Jeff Bierman, Author at TheoTrade

The Number That Cost Short Sellers $450 Billion

August 3, 2026

Microsoft had a 29-point expected move going into its earnings report. The stock jumped 16%, its biggest day since October 2008, and added roughly $450 billion in market value. That is the largest single-day gain any stock has ever posted. A lot of traders sat short through it anyway, and some of them aren’t trading anymore. That’s not hindsight. The 29 was published. It was sitting right there for anybody who bothered to look, and it told you exactly what you were walking into. Most people never look. They pull up a chart instead, and I’m telling you the chart is worthless the second a company reports. One number decides whether you can carry a position through earnings, and it gives you three possible answers. Screw the chart. It’s useless on earnings. I don’t care what pattern you found or how clean the setup looked yesterday. A company reports and

This “Short Signal” Fakes Out Traders All the Time

August 1, 2026

Hey Trader, A stock runs up 80 points. So it’s over-extended, right? You short it because the chart looks finished. Extension proves nothing about direction. That guess carries unlimited risk above you. I ran that same play for years. I would look at a chart and go, “Oh, that just cannot go any higher.” That rule lives nowhere except your own head. You invent it because the number feels too big. Sandisk cured me of the habit. It added another 35 points after I had written it off, then closed the day right up there. I have made millions and lost millions in almost 40 years. The losses came from underestimating momentum. Everybody at Theo knows me as the short seller extraordinaire. I would take the short 100 times out of 100. I still will not touch the SMH here. Shorting a parabolic monthly MACD is out of your mind

How to Know WHEN to Sell a Winner

July 27, 2026

Hey Trader, I watched traders ride Micron from $300 to $800. With more than 200% in the bag, they used a reversal candle to take profits. They then watched Micron run another 500 points before it finally topped out. Now, I’m not saying they did anything wrong. But a lot of traders take profits early and hold losers into oblivion. Obviously, I advocate for the opposite. However, I’m not suggesting you do it without any framework or plan. Instead, I want to give you something that can help you determine when it’s time to ring the register. It’s a little something I like to call Momentum Duration. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of it before. It’s not a well-known concept. Yet, after today, you’ll understand how it can help you squeeze the most out of your trades and give you more certainty when you take profits. What Momentum Duration

The Mistake That Cost Me $4,600

July 25, 2026

Hey trader, About 25 years ago, I shorted 100 shares of Google after hours. It was up 45 points. I felt smart. Scott Sheridan closed my account right in front of me. I was down $4,600 with a margin call. He looked at me and asked what I was thinking. I had no honest answer. Tom Sosnoff sat 20 feet from me. Scott Sheridan sat right to my left. I had never defined my risk. That loss became my baptism into the one rule I trade by today. Define the risk first. Then make the trade. You can watch my setups fire live in the Genesis Cog Scanner. Yet, a signal only marks the entry point. The rest of this lesson covers the harder half: How I decide whether to take the trade at all. Why the risk comes before the trade I have been in this business 40 years.

Why I Never Take a Big Loss

July 23, 2026

Hello trader, Markets fall about 1.5x faster than they rise. Bad news travels faster than good news, and fear runs stronger than greed. One oversized position can erase months of gains in a single session. That is the math working against you every day. The algorithms will not rescue you. This market takes your money fast the moment you get careless. That’s why I have one rule above every other: My job is not to lose money. At the end of the day, it’s not about being a hero or who made the most money. It’s about making “enough” money. Sure, it’s great to have extra cash in retirement. But, it’s more important to have a retirement than the largest accounts amongst your friends. I know this advice is simple, common, and also quite hard to adhere to. So, let me give you a clean example. I’ll explain the exact

