timothy sykes logo

Patterns To Watch

The One Factor Holding Your Account Back

Timothy SykesAvatar
Written by Timothy Sykes
Updated 2/25/2026 5 min read

You’re so close to consistent trading gains.

There’s only one thing holding you back…

I see it in the chatroom every day:

The opening bell rings. The coffee’s hot. The spikes are hotter. There’s face-ripping volatility in the market. You’re ready to bank.

You scan for the biggest moves of the day. The strongest stock spikes pop up on your screen.

Perfect.

But then a problem develops…

There are several good setups from your scan.

The price action bounces around on multiple charts as the seconds tick by.

You can’t find a clean entry to believe in without feeling like you’ll miss the other moves.

And you have to make a choice:

Which stock should you focus on??

Almost immediately, after a frantic stab at one of them, the price action works against you.

Maybe it’s a dud. Maybe you should switch to your second pick…

A few stressful hours later, you’re red on the day. That’s when you see it: one of the stocks on your list printed a perfect setup while you were busy second-guessing yourself.

And you missed it entirely.

Not because you were watching the wrong stocks. Because you never knew what to look for in the chart.

It’s not hard to find the hottest stocks of the day. I literally give away my scanning criteria for free.

What separates the winners from the losers is the ability to recognize the most valuable price action within a larger stock spike.

There’s a specific pattern to look for in the market.

And once you see it, every other stock drops out of focus.

The Hottest Stocks Every Day

jack kellogg and sykes in italy
© Millionaire Media, LLC

Before we talk about this beast of a trade pattern in the market, let’s make sure we’re on the right hunting grounds.

Most stock spikes don’t deserve our attention.

I already mentioned that I share my scan criteria for free

The factors listed below narrow down the entire market to a handful of stocks that have the best opportunity for real, explosive moves intraday.

Here’s what I’m looking for:

  • A price below $5.
    • Low-priced stocks can move higher percentages with less buying pressure. A $2 stock can double to $4. But a $200 stock rarely doubles.
  • A low float.
    • A low float means a limited supply of shares. Usually below 10 million. When demand hits, prices spike faster for stocks with a lower supply.
  • Daily volume of at least 1 million shares.
    • Volume confirms that real interest exists. Without it, price spikes are unreliable and hard to trade.
  • A news catalyst.
    • This is the spark for the move. A press release, an FDA decision, a surprise earnings beat: something that explains why the stock is running and gives traders a reason to push it higher.
  • A spike of at least 20% on the day.
    • A stock that spikes 20% can spike much higher.

When all five boxes are checked, we’ve got a powder keg that’s ready to blow.

On any given day, only a small handful of stocks will meet every one of these criteria. That’s a good thing. It eliminates the noise from the market.

Once you’ve got a short list in front of you, the next question is: what do you do with it?

That’s where my patterns come in.

One of the cleanest, most beginner-friendly patterns is the breakout setup.

The Breakout Pattern

On February 25, we saw two stocks follow a breakout pattern perfectly.

  • Larimar Therapeutics Inc. (NASDAQ: LRMR) spiked 60% past the breakout level.
  • XWELL Inc. (NASDAQ: XWEL) spiked 62% past the breakout level.

Both of these stocks showed up on our scan before the move.

The share prices started below $5, the stock spiked at least 20%, the volume showed more than 1 million shares traded intraday, they each announced news, and they both had low floats…

Technically, LRMR had a float of 38 million shares. But it’s close enough to 10 million. Considering big stocks like NVDA have 23 billion shares in the float.

Breakout patterns are perfect for new traders because the price action is almost obvious.

  1. A stock spikes with news.
  2. It hits a top before pulling back (the breakout level).
  3. It consolidates sideways.
  4. Then it pushes through the breakout level.

You can see it clear as day on the charts below from February 24 and 25:

LRMR chart multi-day, 1-minute candles Source: StocksToTrade
LRMR chart multi-day, 1-minute candles Source: StocksToTrade
XWEL chart multi-day, 1-minute candles Source: StocksToTrade
XWEL chart multi-day, 1-minute candles Source: StocksToTrade

As traders, we can either:

  • Buy shares in anticipation of the breakout.
    • Use the consolidation lows as a stop loss.
  • Buy shares after the breakout is confirmed.
    • Use the breakout level as a stop loss.

Pay attention to setups that look like LRMR and XWEL.

Anything else is a costly distraction.

Cheers

 

*Past performance does not indicate future results



How much has this post helped you?



Leave a reply

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.
Read More

* 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”