STEVE GOMEZ

ANDY LINDLOFF

Steve Gomez is a professional day trader who lives in San Diego with his wife and 2 daughters. He graduated the University of Southern California with a BA in Communications and Social Sciences. In 1994 Steve began reading as many books on day trading as possible and began trading part time in the Chicago Commodities Markets using phone orders to get in and out of positions.

It was at a retail-trading floor in 1998 where Steve met his long-time trading partner Andy Lindloff. The two of them attended a course on Direct Access and Level 2 stock trading. After 1 week of basic instruction, he began the learning curve of live day trading. It took Steve about 6 months to get the big picture of stock trading and break even in his account.

During his years on a retail-trading floor, Steve tried to avoid trading the slow periods of the day by getting away from his seat and helping others with their layout or software shortcuts. It was at this time he discovered his affinity for communicating his knowledge of day trading and market psychology with others.

After 2003, Steve began day trading from a home office in the suburbs. He and Andy stayed in touch over the Internet with VOIP technology using Skype. This proved to be the next best thing to being on a real floor with other traders. From then on, working at home and communicating with his trading buddies was the best formula for success. Not to mention lifestyle.

Andy Lindloff is a professional day trader and mentor with 10 years of experience actively and successfully day trading stocks. Specializing in momentum trading using technical analysis, Andy has taken his expertise international. He is currently contracted by Asian American Association (proprietary day trading firm) as a mentor and travels to China periodically to help other traders learn day trading techniques to become profitable.

A graduate of Texas A&M University with a Bachelor’s degree in Marketing, Andy is a husband and father of one. After a successful career in the automobile business and a sales representative position at Edward Jones where he received his Series 7 license, Andy left to pursue his passion for day trading stocks. He began trading in 1998 full time on a retail-trading floor and after several months of self-teaching and hard work Andy’s efforts paid off earning him a comfortable living and 9 consecutive years of profitability.

In July 2007 Andy began working with a team of 20 traders in China and his team to date has not had a losing month. Andy’s accomplishments as a day trader/mentor and his desire to teach others has led him to team up with long-time trading partner Steve Gomez to help other traders achieve success. Steve has since joined Andy to help with his contract in China and Los Angeles.

ABOUT US

LEARNING WITH REALTIME DESKTOP VIEWING

Observe All Trading Bell to Bell

In conventional audio chat rooms you will most likely only hear a few calls a day. With desktop viewing you will be able to view and hear every trade executed during the entire trading day. (2 hour audio break)

Observe winning and losing trades

Learning to stop losing money is as important as making money. Seeing the winners will help you become a better trader and build your confidence, while watching the losers will improve your discipline and exit strategies.

See the trades we pass on

Watch as we cycle through hundreds of trades a day looking for the right ones. Listen to the reasons why we pass on them and move on scanning alerts, watch list, and sectors. Sometimes not making a trade is the best trade. Use the chat feature to suggest a stock setup and we can evaluate it (time permitting).

Clear view of entire desktop

Because of the limited ability of desktop recording software you are only able to see a portion of the desktop in trading videos. With WebEx you get the whole desktop in great clarity. Not like the cropped and blurry Youtube videos.

Interact live with the trader

Have your questions ready to ask the pros! Participate in a live Q&A session during the slow times of the day. Desktop Viewing is a great interactive training tool for conference calls allowing you to get the most out of the trading day.

Be certain trades are being made

When listening in chat rooms can you be certain that trades are actually being executed by the people who call them? There's no doubt when you get to see it first hand in real time. This is NOT simulated trading. It is real-time and real money.

A Brief History of Electronic Day Trading

Day Trading is not new. It has been around for well over 100 years in this country. The only problem was you had to live in the city of New York or Chicago to be a successful day trader back in the early 1900’s. There were however, smaller town “stock trading” houses known as Bucket Shops. These operations were more like off-track horse betting parlors.  Because there was no real stock changing hands at these places, they relied on ticker tape information that was delayed many minutes to follow the price movements. The Bucket Shops gave customers heavy leverage to “trade stocks”.  The CFD  market of today is now an electronic version of the old Bucket Shops 100 years ago.

