$16+ Million Trader vs 15 Losing Traders (FT Alex Temiz)

There's been plenty of times that I've made six figures in a day. So, if I place a trade, there's a 75% chance I'm going to make money. If you want to make more money than a doctor, lawyer, engineer combined, you have to treat it like a...

Do you want to know exactly what happens when you take 15 unprofitable traders and sit them with a world-class trader? The problem is losing money. You're losing more money than you should, right? You're making 200 here, but you're losing 1,200 there. It's six times the loss, right? This is the feedback that you need to hear, right?

>> Absolutely. A lot of people, they always want to keep their trading accounts as large as possible 'cause you think that to be a big trader, you have to [music] have the largest account. For me, I find that the larger account you have, the more risk you have because in this boom and bust series on words of wisdom, we took 15 unprofitable traders and sat them with Alex Tamse.

>> I [music] see a red, no kidding, $25,000 and I just freeze.

>> To me, it sounds like you're using mental stops, not [music] hard stops. As soon as you hit whatever entry button it is, 1 second later, the next button you hit is stop order. I've made a career trading for 1 hour a day. I found that the less trading, you actually make more money. Alex is the number one verified [music] trader on Kinfo, a verified trading platform. With over 16 million in verified profits, no one better to help these unprofitable traders than Alex. In the trading world, you have to be the master of [music] one, not the jack of all. I trade small cap stocks between 9:30 and 10:30, $2, $10 on the short side. And I made a ton of money doing it. I hate streaks. I don't I don't track my streaks. I don't care about my streaks. A lot of people feel like when they're on a win streak that that's when they're the most invincible. But that to me is when you're the most vulnerable because in this episode, Alex gives them actionable, specific advice and steps to take in order to progress and see profitability. All this and more in this special episode on words of wisdom.

I lost $450,000 in a single day. I tried to revenge trade the next day and try to make it back. Taking it day by day, slowly but surely building it back. How did you learn to separate that? I know it takes time, but what ended up [music] working for me is risk management, sizing, stop-loss, discipline.

>> Eli, good to see you.

>> What's up, man?

>> How do you know when you're done?

>> Done with what?

>> Done with trading that day. One of the things I find that is challenging for me is especially being over PDT is that you feel like there's opportunity at all times. There's opportunity in the pre-market. There's opportunity right at the open.

>> Yeah.

>> There's opportunity after zombie hour, after 10:30. There's opportunity at the 2:30 hour after lunch.

>> And there's definitely opportunity right after the close.

>> So, one of the things I'm finding myself struggling with is recognizing that that's it for today, right? And one of the things I really enjoyed, believe it or not, about being under PDT, the fact that I didn't have a choice, right? I wouldn't, one of the things you said recently in one of your videos was um you don't trade pre-market. You don't trade after hours. You avoid everything that sort of can take up mental capital. Um when you're in this process of climbing a mountain like a lot of us, we see we want that's what we're trading. We want opportunity. We want um the ability to make money and it feels like that's all the time available even though we don't obviously, right, we know we don't all the time but we have enough, right? I've hit enough pre-market winners, I hit enough after hours winners to know that there is opportunity. How do I know if I'm in the process of climbing this mountain that that's not for me?

>> Yeah, I mean, so you see my trading, right? My trading, I trade for 1 hour a day, 9:30 to 10:30, right? That's my sweet spot. So how did I find that sweet spot? I went back to my stats. I looked, looked. I uploaded all my trades and I found that pre-market I lose money. After hours I lose money. After 11:00 a.m. I lose money. So my sweet spot was 9:30 to 10:30. So my whole mindset, my whole thought process was if I just trade at the hours where my stats tell me that I make the most amount of money, then I don't need to worry about anything else. So for you, my question is based on your stats, where, what time frames do you make the most money?

>> After the open, between 9:45 and 10:30.

>> Okay, that's it. Then cut premarket, cut after hours, focus 9:45 to 10:30 and that's it. I've made a career trading for 1 hour a day. There's opportunities pre-market, there's opportunities after hours, but at the end of the day, my trading is just based on that one window that I have the edge in, right? There's other traders that might have a large edge in every single window. That's just not me, right? And you don't need to be trading every single hour of every day to make money. The problem with trading is that people relate it to a day job. You know, when you're working your day job and you're clocking in, the more hours you put in, the more money you make, the more overtime you make, the more money you have. For me, I found that the less trading, you actually make more money. Because I related to the casino, when you're at the tables at the casino, do you make more money when you're playing cards or when you walk away? Same thing in trading. You don't need to be trading for long hours in the day to make money. So find what window you make the most money in specifically yourself and just stick to that window. I don't need to be trading all hours of the day because I don't really make money. Let's say I make uh just random numbers, $1,000 between 9:30 and 10:30, but I only make $100 pre-market. That $100 is not really going to do anything for me. I should rather focus on scaling up my window versus trying to be profitable in every window.

>> Great. Great. That's a great, great answer. And the flip side of that question is um again, when you're in the process of climbing that mountain.

>> Yep.

>> Um, it's a little bit different to be able to when you've climbed it, you can say, "Oh, you know what? I can hold off. I don't need to I I rather shop in Amazon, right? That's less expensive than overtrading." But when you haven't done that, you it's harder to hold off. I don't know if anyone can agree with me. It's harder to hold off on trading. Um, sometimes I feel like I miss an entry and then you feel yourself chasing the next one, right? Or or I guess the other side of that question is that day I made $500 in the pre-market. Who knows? Today is not going to be the $2,500 $2,500 day. Or do I stop in the pre-market because I feel like I had a decent green day?

>> Yeah. I mean, the question becomes is, is there another opportunity that's worth risking money on? Right. So, a lot of traders if they look for opportunities, they will find it, but it doesn't mean that it's the right opportunity. So, my question for you would be during, let's say, you make your money pre-market, right? Fine. No problem. But at the open, is there another opportunity? If there's another opportunity that makes sense, pretend that you didn't have that first trade. If there's another opportunity that makes sense, that fits your criteria, you could take it all day long. But the question becomes is, are you just taking that trade to make more money or are you taking that trade because there's actually potential there? And that's the question.

>> Absolutely. Great, great answer. Thank you.

>> Appreciate it.

>> Take advantage. Hi, Alex. Nice to meet you. What's up?

>> All right. My name is Jeffrey. I've been trading for about 6 years and overall I feel like risk management has been one of my issues, especially when it comes to, well, setting up my plan, not following it, and then starting seeing like, you know, you'll see market still move in your favor and then I'll think about risking again and that's an impulsive side of my trading that I feel like I really need the most amount of help with, or just a a simple advice, right? For the most part, I feel like seeing price action just move in my favor is, even though my plan might have not been valid at that time, even just seeing it move in my favor just a little bit makes it very easy for me to just want to jump in and overall it's just impulsive.

>> Yeah. So to me it sounds like you're not really making a detailed plan before you're entering a trade. Okay.

>> For me, every single trade before you enter needs your entry, your exit, your stop, and your target. If you don't have all these four things in there, I mean, you're just gambling at that point. So, if you're saying that sometimes it's going in your favor, sometimes you're pushing for more, that to me means that you have not made a solidified plan before the trade. So, that way, if you have your entry, your exit, your stop, and your risk, you have nothing to worry about. You're just doing exactly what your plan says. So, for me, when I first started, I would take a post-it note, and let's say the ticker was Tesla. I write my entry, my exit, my stop, my target. I'll put that post-it note on my screen in front of my chart. That way, whenever the stock got to my ideal entry, I said, "Oh, entry, boom." If it hit my stop, all right, that's my stop. So, I think for you at least, make sure that you're making a plan before the trade, before you enter the trade. Have that on a post-it note, stick it on top of your screen, and only follow that. If it goes more in your favor after that, so what? You still made money, right? It happens to me all the time. Every single time I get out of a stock, it goes lower without me, right? But that doesn't mean that I'm going to say, you know what, on the next one, I'm going to hold for longer. I've made a career through consistency. So, I'm okay missing out, you know?

>> Okay. So, another question, if I can move on, u is what about when the plan is, let's just say the plan is not going to is not able to follow through, right? Price action is not given, but it still gives you your edge, quote unquote. Gives you your edge. What would you do in your specific scenario? Would you not take it because it's not part of your plan or would you take it? Adapting risk and a set of us.

>> If you take it if you're adapting, you're going to choose an excuse to adapt every single time.

>> Right.

>> Okay.

>> All right. For me, just make your plan. Stick to the plan. If it doesn't get there, you don't get there. In October, I didn't trade for 10 days out of the month. Okay.

>> And the day that I traded on the 11th day, I made more in one day than I made for the entire month.

>> Nothing hit my plan for 10 days. The 11th day, it hit my plan. I went aggressive and I made my month in a day.

>> Wow. So trading is not the type of business where you need to trade every day, dude. If it's not hitting your plan, if it's not hitting your entries and exits, you don't trade it. It's like fishing. You throw your reel in the water. If the fish doesn't come to you, what are you going to do?

>> Swimming for I get it. I get it though, 100%. I do appreciate this. Of course.

>> Yeah.

>> Hey, Alex. I'm Sony.

>> How you doing?

