This reader needs JavaScript for search, threads and tags. Recent tweets from @SmallCapSmarts:
- 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. ↗
- 2026-03-20 — Chilling in $BOXX for now. ↗
- 2026-03-19 — In terms of both the number of opportunities and the quality of setups, this is probably the worst market since 2022.
Large caps and small caps both feel equally bad. ↗
- 2026-03-17 — Every paid course trading strategy I backtest usually shows the same equity curve.
Not terrible. Not good. Just enough to cherry-pick perfect trades in hindsight.
If something is truly scalable and robust, it doesn’t end up in a $299 or even $6500 course.
It gets traded quietly… until it stops working. ↗
- 2026-03-16 — Had to post an easy one.
Everyone’s banking on $WNW anyway.
Adapt or die!!! ↗
- 2026-03-13 — Makes sense actually.
If you flood the internet with retarded content, AI will just train on it and become retarded too.
Checkmate. ↗
- 2026-03-11 — Right now the timeline is mostly:
“Look guys, I made a dashboard… I’m gonna be the next RenTech.”
Discretionary traders jumping on the AI bandwagon are in for a rude awakening imo.
People who’ve spent years building bots, automation systems and doing real quantitative research know how limited and treacherous this stuff actually is. ↗
- 2026-03-10 — Funny thing about trading psychology.
It’s rarely an issue when you actually have edge.
You just follow rules that make money or execute ideas that work.
Psychology becomes the main topic when there’s no edge.
Which is why course sellers love it, it’s the only thing they can sell without giving you one. ↗
- 2026-03-09 — hehe ↗
- 2026-03-09 — Interesting trend I’ve noticed on fintwit small cap traders.
Many are still posting daily wins, mostly on tiny size though.
But if you look at Kinfo, it tells a very different story: basically every $1M+ small cap trader has been in a drawdown for months.
Makes you wonder, are the real winners just avoiding Kinfo, or are people simply posting only wins on X? ↗
- 2026-03-09 — Bought a shitload of Apr 17 $110 $USO puts.
Feels like free money… which usually means it isn’t. ↗
- 2026-03-09 — Yeah yeah, I know “it’s China.” Save your time commenting. We’ve seen US stocks pull the exact same move several times. ↗
- 2026-03-09 — $CIIT
I honestly used to think lowering size was enough risk management for premarket shorting.
Now it’s obvious they can make any move premarket.
You can hope your bot or broker risk controls ignore it, but the only real solution might be not trading it at all. ↗
- 2026-03-09 — If you’re shorting crude / WTI via futures or futures-based products, make sure you understand how they work.
Very different game from shorting small caps.
WTI literally went negative during COVID. ↗
- 2026-03-05 — Touching grass this week.
Highly recommended. ↗
- 2026-03-03 — Pretty weird seeing course sellers bragging about 1/3 of what you make and showing off Lambos, first class travel and gold watches worth 100s.
While you’re wiring the IRS nonstop and very far from feeling rich. ↗
- 2026-03-03 — Korean market is just hilarious.
Of course I miss the unwind the one time I’m traveling.
At least I didn’t blow up trying to short oil & gas small caps.
$EWY $KORU ↗
- 2026-03-01 — In case you want to copy/paste
Drone / Aerospace / Defense
UAVS
PRZO
RCAT
DPRO
CVU
KTOS
DFSC
MNTS
AIRI
KITT
XTIA
GPUS
SIF
SIDU
FJET
SATL
Energy
AGIG
IMPP
MARPS
LSE
MTR
RBNE
ANNA
USEG
TPET
EONR
INDO
REI
GTE
EPM
DLXY
RCON
MVO
BATL
Shipping
CISS
EHLD
EDRY
HMR
NCT
SRVN
USEA
UFG
GLBS
HTCO
PSHG
TOPS
Israel nano floats
HUBC
JFBR
BNRG
PRFX
SCNI ↗
- 2026-03-01 — Tomorrow’s SC Watchlist
Drone / Aerospace / Defense $UAVS $PRZO $RCAT $DPRO $CVU $KTOS $DFSC $MNTS $AIRI $KITT $XTIA $GPUS $SIF $SIDU $FJET $SATL
Energy $AGIG $IMPP $MARPS $LSE $MTR $RBNE $ANNA $USEG $TPET $EONR $INDO $REI $GTE $EPM $DLXY $RCON $MVO $BATL
Shipping $CISS $EHLD $EDRY $HMR $NCT $SRVN $USEA $UFG $GLBS $HTCO $PSHG $TOPS
Anything else? ↗
- 2026-02-26 — $RXT I should be hitting these with much more size.
Years of shorting train you to think survival first.
