28 Trading Questions Answered: Clement Ang Q&A
Clement Ang
Clement is a dedicated trader whose passion for the markets was sparked during his university days and refined through real-world challenges.
Published: October 6, 2026
Clement Ang went from trading part-time around a corporate job in Hong Kong to managing money at SilverCape, finishing as a top performer in the million-dollar division of the 2025 US Investing Championship and returning +522% across 2024 and 2025. TraderLion opened an AMA on X, and readers sent in their questions. Here are his answers to all 28, grouped by theme.
Answers are in Clement’s own words, lightly edited for typos and broken into paragraphs. Reader questions were lightly cleaned up. Follow Clement on X at @Clement_Ang17.
Market Environment & Cycles
How do you avoid overtrading in choppy markets, and how do you know it's time to increase exposure again after a choppy or sideways market?
This is a tough one, and a great question! Honestly something I still struggle with (though much better compared to earlier years). The difficulty isn’t because you can’t sit out of a choppy environment, its exponentially increased because the market eggs you enough to keep you engaged enough just to rug you, toiling on your mental capital until the real turn comes and you’re too exhausted to engage again.
My solution thus far:
(1) Think very deep about your trading system: When are you allowed to be aggressive and chase for opening range entries? When are you not allowed to and should only engage 30-minutes after the market open? Which type of entry styles (breakouts or pullbacks) favor a choppy market environment? Within each entry style, what is the entry tactic? (5-min 6/20 MACD turns, or 30-min pullback pivots, etc…) What type of profit taking rules should you have in a chop market? (say take half position off at 3R instead of 1/3 in trending environments). How many new trades are you allowed per day? Max risk per session? Importantly: What is your A+ setup? What filtering criteria do you have that differentiates this setup vs the rest? (In choppy markets, you won’t find that many A+ setups). Having this clarity allows you to engage a chop market without doing too much damage to the account.
(2) The next part of this is situational awareness: How do market cycles start? You will have to conduct deep dives to find the answer to this.
From July to August specifically, there was a lack of setups and leadership compared to April and May. Is that a discretionary feel, or do you have a gauge on the number of sectors and setups that are setting up? And when you mention a lack of leadership, how do you define that?
Speaking for myself, its definitely a discretionary feel! This ‘feel’ comes from years of screen time, studying market cycles, and just failing time and time again from catching the ‘big winners’ of each cycle. It will help to have a well established daily and weekly routine that you do (non-negotiable!) over long stretches of time to develop this feel. Routine journaling in my earlier years helped too, especially as I write about what I missed and where I could have done better — I encourage you to do the same!
How do you go about understanding whether, in a specific market condition, you should be buying breakouts or buying weakness (pullbacks) after a good strong move?
Good question! I would like to first have you read this quote that I got from ‘Trend Following’ by Michael Covel:
“Trends develop because there's an accumulating consensus on future prices, consequently there's an evolution to the true price value over time. Because investors/traders are human and they make mistakes, they're never 100% sure of their vision and whether or not their view is correct. So price adjustments take time as they fluctuate and a new consensus is formed in the face of changing market conditions and new facts. For some changes, this consensus is easy to reach, but there are other events that take time to formulate a market view. It's those events that take time that form the basis of profits.”
In relation to your question (answering from the lens of a William O’Neil type growth stock trader), clean breakouts can occur under the context of post-market corrections because positioning has been reset — everyone has hopped off the boat and no one has exposure. So what happens? They chase stocks higher to get their desired allocation. As the rally lengthens in duration, most have already gotten exposure, trades get crowded, that’s when you likely want to focus on just pullback buying because trends are an accumulating consensus on future prices.
Now the other scenario where breakouts will work is in a manic, hot market environment. You will see the most speculative issues form beautiful technical patterns and breaking out. In my memory, we last saw that in October 2025 with the strategic rare earth/mineral names. Hope that answers your question!
How much, if at all, do you change or adapt your strategy in choppy environments? Any coping mechanisms you use to avoid getting drawn into style drift?
In choppy environments, you’d ideally want to sell quicker (and more into strength), or just sit out! I don’t really style drift, the strategy remains the same, its just the trade management that needs adaptation!
Watchlists, Scanning & Themes
What is something within your process that you feel is very underrated, that more traders should be doing?
I won’t say there isn’t anything particularly ‘underrated’ or special! But if I would have to point one out, its flipping through charts routinely + watchlist management. Having a daily and weekly routine where you become a ‘chart junkie’ and flip through hundreds upon hundreds of charts is where you will develop that feel for the market. You won’t feel it in one day, but doing it over time for many days and many market cycles: you will develop a feel for the market that is irreplaceable. That I believe is the discretionary edge in trading that many are looking for!
Could you walk through your scanning process?
These Substack articles that I wrote with @KynaKosling are a good read in case you missed it — nothing has really changed with regards to routine and my scanning.