>> Great. Um, so I struggle a lot with stop-loss. I have just a huge mental block. Risk management are those two new words that I've just added to my trading vocabulary. So, I have like sat like through like positions, open positions where I see a red, no kidding, $25,000 and I just freeze. I have like hard time like getting out of it. 80% of those times that stock did come back to my average when I did get out. But there have been other 20% of the times when I blew off my count three, four times. So I'm just like learning how to like unfreeze myself basically, like stop out. Uh, but it's been a process and I have to say since the time I start joined MIC and did the discipline workshop, I have really grown as a trader, but I still occasionally struggle.

>> Yeah. So to me it sounds like you're using mental stops, not hard stops. So for me, when I first started trading, I thought that the only way to be a successful trader was to click the stop button myself. And every time a stock would go against me, I'd be like a deer in headlights. I would freeze, right? I'd be down $5,000 and I say, "All right, if I go back to break even, >> I'll take it back." And then the $5,000 goes to 10,000, but if it goes to $5,000, I'll break even and I'll be okay. Then it goes to -25,000, I blow up my account, right? I don't have the mental discipline myself to click the button. So I always use market stop orders. So for you don't feel like you have to stop out yourself because clearly I can't do it, right? I can't do it. You can't do it. So I would say that after every single stock that you enter, as soon as you hit whatever entry button it is, one second later, the next button you hit is stop order. Where would that stop order be? That depends on your risk, right? You shouldn't be risking $25,000 on these trades because like you said, 80% of the time that comes back, the 20% is going to blow you up over and over and over again. So, my advice would be after every time you enter a stock, stop market order mandatory. I'm a deer in headlights. You're a deer in headlights. Professional traders on Wall Street, they have someone called a risk manager. So, a risk manager's full-time job is to manage your risk at the office. If you're doing something wrong, he's going to come, he's going to tap you on the shoulder. He's going to say, "What's your plan?" Well, for us normal traders, we don't have a risk manager. So, our risk manager has to be the stop order. So, every single trade going forward, no matter what, has to have a stop. And do not let the stop number be $25,000. Your stop has to be whatever two days worth of work is. If you make $1,000 a day, your stop, your hard market stop order has to be at minus $2,000. That way, on your worst trading day ever, you're only losing two days worth of work. So don't feel like you have to click the stop button yourself because it's very, very difficult. Let the technology, let the computer, let the order do the work for you.

>> Okay. And um, I have set those like I uh trade using Cobra and I've asked them to like set that max position, max loss, whatever that's called, and several times I've actually called them to remove that. Uh, and uh, now I'm like working on it. Like I don't do that anymore, but I So it's just like been a process, right? Like I don't do that 25k blowups anymore. Uh, but then like I started like remove calling Cobra and say, "Hey, get rid of this for me." Um, any suggestions in I know I shouldn't be doing it, but it's >> let me let me give you let me give you an analogy, right? So let's say we need to hear your analogy.

>> Let's say you are an alcoholic, right? And you tell the guy at the bar saying, "Do not give me any drinks ever. I don't want any drinks." But sometimes you go to the bartender and say, "Give me one drink. Give me two drinks." Sometimes, you know, you might not get into trouble, but overall, you're going to get back into bad habits. So, you have to cut yourself completely off. So, what I know a lot of people do is they get a document and they sign it and they say, "No matter what, if I tell you to change my stop, do not change it. Here's the document."

>> Okay? So if you have to go to that level of extreme, I mean, so be it. So be it. It's better than losing money.

>> It's better than losing money. But you are >> addicted to the pain and you're asking for more addiction. You're asking for more drugs and it's not going to work.

>> It's not going to work. You're not going to make money. So you have to choose. Do you want to be a gambler or do you want to be a trader? If you want to be a gambler, I'll take those odds, right? I'll take the odds, right? But if you want to be a real trader, you can't ask them to move it. What's the difference? That's like saying my stop is five and I'm going to move my stop to six and I'm going to move my stop to seven. I'm going move my stop to eight. You're going to blow up either way.

>> Yeah. Yeah. I was like uh following one of the live trades on mic. I don't know if you have heard of that community, but Tom Diesel was um doing live trading that day and like I've heard these words before, but it really resonated because he was displaying that. He was like you have to accept your risk and those words really resonated with me. This is what I need to do. I need to just accept it.

>> Yep. There's no there's no reward without risk, but you could always make sure to control the risk. So, if you control your risk with the stop market orders and you control your risk by not adjusting your loss, I mean, you've clearly shown that you can make money in the past. So, all it is is just managing those losses.

>> Thanks for your feedback.

>> My pleasure.

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>> What's up?

>> Hey, I'm Goose.

>> Nice to meet you.

>> Um, mine is short and simple. Um, so I have this habit moving a stop loss hoping that price would retrace back to the entry, hoping that he could get out. But what happens at the end, it just makes a small retracement and it keeps falling down or going up, depends on your position. What would your advice be to me to build a mental toughness to accept the loss and that's it?

>> I mean, it just depends like, do you want to be my my whole thing is always down to the thing of treat trading like a business. If you had a job and you did something that your boss told you not to do, would you still have a job?

>> Right.

>> Exactly. So, if you use that same analogy in the trading world, I mean, if you're not sticking to your stop, you're not sticking to your job and you're going to get fired. You know how we get fired? We lose all of our money. Yeah.

>> You know what I'm saying? So, at the end of the day, it's just like for me, it took me years and years and years to learn these same lessons. I had to lose hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars to learn these lessons. Now, it's at the point where it's like I don't want to lose any more money, right? So you could probably ask yourself, like, had you just stuck to your stop, how much more money would you have had? Probably a lot more, right? So it comes to a point where you say, "All right, wait a second. If every year that I'm not sticking to my stop, I'm you know, leaving 50k of extra losses." You multiply that by 10 years, you could have had an extra half a million dollars, right? Or if you just do it by year by year, you save an extra 50k. 50k is like four grand a month extra that you'll make, right? By just sticking to your stock. So the question now becomes is, how badly do you want to be successful and how much money is it going to cost you in losses to get there? For me, it took me way too much money, right? So that's why you're here. You're here to learn the same lesson that if you just stick to it, you make more money. If you notice, everyone has the same issue because that same issue, once you cross that barrier, that's what's going to kind of get you to the point of consistently profitable. You know, I take losses all the time. I lose money all the time, but I make sure that my losses are controlled. You know, I'm okay accepting a small loss because I know I can make it back. You know, it's I had a trade, you know, a couple weeks ago and I lost $16,000 on the trade and when the trade finally reversed, I stuck to my stop, kept it under where I needed it to be, I made back the loss plus more, you know. So, that's the whole thing is let's say your max loss on the day is $1,000. Even if you eat $100, even if you eat $200, even if you eat $300, that doesn't mean you're out of the game. But if your loss is a thousand and you change it and you move it and you go to 5,000, you go to 10,000, it's going to take you months to make it back, it's not worth it. It's ego at the end of the day, man. It's ego. I mean, I'm always in the mindset that the market is always right. So, like, as men, we like to brag. We like to have ego. We like to say that we're, you know, the king of the castle, whatever it may be. In the market, dude, the market don't care. Market's going to take your money. So, my advice would be the question is, how much are you willing to lose? And to me, if you're here right now, you probably lost way too much already.

>> 100%.

>> Right? So enough is enough. And think about it in terms of math, right? If you if you don't stick to your stop and you lose an extra couple thousand, multiply that by how many months are in the year and how much more extra money you would have, you know?

>> Yeah. Okay, that's it. Thank you.

>> Pleasure.

>> Hey, Adams.

>> What's up, man?

>> I'm Louis.

>> Nice to meet you. And I have a very specific question for you, right? So, um, it's >> if you were trading a 35K account and wanted to scale it sustainably, how would you structure your risk per trade, your daily loss limits, and your size up increments? What specific criteria must be met before increasing size?

>> Good question. So, I think like the previous answer that I had before is number one is size is determined based on the setup. So, you can't just wake up on a random Wednesday and say, you know what, I'm going to size up today 'cause I feel like it. That's not how you make money. The way that you make money is exponential bet sizing. So, a lot of people talk about this. So, we'll kind of get into it in detail. So, you need to be able to grade your setups, right? So, first things first, it all comes down to the stats and the numbers. So upload your trades, find whatever you do, get that window, and now that you have that information, it'll allow you to determine what you make the most money on. So for example, let's say there's a C setup. So I'll tell you what my C setups, my B setups, my A setups are, and I'll tell you the sizing based on that.

>> Awesome.

>> So a C setup for me is a setup that maybe comes along every single day and has like a 50/50 win rate, right? It could be something as simple as like a VWAP rejection short. You know, 50% of the time it's probably going to fail, whatever. I'll use a thousand shares there for reference. Right.

>> Low size.

>> Thousand shares size. Yeah. Right. Just as a reference, right?

>> Then here comes a B setup. A B setup might work 75 to, you know, 80% of the time. That might be a stock that pushes up pre-market, fails pre-market, and then pushes to resistance, and then fails again.

>> So, it has a pre-market move, comes back down. Market opens, pops up a little bit, comes back down. That's like a B+. On a setup like that, I would use 5,000 shares. Five times more. Now, let me give you a setup where it's like a first red day. A first red day is multiple uh green days up and then that first day that it goes red, that's going to be a very high. That's my highest win rate setup, like 90 to 95%. I would use 25,000 shares on that setup.

>> So, notice the difference. The higher the win rate of the setup, the more aggressive I want to get with my size.

