Welcome to the Investor Master Series. My name is James Boyd, and welcome to the final word of 2024. Merry Christmas to all, and I thought about wearing the Santa Claus suit just to maybe throw it in there, but I'm going to hold off. So, alright, a little fun there. So we welcome Debbie, Bill, Michael, Ocean, many others. And yeah, Merry Christmas to you and your family. Happy holidays. This is the last webcast of 2024. And a quick reminder that I did post on X some of the videos that we did for 2024 in our classes that would be like really good to review. Now, these are kind of like, let's say, the platinum hits, if you will. And you could see that just real quick.
If you go to the my X page, you're going to see that by the class, I broke down highlighted classes. That if you said, geez, I want to go back and study over the break, which ones could I do? These are highlighted classes, right? For each class, I kind of pick three or four and then put the links in there on my X page. So make sure you go back and actually look at that. Those are foundational concepts that we want to make sure that we master. Now, just real quick, as we get started here, remember that options carry a high level risk, not suitable for all investors. Some of our trades will be stocks. Some are going to be options. But stocks are a foundation part of the portfolio.
We try to use options as a way to create income and also have protection, occasionally leverage. And also remember, the information here is provided for general informational purposes only. This webcast discusses technical analysis, but we also want to include fundamental analysis and also intermarket and macro analysis as well. Because we know some of the things on the international markets, et cetera, can also influence what's happening here domestically in the United States. Now, also remember that investing involves risk. As we talk about examples of short options, those can be assigned at any time up to the expiration, regardless of the end of the money amount. Our options that we're using in this class are American-style options, which that can happen.
And also remember, when we talk about today, our topic that we're going to be talking about is really kind of looking at the current portfolio that we're finishing for 2024. We'll take a quick look. We'll take a quick look at the portfolio, anything that kind of stands out. Second, we're going to talk about the 2025 portfolio. We're going to reset the portfolio today. Okay? That way, when we come back right after the, whatever it is, January 2nd or whatever, what's the biggest actually thing is we're not kind of re-explaining it. We're hitting the ground running. So we're resetting today. Okay? And also, we're going to talk about the TOS layout. Kind of how we're going to set up that portfolio. And then we're going to talk about some new positions.
So we've got a lot to cover here today, as we usually do. Let's kind of just take a quick look at. So first off, remember we said last year, it was actually what November 15th of 2023, we really talked about using the S &P 500 as a benchmark, right? That's what we were trying to outperform. Well, to kind of take a quick look, and I'm just looking at from, if you look at the S&P from last, well, January 2nd of 2024, until now, the benchmark, okay, that we're talking about is 26% for the S& 500. So you could decide for yourself, is that a benchmark that you would use? But many stock investors, that's what they might be using.
You could also kind of weight the portfolio, take your weighting of the portfolio to large caps, small caps, mixture, et cetera, and kind of get a weighted average for a benchmark. Okay? Okay. Okay. Okay. Take the S&P as a bar, 26% for the year. So not a bad number, okay, for 2024, with all the kind of the craziness. Now, if we look at the NASDAQ just briefly, 28% there, okay? If you look at, let's say, the RUT, kind of where does that stand? I mean, 9. 2%, and you look at the Dow Jones, 14. 8%. So quite a bit of difference, if you're talking about the S&P and the NASDAQ, compared to the others.
Now, the way you could actually see this is, if we're on a one-year daily chart, just click on that sideways S, and you just go down to where it says, show price as a percentage, and that way that, on that right-hand side, you're going to see that it's not showing the price, it shows the percentage up or down for the given timeframe, okay? Now, I want to kind of go back. So when we started, for example, this portfolio, I think we were at 45, okay? Sit here. At 73, we're just going to kind of reset. The only thing left in this portfolio is a Boeing position, and that position right there, that is yours truly a collar. And by the way, that collar is 719, okay, so far, with 24 days remaining.
Now, we are above the short call, okay? So there might be a pretty good chance here that we have a good percentage of that. I'm going to take the time to do that, but I'm going to bet maybe it's – I don't know. Well, actually, maybe we will. Let me just throw this in here. Why not? I just kind of want to see the percentage, okay? We'll fast-fire these numbers. But we're going to wipe this portfolio clean, and we'll talk about the amount in just a moment. But let me just kind of punch these numbers in and kind of see where it's at, and I just kind of be interested to kind of see myself. And so if we look at that credit or debit, it was a credit of $1.