Great for avoiding blow-ups.
Not always great for moneymaxxing. ↗
- 2026-02-26 — * $KORU ↗
- 2026-02-26 — $KURA $EWY working nicely across the board.
Margin requirements are tight though. ↗
- 2026-02-25 — Heard people complaining there are no gaps to short in small caps.
Here’s $XWEL for you.
Welcome to 2026! ↗
- 2026-02-20 — In hindsight, I should’ve deployed more capital while it was easier rather than forcing the slow “organic” growth path. ↗
- 2026-02-20 — I literally learned how to trade from this book a long time ago.
Still consider it one of the best.
Excited to see what the new one brings. ↗
- 2026-02-20 — 300k to 1M was actually much easier (took less than a year).
Grinding from a small account to 300k is the real pain, especially if you’re trying to pay bills along the way. I was lucky to have capital and profits from other strategies.
Honestly, get a job first or save up at least a couple years of expenses. Survival pressure can kill even the best strategy.
And I probably wouldn’t rely on small-cap shorting to build an account from scratch in this environment. ↗
- 2026-02-20 — $RXT well… that was a piker move. ↗
- 2026-02-20 — Just checked small caps OPB strategy with wide stops, the one I discontinued back in October. Absolutely brutal.
Should’ve probably just started going long instead. ↗
- 2026-02-20 — This is a very good illustration of an edge going away.
For me, edge has always meant risk-adjusted returns.
Returns may not be down that much, but the associated risk is significantly higher now. ↗
- 2026-02-20 — Interesting point.
The more you use LLMs for highly specific problems using your data and ideas, the more noticeable their ability to generalize within that niche domains in general becomes.
I’ve noticed a huge improvement in idea/code generation for very niche trading strategies lately... the chatbot barely had any clue before. ↗
- 2026-02-17 — $RIME random discretionary trade.
Very tight stop worked really well here. ↗
- 2026-02-17 — Not that I mind. Came for the edge leak, stayed for the Spanish lessons. ↗
- 2026-02-17 — Is it just my feed, or are half of small-cap shorts tweeting in Spanish now? ↗
- 2026-02-17 — Btw, I don't think the main problem is that it's "Chinese".
When there are too many shorts trying to exit and no liquidity, you get this. ↗
- 2026-02-17 — POV: you're dead shorting $PLYX ↗
- 2026-02-17 — Routing issues across all brokers didn't help I guess. ↗
- 2026-02-17 — Small caps are getting more and more ridiculous every day.
$PLYX ↗
- 2026-02-15 — Unironically, my best-performing investment last year was upgrading to 96GB of RAM 😂
$SNDK $WD ↗
- 2026-02-13 — Not many opportunities lately, mostly sticking to earnings plays.
$FSLY yesterday and today was great.
$RIVN basically the same setup today 👇
Everything else feels range-bound. ↗
- 2026-02-13 — Who here trades #KOSPI / #KOSDAQ?
Looks like a retail-driven momentum market with nice clean moves.
Any insights from those actually trading it? ↗
- 2026-02-09 — Software bounce continuation was the main trade today.
Played the breakout in $IGV and several single names.
Still holding the $MSFT swing from Friday. ↗
- 2026-02-07 — The moment you stop trading small caps and your sleep improves. ↗
- 2026-02-06 — Unfortunately most bounces happened overnight. No real overextension or liquidation.
Ended up playing quick consolidation breakouts across the board at the open.
Too many charts to post, here are some examples. Added a few swings as well.
Maybe we get another leg down? ↗
- 2026-02-05 — I’ve been sitting on cash for a while in my swing portfolio, waiting for a good long opportunity. This might be it.
Sticking to tight-stop probes. Everything keeps pushing lower, so it’s feels like death by a thousand paper cuts, but that still beats blind buy-and-pray.
Huge opportunities ahead. Great market.
$IBIT ↗
- 2026-02-05 — This MIGHT be a great bottom-picking zone for some long-term longs.
Just don’t forget: plenty of stocks never bounce, they fade into OTC and eventually delist. ↗
- 2026-02-04 — This market has real 2022 vibes.
That year worked well for me, systematically shorting breakdowns, trailing everything, no opinions.
Might be time to dust that playbook off again. ↗
- 2026-02-04 — Software stocks keep melting down.
Funny how one part of US tech is eating another, so $QQQ has been stuck in place for 5 months.
Might be some nice long-term bounce opportunities here.
$MSFT $APP $ORCL $INTU $CRM $NOW $ADBE ↗
- 2026-02-03 — $FIG no trade here, just some thoughts for the future:
Still taking a beating post-IPO. This isn’t just company-specific, the whole software sector is weak, and the IPO cycle isn’t helping either (lockups supply).
