This reader needs JavaScript for search, threads and tags. Recent tweets from @SmallCapSmarts:
- 2026-10-08 — If I end up making a trading course, what format would you prefer? ↗
- 2026-10-07 — Based on the feedback, a few things I want to address:
1. “You blew up, so now you sell courses. Nobody sells what actually works.”
Fair enough. I’m actually doing pretty well. Maybe a bit bored lately. If I decide to do this, I’ll make my kinfo public. It’ll be a continuation of the accounts I’ve posted before, so it’ll be very easy to verify that I didn’t conveniently skip anything.
Also, I don’t plan to make most of my money from small caps long term, so sharing some of what I know there isn’t exactly sacrificing my future income.
2. A lot of shorts are worried I’ll bring more competition into the niche, take locates, and hurt liquidity.
That’s a completely valid concern.
3. I got a lot of DMs, and there’s clearly a real struggle out there. But most of it doesn’t come from not knowing the exact setup or secret algo.
It comes from weak fundamentals: how to research strategies, test them properly, understand why they work, manage risk, build tooling, and adapt when the market changes.
If I simply publish a strategy that works today, it’ll eventually get arbitraged away (probably much faster once it’s public) and people are back to square one.
So if I do this, it’ll probably be much lower-ticket than I planned, and it won’t be a full reveal of my current algos.
The focus will be on strategy/algo development, robust examples that are harder to crowd, risk management, research process, and tooling.
The goal will be to make someone a better trader who can keep finding edges, not give them one edge with an expiration date.
I still probably won’t have the time or energy to actually do this, but I like the idea and think it could be genuinely useful. ↗
- 2026-10-07 — All these spikes should be investigated and busted. Unfortunately, the smaller ones where MMs and other connected players didn’t get hit might just fly under the radar.
$BIYA ↗
- 2026-10-07 — $BIYA trades above 3.05 between 8:20 - 8:23 canceled
Check your positions ↗
- 2026-10-07 — Serious question: did anyone get force liquidated by their broker in $BIYA? If so, please DM me. ↗
- 2026-10-07 — $BIYA endless opportunities in small caps.
Can’t wait to add this setup to my course ↗
- 2026-10-06 — Been thinking about putting everything I’ve learned trading small caps into one uber edge-leak course, then calling it a day here and moving on to investing.
Not sure I’ll actually do it since I still make good money in SCs, but curious would anyone actually want this, and what would you pay? ↗
- 2026-10-06 — Tech IPOs aren’t capital raises anymore, they’re engineered exit liquidity for VCs.
The 10x growth stays private, and public small/mid-cap tech is just second-tier leftovers.
Solid watch on the topic:
https://youtu.be/roe3SgezmmU?si=I18OFS87IHdRbmlQ ↗
- 2026-10-05 — Are models actually getting better?
Feels like they use more tokens, take longer to answer, and still miss the point way too often.
Starting to wonder if we’re just hitting the limits of high-quality data. ↗
- 2026-10-01 — “You need to blow up at least 69 times before you make it"
Nah. You can make it without being a degen.
Better odds of keeping the money too, instead of going quiet or selling courses after supposedly making 8–9 figs. ↗
- 2026-09-30 — Imagine T-bills are yielding 12%.
Would you even bother trading?
$TLT $BIL $BILS ↗
- 2026-09-30 — Glad to see the long hyperscalpers are still killing it. Makes sense with how insanely crowded the short side of small caps has become, exploiting shorts is the trade.
Also funny how the hyperscalpers quietly went under the radar printing money while short sellers can’t go 5 minutes without bragging about P&L.
Tells you a lot about who the real pros are. ↗
- 2026-09-29 — Personally leaning toward just buying calls. Feels like this could reverse hard on a single headline, and there’s no realistic way to time that. ↗
- 2026-09-29 — Are we buying the $TLT panic if this accelerates here?
If so, what's the best way to execute it? $TLT calls, $TMF, or Treasury futures etc? ↗
- 2026-09-28 — God, I'm old. LOL #My9Games ↗
- 2026-09-27 — After some great discussions here, I’m changing how I think about my investment portfolio.
Moving away from purely passive and toward more active long-term investing.
The basic idea: own individual assets, hold the winners for years without realizing gains, harvest the losers, and try to keep whatever gains I do realize in LTCG territory.
Basically trying to compound as much as possible without constantly creating a tax bill + optimizing taxes on trading.
The interesting part is you can actually backtest and quantify a lot of this, so I’m going pretty deep down that rabbit hole now.
Will probably post more of the research/trades/ideas here. Partly to share, but also because there are some seriously good investing minds on fintwit and the feedback is valuable. ↗
- 2026-09-26 — Finally found some real edge.
Don’t tell anyone. ↗
- 2026-09-25 — Another thing I’ve realized over time: fixed income investments works much better for me than passive equities.
Having something boring and predictable on one side makes it much easier to deal with the stress and volatility of trading on the other.
So I’m increasingly liking the barbell approach, especially with rates where they are globally. ↗
- 2026-09-25 — I know I should invest the capital I’m not using for trading.
Problem is as a trader holding $SPY $VOO etc through every market phase is excruciating. Give me a few years of chop and I know I’ll start messing with it.
Best answer I know is own something illiquid or locked up by design.
Then again, I’ve been so illiquid at some point because of that before that I had to get a job lol.
How do you guys do it? ↗
- 2026-09-16 — The best small-cap trading setup by far ↗
- 2026-09-11 — This is how you approach alpha research.
You’re never sure something will keep working going forward, but knowing why your strategy works is key.
It helps you recognize when the edge is gone and it’s time to stop. ↗
- 2026-09-08 — Small caps are dead, my options portfolio pretty much runs itself, so I’ve decided to retire until further notice. ↗
- 2026-08-31 — What’s the smartest way to get some long exposure to oil for the next 6–12 months?
