I already explained in detail when you should get aggressive and when you should get defensive in this post.

But here is the part that most traders completely miss.

The days when everything is selling off are critical.

This is when the market quietly separates the leaders from the laggards.

And I will show you exactly what to do so you are prepared to make a lot of money when we get back into an “easy money” market.

What relative strength really means

Relative strength is not just “the stock is going up.”

Relative strength means the stock is behaving better than the market.

For example:

The index gives you the context.

The stock shows you where the money actually is.

Why relative strength matters most on red days

On green days, almost everything goes up.
You do not have a real edge.

On red days:

This creates clear separation between leaders and laggards.

Your job is to study that separation.

How to spot leaders in real time

When the market is selling off, scan for stocks that:

A real leader resists the selling.

Here’s a recent example on DOICN

Often you will see things like:

Here’s another example.

While the index did this:

These are your clues.

What to do with that information

The point is not to buy everything that holds up on a down day.

The point is to build an A‑list watchlist.

When the market turns back up:

That is where the big money is made.

AND
Not in guessing bottoms.

BUT
In being prepared.

What weak traders do instead

Most losing traders do the exact opposite:

So when the market finally bounces,
they are stuck in the weakest names.

A simple plan for red days

On red days, your job is not to be a hero.

Your job is to:

This is the real work of a swing trader.
The actual entries come later.

If you learn to think like this,
you will stop chasing moves that already happened.

You will be positioned in the leaders before the big moves start.

AND

This is exactly what we do every day inside the PRO community on our Discord server.
We constantly hunt for opportunities and share stocks with great relative strength with our members.

If you do not believe me, here is a message we got just this Monday.

If you are thinking about joining the community,
well, right now is the best time to do it.
The yearly plan is 49% off.

Get 49% Discount with Yearly Plan

See you inside :)

Trade Setups of The Week

Copy My Watchlist for this week

Here are the stocks, sectors, or trends I’m watching closely.

Access my entire watchlist for free here:

My watchlist

Want more than just a watchlist?

Join a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to achieving financial freedom and taking control of their future.

Upgrade now to get the full experience!

If you think this newsletter could help your friends, share it with them so it can reach as many traders as possible.

And here’s the fun part: when you share it, you can unlock special rewards + you will look smart in front of your friends :)

“One trade closer to freedom.”
Vladislav

(*Only realized profits are included here, unrealized profits are not counted in the final calculation, which may result in lagging performance statistics).

This is my performance from previous years.

To better understand the strategy we are following and not to buy blindly without any context, please read and analyze my strategy carefully:

Right now, these are my positions:

Read more

AND

I am still holding positions with unrealized profits (like HPE, RKLB, ALAB, and others).

Transparency is important to me, so here is my broker activity statement.

*it’s actually more if you count the unrealized profits

I am not showing you all this to brag about how good I am.

ACTUALLY,

I want to show you exactly how I made this money.

In May, I took a total of 51 trades, averaging about 2 trades per day.

Look at the net daily P&L and notice how the losses are small and the gains are large, measured in R units of risk.

This means that one of the secrets is that I cut my losses fast and I hold on to my winners.

I’ll be more specific and show you the EXACT setups and trades I took to make this kind of money.

Here are 3 examples to learn from.

Base breakout - HPE

So this stock keeps paying me because it simply does not want to drop below the 10 MA.

For context, HPE had formed a 10‑month base that I was watching very closely.

As soon as I see this kind of price contraction forming, I immediately add it to my focus list.

On April 16 I initiated a position with a stop loss at 24.68, an extremely tight risk.

The stock moved in my favor from day one with a 5% return, then on the second day it already hit 3R, so I sold one third and it basically became a free‑risk trade for me.

After that the stock formed another small base; that was the opportunity to add to the position, but I did not take it.

Then I started selling into strength, as you can see on the chart above.

Right now, the stock has given me a huge realized multiple of 23.8R, and the position is still not fully closed, so most likely it will end up over 30R.

So this single trade paid for roughly 30 losing trades.

Just imagine for a moment the power of this kind of risk management.

20 MA Undercut and Rally Trade - CIEN

The stock touched the 20 simple moving average perfectly, undercut it, and then rallied on volume.

This allowed me to use a very tight stop at 486.22, with an entry at 493.61.

I sold one third of the position on the second day, because the trade had already reached 3 units of risk.

Then I sold into strength six days later.

After that I sold when it closed below the 10 MA, and finally the last portion when it closed below the 20 MA.

This allowed me to lock in a 7.29 R multiple.

As you can see, after I sold, the stock offered yet another similar setup.

And before this, on March 27, there was one more valid setup.

Base Breakout Setup - PWR

PWR was a classic base breakout setup.

The stock undercut the base and the 50 MA, and then it started to move.

My entry ($585.29) was only after the stock price got back above the 10 and 20 MA and broke out of the base it had been forming since February 19.

SL was at $576.48.

I sold the first one third of the position on April 22, after the stock reached 3 units of risk.

Then I got a gap up into earnings, and seeing that the stock was about 9 times extended from the 50 MA, I sold into strength.

After another two days I literally sold at the top.

Finally, I sold the last remaining shares on the day it closed below the 10 MA.

This trade generated an 8.10 R multiple for me.

You can achieve this too.

After walking you through these trades,

you can clearly see that this is not about lucky bets.

it is about repeatable setups, strict risk management, and the discipline to execute.

If you want to level up from random trades to a structured swing trading process, I built Freedom Trades exactly for that.

PRO is your next step.

And right now is the best time to take it.

The yearly plan is 49% off.
If you’ve been sitting on the fence, this is the moment.

Get 49% Discount with Yearly Plan

Trade Setups of The Week

Copy My Watchlist for this week

Here are the stocks, sectors, or trends I’m watching closely.

Access my entire watchlist for free here:

My watchlist

Want more than just a watchlist?

Get an understanding of the screener, so you know exactly what to watch.

Gain access to my trading strategy!

Join a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to achieving financial freedom and taking control of their future.

Upgrade now to get the full experience!

If you think this newsletter could help your friends, share it with them so it can reach as many traders as possible.

And here’s the fun part: when you share it, you can unlock special rewards + you will look smart in front of your friends :)

“One trade closer to freedom.”
Vladislav

(*Only realized profits are included here, unrealized profits are not counted in the final calculation, which may result in lagging performance statistics).

This is my performance from previous years.

To better understand the strategy we are following and not to buy blindly without any context, please read and analyze my strategy carefully:

Right now, these are my positions:

Read more

To the next market wizard.

It will grow your account exponentially.

And your drawdowns will barely be felt.

It is simple.

BUT not easy.

That is why today I am going to show you my tactic.

And not just mine, but also that of 3 other market wizards who have a very strong grasp of this concept.

Let’s start with the masters, those who have decades of experience in the market.

When to Get AGGRESSIVE (according to market wizards)

Mark Minervini

- Your last 4-5 trades are working (open profits/close profits)
- Follow-through day occurs and market turns up
- Setups are visible AND bearing results
- Market is in “easy dollar” environment with stocks above 50/150/200-day MAs

William O’Neil

- Major indices trading above rising 50-day and 50-week MAs
- Market in definite uptrend (CAN SLIM “M” criterion)
- Price/volume action on indices confirms strength

Qullamaggie

- $QQQ above 10 EMA and 20 EMA, MAs trending up
- Your trades are working (progressive exposure)
- Leading stocks breaking out with volume

When to Get DEFENSIVE (according to market wizards)

Mark Minervini

- win rate drops below 50%
- Market conditions are weak/volatile
- Your trades are not working (getting stopped out repeatedly)
- “Hard penny” environment where fakeouts are common

William O’Neil

- Indices below rising 50-day MA
- Market in correction/downtrend
- Most stocks follow general market pattern down

Qullamaggie

- You’re in a drawdown
- Breakouts failing, more false moves

Ok, that’s what they say. Here’s how I turned that into a concrete system.

