Editor’s Note: Good evening, Insiders – Mike Burnick here.  

In our last issue, we took a deep dive into the work and strategies of my colleague Jeff Clark – one of the sharpest minds I know, and one of Team TradeSmith’s premiere experts in technical market analysis.

Though it may not feel like it, considering how quickly he became a core part of our team, Jeff joined up with TradeSmith just last year – not just as the editor of Delta Report, Market Minute, and the publications over at Jeff Clark Trader – but as an expert in reading shifts in market trend.

Jeff has spent over 40 years trading and studying the markets (that’s more than me, even!), and managed money for over 100 of California’s wealthiest individuals. After retiring from running his own firm, he works to teach his winning strategies to everyday investors.

Now, you don’t need me to tell you that markets have been wild lately – or that today’s volatility is rewarding traders with the right tools and the right approach.

But Jeff’s seeing something else in all this volatility. He’s always had a knack for finding tipping points in the market… and he’s identified a few signals pointing him to one conclusion:

The market is currently in the middle of a “disruption window.”

These are rare stretches of time where traditional market rules break down… and that offer a prime opportunity for anyone with the right strategy to trade it.

Jeff has traded through disruption windows like this twice before – and in both cases, he ran win streaks long enough that someone rolling a single $5,000 stake from one trade into the next would have ended up with $1 million or more by the end of it. 

That’s why earlier today, he went live with the 12 Trades to $1 Million Challenge, as he attempts to guide traders through a three-peat – with the first trades starting right now.

Jeff’s been sharing the details of his research, his strategy, and the trading plan for this challenge with the rest of Team TradeSmith for a few weeks now, and we’re all incredibly excited by what we’ve learned.

That’s why in tonight’s issue, I’m giving Jeff the spotlight to share the same with you – in hopes that you’ll join him in trading what may be the best setup he’s seen in decades.  

Take it away, Jeff!

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The Best Way to Profit From Today’s Market Disruption

BY JEFF CLARK, EDITOR, MARKET MINUTE

 

The Pony Express ran for just 18 months. Then, the transcontinental telegraph killed it.

But for those 18 months, it was the fastest mail service in America. A letter from Missouri to California took 24 days by stagecoach. The Pony Express did it in 10.

They didn’t do it with faster horses – they did it with fresh ones.

No horse could make that trip at that speed. But a network of horses could. The Pony Express ran on a chain of relay stations, spaced 10 to 15 miles apart along the route.

A rider would gallop hard for one stretch, swing his leather satchel onto a fresh horse at the next station, and hand off to the next rider. The tired horse stayed behind. The mail kept moving.

The same logic applies to trading.

If you want to take a modest stake and turn it into a meaningful amount of money, one of the best ways to do it is to take small, well-timed gains and roll them, one into the next, until the position has grown into something much bigger.

But there’s a catch. A rollover strategy doesn’t work like this in every kind of market. It needs the right conditions – the equivalent of fresh horses waiting at every station.

Those conditions are in front of us right now.

A Market Disruption Is Underway

Earlier this year, Anthropic – the company behind the Claude AI model – announced a new security tool that could automatically scan code for vulnerabilities and suggest fixes.

Within days, three of the most respected cybersecurity companies in the world – CrowdStrike (CRWD), Cloudflare (NET), and Okta (OKTA) – each lost close to a tenth of their value in a single session.

A few weeks later, a research firm called Citrini Research published a viral note about what AI was doing to the software industry. The argument was simple – and devastating. AI coding agents had erased the cost advantage that protected enterprise software for two decades. What used to take a team of engineers and months of work could now be done by one person, in a weekend, for almost nothing.

The market took it seriously. Within 48 hours, roughly $285 billion was wiped from software stocks. Salesforce (CRM) is down as much as 30% in 2026. Atlassian (TEAM) dropped nearly 58% in a single quarter. Even Palantir (PLTR) – a company so deeply embedded in the U.S. military that the Pentagon made its software an official long-term program – lost 15% in a week.

It’s not just AI. Last year, a single tariff announcement triggered an 11% drop in the S&P 500 in a matter of days – one of the sharpest declines in decades.

This is a major market disruption.

A moment when the normal rules of the market temporarily break down. Stocks move 20% or 30% in a single session. Sectors reprice overnight. Companies that should be steady become volatile, and companies that should be punished start ripping higher.

These windows are rare. And when they appear, they don’t stay open long.

But they’re the exact conditions my strategy is built for. Stocks are moving. Setups are appearing faster than usual. The market is handing fresh horses to anyone watching for them.

Trading through one of these windows doesn’t guarantee anything. All trading carries real risk of loss. But the conditions in front of us are the best I’ve seen in 42 years for the kind of rollover strategy I outlined above.

I don’t want to lose this opportunity. That’s why I’m launching the first trading challenge of my career. By taking advantage of this rare market disruption, I aim to turn a $5,000 stake into $1 million in 12 trades or less.

This challenge isn’t for everyone. But I’m looking for qualified readers to join me.

Turning a small stake into a million will be tough. And it may not happen. But my track record shows it’s entirely possible.

Two Winning Streaks, Two Market Disruptions

One of my team members went back through the 381 trade recommendations I’ve closed over the past nine years. He found something that surprised me.

There were 36 separate streaks of three or more winning trades in a row. Twenty-one of those streaks ran five trades or longer.

And on two specific occasions – both during exactly this kind of disruption – the streaks ran long enough that someone rolling $5,000 from one trade into the next would have ended with seven figures.

The first was during the 2023 banking crisis. Nine trades. $5,000 to $1.3 million.

The second was during the AI repricing of 2025. Twelve trades. $5,000 to $2.6 million.

Both took place in roughly the same conditions we’re seeing today. Both windows closed within months. And neither one announced itself in advance.

I want to be clear about what those numbers are and aren’t. They’re not a forecast. They’re not a guarantee. They’re a look back at what the same approach produced the last two times conditions like these appeared. The next time may look different.

But the pattern is consistent enough – and the conditions in front of us close enough – that I want to attempt the same thing again. This time on purpose, with readers alongside me.

I’m calling it the 12 Trades to $1 Million Challenge. We’ll start with a small stake and try to roll it into $1 million in no more than 12 trades, in six months or less.

Three things matter before you decide whether this is for you.

1. First, the odds of hitting the full $1 million are low. I want to say that plainly. Even in the best conditions I’ve seen in 42 years of trading, this requires favorable markets, disciplined execution, and some luck. Any trading carries real risk of loss. This is not money you should rely on.
2. Second, the Challenge is designed to cap your downside at the starting stake. You put $5,000 in, and that’s all you put in. Not a penny more of your own money.
3. Finally – even if we don’t reach $1 million, the trades along the way are designed to produce real gains. Stopping halfway with $50,000 or $100,000 from a $5,000 starting stake isn’t a failed Challenge. It’s a result almost no buy-and-hold strategy could match over the same window.

Earlier today, I went live to walk viewers through the full plan, both prior streaks trade by trade, and the specific setups I’m watching right now during the Challenge launch event. But that doesn’t mean it’s too late to join me.

If you’re interested in learning more about the full strategy, you can click here to catch the replay of the launch event.

Best regards and good trading,

Jeff Clark
Editor, Market Minute

P.S. The Pony Express ran for 18 months. The window we’re in won’t last that long. The 2019 disruption window lasted a few weeks — while the 2021 window closed in five or six.

By the time most investors can be sure the conditions are right, the conditions usually aren’t anymore. That’s why I’m doing this now, and not waiting for confirmation that won’t come in time.

So, if you’re thinking about joining me, you’ll want to act now: Click here to get all the challenge details before it’s too late.