Co-Founder @SMBCapital and SMBU.com Author- One Good Trade and The PlayBook Board member- @Traders4ACause and @Impact_Comp
New York, NY
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To learn 3 real-world setups that our traders use, including the simple setup that we teach all our new traders, and the setup that turned one of our traders into a 7-figure big money earner, check out the free webinar we're currently running. bit.ly/2XaOWmB
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Mike Bellafiore retweeted
I did the SMB Fast Track with Justin and can highly recommend it.
Especially if you come from swing or position trading, there’s a lot of value in diving deeper into the day trading world and learning directly from someone who does it every single day.
Justin is an incredibly dedicated and patient teacher.
One of the best parts for me was the trading pod. You don’t just finish the program and move on; you build relationships with other traders and can continue trading and sharing ideas together afterwards.
That part alone has been extremely valuable for me.
Huge thanks to Justin @SperoTrades for all the effort you put into this! 🙏
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Want to know the fastest way to get good at trading?
Hint: It isn’t uncovering a secret indicator, hopping into another Discord alert room, or finding the special sauce strategy [[00:07]].
The real speed hack isn't skipping the work—it’s stopping yourself from wasting time on the wrong work [[00:22], [00:28]].
Years ago, a sharp, affable, and thoughtful college student walked up to me for a one-on-one chat after an SMB Capital presentation at his university trading club. We happened to be at Stony Brook University just ten minutes from where @sspencer_smb and I grew up. Long Island game recognizes Long Island game. He landed an internship with us, earned a seat on the desk, became a full-time trader, and today @SperoTrades is our communities favorite trading mentor across SMB Inside Access and SMB Fast Track.
To provide context on his ability, he has the skill, temperament, and leadership to run his own team at SMB—or maybe even open his own regional office in time. But he loves the trading team he’s on, thrives in that dynamic, and genuinely loves giving back to help developing traders in our community.
In his latest masterclass, Spero pulled back the curtain on how to cut your learning curve down as fast as humanly possible:
Narrow the Game (Master One Setup First): Pick one repeatable situation—an ORB, a VWAP continuation, or an extended mean-reversion move—and become relentlessly annoying about mastering its depth [[02:14], [02:30], [03:22]].
Build a Real PlayBook, Not a Sentence: Saying "I like breakouts" isn't a PlayBook—it’s just a sentence [[03:38]]. A real PlayBook has variables: the catalyst, daily chart context, sector strength, volume confirmation, entry triggers, stop placement, and where to scale [[03:46], [04:06]].
Get More Reps: Speed comes from increasing your reps: live trading is rep 1, video replay is rep 2, post-close chart review is rep 3, and historical backtesting is rep 4 [[06:17], [06:28]]. Pattern recognition is built from hundreds of archived reps, not calendar time alone [[06:41], [07:07], [07:35]].
Context Over Lines on a Chart: Anyone can draw support and resistance [[07:45]]. Pros ask: Why today? Who is trapped? Who is forced to buy or sell? [[07:58], [08:07]]
Risk Small Enough to Learn: If losing a trade changes how you execute the next one, or you find yourself negotiating with your stop, your size is too big [[10:55], [11:03], [11:10]]. When you oversize, you stop learning and switch into panic survival mode [[10:28], [10:39]]. Earn the right to scale by proving your data and execution first [[11:19], [11:26]].
Identify the "See It" Moment: Risk management isn’t just waiting for your stop to hit [[12:18], [12:26]]. Train to spot when the trade stops behaving properly: volume dries up, the breakout stalls, or the sector rolls over [[12:42], [12:51], [13:00]]. Better traders cut risk early when the reason they are in the trade weakens [[12:33], [13:13], [13:21]].
Review Like an Athlete Watching Film: Honest, intensive review uncovers your real weaknesses [[13:53], [14:34]]. Ex. Most traders blame their discipline when their real issue is poor stock selection or trading after 11:30 AM [[14:40], [14:53], [14:59]]. Review your losers to know what to avoid, and review your winners to know what to aggressively press [[15:49], [15:56]].
Get Around Traders Better Than You: Figuring out this game in total isolation takes years longer and costs a fortune in tuition, otherwise said- trading losses [[16:06]]. Surrounding yourself with traders who hold high standards, prepare meticulously, and call out your blind spots completely transforms what you consider normal [[16:26], [17:14], [17:34]].
