Shoulda Woulda Coulda | Podcast Episode #421

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Hey, I’m Ryan Mallory and this is my Swing Trading the Stock Market podcast. I’m here to teach you how to trade in a complex, ever changing world of finance.

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Learn what it means to trade profitably and consistently, managing risk, avoiding the pitfalls of trading, and most importantly, to let those winners run wild.

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You can succeed at the stock market, and I’m ready to show you how. Hey everybody, this is Ryan Mallory with shareplanner.com’s Swing Trading the Stock Market.

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Today’s episode we’re going to talk about the Shoulderwood Akudas. And this is something that can really hamper a trader, not so much from a current trade, but reflecting on his past and then making bad decisions about his future trading.

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So we’re going to talk about the Shoulderwood Akudas.

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I got the inspiration for this episode from a guy in the Trading Block Discord.

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So this guy will give him a good Florida redneck name.

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I’m going to go with my Uncle Barry this episode.

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So Uncle Barry, but I’ll just call him Barry for this podcast episode.

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But Barry here, he asked me about GPS. That’s the Gap the store for those who who aren’t aware, but GPS asked me about what I thought about the stock.

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They had earnings later that afternoon.

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But I was really, I wasn’t judging it based off of the earnings. I was just giving them my opinion on the chart itself.

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Of course, I don’t trade through earnings. I think that’s one of the craziest things you can do from a swing trading standpoint because it can take a whole year of good trading of completely ruin it with one earnings report that you cannot predict.

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Now it’s different for long term investing ’cause you can’t long term invest unless you are willing to hold through earnings.

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But I have my own little things about long term investing that I do to try to minimize the impact of those earnings events.

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But any case, not getting into that for this podcast episode. The important part here is I was asked about GPS gap and I was asked about, you know, you know what I thought about it.

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It had a huge support level that it had been tested multiple times over the past year, held it each time and it had like a 10% bounce over the past couple days.

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Now that support level had been holding strong.

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However, I didn’t like how much it had run over the last day. So it was like up over 10%.

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And so for me, I’d like my average stop losses to be around like 4 or 5%. In this particular situation, you would have needed about a 20% return on the trade just to justify a 2 to one return.

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Now, if you’re wrong, you’re down 10% on the trade.

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And let’s say you’re putting 10% of your portfolio into the trade, you’re down 1% on your portfolio. That’s not a good thing.

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Now, granted, if it, if it runs up over 20%, yeah, you’re doing great. You’re up over 2% of your portfolio overall.

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So that’s a good thing.

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I give him my opinion.

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But he went ahead and bought the stock.

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And the thing rips over 25%.

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You should be pretty happy about that, right?

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I mean, I get 25%.

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I’m gonna be pretty happy about it.

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I should have bought more on my trade.

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And they’re really bad for trading. And they’re really bad for trading. He even said I got in, but I should have gotten in bigger. Oh well. And now he’s looking to get into more after it’s made a 25% move.

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And I don’t think that that’s a good idea. Once you’re starting to see those big kinds of moves where it’s gone up 10, 15, 20, 25% and you’re now willing to get in after those kinds of moves, that has FOMO written all over it.

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And so you don’t want to do that. You want to get in before it starts to make those big moves. You want to get in at the ground level, not necessarily getting in right when the bottom is timed,

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but when it starts to break out, when it comes out of a base that it’s formed. There’s a difference between trading a stock when it’s coming out of a base versus catching a

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falling knife where a stock’s in complete free fall and you’re hoping to get in right at the bottom, at the bottom tick, you want to avoid that mentality.

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But once it starts to break out, once it starts to bounce and pulls out of that base that it’s formed, whether it’s on an intraday or a daily chart, then you have a good opportunity there.

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But when it’s already run 25%, especially on a gap higher where it could easily come back and fill that gap, that’s high risk, that’s huge FOMO.