I’m a user of Deepvue and I basically take a lot of their pre-set screeners, edited according to the ADR% and Liquidity (Avg. Dollar Volume) that I desire, and bunch them together into a watchlist. Over the weekend, I flip through every single chart in there — anything that is interesting, I will add to my watchlist.
The alternative is to just cast a wider net: Scan for stocks trading above the 50-SMA and 200-SMA, trades at least 50 million dollars on average the past 20 days, and has an ADR% (20 days) of >=3%. Then look through every single chart. Over time, it gives you a feel for what is moving, whether the environment is healthy/not healthy, etc…
In terms of daily routine, I flip through the stocks in my watchlist every day and categorize them based on their technical action. I also run a screen-on-screen on Deepvue to see if I’ve missed out anything interesting. Hope this helps!
How do you spot and track sector rotation?
By religiously tracking and managing my watchlists!
How much emphasis do you put on leading themes and groups? Can you explain how you go about determining both? That's always a challenge for me.
Good question! To me I view themes/groups as the same thing, with theme being a subgroup of the main group (so CPU names within semis for example). I try to keep it simple in terms of how I determine it, it usually originates from my watchlist management where I begin to see more names exhibiting strong and persistent relative strength to the general market — they generally get promoted to the top of my watchlists naturally! Flipping through charts routinely and getting to know a little bit about each company will, over time, naturally give you a better sense of which themes/groups are leading and showing strength!
Can you talk about your daily and weekend routine, and watchlist management?
Clement answered this one with a link: his thread on his daily and weekend routine. For more on how he builds and maintains watchlists, see the scanning answer above and his Substack pieces with Kyna Kosling.
Stock Selection & Setups
You mentioned in a recent TraderLion interview that you're moving to position trading after being a swing trader. How do you shortlist stocks, and what ultimately makes you take a position?
I want stocks that have shown tremendous relative strength during a market decline/chop, belongs to a theme/narrative that the market has caught on, and has the fundamentals to back it up. In relation to what I just said, I’m still figuring out the balance of swing vs position trading!
Clement explains the shift in more detail in this thread on moving from swing to position trading.
What precise steps did you take in the early days to build the necessary skills? Also, any advice on how to narrow a focus list down to only three to five names?
My interviews on the TraderLion YouTube channel could shed light on that!
On narrowing your focus list, you have to know what a good setup looks like, and it usually satisfies the following:
- In theme
- Shows relative strength
- Beautiful symmetrical weekly chart, ideally multi-week
- Strong setup on the daily chart, showing volatility contraction characteristics
- Near 52-week / all-time highs
- <4x ATR multiples from the 50-SMA
- Liquid (trades at least 50 million dollars a day), and moves fast (at least 4% ADR)
Entries & Execution
What do you do if you're underinvested while the market and leading stocks are broken out and extended? Would you look for secondary breakouts, or wait for pullbacks in the leaders?
Great question! If you’ve missed the initial leading stocks, you definitely do not want to be chasing them. Case in point, I actually bought AMD last week but shook myself out because I wasn’t entirely ‘confident’ — as we’re speaking now its trading way higher from where I bought it. The absolute last thing I want to do is buy it up here, because the risk:reward over the set does not favor you (and it will contribute to a non-profitable trading system, you’re giving money away to the market!)
Look for other themes that are setting up. In a strong environment, you’ll have more than a handful of stocks that will give you love. Its like dating as a young bachelor — let the girl come to you, know your worth! The secondary opportunities will always come if you wait for it (play hard to get yo!).
I will add: “Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.” Trading the markets is like surfing a wave, you need to ‘flow’ with it and not force yourself on it (within the boundaries of your entry tactics). There definitely are instances when you CAN chase a market higher, but that’s a topic for another discussion one day.
If a stock gaps up but still goes through your buy point right at the open, do you buy it directly, or wait for the candle to finish forming and buy the opening range high?
Good question! It depends on the context: (1) Is it gapping up for a reason? (2) Is it a ‘screw bar?’ — meaning the prior candle closes at the low, and then the next day gaps back above the high and takes out range (this is happening very frequently lately).
Normally though, I’ll usually watch the first 30 minutes, especially if the stock gaps up without any sort of catalyst and I ‘feel’ that the chart pattern isn’t well developed enough yet. It is helpful to track these over time — that will give you your answer!
Do you ever buy a stock if it's already over 1 ATR? If so, in which cases? What if it gapped over 1 ATR?
No I usually don’t, I want the current move for the session to be <60% ATR from the LoD. Otherwise, you’re chasing a move that has already happened hoping for reward! Similarly for instruments traded 24 hours (precious metals and crypto for example), you need to take into context what has already happened going into the US trading session.
How much weight do you give to price action outside of market hours? Is there any signal that would make you buy or sell outside regular hours?