And if we look at the long put, it was $1. 55. So the maximum gain that we can make on this position was $10. 74. The current P &L is actually sitting at $7. 27. I said 70%. We're at 68. So I was 2% off. So, if you take a look at that, we're going to take that position down. This, by the way, if we had 65% plus what, 20 or so days remaining, which we have, some investor might consider exiting that, okay? Now, the other position we have was kind of two examples of verticals, a short put vertical and a long call vertical. Which one made more money, right? You can see for yourself. But over here, what we're going to do is we're going to adjust this account, okay?
And we're going to reset all balances and positions, okay? By the way, there is not a way to do this in your real money account, so it's only a paper money account only. All right. Now, what I'm going to do is reset all positions to zero. We're going to proceed. And now what I'm going to do is just give it a time to kind of wipe. And you're going to see that it's going to show these tickers for the next day. But tomorrow when we come back, it's going to be gone, okay? Now, the net liquid day trade is at 100. And what we're going to do is we're going to go back to adjust account.
And what we're going to do is we're going to take this all the way back down to, if you don't mind, is I'm going to right click on any one of these positions go adjust cash. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to take it all the way down to, if you don't mind, I'm going to say subtract 70. Now, if we have 100 and we subtract 70, we're going to take it down to 30, okay? So we're talking about margin. And we're resetting lower than last year. Last year was 45, okay? We're taking it down to 30. We talked about lowering that. The second one, we're going to go to margin. We're going to go to the IRA. And what we're going to see is just kind of.
We started at 185. And what we're going to do is we're going to lower that as well. Anything that kind of stands out here. Love Airlines is getting a push. Apple's had a very nice time to the upside. Probably the record-setting moving average at 33 days on the 10-day moving average. Imagine if you could get one of those a month. That'd be amazing, okay? Not a recommendation. But the biggest actually. By the way, one of them that's actually doing record-setting to the downside is SLB. 19. Days down on the 10. And 24 on the 20. All moving average. Those are bearish positions, okay? NVIDIA, we flipped the position yesterday. Getting a little back on what we realize in terms of a loss. And you're going to see that anything else that stands out.
Micron is still under pressure. Down 545. And these other ones like Tesla and you name it. Not a whole lot there, okay? So a couple trades. Worst trade that is in the portfolio right now is a short vertical two contracts on Micron, okay? So that's kind of the worst one we actually have in the portfolio. Verifying that that is correct. The second one is Honeywell, okay? Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to also do this. Go to adjust account. Let's reset all balances and positions. Go to apply. It's going to flush it all out. Now, what it's going to do is it. There it is. Gone, okay? Now, what I'm going to do is let's kind of go back to. What are we going to set it to?
Now, last year it was 185. We're going to take it down to one. Now, what does it go to, okay? So it's at 100. It resets defaults to 100. And what I'm going to do here is I'm just going to right click on any one of these tickers, okay? Right click. Adjust cash. And now what I'm going to do is I'm going to add five, okay? So in the margin, we're going to start with 30, okay? In the IRA, we're going to start with 105. Okay? Both I've lowered, okay? And now what I'm going to do is you're going to see. Let's kind of talk about. Just kind of see what it looks like. So 30 there, right? And you actually see that when you look at the IRA, we got 105.
Okay? So that's what we have. Both lower. So the margin went from 45 down to 30. The IRA went from 185 down to 105, okay? Now, it would be nice if we kind of had like a bigger account, okay? But a lot of people kind of like to start lower. That's fine. I don't care what balance we have. We're going to run the same place, okay? Now, speaking of that, I want to kind of speak to if I. So if I were brand new, but I knew what I knew, I want to talk about the layout of how we like to set up this platform. So first off, let me kind of just speak to. By the way, this matters because when we're talking about the layout of the platform, it's going to come back to routine.
So just real quick, when you take a look at this, the way we like to lay this out, okay? Is on the left-hand side, and this would be very important you pay attention to this, because if you're kind of struggling with routine, and what do I look at and why? And I'm going to show you the list. The top left-hand side, when we go into 20-25, we want to have a futures list. Now, you might not trade futures, but futures can influence. Obviously, equity futures can influence, let's say, where the indexes are. The equity futures can influence what sectors are up. Some of the commodity futures could affect the OK. Commodity sectors, like energy or basic materials, and stocks, and industry groups, and sectors, and so on.