On top of that, the market is clearly pricing in fears of AI disrupting design software.
I like the product, they’ll probably integrate AI rather than get disrupted by it.
That said, no long term buy setups here yet. Maybe it gets interesting on a earnings surprise down the road. ↗
- 2026-02-03 — $MSTR
Nothing fancy, just a downtrend continuation on a weak $QQQ $IBIT day.
Super clean structure.
Shorting crypto momentum in a downtrend is actually great. It’s much more straightforward than uptrends lately: until you get real capitulation, there’s usually no bid.
Covered mainly to free up BP in this account. ↗
- 2026-02-03 — I’ll be journaling some discretionary trades here, mainly to make them easy to revisit, and get feedback/discussion. ↗
- 2026-02-03 — $SNDK
1) Obvious daily overextension.
2) Failed PM high breakout.
3) $QQQ $PLTR weakness helped.
Not A+ due to recent strong earnings somewhat limiting downside follow-through, so quick daytrade only. ↗
- 2026-02-03 — Halted $TCGL borrow is ~428% annualized.
That’s ~30% per month in guaranteed bleed.
Nobody knows when it unhalts.
I’ve been stuck in $HYZN like this for over a year, broker just keeps charging daily, “nothing we can do”
Don't forget this in your backrests. ↗
- 2026-02-03 — $NPT another nearly instant 200% liquidity skip
The space feels insanely crowded and nothing can help it. Small cap shorts quit only when they blow up.
You're definitely going to see much more of this. ↗
- 2026-01-31 — Trying to gear my feed toward midcap / largecap traders.
Looking for ideas from people who actually trade size.
Also interested in options & vol perspective.
Drop accounts you like
A few I’ve been enjoying lately:
@TheShortBear
@Egalmar1
@YanniTrades
@RealSimpleAriel
@stevenplace
@Valckrie ↗
- 2026-01-30 — Hope you’re all okay out there ↗
- 2026-01-30 — $AGQ theoretically can go to 0 today, right? ↗
- 2026-01-30 — Covered the last $AGQ options.
No idea where $SLV or $GLD go next.
Similar to small-cap shorts: unlimited risk, but way better hedging tools.
95% fades are definitely not a common thing in small caps lol ↗
- 2026-01-30 — Didn’t blow up, if you’re wondering ↗
- 2026-01-30 — Additional thoughts:
After the switch to a 23h market, stress + lack of sleep will be unbearable, a serious health risk.
Returns in % terms have been steadily shrinking: more competition from riggers/other shorts, higher locate costs on the best fades, and simple account growth compressing the edge.
This isn’t scalable. You can’t responsibly raise capital to "short penny stocks", nobody sane allocates to that risk profile. ↗
- 2026-01-30 — I think I’m done with small caps.
After yesterday’s nonsense in $TCGL and the constant stress from automating this, it finally clicked: the money I make there just isn’t worth it anymore.
Once your account is 7 fig+, small caps make no sense.
The risk–reward becomes completely skewed.
Losing 7 figures in one tail event is far worse than making another 7 figures in a year, as there are many other ways to grow capital 50-100% a year without living on edge.
Small caps are great for building a small account.
They’re terrible for growing a big one.
This feels less like quitting and more like graduating. ↗
- 2026-01-29 — WTF!!!! ↗
- 2026-01-29 — $TCGL remains untradable after hours.
Bid, ask, and last are fully controlled. No real liquidity.
Tried small size. Bid-ask moves 10% with zero prints.
Totally fake market. ↗
- 2026-01-29 — I’m genuinely sad this keeps happening to people.
Nobody tells you it’s possible, all we see here is everyone printing money every day.
Shorting small caps gets sold as a reliable income stream. It isn’t.
I thought about marketing and selling some small caps related software I built for myself, but I don’t want to be part of all this madness. ↗
- 2026-01-29 — $GLD isn’t speculative trash like $SLV.
When it gets overextended, you get real supply/demand imbalances at extremes.
IV also hit a multi-decade high, that’s been a local top pretty much every time. ↗
- 2026-01-29 — I was this close ↗
- 2026-01-29 — Nervously checking every account for a rogue $TCGL short hit by a bot.
Yeah… this is too much. ↗
- 2026-01-29 — Guess I’m officially on team "A+ trades exponential sizing" now
Rare setups and way less stress. ↗
- 2026-01-29 — Went hard short $GLD today: options, ETFs, gold small caps.
Hit pretty much everything I could find.
