UGRU Stocks™ Tips to Simplify Your Trading

Cut the guesswork. Focus on what works.

Tip #1: Don't over-diversify

Whether it’s an ETF like VOO, a mutual fund, or even a fiduciary-managed account, the flaws are the same: overlap that makes “diversification” an illusion, dilution that waters down your winners, hidden or compounding fees, and no true exit discipline when markets fall. They sell the comfort of safety but lock you into average results. As a UGRU Stocks subscriber, we flip that thinking on its head: instead of owning hundreds of tickers, we focus on just three high-conviction stocks with clear entry and exit rules — a principle Warren Buffett himself endorses. True protection and performance come from discipline and timing, not from piling into every product Wall Street sells. I can’t emphasize this enough, pick three (ONLY Three) of our stocks we provide alerts for and stick to it!

Tip #2: Be Patient

The reality is that you WILL lose on your trades. In fact, more often than not, your trades will be losing trades. SIDE NOTE: If you’ve seen a YouTuber claim 90%+ percent winning trades, RUN! Even the best money managers in the world lose more often than not.

The good news is a 2.5% loss by acting on a sell signal may very well have prevented a 10%, 20% or 30% loss had you simply chose to hold the investment.

You might have 6 buy and sell alerts in a row that were all losses totaling 8%. But the next 25% winning trade may very well be next!

So be patient and know that probability and process is in your corner.

Tip #3: Don’t Chase Trades

If you’re late to the trade, simply wait for the next signal. All of our criteria is based on 4-hour time frames (Heikin Ashi candles).

All alerts are sent out upon the completion of that time frame (at the close of the candle). This happens even if the criteria was met in the first minutes of the candle.

This is important to know because if a “Buy” alert was sent for a stock in the morning and you’re seeing it that evening you need to place an aftermarket order.

If you do miss a trade, don’t worry, the typical stock or crypto will have about 20 or 30 alerts over the course of a year which brings me to the next tip about cost.

Tip #4: Be Cost Conscious

UGRU Stocks™ is a great way to save money because the alternative is a what? A mutual fund? A professional Investment Advisor? Let’s think about that.

Let’s assume you have $50,000 and have a professional manage your money for 1.25% (which could be as high as 4.5%, ask me how and I’d be happy to share)

If they manage your account for a 10% average return over 30 years your $50,000 will grow to $872,470 (this assumes you added nothing to the beginning balance and you took nothing out).

But, when we account for fees of 1.25%, you’re not experiencing 10%, you’re experiencing 8.75%. So, the ending balance is actually $619,224.

The fee is a seemingly small 1.25%, yes. But, when calculated in dollars it brings this idea of cost into focus because its easier for us to do simple math and see that we’re paying $253,245 (the difference of $872k and $619k). And, they may still put the cost of actual trading spreads or fees on you.

Forget about paying the additional trading fees a professional is likely to shoulder you with and we can see that you have actually paid $703 per month on average during the time you had that person manage your money.

UGRU Stocks™ offers incredible cost savings. But you can still have more fees than necessary if you’re not paying attention.

For example,  while platforms like Webull or Robinhood advertise “free trading,” the real cost comes through payment for order flow — your trades are routed to market makers who may give you slightly worse prices. Over time, those pennies of slippage on every buy and sell can add up to far more than commissions. At a brokerage like Schwab, where execution quality is prioritized and spreads are tighter, you’re more likely to keep those pennies in your pocket — making it the cheaper choice in the long run.

Feel free to check out my write up on the best platform for trading HERE.

Tip #5: Don't Try to Outsmart the Alerts

This tip is about not outsmarting the alerts. But first let me share a little story:

An interesting experiment was performed pitting humans and monkeys. Each were given an option to press two buttons (one red and one green). Each button would light up randomly, but the green button was programmed to light up 80% of the time.

If the button was pushed and it subsequently lit up, a reward was given. If the choice was incorrect there was a shock administered.

Eventually, the monkey learned that there was a better chance in defaulting to the green button 100% of the time, even though it would get shocked two times out of ten.

Determined not to be outdone by a monkey, the human searched for a pattern (unsuccessfully).

The story is an interesting lesson in human behavior that can serve us well but, in the real world there exists something the human (or monkey) did not have access to and that was data. If you have the right data, patterns do emerge.

I’m not saying that it guarantees winning choices all the time but, it does put probability in your corner.

If a monkey benefited from probability, chances are you can too when you put a process like UGRU Stocks™ behind your actions!

Tip #6: Money is Not a Spectator Sport

This is something I often tell my clients because it’s so true.

If you want to win at investing it will require a bit of your time but it doesn’t mean you have to make it a full-time job.

You should expect to spend a few minutes per week acting on alerts.