$USO ↗
- 2026-08-27 — Sold some. Gotta respect the decay. ↗
- 2026-08-27 — Went in heavy across a bunch of strikes on $NVDA
Super cheap leverage thanks to the low IV. And I’m still risking only about 1/2 of what I can lose on a really bad small-cap short lol ↗
- 2026-08-27 — Between the risk of getting sued by every garbage small cap I short, getting steamrolled by China linked scams in premarket or endless halt fests rth, and paying each broker the equivalent of an average American salary for seemingly imaginary locates of questionable legality, I’m happily switching to large caps ASAP.
Only problem: I want more capital.
So, what’s the play for raising more capital? ↗
- 2026-08-25 — And yeah, in the age of AI, just ask it to backtest what your favorite guru is preaching. You’ll most likely be very disappointed with the results. ↗
- 2026-08-25 — I’ve tried pretty much all the big small-cap/mid-cap discords and chatrooms while scouting for alpha, and I’ve seen a ton of courses. Almost all of it felt like a complete waste of time and money.
I genuinely think maybe 5–10% of the content has any real value, it's basically glossary terms, hindsight, and stuff you could learn for free.
And some are just blatant scammers selling some illusion of success /knowledge to people who don’t know enough yet to recognize it.
There are a few exceptions, but they usually require such a specific setup, skill set, and level of experience that 95% of people will probably blow up before they ever get there.
Pretty sad picture tbh, especially now that most of the easy statistical edge is gone. ↗
- 2026-08-24 — Glad to see that, with the predatory naked short selling algos finally gone, deeply undervalued companies like $DAIC can now trade in an efficient market and achieve fair price discovery thanks to the exceptional skill of small cap long term investors.
Aug 14, 2026
"Nasdaq’s staff had determined to delist the Company’s common stock" ↗
- 2026-08-23 — Good news! According to Ross, the predatory naked short-selling algos have left small caps since May, so everything can finally go up again.
Green light to go long everything! 🚀🤪
Just don’t naked short or you’ll blow up!!!! $ZJYL $XHG
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3TQJxaDZus ↗
- 2026-08-19 — Good thing I excluded all the China scams.
Now there’s nothing left that can black-swan me…oh wait
$ZSTK ↗
- 2026-08-18 — You gotta listen when the founding father of small cap shorting speaks. ↗
- 2026-08-18 — Algo trading idea generation has probably been the worst use case for AI I’ve tried.
Credit to the good algo traders for keeping their actual ideas off the internet.
At the end of the day, these are just massive models trained on existing data. If the real edges were never published, there’s nothing for them to learn from.
Still no real intelligence there. ↗
- 2026-08-17 — Are you ready to trade Chinese rigs from 9 PM to 4 AM?
This is gonna be a serious mess.
Bye bye, backtests and bots. ↗
- 2026-08-17 — Somehow I find making money going long much more deeply satisfying than shorting.
First, I can use multiples of the size I can on shorts.
Second, I get to help squeeze other shorts
$WETO ↗
- 2026-08-13 — $SMCI absolutely the best continuation earnings play so far this season. ↗
- 2026-08-13 — $XHG is pretty much the main reason I’ve been talking about longing small caps lately.
If moves like this are possible, you can’t scale shit on the short side.
Needless to say, the long side is so positively skewed now that the EV starts looking pretty impressive. ↗
- 2026-08-12 — Who are the best traders to learn small cap longs from?
Looking for people with a real, repeatable process who don’t have a room following their signals to dump into. ↗
- 2026-08-12 — Locate prices being obnoxiously high was at least bearable when these things still faded a little.
Now you get a massive HTB bill on top of the outsized China scam losses. Really challenging, to say the least.
This game has gotten really hard to beat.
$OFAL ↗
- 2026-08-11 — $PLAG you’re telling me this is organic price action?
This thing is basically begging to get T12’d
Be careful out there. ↗
- 2026-08-11 — Why are @DilutionTracker @ASKedgar @finviz etc country classifications so off lately?
$PLAG is a perfect example. Listed as USA, while the company itself says it has significant operations in mainland China.
Really bad at catching these hidden Chinese operators.
@IBKR has no problem with $PLAG identification for example ↗
- 2026-08-05 — We're not small cap traders anymore.
We're more like professional China scam survivors now.
$YXT $JLHL $INLF $RITR ↗
- 2026-08-04 — Naked short sellers at it again. Some familiar names.
Apparently only the company should be allowed to sell unlimited shares into retail. ↗
- 2026-08-04 — Crazy stuff going on in some strategies.
Have you ever seen a strategy's out-of-sample live performance exceed its backtest? ↗
- 2026-08-03 — $AMZN
It's unbelievable how attractively priced large-cap call options can be. Built a very leveraged position in $AMZN largely because IV was only ~30%
Took half off today. Letting the rest ride into expiration. ↗
- 2026-08-03 — One thing I've noticed: most of the obvious LARPers claim to make money in futures, crypto, or options.
The small-cap crowd is surprisingly genuine.
The catch is survivorship bias, you mostly end up seeing small cap shorts who survived all the endless rigs and black swans. ↗
- 2026-08-03 — There are basically 3 levels of fintwit LARPing:
1. Fake everything chatGPT/photoshopped P&Ls, rental lambos, fake lifestyles, and a $497 course.
2. Real breakeven/losing traders who only post winners, quietly bury the losers, and monetize selling vague discretionary "edge"
3. The most fascinating one: people who don't sell anything and still pretend to be someone they're not. Pure recreational LARPing for the dopamine. ↗
- 2026-08-03 — Hit my small-cap P&L target for the year last month.