How do I get aggressive or defensive

I have created my own system.

It looks like this.

And it all starts with my last 5 trades.

Did they perform well, or did I get stopped out on all of them?

Okay, let’s say I got stopped out.

Why did that happen?

Is it because the market environment is unfavorable for my strategy, or is it my execution, a psychological cause?

Then, after I identify the root cause, I apply corrective measures.

So just like the masters, it all starts with your PnL.

Your performance on your last trades is the best indicator.

How much risk do I take

I have 3 risk thresholds based on performance and market awareness.

To keep things practical and not just conceptual, below you have a small “Risk Management Cheat Sheet” that translates the aggressive / defensive idea directly into risk percentages per trade.

In short, we use two axes: account performance and market context combined with setup quality.

On the left side, “Performance Based”, risk per position varies depending on the state of the equity curve:

• Between 0.70 – 1% per trade when the account is at all-time highs and the market environment is favorable. Here we are in controlled aggressive mode, letting recent profits finance the larger exposure.

• 0.5% is the “normal” size, when we are neither in euphoria nor in a significant drawdown.

• 0.25% is defensive mode, used when the account is roughly in a 10% drawdown or recent performance is weak; we automatically reduce position size by half.

• 0.125% is ultra-defensive mode: account in roughly a 20% drawdown and an unfavorable environment; positions become almost symbolic, the focus is exclusively on capital protection.

On the right side, “Market MA + Setup”, we adjust risk based on pattern quality and SPY’s position relative to its moving averages:

• 1% risk only for an A++ setup when SPY is above the 10 MA, meaning a top-tier pattern in a very bullish market.

• 0.5% for an A setup with SPY above the 20 MA, moderate aggression in a still positive context.

• 0.25% for a B setup with SPY above the 50 MA, we are trading, but with a clearly defensive approach.

• 0.125% for a B setup when SPY is below the 200 MA, a mediocre pattern in a weak market, exactly where we want to be almost fully in cash.

With these settings, it is guaranteed you will not blow up your account

AND

you will have enough time to experience multiple market cycles.

Multiple market cycle experience

If you manage to go through a drawdown and experience multiple cycles,

something almost magical will happen.

You will develop the ability to feel and understand when the environment is favorable and when it is not.

That will help you know when to press the accelerator and when to hit the brakes.

For example, in March it was so difficult that almost every trade I entered ended in a stop loss.

As a result, my win rate was only 22%.

However, in May, at the time of writing, my win rate is 46% and will likely go above 50% as I take more profits.

So what I want to say is, do not get discouraged if it does not work out from the beginning.

You need time in the market.

AND

This does not come easy.

It comes with losses, frustrations, and a lot of perseverance.

And this is exactly what separates a trader who just participates from one who starts compounding consistently.

knowing when to press the accelerator and when to lift your foot.

That is exactly what we build inside PRO, not just trade ideas, but the context, the execution, and the real-time adaptation to what the market is actually doing.

You will see exactly how I size, when I scale, and when I step aside.

If you want to see how I apply this system day by day, on real trades, and be part of a community

PRO is your next step.

And right now is the best time to take it.

The yearly plan is 49% off.
If you’ve been sitting on the fence, this is the moment.

See you inside.

Get 49% Discount with Yearly Plan

Trade Setups of The Week

Copy My Watchlist for this week

Here are the stocks, sectors, or trends I’m watching closely.

Access my entire watchlist for free here:

My watchlist

Want more than just a watchlist?

Get an understanding of the screener, so you know exactly what to watch.

Gain access to my trading strategy!

Join a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to achieving financial freedom and taking control of their future.

Upgrade now to get the full experience!

If you think this newsletter could help your friends, share it with them so it can reach as many traders as possible.

And here’s the fun part: when you share it, you can unlock special rewards + you will look smart in front of your friends :)

“One trade closer to freedom.”
Vladislav

(*Only realized profits are included here, unrealized profits are not counted in the final calculation, which may result in lagging performance statistics).

This is my performance from previous years.

To better understand the strategy we are following and not to buy blindly without any context, please read and analyze my strategy carefully:

Right now, these are my positions:

Read more

They watch the stock flush below a key level, hit their stop, and then stare at the screen as price immediately reverses and runs 30%, 40%, 50% without them.

It feels like the market is personally targeting you.

The truth is, it kind of is.

And today I am going to show you exactly how to be on the right side of that move.

The setup is called the Undercut and Rally (U&R), and it has made me tens of thousands of dollars.

One of the trades was NVDA.

NVDA had been trending beautifully, then pulled back hard through the 20 SMA. Every holder who had their stop just below that moving average got flushed out in a single session.

I had marked the level the night before.

I waited for the reclaim. I entered.

The stock ran over 20% in the following two weeks without ever looking back.

That one trade paid for months of losses.

That is the power of understanding what is actually happening beneath the surface of price action.

What Is the Undercut and Rally?

In simple terms, the Undercut and Rally is a failed breakdown.

It is a classic shakeout where price dips below a major key level, shakes out the weak holders by hitting their stop losses, and then snaps back above that same level with strength, typically confirmed by volume.

This setup most commonly appears during short-term corrections and pullbacks in otherwise uptrending stocks.

The beauty of it is that it gives you a clean, well-defined entry point with a very tight and logical risk.

Why This Setup Exists: The Psychology Behind It

Before you can trade the U&R with conviction, you need to understand why it happens in the first place. It is not random.

When a stock trades at a key level for any period of time, every trader watching that chart places their stop in roughly the same place: just below that level.

Support levels, moving averages, prior highs turned support, they are all visible to everyone. That means stops are clustered in a very predictable location.

Institutions know this.

Large players who want to accumulate more shares at a better price have a simple playbook: push price briefly below the key level, trigger all those stops, buy the shares that get dumped onto the market, and let price snap back above.

The retail trader gets shaken out at the exact low.

The institution fills their position at a discount. Price then rallies hard because the weak hands have been removed and only strong holders remain.

This is not a conspiracy. It is just how markets work.

And once you see it, you cannot unsee it. The U&R is simply your way of recognizing that flush in real time and positioning yourself alongside the institutions rather than against them.

How to Turn This Into a High-Probability Trade: Add the High Volume Close

The real edge multiplier is combining the U&R with a High Volume Close (HVC).

A HVC marks a level where significant institutional activity happened.

When price later undercuts that exact HVC level, you are triggering the stops of traders who entered on that high-volume candle.

The subsequent rally back above it signals that the institutions are still in control and defending their position.

The MU chart is an outstanding example of the HVC combined with U&R.

Multiple High Volume Close candles are annotated at a key support zone around $334 to $370.

Price made an initial U&R at that level (labeled “another example of U&R”), held, and then in April broke down hard, undercutting the key support level.

That undercut shook out the late holders and triggered stops on both sides.

What followed was a clean rally all the way from the lows near $318 back through $540 and beyond, labeled clearly as “rally” and “strength” in the volume panel.

Advanced U&R Technique: Combining the 20 and 50 SMA

The real edge of this setup comes when you layer moving averages on top of each other.

When price undercuts either 20 SMA or 50 SMA.

