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Your Christmas Eve Trading Plan

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Written by Timothy Sykes Reviewed by Jack Kellogg Fact-checked by Ellis Hobbs
Updated 12/23/2025 6 min read
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Merry Christmas Eve…

The market closes at 1 P.M. Eastern today.

You could use this as an excuse to slack off, drink eggnog, and watch Die Hard.

But you shouldn’t.

The best traders I know all have one thing in common:

They study constantly.

You can relax tomorrow, open your presents, and spend quality time with your family.

Use today to STUDY. Get ahead of the crowd before the Santa Claus Rally.

Trading isn’t like a high school exam where you can cram the night before and get a passing grade.

If you under-prepare, you’ll underperform. Period.

I might sound like your parents telling you to eat your vegetables. I know studying isn’t as fun as trading. I know it’s hard to motivate yourself to do the reps.

But look at what the results can bring…

Mariana joined my Trading Challenge in 2018, right after she graduated from high school.

She studied for an entire year before she started trading. No profits. Just learning.

She hadn’t invested a single dollar in her brokerage account … but she was making a serious investment in her knowledge account.

The results?

Once Mari started trading, she had a shorter learning curve than any other student I’ve worked with.

By the time she turned 20, she was a millionaire.*

tim sykes and mariana $1 million trading milestone
© Millionaire Media, LLC

If you want to make millions like Mari, you have to study like Mari.

REMEMBER: Winners do the hard work that losers aren’t willing to do.

Use this half day to study like a millionaire…

Study Tip #1: Build Your Friday Watchlist

Take some time this afternoon to build a killer watchlist.

Keep it short and simple. Reserve spots for the best setups only.

Perfect technicals, low-float runners, and recent spikers…

That way, if one of the stocks you’re watching starts to make a big move on Friday, you won’t have to go searching through a massive list of tickers.

Your Supernova setup will be right there, just waiting for you to pull the trigger.

Study Tip #2: Clean Up Your Charts

I always see traders using these crazy-looking charts with dozens of indicator lines crossing into a confusing mishmash and think … “Why?”

Just like having too many trades on your mind, having too many indicators on your charts can do you a major disservice.

It may seem like the more indicators you use, the better chance you have of carving out an edge for yourself.

But that’s a myth.

Using too many conflicting indicators can lead to more confusion, less directional clarity, and potentially serious eye strain.

You have to learn how to sort the signal (meaningful data) from the noise (useless confusion).

If your charts look anything like this…

Source

…then it’s time for you to remove some indicators.

Keeping your charts clean will help you keep a clear head while trading.

You don’t want your charts to look like an Etch-a-Sketch.

Stick to a few reliable indicators like:

More Breaking News

  • Exponential Moving Averages (EMA)
  • Relative Strength Index (RSI)
  • Volume-Weighted Average Price (VWAP)
  • Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD)

Study Tip #3: Review Your 2025 Trading Performance

© Millionaire Media, LLC

Christmas Eve is a great opportunity to step back and evaluate your 2025 trading performance…

Rules and Discipline

  • Did you trade your predefined setups or random ideas?
  • Did you enter and exit where your plan said to, not where emotions told you to?
  • How often did you break rules (and why)?

Risk Management

  • What was your average loss size compared to your average win?
  • Did you cut losses quickly, or did you “hope”?
  • What was your maximum drawdown, and was it avoidable?

Pattern Focus

  • What percentage of trades came from your best, proven patterns?
  • Which setups consistently worked (and which didn’t)?
  • Were you forcing trades instead of waiting for A+ opportunities?

Preparation and Study

  • Were you studying past charts, catalysts, and former winners?
  • How many hours per week did you spend studying?
  • Did you improve your watchlist quality over time?

Use This Time Wisely

Karmagawa & Timothy Sykes give to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Miami December 6, 2019 © 2019 Millionaire Media, LLC
Karmagawa & Timothy Sykes give to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Miami December 6, 2019 © Millionaire Media, LLC

The market gave you a Christmas gift today. A half day. Extra study time.

Don’t squander it.

Use this afternoon to sharpen your skills.

Build your watchlist.

Clean up your charts.

Review your year.

Do the work that separates winners from losers. Eat the vegetables that separate the healthy from the weak.

