Anaphos

Buying breakouts & trying not to die by 1000 cuts

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

One thing I am doing better than last year is accepting the tradeoffs of doing things the way I am doing them. I currently wait for longer confirmation in price action leading to less tight entries but also less shakeouts. Questioning this after every trade that gave me a less tight entry because I waited and flipping around in execution strategy will do more harm than good.

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

Same here. For my hourly strategies I only look at the charts once an hourly candle has closed. For daily ones only at the end of the day. Caught myself randomly going down to 5min charts last August which led to me taking random decisions and hurting my performance quite a bit. Much better this way

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

@Peoplewish Changed my system to this as well this year. All the „work“ happens the night before. I don’t want to think during the trading day, just execute. Helps me a lot with focus and puts a hard quality gate into place what actually makes the list and whats just looking kinda nice

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

While I love the opportunity to be exposed to amazing traders on X, the main downside is having these narratives pushed on you. My main struggle there is with profit taking. Everyone talking about how extended something is from its 50SMA or whatever makes it harder for me to wait for my exit signal and not sell parts prematurely. Last year my $HYMC could have almost doubled my yearly return if I just had followed my rules on it instead of selling early

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

Todays action underlines the different market regime we are currently in. Recognizing this on day 1 came quite easy to me in Q4 last year, when the easy money environment was over, but then continuing to act on it even weeks later was harder. So far doing a much better job with cutting back trading and being way more selective $SPY $SPX $SOXX $QQQ

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

Today is a change in character. $SPY $SOXX $QQQ $IGV $IWM all taking sizeable hits. Reminds me a lot of Oct 10th last year where we had a similar change after the aggressive run of speculative names like quantum ($RGTI $QBTS) etc.
What is valuable is to keep this in mind a couple of sessions from now, even if we stabilize around these levels or go up again.
Easy money environment of the last weeks on the long side likely over or at least paused

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

My biggest breakthroughs always came after boring but very productive work like manually reviewing every single trade I made in the last 3 months and finding out what the winners and losers all had in common. This was the initial one I did early last year that told me to focus on only one setup back then and kicked off my first profitable year

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

Took a few swing stabs here after not doing anything the entire week. Starter size to test the water. Selective names are moving out of bases and semis overall still look constructive with lots of names in my watchlist $ACLS $ONTO $SILC

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

Highly agree with your points. When I started to focus on small caps, initially, I wanted to trade something that I could "always" trade (irrespectively of market environment). Now after ~2years of it I understand how important environment is (even in small caps) with my best months (Sep&Oct 25, May 26) coming from periods of general hot markets and my worst months (Nov&Dez 25) came after those exact periods ended.

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

@SixSigmaCapital Believe so. Already reduced the max amount of loss I am willing to take during the month and will be more selective with setups. The period directly after the Oct change in character last year was by far the worst environment for my system

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

SpaceX $SPCX IPO this Friday. 1.7T make it the highest IPO ever and translate to 50-120 times sales (depending on source/assumptions). What’s crazy is that even from the list of @saxena_puru of hottest IPOs, only $SNOW $CBRS $COIN and $RIVN are even remotely close in terms of size and valuation with $SNAP and $RBLX being honorable mentions. All of these have failed to make significant progress over the years.

[Puru Saxena @saxena_puru]

Moral of the story - do NOT chase hot IPOs

Year-1 average drawdown = 55%
Year-1 median drawdown = 54%

Table: Truist

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

To follow-up on this: here is the return distribution of the 2 small cap breakout strategies I trade. By far the worst performing month was last year Nov shortly after the character change in $SPY $SPX and after the Sep&Oct mania was over. Until the market shows me more clearly what it wants to do, I am stricter in the set-up quality I take and lower the max loss of the month I allow myself.

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

Today is a change in character. $SPY $SOXX $QQQ $IGV $IWM all taking sizeable hits. Reminds me a lot of Oct 10th last year where we had a similar change after the aggressive run of speculative names like quantum ($RGTI $QBTS) etc.
What is valuable is to keep this in mind a couple of sessions from now, even if we stabilize around these levels or go up again.
Easy money environment of the last weeks on the long side likely over or at least paused

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

@PeterLBrandt I have the same rule but on a daily basis. I never hold any trade in which I am red overnight. I might miss some moves because of this but it keeps my losses small and controllable

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

Today is a change in character. $SPY $SOXX $QQQ $IGV $IWM all taking sizeable hits. Reminds me a lot of Oct 10th last year where we had a similar change after the aggressive run of speculative names like quantum ($RGTI $QBTS) etc.
What is valuable is to keep this in mind a couple of sessions from now, even if we stabilize around these levels or go up again.
Easy money environment of the last weeks on the long side likely over or at least paused

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

@SmallCapSmarts I have a time series of my system returns of the last years. On days where I am under pressure I remind myself that it is insignificant in the long run as long as I keep executing on plan. The multi year view really puts things into perspective

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

The first finding of my swing trading research is the length of the base. In my smallcap playbook, I look for 3-10bar consolidations on the daily before entering with the average being around 5.

Looking through recent and historical swing breakouts so far makes me think I should focus on stocks that have made a sizable (100%+) move and then consolidated for 15-50 bars.

Here are some examples of what I am looking at:
$LITE Jan 2026: 700%+ move from lows and then 22 bar consolidation. AI Theme
$SNDK Jan 2026: 1000% move off lows and then 22 bar consolidation. Clear AI Leader
$AMPX Sep 2025: 400% move and then 36 bar consolidation. Broader AI theme (Batteries)

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

Want to systemize a large cap breakout approach to expand my playbook (as opposed to taking random set-ups in large caps like I did in May). However, the discovery requires a different approach compared to my small cap breakouts. In my small cap strategies, I have very restrictive filters what even enters my watchlist, so I can backtest it quite well by running those filters over years and looking at every single result. Even with the most restrictive criteria I could find for large cap breakouts so far, I get 20-100 scan results daily.

So instead I am building a dedicated chart database looking at the hottest stocks that broke out of bases in the last 18 months first and then going further back. Afterwards want to create a structured approach to these things in a playbook and then test it forward on small size.

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

@SimpleSwings was also looking at it. Looked great. I dont use undercuts but wait for the close of hourly bars in these types of set-ups. Leads me to miss some ones but a lot of the time also avoids false breakouts (like today)

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

I dont look intraday at my profitable positions where I use a close below the daily 10-SMA as a take profit method. I just quickly look at them shortly before the market closes to see if I should sell. This helps a lot with sticking to the sell rules and minimizes impulses I get to sell too early.
Case in point today: $PENG going from -7% to +1% while the overall market was tanking (except for semis $SOXX)

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

@ConnorJBates_ All of my big trading system improvements (parabolic filtering, a new setup using intraday timeframes etc) came from curiosity. Still need to make sure the curiosity does not lead to dilution of focus and execution away from my very profitable core to the „shiny new objects“

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

Enjoyed the rotation out of software $IGV back into semis $SOXX today as my system works best on stocks that already made big moves and are a bit extended. Was able to capture $TE and $VPG intraday while still holding my $PENG trailing the 10-day.

On the swing side, $SOLS and $AAOI are looking like they are breaking out of larger bases. Still early in the learning curve of this type of set-up but so far my chart database shows me that I should focus on names with longer (15+ days) consolidations rather than these ultra short term consolidations I trade in small cap breakouts

[Anaphos @AnaphosInvest]

@JLawStock If I had my current systematic selling rule last year, just 2 trades $TDUP and $HYMC (out of 200) would have accounted for 50% of the entire return of the year. Crazy asymetrical things can happen if you let winners run