So when we look at, let's say, futures, I'm going to show you the ones that we normally look at, okay? And you might just make a list with those tickers. It doesn't mean you have to know all of them, okay? But these are the ones we like to have in a list. Second list on the left-hand side, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go up, obviously, I have indexes, okay? And you're going to see that this is the list that we look at. And I'm going to take, for example, out, and I don't know why, let me take that fruit oil out, okay? And I'm going to also take the dollar out. I don't know why that's in there. Let me take that back out.
If we're just flat out looking at the indexes, okay? There you go. Now we're good. So when we look at the indexes, notice I did include the SOX or the semiconductors. Many of you like to look at that. I'm fine. I'm fine with that. And you're going to see that we do also include the VIX as well in index, okay? Next list we actually have. Now, this is very important because if you, I mean, I'm looking at this each day, futures, then indexes. Notice it says one, two sectors. We actually see that list. Obviously, that's something we want to look at. And if we look at that list, and let me kind of maximize this so we can see what is in the list. Now, by the way, Kevin and I teach the ETF class on Friday.
Connie teaches it on Monday afternoon. I cannot show ETFs like the tickers, at least in this class. But if we could, we could just use an ETF list, okay? I am using a sector index list to be compliant. And so that's why I have those tickers. But if you're not teaching a class, you might just use a different symbol that is trying to get the same thing done as me pulling up the index, okay? Now, so there's the sector. Now, I'm going to scroll down. Notice what we actually have on the left-hand side. Next, we actually go to here, the Dow Jones, okay? Next list, the NASDAQ 100. And the next list, you're going to see, obviously, the S&P 100.
And the last list, but I don't look at very much, but I'll just kind of quickly glance, is the S&P 100. It's listed right there. And here's the thing. I want to see it every, I want to see that, okay? I want to be able, I don't want to kind of come, I don't want to every day have like a different, different view, okay? That's the way I like to lay it out. Futures, indexes, sectors, Dow, and then so on, okay? Now, also notice here on this list that we have, and this is important, symbol, last net change, percent change, okay? And there's a trend. The whole purpose of this trend, so when we're looking at this list, what are we actually categorizing a buy?
Answer, we're looking at this in terms of a percentage change, like which ones on a percent basis. We're up the most today. That's one way to look at it, or one way we would look at it. Second, we could also say which trend, which one of these tickers have certain trends that we're looking for. So if we said, hey, well, I'd like to see stocks that are in like a trend two or three. Well, now we can actually see which ones are doing that. The S &P is trend three, the US dollar is trend three. Sorry, Canadian fans out there and others. And you're going to see that the 10Y also is up about another three percent here today, up the trend three as well.
Now, you could go to the also the indexes and see that same thing. Sox is trend three, okay? SPX is trend three. And if we went down to sectors and say, who's trend three? We're seeing some better movement today in IXY, discretionaries, technology. We're seeing S &P, obviously, we just said the index list. And I use that as a benchmark. That's why that's in there. And we're also seeing the financials. Those are in trend two. Notice how many sectors, boo, are literally, I mean, just horrible, okay? Staples, utilities, healthcare, energy, base materials, industrials, all pasted in trend number one. So if we pulled up those sectors, they're going to look like double black diamond ski slopes to the downside. And if you spend your time looking for stocks in those areas, man, it's going to be probably pretty ugly.
Now, that does not mean there might not be opportunity for horizontal bounce setups. But that's probably not the first place we're going to be looking. Why? Well, because our portfolio is set to look for relative strength first, okay? First, clear? Sure, okay? And then lastly, looking for stocks that might be bouncing last. We're kind of thinking like 80-20. 80% we're going to be looking for relative strength. 20% we're going to be looking for things that might have pulled back and then bounced, but they might be more of a potential project, okay? Project just means that it hasn't shown relative strength as of lately and might take some time to come back up. The risk of that is might, okay? Now, I want to also go back to just real quick something.
When we also go back to market watch, the way we're going to lay it out, nothing new to kind of stay here. Here is this is the column headings that we're going to have. So when we pull up the markets on a daily basis, I don't want to wonder what I'm going to see, okay? And so these you can find right on my X page, all the listings, all the column headings. You can find the scripts right on my X page. And last but not least, when we pull up a chart, we're going to really use this chart. It's also on my X page right at the top. If you don't have this, I'm going to share this with you and right there.
Now, this is really, I'd say, why did he just explain the list that he has? Why did he just explain the market watch? And why did he just explain the charts? Because I want us to be on the same day, same page. That's why, okay? I don't want us to all be kind of thinking different things. I want us to kind of have a routine and a set format. And I think not having a format can really mess someone up. Okay? And I want to kind of also build confidence that, Hey, I kind of have, I know what I'm supposed to be looking at or could be looking at, and there's a repeatable process. Okay. Now I want to kind of just go back to something, just make sure I'm not missing anything.