The more confluence you stack, the higher the probability.

Give more weight to the 50 SMA over the 20 SMA.

The 50 SMA attracts more institutional attention, which means more stops are clustered there, and a successful U&R off the 50 SMA typically produces a stronger and more sustained rally.

Bloom Energy (BE) is probably the most visually clean example.

The stock trended from the high $30s all the way to $140 in a powerful, uninterrupted Stage 2 uptrend.

Along the way, two separate U&R setups are annotated on the chart.

Each time price dipped below a key moving average or support level, it quickly reversed and continued higher.

The 20 SMA acted as the key trigger, and the rebound from the "key level" around $86.50 produced another powerful rally leg to $140.

The HVC annotations on the volume panel show exactly where institutions loaded up, and each of those levels later became a springboard for the continuation.

How to Play the Undercut and Rally

Once you spot a potential U&R setup, execution is everything. Here is the step-by-step process I use:

1. Identify the key level in advance
Do not wait for the setup to happen and then react.

Mark your key levels before the market opens.

You are looking for prior support zones, high volume close levels, and the 20 or 50 SMA.

2. Wait for the undercut
Price needs to break below the key level with conviction.

This is the shakeout.

Weak holders are getting stopped out.

Do not buy the breakdown. Do not try to catch the falling knife.

Your job at this stage is to watch and wait.

3. Wait for the reclaim
This is your trigger.

You want to see price push back above the key level it just undercut.

The reclaim can happen intraday or on the next candle.

The faster the reclaim, the stronger the signal.

A slow grind back is less convincing.

4. Enter on the reclaim
Your entry is the moment price closes back above the undercut level, or you can enter aggressively as price is reclaiming it if volume is already confirming.

A strong close near the high of the reclaim candle is ideal.

5. Place your stop below the undercut low
This is the beauty of the setup.

Your risk is extremely well-defined.

Your stop goes just below the lowest point of the undercut.

If price goes back down there, the setup is invalid and you exit without hesitation. No exceptions.

6. Set your target based on ATR.
A clean U&R off a key level typically targets the prior high or the next major resistance zone.

Use the ATR of the stock to gauge how much room you have.

As a rule, you want at minimum a 3:1 reward-to-risk ratio before entering.

(revisit our strategy so you know exactly when to sell!!!)

7. Manage the trade as it moves
Once the trade is working, trail your stop behind the 10 SMA or the prior swing low.

If the stock is a strong momentum leader, do not rush to take profits.

Let the position breathe and give the move room to develop.

The best U&R setups on large-cap momentum stocks can run for months.

Here’s an example on NBIS

NBIS provides a clean example of a U&R off an HVC level in a strong momentum stock.

An HVC occurred around the $57.50 area, setting a key reference level.

Price later pulled back and undercut that HVC level, then snapped back above it in a textbook U&R.

From that U&R entry, NBIS rallied sharply, reaching near $70 before the most recent pullback.

The volume panel shows the massive spike on the most recent session, which is the current HVC being set now.

This is a stock that had already proven itself as a momentum leader before the setup triggered, which is exactly the criterion you want.

The Core Checklist for a High-Probability U&R

Here is how to stack the edge in your favor before taking any U&R trade:

• Price undercuts a major key level (prior resistance turned support, a high-volume close level, or a key moving average)

• The undercut is followed by a reversal and reclaim of that level, preferably on the same day or within 1-2 sessions.

• Volume on the reversal candle is above average, ideally confirming institutional absorption

• The stock is a proven momentum leader with strong prior price action, not a random name.

• The U&R aligns with the 50 SMA (weighted higher than the 20 SMA) for maximum confluence.

• The undercut level coincides with a prior High Volume Close, making it the most powerful version of the setup.

The bigger the market cap, the more respected these levels tend to be.

Large-cap momentum stocks have more institutional participation, which means more stops are clustered at key levels, and the U&R shakeout is more predictable and more explosive when it resolves.

Want to Go Deeper?

Today’s newsletter gave you the full framework.

But knowing the setup is only half the equation.

The other half is knowing exactly which stocks to watch each week, how to size your position correctly, when to add to a winner, and when to cut and move on.

Inside Freedom Trades, I share my live watchlist every single week, post real-time alerts when I enter and exit trades, and break down every setup I am tracking with full context.

Everything you read today, applied live, every day.

If this newsletter added value to your trading, you will get this level of detail every single day inside the community. Come join us.

And right now, the yearly plan is 49% off.

If you have been sitting on the fence, this is the moment.

Get 49% Discount with Yearly Plan

Trade Setups of The Week

Copy My Watchlist for this week

Here are the stocks, sectors, or trends I’m watching closely.

Access my entire watchlist for free here:

My watchlist

Want more than just a watchlist?

Get an understanding of the screener, so you know exactly what to watch.

Gain access to my trading strategy!

Join a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to achieving financial freedom and taking control of their future.

Upgrade now to get the full experience!

If you think this newsletter could help your friends, share it with them so it can reach as many traders as possible.

And here’s the fun part: when you share it, you can unlock special rewards + you will look smart in front of your friends :)

“One trade closer to freedom.”
Vladislav

In the coming weeks, we'll likely see it outperform the SPY index, as I will be selling most of my unrealized profits at the first pullback below the 10MA.

This is my performance from previous years.

To better understand the strategy we are following and not to buy blindly without any context, please read and analyze my strategy carefully:

Right now, these are my positions:

Read more

The answer is almost never the strategy.

It is almost never the market.

It is that they do not know which stage of the journey they are actually in, and they are applying stage 4 thinking to a stage 2 problem.

In this article I break down the 5 stages every trader goes through, how to recognize which one you are in, and the specific actions that move you to the next level.

This is the framework I wish someone had handed me when I started.

Stage 1: The Accidental Genius

Estimated duration: 1-6 months

It all starts with a winning trade.

Maybe even several in a row.

You do not know why you won, you have no clear strategy, but your account is growing and your brain draws the logical conclusion: you are good at this.

This is the stage where chaos disguises itself as “talent”.

You buy a stock because it “looks good,” you exit because you “have a feeling,” and somehow everything seems to work.

The market is in a bull run, volatility is helping you without you knowing it, and luck is your best friend, even though you think it is you.

The major danger of this stage is that you build confidence without a foundation.

And confidence without a foundation is more dangerous than a lack of confidence.

How to advance:

Document every trade. Not to brag, but to understand why you won or lost.

If you cannot explain in 2 sentences why you entered a trade, you do not have a strategy, you have luck on your side. And luck does not last.

Stage 2: Organized Chaos (or How to Lose Money in Every Possible Way)

Estimated duration: 6 months - 3 years

The market corrects you. And it does so brutally.

Your account starts to decline.

You look for explanations, and the internet offers you thousands of solutions.

You follow alerts from people you do not know.

You pay for tips and calls. You change your strategy three times a month.

Today you are an options trader, tomorrow you are chasing crypto, the day after you are copy-pasting after someone on Substack.

Every loss produces a new search.

Every new guru promises the perfect system.

And every new system fails, because the system is not the problem, you are the problem. Or more precisely, the lack of a system of your own, followed with discipline, is the problem.

This is the stage where most traders get stuck forever.

Not because they are not intelligent, but because they refuse to accept that the solution is not external.

They end up calling everything a scam and leaving trading convinced that it is impossible to make money. Some are actually right, for themselves, because they never made it to the next stage.

How to advance:

Stop buying solutions and choose a single system to learn deeply.