Trading can be unforgivingly challenging. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel, and you don’t need to rush the clock by jumping strategies every month [[17:43], [18:01]].
Shorten your loop: See it, trade it, review it, correct it, and see it again [[01:21], [18:52]].
#DayTrading #PropTrading #TraderDevelopment
How To Get Good At Trading (As Fast As Humanly Possible) piped.video/XF1usbFkA2w?si=8qaQ… via @YouTube
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"You only as good as the stocks you trade," @MikeBellafiore- One Good Trade. 👇👊
Yes! Think about what a statement it is for Jadecap to say this! Arguably one of the most credible funded traders who DOES trade nq/es.
It’s ok to trade futures. It’s ok to non-exclusively trade nq/es. But, my strong opinion, is you will massively underperform your potential if you don’t gravitate to what is “in-play”.
In-Play: Silver/gold in Jan. NQ/ES during breakouts. Oil in-play this yr. Crypto futures very much in-play rn.
My bias towards equities is that you get tons of in-play securities every day w massive price discovery (think $MRNA news or semi breakouts or memory name moves… you don’t get moves like that elsewhere)
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"In trading, your ego is not your amigo." 👇👊
Two lessons separate the traders who make it from the ones who keep starting over.
Almost everyone can recite both.
But very few have actually absorbed them.
And it's the space between knowing something and absorbing it is where a lot of trading careers quietly stall.
Lesson one: a good decision can cost you.
Sometimes a good decision means watching a move happen without you. Your setup wasn't there, so you passed, and the market ripped anyway.
Sometimes it means taking the loss at your predefined stop. Clean execution, exactly as planned, and you're still down money.
You know both of these are correct. Every trading book says so.
But nodding along to that on a Sunday is very different from sitting flat at 10:42am while NQ runs 80 points without you.
Your nervous system didn't read the book.
It registers exclusion, it registers loss, and it files both under threat.
So the lesson isn't learned until you can miss a move or take a controlled loss and your body stays relatively quiet. Until the regret stops leaking into your next trade.
Lesson two: a bad decision can feel great.
This one is harder to see, and I think it does more damage.
You take a trade on impulse. No setup, no defined risk, just a pull in your gut that said now. And it works.
It feels like a relief, or can even feel fantastic, which is exactly why it's dangerous.
Underneath the P&L, you just paid yourself for breaking your own rules. You rewarded the behavior you are trying to eliminate.
A couple of things follow from that.
The ego gets fed. The win becomes proof that you "saw it," that your instincts are special, that maybe the rules are for other people.
In trading, your ego is not your amigo.
It cares much more about being right than about being successful over time, and a lucky impulse win hands it exactly what it's been asking for.
And the brain learns. Dopamine has less to do with pleasure than most people assume.
What it tracks most reliably is the gap between what you expected and what you got.
An impulsive trade that pays off is, almost by definition, unexpected, so the dopamine response tends to run hotter than it does for a boring planned winner.
That surge tags the behavior as worth repeating.
Since impulse trades only pay some of the time, you end up on an intermittent reward schedule, which is about as sticky as conditioning gets.
Anyone who has watched someone at a slot machine understands this intuitively.
Bad habits get wired in while you're making money.
You won't notice them forming.
Your account will notice later.
So which one is the real threat?
Many (not all) developing traders are far more afraid of missing out than of their own impulses.
FOMO feels urgent and painful.
And the impulse win feels like a gift.
In my experience they have it backwards.
A missed move costs you one trade. A rewarded impulse can cost you years, because it trains the very pattern that eventually hurts an account badly, and it does it while making you feel skilled.
Getting this to land, not just intellectually but in the nervous system, is a big part of what good coaching actually does.
Someone has to look at the winning trade you're proud of and ask how you got into it. Someone has to help you stay with a missed move long enough for your system to register that nothing bad happened.
Left alone, your Inner Market will keep treating the missed move as the emergency and the impulsive win as the victory.
Most traders never stop long enough to question which one is actually costing them.
