Day 15: Daily P/L - $21.25 , overall + $.74. Today...
# active-tradings
sparse-artist-42524
08/21/2025, 8:14 PMDay 15: Daily P/L - $21.25 , overall + $.74. Today the volume was mostly even so i was looking through for high value moves and because i am back around break even i was even stricter with my stops, but noticed they would almost always get taken out if they were nearby, way beyond just chance. I then remembered what Jim Cramer was saying in the interview and like Dovid mentioned, i put what he was saying into AI and what my experience was. AI explained the manipulation tactics that big money uses and i think this is what i was perceiving as random but is actually full on manipulation. I believe this is what makes this seem like gambling whenever you day trade. This also reminded me i have been not follow one rule from a lot of my classes, and that was to use 2 times ATR ( average true range ) as the stop loss, i have been much stricter but now i believe i understand why my stops always get taken out, and why i was successful using the sleeper hold without stops originally in Fidelity. This has been puzzling me because in my class at NYIF and in the mainstream world, they proclaim the "balanced market theory" which is that when a new event or news piece comes out the market then balances out based on that, i now realize that is gaslighting and propaganda from the industry as the "market insiders theory" makes way more sense and i actually see play out in more ways than i could explain here. So to move forward i am going to use larger stop loss gaps, but reduce the share size i am trading with to control risk until i can get consistent positive results. I will post some of the AI response in a thread here and the long form video i found of Jim Cramer, definitely worth the full watch if you do any trading yourself.
sparse-artist-42524
08/21/2025, 8:15 PMCHAT GPT Response
You’re describing classic *microstructure games*—how big players can shove price around in the short term to trigger other people’s orders, then trade the snap-back. I’ll translate the phrases and then show you how this hits retail stops and what to do about it.
What “take, hit; bid and offer” means (plain English)
• “Take” the offer = buy aggressively at the ask (you cross the spread).
• “Hit” the bid = sell aggressively at the bid.
• Repeating “take and hit, take and hit” means pushing price back and forth with market orders to make it look like momentum is starting or failing, and to flush out stops on both sides.
• “Bid and offer, bid and offer” (often said fast) = post quotes on both sides and nudge them around to steer the tape and the order book.
Some of this is just aggressive execution. But placing orders to fool others (e.g., spoofing—showing big orders you plan to cancel to fake pressure) is illegal. The line is intent.
The play they run (step-by-step)
1. Identify where retail stops sit.
2. Obvious swing highs/lows, round numbers (e.g., 100.00), yesterday’s high/low, premarket high/low. Many traders put stops just beyond those.
3. Nudge price into the stop pocket.
4. In thin moments (premarket, midday), it doesn’t take much to lift the offer a few ticks or hit the bid a few ticks. If they push price through an obvious level, clustered stop orders fire.
5. Stops become market orders.
6. When your protective stop is triggered, you’re forced to buy high (if you were short) or sell low (if you were long). That adds fuel in the direction of the shove.
7. They fade it.
8. Once the stops are flushed and the forced orders slow down, there’s no more “fuel.” The big player then trades the other way (the fade) and captures the reversal—often right where retail got forced out.
9. Repeat around the next obvious level.
10. “Take and hit, take and hit” = ping the book, trigger flows, then fade.
Why your tight stops keep getting tagged
• You’re stopping out where everyone else is. Obvious levels = stop clusters.
• Noise vs. structure. Your stop is inside the “noise zone,” not beyond the true boundary of the move.
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