Depends on the market context. In June/July, the KOSPI index was the epicenter of the memory trade, and hence it made sense to pay attention to what the overnight market was doing as it relates to the action there.
When you have multiple stocks on your focus list triggering buy points, how do you prioritize in real time? Are you using stop orders?
You can buy in order of the trigger! But lately, I’ve become a fan of pullback buys vs buying straight off the open — so I usually wait out the first 30 minutes before doing anything (unless we get into those hot momentum environments). That gives me time to use limit or stop orders buying that intraday ‘turn’.
Risk, Stops & Position Sizing
What sort of pullback from peak equity do you have to stomach while generating 522% in two years? And is it variable given market conditions — in roaring bull markets maybe you allow 10-15%, but in average ones only 5-8%?
Good question! You’re on the right track in thinking that I try to adapt to market conditions. I usually like to start every year with a clean slate. So with 0% YTD PnL, I’m trying to go for base hits, easy trades — things that can move my equity curve up as I build cushion. When I get beyond a certain point (say 20% YTD PnL) AND I see that market conditions are starting to favor my trading style, I will get aggressive as long as the positions I take are showing me traction.
To quote Stanley Druckenmiller: “I see a lot of managers get up 20% or ‘I want to book my year. I made my high watermark. Let’s go to the beach.’ I’m the opposite… If you’re up 20 or 30%, you’re playing in the house money, that’s when you try and get up 60 or 70%.”
And to also quote Victor Sperandeo, you always want to approach your trading business with three principles in mind, one after the other: 1) Preservation of Capital 2) Consistent Profitability 3) Pursuit of Superior Returns.
SO, once I’ve knocked it out of the park, say 50% YTD and the market conditions really are rewarding me, I shouldn’t stop because this could be THE year to make big returns. In that case, I’m okay to suffer a larger drawdown from equity curve peak because of the ‘house money’ mindset. For me, I am okay trading off 20-25% off my peak because my worst case scenario is I have a decent year, but my best case scenario is I knock it out of the park!
You buy a ticker from your focus list and you have levels as your stop. If there's a gap down past your stop, how do you react? Close immediately, or wait 5 to 30 minutes after the open?
It depends on the market context. If many stocks and the general indices are gapping down into ‘support’, then I will remove my stop and let the first 15 minutes trade — if the low of that 15-minute candle is violated then I’m out. But for newer traders, always just take the first loss: The first loss is always the best loss!
When do you pyramid into a full position, and when do you take the full position at once? Does it depend on market environment, profit cushion, or quality of the setup?
When I buy a position, its usually my full position at once.
What's the best way to stop overtrading? And how do you balance a long and short mindset while always being ready for the next uptrend?
Keep a log of every single trade you’ve made. Start categorizing trades that you shouldn’t have made, and figure out why you’ve made those trades. Then, sum up the PnL you’ve made/lost taking those trades! Now once that is done, calculate what your performance would have been had you not taken those trades!
On the second question balancing long/short, it’s a tough one to answer but it comes down to situational awareness — knowing what the environment looks like when the market is ready to transition into a potential uptrend. I would advise against being heavily involved on the short side as it is very difficult to transition between the two, just based off of personal experience!
How do you hold your winners? How do you protect your equity curve? And how do you have the discipline to follow your rules?
Great question! (1) From the perspective of a swing/position trader, it helps to have a general idea of whether you’re early in a cycle or late in a cycle. During the earlier parts of the cycle, you ideally want to trim less of the initial position (to derisk it if that’s part of your process), and let the balance trail via the 10-MA or 20-MA (again dependent on your process). On this, it helps to study how the biggest stock market winners of the past setup, move out, stall/top out, and break their MAs. This builds muscle memory to know what you can expect from your positions.
Now when we get to a later part of the cycle, the uptrend has gone on for a certain duration, you now likely want to sell newer positions into strength more frequently. Setups are few and far between, price action gets choppy, and you will likely find it difficult to gain traction. This is where it becomes harder to hold winners.
(2) In protecting your equity curve, you have to heed feedback from your trades. The magic is when you pair that feedback with situational awareness. If you are beginning to see warning signs, like leaders breaking down hard, and the feedback of your last 5 trades were losers — that’s a sign to dial it back on the risk taking.
(3) Following rules is hard for sure! I break rules sometimes too and suffer the consequences. I think the key is in deciding which is more painful: (1) Following rules and missing a trade, or stopping out on a trade, or (2) Breaking rules and having that become a habit. When the pain of staying the same (breaking rules) outweighs the pain of making the change, you will change! If you’ve found yourself breaking rules, don’t be discouraged — we all do from time to time. The key is in acknowledging the mistake, letting it go, and finding the courage to be disciplined again!
Psychology & The Journey
How do you deal with FOMO?