And then we're going to kind of, we're going to kind of talk about right now in this, in these two portfolios, and let's kind of go to those now. Okay. So when we talk about, let's say, looking for stocks for 2020. Okay. Just like we did in 2024, they need to be something that have a fundamental basis. Okay. In other words, if we looked at revenue, revenue and earnings per share, these are profitable companies. These are not like companies that are, we want to see a track record, at least over the last one or two years, where there is a fundamental basis for the trade and or investment. Okay. Liquidity is key. The stocks that we're looking at probably 80% of them are going to be 50 plus, 90 plus, 95% plus of the time are coming from the Dow, NASDAQ, and the S&P 100, maybe 5% of the time, they might be S& P 500, but that's not the, my, not the majority.
Okay. Now I want to kind of go back to a question that we had yesterday. It was on ads. And I responded back is someone asked the question, I think it was Bill. He asked, why do you look at the charts of the Dow stocks, NASDAQ and SP 100 stocks? And then you say that you look at, let's say the market watch seems maybe like a potential. I don't think he said contradiction, but let's say I, let's say I did. Okay. So the reason why I look at the, the physical charts on a daily basis is I like to kind of stay in tune and be kind of reminding myself of what these charts look like. Okay. If someone went to the market watch, well, why would I use the market watch versus just looking at the chart?
Well, the reason why you use the market watch is if I said, 'Hey, I want to see where what stocks are exhibiting relative strength and I want to do it in five seconds or less.' Well, if I had a fast computer, uh, that's probably an, let's say, and I wanted to kind of see where that relative strength was in five seconds or less by a fast internet speed and so on. I can see in five seconds or less, where's the pocket of relative strength on the Dow, the NASDAQ, or the S&P 100, and P 100. And so on. If I want to see what stocks were doing cold, if I want to see what stocks were breaking out, if I want to see which stocks are doing a moving average crossover, which stocks are doing bull flags, which stocks are doing breakouts and kind of, where are they in that breakout process, you're using the market watch to see something specific.
Okay. Or which stocks, for example, have high implied volatility. So this is where you're maybe looking for. For something specific. Okay. Or which stocks are, for example, in, let's say trend three. Okay. Which ones kind of have a better trend on a daily chart or which one actually give us something, let's say a trend weekly. So this is where you can isolate to something specifically you want to see. Now, if we look at charts and we use market watch, it doesn't mean that we're contradicting each other. Okay. You look at charts because you're trying to see the bigger picture of what's going on, trend, momentum, and so on, where the price is in relationship to the moving averages. Okay.
And sometimes it's just nice to kind of see the chart itself, but you use the market watch if you're trying to say, I want to get a summarized table of what's going on. And last but not least, I want, I'm looking for something specific. Now, remember the Market Watch is a way you could actually search. It's also a way you could monitor the positions. And so when I said search, you can search based on trend type search based on pond volatility, relative strength bounce, bullish bounce, or bearish bounce, breakout, crossover, flag, or breakout. So this is where you're saying, 'I look, I want to see something specific.' Go through the list for me. Are there any stocks that match that criteria? The end. Okay.
So it's kind of interesting when we're all learning, we think if we say two different things that one discounts, the other, it's not, that's not true at all. Okay. The chart is the chart. Okay. Shows the bigger picture. Okay. But this is a summary of what we're seeing on the charts. And it's a way that the list is a way to scan what's actually happening on the charts. So we use them in combination. Okay. If we said is one more important than the other. Yeah. Yes or no. Okay. We like to use them in combination just because you use them in combination. Does it, it does not discount one versus the other. Okay. Now, but I wanted to address that now for 2025, let's hit this. Okay.
So we've got to have something that's fundamental. Okay. Something that actually has, it's a growing business. When we look at the industry group, it's probably in the top two to three stocks in the industry group. Okay. Fundamentally, second, we've got to have something that has some technicals, a trend price above the 20, 10 period moving average, 10 period. At a minimum, if we're talking about bullish, and it must be something that has options, liquid options. Okay. And the reason why we're talking about that liquid options. Okay. It has to be something that's on that probably is coming from the Dow S&P 100 or the NASDAQ 100. Why? Because we want liquid options. Why? Well, because we want something that if we want to sell something to create some income, maybe a cover call, there's tighter bid-ask spreads.