Now comes the hard part: convincing myself not to shut it down and focus on large caps instead.
Instead, I’ll probably keep donating to locate providers and surviving the inevitable squeeze cycles that limit both long-term growth and sanity.
At what point do you walk away from a strategy that’s still profitable, but no longer scalable? ↗
- 2026-08-02 — @eschunk8 @ChrisCamillo Oh nice, agree, amzn is my biggest position right now ↗
- 2026-07-31 — $FCUV has to be close to a record.
A supposedly 0.62M float traded over $1B today, roughly 140x float rotation. ↗
- 2026-07-30 — $CYCU just an all-day short trap.
Absolutely diabolical for a 10M float.
And not a single Chinese name in the filings. ↗
- 2026-07-29 — All the course sellers are posting "day in the life" videos lately. Lambos, private jets, clubs, travel etc
Want to know what real traders mostly do?
They wake up, walk into another room, and spend the next 10–12 hours there.
If they work in an office, add another 1–2 hours for commuting and stuff.
That's mostly it. ↗
- 2026-07-29 — Not looking good for $TLT
If this continues, Chinese scams might be the only stocks going up. ↗
- 2026-07-29 — Meh ↗
- 2026-07-29 — Ok, I'm in ↗
- 2026-07-28 — $STKH 3d printed steaks. Seriously.
Feels like we're getting one of these every day now.
And this one isn't even Chinese... ↗
- 2026-07-28 — Anyone dip buying $SNDK?
Or do we have to wait until the close to find out who was actually in? ↗
- 2026-07-27 — $FIEE country: US?
Don't think so.
If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck. ↗
- 2026-07-27 — Looking back, I really wish I'd bought some of the cars I wanted when I had the chance instead of trying to be "reasonable"
The funny thing is, buying what you truly enjoy isn't necessarily financially irresponsible. If your taste happens to overlap with what the market loves, you might end up making money while enjoying the ride.
This sat at around $200k for ages. ↗
- 2026-07-23 — 214 stocks are traded under 5m mcap right now, and some regularly have HUGE daily volume ↗
- 2026-07-23 — Looks like we’re headed toward a market where only the Chinese riggers are left. They’ve always been good at faking market caps.
Love it or hate it, they’re better at this game than 99% of profitable short sellers. Not someone I’m too excited to play with.
Eventually, Chinese small caps gonna get banned too, so this niche might be cooked for good.
Hope y’all made the most of it while it lasted. ↗
- 2026-07-23 — Of course I made money going long here, but lost in my short acccounts. Convinetly not showing the losing side is how many of your favourite gurus are always right ↗
- 2026-07-22 — What’s your bet?
Did I make money today, or not?
$ZCMD ↗
- 2026-07-22 — $ZCMD
Chinese scammers really reached a new milestone today.
$90M (!!!) of what looked like wash trading just to try and pull a $ZJYL on every short seller who jumped in thinking it was liquid and safe. ↗
- 2026-07-22 — No locates, no squeeze.
That’s the first axiom of small-cap trading. ↗
- 2026-07-21 — One $ZYBT could've been a black swan.
Now we get another +1000% runner $CPHI the very next day, plus a bunch of smaller ones
China is back!!! 🇨🇳🔥
Shorts, get ready to give back everything you made over the last few weeks.
p.s. that's what you get for posting too many winning screenshots😄 ↗
- 2026-07-21 — Finally, some relative strength in crypto ↗
- 2026-07-20 — $ZYBT +1200%
Think that's enough to bring some interest back to small caps?
Or is it just another one off Chinese rig? ↗
- 2026-07-20 — Traders, when do you usually take a vacation away from the markets? ↗
- 2026-07-19 — Just watched The Odyssey.
Absolute masterpiece.
Like with everything on Twitter, make up your own mind. ↗
- 2026-07-18 — You know what this means, right?
If your edge is just drawing lines on TradingView, you’re basically a mainstream gambler. ↗
- 2026-07-18 — After reading small caps twitter, you’d think it’s the softest game to make money in.
Especially if you came from poker, where even beginners now understand basic statistics and probability.
Unfortunately, those aren’t the people you’re mostly playing against.
Once you trade with size, you’re competing against riggers, HFT firms, and greedy locate providers. Those are your real opponents. ↗
- 2026-07-17 — Looks like a "free money trade" btw. $PSNYW a June 2027 warrant with a $345 post-split conversion price printed ~ $39 while PSNY’s day high was only ~ $18. ↗
- 2026-07-17 — $PSNYW $3 -> $39
Seems like bored SC traders started reaching for illiquid junk.
This is exactly the kind of thing you have to be prepared for, shorts starved for opportunities and liquidity this thin, I wouldn't be surprised if we see more of these. ↗
- 2026-07-16 — This is the top 1Y account on Kinfo now.
Probably my favorite.
Why?
Because he didn't hide his drawdown history.
Unlike 90% of the "top traders" selling courses and flexing on X, he shows the full equity curve not just the good years. ↗
- 2026-07-09 — I see some people are missing the point.
This isn't about locates being expensive. It's about providers displaying and charging economically infeasible locate fees.
Two very different issues. ↗
- 2026-07-09 — Honestly, blacklisting China is not enough anymore.
You have to go through every small cap you trade, vet it manually, and only trade from an approved list. ↗
- 2026-07-09 — MUST READ FOR EVERY SHORT SELLER
The $INHD draft complaint is absolutely insane. A masterclass in how a float can be weaponized using a regulatory halt.
TL;DR:
A criminal network allegedly spearheaded by the OFAC sanctioned Prince Holding Group (a Cambodian transnational criminal organization) secretly acquired control of Texas-based, Nasdaq-listed Inno Holdings Inc. $INHD
They fired the US board, management, and auditors, replaced them with scheme-affiliated personnel + a Singapore auditor, and moved operations to Hong Kong to dodge US regulatory oversight.