Epic move. ↗
- 2026-01-29 — +517% and halted up
Very little chance of covering this so far ↗
- 2026-01-29 — $TCGL smells like a "liquidation play" that trapped some shorts. ↗
- 2026-01-29 — It's pretty clear that all these 100%+ moves are just shorts getting squeezed, not long buying. The long/short imbalance is completely ruined and isn't going to change anytime soon. ↗
- 2026-01-29 — Feels like the only clean penny stock fades now are the ones without locates.
Everything else is just max losses and grind.
At this point every backtest feels like fugazi, clean equity curves, impossible executions. ↗
- 2026-01-28 — $SLV definitely would’ve gotten me today. ↗
- 2026-01-28 — Done with $SLV , back to small caps ↗
- 2026-01-27 — If you made money shorting $SLV or saw “everyone” on X make money and now want to do it yourself, just chill for a bit.
This was a very rare setup. Don’t start hunting for a silver short every day now.
Fundamentally the dollar is weakening and the trend in $SLV is still up. ↗
- 2026-01-26 — Spent the whole day focused on the $SLV universe.
Checked small caps now, nothing new to post, river of red trades again, totally organic price action everywhere.
Wild how blatant this stuff is and the @SECGov does nothing. ↗
- 2026-01-26 — Went full margin short silver via levered ETF short calls across every account that had options.
+70% trade.
Still not even close to my best trade, and definitely not life-changing money.
Idk how you retards do this. ↗
- 2026-01-26 — Every guru who hasn’t posted $SLV trade in months is suddenly about to spam us with screenshots. ↗
- 2026-01-26 — Is it A+ short now?
What's your favorite hindsight guru saying?
$SLV #silversqueeze ↗
- 2026-01-25 — Super late to this, but been looking at prediction markets.
What actually works here?
Arbitrage? Fading retail narratives?
Where to start + who’s worth following? ↗
- 2026-01-24 — I’m guessing many just swung it because the daily looked extended.
Small caps are in genuinely uncharted territory.
Years ago it took Shkreli cornering the float in $KBIO for moves like this, now it’s a daily occurrence ↗
- 2026-01-24 — Doing my daily report card and noticed $BNAI
When you run many accounts and some are automated, the chance that one position gets left overnight by mistake is very real.
New fear unlocked. ↗
- 2026-01-23 — Imagine the drawdowns FinTwit took shorting $SLV ↗
- 2026-01-23 — And if the thesis fails, you can actually bail with minimal risk.
$SNDK ↗
- 2026-01-23 — The cleanliness of "in play" mid/large-cap moves is so refreshing after small caps.
You can actually see other agendas at work besides squeezing shorts or trapping longs.
$MRNA today is a perfect example. ↗
- 2026-01-23 — I have only one question: who the fuk is putting this much bid support into worthless junk? ↗
- 2026-01-23 — Question for the small-cap L2 experts:
Do you see recent low float moves in $MOVE, $DRCT, $THH, $KUST as normal on the Level 2? ↗
- 2026-01-23 — Happy Friday! 😄
Two full days without losses ahead! 🥳 ↗
- 2026-01-21 — Looks like hot small-cap market (aka 3 max losses a day) is slowing down.
Back to the “give me your kidney for locates” regime.
Missed a ton today, the few I managed to locate squeezed nicely (screenshot).
Pretty clear that backtesting SC shorts without locate cost/availability is a fool’s game now. ↗
- 2026-01-21 — Interesting how an entire industry of Qullamaggie-related content grew out of how well-documented his journey was.
But you don’t see nearly as many repeatable success stories, most people who tried to copy it systematically failed for different reasons.
Not here to hate Qullamaggie, I genuinely like him and I think the method can work. Just realize:
1) It needs a strong market regime
2) Drawdowns can be long and brutal
3) You need to size big for it to be financially meaningful
4) A lot of edge in execution + discretionary judgment built from 10000+ hours of studying history and actually trading
I personally traded something very similar long before covid, and only started making money with it in the US equities after combining it with some other alphas. ↗
- 2026-01-20 — Ok, this isn't fun anymore. ↗
- 2026-01-19 — Getting blocked by small-cap furus is becoming a badge of honor.
I’m trying to be polite, never personal, and mostly just ask questions, so when they block instantly, it tells you everything you need to know.
Respect to the few who don’t do that. ↗
- 2026-01-19 — I went through all the small-cap traders I follow on kinfo.
Many disappeared, but those who are still public have clearly been struggling for the past three months.
Longs, shorts, systematic, and discretionary alike.
What’s going on? ↗
- 2026-01-17 — Would be really nice to get rid of that stupid premarket trading, but instead we’re getting 24h… so I’m not sure any of this is even relevant anymore. ↗
See @SmallCapSmarts on X →