It does not have to be perfect, it has to be yours.

Study a single setup, on a single market, with a single timeframe.

Boredom is the first sign that you are on the right track.

Stage 3: The Strategy Without a Master

Estimated duration: 1-2 years

You have chosen a strategy.

You know what you are looking for.

You know what setup you are tracking.

Theoretically, everything makes sense.

In practice, you are still losing or breaking even.

Not because the strategy is wrong, but because you do not have the experience needed to apply it correctly.

You enter too early. You exit too late. You ignore an obvious warning signal because “this time it is different.”

You follow the rule in 7 out of 10 trades, but in the exact 3 where you do not, you lose all the profit from the others.

This is the stage where you learn that a good strategy applied with 80% discipline produces mediocre results.

Consistency is not a bonus, it is the baseline requirement.

Also in this stage, you start to understand that trading is a game of probabilities and that a losing trade does not mean you were wrong.

This mindset shift is crucial.

How to advance:

Keep a paper trading journal.

Not a spreadsheet, a narrative journal.

Write what you felt before the entry, what you were thinking while the trade was open, and what you did differently from your rules.

Emotional patterns are harder to see than chart patterns, but they are just as important.

Stage 4: The Strategy Becomes Yours

Estimated duration: 2-4 years to reach and consolidate

This is the stage where things start to click.

You are no longer following a strategy, you are living it.

You have taken the original framework and adapted it to your personality, your risk tolerance, the hours when you can be active, the type of setups that suit you psychologically.

You know when to push and when to stay on the sidelines.

You understand market cycles.

You know that a setup that works perfectly in a trending market can destroy an account in choppy conditions.

Drawdowns still exist, but they are controlled, expected, and no longer trigger panic.

The most important sign that you are in this stage: it is hard to explain to others exactly what you do, because a large part of the decision comes from accumulated experience, not written rules.

You have developed something called market feel, and that cannot be bought or copied.

The difference from previous stages is not that everything is easy.

It is that you know exactly why you win or lose, and that makes all the difference.

How to advance:

Document your system in detail, as if you were explaining it to someone from scratch.

This process will force you to identify what is still vague or inconsistent. Seek to understand “why” your strategy works at a market structure level, not just “how.”

Then, build systems for absolutely everything.

When everything is systematized, you are no longer making decisions under emotional pressure, you are executing a process already thought through with a clear head.

Equally important is building protection systems.

A protection system for periods of over-confidence, when everything is going well and your brain starts ignoring risk signals.

A system for days when you are not in the right psychological state, whether you are tired, stressed, or distracted, that explicitly tells you not to open any trade.

Discipline does not mean being strong in every moment.

It means having written rules that protect you precisely in the moments when you are not at full capacity.

Stage 5: Mastery and Scalability

Estimated duration: 5+ years from the start, indefinitely refined

Few people get here.

Not because it is impossible, but because the previous stages demand a patience that most people do not have.

In this stage, trading becomes an almost meditative activity.

You no longer need to “convince” your brain to follow the rules, because the rules are fully internalized.

Good decisions are made naturally, not forced.

What truly sets this stage apart is scalability and adaptability.

You can manage a larger portfolio without changing your psychology.

You can navigate shifts in market regime (bull, bear, sideways, high volatility) and adjust without panicking or abandoning your system.

You understand when the market has changed structurally and you know how to respond, not react.

Another defining element of this stage is that you can clearly articulate what you do and why.

Experience has transformed into deep understanding, which allows you to pass knowledge forward, to mentor, to build community, to educate.

Not out of obligation, but because you understand that doing so consolidates your own foundations even further.

Drawdowns are no longer emotional events. They are expected chapters in a book you have read before.

How to maintain and evolve:

At this level, the greatest threat is complacency.

Keep documenting your trades, analyze losses with the same seriousness with which you analyze wins, and stay curious.

Markets evolve, and a trader who does not evolve with them will inevitably regress.

Where Are You?

If you read carefully, you already know the answer.

What matters is that you are honest with yourself.

You cannot skip stages, you cannot buy a shortcut, but you can choose to accelerate the process.

The difference between someone who reaches stage 4 in 3 years versus someone who gets there in 8 years is, most of the time, the quality of the environment in which they develop.

A clear system, constant feedback, and a community of traders who are one step ahead of you compress years of trial and error into months.

That is exactly what I built in Freedom Trades. A real system, clear rules, risk management, and an active community of traders going through the same stages.

If you want to accelerate, your place is here.

And right now, the yearly plan is 49% off.

If you have been sitting on the fence, this is the moment.

Get 49% Discount with Yearly Plan

Trade Setups of The Week

Copy My Watchlist for this week

Here are the stocks, sectors, or trends I’m watching closely.

Access my entire watchlist for free here:

My watchlist

Want more than just a watchlist?

Get an understanding of the screener, so you know exactly what to watch.

Gain access to my trading strategy!

Join a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to achieving financial freedom and taking control of their future.

Upgrade now to get the full experience!

If you think this newsletter could help your friends, share it with them so it can reach as many traders as possible.

And here’s the fun part: when you share it, you can unlock special rewards + you will look smart in front of your friends :)

“One trade closer to freedom.”
Vladislav

This is my performance from previous years.

To better understand the strategy we are following and not to buy blindly without any context, please read and analyze my strategy carefully:

Right now, these are my positions:

Read more

It was when I stopped trusting my gut.

Sounds counterintuitive. But the gut feeling most traders follow isn’t intuition.
It’s a collection of biases that have been building since the day you were born.

And your brain, as smart as it is... was never built for trading.

I know this because I lived it.

Let me show you exactly how it sabotages you.

Bias #1: Loss Aversion

Here’s a number that should shake you: psychologically, a loss hurts roughly twice as much as an equivalent gain feels good.

You make $1000 on a trade. Nice feeling.
You lose $1000 on the next one. You feel destroyed.

Same amount. Completely different emotional impact.

This is why traders:

• Hold losing positions way too long (hoping it comes back)

• Cut winning positions way too early (scared to give back profits)

In swing trading, this is deadly.

Because a good swing setup needs time to develop. If you cut your winners at +2% because your hands are shaking, and hold your losers to -20% because you “believe in the thesis”...

Bias #2: Recency Bias

After two bad trades in a row, your brain starts whispering:

“Maybe this setup doesn’t work anymore.”

After three winning trades in a row, it says:

“I can’t lose right now. Size up.”

Both thoughts will hurt you.

Your brain is wired to treat recent events as more important than they actually are. In markets, that’s a trap. A bad week doesn’t mean your edge is gone. A good week doesn’t mean you’re untouchable.

I learned this the hard way after my best month ever.

I doubled my size on the next setup.

You can probably guess what happened next.

Bias #3: Confirmation Bias

You find a stock. You like the setup. You’re bullish.

Now your brain starts collecting evidence.

The chart looks great. Volume is there. The sector is strong. That analyst on Substack agrees with me.

What you’re not doing? Looking for reasons to NOT take the trade.

This is confirmation bias. You’re not analyzing the market anymore. You’re building a case for something you already decided.

In swing trading, this gets especially dangerous because our holding periods are longer. You have days to keep convincing yourself you’re right... while the stock slowly grinds against you.

The fix is simple but uncomfortable: before every trade, write down the top three reasons it could fail.

Bias #4: The Gambler’s Fallacy

“I’ve had five losing trades in a row. I’m due for a winner.”

No. You’re not.

The market doesn’t know how many trades you’ve taken. It doesn’t owe you anything. Each setup is independent.