UGRU Stocks™ can reduce the time you take to manage your investments to just a handful of minutes per month; less time than you spend listening to the expert explain why they failed to beat the S&P 500.

Tip #7: It’s OK to be in Cash

Before diving into this tip, I’d like to share my first major win in 2008/2009 as a professional Investment Advisor.

Before that win I had an awful experience at the turn of the millennium. I had been a Financial Advisor for about four years by the time January of 2000 hit.

That year looked like it might be a good year seeing as we crossed the feared Y2K hurdle. But, the year ended negative and so did 2001 and then even worse in 2002. It was like Chinese water torture!

I’m ashamed to look back and see I even BS’d my clients by telling them “it’s only a loss if you sell”. I honestly believed that (it’s what I was taught by my mentors).

That experience led me to break out of being a product salesman like so many other “Financial Advisors” and focus on the real mechanics of market movements.

As you know by watching the UGRU Stocks™ explainer video there was certain criteria that screamed of highly probable downturns for 2008/2009.

So, in December 2007, I moved my clients to cash and cash equivalents. But that’s not the end of the story.

Midway through 2008, the markets seemed unaffected by the data and I started getting a few clients that were inquiring about my decision.

But, I stuck to my guns explaining that cash is an asset class and since they were paying me to manage their money, I felt that was the best place at the time.

Now, you have to understand what I was up against. Most financial professionals subscribe to Modern Portfolio Theory that has overwhelmingly led to the notion of keeping a “balanced portfolio”.

I have very strong opinions about this that I wrote about in Chapters 9 and 10 in my most recent book. You can check that out HERE.

Anyway, why did this whole Modern Portfolio Theory matter? Well, those clients talked to other advisors who claimed I was cheating them because I was charging to keep their money in cash.

The way I saw it was that if I saved you $500,000 in losses then I deserved to continue to charge my fees as a money manager, even if managing your money means being in cash for a while.

You be the judge on that one. But, I will say I did lose a few clients and the subsequent market losses they experienced had some serious implications for the retirement they were trying to enjoy.

Many times we overcomplicate things like how we might approach using the UGRU Stocks™ alerts.

For example, we might try to take all the alerts and try to allocate 5% of our money into each and try to balance that act. 

You can see how that would become overwhelming, right?

Of course, the alerts are yours to act on any way you want but, if it were me I’d pick ONLY three and simply be all in or all out based on the alert.

Like my clients learned, being in cash can be a good thing!

Tip #8: Trade Responsibly

By now you may have noticed a great trade close out for a 2%, 5%, 10% or, even greater gain.

It might be tempting to start believing that leveraging your trades is a good idea, let me assure you it is not.

I’m not going to go deep on this one because its straight forward to me but please keep in mind a few things if you’ve thought about making trades on margin:

  1. You might 10x your investment but, you could lose it all.
  2. Probability is not on your side. Remember, although the losses will likely be greatly limited, you will lose ~60% of the time.
  3. It only takes one time getting wiped out to prevent you from enjoying years of positive investing experience.
Tip #9: Don't Analyze Why a Trade Did What it Did

UGRU Stocks™ is intended to relieve you of many burdens so you can live your best life.

It might be tempting to spend inordinate hours trying to figure out why but, is that how you REALLY want to spend your time? If so, maybe you should consider becoming an Affiliate HERE.

But, you probably have better things to do in your life like family, friends, travel or hobbies so save yourself the grief of:

  1. Buying expensive trading and analytics software
  2. Going blind pouring over information
  3. Riding the emotional roller coaster

And trust that you’ll likely manage just fine over time with UGRU Stocks™ which is based on a professional management process.

Tip #10: Don't Get Hung Up on Price

Buying a house is viewed differently than buying a stock or crypto. With a house the affordability factor (for most people) is in the list price and whether you can afford the loan payments. Or, if you can afford to part with that much money all at once.

Tip #11: Don't Worry if We are in a Bull or Bear Market

There is an old saying in my line of work: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.

I’ve never seen anyone go broke taking a profit but, I’ve seen people go broke with a buy and hold mentality.

Most people think uni-directionally regarding making investment gains.

The truth is that we can make money in a Bull Market and make money in a Bear Market. But, you’re NOT likely to achieve that with a buy and hold strategy.

Think about it this way: If you had $100,000 and you lost 50% in your buy/hold strategy in a down market, it would take a 100% return for you to see that $100k balance on your statement again.

At a 12% average annual return that could take over eight years to achieve.

But, when we include the effects of inflation, it could take 13 to 15 years just to regain the purchasing power we had before the 50% loss.

The first time I heard the term buy and hold I thought exactly what you’ve likely thought. It’s simple, buy a stock and never sell it. But I found out that was all wrong.

