In this MNDY vs. ACH post-earnings case study, I compare two bearish setups from August 10, 2026. MNDY fell 13.95% during its first hourly earnings candle but produced just 4.92% MFE, while ACH initially dropped 19.76% before extending to a massive 43.21% MFE. After losing roughly $600 forcing the weaker MNDY setup and recovering to finish down just $5, the session highlighted an important trading lesson: better trade selection can protect not only your capital, but also your attention.
Throughout 2026, I’ve been building a trading system around one basic idea: only trade post-earnings momentum setups that meet the criteria I’ve outlined on my trading strategy page.
And most of the time, when I actually stick to that system, I do pretty well.
Today, however, I spiraled straight out of control.
I spent most of the morning trying to force a mediocre MNDY setup while a much higher-quality ACH setup was sitting right in front of me.
Ultimately, I entered MNDY too early. I oversized. I flipped from long to short and back again. Eventually, I stopped trading the setup and started trading my P&L, trying desperately to make back what I’d already lost.
By the time I was done, I’d dug myself into a roughly $600 hole. It was only by oversizing and revenge trading that I managed to recover almost all of it and finished the day down only about $5.
That might sound like a successful recovery. It wasn’t.
Because while I was busy fighting MNDY all morning, ACH ultimately produced a 43.21% maximum favorable excursion (MFE) in the direction of its initial post-earnings move.
And that’s what made today’s lesson so painfully obvious. Capital wasn’t my only scarce resource. Attention was.
Below, I break down both MNDY and ACH’s post-earnings setups to help traders see the difference between a good momentum setup and one that they probably shouldn’t even think about trading.
MNDY – The Earnings & Technical Setup
Going into the morning, I already had my heart set on trading monday.com (MNDY).
There wasn’t necessarily a good reason for that. MNDY was simply one of the bigger names reporting earnings that morning, and I had seen the stock produce significant post-earnings moves in the past.
That familiarity created a bias before the setup had even finished developing.
MNDY initially fell 13.95% during its first hourly earnings candle, which is right in the sweet spot for what I like to see when scanning my setups.
Based on that hourly earnings move alone, the chart looked like exactly the kind of post-earnings momentum I wanted.
But the details were considerably less convincing:
- MNDY produced no hourly, four-hour, or daily breakout.
- Its momentum candle had a relatively large 5.40% lower-wick retracement.
- Fundamentals were mixed, but not bad by any means: EPS beat expectations by 33.33%, revenue beat by 2.87%, while guidance was slightly bearish/mixed.
The fundamentals and price action therefore didn’t really agree. The chart showed downside price action, but the fundamentals said this was a company that was continuing to beat top and bottom line expectations.
So overall, MNDY wasn’t necessarily an untradeable setup. It simply wasn’t a particularly strong one. More importantly, I should have done a much better job managing myself, my positions, and my discipline instead of spiraling out of control.
Take a look at the chart below and you’ll see just how many times I had to trade in and out, up and down, just to break even.
That’s not sane or healthy trading…
And the results from the setup only confirm the problem:
Instead of continuing lower, MNDY reversed, producing only 4.92% MFE against 5.48% MAE. From the hourly candle close through the following day’s close, the stock actually moved 5.48% higher than where my initial short entry would have been.
Overall, MNDY checked surprisingly few of the boxes I normally look for in a high-quality post-earnings setup. Yet this was the stock I decided I needed to trade.
Ironically, I also had a similar freakout last time MNDY reported. The stock popped higher, I got long, and then the stock ripped lower.
Yet instead of exiting and calling it a day, I did the exact same thing as today’s move, and oversized, overtraded, and spiraled out of control.
Meanwhile, ACH Was Sitting Right in Front of Me
I had actually found Accendra Health (ACH) during my pre-market scan.
I passed on it primarily for two reasons.
First, ACH had already fallen 19.76% during its first hourly candle. Based on the post-earnings data I’ve collected so far, a move approaching 20% starts entering territory where I’m increasingly concerned about momentum exhaustion.