Using offshore shell companies, they allegedly cornered the tiny float. On June 8, 2026, they spun up 278M+ shares in artificial volume out of just ~410k freely tradable shares, squeezing the price from $1.11 to $39.49.
Weaponized Halt: The chaos triggered a Nasdaq T12 halt. The defendants are allegedly withholding info from Nasdaq to prolong the halt, keeping shorts completely trapped.
Extortionate Fees: Since they control the borrow, they are bleeding trapped shorts with interest rates between 600% and 3,500% annually.
Offshore Flight: Millions in forced daily borrow fees are being funneled directly offshore to an OFAC-sanctioned syndicate.
Make your own conclusions who youre trading against shorting small caps. ↗
- 2026-07-09 — I know people here like to post them this way.
$JLHL ↗
- 2026-07-09 — We really need to talk about locate prices at 20-30%+ of the stock price.
Nobody rational is intentionally paying that.
Whether that’s bad design, lack of controls, or something worse, it deserves scrutiny.
I would not be surprised if this eventually gets legal or regulatory attention. ↗
- 2026-07-06 — Let’s keep it simple: SC short traders don’t just often lack understanding, many of them are simply borrowing against their own future blow-ups.
Long traders are the true masters of small caps. ↗
- 2026-07-05 — If you had to guess the most affluent person on small-cap FinTwit, who would you pick?
I’m definitely not looking at traders. Most “I made $100M shorting small caps” stories are peak-equity "screenshots" that conveniently skip the following drawdowns, blowups, taxes, and perpetual borrow fees etc.
My guess: @timothysykes or @WarriorTrading
Second guess: maybe some brokerage owners or borrow providers. I just don’t know if any of them actually post here. ↗
- 2026-07-03 — I honestly don’t see a problem with anyone selling a service, as long as they’re not lying or pretending to be someone they’re not.
Faking being a profitable trader, frontrunning followers, selling fake PnL, hiding loses etc. yeah that’s different.
Everything else can be considered some form of education.
That said, I’ve personally never gotten real value from any paid room, trading course, or subscription.
I’ve gotten a lot of value from paying for software engineering, quantitative, and finance education though. ↗
- 2026-07-02 — If I were making mid-six figures + a month, I’d never sell a subscription or a discord
Oh wait, I don’t sell either. ↗
- 2026-07-01 — You might not like Lance, but some of the things he talks about are very true.
For all the short sellers coming off a hot month, this one is worth watching (at 2x of course)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-3owTiHmhw ↗
- 2026-06-30 — Here we go ↗
- 2026-06-30 — After reading smallcap short monthly reviews, it's obvious we're in for more pain.
We lost some whales in May and early June, but new ones always emerge.
Small fish grow bigger, attract more fish, then all get scooped up by whale trawlers from China and Bermuda. ↗
- 2026-06-30 — Probably the most valuable skill I’ve seen in trading is the ability to connect with people and ask good questions.
You’d be surprised how much edge comes from private conversations. Some of the biggest insights you’ll ever get never make it to X, youtube, or discord.
I’ve met people who weren’t particularly strong at probability, statistics, or quantitative thinking, yet still became successful because they could pick up the phone, call a portfolio manager or trader who had already mastered a strategy, and get most of the playbook directly from the source. ↗
- 2026-06-26 — Definitely don’t start with data.
After all, you can’t erode an edge, if you can’t explain it in simple terms, backtest it, and support it with data.
That said, you can still be hugely profitable regardless I guess. ↗
- 2026-06-26 — https://youtu.be/iE7nQWo1c74?si=dLP-Z6pEYkXISV6h ↗
- 2026-06-26 — Surprised people are still hyperscalping.
Thought they killed that edge long ago.
Anyway, enjoy.
Full Hyper-Scalping Guide (From A-Z) ↗
- 2026-06-24 — $PLSM who the hell is getting squeezed here?
Did anyone actually get locates, or are these just organic buyers? ↗
- 2026-06-23 — Finished the latest New Market Wizards.
Opposite to the usual core ideas of the series: keep losses small, manage risk, let time compound good decisions and risk management this book felt different. Very different.
Aside from a few semi-institutional traders a big chunk of the traders seemed to make their serious money shorting small caps.
Main takeaways from that group:
1) Go full margin whenever possible
2) Add to winners
3) Try not to stop out or get margin called
4) If you do get margin called, ask/borrow for another account
5) Keep scaling, adding, pyramiding aggressively.
6) Congrats, you’re a Market Wizard
7) Occasionally eat an 8–9 figure drawdown, sometimes 80–90% of your capital
Honestly, I’m a bit disappointed.
Interesting read overall, and I liked some of the parts not related to small caps, and how some small cap traders transitioned to other markets eventually but I’m probably not going to aim for “New Market Wizards” status. ↗
- 2026-06-17 — Nothing beats waking up to 18 “no locates” messages and a beautiful P/L like this.
God, I hate small caps.
I genuinely don’t think there’s another market I could hate this much.
Gotta adapt. ↗
- 2026-06-17 — Looks like small caps are back to my favorite cycle:
No locates for anything that fades, just enough locates to max-loss every squeezer.
Chinese scammers really mastered this game.
At this point, the only solution left might be to blacklist the whole region: China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, Singapore, etc ↗
- 2026-06-16 — I’m honestly not sure what’s going on with $SPCX
The plan was a slow grind up as ETFs eventually funneled this into y’alls 401ks, but now I’m not even sure.
A $2.5 trillion company trading like some low-float trash IPO. ↗
- 2026-06-14 — Need some travel ideas.
Just got back to Texas and I already can’t handle the idea of four more months of this heat and humidity.
