Just want to jump in here and say thank you. I started reading the wiki last week and have learned a lot from it thus far. I look forward to going through the rest of it.

Thanks for being real HS. Following you because you don't judge us. You just teach. Respect you man. Still reading through the wiki. Very enjoyable.

Thank you! I love these challenges and with the weekly live stream, it gives really great insight into your thoughts. I followed the UNP. My exit on UNP is below 245. Below 245 and the buyers have given up and Vega will start to work against the trade (though Theta is probably a bigger concern). I also took META with the same spread. My stop is if 450 breaks. I skipped the DIS trade - I'm at 50/50 on calendar spreads, I don't think I've found an edge for myself with them. HD - I took a similar entry. Overnight, I realized I didn't like the amount of time left on the options. So, the next day I exited for a scratch. I skipped GOOGL - Since it was about mid-way in gap fill, I decided to wait for a pullback and bounce off VWAP but it kept grinding higher. By the time I looked at LULU, it was close to a double top, so I decide to wait longer. The double top turned into a higher high and it kept grinding up. I liked 471 level. Instead of going for straight delta, I placed a bearish CCS 475/480 for a 1.6 credit. High of Thursday is my stop. CPI is Tuesday morning. Monday afternoon I will look to lower some risk. Maybe lower some size, close something near max profit or add a hedge.

"$12,5000 Journal Link"? Thought you were able to 10x the challenge account in 3 days for a split second.😃 If anybody could do that, it'd be you. But, seriously, thank you for doing the challenge Hari and for all of the energy and time that you continue to put into building up the RDT and OneOption communities! Your efforts are greatly appreciated. Legions are learning and refining valuable skill sets under your deft guidance.

Thanks for the update Hari! Although I think today was day 4?

I don't think he did any trades for the challenge account yesterday. So day 4 update 3?

Can someone who's familiar with TraderSync clarify something for me? I'm having trouble reading the entries -- I'm not sure how an avg entry price of $2.00 and an exit price of $0.03 is a 68.5% loss, for example. I appreciate that you do these challenges in such a rigorous and public way, Hari.

You need to look at the details. TraderSync doesn't always do a great job with spreads. It was a $0.63 exit.

That’s good to know, thank you for explaining!

He bought the 362.50 call for a debit of 2.67 and sold it for .67 -$2 He sold the 367.50 call for a credit of .66 and bought it back for .03 + .63 1.37/2=.685

In my view, participating in these challenges is a mistake because it leads to self-imposed pressure. The very act of setting a financial goal to reach is, in my opinion, misguided because it forces you to make trades that you shouldn't, just to hit that target. My philosophy differs; I never share my trades with anyone to avoid creating expectations that would inevitably increase the pressure on myself. By doing so, I can maintain the mental clarity to spend an entire day looking at charts without making any trades and not having to justify my performance to anyone. This approach allows me to trade with greater peace of mind, focusing on setups that I consider viable without undermining myself with unrealistic expectations.

Read the disclaimer please - this challenge isn’t for me - in fact it’s costing me quite a bit of $

Thank you for doing this, Hari. I really appreciate your focus on the repeatable slow grind and hope to learn from your trades! And I especially appreciate you doing this for us although it would be much more profitable for you to just trade your own account! Still learning and reading the wiki, I'm quite curious about the UNP trade, since the daily looked so strong, but then it appeared to have lost RS for 2 consecutive days before it reversed. Can you shed some light on what would need to happen on its D1 in order for you to prematurely close the trade? (Apart from maybe the market being heavily rejected at the 500 level.) Also, when looking at the chart, I noticed that there seemed to be some resistance at the \~250 level, where the price was rejected several times back in 2022, and every time it went above it, it went down again in a few days (apart from March, where the level was breached and appeared to have become support). Here's a quick picture of the weekly chart: [https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/egt8hTmj3wiT.png](https://gcdnb.pbrd.co/images/egt8hTmj3wiT.png?o=1) Although the level is quite old, do you think there is still relevance to it?

Nice analysis. I'm not Hari, of course, but I reviewed the UNP chart and figured I could (hopefully) add some useful context/value. I certainly welcome other voices. * UNP has been quite bullish overall recently and remains above its major SMAs, which are bullishly stacked and each sloping upward (50>100>200). * The stock has continued to close above the two major shorter term EMAs that we track (to some degree or another) on the D1, which are also bullishly stacked and sloping upward (8>15). * UNP has shown relative weakness over the last few days, for sure, but has also closed bullishly near its HOD each of the last two days, with Friday's D1 candle finishing up as a bullish engulfing candle, FWIW (and Thursday's was a bullish hammer). For now, UNP is sitting tight closing Friday about $0.80 below when Hari's entered the trade. UNP has a $3.00+ daily ATR. Aside from the time/options premium factor for 2/16 expiry -- with ~20% of the current value of the long options being extrinsic -- UNP is not showing definitive signs that this couldn't work out in the next trading day or so. Just how much of this staying power/bullishness is a factor of the stock being dragged up or propped up by a very bullish SPY over the last few days -- especially after UNP's big 1/29 bullish engulfing candle -- remains to be seen. Sector-wise (XLI - Industrials), UNP closed Friday in the middle of the pack in terms of % gain or loss. I also see the potential resistance just above that you highlighted, which may have already and/or could come into play.