This bias pushes traders into revenge trading. One bad day turns into a blown account because they keep “trying to get it back.”

I did this exact thing for months during my futures phase.

The market was never going to give me my money back out of fairness. That’s not how any of this works.

Bias #5: Overconfidence After a Winning Streak

A good month feels like you finally cracked the code.

You start sizing up. You start taking lower-quality setups. You start skipping your checklist because “you know what you’re doing now.”

This is the most dangerous phase for any trader.

The win rate in swing trading is not 100%. It was never meant to be. A 25-40% win rate with great risk/reward is all you need to build wealth over time.

But overconfidence makes you forget that.

The traders who last five, ten, twenty years are not the ones who never lose.

They’re the ones who never let a win convince them they’re bulletproof.

The One Thing All These Biases Have in Common

Your brain is trying to protect you.

Loss aversion? Keeps you from financial ruin, in theory.
Recency bias? Pattern recognition that helped humans survive.
Confirmation bias? Mental efficiency. You can’t question everything forever.

These are not flaws. They are features... that were never designed for financial markets.

The traders who make it are not smarter.

They just built systems that remove the brain from the equation as much as possible.

Fixed position sizing. Clear entry rules. Hard stops. A journal.

Understand that your emotions will always be there... and they built a process strong enough to override them.

Now here’s the thing.

Knowing these biases exist is step one.

Having a structured system, a community that holds you accountable, and a weekly watchlist that removes the guesswork... that’s step two.

That’s exactly what Freedom Trades PRO is built for.

Every week you get:

• The exact setups I’m watching, before the move happens

• My full screener and strategy, so you know why a stock is on the list, not just what it is

• A community of traders who are building the same thing you are: freedom

And right now, the yearly plan is 49% off.

If you’ve been sitting on the fence, this is the moment.

Get 49% Discount with Yearly Plan

Trade Setups of The Week

Copy My Watchlist for this week

Here are the stocks, sectors, or trends I’m watching closely.

Access my entire watchlist for free here:

My watchlist

Want more than just a watchlist?

Get an understanding of the screener, so you know exactly what to watch.

Gain access to my trading strategy!

Join a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to achieving financial freedom and taking control of their future.

Upgrade now to get the full experience!

If you think this newsletter could help your friends, share it with them so it can reach as many traders as possible.

And here’s the fun part: when you share it, you can unlock special rewards + you will look smart in front of your friends :)

“One trade closer to freedom.”
Vladislav

This is my performance from previous years.

To better understand the strategy we are following and not to buy blindly without any context, please read and analyze my strategy carefully:

Right now, these are my positions:

Read more

The best part?

They are all free.

And if you stick with me to the end, I’ll hand you my exact TradingView layout with all 6 indicators already configured, so you can copy my entire chart setup with the press of a single button.

This is the same layout I use every single day as a full-time swing trader to screen hundreds of stocks, qualify setups in seconds, and manage every position from entry to exit.

The 6 best indicators for Swing Trading

Here is an overview chart with all the indicators

Now let's take them one by one.

1. The indicator for better stock selection

Swing Data, developed by Jeff Sun, is a consolidated table that displays directly on your chart all the metrics you need to understand the “personality” of a stock, meaning how it moves, how volatile it is, and how liquid it is.

What the indicator does

It transforms the chart into a mini stock-selection dashboard, bringing together in one table all the liquidity, volatility, and relative strength metrics you need to qualify or disqualify a candidate in seconds, without opening other tools.

What it concretely displays

• Market Cap, the total market value of the company.

• Float %, percentage of shares available for trading, directly influences volatility.

• ADR%, the average daily movement in percentage, a key volatility indicator.

• ATR, the average price volatility including gaps.

• LoD dist., the distance from the Low of Day relative to ATR, expressed as a percentage.

• Average Daily $ Volume, the average daily value traded in dollars.

• Average Daily Volume, the average number of shares traded.

• Projected Volume, the estimate of total volume for the current day.

• Relative Volume, current volume compared to the average.

• Liquidity Cap, based on 1% of average volume.

• IBD RS Rating with one decimal.

• Up/Down Volume Ratio.

• % distance from 52W High and 52W Low.

• SPDR Sector RS Rating next to the sector name, for quick reference (e.g. XLK RS-65 vs AVGO RS-97).

• Intraday % Change on SPDR Sector, to compare the strength of the stock vs. the sector it belongs to in real time.

How it helps me with stock selection

I use this tool as a stock selection filter. It is very powerful and helps me filter dozens of daily stocks much faster than I used to.

• Market Cap, I want to see at least 1B; anything below that is considered a penny stock for me, a deliberate rule to prioritize stability, liquidity, and technical reliability.

• Avg $ Vol, I want to see at least $100M traded every day (although even this is a bit illiquid), because I want as many institutions as possible to be involved in that stock. Institutions need liquidity to move their positions; they don’t enter and exit instantly like we do with a 10k-1 mil account.

• The simple rule is Avg $Volume per day must not be less than 100 times your capital. Example: you have a $1 million account, don’t trade anything smaller than $100 million average $ volume per day. The bigger, the better.

• ADR%, I’m interested in it being as large as possible. I explained here in detail why. I strongly recommend you read this.

• RS Rating is a very important component, I don’t want to buy anything that doesn’t show relative strength compared to the index and to the sector it belongs.

• LoD distance, if it is over 60%, most of the time I no longer buy that stock. Why? Very simple. Because the move has already happened and there is very little space left for me to have an acceptable profit at the end of the day to hold the position overnight. You want to have confidence that you can hold that position and not wake up to a huge overnight gap.

Why it’s useful for you as a swing trader

• You qualify or reject a candidate in seconds based on hard thresholds (Mcap, Avg $Vol, ADR%, RS), instead of opening 4-5 tools for every ticker.

• You filter out late entries automatically with LoD distance, avoiding chasing moves that are already extended intraday.

• You confirm relative strength vs. index and vs. sector before entering, a core requirement for momentum swing setups.

You can download this indicator for free here: https://www.tradingview.com/script/uloAa2EI-Swing-Data-ADR-RVol-PVol-Float-Avg-Vol/

2. Moving Average Indicator

I use SMA 20, 50, and 200 because they cover three different time horizons, and together they give you clear context of trend, momentum, and probable zones of support/resistance watched by everyone, including institutionals.

In swing trading, it matters enormously to enter in the direction of the dominant trend and as close as possible to relevant averages, so you have an edge on probability and risk/reward ratio.

SMA 20

It is the short-term average, reacts quickly to price, and shows you recent momentum. Many swing traders use it as a guide for position management and for pullback entries, watching price bounces off 20 as a signal of trend continuation.

SMA 50

It is the medium-term average, filters out noise, and shows you how healthy the trend is in the last few weeks.

SMA 200

It is the classic long-term trend benchmark, intensely used by institutionals as well. The fact that the price is above or below 200 is seen by many as a delimitation between bullish market and bearish market, and reactions at 200 often mark key points or important consolidation zones.

I avoid buying anything that is below the 200 Simple moving average.

And that green line you see on the chart above is the 9 EMA. I use this indicator to quickly get me out of short-term positions.

You can download this indicator for free here:

https://www.tradingview.com/script/V8E1T8Sq-Multiple-Moving-Averages/

3. Simple Volume Indicator

Here is a diagram so you can understand the difference between the conventional volume indicator and this indicator.

I use it because it removes the noise from volume and leaves me only the signals that matter for momentum and institutional accumulation.

It fits exactly with my routine of screening and searching for entries on stocks.