Looking for a EU destination near the sea, with a tz not too far from NY.
Spain seems to have the highest edge density per square meter now. I love Mallorca and have been three times, but open to other ideas. ↗
- 2026-06-12 — I actually have zero research on trading the first day of an IPO, but there clearly seems to be an edge there.
Other than trying to get allocated shares in the early rounds, what do people usually trade? What are the common strategies around IPO day?
$SPCX ↗
- 2026-06-11 — Looks like small caps are shifting from “everything squeezes 500%” cycle to the “locates cost 10% of the stock price” cycle.
Different type of pain, same circus. ↗
- 2026-06-10 — After some quick poolside analysis, I still don’t see much evidence that PDT removal itself has changed anything yet.
If anything, it looks more like China-based names are being pushed by the usual players, with PDT removal used as a convenient story.
Maybe the goal is to attract more U.S. retail demand around this dynamic, then sell billions into it post-PDT.
Pure speculation, obviously. ↗
- 2026-06-08 — Most fortunate vacation timing ever.
Wtf is going on in small caps?
$INHD ↗
- 2026-06-07 — Also, pretty excited to find out there’s a Volume 2 focused entirely on hedge fund managers coming next year! ↗
- 2026-06-07 — I started listening to The New Market Wizards on a flight.
I like it so far, but it feels like almost everyone in that book made money shorting small caps at some point.
It’s getting even more crowded soon. ↗
- 2026-06-06 — As expected, PDT removal has been a nothing burger so far.
It all depends on liquidity flows, and the major market correction turned out to be a much more important factor.
A bunch of $2k accounts getting extra intraday trades doesn't matter all that much. ↗
- 2026-06-05 — You guys in small caps really need to understand variance.
It’s honestly funny watching people cry about red days, and even funnier watching them flex green days while trying to lecture others who had a couple of reds.
Those of you with a serious poker background probably don’t need this explained.
I have multiple accounts, each running a bot with a different approach. Often, one is down today or this week while another is up. Does that mean the one that’s up is better at adapting, or just better overall? No. Does the one that’s down need to adapt? Probably not. They all crush it long term.
Same goes for traders. In the end, the best trader is the one who makes the most money without blowing up, not the one who had the most green days. ↗
- 2026-06-04 — Meh, didn't like how it bottomed. No need to pay theta when you're not sure about the direction. ↗
- 2026-06-04 — Is PDT dead already?
Are we good to start buying everything and wait for noob short sellers to blow up en masse?
$STI ↗
- 2026-06-04 — It's going to be funny when traders realize we've all been massively subsidized to use really good LLMs.
Not sure many people are actually ready to pay what they really cost.
In some cases, hiring a human developer might be cheaper. ↗
- 2026-06-04 — Not predicting it, just planning for it.
If crypto has a real panic event, I have limit orders waiting in the $800–1,200 area on $ETH ↗
- 2026-06-03 — $MRVL puts LET GO!!!
No locates required, liquid options, defined risk.
What other overextended names are out there? ↗
- 2026-06-03 — $1k/day for locates seems like the new normal for small/mid sized account
That’s ~ $200k/year just for access.
Small-cap shorting better be printing hard to justify that, and I’m not sure it is anymore. ↗
- 2026-06-03 — “No locates” used to mean no shorts to squeeze = easy fade.
Now it often means the fast bots/traders already grabbed all borrows, got trapped, and there’s nobody left to pressure the stock.
For a low-float runner “no locates” is: ↗
- 2026-06-02 — How is “illegally influencing prices through tweets” conceptually different from sending a buy alert to followers in a chatroom or Discord, then selling into the demand it creates? ↗
- 2026-06-02 — What’s the most useful factor for making money in small caps right now?
Everyone here is apparently banking, so I figured I’d ask. ↗
- 2026-06-01 — $SPCE really reminds me of $CAR.
Same short-squeeze dynamics, same call options with insanely high IV.
At least this time we potentially have a "sell the news" event on the horizon. ↗
- 2026-06-01 — Even IU agrees small-cap short selling is cooked…
Yet X is still full of no-names insisting some random people are out there killing it. ↗
- 2026-05-29 — Job ideas for small-cap short sellers in 2026:
Uber Eats
HVAC, if you’re smart
Plumbing, if you want real edge
Electrician, if you can handle risk
Car sales, if you have that discord/subscription service
Real estate agent, if you followed pumpers and PRs and know how to promote trash
Anything else? ↗
- 2026-05-28 — (media) ↗
- 2026-05-28 — Are there any small-cap traders still putting up those absurdly clean, straight-up 1M+ year equity curves?
In 2024 it felt like literally everyone had one. ↗
- 2026-05-28 — Also made a couple of on-chain transactions today.
Man, this stuff is so cheap and fast now. I genuinely forgot how painful it used to be when the ecosystem was hot, everything clogged, slow, absurd gas fees everywhere.
Infrastructure has improved a ton. Feels way more usable now compared to the last cycle. ↗
- 2026-05-28 — Very strange spot for $ETH.
On one hand, the technicals look awful: curling lower, stuck in a downtrend, showing basically no relative strength during this rally. If $QQQ finally corrects, $ETH looks set up to break and test 1500–1600 at least .
On the other hand, crypto Twitter sounds completely washed out. Everyone seems desperate, a lot of people are dumping it, and even Vitalik is writing novels now.
Feels like a clean breakdown in maximum-disgust bottom territory. Idk ↗
- 2026-05-27 — Shorting small caps at a prop must be nice.
No personal tail risk, just all the pretty high win rate.