Day trading or daytrading (as some spell it) was for the most part relegated to professionals who had access to the markets with no middleman taking a bite out of the transaction. Up until 1987 this was pretty much the way it was. That all changed on October 17, 1987 when the stock market crashed. On that gut wrenching day, the big customers of the brokerage houses were getting out while the “little guy” was left to hold on the phone as the panic ensued. There was no way for the small orders of 1 to 5,000 shares to get attention. The phones were literally left to ring off the hook. Because of this breakdown in the system, the SEC put rules in effect to protect the small investors.

The Small Order Execution System or SOES was created to electronically match orders not greater than 1000 shares. It was essentially the first direct access trading system for small traders located in offices around the country.  Although it was designed as a fail-safe system to protect the small investors, it quickly became the main vehicle for electronic day traders. Order entry specialists would take orders as traders shouted at them to execute, cancel, or change their orders.  Never again, would the market see bid ask spreads half a dollar wide for big cap liquid stocks. The days of easy money for the stock broker were beginning to wane. What was once a spread of 50 cents is now more than likely 1 penny wide. Since it was the broker who bought on the bid and sold on the offer to their own clients, they were making a killing for themselves.

For whatever the reason, the college town of Austin, Texas became the hub for electronic day trading.  Brokers in New York were amazed at how these orders would come in and hit them for 1000 shares at a time.  The SEC had mandated that NASDAQ dealers continue to make a market by advertising a bid and offer that could be accessed by SOES. They had no choice but to let these traders hit their advertised price, then quickly sell as the price moved up a quarter dollar or more using SOES to hit the bid and get out with an easy profit. In fact day trading back in the day of SOES was too easy!

Around 1996, retail day trading floors began to open up to the public. Starting mostly in Texas, they migrated into most major cities across the country.  They became modern day Bucket Shops, only this time real stock was being traded with information in real time. Things were going great. It seemed everyone was in the market and making money. Just buy and keep buying. Then 2000 came along and wiped out many traders. Those who refused to turn around and change their strategies were slowly stopped out of trading.  Around 2002, it got even harder when the whole stock market went to decimals. Why was this such a defeating move for many day traders?  Before this time, there were only 16 price levels in a 1 dollar move. Stocks traded in fractions of 1/16 or “teenies” as they were called. Making a “teenie” was easy money if you knew what you were doing. Making 4 “teenies” was not uncommon. That’s a 25 cent move with only 4 price levels!  Now there are 100 price levels to negotiate! More noise and variables were added to the markets as the spreads continued to narrow.

Some of the latest changes to the markets started in Pattern Day Trading Rules. You must have 25k in your account to qualify as a day trader who can execute numerous trades in one day without a problem or a margin call. There are a few exceptions to this rule. If you are part of a capital pool account, that pool account may qualify in total to satisfy the SEC. The next big change was the abolition of the Uptick Rule. This has allowed many short sellers to “pile on” the markets without having to wait for an uptick in the time and sales prints. Which in turn has led to increased volatility in the markets.

Finally, Dark Pool orders are becoming a difficult environment for decoding who is a buyer and who is a seller. They are pools of liquidity that are not seen in the national level 2 quotes. They are invisible orders sitting there waiting to be matched by the computer algorithms and ECNs. They are required to report the sales to the Time and Sales immediately. If you watch closely on a level 2 screen with Time and Sales, you will see some trades go off in between the inside market quotes. This has made it hard for the old school professionals who relied on identifying who the buyers and sellers are.

Today the landscape of the day trading market is very different from just 10 years ago. Computer Algorithms are executing trades. Black Box and Gray Box trading systems are becoming more advanced and more widespread. Gray Box refers to the computer executing a trade and then having a human trader exit the position. Black Box trading is where the computer does everything. The entry and the exit are written as a formula that sometimes has 30 steps involved before a trade is executed. The issue with robot trading is that the daytrading system has to evolve with the markets.  No single system will work all the time.  The markets are ever changing. In fact change is the only constant.