What it shows me clearly

• Blue bars (PPV): pocket pivot type volumes, a sign that institutionals are buying in the base or on the breakout.

• Green bars: up-day above the 50 average, confirms real demand on the move.

• Red bars: down-day above the 50 average, shows me unconsumed supply that needs to be absorbed.

• Dark gray bars: volume below average, noise, I ignore them.

• Orange bars: “dry” volumes, typical in tight consolidations before a breakout.

How it helps me with entries

I see if the recent reds (RRV) are followed by bigger greens or if their highs are taken, a sign that the supply has been absorbed.

Multiple PPVs in the base plus PPV on the breakout candle = strong bullish signal of accumulation.

Bull Snort (volume 3x average, close in top 35%) marks for me the impulse candles that I watch as a long trigger.

Quick context on the table

RVol, Volume Buzz, U/D ratio and Avg$Vol tell me at a glance if the stock has enough liquidity for my size and if the current day is statistically significant.

1mL (1-minute liquidity) confirms that I can enter and exit without large slippage, important for progressive exposure.

Projected RVol gives me, even during the session, an estimate of the final volume, useful for intraday execution on swing setups.

HV edges for “big winner” stocks

The HVE, HVY, HVQ labels mark the highest volumes ever, over one year, over one quarter, typically zones of aggressive institutional accumulation.

These help me filter the candidates with the highest probability of becoming big winners, exactly the type of momentum stocks I bet on.

You can download this indicator for free here:

https://www.tradingview.com/script/JkB0iCFp-Simple-Volume-with-Pocket-Pivots/

4. ATR% multiple from 50-MA

The indicator quantifies how “extended” the price is compared to the 50 moving average, expressed in multiples of ATR%, not in absolute percentages.

This way, a volatile stock and a slow one can be compared correctly, because the inherent volatility of each stock is normalized through ATR.

The formula explained

• A = ATR% = ATR / current price, so how much the stock moves daily, as a percentage of price.

• B = % gain compared to SMA 50, so how high the price is above the 50 average.

• B / A = how many times ATR% fits into the distance to the SMA 50.

Example: if ATR% = 3% and the price is 24% above SMA 50, you are at 8 ATRs of extension, so in a profit-taking zone.

What it concretely helps you with

• It gives you an objective threshold for scale out, typically 7-10x ATR% above SMA 50, where statistically stalls and pullbacks appear.

• It eliminates the emotional decision; you sell in pieces when the math says the position is stretched, not when “it seems like a lot to you”.

• It can also be used in reverse, for shorting on overextension.

Why multiples of ATR, not percentages

• 20% above SMA 50 on a stock with ATR% 2 means 10x ATR, very extended.

• The same 20% on a stock with ATR% 5 means only 4x ATR, still healthy.

• The raw percentage says nothing without volatility context; the ATR multiple does.

You can download this indicator for free here:

https://www.tradingview.com/script/oimVgV7e-ATR-multiple-from-50-MA/

5. EPS & Sales

What the indicator does

If I have to choose between 10,000 stocks that I can buy in the US market, naturally I want to buy the best one.

And how do I see that? Well, by looking at EPS and Sales, the most important engines for the growth of a company.

If suddenly a company has a triple-digit sales growth surprise or EPS, analysts will be forced to reprice that company.

And institutions will buy the company as it is now more attractive at that price.

This script brings to TradingView the MarketSmith / MarketSurge type table with EPS and Sales growth quarter vs. the same quarter from the previous year (YoY), plus QoQ and estimates for the next earnings.

Practically, it transforms the chart into a mini fundamental terminal, without opening another tool.

What it concretely displays

• Table with the last quarters of EPS and % YoY variation compared to the equivalent Q from last year.

• Sales YoY growth on the same quarters, aligned with EPS.

• QoQ for EPS and Sales, as a filter of sequential acceleration/deceleration.

• Arrows on the chart exactly on earnings day with the % of growth, MarketSmith style.

• Optional columns: Surprise (actual vs. estimate), ROE, Gross Margin.

• Estimate for the next earnings, so you know the date and the market’s expectations.

Why it’s useful for you as a swing trader

• You quickly confirm on the chart your criterion of double-digit EPS and Sales growth, one of the base metrics in your scanner.

• You validate “C” and “A” from CANSLIM, current and annual EPS, without leaving TradingView.

• You see the acceleration pattern: successive quarters growing EPS from 25% to 45% to 80% is a classic signal of a leading stock.

• Surprise % tells you if the company constantly beats estimates, a frequent catalyst for breakouts with volume.

• The date of the next earnings helps you avoid entering long 2-3 days before the report, or plan partial exits beforehand.

You can download this indicator for free here:

https://www.tradingview.com/script/WiaFmLGR/

6. Industry Group Strength Indicator

Here is the translation, keeping the original format:

Industry Group Strength shows you, directly on the chart, the strongest stocks from the same industry as the ticker you are looking at, ordered by performance.

Practically, it transforms the chart into a mini peer-group comparison, so you can see if your stock is a leader or laggard in its own industry.

How it works

• It has predefined lists of stocks by industry, filtered on market cap above 2B, price above 10 dollars, and primary listing.

• It automatically detects the industry of the current ticker and loads the peers.

• It sorts them by the chosen metric and displays them as a table with color-coded lines on percentiles.

Available metrics

• YTD Return, performance from the beginning of the year, useful for seeing the leaders throughout the year.

• RS Rating, 1 to 99, relative to S&P 500 on a lookback chosen by you.

• % Return on a custom lookback, e.g. 1M, 3M, 6M.

Why it’s useful for you as a swing trader

• You confirm your rule from the daily routine of following the sectors and industries where institutional money flows in.

• You only buy group leaders, not laggards, the oldest CANSLIM rule, “L” from “Leader or Laggard”.

• You avoid the trap of buying a stock that looks good alone on the chart, but is the last in the industry, a sign that the industry’s momentum has moved on to others.

You can download this indicator for free here:

https://www.tradingview.com/script/5NsvcOVp-Industry-Group-Strength/

Bonus for PRO members

I’m going to give you my layout and all the settings of these indicators, so you can copy exactly what I use.

And all this very simply through the press of a single button.

Here is the link

Read more

This is my performance from previous years.

To better understand the strategy we are following and not to buy blindly without any context, please read and analyze my strategy carefully:

Right now, these are my positions:

Read more

The truth is much more boring.

Success comes from a well-structured daily routine, repeated with discipline, day after day, regardless of whether the market is in a bull or bear phase.

And here’s the best part: this routine doesn’t have to consume your entire day.

You don’t need to sit glued to the screen for 12 hours, staring at charts until your eyes burn.

A properly optimized process can take as little as 30 minutes to an hour of focused work, leaving the rest of the day free for whatever matters to you, whether that’s family, hobbies, a 9-to-5 job, the gym, or simply living your life.

That’s the whole point of swing trading.

It should fit around your life, not the other way around.

Over the past few years, I’ve refined my process until it became almost automatic, built specifically so it respects my time and my energy.

In this article, I’ll show you exactly what my trading day looks like, from the first scan in the morning to the market close, so you can build a routine that works around your schedule, not against it.

I promise you this article is packed with value, and if you implement a routine like this yourself, it will permanently change your trading performance, and more importantly, your quality of life as a trader.

My daily routine is:

1. Stock screening

2. Focus list

3. Market awareness

4. Execution

5. Portfolio management

Now we’ll go through each one, and I’ll explain them in detail.

1. Stock Screening

This is the first step in the process and involves adding all results into a single watchlist.