#traderperformance #tradingpsychology $ES_F $NQ_F
$QQQ $SPY
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Mike Bellafiore retweeted
Big shoutout to @smbcapital for helping me identify “stocks in play” in my early years of trading. Absolutely one of the best skills that has transferred over to all of my trading regardless options, or futures even over the years!
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Would you say to a best friend what you say to yourself?
Becoming aware of our inner voice and critics and how we deal with our internal
Conflicts is the first step to self coaching.
That’s where healing and self love comes
Into play and being able to forgive and nurture ourselves and our inner child is the way we overcome our inner critics and internal inner voice conditioning
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At SMB, we build skilled active bionic discretionary traders- equities, options, some futures.
What does that mean?
It is not enough for our traders to be right on direction. Ex. SPCX is going to 160. Direction: SPCX is going higher.
SMB traders must also be right about timing. Ex. SPCX will reach 160 by EOD. We spot a setup and confirmation on the tape that allows us to time our trades. Timing: SPCX will be 160 by EOD.
But there is more.
SMB traders must be right about direction and timing, and also stay within their stop loss. Ex. My stop loss for SPCX is below 150. If your stop loss is hit, it doesn't matter where the stock goes after for that particular trade. Stop loss: 149.99 SPCX.
Skilled active bionic discretionary traders must be right about direction, time, and stop loss.
Ex. If SPCX hits 149.99 and then trades to 160 by EOD you have made a losing trade.
Ex. If SPCX closes negative by EOD, then you have made a losing trade.
Ex. If SPCX closes negative by EOD, but is 165 on Friday then you have made a losing trade.
This is the challenge for skilled active bionic discretionary traders.
#proptrading #trader #proptrader
Trading lesson: A view on direction isn't enough. You need a time frame and a map of the paths price could take.
Here are some paths we discussed for $QQQ in our pre-market meeting, all for the first hour. Once the open shows us which one is unfolding, that's the one we trade.
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"If you are going to be successful in coaching yourself, you first want to work on your self-talk and how you treat yourself." 👇👊
A positive trading psychology cannot substitute for trading skills, but it can help us make the most of our abilities. This post is the first in a series to help us become our own trading coaches, and it will be followed by a series of free webinars: traderfeed.blogspot.com/2026…
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Happy Birthday @sspencer_smb!
Happy Birthday to SMB Capital Co-Founder Steve Spencer @sspencer_smb It is truly amazing what you have helped to build at SMB. Your AM meetings are a must-watch for developing traders, with your clear buy and sell technical levels. Your wisdom on the state of markets has been invaluable to many traders worldwide since 2005. And you remain the $TSLA GOAT.
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Mike Bellafiore retweeted
One of the GOATs of day trading: Steve Spencer @sspencer_smb.
Co-founder of @SMBCapital, with nearly 30 years of experience in the markets.
What impresses me most about Steve is his ability to read the market, adapt to changing conditions and consistently find opportunities.
It was a real pleasure catching up with him at the SMB Capital Summit in NYC.
If you’re serious about day trading, Steve is someone you should absolutely be learning from.
Huge respect for what you and @MikeBellafiore have built at SMB Capital. Thanks for everything you do for the trading community! 🙏
#trading
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Mike Bellafiore retweeted
Team SWang celebrates Bella's birthday at Twin Tails on UWS.
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"To trade the right way, it's necessary to learn the right way." 👇🏿👊
We can greatly improve our odds of trading success by learning that builds experience and expertise. When we learn the right way, we don't struggle with emotional disruptions of performance: traderfeed.blogspot.com/2026… @MikeBellafiore @SMBrecruiting
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Mike Bellafiore retweeted
We can greatly improve our odds of trading success by learning that builds experience and expertise. When we learn the right way, we don't struggle with emotional disruptions of performance: traderfeed.blogspot.com/2026… @MikeBellafiore @SMBrecruiting
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Mike Bellafiore retweeted
🚨 Desk Alert: Today’s PlayBook Review — DOCS Short Squeeze 🚨
If you want to build a seven-figure trading business, you don’t do it by blindly buying dips or taking random punts on whatever is popping on social media. You do it by finding asymmetric institutional imbalances, sizing up when the math justifies it, and executing with unyielding discipline.