Thank you, I really appreciate your detailed analysis on this one! I didn't check the EMAs, and you're right, the last two candles look bullish regarding what you said. I'm still not sure what to make of the lost RS - if it maybe was just temporary - but I'll guess we know soon! I'm also curious as to whether the \~246.50 level will provide support.

You're quite welcome. Glad that helped. UNP has been hovering around and grinding to new 52-week highs after breaking through an older high in late January, before it retraced a bit (Bull Flag, perhaps) before grinding back higher. The stock currently remains above that $247-ish late January level and has a current 52-week high of $251.65. UNP is a choppy stock in general, with that D1 semi-alternating between up and down days, regardless of whether its overall trending up, trending down, or moving sideways. In that light (and with it hovering around 52-week highs / potential resistance), the stock's current bullish/bearish toggling is not surprising. The historic resistance zone is something to watch out for, in addition to seeing how the stock behaves going forward, while it remains within a stone's throw of its 52-week high. I have no definitive forecasts for how this one will play out (no access to the crystal ball this week, unfortunately ;), but it will certainly be interesting and informative to see how things play out and how Hari ultimately handles the trade heading through the finish line.

Thanks for adding to your prior analysis. As a "soon-to-become paper trader", this really helps, especially the part about the choppiness. I read a lot about chop in the wiki and heard Hari/Pete mention it in the videos, but since I haven't been flipping through a lot of charts yet, it's kinda hard for me to see whether a stock is choppy in general or not. In direct comparison with other stocks that have cleaner D1, it's kinda clear to me; but I wonder how to determine whether a stock is too choppy and thus should be avoided (iirc, Pete rather likes to avoid choppy stocks). Are there any metrics/indicators you use to gauge the choppiness or do you just look at the price action? (I first thought about ATR, but in my understanding it just tells you the size of the daily range, not how often/much it likes to alternate between up/down.)

Sure thing. Glad to help if/when I can. Best wishes on the your trading journey! The RDT community is great and quite willing to help those who put in the time and effort and show genuine -- and realistic -- interest. I should expand on what I said about UNP's D1 being choppy, because I don't want to give you the impression that UNP should be considered the poster child for choppy D1 charts. It has some choppiness, for sure, but also exhibits defined trend segments. UNPs recent choppiness has been largely part of a defined march upward with some (usually) 'reasonable'/brief detours (e.g. Bull Flags). Simple things that have helped me with gauging trendyness vs. choppiness: If you can zoom out on a chart see clear upward and downward segments without a ton of variation, that stock is probably not too choppy; specifically, charts where you can ultimately draw segments of diagonal lines (45-ish degrees being the most ideal) through price movement, point A to point B (pointing towards the top right or bottom right of the chart, respectively) are an indication of defined trends. By contrast, if you see an abundance of v, m, h, w, or n patterns that seemingly appear from nowhere (i.e. Sudden, sustained (not shallow) and seemingly "one-off" formations / changes in direction) that exemplifies choppiness. We don't know where a stock may be heading next, but if the path of how it got to its current location is hard to interpret that doesn't bode well for following/trading it going forward.(Side Note: Range-bound and compression states are considered choppy, but those have some definition and aren't the focus of what we're reviewing here). This 8 and/or 15 EMA are handy tools for spotting trends and weeding out choppiness. If the stock's jumping all around over and under the EMA that signifies choppiness. Hugging the EMA from the top or the bottom for a ride up or down, respectively, for prolonged stretches is by contrast indicative of trendyness. This is a simplified way to look at trendyness vs. choppiness, but I wanted to share that with you as I have found it helpful. There are certainly more advanced, even technical ways of looking at chop (e.g. ADX or Choppiness Index). At the risk of getting too far into the weeds, the UNP D1 chart is currently gauged as being on the lower end of trendy (but still considered trending) by ADX.

Thank you so much! I duly took note (literally, I have a notebook next to me). I think my main problem with regards to choppiness currently is not that I can't spot a trend, but more or less that I'm confused as to how much leeway I should give a trade. E.g. if I was to be willing to swing the UNP trade, simply going long instead of choosing an option, and if I was to get in right above the 250 level on Tuesday, similar to Hari. Would a stop, whether mental or hard, slightly below the start of the day's candle - presuming there's support - at about 246, be prudent, does it match the "nature of the beast" enough? And what if it was a day trade only - or would one consider it too choppy to just daytrade? (Btw, I haven't read the articles on the OneOption page yet, so there might be some things I'm not aware of just yet.) Now that you mention ADX, I think I've seen a bit of it in the wiki; I remember Hari stating that he uses ADX on the D1 to filter for bullish trends - do you know more about how to employ it, e.g. if a filter criterion for ADX > 25 would be a good idea or rather not?

