After 19 years of investing, I’ve realised something: Most people don’t lose money in the stock market because they’re bad at picking stocks. They lose because they’re bad at managing themselves. 10 mistakes I see constantly: 1. Buying companies they don’t understand 2. Selling because they’re scared 3. Buying because a stock is going up 4. Holding losers just to “get back to even” 5. Investing money they actually need 6. Having no real time horizon 7. Taking more risk than they can handle 8. Following whatever is trending 9. Chasing stocks after the big move 10. xpecting to get rich overnight And #4 is one I’ve had to remind myself about. Take $DND.TO Dye and Durham. I’ve held it through a huge drawdown, but I’m not holding it simply because I want to “get back to even.” My original entry price is irrelevant. If I wouldn’t buy the stock today at the current price, I shouldn’t own it just because I bought it at a higher price. “I just need it to get back to my average” isn’t an investment thesis. I’ve made plenty of mistakes myself. The biggest lesson? Your biggest advantage in the market isn’t finding the next 10x stock. It’s having a plan - and having the discipline not to sabotage it!

We watch investors here on X constantly gravitate towards brands that they recognize and use daily. This is oftern a trap as the stock drops below the 200d ma and enters a stage 4 decline. When a former star stock drops 20%, 30% or 50%+ from its highs, it looks like a bargain Amateur investors will often buy one of the dips, assuming a famous brand will quickly recover. The stock may eventually turnaround but this process can take months or often time years which really hurts long term portfolio performance. The opportunity cost is real. Holding a laggard traps your capital in an underperforming stock. This underperformance prevents the portfolio from the compunding gains generated by the market leaders. If you want to buy turnarounds, do it after the stage 4 has ended, preferably as it breaks out into a new stage 2.

Stock picking matters more than any indicator in the world. If you never learn how to evaluate a company, every indicator is totally useless! Before I look at a chart, I study the business and pick the leaders that capture all of the following: 1. Year-over-year quarterly EPS growth 2. Management guidance 3. The CEO’s personality, charisma, and long-term vision 4. The company’s competitive moat 5. Institutional (“whale”) accumulation. I have regular meetings with fund managers and directors to stay close to what institutions are actually doing. In short, the business always comes first. Charts come next! @cantonmeow @tonylee80 @sheslee @niker8202 @Hiteshp99 @gabz_investing @redfoxryder @starship_ride @HeidingOut @RosannaInvests

Nobody on X is qualified to give you any financial advice. The best lessons come from your own experience. If you never put yourself in the position to actually live it—make the decisions, feel the consequences, and adjust—you never really learn. Most of what you see online is someone else’s highlight reel, recycled talking points, or a pitch dressed up as wisdom. It can be interesting. It is rarely a substitute for doing the work yourself. Read. Test small. Track what actually happens in your situation. Take the lumps. That’s how you build judgment no thread can give you. Keep going. The only way through is through!

No matter which strategy you follow, if you cannot tolerate volatility and run for the hills after every stock market turbulence, you cannot be a successful investor. Chasing rallies and anxiously selling after pullbacks is a recipe for disaster.

Only go 100% equities right now if you pass every one of these tests: 1. 12 months of living expenses set aside for you and your family 2. You’ll keep investing steadily for the next 20 years 3. You didn’t panic-sell in the 2020 COVID crash or the 2022 bear market 4. You bought more stocks while everyone else was selling during these bear markets Fail even one of these and you have no business being all-in.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​!

Did you know that in 2018-2021 $PYPL once grew revenue CAGR at around 20% and operating margin expanded from 14.2%-->16.8% Some growth investor extrapolate this growth to the next 5 years the pile into the stock making it as high as 300. Warren famously said: “Forecasts may tell you a great deal about the forecaster; they tell you nothing about the future.” Charlie is not so kind on these forecaster. He said “It’s stupid the way people extrapolate the past – and not slightly stupid, but massively stupid.” We need to be careful when we extrapolate.

All it takes is a few big winners a year to make it IF you don't overtrade in between. This is the biggest principle and concept I am trying to fully internalize. It is really hard because it requires you to do nothing for long periods of time. It is all about patience and the art of doing nothing.