There's a tradable market at that time. It does not guarantee at the future point in time, but we're saying, Hey, probably if it has higher average volume, greater chance of having liquid options. Now, it could be growth, income or value stocks, either or. And we like to kind of really have a mixture of, let's say, five different sectors. We don't want the whole portfolio in, let's say, tech and discretionary. Want to kind of have a mixture of maybe five or so sectors. Now, remember, like last year, we're relative strength investors, at least the classes that I show are. Okay. Now, the other thing is when we talk about. So I hit. That when we talk about strategies, last thing I want to say, we're gonna spend the rest of the time trading.
We're focusing on long stocks, okay. Long synthetics, which has some similarities, but differences. Okay. Long synthetic, long call and short putt. Well, by that downside protection, the difference in the long synthetic and the stock one has an expiration. Okay. That's a major difference. Okay. But we're going to use those together. Hash secured puts, which I think we did a lot. In 2024, we'll continue short put verticals, long call verticals, callers. You were waiting for that. So was I and covered calls and protective puts or married puts. So when we talk about bullish strategies, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, really a total strategies of bullish. Now we could sit here and argue that like, if you really lay those out, there's really five. Okay.
So I'm going to say there's probably five max eight strategies. Okay. Cash secure puts is a potential way to buy the shares of the stock. Some differences, but really when you summarize them, it's five main strategies, situational, depending upon trend would be short call. Verticals bearish, long put verticals bearish. And last but not least, short synthetics bearish. Okay. Not probably going to show too many examples of long puts. Okay. We try to be theta positive or neutral. Okay. That's situational. Now, if the market's neutral, the bullish, we're probably 80% bullish, maybe 20% bearish. If the market goes down to 25, we might have to flip that based upon current trends. So what I want to do kind of in this first little bit here is I want to kind of give us some foundation of what we're going to kind of, of how we're going to be setting up the portfolio.
Now, what I want to do now is kind of talk about the first little bit here. I want to talk about the first trades for 2025 now with these trades that we show in our examples is I'm going to have to go back to, you know, we're, we're not going to be having a class by go back to this just real quick. We pull that up and speaking of that, I'll, I'll slide that over in just a moment. And so if we looked at, let's say a coach, let me kind of slide this over. So when we look at, let's say kind of the, the, the next class. And I just kind of want to show us this in terms of timeframe. If you do not have this, make sure that you do okay.
Now, by the way, with what we just went over, it would be very good. If you said I watched this video, at least the first 20 minutes over again. So I have an understanding of how we're going to be attacking 2025, not limping into 25. Okay. Attacking. Okay. Now what I'm going to do is that, so here we are in this last class, the next time we're going to be getting into 2025. We're going to be getting together is going to be on the January 2nd. Okay. Now, by the way, Merry Christmas and happy new year to you. And also remember that to be safe, read the disclosures and make sure you, you come back for January 2nd. Okay. Just remember, it's always about managing risk, right?
So, the next class I'll do is going to be trading the trend. So we're going to have these trades hopefully for the next week or so, but that way, when we come back into January 2nd, we're going to not going to be like, well, what are we going to do? Let's just reset now. That's why I chose it now. And then pretty much when we come back into January 2nd, we're already off and running. Okay. Now let's spend the rest of the time talking about sample examples. Now, what I want to do is I want to come back to this. And so if I said to you a comment, such as 'we are looking for relative strength in the Dow', where is it? Well, let's use our tools. Okay.
So if I actually looked at where the relative strength is in the Dow Jones, industrial, now this is a public list. It's not James' personal list. If I said, where do we see the relative strength? Okay. Now I just like to click on the RS five. And when I click on the RS five, what it does is it clumps all the green patches right at the very top. Okay. Now here's the deal. You could actually say why I know this. That's, that's not really the point. I know a lot of things. I don't do it. Okay. And you do too. Okay. So what we want to kind of be doing. Okay. So what we're going to be doing is we're going to be looking for examples of where is that relative strength and are there opportunities for potential setups?
Now, number one is Cisco is actually having a pretty strong move with trend three. Okay. With a hold. Okay. Now, obviously, if we look in the last, let's say kind of the timing of this, it's been in the last two to one days. Cisco is kind of looking a little bullish. Now that two different portfolios, one's a $30,000 portfolio, one's 105 Cisco, maybe for the margin kind of might be. We'll look at that in just a moment. You got Amazon getting a little bounce back. Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, a little diagonal. How do you know they're diagonals? Trend two. Okay. If you're looking for diagonal breakout, say that diagonal, well, that's trend two. Okay. That's price snapping back above the 10-period moving average. Nvidia getting a little pokey poke to the upside.