Today, Brian F., during SMB Inside Access, is stepping into the hot seat to deconstruct a monster momentum setup: The DOCS Short Squeeze from August 7, 2026.
DOCS sat at the exact crossroads of beaten-down healthcare software and an AI narrative shift. After earnings, it didn't just gap—it surged over 200% premarket, printing a staggering 1,660% RVOL and squeezing through a heavy 20% short interest backdrop. Brian caught pieces of this move for 47% of a daily stop, but what makes this PlayBook exceptional is his brutal self-honesty about the trade he didn't fully maximize.
What You’ll Learn Today:
- Anatomy of a Structural Short Squeeze: Why price-insensitive buying must eventually exhaust, and how to spot the structural turn when a stock is trading 15 ATRs above its prior close.
- The "Shark Rule" & Intraday Anchors: Indicators like RSI (which tagged 90+ on DOCS) can stay overbought for hours during institutional mania. Learn why you never short into the frontside until price confirms a failure below the 1-minute 21 EMA and Anchored VWAP.
- The "A+ Sizing" Lesson You Can’t Afford to Miss: Brian banked a solid green day, but his review shows how missing the primary A+ blowoff entry cost him an extra 1.83 daily stops (~5x his realized P&L). We’ll discuss how to eliminate hesitation so you don't trade A+ setups with B- piker size.
- Level 2 & The Tape Before the Open: How to read the premarket book when speed accelerates from 200k shares over three hours to 15k shares per minute right into the 7:16 AM blowoff top.
- Next-Gen Desk Tech: Brian breaks down his automation stack—using Claude Code to build custom Python scanners, running strategies through QuantConnect, and piping real-time execution alerts straight into Discord.
None of us are born with an innate ability to read a tape or short a blowoff top. You build edge by diligently reviewing real trades, finding where you left money on the table, and improving for the next similar trade.
Come support Brian, learn a trade in detail, bring your questions, and let’s see what grade he earns from me.
📍 Where: smbtraining.com/blog/smb-ins…
🗓️ When: Wednesday, 1:30 PM EST
One Good Trade,
Bella
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Mike Bellafiore retweeted
Love seeing my talk from the SMB Capital Summit crush it on YT! Every year a bunch of the talks from the @smbcapital conference go viral.
The attendees and environment are even more amazing in-person. Get your butt there live next year!
piped.video/P4Ijq-IJhE8?si=mFzL…
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Mike Bellafiore retweeted
Der Inbegriff von Peak Performance, wenn ihr mich fragt: so fokussiert auf den einen Punkt zu sein, nur in diesem einen Moment zu sein, sein bestes Spiel zu machen und dann in den nächsten Punkt zu gehen, nicht zu realisieren, dass du gerade einen Grand Slam Titel gewonnen hast. Das wird man in dem einen oder anderen MBA-Kurs über Jahre zeigen und studieren... Und für uns als Trader vermutlich eine der wichtigsten Botschaften überhaupt. Oder, um es mit @MikeBellafiore zu halten: "One good Trade. And then: one good trade." - Congrats @AlexZverev 🚀🎉
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Want to know how elite traders catch massive, high-reward reversals without blowing up their accounts?
Hint: They don’t blindly short every stock making new highs or try to catch falling knives [03:24]. They wait for true capitulation—where forced market structure, margin calls, and pure exhaustion create historic imbalances [00:15, 34:16].
@theonelanceB took the stage at the SMB Trading Summit to break down the mechanics of one of his most profitable trading setups: The Capitulation Fade.
Lance was an 8-figure-a-year producer when trading full-time. Today, he mentors traders on our desk, steps in part-time to trade the biggest asymmetric opportunities, and directs his incredible philanthropic work through the Impact Competition.
When a former 8-figure trader reveals his exact 10-variable mental checklist, you grab a notebook and pay attention [04:33].
Here are the heavy-hitting lessons from Lance’s masterclass:
Trade the "Right Side of the V": Amateurs jump in front of trains trying to guess the exact top or bottom [03:24]. Elite mean-reversion traders let the euphoria or panic happen, wait for the turn, and execute on the backside of the move [00:46].
Slope Over Distance (The Asymptote): It’s not about how far a stock runs—it’s the rate of change [05:33]. Linear moves can trend for months and bust short sellers [06:24, 07:49]. You want an asymptotic, parabolic curve where price accelerates into a vertical wall [05:49, 06:52].