When you buy to hold, you have to ask yourself what you’re buying in the first place and why you’re buying it (and why you’d sell but I’ll save that for another tip).

For example, let’s say that you wanted to squeeze the highest return you could from your investing, and I told you that Microsoft was the place to do it.

You may very well laugh at me because people have recently bought Microsoft for its steady returns and dividend (that’s changing though).

The time to REALLY benefit would have been 1986 with its IPO. Why? Because it kicked off a new era in personal computing, just the way:

1996 – Amazon kicked off a new era of the way we shop.

2005 – Google kicked off a new era in personal information

2012 – Facebook kicked off a new era in social media

Just like Coinbase kicked off a new era in 2021 with Crypto currencies.

So, if you were to invest, wouldn’t you want to do that in the next adoptive technology like EVs, the next cultural shift in the way we send/receive money like Crypto and ride the shift in monetary policy that drives whether we are in an inflationary environment?

My guess? Sure you would because there is so much momentum and volatility with new technology and cultural shifts that we can effectively make money when the markets are in a bull or bear cycle.

There’s a time and a place for buy and hold but let’s not forget, no one ever went broke taking a profit.

Tip #12: Turn Off the News

I don’t need to tell you we are inundated with news feeds (being human makes you painfully aware of that already).

Nevertheless, we are unwittingly affected by the news on a subconscious level. And, the masses seem to find themselves a day late and a dollar short.

And, EVERYTIME it seems we quietly kick ourselves in the butt for making decisions based on what we get from the hamster bottle (I know I have).

One newsfeed we’ve heard for the past several years now and, its true…

Most Professional Money Managers Fail to Outperform the S&P 500.

In fact, if you do a Google search, you’ll find 1000s of news articles written on the topic. But like all truth it resides in context so, let me put this truth in context for you.

There are more than this but three that stick out as to the real reason they usually fail to beat the indices is because:

  1. Tons of entry research, little exit research
  2. Fees
  3. Parameters

Point number one has to do with a five-year study over 4.4 million trades finding that top managers poured most of their time into the study of what they wanted to purchase and an abysmal amount into why they would sell.

Knowing when to sell is a very underappreciated skill when it comes to investing.

Point number two should be a no-brainer. When you’re being charged 0.75% by the fund manager and 1% by the advisor that sold you the mutual fund (or managed portfolio) it gives the S&P 500 a distinct advantage right out of the gate.

Number three is that their hands are tied. If a money manager says they are a large cap growth fund, then by definition they are locked into sticking with large cap growth stocks.

They have a little wiggle room but it’s very limited, so they aren’t agile enough to see an opportunity and run after it. They are stuck, and by default so are you.

The news is very much geared the masses, what they know as common knowledge and, the appeal of the average persons experience so they can keep viewing numbers high by sensationalizing your fear and greed.

When they are forever talking about fund managers and where to put your money, the news is not only geared for the masses, its simply old news.

So, the takeaway is:

  1. Knowing when to sell is just as important as knowing when to buy
  2. Keep overhead low
  3. Stay nimble, don’t act on old news.
Tip #13: Don't Obsess Over Your Trade

The idea of the last tip spills into this tip because we live in a hyper sensationalized world and that has implications as a human making decisions.

We want to make the right decision and there is stress when we don’t so its natural to catch ourselves refreshing the screen to see the pricing movement of the stock or crypto we just bought.

Part of preventing this is setting proper expectations (which we covered a few tips back). If you know not every trade will be a winner that can help settle our emotions.

But, if we can learn to trust the process and that we are likely to have higher success on the balance we can stay away from obsessing over what the pricing is doing minute by minute.

Obsessing over a trade defeats the purpose of UGRU Stocks™ which was created to help you live your best life without worry.

Tip #14: Control What You Can, Manage What You Can’t

I wanted to give you one last tip if you want to up your personal finance game.

I’ve been a financial professional for a long time and when I reflect on why I’m still in this line of work after so many years, one word comes to mind – value.

I love adding value to the people I work with! When they see that I’ve been able to help them there is a certain sense of satisfaction that keeps me wanting to experience seeing you happy.

It’s the difference between what a salesman takes from you and what a professional offers you.

And I feel blessed that somehow, someway at the start of my career I found it important to pursue doing things the right way.

I want to pull back the curtain just a bit and share something that only few wealthy people have used to enhance their retirement.

The cool thing is that it has nothing to do with making bigger returns on your investments.

Also, the process behind it can actually be used to build wealth in amazing ways long before the Social Security Administration says you should retire.

There is a short video HERE that shows how.

After the video, let’s meet in a Zoom call and I can answer any questions you may have.