>> But it's based off all the information throughout all those trades that you've collected. Correct.

>> Correct. I know it's like for example, I know when my wife is hungry, she's easily irritable. 99% she's easily irritable. So if I was to take a trade on that, I know I have high probability, I'd go in larger size, right? Versus another situation where the probability is low, I wouldn't size up. So based on your account example, you know, you would then determine, all right, if I'm only willing to risk maximum $500 on this single trade, all right, if it's a C setup, you know, I'm going to size accordingly. If it's a B setup, maybe I want to raise my risk and raise my size. But if it's an A setup, I want to be very aggressive and widen my size because there's a higher opportunity. The problem is, you can't mistake a C setup for an A setup or an A setup for a C setup. So, you have to know what works for you. So, it all comes down to the numbers and the data. So, if you don't know what setup you're you're making the most money on,

>> you're not ready to size up. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt whenever any setup is there, I could grade it in my head and based on the grade in my head, I could size up accordingly. That makes sense, Alex. Appreciate it.

>> Thank you so much.

>> Of course.

>> I have issues with sizing. Okay.

>> But it's a little bit different. Um, when the trade is going in my favor, I tend to size up a lot

>> in the middle of a trade.

>> Okay.

>> I don't go without a stop loss. My stop loss is automatically there. So, it kind of brings up my stop loss as I'm sizing up.

>> Okay.

>> Um, and in the same thing, if I'm down two trades, I size up a lot. But my biggest issue is when the trade is going in my favor, I am clicking, "Get me in, get me in, market order," and the next candle comes out and wipes me out. That's my huge issue that I run into. If I'm just doing what I'm supposed to do, I'm usually fine. But where I can see I'm making 500, then opportunity can come and take that 500 to 12500. My size is blowing up. That's my biggest issue.

>> So what kind of stop are you using? Like what's the number stop that you have and what's like the sizing that you're using?

>> So my automatic stop I do futures. Uh my automatic stop in uh my ES is um is four to five points depending on the setup. Uh usually it's just four points and on NASDAQ it's 20 points. So it's not huge. Uh so when I get in it's automatically set at 20 uh 20 points on NASDAQ. I see exactly where it's bouncing and it's going towards me and I start with two to three contracts. All of a sudden those two to three contracts are becoming seven, eight, nine contracts and it starts to go in my favor and I can see it, but obviously you're uh what happens is um because you're entering late, you're still making the same amount of money. It's not like you're making huge money unless you hit your profit, right? But all of a sudden, the next candle comes right back down and takes me right out. That's the issue I run into.

>> Yeah. So, I get it. Uh, I think my honest opinion is you're in too big. You're in too big. So, my So, I'll give you an analogy of, you know, my trading. So, I was uh fortunate enough to be trading at a firm called SMB Capital for a year and

>> and the thing there is very competitive. So, I was sitting next to probably their top trader on one side and another top trader on the other side. So, I was very competitive. So, I was being in way too big on every single time I was adding to the winner, but I was adding way too big compared to my risk, right? So, for example, let's say my risk was $10,000. I was using 85,000 shares. Stock would bounce, you know, 10, 15 cents, I'd be out.

>> It makes no sense. So, what I found is I actually started to make more money by using less 'cause I was able to stretch the move a little bit more. So, for number one, the fact that you're adding to your winner is already half the battle. That's great. A lot of people, they just keep adding to their loser, right? So, if you're going from three contracts to nine contracts, maybe just go from three to five or six. That way, one tick is not going to kill you out of the market, right? Because you're obviously getting the direction right. You're obviously getting everything right, but you might just be in a little bit too big based on your risk. So, your options are either raise your risk, which is obviously determined up to you based on how comfortable you feel, or just drop the size and wait for the move to keep going in your favor. The way that these indexes are trading these days, they make a directional move and they just go, right? They just go. Correct. So, if you have even five contracts or even six contracts,

>> the amount of room that you could have of them going more in your favor is more advantageous than putting in way too much and then hoping that just kind of flushes up or pops back up to make that money fast. But, as you can see, it's too big. Too big based on the risk. So, my advice would be to at least size down and try to take a bigger portion of the move or adjust the risk, you know, and it all comes down to you. If you're already a successful profitable trader, you know, you could raise your risk, but that doesn't mean if you're going from three contracts to nine and you raise your risk, now all of a sudden you're going to go from 9 to 20.

>> You know what I'm saying? It doesn't make sense. So, my advice would be probably stick to like five or six max if you want to keep your risk and try to go for a bigger portion of the move. That way, one little candle is not going to stop you out. If if that happened to me, I mean, it'd be very difficult for me to make money trading because these stocks need room to move. They need something called fudge factor, right? They need to like move up and down a little bit. It's never you're never going to get it to the point where it's going to be exactly the top and exactly the bottom. It's impossible, right? So, my advice would be use a little bit less size and go for a bigger portion of the move. You're going to make more money like that. So, don't think that you're going to only make money by sizing up larger. You will also make more money by taking a larger portion of the move.

>> Correct.

>> So, focus on that.

>> Okay. And have you also done with the fact that um after a couple losing trades, have you sized up?

>> Yeah. I mean,

>> that's my other just make up the money.

>> Yeah. When I first started, sure, but like usually what happened to me is it's like quicksand. You get deeper and deeper and deeper. You start sinking, man. So, like for me, like after years and years and years and years and years of doing it, I just I just accept that I'm wrong and I just wait for the next one. I just wait for the next one. The market's always moving. The range on these stocks, the range on these indexes is just so vast. Like even if you lose money one day, you have the opportunity to make it back the next day. You know, it's not going anywhere. So, I need that'd be the biggest thing is just like understand that you're going to dig yourself a bigger hole. You're going to fall into quicksand and it's very difficult. The more you keep fighting, the faster you fall in, right?

>> That's correct.

>> Cool. Thank you. Pleasure.

>> Alex,

>> how you doing?

>> Alex, I have a uh habit of being right right after I get stopped out. So, I have a two-part question.

>> Uh number one, uh would it be better to get stopped out and then re-enter or should I just make more uh or just move my stops much further out? Uh the second part is uh specifically with stop uh small caps, do you have a specific uh amount that you risk, meaning um like a percentage of the stock like a $3 stock maybe 20%, 15%? Or is it all based on levels?

>> Yeah. So let's start with the first one. So my advice would be stop out and just get back in. I do it all the time, right? I it's okay to be wrong. It's not okay to stay wrong. So my advice would be get out and just get back in if it's going in your favor. There's been so many times that I've stopped out on a stock at the exact high of the day. Every single time, two seconds later, it has a big death candle down. In previous moments, I'd be like, "A shit." Like, I missed it. Now, I'm like, "Get back in." Right? So, as long as you get out, that means you're controlling your risk and then you could always get back in if it's going in your favor. So, that's the start. Now, for the second question, depending on the price of the stock, is there a certain percentage risk? To me, it's not dependent on the price of the stock. It's based on the setup, right? So, if there's a stock that has a B quality setup and it's $2 a share, but a stock has an A+ setup and it's $100 a share, I wouldn't be adjusting my size based on the price of the stock. I'd be adjusting it based on the opportunity of the stock in front of me, you know.

>> Got it. Uh, and for the first part, um, you mentioned that you'll stop and get out. Uh, the problem is if my stop loss is at my max loss for that position, I can't get back in. So, when you first enter a trade, are you thinking like a percentage of your max loss that you're willing to risk?

>> Yeah. So, your max loss is supposed to be your airbag. Your airbag is not supposed to go off every day, right? If you're driving a car and your airbag goes off every day, something's [ __ ] up, right? I mean, I don't want to get in a car with you, right? So, the thing is in trading, that should be your protection. That's like your, you know, your parachute when you're jumping out of a plane type thing. So for me, if you're getting stopped out very often, it means you're in too big, right? A lot of a lot of the problems I see in traders is whether it's they're in too big, they don't stick to their stops, or they're just revenge trading or FOMO trading or anything like that. So my advice would be for me as a short buys trader, what I do is if a stock is above the VWAP, the volume weighted average price, I'm only using 30% of my max size. So if I determine that on that stock that day, I'm going to use 10,000 shares. If it's above VWAP, I'm only using 3,000 shares. That way, if I stop out, I'm not going to set my stop out at the level where I blow up. I'm gonna set my stop out to the level where the trade thesis is no longer valid. So, for me, that would be like a high of the day break. It would be like a pre-market high of the day break or some sort of reclaim like that. And as long as I'm stopping out at those levels, I'm still controlling my risk. So, my advice would be size down. Don't make your stoploss area your max loss area. And keep in mind that your stop should be at the level where your trade thesis is no longer valid. So if you're buying a stock and it breaks low of the day, chances are your trade thesis is no longer valid. You should get the hell out of there, right? But in this example, you just want to make sure that you're sized up. You're not max size as a stock is going against you because you never want to be in your largest size when the stock is going against you. You want to be your largest size as a stock is going in your direction. Thank you so much. Pleasure.

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>> I'm Allison. Nice to meet you.

>> Nice to meet you.

>> Um, so I guess my question is I'm a relatively or quite a new trader and um, I do all the bad things. I can't sit on my hands. I have a lot of FOMO. I enter at any time. I use, you know, I trade during the pre-market, during the market, after market. I'm all over the place. And I didn't have, as you mentioned, that, you know, good discipline at the beginning. I wasn't taught or I didn't learn properly. And for you, what I wouldn't prefer not to keep on losing and losing and losing for years to come before I learn. What was the shift for you that got you to be more disciplined?