American Express. Express, AXP. And there goes Apple. Act down the stretchy Cubs. Okay. Now, remember, some of you are Samsung people. Someone could buy Apple stock if they consider that for themselves and still like their Samsung phone. Okay. We get so fanatical about Apple or Samsung or Google. Now, you're also going to see that Boeing's right there. So here's the funny thing. A lot of people are like, 'Man, I'm going to spend three hours running the search.' Why don't you just look at the ones in the bottom and that's like in the top 100? Okay. Well, I like to look. I look for my own search, but what's wrong with these? So this is what's kind of funny. Okay. We're not looking to make our own hot sauce.
We're going to look into Russell 1,000 stocks. Look in these categories, we're not interested in companies that have such a low track record of history or low revenue, low earnings per share. We're looking for proven liquid companies. Okay. Now this is just how the paper money feels about that. Now, what we're going to do is I'm going to pull up just real quick. One of the stocks, let's kind of start with just real quick. Let's go to just this one for just a moment. Okay. That one is also there as well. And we're going to bring this up in our first example of 2025. Now I'm going to bring it up. Let's kind of first go to this next lick and day trades. There it is. One Oh five.
We're going to go back V and I'm just going to kind of set it up. Now, tell me what you see on this chart. What do you see? Now, if we kind of looked at this chart and we kind of just zoomed back a little, zoomed in a little bit, kind of like a plateau, a seaport, and kind of a little bounce. Now notice where that bounce was. Do you see that they, uh, high-speed BJ, do you notice where the intraday low was right at the moving average, bullish or bear? Okay. Well, right. For some investors, it might kind of take. There's a bullish signal. Now let's kind of go back to strategy for just a moment, right? Long stock, long synthetic.
Today's not about strategy selection, but let's say the investor said, look, I at least want to get a position on the table, uh, going into the new year. We're going to go to trade tab. Let's say the investor says, look, I want to be, uh, do a trade that might have higher potential profitability, maybe not as much probability. Okay. As a short put vertical. Now, what I'm going to do is we have about 13 or so minutes. I like to get three or four trades on the table. So I'm just kind of buckled down here. Okay. What we're going to do is we're going to buy the three 20 and we're going to sell the three 25. Now, we've got to also be thinking, 'Is when we look at this trade, uh, what's the risk here.' Okay.
Well, the, the risk is given a vertical, the debit of let's say two 60. Now, let's kind of think to ourselves. Well, how much are we willing to risk of that one Oh five? Let's say the investor said, James, I'm not willing to risk more than 1%. Let's say what's, what's 1% of that? Well, 1% of that is a thousand. If we said I'm not willing to risk any more than a half of 1%, it'd be 500-ish dollars. So if we said we could maybe do two contracts, that would be at the most. That we could do. Because if I went to confirm and send, now, what you're going to see is max loss, five, 20, five 20 of that one Oh five, it's going to be right at a half of 1%.
That's not any different than last year. It's just a different amount. Same percentage note, the commission cost of the trade, including commission, we're going to send the order. And there it goes. So first trade of the year is a long call vertical on the, okay. Now I'm also going to go back in just real quick, uh, the lower dollar count, uh, we see that for example, let's kind of do a stock trade there. So we've got 30 there, there's, uh, Cisco and Cisco is having a pretty decent bounce. Now I'm not going to tell you that, you know, it would have been nice to take that entry here or there. Okay. And then this was kind of the third day or second day into the crossover, but let's say the investor says, James, I want to kind of put on a stock trade.
Now, if we kind of had, let's say 30, how many like stock positions could we have? Okay. Let's say the investor said, 'Look, I'm not going to put in any more than 10% of that value into one trade. Well, it'd be three. Okay. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to right-click on that chart, go to buy custom with OCO bracket. Now. Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go click on the pool balls. It goes to percent. We do CV fills. We're going to go dollar amount. Now, when I go to. A dollar amount, I'm going to switch this to $3,000. Okay. So that is 10% of the total. Okay.
Now, what I'm going to do is right above that, I'm going to snap that little red icon there, and it's going to be 50 shares of stock. All right. Now, what about the stop?' Always like to look at the downside first, not because we're negative, but we're realist. Okay. We want to cut that. The first job is, you know, risk protection. Okay. And what I'm going to do is slide this over and then say, look, if we said 57, 55 is the support area, less 2%. We're going to set the stop at 56, 39 or 56, 40. What I'm going to do here is I'm going to take that number 56, 40 data GTC.