Great question! First I think its important to acknowledge that FOMO exists. Every trader, regardless of whether you are new or seasoned, experiences FOMO to varying degrees. The difference is in knowing what happens over a large dataset when you succumb to FOMO.
So to answer your question, start tracking your trades and tagging each one where you succumbed to FOMO. Ask yourself, did you make money over time doing that? Speaking for myself, I know that I will almost always lose money when I FOMO and chase a trade. That being said, I am also human and I do succumb to these emotions from time to time, its just that I do it much less frequently now. When you’ve experienced the pain of FOMO over prolonged stretches of time, you will eventually get to the point where ‘enough is enough’. That’s when change happens!
How do you get through the period where you have no results in the early stage of your trading journey? What was your ‘aha’ moment in trading?
I think you first have to ask yourself: ‘what is your reason/motivation for trading?’ For me, its definitely money, and going a step deeper: its to provide a very comfortable life/financial security for my entire family. I’m not trading just for myself, but I’m carrying the weight of everyone who has placed their belief in me that I can make it.
And so starting out, aside from the passion of figuring things out, I needed to have this delusional belief that I can make it (even though I wasn’t making money or progress). It definitely got tough at times and when I hit rock bottom, I wanted to give up. But giving up is irresponsible to myself, and importantly, those who believed in me!
I wouldn’t say there was a particular ‘aha’ moment in trading, but through consistently reiterating myself and improving, consistently running my process, journaling my successes and failures, the market has humbled me and that was when I saw light at the end of the tunnel (today!). Trading has made me more introspective, mature, and someone who will forever want to learn and grow. I’m sure if you have a strong enough resolve, you can too!
What did you notice that led you to believe your strategies would work out? What was the inflection point before diving in completely?
I saw my equity curve trending in the right direction in 2024 and put up a good return year in the USIC. That was when I had the thought that perhaps I had what it took to trade full-time.
Prior to this I really put in a LOT of work to get there — it was basically chart work and studying whenever I had pockets of time outside of corporate work hours. Tiding through those really tough periods built resilience to keep going no matter what, and taught me that as much as I’m not really talented, I will outwork anyone and that would be enough!
Advice for Newer Traders
For a beginner, which two or three setups would you recommend learning first to handle all market conditions — bullish, choppy, bearish? Looking for something simple, and in what order should I learn them?
For starters, you won’t be able to handle ALL market conditions. I would start with just trading volatility contraction patterns in a bullish market environment and go from there. Its simple, but you have to put in a LOT of work to get good at it.
I'm a newbie. In search of an edge as a swing trader, how should I proceed? What steps must I take, what statistics should I record, and how can I objectively assess what's an A+ setup against a mediocre one?
There isn’t a set step-by-step way to find edge. But you’re on the right track following @TraderLion. Learn from the greats, study them deeply, and take what makes sense to you (and that fits your personality).
Performance & Expectations
Which stocks or trades contributed the majority of your gains?
My trading stats do follow the Pareto principle. $ARM, $MU, $CRWD, $ALAB, $CRDO and $BE contributed to the bulk of my PnL this year.
Do people have to trade all the hundreds or thousands of failed trades to get the same results, since only a small number made most of the gains?
It depends on your trading style! Hundreds/thousands of failed trades could be a result of tight stops — take Martin Luk for example. Is there a way to optimize for fewer trades and trading only the “A+” opportunity? Yes probably. But the thing is no one can predict the future, we never really know which handful of small trades will make up those big gains 100% of the time. You can only work and get comfortable with uncertainty while letting the law of large numbers play out.
- Choppy markets are a trade-management problem, not a strategy problem. Clement keeps the same setups but sells faster, waits 30 minutes after the open, and caps new trades and risk per session.
- Breakouts work best right after a correction, when positioning has reset. As a rally ages and trades get crowded, he shifts toward buying pullbacks.
- His edge is routine chart flipping. He builds watchlists from Deepvue screens filtered for ADR% and dollar volume, reviews every chart on the weekend, and lets leading themes rise to the top.
- His A+ checklist: in theme, strong relative strength, a symmetrical multi-week weekly chart, volatility contraction on the daily, near highs, under 4x ATR from the 50-SMA, and at least $50M daily volume with a 4%+ ADR.
- Risk scales with cushion. He starts each year going for base hits, gets aggressive only after about 20% YTD in a favorable market, and will accept a 20–25% pullback from peak once well ahead.
- Track your mistakes in data. Tag overtrades and FOMO trades in your log, total their P&L, and see what your results would have been without them.
Keep Learning From Clement
Want more from Clement? Read about the four traders who shaped his journey, follow him on X at @Clement_Ang17, and watch his interviews on the TraderLion YouTube channel.
This article is for educational purposes only and is not investment advice. Trading stocks involves risk, and past performance does not guarantee future results. Stocks mentioned are examples from the trader’s own experience, not recommendations.