>> Yeah. I mean, it's like I said, you got to treat trading like a business. You have to take this thing seriously. Like for I always relate it to the day job is like if you do the exact opposite of what your boss is telling you, you're not going to have a job. And in trading, the exact opposite of what your boss tells you is revenge trading, FOMO trading, trading, random stuff. So like you're not going to get the results that you're looking for by doing these things. So the question now becomes is, are you going to treat trading like a business or are you going to treat it like a hobby? I mean, it's totally fine to treat it as a hobby, but you're not going to really make money, right? If you want to treat it like a business and take it seriously, understand that, you know, it's possible. You know, there's plenty of traders, you know, that make tremendous amounts of money, more money than me, and they treat it seriously every single day. So, the question becomes is, do you want to treat it seriously or do you want to just keep gambling? You know, you probably have better odds at the casino, right?

>> Definitely.

>> So, that's the answer. And if you're here, you want to treat it seriously. So, my advice would be, you know, go back to the basics, right? I am trying to be very disciplined because the more discipline I am, the bigger paycheck I get.

>> So if you start to relate it in terms of every little bit of discipline that you do might be an extra $1,000 in your pocket, might be an extra $100 in your pocket, then to me like that's that's money. And what I did when I first started is

>> I would always give myself punishment or rewards. So if I stuck to my plan, if I did something right, I would have a nice steak and a chocolate cake. If I did something wrong, I'd have to eat a salad. And let me tell you something, I hate eating a salad. [laughter]

>> I think it's disgusting, right?

>> Yeah.

>> So, the same way if you have a child, you reward them for doing something good and you punish them for doing something bad.

>> We have to treat ourselves like children sometimes. And by reinforcing that,

>> you know, I started to enjoy the steak and chocolate cake more because I kept doing more and more things, right? And maybe for you it might be, you know what, every time I do something right, I'm able to get uh a new piece of jewelry or I'm able to travel somewhere or I'm able to do something to reinforce the reward system because the more rewards you give yourself for doing something right, trust me, you're going to probably want to do more of the things right.

>> That makes a lot of sense. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.

>> Of course.

>> Overtrading, forcing trades, and FOMO. It feels like a lot of my overtrading comes from high expectations of the market and I realize that a process-oriented well when I try to be process-oriented, I create this level of expectation with what I'm writing, what I expect of price, and if price gives me that, well, I tend to trade more. And if price doesn't give me that, well, then I'm kind of not in the objective.

point of mind that I was over. I was originally, and now I'm either forcing a trade setup, or I'm not really looking at the setup as objectively as I would hope.

Um, I guess my issue would be, is how do I commit to this process, this overall successful version of me that I know I can be, but without having that high level of expectation of the market going in my favor or not going in my favor?

Yeah. I mean, it takes time, right? It's like learning a new language, right? Your first year or first two years that you're learning a language, you're kind of learning the basics. But as time passes, you become more and more advanced. So it's something that I call "time in the seat." So the more time you spend in front of the computer, the more time you spend, you know, checking these charts, or more time you spend backtesting, automatically you'll get more confidence to see what you're looking for.

So how long have you been trading?

I've been trading for about six years, but four years I've taken it very seriously.

Okay. So for me, it took me at least that four to five years to start seeing things. And, you know, now, even 12 years in, I'm still seeing things, I'm still learning, I'm still getting better. So it's just a matter of, you know, time in my opinion. So as long as you're committing to at least reviewing charts at night, reviewing your trades at night, maybe waking up early and looking at charts. For me, I've seen, dude, like 10, 10,000, 100,000, maybe a million charts literally. Literally, I stopped counting because like it's ridiculous. But now I could see a chart and be like, "Oh, dude, I know exactly what's going on there." So for me, I think it's just time. I think it's just more time. It's like understanding that this is a marathon. It's not a sprint. You're not going to learn this new language in a year, two years, maybe even four years. A lot of the successful traders that I've seen that have been doing it for a long time have been doing it for a long time, right? It's because after a certain point of seeing the pattern over and over again, you feel more comfortable with it, you know?

Okay. So my then question would be, is how would you go about adapting? Because with my experience, I've heard a lot of traders talk about being able to be adaptable to what the market is giving you. And when I do a process and I have this set plan, it's an expectation now. And if it does not happen, I have a hard time being adaptable. It's, "Oh, I can see the market going downwards, but I'm convinced it's still going higher." And I want to get better at that adaptability point of trading and I want to know what a successful version of.

So what are you trading right now?

I'm trading, well, I'm all around forex, indices, and futures.

Okay. You should probably stick to one first. You know what I'm saying? 'Cause all these markets are different, right? It's like soccer and basketball. They're both using the ball. One's using your hand, one's using your feet, right?

Yeah. Okay. You got to stick to at least one of them first to understand 'cause like if you're trying to focus on this direction and this direction, I mean, your brain is split up. So it's very hard to focus. So my advice would be at least start with just focusing in on one type of market or one type of strategy or one type of something because something might work in the forex world that might not work in the futures world. And now all of a sudden you're like, "Wait, it works here but it doesn't work there. Like, what's going, where's the disconnect?" You know what I'm saying?

So, um, it's, it's hard to disagree with you here, especially because, you know, you're a susp, you know, I'm not in that position just yet, but from my level of experience and my own characters, I understand that I like to try it all. When I go out to a restaurant, I'll buy five different plates and want to just try the steak, the chicken, and the salmon at the same time. While with trading, I realized that that's also a part of me that I have had a difficult time doing, right? Where if I stuck to one chart or one market, I'm constantly looking at it and I might not find the trade setup or I might not find nothing at all. And that might be for months on end. Like, um, indices, S&P 500, they are very straightforward.

Yeah, my personal way of trading is to have good levels of retracement before getting in. With S&P, I have a hard time doing that or indices just because they're very straightforward and one-sided markets.

Yeah. So I want to ask, why is it then, then if some traders are you, what you mentioned, a lot of traders say that it's a successful thing to do, but there are some other traders that say, "Oh, you can focus as many as you want or even focus on what opportunity is available during that time."

Okay. [laughter]

So let me, let me, let me explain, right? I appreciate you being honest 'cause that's what, that's what the whole point is here. So, the thing is that like a lot of traders that may say it works in all the different types of things may not actually be real successful traders. You know, you don't really know if they're actually even verify if they actually even make money.

That's true. That's true.

So, that's number one. And number two is,

Dude, I like trying all types of food, too, right? I [laughter] eat steak. I eat lobster. I like sushi. I like this. If I go to a restaurant, I'm ordering everything, too. But in trading, that's not how it works. Okay?

Right? In the trading world, you have to be the master of one, not the jack of all. Right? Okay. So, if you could just successfully pick one market, one time frame, one window, that's all you need. I trade small-cap stocks between 9:30 and 10:30, $2, $10 on the short side. And I made a ton of money doing it. Okay? So, I don't need to be trading, you know, the S&P. I don't need to be trading options. I don't need to be trading corn futures. Even if there's a market there, it doesn't really matter 'cause for me, I just want to be the master of one versus the jack of all. So, it's good that your personality says that and it's good that you know what your personality is, but that is at least able to trigger you and tell you, you know what, like that's my human personality, but my trading personality has to be a little bit different.

Okay, I understand. Focus on your strength, pretty much.

Yep. Thank you.

And don't try to do everything, man.

All right, I can see that's a problem.

Yeah, thank you. Of course, Alex. Thank you. So I focus on only one setup and that's primarily in small caps in penny stocks. Okay.

And what I look for is a specific entry. I have a defined stop loss. The challenge I have is if it's above a certain uh pre-market volume, I put that as a part of the stock selection.

Okay.

So if this specific pattern appears in, let's say, in the five uh stocks, okay,

the first two will be a winner, but the last three will be a loser. So what are all the things that I can look for while doing the stock selection so I can reduce the failures?

So are you long biased, short biased? What you

long biased?

Okay. And what's like the strategy that you're using, like what, what is the pattern, like what is the thing that is executed?

Morning panic dip. So the moment it reaches the high of the day, that's my entry.

Okay. So if a stock panics in the morning and it breaks the high of the day, that's your entry. Okay. And have you found through backtesting that that is successful and that works for you, or what's

I've had five years of data. I went back and tested it.

And then how much percent of that is working? Because from the example you said, it sounds like only 20% of the time it works. It works one time, but four times it doesn't, you know.

Yeah, it varies anywhere from 30 to 35.

So for me, that's not enough of a high probability in my opinion. You know, like the setups that I'm trading, at minimum, it's like 50% at minimum, right? And if it's 50%, it's not even like, it's not even a trade that I want to get aggressive on. So set certain setups like my first red day or sell the news or anything like that, it's like a 90, 95% setup. It doesn't come around every single day. It may come around once a quarter, but that's kind of a very high win rate. So for me, my uh thought process would be, do you have any other strategy that you've been using that you've been backtesting that has higher results than that?

No, I've been focusing on only this.

Okay. So my example to that is either a try to find a little bit more niched-down version of that strategy where maybe if it panics in the morning, instead of buying at the high of the day, you could buy on the reclaim of low of the day.

