timothy sykes logo

Patterns To Watch

This Trade Setup Turned Him Into A Millionaire

Timothy SykesAvatar
Written by Timothy Sykes
Updated 1/6/2026 8 min read

He sat, staring at his laptop, wondering if he made a huge mistake.

The market was open. The stock’s candles flashed on the screen, red, green, then red again. Order numbers flew by on the tape.

It came down to ten thousand dollars. That’s all he had.

Money that he saved skipping dinners out, tirelessly working his day job, and cutting corners wherever possible.

He wasn’t rich. He wasn’t a finance major. He wasn’t even sure he belonged in the market.

But something in him refused to quit.

He kept studying. Every night. Every weekend.

  • Chart patterns.
  • My trading lessons.
  • Past trading livestreams.

He learned how to spot panics before they happened … How to control greed when everyone else was chasing it.

And slowly, trade by trade, he began to see the market differently.

Fast-forward to this year: That same $10k account crossed the $1 million milestone.

His name is JayRay, and he’s my newest millionaire student.

Look at my post below:

In this blog post, I’m sharing every detail of JayRay’s success.

The trades, the setups, the mindset … Exactly how JayRay joined the ranks of millionaire traders.

This is the newest example of a millionaire trader in the market. Follow his process.

JayRay’s Biggest Lessons

JayRay’s journey from $10k to $1 million is special … But in the grand scheme of things, anyone can do this.

He faced the same fear, doubt, and mistakes every new trader does.

But instead of quitting, he studied every loss, refined every setup, and built discipline one trade at a time.

Now he’s sharing the principles that changed everything for his account. The habits, patterns, and mindset that separate consistent traders from the crowd.

Here are the biggest lessons behind his rise to millionaire status.

Wait For Underhand Pitches

Too many traders force positions on inopportune setups.

Some of the trades could work, but they don’t have the best supporting factors.

It’s like trying to hit a 90 mph fastball. You might make contact, but the odds are low.

Why waste time with fastball setups when the market is constantly serving underhand pitches?

There’s a checklist that I use to determine which trades are worth taking.

JayRay has a similar checklist. And in the livestream we did for Challenge students on December 30, he broke down the exact strategy he used to trade EKSO. The trade that pushed him over $1 million in trading profits.

It’s called a failed breakdown.

I overlaid the pattern on the chart below. Every candle represents one trading minute:

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

JayRay only trades under a handful of circumstances, the failed breakdown strategy is one of them.

More Breaking News

Stop trying to hit fastballs. Wait for the underhand pitch that fits your process.

Abs Are Made In The Kitchen

Everyone thinks: To get good at trading, I need to trade.

But that’s only half of the equation.

In the beginning, traders need to meticulously study during slow market conditions to build their conviction and solidify their process.

I’ve often heard from gym rats that “abs are made in the kitchen”. No matter how many situps you do, if you eat like crap you won’t get abs.

That’s similar to trading. No matter how many trades you make, if you don’t study you’ll never learn this process. You need both factors to become a successful trader: Knowledge and trade experience.

Just like the necessary balance of exercise and diet to get abs.

One Good Trade

The effectiveness of this process clicked for JayRay at the end of a huge losing streak.

He was 0 for 17. Loss after loss after loss.

But on the eighteenth trade, he made it all back and closed green on the month.

When we control our losses, one good trade is all it takes to wipe out our losing streak and push our account forward.

Too many traders get caught up trying to turn every trade into a win.

We don’t need every trade to be a win when it takes one good trade to wipe out a streak of losses.

A+ Setups Can Fail

In the market, any trade can fail.

Even with an A+ setup, it’s possible the stock holds an offering and the floor drops out from under us.

  • Use that knowledge to cut losses quickly.

But also …

  • Don’t get discouraged if your A+ setup doesn’t work once or twice.

Log the data. Look for a lesson to learn. And understand that sometimes the market will defy all expectations.

Grow thick skin and trust the process.

This is trading, not knitting with your grandmother. Sometimes we’re forced to deal with uncomfortable truths in the market and soldier on.

Process Over Profits

Go watch the livestream with JayRay. It was posted on January 3, 2026.

You’ll hear me practically screaming at him to lock in profits and claim his millionaire status.

But he stuck to his process and traded EKSO perfectly into the afternoon on December 30.

Yes, he left a lot on the table, but he also gave the chart enough time to try and break to new highs. And that would have secured even more gains.

JayRay wasn’t thinking about the money. He was thinking about executing the trade to the best of his ability.

Over his trading career, he’s logged almost 800 different data sets to support his trade thesis.

According to the data, there was a 70% chance that EKSO would break out higher that day. So he stayed in the position to try and ride the wave.

Ultimately, the trade broke down. And he sold his shares for a profit even though the trade failed.

Only One Re-Stab

JayRay had to make some rules for himself to curb bad habits.

One of the most notable was his habit of retrading the same stock intraday, losing over and over again. This is known as revenge trading.

JayRay’s solution was to limit himself to one “re-stab” on each stock intraday.

Sometimes we need to set hard limits for ourselves just to stop from over-trading.

What Helped The Most?

I asked JayRay which tool contributed the most to his success. And without skipping a beat, he mentioned all the content that’s in the Challenge.

  • The video lessons.
  • The trading livestreams.
  • The DVDs.

JayRay said he watched Tim Grittani’s DVDs at least 7 times each.

He would even turn them on in the background instead of re-binging some old TV show.

The patterns that we use to trade never change.

Whether you’re watching a livestream from last week, or a DVD from over 20 years ago, you’ll see the same patterns on the chart.

And once you’re in the Challenge, you’ll start to recognize these patterns before the stocks spike …

>> Join The Challenge <<

It’s where all my millionaire students got their start.

Follow in their footsteps. Use a trading process that works.

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”