I have 6 different scanners.

1. TradingView Freedom Trades Scanner: the scanner we use in the Freedom Trades strategy, which gives us the best growth stock opportunities. (I check this weekly)

2. My own scanner, coded with the help of AI, which uses a proprietary formula to grade opportunities and delivers the 10 best results daily. (I check this daily)

3. Hottest Stocks Screener (I check this daily)

4. CANSLIM Screener (I check this daily)

5. IPO Screener (I check this weekly)

6. Stocks near multi-year lows (I check this weekly)

And basically, I simply take all the results from these screeners and add them to today’s list.

This will be the preliminary list. The number of tickers I’ll have at this point depends heavily on the general market. In a bull market, I can have 150 to 200 tickers to review, while in a bear market it can be 10 to 20 tickers max per day.

This is basically the part that takes the longest, because it involves me manually going through each ticker.

At the beginning, it will take you longer because you don’t know what to look for, but over time your brain and eye will develop, and you’ll immediately recognize what a winner looks like. (In the Freedom Trades strategy, I show you exactly what to look for.)

It sometimes takes me 30 minutes, other times 2 hours, depending on how hot the market is.

2. Daily Focus List

I add all the tickers I like from the preliminary watchlist into a watchlist called “Focus List.”

My limit is 6 tickers in this list.

You need to enforce this rule, otherwise you’ll end up piling a bunch of them in here.

This is very important, as it will affect your execution if you have too many.

You know the saying: if you try to catch two rabbits at once, you won’t catch either one.

3. Market Awareness

This is a very important step, because this step determines whether or not you’ll execute today, and whether or not you’ll be aggressive.

Basically, in this step we’re trying to judge whether we’re in a favorable environment for trading or not.

I can tell you right now that from November 2025 to March 2026, it was a very tough environment for swing trading.

The smartest thing you could have done was either reduce size or stay completely in cash.

Then in April, everything became easy again, and that was the moment to push.

As we know from the statistics, 3 out of 4 stocks follow the general market.

So remember: General market > Setup.

How I Identify the General Market

Also with the help of a screener in TradingView.

Here, you can add them too.

I check all of these to see where they stand.

What are the general indexes doing?

Are they above the 200MA? What about the 50MA? The 20MA?

In general, use the 200MA for the long-term trend, the 50MA for the medium-term trend, and the 20MA for the short-term trend.

Check the VIX

The VIX (Volatility Index) is the market’s “fear gauge.” It measures the expected volatility of the S&P 500 over the next 30 days, calculated from options prices.

Below 15 is the perfect trading environment: low volatility, stable trends.

Between 15 and 20, volatility is normal.

20 to 25, be careful. Many of your trades will get stopped out due to volatility.

Above 25, I’d sit tight. I wouldn’t open any new positions and would wait for a more favorable environment.

Check Market Breadth

Market breadth is an indicator that measures how many stocks are actually participating in a market move, not just what the major indexes like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq are doing.

Think of the market like a team. If the index is going up but only 5 to 10 mega-cap stocks (Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft) are pulling everything higher, the team looks strong, but it’s fragile. If small and mid caps are rising together with the large caps, the trend has a solid foundation.

It’s completely free and you can do it in TradingView. Copy these tickers.

Check the Sectors

And the last step is to check which sectors are performing the best, so I can figure out where I should focus.

Checking sectors is essential for swing trading because it shows you where institutional money is flowing in the market and what the real market “regime” is, beyond what the major indexes show.

Copy all the tickers from here into a watchlist.

4. Execution

It’s time to execute.

And you’ve probably figured it out, but at this point you should be confident about what you’re going to trade today.

All of these steps are meant to make you feel confident and prepared.

Because “with preparation comes opportunity,” or as I like to say, “luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

And in this part, I like to have zero discretionary component.

I execute purely mechanically, according to the Freedom Trades strategy.

If in the screening or market awareness parts you could say there’s a discretionary side, that it’s not always black or white, well in the execution part it’s purely mechanical.

If this happens, execute that.

To give a specific example: if the stock, on the daily time frame, breaks above the previous high, I execute a 5-minute ORB with stop loss at LOD and risk 0.40% per trade.

And what’s cool about this is, if you remove the discretionary component from execution, the emotions disappear.

It’s just a matter of following instructions.

Everything is clear.

Discipline becomes much easier.

I execute 99% of my trades within the first hour of the market open.

5. Portfolio Management

At this point, the first hour after the open has passed, and now comes the easiest part of the day. At this stage, it’s all about taking profits.

I don’t have anything to manage when it comes to stop losses, because they’re already set in place from the moment I executed the trade.

This is the most relaxed part, because:

Profitable positions manage themselves; losses are what we have to manage.

And since we like to let our winners run, that means you don’t have to be glued to your screen all day.

That’s the point of swing trading: to have free time.

To use that free time for whatever you want, whether it’s spending time with your family, hobbies, a 9-to-5 job, etc.

Your Next Step

You’ve probably figured it out by now, but the most important part is what you do after the market closes.

Meaning, after you get home from work, spend 30 minutes to an hour filtering stocks and studying the market, then the next day execute those ideas, and then job done.

Simple on paper, harder in practice. Because doing this alone, without a clear strategy, without the right scanners, and without people to keep you accountable, is exactly why most traders give up in the first 6 months.

That’s why we built Freedom Trades. You get the full strategy, my scanners, real-time trade alerts, weekly market analysis, and a community of traders running the exact same routine.

Right now, the yearly plan is 49% cheaper than the monthly one, so if you’re serious about building this routine for the long run, this is the moment to lock it in.

We’re waiting for you inside.

Get 49% Discount with Yearly Plan

Trade Setups of The Week

Copy My Watchlist for next week

Here are the stocks, sectors, or trends I’m watching closely.

Access my entire watchlist for free here:

My watchlist

Want more than just a watchlist?

Get an understanding of the screener, so you know exactly what to watch.

Gain access to my trading strategy!

Join a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to achieving financial freedom and taking control of their future.

Upgrade now to get the full experience!

If you think this newsletter could help your friends, share it with them so it can reach as many traders as possible.

And here’s the fun part: when you share it, you can unlock special rewards + you will look smart in front of your friends :)

“One trade closer to freedom.”
Vladislav

This is my performance from previous years.

To better understand the strategy we are following and not to buy blindly without any context, please read and analyze my strategy carefully:

Right now, these are my positions:

Read more

-review of what has changed in the community,

-and where this community is headed.

I haven’t done a post like this since December 2025, and a lot has changed since then.

Well, as of January 2026, I officially resigned, and I am a full-time swing trader.

Since then, the community has grown by another 600 people, and as I write this, we have 2,276 traders in Freedom Trades.

Community Improvements - what’s new

As a PRO member, here is what you currently have access to:

I want to talk a bit about the upgrades that have happened on the Discord server, because I believe that’s where the biggest leap has been made over the past few months.

In March 2026, I built and tested a Python bot that automatically captures my trades on IBKR and posts them instantly in the Signals channel on Discord, so you will receive them in real time, without waiting for me to post manually.

(That’s what I used to do before, and it would obviously take forever. By the time I was posting, the price had already moved. Now the delay is 5 seconds max.)

The bot is now live.

Here’s an example from April:

On top of that, the bot also sends a daily end-of-day recap of my positions, so you know exactly which ones I’m still in and which ones I’ve exited.

Then I took things to the next level.