Because if these stocks are panicking in the morning and you're buying it all the way when it comes back up, that might be too late. But if you could buy it when it's reclaiming that low of the day, that might be a better entry for you. That might signal a higher win rate. But to me, to buy that stock after it breaks down and then comes back to high of the day, it seems like it's already too late because a lot of people are going to be selling into that. You want to buy, you know, when the panic is starting to reverse, the first signs of reversal, you know, with a stop at the low of the day versus the high of the day. That would be my advice. Okay. Thank you.

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Hey, Alex. Uh, I have a problem with FOMO exits. Uh, what I mean by that is once it goes green, I end up moving my stop down. So I'm definitely going to have a profit. Okay. Uh, and a lot of times, uh, sure, I'll have a high win rate, but it's like for just a couple dollars, um, versus, uh, you know, even leaving the stop or just moving it a little bit, so I would maybe lose a little bit. So, um, can you maybe comment on that? Uh, if it's better to maybe take some small losses or medium losses or protect green at all costs.

Um, so it really depends, right? So for me, what I do in my personal trading is whenever a stock, whenever I enter a stock and it's going in my direction, I always take a little bit off. And the reason why I take a little bit off when it goes in my direction is I want to build a profit cushion and I want to be able to be patient. I find that in my personal trading that if I don't at least take a little bit of profits and, you know, put it as a realized gain, that I can't find myself being patient and I don't find myself being as confident. So, in your scenario, it sounds like as soon as it gets to that profit level, you're putting your stop in a place where if it kind of just jumps up a little bit, it kind of kicks you out and you protect the green, but you're not really capitalizing on how much lower or how much higher it's going to go based on your direction. So, for me, my advice would be if the stock is going in your favor, take a little bit off to give yourself a profit cushion and then you could be a little bit more loose with your stop. That way, instead of it guaranteeing green, maybe you could set your stop at a point where it's break-even, where you're just kind of giving back that little bit of green, but holding for a bigger move lower, you know? So, that's kind of what I find works for me. Impatience is if I don't have a little piece off, I can't really be patient. And often times it just keeps going in the direction, which is totally fine, too. But that would be my thought is my thought is at least take a little bit off and be a little bit more wide with your stop and instead of you know protecting green $5, $10, whatever it may be, you at least are letting the stock work for you, right? The biggest moves in the markets are when the stock picks a direction and keeps going in your favor. So if you are stopping yourself from even capitalizing on that, you're limiting your profit potential, you know.

Got it. And also, uh, do you ever exit trades that are green, uh, with stops? So, for instance, when it's green, lowering your stop down, uh, maybe not as aggressively as I am, versus just taking limit orders?

Yeah, I do. I do. I mean, but again, my whole thing is like, I'm okay taking a little bit of profit off the table and even setting a stop because it's, if I'm, if I'm letting the stock move in my direction and I'm taking pieces off along the way and along the way and along the way, by the time that part comes, I have very little anyway because I've reduced and reduced and reduced and reduced already. You know, let's say I have 100% of my size, but on the first break of support, I'm down to 50% of my size, and on the next break of support, I only have 25% of my size left. Then already I've locked in 75% of the money, and the other 25% I could ride it to break-even or ride it to whatever. But as long as I'm sticking to my plan, which is taking profits along the way, it's very, very difficult for me to get myself in trouble.

Thanks a lot.

Of course. So, you mentioned you like to take profits, um, when, when it goes in your favor. So, I find that when I do end up taking profits when, when, um, a trade's going in my way, I tend to end up scalping the stock a lot more and overtrading on that stock. Um, I'm just wondering if you know, thinking back to when you started, did, did you ever have that problem of overtrading and turning a plan into scalping and, um, kind of changing your bias back and forth?

Yeah. So what happened for me is, you know, there would be certain opportunities that, let's say the market opens up at 9:30, I'll place a trade and by like 9:32, like two minutes later, I would have a great day and I'd be like, "Dude, like I just made money in two minutes. Like that's not like I got to keep working. I got to keep trading." And then I would end up forcing trades. I would end up gambling. I would end up doing random stuff. So, I found that for me, at least, you know, if I take a stock and it goes in my direction instantly and I'm not able to get the exact size that I want, at least I still made money, right? At least I still made money. There's been so many times where I have like an entry and I nail it, but it goes in my direction way too quickly that doesn't even make sense to add. I'd rather just take the money and, you know, you know, put it in my pocket and be like, "All right, like it's fine." Like, it is what it is. So that's my thought is like I've found that my personal trading is if I make money way too quickly or if it goes way too fast in my direction, you know, I've just chalked it up to taking the money versus in the past, I've tried to keep trading, tried to keep finding opportunities, tried to keep forcing trades, and it wouldn't really end up working out. And at the end of the day, I made money, so who cares if I didn't make more money, right? That's, I think it's, I think greed is a really big issue for traders. Traders get way too greedy. Make a thousand and they're like, "I didn't make 2,000. I make 10,000. I should have made 20,000. I made 50,000. I should have made 100,000." You're like, "What the hell, dude? Doesn't that end?"

Right? But if you just make the money, I mean, I remind myself that $1,000 a day is a quarter million dollars a year.

So, as long as even if you're making $1,000 a day or even $100 a day, it adds up and it adds up and it adds up. Not every trade is going to work so perfectly that you're going to get the exact size that you want, but that doesn't mean that you can't make money along the way. Yeah, I think you might have answered my next question because I find that, um, as I was reviewing my trades on on TradeZella, I a lot of times, um, when I, when I sell too quickly and take the profit, I'll risk that plus my original risk that I wanted on the trade only for it to go against me. I'll get stopped out, maybe I'm too big of size and and I get scared out and then the actual move happens that I, that I originally planned for. Um, so sometimes I'm wondering, is it better just not to take the profit, let the original risk stay where I'm comfortable with and then try to see if it rides out?

Just take, take the money and if it sets up again, take it, take the trade. Take the money first, lock it in, have some realized profit. God forbid if you're wrong on the secondary trade, you'll give back the realized profit instead of turning it into a balloon loss, you know.

Okay, awesome. Thank you.

Sure.

Yeah. So, uh, let's discuss FOMO and green streak. Okay.

So, I struggle with like, I, if there was like a championship for red candle chaser, I'm sure I would have like won a gold medal. Um, not anymore. Like, at least like I am like not doing that anymore. But I did struggle with that a lot. Like especially being short biased and I see like a red candle and it's already down 40, 50 cents and I could have made like $500 on a thousand shares, then I start chasing it and that has actually like obviously like gone against me because I'm already chasing the low. Um, have you, like, I'm sure like you have dealt with that, like any advice for me? I don't do it as much anymore, but still.

Yeah. I mean, look, if you're a short bias trader and then you have a big red death candle, I mean, my thought process is, wait for the bounce. That's none. No stock ever just goes straight down and straight down and straight down or straight up and straight up and straight up. They always just either come back down to support and then go back up or come back up to resistance and come back. So my advice would be whenever you see that signal, instead of in your mind saying "chasing it," your mind should say, "All right, the next bounce I'm going to attack. The next bounce I'm going to attack." And if it doesn't bounce enough or if it doesn't get to your area, you don't place a trade. Remember, you don't have to trade every single stock that moves every single day, you know? That's not, it's not what we're looking to do here. We have to be very selective with the stocks that we trade and the way that we trade them because, you know, I mean, you've seen me do it. There's certain days that I make my entire month. All right. So my advice is when that signal happens, whatever that signal may be, the moment that it happens, instead of your mind going straight to emotional chasing and emotional trading, your something in your mind should say, "All right, this is my green light to now wait for a bounce, right?" You don't have to wait for a 50-cent bounce. You don't have to wait for a dollar bounce, but let it at least bounce a little bit because that's going to create a resistance level and then probably come back down.

Yeah. And like, uh, during this whole like process, I've discovered something about myself and that is like, it's, this is like a muscle memory. I see red and I chase.

Yeah.

So I had to learn a lot about it and I'm just sharing it here. Maybe it will be helpful for others.

I went ahead and changed the color of that candle.

Okay.

I changed it to pink.

Whatever you got to do.

So I didn't, I didn't see red anymore. So I wasn't chasing red anymore.

Whatever you got to do.

Yeah. It really helped me like just changing it from red to pink.

Right?

So, so in turn, like, so in return, like the pink has been really good to me and, um, I have been having a green streak, which is good. I think I'm finally discovering my niche and I have had like three weeks of like green streak and I think I can say like I'm like almost a profitable trader now, but I'm also like worried and I slipped up on Friday while before I flew here, I slipped up. I was like, "Oh damn, I don't want to miss my green streak." And then I took a trade which is outside of my niche. What should I do? Just kick myself?

[laughter]

I know. I know. I know the answer. I should have already kicked myself.