Tomorrow? Relax. Enjoy Christmas. Spend time with the people you love. Play with your presents.

But today? Invest in your knowledge account.

Merry Christmas (and happy studying)…

Cheers,

Tim

 

 

 

*Past performance does not indicate future results

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Author card Timothy Sykes picture

Timothy Sykes

Tim Sykes is a penny stock trader and teacher who became a self-made millionaire by the age of 22 by trading $12,415 of bar mitzvah money. After becoming disenchanted with the hedge fund world, he established the Tim Sykes Trading Challenge to teach aspiring traders how to follow his trading strategies. He’s been featured in a variety of media outlets including CNN, Larry King, Steve Harvey, Forbes, Men’s Journal, and more. He’s also an active philanthropist and environmental activist, a co-founder of Karmagawa, and has donated millions of dollars to charity.
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* Results are not typical and will vary from person to person. Making money trading stocks takes time, dedication, and hard work. There are inherent risks involved with investing in the stock market, including the loss of your investment. Past performance in the market is not indicative of future results. Any investment is at your own risk. See Terms of Service here

The available research on day trading suggests that most active traders lose money. Fees and overtrading are major contributors to these losses.

A 2000 study called “Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors” evaluated 66,465 U.S. households that held stocks from 1991 to 1996. The households that traded most averaged an 11.4% annual return during a period where the overall market gained 17.9%. These lower returns were attributed to overconfidence.

A 2014 paper (revised 2019) titled “Learning Fast or Slow?” analyzed the complete transaction history of the Taiwan Stock Exchange between 1992 and 2006. It looked at the ongoing performance of day traders in this sample, and found that 97% of day traders can expect to lose money from trading, and more than 90% of all day trading volume can be traced to investors who predictably lose money. Additionally, it tied the behavior of gamblers and drivers who get more speeding tickets to overtrading, and cited studies showing that legalized gambling has an inverse effect on trading volume.

A 2019 research study (revised 2020) called “Day Trading for a Living?” observed 19,646 Brazilian futures contract traders who started day trading from 2013 to 2015, and recorded two years of their trading activity. The study authors found that 97% of traders with more than 300 days actively trading lost money, and only 1.1% earned more than the Brazilian minimum wage ($16 USD per day). They hypothesized that the greater returns shown in previous studies did not differentiate between frequent day traders and those who traded rarely, and that more frequent trading activity decreases the chance of profitability.

These studies show the wide variance of the available data on day trading profitability. One thing that seems clear from the research is that most day traders lose money .

Millionaire Media 66 W Flagler St. Ste. 900 Miami, FL 33130 United States (888) 878-3621 This is for information purposes only as Millionaire Media LLC nor Timothy Sykes is registered as a securities broker-dealer or an investment adviser. No information herein is intended as securities brokerage, investment, tax, accounting or legal advice, as an offer or solicitation of an offer to sell or buy, or as an endorsement, recommendation or sponsorship of any company, security or fund. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes cannot and does not assess, verify or guarantee the adequacy, accuracy or completeness of any information, the suitability or profitability of any particular investment, or the potential value of any investment or informational source. The reader bears responsibility for his/her own investment research and decisions, should seek the advice of a qualified securities professional before making any investment, and investigate and fully understand any and all risks before investing. Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes in no way warrants the solvency, financial condition, or investment advisability of any of the securities mentioned in communications or websites. In addition, Millionaire Media LLC and Timothy Sykes accepts no liability whatsoever for any direct or consequential loss arising from any use of this information. This information is not intended to be used as the sole basis of any investment decision, nor should it be construed as advice designed to meet the investment needs of any particular investor. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future returns.

Citations for Disclaimer

Barber, Brad M. and Odean, Terrance, Trading is Hazardous to Your Wealth: The Common Stock Investment Performance of Individual Investors. Available at SSRN: “Day Trading for a Living?”

Barber, Brad M. and Lee, Yi-Tsung and Liu, Yu-Jane and Odean, Terrance and Zhang, Ke, Learning Fast or Slow? (May 28, 2019). Forthcoming: Review of Asset Pricing Studies, Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=2535636”

Chague, Fernando and De-Losso, Rodrigo and Giovannetti, Bruno, Day Trading for a Living? (June 11, 2020). Available at SSRN: “https://ssrn.com/abstract=3423101”