Now we can run some basic math and kind of say, look, if we have 50 shares of stock and this goes down about $3, it's about a hundred and $50. All right. So we've got the stop, it goes to the point where it's going to go down about $3, that's the stop. So now we're going to set the stop at 56, 40. If we lost, let's say, 150 of that portfolio of 30, well, what percentage of the portfolio could it lose? It's losing $0. 01 would be 1%, $0. 005 is just a half of 1%. Okay. So now what we're going to notice is we've got the stop GTC. Okay. So now we're going to put a target on this.
Now, when we kind of go back and kind of say what might be a potential target, we might kind of go back, look at a longer-term chart, or we might kind of take an angle of the prior highs and kind of say, 'look, if we could go up.' Now, we don't know if it could go up, okay? But if I want to kind of set like a shorter-term target, we might say the diagonal line, maybe 62. Now, open this back up, and I'm going to kind of see, do we have anything longer-term on this chart that we might want to know about, or is it at the high? If we're kind of looking at this 62, which I put a target at, we might say 63 and change.
I'm going to kind of move it to maybe 62 and a half and change, okay? You, the investor out there, might say, I'm going to set it maybe or put it at 63. I'm going back to kind of that prior high right there, okay? Now, Kenneth actually says, crazy boring on Cisco. Kenneth, say back to you, we want to have different, so when we're talking about a lower portfolio, we sometimes want to actually have lower dollar stocks. Now, the purpose of actually having, now, by the way, if you said crazy boring on Cisco, let me just have a little fun with you, Kenneth. If we go back to kind of where this breakout was, and I'm just talking about cents in the last four months, the stock has gone up 23%, okay?
In 23 months. Now, Kenneth, if I said to you, like, is that boring? Even if the investor got 10, 12% of that, is that boring? I mean, is the investor out there just making that on a daily basis? I mean, let's just have it come to Kenneth's meeting here, okay? So, the reality is, be very careful with what you're saying, okay? It doesn't look like it's a lot, but when you look at it on a percentage basis, and you think about, what that investor has been making for the year, then they have to actually say, okay, so maybe I'm not looking at it correctly. So, when you look at the percentages, okay, it's probably more interesting than maybe the chart initially suggests.
Now, the other thing is, we're trying to do lower dollar stocks to try to set up a portfolio, okay? Now, what I'm going to do here is notice you got the capital, target, and also the portfolio. So, what I'm going to do here is notice you got the capital, so what you're going to see is we got the stop, and notice what's in red, we can see that, and you're going to say send the order. Now, the thing is, is we also want to have some diversification of not just being in Apple, Microsoft. We want to have some differences here, okay? Now, I'm going to also go back to, for example, okay, another stock that we're going to keep an eye on. I'm going to go back to, just real quick, PLTR, okay?
Now, one of the stocks, now, here's the deal. Okay? I historically have had people that will say, like, I'm looking for stocks like this, okay? I want to see something that's just exploded in value. And then the stock goes down, and that same person says it's too blasted volatile. So, the moral of the story of what I'm saying is, we don't, we're trying not to have every stock where it's, like, super volatile. Sometimes, if you pick a stock like this, there's reasons for that that kind of have some growth. So, I'm going to go back to that. And then, I'm going to go back to that.
Okay? Now, in this case, I'm going to kind of choose something. So, Palantir, I'm just giving an example of something that's exploded. You got to remember, if it can crash up, it can also crash down. You can't just pick one side of that, okay? Now, I'm going to go back to the kind of the one we looked at yesterday, but we're going to look at it right now again. I'm going to use the example of going right back to Brock. I'm going to go back to Brock. I'm going to go back to Brock. I'm going to go back to Brock. I'm going to go back to Brock. I'm going to go back to Brock. I'm going to Now, let's look and see if we can trade this in the margin and the IRA.
Let's look and see if we can do it. Okay? I'm going to go to the trade tab. Okay? Now, what does that chart look like? Well, that chart, as of yesterday, showed a hold dot on the chart. Okay? Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to the trade tab, and I'm going to go right back to the January expiration. Now, the question we're asking ourselves is, could we do this in the margin and the IRA? All right. So let's kind of take a look. 20 cents wide in the bid-ask spread. Okay. 20 cents wide in the 240 as well. So it's about 20 cents. That's really the limit of what we like to see. Now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to right click on that $237.