No, I know. The thing is like, look, the reality is like, I think green streaks are very dangerous. I hate, I hate streaks. I don't, I don't track my streaks. I don't care about my streaks. My streaks mean nothing because the problem is when you're on a green streak, you get overconfident. You get cocky and you don't want to ruin the streak. So, you start doing random stuff. So, think about it. I mean, it's a very good lesson that you're learning now early on in your trading that, you know, these streaks don't matter. So for me, it takes me to lose money to learn a lesson, right? And quite sometimes I'm stubborn. It takes me a lot of money to lose to learn my lesson, right? But for you, think about how good of a lesson it is that you're learning this early that your streak doesn't matter. It's actually when you are on a streak. I personally wouldn't even track it. I wouldn't even look at it. But for some reason, if you are, it's fine. Just be like, "That is actually when I'm most vulnerable." A lot of people feel like when they're on a win streak that that's when they're the most invincible. But that to me is when you're the most vulnerable because you're going to start getting loose because you're like, "Oh, I'm on fire. Everything's feeling good. I'm gonna attack this. I'm gonna attack that." And you end up getting slapped in the face. So, let it at least be a lesson to say, "You know what? The streak doesn't matter." And next time I am on some sort of streak, let me just like slow down a little bit. There's been times that I've been on a very, very good streak. I mean, dude, I'm knock on wood. Thankfully right now has been unbelievably good and I've been just be like, "All right, like let me just slow down a little bit more. Let me be more self-aware." 'Cause if you are more self-aware, you could prepare. 'Cause if I was not self-aware and something crazy happened, I might be a little bit more loose with my risk, be like, "You know what? I'm feeling good. I'm in tune with the market. I got this. I got that." And all of a sudden the stock comes and kicks my ass. But if I am in tune with where I'm at and I say, "You know what?"

It's good, but maybe it's a little bit too good. Let me just slow it down a little bit. That at least for me helps me just kind of keep my [ __ ] together because otherwise I feel like I am just as vulnerable as anyone else, you know?

All right. Thanks.

Can you elaborate on what led you to the process of locating right before you enter a trading?

Yeah, I mean, when I first started trading, uh, you had to wake up very, very early and reserve your shares to short because a lot of the brokers had limited quantities. So as shorting has become more mature and as there's been more competition in the broker world, most of the short locates are very rare, like readily available. So for me, back then, you would have to pay money for the locate. You locate it early and whether you use it or not, you'd have to still pay for it. These days, I don't have to locate early. I could just locate a second before I need it to reduce my cost for the trade.

So, I'm just locating beforehand now because there's more inventory.

Okay.

And I don't need to waste money, you know, waking up at 4:00 a.m. and locating it when I could just locate it 10 seconds before I need the trade.

Absolutely. So, it's more of a logistically easier now to handle it rather than just a FOMO strategy. 'Cause for me, I felt before, like you talked about, I'll locate at 7:30 a.m., 8:00 a.m. and I had those shares and they were burning.

And you feel like you'd have to pay for, have to use them.

Yeah. These days, these days with the brokers that we're using, you know, you don't need to uh wake up that early and reserve your shares 'cause it's readily available all day long. You know, they, for the last, I don't know, like four or five years, like I haven't needed to wake up early and reserve any type of shares 'cause, you know, the brokers that we're using are specialized for this area of the business. So they focus all of their energy and their attention on providing the resource that the trader needs, which is locates at all times of the day. Traders, let me tell you about the best CFD firm in the industry, Alpha Capital. Alpha Capital has every option a trader could possibly need from one-step to two-step to three-step challenges. Whether you want a 6% target, 8% target, or even a 10% target. Whether you want to trade on DX Trade, C Trader, MetaTrader 5, or even Trade Locker and exclusively Alpha Trader. Now, at Alpha Capital, you can get up to $400,000 in max allocation. 200K per strategy can be applied and no better place to trade CFDs than a firm that has paid out over $100 million. Now, here at Words of Wisdom, we have been partnered with Alpha Capital for over 2 years, and they've given us an exclusive discount. Use the code RZ at checkout for 20% off all challenges. The link is in the description below. Now, let's get back to the episode.

Absolutely. Thank you. And one more qu, you touched on this earlier about your entry working out very early, quickly.

Yep.

Right. And what happens afterwards? Why is it that now it turns into, "Well, I'm super right." Why isn't the ego kicking in and saying, "Well, I'm super right. I'm gonna be even more right." Instead of making two grand, I'm gonna make four grand. Rather than you saying, "I'm gonna take the two grand and then see what happens."

'Cause every time I did that, I would lose money. I lose money. So, I would just do that and be like, "All right, it's going in my favor. Let's get even bigger." And then somehow someway, the market always reverses on my ass. Always. So, now I just take the money. I just take the money and accept it. Right? If a stock is not doing exactly what I want on my standards, I'm not taking the trade. I am in control of the trade, not the other way around. If you let the market force you to be emotional and force you to chase, that's exactly what the market wants to do to take your money. Right? So, you have to, you are in control. Trading is the only business or the only game that you could see your deck of cards before you place a bet. So if you're looking at the chart and you see on the chart what you like, you bet money. In other games, especially in Vegas, you got to bet first and they give you the cards and all the cards are shitty, right? You know, so that's the way you got to think about it.

Absolutely. Thank you. Of course.

I am technically sound, you know, I trade US30, the Dow Jones, right?

Yep.

Um, my question is this to you, right? Fundamentally, right? What are you looking for pre-market to combine your analysis with your technical analysis as well because at times I find myself, you know, that I miss out on huge moves, you know, because something got triggered around, let's say, like 9:50 or even 11:00 fundamentally or news or something breaks out, you know? And even though I'm, I executed my trade successfully, right, the move was much larger than I could have expected, you know? So, if you had like a five-step procedure for me, you know, to put together a fundamental protocol, you know, like what would that be?

[sighs]

I mean, I don't know if there's like a five-step procedure, per se, because everyone is different, but you have to kind of go back to your, I guess, your fundamentals and your stats to say, "All right, on Fed days, am I making money? On news catalyst days, am I making money? On CPI days, am I making money?" If the answer is no, anytime there's a type of news catalyst, you don't want to take the trade, right? If you're making most of your money on days where there's no catalyst or no news and just directional moves in the market and you're trying to be patient for those directional moves, that's a different story. So, I guess first of all, my question to you would be,

is there a specific

catalyst or specific something that causes

So, um, I don't trade news, you know. Um, I trade from 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. I trade sweeps, right? You know, so if it sweeps the one-hour swing high, I'm in short. If it sweeps the swing low, I'm in long, right? You know, but, um, at times, like for example, like Trump would tweet something mid-trade and market freak and goes vertical after like 10:45, you know, and yeah, I'm up 150 ticks, right? But I could have been up a thousand ticks, you know? So, like, do earnings affect the Dow Jones as well, you know? Um, like, you know, seasonal earnings because I don't trade stocks, you know, like I literally just trade US30, the Dow Jones, and I'm happy doing it, you know, but, um, like if you were to trade the Dow Jones, what would you be looking for fundamentally?

Well, it's a couple different things here, right?

Question, it's a couple different things. The thing about Trump tweeting is like a very low percentage thing that happens. So to base your trading strategy on something that's not going to happen repeatably, it doesn't really matter. You know, it's like hitting the lottery some days, right? Trump tweeted in April, it's a good time to buy stocks. If you bought a bunch of call options, you could have retired. But like, you can't base a strategy on, "I'm going to buy a bunch of options here and Trump is going to tweet today. I'm going to retire." You're going to lose all your money.

So, for me, that is mostly a strategy that's not repeatable. If it goes more in your direction after,

so be it. At least you're still making money. That's what I always come down to. But to base your strategy or to think that, "Oh, because he tweeted this, he tweeted that, it went more." It's irrelevant. It doesn't matter. And in terms of trading, you know, Dow or anything else, I mean, from what I've known, I don't really trade stuff like that. But the simple thing that I found is most of the time if a stock gaps, if the index gaps down, it tends to reverse. If the index gaps up, it tends to reverse the other way. So like for me, I would just use like basic gaps and knowing that if it gaps down, it's going to rebound at least once. If it gaps up, it's probably going to sell off once. And that might be something. But

for me, I don't trade those markets, so I can't really elaborate more. My specialty is focusing on stocks. And if you have consistency or if you don't have consistency, if you want to stick to those markets, you could try the S&P, you could try the NASDAQ, you could try something else that's more directional, linear, makes more sense, you know.

Makes sense, Alex.

Of course.

Thank you so much.

Pleasure.

Okay. My first question is about, I have my own strategy, break and retest. And my problem is, it's not technical. My problem is the the difference between the execution versus the planning. I, I have from my game plan clear, but at the moment to execute, two things happens. Number one, um, may sometimes get distracted while I'm waiting for the perfect setup. Okay. And when this perfect setup occurs, freeze. It's like, "Okay, I cannot push the buy or the sell button." Okay. And the other one is, how do you do to to build your system to isolate this, uh, noise? You know, what exactly can you suggest me to isolate this noise? Let's see.

Yeah. So the first, let's start with the first question, the hesitation. So, do you hesitate because you're afraid of being wrong, or you hesitate because you're afraid of losing money?

Very important question. I, I think it's more wrong than money. I, I understand at that point of my career, I understand the money is only the result. Okay. I, I, for me, it's more important to have the, the good idea, the my trade, but my point is the execution. Have you ever done something in your life that you've been nervous about, and the moment that you did it, after you felt happier? Like for me, when I was proposing to my wife, I was nervous. The moment I did it, I felt better.

Of course.