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So the SHOULDA coulda woulda’s, the shoulda had a bigger position. I shoulda had more shares of that stock leads to him wanting to have a little bit of a FOMO

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mentality of wanting to get into the stock even more so even though he got in at an incredible price the day prior.

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So I want to cover four points here with you today, and this revolves all around the shoulda woulda coulda’s.

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So I want to cover four points here with you today, and this revolves all around the shoulda woulda coulda’s.

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What the shoulda woulda coulda’s can do to you as a traitor. First, it can cause you to change your strategy.

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You do not want to be changing your strategy as result of what you think you shoulda coulda woulda done on a previous trait.

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You think to yourself, man, I shoulda added more to my position right there, man, I should have gone in longer.

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That’s a shoulda woulda coulda. You don’t want to be thinking like that because at the time, and even he admits to it, it’s that I

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had a lot going on is that I wasn’t able to add more. I was trying to deal with my job.

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I was trying to deal with a project that I was managing a major project. Well, that’s actually a good thing that you’ve made that decision that you based your position size

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on your life circumstances. I’ve talked about this all the time in previous podcasts where you have to be considerate to your

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life circumstances and the situation that you’re in when it comes to forming your trading strategy. That comes along with risk management, that comes along with position sizing, that comes along with

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the type of trading that you do, the, the frequency of your trading. You have to be considerate of your life circumstances.

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And here Barry was considerate of his life circumstances. But now after the fact, after he’s up 25%, he’s got to, should have, would have, could have.

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Now look, every, every winning trade that I have, I could technically say that I should have, would have, could have gone 200% long on that trade knowing how it would have panned out.

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But that doesn’t make it right. Hindsight can provide you some clarity on what you could have done, but not necessarily what you

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should have done. And knowing what you knew at that time, what you would have done.

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Trading has plenty of regrets not getting long enough on a earnings play that you didn’t even

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realize that there was earnings on the following day. And he admits that isn’t something to be regretful about. In fact, if anything, I would be counting my blessings that I was not caught in a bad situation

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where the earnings actually went the opposite way and I was down 25% on the trade and I didn’t know about the earnings going into it.

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That would’ve been far worse. So there should’ve, would’ve, could’ve You got to be careful with them.

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Yes, there’s always going to be that feeling like, man, I wish I would’ve added more. Like for instance, back in October, I started adding to my long term positions.

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I bought AMD, I bought shop, I bought hood, I bought tons of different long term investments for the portfolio and they ended up panning out way better than I ever expected.

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There’s like 20 or 30 of them that I did this with. And most of them, if you bought anything around that October time period of last year, most large

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cap stocks went higher. But there was a sense that I didn’t get necessarily full positions on these.

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I mean, I got pretty close, Some of them more fuller than the others. Others I didn’t, you know, quite add enough to it before the market just completely took off.

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And I didn’t want to foam them my way into some of these prices after they were already like 30 40% higher.

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But yeah, there was definitely some shoulda, woulda coulda’s. And then, you know, looking back on it, it’s easy to say to myself, man, when I get the buy signal,

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I need to be more aggressive about buying. But then in the same sense, I don’t think that’s necessarily the right thing either, is that I

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wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was adding to my positions as I was comfortable with.

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It was very incremental. It was very small each time, but I was adding to it.

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It did pan out. I made a lot of profits on it.

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But looking back, it’s easy to say that, man, I should have had, you know, huge positions in every one of these.

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I should have been 100% long, maybe even 200% long on those positions. That’s the feeling because I was so right about where I got into those things at.

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And so you do get some regrets. And then in the case of Barry, yeah, it’s easy to say to yourself, man, I wish I had way more shares

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than I was comfortable with knowing now how it turns out. But that’s the shoulda.

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Woulda could is trying to get you to change your strategy and you don’t wanna go down that route.

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And sometimes when I do these points, I kind of you go go into one point and also go into multiple other points that I plan on also covering.

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But nonetheless, the second point, what Barry did represented what he was comfortable with and the position size that he could tolerate.