Or are they all just selling challenges/courses now? ↗
- 2026-05-27 — Now imagine that guy’s curve went full sample based Kelly. ↗
- 2026-05-27 — Here’s your typical latest hot trader on X after trading for 2 years telling everyone to “stay positive” and “adapt”
Not leaking any real edge, but definitely attracting more competition, the people taking your locates and making sure your stop gets nuked through.
100 random equity curves. All 0 edge / EV ↗
- 2026-05-27 — I heard locates got better today
$ASTC ↗
- 2026-05-26 — So what do we do if we don’t get any locates anymore?
And longs aren’t exactly safe either. Take shorts away, and suddenly there’s nobody left to front-run except each other. ↗
- 2026-05-24 — If this really is the end of the fake locates era, that alone is an atomic shift in how small caps trade.
Now overlap that with PDT removal and it could get brutal.
I’d throw out most backtests here especially anything built on stats or price action patterns, gonna be a completely different market structure. ↗
- 2026-05-22 — Of course, when every shortseller is FOMOed af after missing 50 easy fades because there were no locates, the only few easy to locate stocks are the ones that squeeze. ↗
- 2026-05-22 — Are we buying everything Japan related now? ↗
- 2026-05-22 — Been looking into what license you need to start selling locates.
Apparently the real edge in small caps isn’t trading.
It’s charging desperate shorts 800% annualized to borrow 371 shares of some Chinese biotech nobody has ever heard of.
And if it gets halted? Jackpot! Now you collect borrow for years, while everyone sends support tickets you can politely ignore.
Honestly might be the cleanest path to 8-9 figures in small caps. ↗
- 2026-05-21 — Hard to argue with the GOAT ↗
- 2026-05-20 — If everyone refused to pay >2%, they’d have to adjust prices.
And honestly, I don’t mind skipping a few easy fades if it improves the longevity of the game.
Otherwise HTB brokers and lending desks will eventually absorb all EV in small-cap shorting. Everyone paying those locate fees will eventually end up breakeven at best after fees. ↗
- 2026-05-20 — Are we getting one of these every week now? $PETZ
Hey @NasdaqExchange cancel these too? Or your buddies are fine this time? ↗
- 2026-05-19 — I'm probably taking a vacation until September, letting everyone blow up post PDT.
Staying in 5* resorts only, way cheaper than paying these locate fees ↗
- 2026-05-19 — Usually it’s either a max-loss day or a no-locates day in small caps.
Today somehow it’s both.
I guess that’s what post-PDT small cap shorting is gonna look like ↗
- 2026-05-15 — Unpopular opinion: small cap gurus are over hyping the PDT removal. It was never the reason people weren't profitable.
Degens have always had prediction markets, forex, and crypto to gamble on. Don't expect them to suddenly start donating liquidity to small caps.
PDT only limited those trying to scale a professional process.
Nothing ever prevented a noob from aping into a discord pump and holding it to zero. ↗
- 2026-05-14 — Why small-cap traders often fail in mid/large caps:
1. Wrong expectations
Small-cap shorting is huge negative skew: lots of cozy little wins, then the occasional account-destroying loss. People get addicted to that smooth green P&L stream.
Large caps don’t distribute returns like that, unless you’re doing something like selling naked options.
2. Too mechanical
“Buy every breakout” or “buy every dip” is not enough. There are way more factors to weigh than just “it’s China, avoid.”
3. Not enough capital
In unlevered large caps, 20–30% annually is actually very good.
But if your account is $50k, that doesn’t feel like enough to matter, so people start forcing trades or adding bad leverage. ↗
- 2026-05-13 — With the PDT rule change coming, everyone has a theory about what happens next in small caps.
Let’s get actual trader data.
If you trade, vote below and repost so we can get a bigger sample.
How are you planning to trade after June 4? ↗
- 2026-05-13 — Nah guys, small caps shorting isn’t crowded. Just adapt.
This honestly looks like a giant account margin-call liquidation. ↗
- 2026-05-13 — China massacring shorts for the third day in a row.
$TDIC ↗
- 2026-05-13 — Giving up pro poker was one of the best decisions of my life.
It wasn’t easy. I still had a strong edge, great friends in the game, and genuinely loved playing.
But one of the most important skills in trading and in life is knowing when a strategy is deteriorating and cutting it before it cuts you. ↗
- 2026-05-11 — Probably the craziest reversal I can remember.
From 2.50 to 0.19 to 6.73.
Things are getting wilder every day.
$WOK ↗
- 2026-05-11 — RT @SmallCapSmarts: So, they canceled all trades between 5:47:00.000 and 5:48:00.000.
https://nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=MarketSystemStatus
Massive win for some, total disaster for others: longs who sold in that window, shorts who covered right after 5:48
That’s what makes this so absurd.
The last 4–5 similar events were allowed to stand, but this one gets busted.
Hard not to think someone connected got hurt this time (and their trades where exactly between 5:47:00.000 and 5:48:00.000.) ↗
- 2026-05-11 — So, they canceled all trades between 5:47:00.000 and 5:48:00.000.
https://nasdaqtrader.com/Trader.aspx?id=MarketSystemStatus
Massive win for some, total disaster for others: longs who sold in that window, shorts who covered right after 5:48
That’s what makes this so absurd.
The last 4–5 similar events were allowed to stand, but this one gets busted.
Hard not to think someone connected got hurt this time (and their trades where exactly between 5:47:00.000 and 5:48:00.000.) ↗
- 2026-05-11 — $ENSC is exactly what people mean when they say shorting small caps is crowded.
A move like this can easily turn into a 5000%+ loss for shorts especially if the strategy is automated.
@Nasdaq and @SECGov should review manipulative activity, those trades should be busted.
But we all know they don't care. ↗
- 2026-05-08 — hell yeah ↗
- 2026-05-08 — Pretty much everyone I know has small-cap shorts as part of their book now.
With PDT removal this is gonna get epic.