A few reasons why I use stop losses: 1. As a rookie broker at ML in 1999-2002, I saw people lose most of their life savings because they didn't know when to sell. 2. I saw "long-term investors" take losses at 50-80% and not buy back in. Everyone is long term until their stocks are down 30-50%. 3. None of us are Buffett or Druckenmiller - or Michael Jordan or Tom Brady. 4. Bear Stearns Lehman Brothers Washington Mutual Sun Microsystems Nortel Networks EMC MCI Worldcom Global Crossing Enron Blackberry Compaq Nextel Everyone has to do what works best for them. For every Amazon and Apple, there is a Nortel Networks or MCI Worldcom.

In every bull market, the same crowd appears: some sell pure fear and constant crash warnings, others push “retire rich” fantasies, secret strategies, guaranteed signals, and “this one trade will change your life” promises—yet most of them don’t even manage a personal portfolio close to US$20 million. After two decades in finance, telling the real ones from the fakes becomes second nature. Before I ever learned to read the whales, I first had to deeply understand retail psychology!

Minervini taught the inverse cyclical cycle:P Early stages: *P/E high *earnings and revs haven't shown up (when Gavin Baker talked about memory early 2025) *sentiment low and neglected Late stages: *P/E low and looks cheap *earnings and revenues flying *sentiment is high

Investment is so difficult because it requires you to be good at 4 things. a) broad knowledge (history, culture, sectors) and deep knowledge (economic theories, companies, finances, market landscape, job/career relevance) b) sharp analytical skills (weight information or assigning probability outcomes, financial, key metrics, understanding specific businesses, products) c) psychological strong (self-aware of your own emotion to be bias - confirmation, recency, survival bias, fight the greedy urge, scare urge, and process information analytically, sustain drawdowns) d) risks taking (you may have a+b+c, but without d, you cannot make money. after all of it, the future outcome is undeterministic/chaotic and out of your control. You have to take some risks for future outcomes.

A 25-year-old guy from Nevada asked Claude how to use AI to get a million views on TikTok It gave him the answer: create an AI girl with an Asian appearance and have her dance to trending music At first, the guy thought it sounded too simple, but he decided to try it anyway For 6 days in a row, he posted 3 videos a day, but none of them even reached 1,000 views. He almost gave up, but one of the videos suddenly started blowing up in views 24 hours later, the view count had already hit 7 million, and he gained 4,328 new followers It looks like AI understands trends better than we do

I have been in this game for more than a decade. Here are the 12 lessons I wish someone handed me on day one:

If investing and trading was as easy as just looking at fundamentals, P/E, FCF, or whatever metric everyone obsesses over everybody would be rich and this game would be easy. Gotta look up from the spreadsheet once in a while to find alpha. Some people just don’t get it.

PRICE will often top before FUNDAMENTALS deteriorate —William O’Neil

If they say "I told you so" or "I warned you", there's a good chance that they are more obsessed with being right and wanting you to listen to them rather than really trying to help you.

