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Patterns To Watch

Today Your Account Transforms Forever

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Written by Timothy Sykes
Updated 2/19/2026 5 min read

Your alarm goes off. The smell of freshly brewed coffee gives you that first rush of energy. And for once, the morning isn’t chaos.

The kids are quiet. The commute is smooth.

You sit down at your desk with your watchlist pulled up and think: today’s the day.

The day my account trajectory changes forever.

The market opens. You’re scanning the biggest movers.

Then you see it: a stock already up nearly 100%*, with multiple float rotations, and the pattern looks textbook.

You’ve studied this setup. You know this setup.

And the pullback comes right on cue.

You buy shares.

For about four glorious seconds, you’re a genius.

Then it drops.

You refresh the screen. It drops more.

Your stomach flip flops. You tell yourself it’ll bounce.

It doesn’t.

Every tick lower feels personal, like the market reached through your monitor and grabbed your wallet right out of your hands.

You did everything right.

The right pattern. The right stock.

But you missed something crucial …

The Key Factor Behind This 100% Spike

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Anyone who’s traded for more than 5 minutes has experienced this exact feeling…

But if you haven’t, let me share an example from February 19.

Rubico Inc. (NASDAQ: RUBI) spiked during premarket and opened for regular hours near the highs, around a 100%* spike.

The float was only 503,000 shares: well within our ideal range of 10 million shares or fewer.

And a cherry on top: the trading volume topped 80 million shares.

It had all the ingredients for a spike higher after the market opened for regular hours.

But the chart had different ideas…

On the RUBI chart below, every candle represents one trading minute:

RUBI chart intraday, 1-minute candles Source: StocksToTrade
RUBI chart intraday, 1-minute candles Source: StocksToTrade

After the first dip, it dipped again, and again, and again … and it never recovered.

My trading patterns keep our accounts safe: Cut losses quickly.

But there’s a crucial detail you’re missing…

The Best Setups Have THIS In Common

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To catch the biggest moves, you have to wake up early for premarket hours (and stay late for after hours).

That’s when we see the strongest stock spikes.

  • The chart can’t halt due to volatility.
  • There isn’t as much retail-trading noise.
  • And it’s when we see the most catalyst announcements.

RUBI gave us at least two breakout trade opportunities during premarket hours on February 19.

The third breakout attempt failed, but there was still room for gains if you bought during the earlier consolidation.

That’s the beauty of my trading patterns. Even when the setups fail, we can still get out with gains.

On the chart below of RUBI’s premarket price action, every candle represents one trading minute:

RUBI chart intraday, 1-minute candles Source: StocksToTrade
RUBI chart intraday, 1-minute candles Source: StocksToTrade

A regular-hours dip buy isn’t necessarily a bad trade…

You aren’t wrong about the pattern…

And you aren’t wrong about the stock…

You’re wrong about the clock.

The premarket version of that trade gave you two clean breakout opportunities.  There was less noise and cleaner price action due to the time of day.

By the time regular hours opened, the easy money was already made. And in its wake was a crowded, noisy, fakeout-filled mess that destroyed traders who thought they were doing everything right.

They were. They just showed up too late.

And in this market…

Too Late = Unnecessary Losses

My millionaire students didn’t build their accounts by finding better stocks. They built them by learning when to trade stocks that were already exploding.

Wake up earlier. Stay up later. Study the premarket charts like your account depends on it…

Because it does.

The patterns are the same. The setups are the same. You already know what to look for.

Now you know when to look.

Cheers

 

*Past performance does not indicate future results



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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”