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Now, I, I do think that all your position sizes from a swing trading standpoint should be similar. Now that’s just my personal opinion.

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I think that it carries a lot of weight. I think it for me personally, it’s proven to be wise because when you have different position sizes,

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one, you can have a smaller position size that can justify getting into a far way too volatile stock that’s not going to have a good reward risk ratio.

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The other thing is, is that you’re going to have different emotions, levels of emotions attached to each of those traits and you don’t want that either.

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You’re going to be like, man, I need this stock more so to work. If I had to choose between one stock work and the other not stock not work, and I’d rather it be

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this one than that one ’cause I have more money into it. So then you have more emotion, you have more investment in those traits.

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Now, I do believe in taking profits along the way, but that’s part of the trade that you set out on originally.

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But you wanna be careful of it’s just having different sizes, like, oh, I threw 5% at this, 120% at this, 110 there and 12 1/2 there.

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That’s just not showing a sense of consistent conviction with each and every one of your trades. It’s showing that in this one, I don’t have tons of conviction.

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This one here, I probably have misplaced conviction. You don’t wanna be that.

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All the trades should feel the same, but that doesn’t mean that you don’t change your position sizes from time to time.

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I’ve actually increased my, I’m about 12% on all of my trades and I can give or take a few tenths of a point, obviously, but by and large, it’s about 12%.

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And before it used to be 10%. Before that it used to be like 8 or 9%.

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Doesn’t necessarily mean I’m getting more risky. I’m just getting a little bit more comfortable with those position sizes.

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But with all that being said, your position size should represent what you’re comfortable with in terms of the risk that you’re taking with every trade that you make #3 it should’ve, would’ve,

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could’ve create the sense that you’re trying to make it big time off of 1 trade, as if there won’t be future winners for you and you’re trading as traders.

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We can’t just bank on it just coming down to 1 trade. Yes, you get a 25% gain.

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And there’s always that sense of like, if only I had more in play on that one.

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If you’re going to be a successful trader, you’re going to have a lot of winning trades.

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In fact, even if you’re the worst trader in the world, you’ll still have winners.

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If you’re blindly choosing stocks, you will have winners.

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that you have put in place the strategy that you will use to successfully manage those profits.

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time, you guys eat like you’re not going to have another meal.

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They hit that pantry like there won’t be food in it tomorrow.

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They don’t enjoy anything.

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And I know my parents probably said the same thing to me as a kid as well.

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Why are you eating so fast?

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My brother and I both, we’d eat the Whopper before my mom could even get the wrapper off of hers.

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They wanna charge you, like for the stinking cheese.

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I haven’t been to a BKI.

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I don’t even know if it’s that anymore.

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that it’s gonna be your last meal, or in your case, that it’s your last winning trade.

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You have a winning trade.

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Enjoy the winning trade.

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Just like what we talk about.

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Winner or loser, you move on to the next trade.

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What you should also move on to is swingtradingthestockmarket.com.

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I’ll also do a watch list review on the watch list.

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That’s pretty cool.

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that I’m following that I’m going to extract my setups from.

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Microsoft, you know the bunch.

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So it’s really cool.

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Check it out.

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That’ll take you to my shareplanner.com website.

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That’ll take you to my shareplanner.com website. So #4 when you’re getting a bit of the shoulda woulda coulda’s, ask yourself why didn’t you risk

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more? Why didn’t you add more to your position size?

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Was it because that was what you had set out for and that’s what you’ve always traded on every one of your trades?

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If so, then that’s good. You’re trading according to your plan, but if you did not trade according to your plan, then yeah,

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you probably do have a reason to be a little irritated at yourself. And then if you didn’t trade according to your plan and you under traded that position, why was it

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because it were you taking on too much risk and you knew it, then that has something not nothing to do with position size.

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And it has something to do with the kinds of stocks that you’re trading that you’re not trading things that are within your comfort zone.

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Like, you’re not going to see me trade Dogecoin or Sheba because I don’t have a comfort for that. I didn’t trade NFTS because I didn’t have a comfort level.