It's the same thing in trading, right? There's certain moments where you're nervous right before you're about to do something, and then when you do it, you feel this level of freedom. So for you, it's just fear of pushing the button, right? So the more experience you have pushing the button, the easier it will be. And in this example, if you're a little bit scared, let's say you're using a 100 shares, click the button with one share just to get used to clicking the button and getting the hesitation out of the way. That one share is not going to change your life. It's not going to make you rich, but it's going to give you the comfort to then be able to do it longer term. So, I think that's where we start. Okay, that, that's okay. But the other part of the question is, how do you build, what exactly do you do to remove the noise? For example, I have one stock and this stock is $100. Okay, this is my entry point. I look at that. Okay, but the price is 70. For example,

go down and I think, "Oh my god, I can take this short." You know, this short pays me $20 and later, okay, go up, you know, when, when the moment exactly comes, my moment in $100, my mental capital is off, you know, because I think one trade, two trade, you know, is what, what you can suggest me to do exactly to wait. I sometimes I think, "Okay, I put an alarm and go and back." When the alarm sounds, you know, but is good that idea or you have another suggestion?

I mean, like for me, the whole thing is you're, you're playing a lot of scenarios in your head that might not be happening, right? So for example, like, let's say it hits the $70 and it comes back down, you're like, "I could have made money here." And then it rebounds and you're like, "If it rebounds and goes higher," you don't even think about it, right?

So the thing is, in my opinion, just make your plan and stick to your plan. Don't worry about, uh, if it's going to do this, if it's going to do that, if it's going to move up, if it's going to move down, if it's left, it's right, it's red, it's green, it doesn't matter. Just make your plan, stick to your plan. If it gets your plan, you place your trade. You're going fishing. Your plan, you're going fishing, you're waiting. If a fish comes, then you're going to reel it in, you know? So, that's your plan. So, stick to your plan. Wait for it. And don't overthink. If you have to, you know, play a video game and then the alert goes off, fine. Fine. You could do that. I mean, I know a ton of people that make a significant amount of money that are just waiting, waiting, waiting, and then once they get the alert, once it gets to their level, then they're placing the trade. So, don't feel like you have to, you know, uh, be obsessing over every little tick of the stock because every little tick doesn't matter. You know, the overall, the overall big picture is the most important.

Yeah, perfect. Thank you. And the other is, what habits do you eliminate? Okay. Create this noise. What exactly do you, you think you eliminate in your routine? Maybe make noise to you.

Um, so for me, like a, a really important thing is I like to silence my phone during market hours. So 9:30 to 10:30, my phone is on "Do Not Disturb." Somehow, like I have a setting that says like, if you call three times, it'll ring, like, in case my family.

Yeah, in case of emergencies, like your phone will ring if it's on "Do Not Disturb" and three times they call. Somehow, someway, someone's always calling me. But I just put my phone on mute. That's like one thing, right? Or like, I tell my wife, between these hours, like we just can't talk. We can't do anything, you know? So, for me, it's just like, there's certain moments when I am active in the market between 9:30 and 10:30, don't talk to me, don't message me, don't do anything. I have to focus, focus on my trading. So, whether it be your phone, whether it be, you know, or even, I don't need food until I'm done trading for the day. You know, you don't want to sit on your desk and just start snacking and then the opportunity comes. I'm not doing anything. Only thing I'm drinking is coffee, right? Because I need the caffeine. But aside from that, I'm just straight up focused. So, for me, I eliminate the phone. I eliminate talking. I eliminate everything except for the market and my coffee.

Okay, perfect. Thank you. Of course. Not having a clear strategy.

Hi. Guilty. Um, I, not too sure. Sometimes the market's environment changes and the things that were working for me, uh, two weeks ago, don't work for me today. And, and I'm still trying to say, "But it worked and I still see the same setup. It should still work." Um, and at the same time, I understand that one should stick to one strategy. So, how does that, you know, that's a bit confusing for me.

What are you doing right now? Like, what's, what's been working in the meantime, or what's been happening now for you?

Well, I guess trading, uh, the ones that were working for me up to two weeks ago were overnight trades. You know, something that moved in the aftermarket and that came back down and then that popped up in pre-market and I could kind of put a sell order in the pre-market and it was, it usually worked in my favor, but that's not working anymore. So, yeah, that's a simple example.

I think, I think traders need, I like to use analogies a lot because I think analogies are a great, great way to learn. So, any good, you know, craftsman has a toolbox. There's a hammer, there's, you know, a screwdriver, there's, you know, any different types of tools in there. So as a trader, you need different tools, different strategies. So my adi, my advice would be during the moments where maybe the trades aren't really going well, or during the moments where the market's not really going in your favor, that's kind of your time to kind of go back in the lab, start paper trading, and start to discover or learn or try new strategies because during certain market periods, one strategy might work, but other market periods, this strategy might not work. So having multiple different strategies could help you during off periods. So my advice would be at least when those periods of slowness are there to go back to the simulator, go back to paper trading, just keep trying things, right? Just keep trying different things.

Yeah, that makes sense. Thank you.

Yeah, of course.

Appreciate it.

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Oh man. So, I honestly, my strategy is not one strategy. I will hope to change. It is a very basic strategy and I honestly, I love it, but I am realizing that there's different market conditions that I am not going to be able to always interpret. I am right now not profitable. So I wouldn't go about changing my strategy until I show levels of consistency. But my question is, what conditions should I look for in the future when I do want to add that extra toolbox, like you mentioned, the extra tool to that toolbox?

Yeah. I mean, so the thing, the thing is that there's been strategies that have been, you know, consistent over time because human emotions have been consistent over time, you know, whether it be in giant areas of panic during April when everyone's like, "We're in a trade war. We're in the biggest great depression again. Like it's, you know, crazy things are going to happen." That is capitulation, panic, and obviously reverse, right? Okay.

It's the same that happened in reverse during the pandemic era when everything became too frothy. GameStop, AMC, they came back down. So there's certain patterns that are always available during any types of markets due to human nature. So for me, I would just keep it to the simple ones like extreme panic. Extreme panic on the street, like we saw on Friday. Friday, the market was gapping down and everything rebounded like crazy. That extreme panic is something that's repeatable, right?

Or on the vice versa, if you get stocks that are just going crazy like SMCI from, you know, a couple years ago, that craziness eventually started to down or even like MicroStrategy. So there's certain patterns that have been repeatable throughout all of history. It's always panic to the bottom and euphoria to the top. So that would be areas that I would be focusing on, at least in extreme areas of the market.

Okay. So you're pretty much saying that I should wait for conditions like extreme conditions in which my normal strategy might not work, but to look at the market.

and see what's actually happening fundamentally.

Yeah. Like I'm a 99% short bias trader, but on Friday I went long and made a ton of money because 1% of the time there's going to be that opportunity there, right?

So as long as the opportunity is there, I don't mind trading it. It's just a matter of not mistaking an opportunity for uh just like a random trade, you know.

Yeah. Okay. So my question is how would I build my progression to get to that point then?

Yeah. Just back testing, back testing, knowing your data. I mean there was a guy here earlier, Steven Ducks. He's like the data master, right? He knows his numbers like the back of his hand. You know, for me, I know my numbers as well. So, my advice would be every single trade that you take, make sure you're at least journaling it. Make sure you're at least back testing it. Make sure you're at least learning from it because that data is gold. Like, I know, for example, Mondays are my worst performing days because I'm so excited over the weekend. I know that between, you know, 9:30 to 10:30 I make the most money. At 10:31 a.m., I lose the most money. I know that I make money on stocks $2 to $10. If it's under $2, I really don't make money. If it's over $10, low probability. I mean, I I know I make money 75% of the time. I know my average win rate is my average win profit is $4,000. I know I've placed thousands and thousands of trades. I know exactly how much money I made. I know exactly how many fees I made. I know that.

That's awesome, man.

Right. So, if you don't know that, then time to get back in back into the lab. Yeah. You know,

so just pretty much know my information as clear as possible. Yeah. It's like a business. Like when you're, you know, I used to grow up watching Shark Tank. You know, whenever they the entrepreneurs come on and Mr. Wonderful says like, "Oh, what's your numbers?" And they just freeze up. Dude, if you don't know your numbers as a business, they're going to roast you. If you don't know your numbers in trading, you're done.

Okay. Okay. That's understandable. I appreciate that, Alex. So, Alex, I tend to trade a lot more when market has a lot of volatility which I feel like there's opport I see opportunities that's not really there cuz the movement is going fast, the price is going up and down very fast. So, I have I have this question about strategy. How do you what's your strategy to stay emotionally sane during high volatility times?

Yeah. I mean, [sighs] so the longer you've been in the market, the the more you could see history repeating itself, right? So, examples of extreme volatility, I suppose, in our lifetime were the 2020 pandemic and, you know, more recently with April and all this stuff. So, what I've seen is every time that there's been elevated panic in the markets, there's always been a subsequent rebound over time. happened in 2020, happened again in April, it's probably going to happen again in the next couple years. What I found is, you know, there's a quote by Warren Buffett that says, "Be greedy when others are fearful and fearful when others are greedy." So, to me, that's really important because every single time the market's going like the overall indexes are going higher, everyone's like, "Dude, if it just goes down a little bit, I want to buy. I want to buy. I want to buy." All of a sudden, it goes down. [ __ ] it's going to go lower. I mean, we saw it this weekend, right? you know, the market was at all-time highs. Everything is kind of going higher and higher and then we start to have like a 2 or 3% dip and everyone's like freaking out, you know. But if you've seen over time that these are normal for any rational market to go higher, it has to come down. It has to collect shorts and then go higher. Right? So for me, I just seen that history repeats itself over and over again. So I try my best not to panic when those crazy moments come. I try to use them as lessons for the next opportunity. So for example during 2020 when the entire market was kind of panicking uh the Fed dropped interest rates to essentially zero and the market rebounded. Knowing that and seeing that that to me said all right in extreme areas of panic when there is any type of catalyst or any type of something it's going to rebound it's going to rebound fast. Now what happened in April? What happened in April was the tariff stuff came out. Trump came out and said it's a good time to buy. It turns out the market had biggest green day in history. So now what that tells me is the next time that it happens, whether it's in 2027, 2028, whenever that extreme panic happens again and there's some sort of catalyst, dude, I'm going in all in because the pattern is going to repeat again,

right?