3 new long strats deployed today. ↗
- 2026-05-08 — $AEHL
Whenever my mood is bad, I can always read PR shitcos trying to lure in more idiots.
“Announces $190,000 in realized gains from its ‘Genius Plan’ and authorizes a $95,000 share repurchase program.”
Of course, nowadays shorts are the “idiots”
In a short-crowded market, prices go up simply because everyone is short. ↗
- 2026-05-06 — $SNDK nothing too exciting yet. Sold some calls since I didn’t expect a major unwind.
Looks like they bought the dip and the extension cooled off a bit. Let’s see how it plays out. ↗
- 2026-05-05 — Funny how $SNDK still shows ~8x forward P/E, less than half $SPY even after the move.
Consensus is still basically “nice quarter but these are just peak-cycle memory earnings” ↗
- 2026-05-05 — $SNDK looks like nobody is trying to A+ short it here ↗
- 2026-04-29 — $XTLB very weird price action.
Huge volume, clearouts both ways.
Feels like full PvP liquidity hunting. ↗
- 2026-04-28 — and make it 2000% premarket lol ↗
- 2026-04-28 — Don’t forget to model 30% slippage when backtesting your small-cap algos.
Non-PDT era is gonna be real fun for shorts…
$ATER ↗
- 2026-04-27 — Saw everyone posting massive wins in $CAR and couldn’t wait to find the next easy A+++ trade?
Looks like people started shorting semis.
What could possibly go wrong with small cap traders trading sector ETFs?
Checking back in 2 weeks.
$SMH $SOXX $SOXL $XSD ↗
- 2026-04-23 — Done with $CAR.
Sick move. Roughly breakeven on spot over many days, but puts paid nicely. IV drop didn’t matter, gamma went nuclear.
More of these this year please. ↗
- 2026-04-22 — Just when X fully convinced me $CAR short was cancer and $1000 was imminent, it drops 30%.
About breakeven on my puts now. Not selling.
Still looks like $200-300 range in a couple of days/weeks. ↗
- 2026-04-21 — Only a matter of days before small-cap shitcos start pumping “entering the car rental business” PRs ↗
- 2026-04-21 — Funny enough my $CAR puts are green today purely off IV expansion. Underlying still doing its evil grind, but panic premium finally showed up. ↗
- 2026-04-21 — $CAR my epic short, brutal.
Midcap extension short crowd getting absolutely massacred. Of course, nobody was short here, just watching, ignored it so far, etc. ↗
- 2026-04-16 — Really reminds me of 30 tabling online poker back in the day.
Just need to figure out the hotkeys, clicking everything is brutal. ↗
- 2026-04-16 — Awaiting the PDT regime shift, I dedicated one account to 100% manual discretionary small-cap trading.
Small account, but just had the first near-5-figure day there. ↗
- 2026-04-16 — $CAR is basically the same day on a loop.
Spasmodic, trappy grind up, over and over.
Don’t remember a short squeeze this tricky in a long time. ↗
- 2026-04-16 — Funny how every shitco suddenly has an AI acquisition or “pivot” PR ready to go.
Shows how little these showrunners think of traders.
It’s mostly theater to dump stock eventually, and somehow we turned it into a PvP high-roller online game.
Imagine how happy they must be. ↗
- 2026-04-15 — Interesting. Some of my non-trading friends reached out to laugh at the $BIRD AI pivot.
You’ve gotta be really stupid to buy that one, but we traders are a special kind of special. ↗
- 2026-04-15 — Are there any HTB systematic shorts still alive?
Them and the people who were short $CAR a week ago...it’s gotten very quiet around here. ↗
- 2026-04-14 — PDT going away will change a lot.
For small caps, I think it means:
1. Clear regime change. Most systematic stuff should stop trading and go into data-collection mode.
2. If a random 3000% squeeze blows you up, rebuilding from zero gets a lot easier.
3. EV might actually improve for a while. Small caps have been miserable lately, so this could be one last real window.
4. No more keeping $30k dead in every account just to trade / test stuff. ↗
- 2026-04-10 — The whole $IGV basket might give us some epic bottom picks soon
Too bad we don’t get 0DTEs on Mondays
$SNOW $MOW $PANW $FIG $TEAM $INTU $CRM ↗
- 2026-04-10 — Feels like the best large/mid cap market we’ve had in a while.
I was honestly pretty close to switching to news-based trading otherwise😄 ↗
- 2026-04-10 — $CAR no idea how you trade this piece of shit with size.
Still holding my 14DTE puts. ↗
- 2026-04-10 — 0DTE casino day.
Single stocks 0DTEs every day would be glorious. ↗
- 2026-04-10 — @SECGov Obviously they don’t care, so this is purely a thought experiment. ↗
- 2026-04-10 — If @SECGov actually cleaned up Chinese scam IPOs, prosecuted manipulators, and voided abusive trades, would trading small caps become more profitable or less?
$CREG ↗
- 2026-04-09 — The number of people on X shorting $CAR, overall high short interest, plus a very thin book and SSR, should make today entertaining.
Bought longer puts yesterday and somehow they still closed green. Guess more people piling into them helps. ↗
- 2026-04-08 — Where are people still getting price improvement in small caps? Moomoo, IB, Schwab?
Tried Schwab and IB. Fills were absolute shit. ↗
- 2026-04-08 — $UCAR
Man, I always underestimate just how stupidly arrogant short sellers can get. ↗
- 2026-04-08 — I traded large/mid caps for years before small caps, and every time I moved into small caps with a broad-market mindset, I got smoked. So it works both ways. ↗
- 2026-04-08 — A lot of small-cap traders who say there’s no edge in large caps are either looking at the wrong things or just dealing with a skill issue.