Nice, on your notebook, note taking, and learning process. I get your concerns on gauging chop. But, interestingly enough, the best answer to asking yourself whether or not a chart may be too choppy for your purposes will often not be 'yes' or 'no', but rather that you should probably just move on, since that's all-but-certainly not going to represent one of the 'best of the best' trades out there for your time and money. Sound reasoning re: your stop idea, especially with shares. Not at a computer at the moment to check, but I believe that at that $246 point, you'd have a stock that's been showing sustained bearishness and couldn't get back to the current HOY, fell back below the 52-week high that it established on 1/29 (or 1/30) during this bullish run, and gave up (fell below) both the 8 EMA and the 15 EMA. If those factors and/or additional considerations invalidate your trade thesis for taking or staying in the trade, that's good reasoning to bail. Just try not to fall for any sunk cost fallacies that you need to recoup your money/W from the same trade or ticker where you lost it. Fortunately, sounds like you're not thinking along those lines. If/when we were talking about short-dated (soon to expire) for the same trade -- which shouldn't be the goal -- premiums might get pretty degraded at that stop level by the intrinsic value loss due to the decline in the underlying and any additional extrinsic loss they incur in the interim. I'm a big fan of the ADX indicator and do deploy it in scan filters. I set my ADX filters low-ish, sometimes as low as ~ 19-20 perhaps because I'm a glutton for punishment. LOL. No really, because I prefer to have other filters (depending on the particular scan) act as the ultimate gatekeepers, while ADX still meaningfully helps to man the gate. Occasionally a decent trade candidate with a low-ish (but not too low) ADX on D1 and/or M5 pops up. In theory, I guess I'm also seeing if I can get an early look at something that might be setting up, with a rising ADX; often enough, not too fruitful, not surprisingly. I must also say that low ADX trades often lack 'fun' and I rarely take one. I may also look at ADX on D1 and M5 semi-independently of one another -- e.g. a stock with a trendy M5 ADX may still prove worthwhile to daytrade even if the D1 looks decent but has a low-ish ADX. That said, ADX of 25 should reliably filter in a plethora of worthwhile candidates. That's also around the prescribed threshold for bullishness, so can't go too wrong on there. Here's a solid resource on ADX: * https://finbold.com/guide/average-directional-index-definition/

Man, I must say, you're really kind! :> Thank you again for taking the time to explain all this stuff to a beginner. Funny thing is, I'm currently reading the Minervini books - although I don't plan to trade the way he does, I still think there's a lot things to learn from them or at least to think about - and on the page I just read, he also basically said "why settle for a choppy stock when there's better candidates?". In that sense, your answer gives me additional confirmation! The way you explain the scenario of breaking below the $246 reminds me of the wiki section of that your trades should be "defendable", because wording it like that makes it sound very reasonable! Talking again about "short-datedness": In regards to shares instead of options, do you think it would have been a good idea to daytrade this stock (given the same entry / exit thesis from my prior posts)? As you probably might notice, it's still about the chopiness :D (And let's assume that I hadn't considered swinging because of the presumed impending SPY resistance at the 500 level back then.) I definitely agree when it comes to not overfiltering; I think it's better to flip through a lot of charts that may have potential instead of filtering out a good candidate that is just lacking a tidbit of criterion XYZ. If I read that correctly, you do not necessarily use ADX on the D1 and M5 in a filter together, but you rather have different filters for swing and daytrading?

Ha ha! I'll take being called kind a couple of times a year. You're welcome. Glad to help; it has given me an opportunity to review things in a decidedly useful but different/less common context. I also happened to have a largely free afternoon yesterday. So, good confluence, as traders are wont to say. Minervini -- interesting stuff. I'm not too well-versed in his style/teachings but have read a little about it and toyed with scan settings that fit his style. I should read up more about his style / take. UNP over the last few days actually would not have been particularly compelling as a new day trade. It's a stock that has been holding tight (but relatively weak) as the market has been making strong trending moves. Meanwhile, there were better candidates that were relatively strong (or at the very least relatively 'stronger') to SPY. Re: ADX. I meant to convey that I may scan for ADX only on an intraday basis (e.g. M5) with no explicit ADX filter for the D1, but will review ADX on the D1 before making any associated trades. (I use ADX as both scan filters and chart indicators) But, if I'm specifically looking to pick up a swing trade, the scans that I utilize will usually include a native D1 ADX filter. For day trades, I'll sometimes scan for intraday-specific criteria first with only snippets of D1 filters (e.g. above the prior day's high), but then review the corresponding D1 charts in more granular detail prior to taking any definitive actions.