5 buy vertical. Let's stick with this long call vertical theme for just a moment. Now, could we do this in the margin account? Well, $237. 5, 240, $1. 25 debit. Could we risk $125? Sure we could. Okay. So if we kind of said, well, if we're going to have 30 in that margin, okay, and I slide this over, I don't know why my calculator keeps pulling up on that second screen, 30, and I said that we're willing to risk half of 1%, it's $150. Well, if I did one contract, we're going to go in the margin account. So now here's what we're going to do. We're going to go advanced order. We're going to go in this case, excuse me, we're going to go confirm and send.
And what we're now going to do is instead of just doing a single account, the margin, we're going to go to multiple accounts. So in the margin account, we're going to do one. Now in the other account, we said we could really risk up to, let's say $500. So in the lower dollar, we're going to do $500. So in the lower dollar, we're going to do $500. So in the lower dollar account, margin, we said that half, we could risk, let's say, if we took up, if we did a half of 1% in the margin, if we did, it'd be $150. We could even do up to 1% or three quarters, which is what we did last year.
Give us a little bit more, but for this case, we'll just do one. And for the IRA, if we said $500, well, we could do really four contracts, okay? So quick and easy math, half of 1%. If we did a half of 1% of about 105, it's going to be right around 500 bucks. Now notice when we have the chance, if that trade could be put into margin and there's cash available. And notice, just because I said the word margin does not mean that we're trading on margin. We're only trading the cash that's in the account, not borrowed funds, okay? So we're not going there. Now, you're also going to see the same, the same idea with the IRA. We're going to send that order, okay?
And you're going to see the breakeven stock, a breakeven price on the vertical, send the order, okay? Now, so today we did the example of, okay? Let's kind of go back and kind of, kind of re-tackle what we discussed. Number one trade that we actually looked at here today that we started out in the IRA was the ticker V. Keep an eye on, for example, MA as well. The AXP, for example, is a little diagonal breakout setup. Keep an eye on there. So we kind of see a little movement in that industry group. The second one that, for example, that we saw, and I wanted to do a lower dollar stock trade, CSCO, we took a stock trade on that. Keep an eye also on lower dollar stocks, example given like SMCI, that is also getting a little crossover here.
So we're going to do a lower dollar stock trade on that. Keep an eye also on here as well, okay? Now, the third trade that we did in final, we also did the example, let's go back to what's the last one, kind of the filled orders. We also did the example of Avgo as well. So we explained how we're going to set up the portfolio for 2025, okay? We reset the portfolios, said what's the list that we're actually going to have, okay? And we showed that, okay? Futures, indexes, sectors, Dow, NASDAQ, S &P 100, S &P 500. So if I said, what is my homework assignment? Your paper money account, please make it look like that, okay? Make sure that on each one of these lists on the side that you have net, percent change, and trend.
So we're all on the same page when we practice. Second, if you said, okay, I got that, I also want you in the market, don't get us all wrong, okay? Our strategy is to look at their charts, ain't it? It's new to many. It's the way we practice stuff, right? We want to look at each different category of product. Again, provides a whole опред doubt exits as well and that's going to be a chart that we actually kind of look at initially okay so i like you to have that that's your homework assignment the watch list the market watch the charts and then we did today three example trades hopefully today was helpful i
wanted to kind of like just like so when we start off on january 2nd we don't have to kind of like take the time to explain now we know when we come into january 2nd we already know what we kind of how we're going to look at things and what strategies we're going to use and pretty much that risk that we're going to be taking on each one of the accounts i want to wish you a merry christmas with you and your family happy holidays and happy new year as well also i want to thank connie hill for answering those questions in the chat state uh and also remember that uh we don't have any class after this so i want you also after you do your homework to go out and enjoy your families okay i like you to do a bullish bounce with your family i want you to do a bullish breakout with your family and a moving average crossover with your family a little fun there
now also remember that with what we discussed it was done for example illustrative purposes only and also remember that i think the biggest takeaway from today is that jeez if we could kind of all be on the same page of the same page of the same page of the same page of the same page and see a repetitive process might actually start to get some confidence and if i actually we kind of hone in on five key strategies over 2025 i might actually know what i'm doing i might become dangerous okay like i might know what i'm doing now so that's the goal is to kind of be on the same page doesn't mean that you do that live but in paper i want us to practice together in the paper money account now remember with what we discussed all investments are going to be on the same page so we've been talking about investing involves risk and this has been the class on investor master series so um thank you so much wish you a great uh holidays see you back on january 2nd remember i post on x those links that you can also go back and watch over the break as well thank you so much take care bye.