Large-cap edge usually won’t show up in a spreadsheet. It’s more contextual, less mechanical, and the cadence of setups is nowhere near what you get in small caps.
But you get real liquidity, tighter spreads, much rarer fat tails, and therefore real capacity. You can size much bigger and still make similar returns on a far larger portfolio.
It also opens the door to managing other people’s money, effectively giving you access to free leverage without the same level of personal downside.
Of course, if you’re trading a $30k–$50k account, small caps probably still make more sense, mostly because of lower volatility of large caps. ↗
- 2026-04-07 — $CETX the perfect retarded longs market PR:
“apparently successful offeror” for a Phase I SBIR contract.
So not awarded yet, and even if it lands, it’s still just the earliest R&D phase.
Apparently lol. ↗
- 2026-04-06 — Trying a new format. Could probably make it 10x longer, but keeping it simple for now. ↗
- 2026-04-06 — http://x.com/i/article/2041121356167720960 ↗
- 2026-04-05 — Met a guy who turned $3M into $30M last year trading large/mid caps.
He’s not even a full-time trader, he has a very successful career in another field.
A lot easier to swing hard when you’ve already won outside the market. ↗
- 2026-04-05 — Great results, David.
The more I trade, the less I want to do everything myself.
The more capital I have, the more I value diversification, knowing there are people better than me at many things. ↗
- 2026-04-04 — I have a question for the “adapt or die” small-cap crowd.
Not for me, but for everyone who’s struggling right now:
How exactly do you adapt here?
By scalping, going long, or using some new price action patterns?
Most of you seem to deny that edge erosion exists, so no risk to your P&L here. ↗
- 2026-04-03 — A very shitty week in small caps for me.
Thankfully, I’ve cut size so much that I’m still up a decent amount YTD.
What’s most concerning is that the broader market was weak, and that’s usually when I do well. Clearly there are other factors at play now.
I have a theory.
On top of the usual Chinese and domestic riggers, we’re also seeing a real scalping renaissance.
Some htb brokers seem to have figured out that by offering near-zero commissions to hyperactive traders, they can still make plenty overall without relying on PFOF.
Now every dip gets bought by both short scalpers covering and long scalpers chasing.
Nothing fades anymore. ↗
- 2026-04-01 — $ELAB did the rigger just get back from lunch, or or is dinner already over in Spain? ↗
- 2026-04-01 — Looks like every small cap trader on X had a record month again.
Very different from mine.
From what I see, most of the people posting records are either scalpers or long-biased traders. That’s the reality of the current market.
So yeah, either I adapt to that… or I don’t. Scalping? Fuck no.
Honestly my size in HTBs is so small right now that I don’t really care.
Main focus is options and getting positioned to extract as much value as possible from the next real bull run in mid/large caps. ↗
- 2026-03-31 — Really hate this headline driven market.
Setups barely matter when one random headline can flip everything in seconds. ↗
- 2026-03-31 — President of Iran doesn’t really decide much anyway.
Everyone just seems way too eager to bottom-pick. Maybe quarter-end flows too, with it being the last day of Q1.
I’m not buying anything here. There’ll be plenty of opportunities once the market actually turns bullish. ↗
- 2026-03-31 — An interesting intro to prediction markets and sports betting.
A bit suspicious that people aren’t afraid to leak the edge there, so it probably isn’t that great or requires a lot of discretionary work/skill. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/chat-with-traders/id957265404?i=1000757524354 ↗
- 2026-03-29 — Honestly, small-cap gurus are probably the least bad actors compared to the futures/options/challenges crowd.
That whole world is pure scam:
lambo pics 24/7, fake lifestyle flexing, zero verification, zero transparency, just aggressively selling dreams to broke people. ↗
- 2026-03-28 — Thank god it’s 2026.
Gemini can summarize the whole watered-down script faster than they can finish the intro. ↗
- 2026-03-28 — Feels like the whole trader podcast circuit is just the same 20 people rotating through each other’s shows, repeating the same talking points and plugging the same rooms, Discords, and services.
And when they finally talk “strategy,” it’s the same recycled setups every time:
overextended shorts, panic buys, etc. ↗
- 2026-03-27 — All top 7 Kinfo accounts this year are options traders.
But sure, small caps are fine and there’s no edge erosion. ↗
- 2026-03-27 — $VSA
China scammers back in action.
D2 short remains one of the worst setups imaginable, right behind OPB.
Something tells me this one gets even more ridiculous today.
Not a buy or sell recommendation. ↗
- 2026-03-25 — What a mess
$UGRO ↗
- 2026-03-25 — $NXTT what the hell is this range?
Who’s selling at 0.45 after 1.50 just minutes earlier?
And who’s still buying 1.50 after it already flushed below 0.80 twice in the same hour today?
Chinese scammers doing whatever they want on the US market. ↗
- 2026-03-25 — Classical PvP price action in small caps today in $UGRO
Anyone who wanted more action should be probably happy now.
What's the theme here btw? ↗
- 2026-03-22 — Question for full-time traders:
What do you say when someone asks what you do?
“Trader” is basically ruined by TikTok kids and fake lambo gurus.
If you dodge it, people think you’re broke.
Say too much and suddenly you’re “that rich guy”. ↗
- 2026-03-21 — There’s a really weird “keep it positive” culture on FinTwit, especially among guru followers.
Any negative view on the expected returns of popular strategies or even mentioning very real risks gets framed as toxic hating or whining.
I honestly don’t know how you succeed in trading with that mindset.
Trading is largely about risk management, and forced positivity is one of the worst mental patterns you can have.
I much prefer Ray Dalio’s framework of hyperrealism first. He probably knows more about surviving and succeeding in markets than all alleged 8–9 figure traders on X combined. ↗
See @SmallCapSmarts on X →