Using Claude to code, I built a scanner based on a formula I created that detects price and volume contraction, along with other factors such as RS Rating, distance from the 50MA, Avg $Vol 20D, 52-Week High Proximity, ADR%, and more.

It even takes into account the market environment. For example, depending on the VIX level, it applies either a penalty or a boost to the score.

I had to come up with all these formulas myself, but the scanner is starting to think more and more like my own style.

The next step was to connect this scanner to the Discord server.

I built a bot that pulls the tickers and their charts and posts them in the Discord server every day after market close, so you have enough time to build your focus list for the next day.

Here’s an example:

and then the charts:

It’s incredible what we’ve managed to build together, with your feedback, in just 14 months.

It’s not perfect, but it will keep getting better as I continue investing money and time into research.

If you want to join us, you can do so right now.

Right now, the yearly plan is much cheaper than the monthly one.

We’re waiting for you inside!

Get 57% discount with Yearly Plan

Costs of running the business

Some of you might think I live off Substack revenue, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Over the past few months, I’ve been investing every single dollar back into building, growing, and improving the community.

For example, I purchased these monitors and a desktop computer.

Please don’t judge my cable management, I’ll get to it eventually, haha.

This setup has helped me enormously to improve my workflow, respond to your questions and messages faster, and be more efficient overall.

Before this, I was doing everything from a laptop.

The software side is another major expense category.

Here is what I currently use:

• Discord Nitro to improve our Discord Server - $144 yearly

• Sidestack for connecting PRO members to the private Discord - $468 yearly

• Google Drive - $120 yearly

• Domain name - $50 yearly

• TradingView Premium plan - $600 yearly

• Tradezella - $588 yearly

• Massive (formerly Polygon) for Market Data - $348 yearly

• Perplexity Max for building the FT Scanner / Platform - $2000 yearly

I’ve spent close to 60,000 credits on Claude Code, lol. That’s a lot of money.

These are just the fixed costs; there are also variable ones, such as purchasing a tool to edit a video.

For example, I paid for a Timebolt lifetime deal last month ($300).

Or back in January, when I was testing different AI coding tools and paid for both Lovable and Replit, and then for FMP to connect market data to the platform.

But these are just examples, I could go on forever, but that’s not the point of this post.

The point is that I don’t care about hoarding money just for the sake of it.

I want to build the best possible thing, and for that you need to invest both money and time.

I want this platform to truly help you, bring value, and serve you for the years to come.

This is not a one-time thing.

This community was built with the intention of lasting at least a decade.

Finally, I want to thank everyone for trusting me.

To those who write to me and spark meaningful conversations.

To those who gave me the opportunity to build this for you.

This has been a very rewarding journey so far, and I hope we can continue it for at least 9 more years.

If you want to join us, you can do so here:

Get 57% discount with Yearly Plan

Trade Setups of The Week

Copy My Watchlist for next week

Here are the stocks, sectors, or trends I’m watching closely.

Access my entire watchlist for free here:

My watchlist

Want more than just a watchlist?

Get an understanding of the screener, so you know exactly what to watch.

Gain access to my trading strategy!

Join a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to achieving financial freedom and taking control of their future.

Upgrade now to get the full experience!

If you think this newsletter could help your friends, share it with them so it can reach as many traders as possible.

And here’s the fun part: when you share it, you can unlock special rewards + you will look smart in front of your friends :)

“One trade closer to freedom.”
Vladislav

This is my performance from previous years.

To better understand the strategy we are following and not to buy blindly without any context, please read and analyze my strategy carefully:

Right now, these are my positions:

Read more

It is a more efficient way to lose less than 1R (unit of risk) when the trade does not move in your favor, without cutting your profit potential too much.

Before I start, I want to give credit to Jeff Sun.

I learned this technique from him.

Since then, this technique has even been adopted by many traders and even some quant firms.

That shows how effective it is and how it creates an edge.

The technique is called the 3-point stop loss.

In the chart below, you have Trader A using the 3-stop strategy and Trader B using a 1 full stop strategy.

Two different stop-loss applications and their resulting drawdowns, based on a 28% win rate over a 500-trade sample size.

Notice how the drawdown is significantly smaller for the trader using the 3-stop strategy.

Most traders obsess over the same question: how do I win bigger?

They chase larger targets, push their exits, and stretch their R multiples, often without realizing they are solving the wrong problem.

The real lever hiding in plain sight is on the other side of the trade, specifically in how small your losses are.

How to use the 3-stop strategy

The core principle is to reduce your losses well before a trade hits the full stop.

Turning a -1R trade into roughly -0.67R.

I will show you an example of an entry and stop loss below.

How it works:

• You enter a trade and define your full risk distance (Entry to Stop = 1R)

• Split that distance into 3 equal zones

• Level 1: Price drops 33% toward your stop, sell 33% of your position

• Level 2: Price drops 66% toward your stop, sell another 33%

• Final Stop: Only the remaining 34% exits at the hard stop

By the time price hits your stop, most of your position is already out at better prices.

A trade that would have cost you 1R now only costs roughly 0.67-0.78R.

Over hundreds of trades, that difference compounds significantly.

It is the main reason an average loss of 0.7R is achievable even with slippage and spread, and it is one of the most controllable metrics in any trading system.

BONUS: You can further reduce overnight risk by trimming 50% of the position before the market close on day 0 if your position is trading below your entry.

Why Small Losses Change Everything

The math here is deceptively powerful.

A standard 2:1 setup sounds decent.

But trim your average loss from 1R down to 0.75R and your adjusted risk/reward jumps to 2.67:1 without touching your winners at all.

Scale that up to a 3R target and you’re suddenly looking at a 4:1 ratio.

The wins didn’t change.

The losses just got a little smaller.

When you internalize this concept, the improvement in your expectancy and equity curve projection will be felt almost immediately.

The real value of the 3-stop strategy doesn’t appear in just a handful of trades.

It’s a long-term discipline that requires consistency and repetition to gradually reduce your drawdown.

Taking it to the next level

With the help of Perplexity, I was able to build a platform that automates this for me.

As you can see in the image below.

Practically, the platform connects to my broker via an API, pulls market data, calculates my position size based on the risk I choose and my stop level (Low of Day, PLOD, HOD, etc.).

Then I can select the order type Market + 3 stops, and the system automatically places the 3 stops at 33% intervals.

I do not have to do anything manually.

This gives me a huge edge when it comes to discipline and risk control.

Since I never touch the stop losses, I just hit one button and wait for the outcome.

There are many other features this tool can handle, but that is something I will show you in another edition.

If you want to understand more about the strategy we use here at Freedom Trades, I recommend joining the yearly plan.

Right now, the yearly plan is much cheaper than the monthly one.

We're waiting for you inside!

Get 57% discount with Yearly Plan

Trade Setups of The Week

Copy My Watchlist for next week

Here are the stocks, sectors, or trends I’m watching closely.

Access my entire watchlist for free here:

My watchlist

Want more than just a watchlist?

Get an understanding of the screener, so you know exactly what to watch.

Gain access to my trading strategy!

Join a community of like-minded individuals who are committed to achieving financial freedom and taking control of their future.

Upgrade now to get the full experience!

Get 5% off for 1 year

If you think this newsletter could help your friends, share it with them so it can reach as many traders as possible.

And here’s the fun part: when you share it, you can unlock special rewards + you will look smart in front of your friends :)

“One trade closer to freedom.”
Vladislav

This is my performance from previous years.

To better understand the strategy we are following and not to buy blindly without any context, please read and analyze my strategy carefully:

Right now, these are my positions:

Read more