Second, ACH simply wasn’t a company I know particularly well.
While those are perfectly valid points, in hindsight, I gave those two factors far too much weight. After all, almost everything else about the setup was stronger.
ACH’s first hourly candle fell 19.76%, but its momentum-end wick retraced only 1.68%. It also produced an hourly technical breakout, although it did not confirm on the four-hour or daily timeframes.
More importantly, the fundamentals agreed with the price action.
ACH missed EPS estimates by 46.15% and revenue estimates by 2.84%, while its guidance was mixed/uncertain.
Unlike MNDY, the overall fundamental picture was substantially more consistent with a bearish hourly move.
The result?
ACH continued lower and ultimately produced a staggering 43.21% MFE, compared with 7.38% MAE. From the hourly candle close, which is my ideal entry, through the following session’s close, ACH declined another 36.13%.
It wasn’t a perfect setup according to every criterion. But compared with MNDY, it was clearly the higher-quality post-earnings momentum setup.
The -5% Stop Doesn’t Ruin the Lesson
There’s an important caveat here. Under my normal strategy of entering at the close of the first hourly earnings candle with a -5% stop loss, I still would have been stopped out of ACH.
Its maximum adverse excursion or MAE eventually reached 7.38% before moving in the direction of the initial earnings move. So it would be dishonest to look at ACH’s 43% MFE and pretend I could have simply shorted the hourly close and captured the entire move.
But that’s where the setup becomes even more useful as a case study.
The initial stop-out didn’t necessarily invalidate the underlying thesis, which was that ACH missed both top- and bottom-line expectations and broke below a key support level.
ACH also still produced a large bearish earnings move, a relatively small momentum-end wick, an hourly breakout, weak earnings results, and reasonably bearish fundamental alignment.
If I’d traded this and gotten stopped out, instead of abandoning the setup—or blindly re-entering immediately—I could have continued watching it.
In particular, waiting for the stock to pull back toward my 6-9-12 EMA cloud could have provided a much better entry than mechanically shorting the hourly close.
Waiting for EMA retracements is something that I’ve discussed in many of my post-earnings momentum case studies, including SMCI and SWBI.
Aiming for an EMA entry would have allowed the initial volatility to settle, improved my risk/reward, and potentially provided an ideal entry into what eventually became an A+ continuation trade.
That’s a much more valuable lesson than simply saying I should have used a wider stop.
Conclusion – The Real Mistake Was Trade Selection
My biggest mistake wasn’t that I failed to predict ACH’s 43% move. Nobody knows beforehand which stock will produce the biggest MFE.
The mistake was allowing myself to become attached to MNDY before the market had demonstrated that MNDY deserved my attention.
Once I committed to it, the problems only compounded through nobody’s fault other than my own.
Sure, it’s true that I eventually recovered my capital. But I hadn’t recovered the opportunity. And that’s the part that doesn’t show up in your daily P&L.
While I was fighting to recover roughly $600 on MNDY, my attention was completely occupied.
ACH had already played itself out.
My chance to trade it?
Gone.
Sometimes the cost of a bad trade isn’t the money you lose. It’s the better trade you miss while you’re busy trying to save the bad one.
Remember: the goal isn’t to trade the biggest company reporting earnings. It isn’t to trade the stocks you know and recognize. And it certainly isn’t to keep trading a stock that already cost you money because you want to win that money back.
The goal is to scan everything available, objectively rank the setups, and allocate your limited capital and attention to the trades that best satisfy your criteria.
Today, that setup wasn’t MNDY.
It was ACH.
If you want to go deeper:
- Explore the Trading Statistics Hub to understand how different sectors behave across market cycles
- Study real setups inside the Trade Reviews section
- Learn the framework behind high-probability setups in the Post-Earnings Momentum Strategy
This is how you turn raw market data into repeatable trading edge.
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