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I couldn’t even figure out what the heck NFTS were at the time. And they still, like, baffled me that people still find value in those things.

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And here’s a picture of a monkey. This is worth $1 million.

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OK, Whatever you say, boss. And in the case of Barry here, he was working a job, a very important job that he had to be

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extremely focused on, and he couldn’t risk letting a trade get in the way of him successfully performing his duties on the job.

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And that’s fine. You have to manage your trades and you have to have a trading strategy that accommodates for your

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lifestyle, for your job, and for what you’re doing between 9:30 and 4:00 PM every day, and the amount of research that you’re going to be able to do before and after the market open and close.

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So let’s wrap this up here. Number one, what we want to remember is the shoulda woulda Coulda’s cannot change your strategy

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going forward #2 when you’re having the show to what it could is and you’re questioning your position size on the trade that you had made and it was a successful trade.

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You have to remember that that position size was chosen for a reason. And why was it #3 you got to remember that you’re not trying to make it big off of 1 trade.

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That one trade is not going. One winning trade is not going to define your entire legacy as a trader.

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And #4 what was the reason for not risking more? Why did you not take on more of a position on that?

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And if you can do answer those four things, I think you’ll be in a better place for when you get the shoulda woulda coulda’s and that you can kind of just brush them off and move on to the next trade.

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Now in terms of my old fashioned of choice for this podcast episode, I think I just knocked over a cup in the process.

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Thankfully there was nothing in it, but I picked out Russell Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon. This is their single barrel.

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It’s 55% alcohol. That makes it like 110 proof. I’m a big fan of Russell Reserve. I think Russell reserve is a pretty good bourbon.

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I love Russell reserve. I, I love drinking it neat.

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So this is my first time actually making an old fashioned out of it. Sometimes I’ll go to restaurants.

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I have a particular restaurant here locally that I like to go to and they use a lot of old forester, not the not the like 1920 or 1910, but they’ll use like the the 100 proof.

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I think it’s just called old Forester 100 if I remember correctly. But here we have Russell Reserve Single Barrel, so it’s pretty good.

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I mean, I really like it a lot. It’s been a nice sip here while I’ve been recording this podcast.

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And I got to say, on a scale of zero to 10, I’m going to give it a 8.1. I think it was incredible.

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The only thing that kept me from giving it a little bit higher of a rating was the fact that it came across a little too strong with the ethanol on the finish.

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Now, as it diluted a little bit more, as the ICE diluted it, that ethanol went away. But initially you could taste the ethanol flavor.

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It’s really strong. There was a strong kick. It was very similar to the Evan Williams that I drink as my standard.

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But this one has just a little bit more kick. I liked it and it still held on to that sweetness.

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The only problem was is that ethanol finish at the very end I wasn’t a huge fan of, but once the the ice cube diluted a little bit, it kind of drowned out that ethanol flavor.

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But it’s still an incredible drink. If you enjoy this podcast episode, I would encourage you to leave me a 5 star review on whatever

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platform that you’re listening to me on. I appreciate those.

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And I do read the reviews just like I read the emails that you sent it to me. Nobody else is filtering them.

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I’m reading every single one of them that’s sent to me. So send them to me. ryan@shareplanner.com and I’ll try my very best as long as it’s not like a tax

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accountant question. I hate those because I don’t know much about taxes.

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I rely on my tax accountant to know those things. But outside of that, yeah, send me your questions, tell me your stories.

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I want to hear the back story, the the questions that you have, the problems that you face, and maybe we can figure out an answer on that.

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Plus check out swingtradingthestockmarket.com. Thank you guys and God bless.

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Thanks for listening to my podcast, Swing Trading the Stock Market. I’d like to encourage you to join me in the SharePlanner trading block where I navigate the stock

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If you have any questions, please feel free to e-mail me at ryan@shareplanner.com. All the best to you and I look forward to trading with you soon.