To find stocks with Elite Relative Strength (RS), you need a systematic scanning process. True market leaders show their strength by making new highs before the major indexes (like the S&P 500 or Nasdaq) or by holding firm when the broader market is correcting. Here is a step-by-step blueprint to find high-RS stocks using standard scanning tools (like MarketSurge, TradingView, or StockCharts): 1. The Raw Relative Strength Scan (The Baseline) If you are using a platform that calculates a proprietary RS Rating (like IBD/MarketSurge, which ranks stocks from 1 to 99 based on price performance over the last year), your starting point is simple: Filter for RS Rating $\ge$ 90: This immediately eliminates 90% of the market, leaving you only with the top 10% of performance. Filter for RS Rating $\ge$ 95: Use this during a market correction to find the absolute elite tier. 2. Visual RS Scans (The "Line in the Sand") If you don't have access to 1-99 ratings, you can use the RS Line (which plots the stock's price divided by the S&P 500 index price). Look for these specific visual behaviors: RS New High Before Price This is one of the most powerful leading indicators in technical analysis. The Setup: The stock price is still consolidating or pulling back below its recent peak, but the RS Line has already broken out to a clear new lifetime or 52-week high. What it means: Institutional accumulation is silently aggressive. Big money is absorbing every share available while the general market is distracted. Blue Dot Scans (MarketSurge / Custom Scripts) A "Blue Dot" occurs when a stock's RS line hits a new 52-week high while the stock itself is still in a base or consolidation pattern. If you use TradingView or ThinkOrSwim, you can search for community scripts called "RS Line New High Before Price" or "IBD RS Blue Dot" to plot this automatically on your charts. 3. Market Correction Scans (The "Resilience" Test) The absolute best time to find true RS is when the market index ($SPY or $QQQ) is actively falling. When the tide goes out, you see who is swimming with a rocket booster. Run a scan with these parameters during a market pullback: Price: Stock is trading above its rising 8-week EMA (or 21-day EMA). Index Comparison: The S&P 500 is trading below its 21-day or 50-day moving average. Performance: Stock is within 10% of its 52-week highs, while the index is down 5% to 10%+ from its highs. 4. Combining RS with Volume Signatures High RS on low volume can be a trap. To ensure the relative strength is backed by institutional footprint, layer your RS scans with volume filters: RS > 90 + HV1 (Highest Volume in 1 Year) within the last 5-10 days. RS > 90 + HVE (Highest Volume Ever) on a recent PEG (Power Earnings Gap). A Quick Example Checklist: If the market sells off 300 points, look for the stock that finishes the day positive or completely flat on above-average volume. Put that ticker at the top of your watchlist it is your primary candidate for an Inside Day contraction or an Under-Cut and Rally (U/C) setup the moment the market stabilizes.

Picking the Right Stocks is Easy. Building Real Wealth is Brutally Hard. (June 1, 2026) Spotting the right companies is only the beginning. True wealth creation demands something far rarer: the right mindset. Here are the 5 non-negotiable traits that separate those who build life-changing wealth from those who merely watch from the sidelines: 1. The ability to endure extreme volatility Most high-growth tech and innovation companies swing 50-70% or more during their journey. Not everyone can stomach that. If you get shaken out during the inevitable drawdowns, your “great pick” becomes worthless. 2. The courage to size up aggressively on discounts When the market (or “whales”) hands you a meaningful discount, do you have the conviction to buy big? Or are you selling cheap to them? Timing the exact bottom is a fool’s game. Position sizing is far more important. Buying a token amount might feel safe, but it’s usually a waste of time and mental energy. Big winners require big bets at the right moments. 3. The discipline to ignore permabear noise and trust your own conviction Permabears will always scream “valuation is too high,” “it’s overstretched,” "top is in" or “the bubble is about to burst.” Look at $PLTR today — the same tired arguments were used for years. Remember: I bought $NVDA at $15.2 with a PE over 120. Almost every legendary growth stock looked expensive at the beginning of its multi-year run. Looking back, most winners have vertical paths precisely because they deserve higher multiples from day one. 4. Stop seeking advice from others The more opinions you collect, the more confused and paralyzed you become. Investing is deeply personal — like choosing who to date or marry. You don’t crowdsource that decision. Develop your own framework, do your own work, and back your own judgment. That’s how real conviction is built. You don't need permission from anyone to buy and sell — nobody owns a crystal ball. Buy during big discounts and lock in profits when you’re euphoric. That’s the simple rule of the game. 5. The patience to hold for the full cycle Most people trade in and out, constantly chasing the next shiny thing. That works for short-term traders with small capital. But as a genuine long-term investor, I rarely sell. Great growth companies typically enjoy 15–20+ year compounding cycles. History shows this with every major winner. The Big 7 are prime examples, proving that 100X to 1,000X returns are very possible if you have the conviction to buy and hold. Selling too early is the silent killer of wealth! @cantonmeow @greatmattsby @sheslee @tonylee80 @Hiteshp99 @Nagetheworld @redfoxryder @HeidingOut

The biggest winners often start with: 1) Price. 2) Then the theme catches fire. 3) Then the fundamentals improve. 4) Then CNBC explains why it was obvious all along. By then the stock is already up 300%, and everyone's suddenly a genius.