket volume.
Elevated RVOL
I also use RVOL for position sizing. If RVOL is <1 I may decide
not to take a large position in the name. If RVOL is >3 this may
give me more confidence to take a larger position, as more
reward and more liquidity should be present.
We want to visit our longer term charts and look for stocks that
are breaking out on these longer time frames. This will bring
more buyers into the trade and buyers who are looking to hold.
Here’s an example of a longer term chart showing a Breakout:
Buys and sellers come tightly together and create what we call a
“wedge pattern”. Then someone wins. The buyers or sellers win.
This coming together of the sellers and buyers creates a rubber
band effect to spring the stock higher or lower in the direction of
its break. More on this in the trade example to come.
News Catalyst
A new product, new client, a new area for growth in the company
materializing. These elements can drive a stock higher. What we
know today about the company is much more promising than
what we knew yesterday. This new news causes investors to
think differently about the prospects for the company and thus its
stock.
Often new and retail traders don't trade stocks with a true
catalyst. By a true catalyst, I mean an event that will cause
significant new buying or selling.
And then there are the bs technical trades that too many new and
retail traders make.
When our new traders first go live they trade stocks with what we
call “changing fundamentals”. For example, news is announced
that will change the fundamentals for a company—and its stock.
This could be either unusually good news or bad news. The point
here is to remain aware of any news event that could change a
company’s fundamentals.
So the question for the new and retail trader is: Are you in stocks
with a true catalyst behind it?
Get Big!
The best traders trade big when they have edge. And they know
when a trade has edge. Simply put, when Big Dawg sees his
I listened.
When he was done, I looked him directly in the eyes and with
intensity challenged, “How come you don’t come into my office
and express such disappointment about not being bigger in a
setup that you have a measured edge in? How come you don’t
feel this bad leaving all that money on the table in your best
trades where you were not big enough? Because that’s what
you’re doing with your trading. You're leaving massive profits on
the table by not trading bigger in your best positions.”
Let’s dive deeper into an example of The Big Dawg Trade with a
trade he was in.
News Catalyst
Notice how the buyers and sellers come together and create this
wedge pattern. Buyers are long and sellers are short, and
someone is going to win or lose. And when someone starts to win
they will want to press their position and the losers will exit,
creating more momentum into the direction of the break.
We buy Tier 3 for the same reasons, plus Time and Price. The
stock is holding above VWAP for a longer period of time; thus we
add risk and because it is holding higher we add risk.
We buy Tier 4 and Tier 5 because the stock is breaking out of the
consolidation Wedge Pattern that it was in. This breakout of the
Wedge Pattern gives us more evidence that the trade will work.
So we add more risk. When the stock breaks out of consolidation,
we look carefully at whether more volume comes into the
breakout and to see if the stock spikes higher. This is what we
want to see. We want increasing volume to come into the market
and for the stock to spike higher away from the consolidation
pattern. As you can see, around 10:30AM, we do get increased
volume coming into this stock. This is another check in our favor
that we are right on the trade. And we get a really strong push
away from the wedge pattern. This is yet another check in our
favor that we are again right on the trade.
Next, we sell Tier 4 and Tier 5 into the strength. One thing that
pro traders do better than the average retail trader is sell into
strength and buy back into weakness. They make cash flow, while
also profiting from a core position. In this case, our trader makes
money selling into strength and then buying back at lower prices.
Taking profits into strength is a best practice I observe from
consistently profitable traders (CPTs). In fact, making this one
We buy back Tier 4 into the pull in as the stock continues to hold
above VWAP and stops going down into the pullback. When
buying a pullback (this is another trade taught by SMB) we
encourage traders to wait for the stock to stop going down, turn
back up, and then enter with more risk.
We buy back Tier 5 as the stock holds above VWAP and TIME and
PRICE. We discussed this above with our original entries. More
time has elapsed with the stock holding above VWAP and it is
holding higher. The stock is acting well and better than when we
added Tier 4. Thus, we want to put on more risk.
We buy Tier 6 and Tier 7 and Tier 8 when the stock busts out of
its Wedge Pattern again near 11:45 AM. We want to add more
risk because of price. The stock is breaking above an important
price intraday that signals the trade is more likely to work. When
more variables are in our favor, we add risk to our position. It
doesn't make sense to have the same risk on when the market is
giving us information that our trade is more likely to work. Thus,
we add risk and size.
We sell Tier 3 and Tier 2 and Tier 1 when the last consolidation
area can’t hold at 14.50. We want to get flat as the momentum to
the upside is now not holding. The stock held its consolidation
pattern at 10 and then at 11.50, but now couldn’t at 14.50. The
pattern has changed. So we want to take our risk off and
reevaluate.
Stock In Play
Holding above VWAP
Elevated RVOL
Technical breakout on longer time frame
Tight consolidation (wedge) intraday
Area where you can spot you are wrong
News Catalyst: new product and growth stock
Capture the meat of the move
Get Big!
How can you take what you learned in this eBook and make the
most from your learning? First, please attend our free 2 hour
workshop with four of the most powerful trade setups, and as a
bonus my step-by-step description of The Big Dawg Trade via a
trading video.
Trade the Big Dawg Trade on demo for the next week
Trade with size on the demo for the Big Dawg Trade so you
practice being a big trader
Archive each day the best Big Dawg Trade from the trading
session (your PlayBook)
Track your results
When comfortable with the trade then...
Keep working on your trading game. You just might become the
next Big Dawg!