Extreme Extension From Equilibrium: Lance uses Bollinger Bands (2 standard deviations off the 20-period moving average) as a visual ruler for price expansion [09:37]. The further price stretches away from the moving average, the bigger your potential reward back to equilibrium [10:48].
Never Fade Day 1 Fresh News: Fresh news means a fundamental repricing—equilibrium has changed [12:03, 12:30]. Lance avoids fading fresh catalysts; his biggest edge is when price goes parabolic days after the news on pure emotion and technical momentum [11:55, 15:48].
Wait for Later Legs & Massive Volume: The biggest capitulations occur on 3+ consecutive extended legs and multi-day runs [08:31, 19:20]. Watch for volume that completely dwarfs historical averages, signaling that participants are getting aggressively flushed out [16:38, 18:08].
Boring > Speculative: A diversified giant (like Berkshire Hathaway or an entire index like the Nikkei) that panics on noise has massive institutional gravity pulling it back to fair value [30:04, 32:10]. A beaten-down microcap biotech can easily go straight to zero [30:35].
Spot the Footprint of Forced Liquidations: When a stock goes 9x higher and someone is stubbornly bidding millions of shares on the tape at the highs, they aren't buying because they want to—they're buying because their broker is liquidating them on margin [36:33, 36:53]. When that forced buyer breaks, the bottom falls out [37:30].
Trading is a challenging sport, but edge in this game isn't found by spraying and praying across 50 different charts. Real edge comes from stacking significant variables in your favor and having the supreme patience to strike only when the market is completely unhinged.
Study the nuances, respect your capital, wait for the market to prove the turn, and get your work done!
#DayTrading #PropTrading #SMBCapital #TradingStrategy #RiskManagement
The 10 Rules That Catch Big Reversals (BEFORE They Happen) piped.video/P4Ijq-IJhE8?si=LYmI… via @YouTube
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🚨🚨🚨"I continue to find that the single greatest mistake that developing traders make is focusing on their mistakes and losses and not clearly identifying and studying what they do right." 👇✍️👊
This is the single greatest mistake that developing traders make...amidst the frustrations of the learning curve and their desires to make money, they fail to dive deeply into what they do well and how they can leverage those strengths: traderfeed.blogspot.com/2026… @harrimanhouse
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Most traders think an elite prop firm wants one thing on Day 1: make us millions of dollars.
What we actually expect may surprise you.
Over Sarabeth’s UWS breakfast, I was checking my inbox when I saw a response from @robertoclaroar1. Roberto is one of the most likable developing traders you will ever meet—you root for him the way a New Englander roots for the Patriots. After years of relentless training and building out an impressive Breaking News systematic strategy, he officially earned a seat on the SMB desk.👏👏👏👏👏
His response to the invite? "Thank you Mike. And I will show my gratitude with results and progress."
In the past, new invites often came with vows to make the firm millions. Roberto’s response gave me that familiar gut check: it’s time to set the record straight.
When you earn a seat on our desk, we do not expect immediate P&L fireworks. We expect you to:
1) Collaborate. Build an alert for a peer. Share an idea that fits a senior trader’s PlayBook. Dissect a missed setup openly with the desk.
2) Master the daily inputs.
a) Build a PlayBook
b) Daily Report Card
c) Trading Journal
d) Build technology
e) Collaborate with colleagues
f) Bring your best self to markets- eat, sleep, exercise, breathe.
g) Backtest trading ideas
3) Make progress. By Year 1 build a PlayBook of your best setups, show PnL progress, and have real relationships on the desk. Do that, and you've earned your next year.
4) Be curious, open-minded, and resilient. If you do all of these and lose money we will NOT be disappointed. We will help you transition into another job where your experience with us will be valued.
5) Accept mentoring and coaching. Trust the process. We’ve been developing star traders since 2005. Lean on our capital, tech, and team.
Giving your best professional effort is all that is expected. Doubling and tripling down on a solid process that has yielded results for many before you is all that is expected. The rest will take care of itself at SMB and in the markets.
Amazing work Roberto!
#PropTrading #TradingProcess #SMBCapital #DayTrading
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