Why Two People in the Same Stock Have Different Outcomes

July 20, 2026

Hey trader, I want to share a tale of two traders, both who bought the same stock.. The first bought while the slope was parabolic. He got rich so fast he offered to buy drinks at the bar. The second bought after that slope rolled into a waterfall. He handed back everything he made in a couple of days. It was the same company and the same trade. BUT…the slopes ran opposite. The slope decided both outcomes. The stock itself never did. I have taught this for years: You get rich or poor off the slope. The algorithms are programmed to buy slopes or sell slopes. If you fight the slope, you will lose money. This lesson is about that slope. It’s one of the key ingredients in the Genesis Cog Scanner and strategy. And, today, I’m about to show you precisely why. Reading the Slope You can read slopes

Why Everyone is Wrong About Oscillators

July 18, 2026

Hey trader, I have sat in an airport with the market open and real money on the line. The ThinkorSwim platform crashed. Every chart I lean on went dark. I could have traded off my phone. Plenty of people do. I refused. I will not trade off my Samsung. If I cannot see it, I will not trade it. Trading without an oscillator is like flying an airplane without instruments. That instrument is my eyes and ears. I have watched a trader brag at the bar about being up 80 points. Ten minutes later his margin call landed. He never checked his gauges. The oscillator was telling him to get out. Today I want to slow you down and hand you that same instrument. Because most people don’t actually understand how to use it. They assume it predicts the future. That’s not how it works. That’s why I’ll dig into

The Concept Most Traders Know But Don’t Understand

July 15, 2026

Hey trader, IBM stock is dead money. The company warned about delays, something I flagged in my soapbox sermon yesterday. Yesterday proved me right in real time. The charts gave no warning at all. A single word in the company’s outlook caused the pain. You see, valuation risk hides where you least expect it. A stock can be upgraded one day and hammered the next. Fortunately, I’m here to teach you how to avoid this buzzasaw. The term “multiple compression” gets thrown around a lot. The average trader understands what it is but not why it happens. That all changes today. What Multiple Compression Actually Is A multiple is the price you pay for every dollar a company earns. A stock at 25 times earnings means you hand over 25 dollars for each dollar of profit. Compression happens when that number shrinks. The earnings can hold steady while the multiple

Why I Could Quit Charts Tomorrow

July 13, 2026

Hey trader, There is a photograph on the seventh floor at DePaul University. A professor points at one chart. Students pass that image on both sides on the way to class. The chart – the CAPM model. Every finance student on earth must know it to earn a degree. I have taught it for ten years across two universities. It is the centerpiece of everything I do as a former hedge fund manager. You see, charts only give you timing. They never show you what a company is truly worth. The CAPM model tells me when a stock is a gift. It also warns me when a stock is a trap. The gap between price and value has a name – arbitrage. And when you understand how to read it, you learn to stop overpaying for things that blow up. Now, there are a lot of misconceptions about the model.

The Two Prices Hiding In Every Stock You Own

July 11, 2026

Hey trader, Every stock on your screen carries two prices at once. The screen only ever shows you one of them. That flashing number is market value. It is perception, sentiment, and noise dressed up as truth. Underneath it sits a second price called intrinsic value. That price is what the company is actually worth. I have made my living in the space between those two prices for 39 years. You have been trained to watch the flashing number and react to every tick. That habit turns a temporary discount into a reason to sell in fear. When the two prices drift apart, the market hands you an arbitrage. You buy the discount and wait for the gap to close. By the end of this piece, you will read any stock you own through both prices. You will know whether a drop is danger or a gift. I built the

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09.00	Don Kaufman \| Pre-Market Prep \| FREE SESSION 09.20 09.30 Don Kaufman \| Early volatility 09.20 10.30 Jeff Bierman \| Market structure 10.30 11.30 Brandon Chapman \| Ghost Hour 11.30 12.30 Gianni Di Poce \| Macro overview 12.30 13.15 Elizabeth \| Price Action 13.15 14.00
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14.00	Corey Rosenbloom \| Options tactics 14.00 15.00
15.00	Blake Young \| Market wrap 15.00 16.00

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