So it's all history repeating itself.

Got you. Thank you.

Of course.

All right. So, so you talked about um checking your data and and helping you, I guess, build that conviction in a particular setup, but I guess how did you uh how did you develop the the strategy u to begin with? Like when you first started off, were you throwing darts at a board and taking random impulsive trades and then slowly, you know, looking at that those trades and seeing if there's a pattern between them or how?

Yeah, I mean, look, I think that I stand by the quote that mentorship is the shortcut to success. When I first started trading, there wasn't as much uh knowledge online. The only knowledgeable thing that we saw online was something called like buying the breakout. And every time I bought the breakout, it was straight down.

So, I met a guy called Bao and he kind of took me under his wing and he became my mentor. And I've had multiple mentors throughout my trading career, right? But I think that the best way to learn a strategy is to at least piggyback something or someone that you know has had success in the markets cuz again history tends to repeat itself. So the way that I learned the first red day strategy was my mentor Ba was using it. He was using it consistently but I started to realize it had such a high win rate. So whereas he was using that strategy to scalp and make a little bit of money, I recognized that the win rate was so high that I should go bigger and I evolved that strategy. So throughout your trading career, there's going to be multiple mentors or multiple teachers that you learn different things from. And your goal as a trader is to take a little bit from him, a little bit from him, a little bit from him, a little bit from her, and mold it into your own trading that's unique to yourself. So my trading has all different pieces from all different types of mentors that I've molded to myself. So the problem is that a lot of people online are not really clearly making money. So that's why you need avenues like this where you know RZ verifies his traders that they actually make money. So that's kind of what helps you weed through all the inconsistent strategies out there because there may be someone that says I make money trading gold futures at 2 p.m. every single Wednesday and then you try every 2 p.m. on Wednesday, you lose money until you realize that the guy doesn't even know how to make money. He doesn't even know what he's even trading. So I think that's the biggest problem is there's a lot of inconsistent education and not real lessons out there. So at least make sure that the channels that you're learning from are all from verified third-party traders that actually make money is that way you know that it works and you can mold it to your own, you know, strategy.

Okay. Um got a couple more questions actually, but um

in regards to your death candle um that that you sort of rely on for some of your strategies, h how does that apply to your A+ setup where you know the multi-day runner and then first red day versus your B+ setup where you're looking at a retest at the high of day and

Yeah. So the way I see is everything in trading is all about signals and confirmation, right? So for you to be heavy or aggressive in your trading, there has to be some sort of signal or some sort of confirmation that tells you that you should be aggressive. So the analogy that I always use is bow at Disney World. So So you're making a bet and the way that you win the bet is if Bow gets drunk, right? So if Ba goes to Disney World, there's probably a 50% chance he gets drunk. Okay, you might be taking that bet. But if Ba's at the club, there's a bottle of Hennessy and a couple cute girls with short skirts. 99% chance he's getting drunk. What's my signal? My signal is when he starts slurring his words. When he starts wobbling around, that's my confirmation for my trades. That death candle is my confirmation. That's my signal that the trend is reversing. That's my signal that things are changing. So, that's my green light that I should start getting more aggressive on the trade.

Okay. Does does it change from one setup to the other? like on on your first red day, you know, are you waiting for it to run um in the morning and then come down and then have the death candle?

Wherever I see the signal, I will take it. It doesn't have to be particularly at a specific time or a specific something. Whenever the signal is available, I'm going to take it. And my risk and my stop would be a reclaim of that candle. So, if that candle goes from $6 to 550, if the candle reclaims $6, it's no longer a death candle or reclaimed. That's my stop. But if it continues to go lower, at least now I have a set risk area. So if it has that candle and does not follow through, then my trade thesis is wrong and it's not actually a death candle. It's a trap.

And are you basing um any other criteria on it like the amount of volume on the death candle?

It should ideally be an elevated volume candle. It should ideally have elevated volume because if not, then it's not really a death. Death candle signals that people are trapped. So, usually there's going to need to be uh elevated volume for that trap to be confirmed.

Okay. And and does time of day matter for you for that? Like pre-market versus

pre-market? I don't really count. I only count usually during the market open because pre-market is a lot less volume. Uh it's a lot easier for them to manipulate the charts. So, I don't really consider, you know, the pre-market death candles. I usually like it uh at the market open.

Okay. And then um when you're looking at your exits on a on a strategy, I overheard you saying that you like to use support and resistance levels.

Um do you do you give more weight to a shorter time frame support or resistance versus, you know, a longer time frame like the daily or Yeah,

because I noticed in your YouTube videos you generally draw um a line at, you know, at the end of a wick of like a more shorter time frame. But um you mentioned also that you look at daily daily resistance levels as well.

Yeah. So, I'm looking at the daily chart for the overall big picture of the setup. So, if I see on the daily chart that it pushes up and fails, or if I see on the daily chart it's like a multi-day runner, that's at least my my overall big picture of the stock. But what I'm basing my levels on is the pre-market action and the action at the open. So, just because it has like a key level on the daily chart, it might be important, but chances are if it's going to have that key level on daily chart, it's probably going to have that same key level pre-market as well. You know, these charts are usually congruent. So, for me, I'm using mostly the pre-market area, which would then line up with the other charts. But knowing the data pre-market and knowing the data at the open is kind of where I'm basing these trades on.

Okay. And and and how much of like the fundamentals do you give weight in your like I I tend to track dilution as well in a lot of small cap stocks? Um and when I see certain underwriters, you know, it gives me a little bit more conviction. Yep.

But as of late at least, I found that

it's it's not really applicable. like they're running it anyway and and it's going a lot further than I think even when I when I do look at the daily for support and resistance levels is kind of just

blowing away. I think I think the biggest thing here is to understand that back in the day uh the fundamental aspect of trading was something that had to be learned and now there's tools out there that kind of condense all that information. Once that information becomes readily available, it becomes a commodity and because now everyone uses it and everyone knows it, it's useless.

Right. Right. Okay. So, so you're not giving it as much?

I'm not giving it as much attention anymore because now everyone has the data and the data is used to skew people's emotions the wrong way. But the chart is always the Bible. The chart is the chart is everything.

Okay. And and um is VWAP the only indicator that you

VWAP is the only indicator. Yep.

And you're using it to kind of um I guess uh quantify your aggressiveness on on the trading.

Yeah. If the stock is above VWAP, that means that the long bias traders are in control. If the stock is under VWAP, it means that the short bias traders are in control. So at least helps me determine which side of the tape is trapped.

Okay. Okay. Awesome. Thank you. Cool.

Um couple simple questions. How do you identify trend days and chop days?

What are your criteria?

So for the small cap stocks that I trade or are you trading about different

I do futures usually.

Okay. So usually what I've noticed about the overall indexes is they usually pick a direction after 10:30 and they continue that direction all day long. So that's what I've seen that works is usually the first like half hour to an hour is like chop and price discovery. And after that first hour is usually when the market picks a direction, chooses a linear direction for the rest of the day. I mean, if you think about a company like Tesla, Tesla

by 10:00 a.m. it picks a direction, it just goes down all day or it just goes up all day. You know what I'm saying? Okay. So I would say probably for the large cap stocks after about 10 to 10:30 a.m. they pick a direction and they just go that direction.

Okay. And how do you identify chop days then? Uh for me the chop days after 10:30 if it's not picking a direction if it's just kind of like wobbling up and down. Usually what we see is if there's any type of news or catalyst or Fed or CPI or something.

Usually those types of days create a little bit more chop. Especially the Fed days. The Fed days are at 2 p.m. it's up and then it's down and it's up and then it's down and then it's up then it's down. So it's too choppy. So I think whenever there's any type of news catalyst it kind of creates the chop. But other than that they usually just pick a direction and follow that direction.

Okay. uh what do you how do you identify death candle because I've uh heard you speak about a lot but I'm not sure what that is.

Yeah, for I mean the indices like that it's not really as relevant because there's way too much alos, there's way too much institutions, there's way too much stuff like that. But for a small cap stock, a death candle would be like a big red candle on elevated volume that triggers a reversal on a stock, right?

So you're looking for a reversal on that, not continuing it.

So a reversal of the move up. So if it moves up and has a death candle, it's reversing the trend then continuing down.

Okay. Um how do you actually enter a trade? Uh, do you just do market order?

No, I use limit orders every time.

Limit orders?

Because the limit order I'm in control of where I want my entry to be. Yeah. Market order will be more emotional.

Exactly. I I get very bad entries when I do market order, but it doesn't always fill me if I'm just putting my uh entries there because it never really comes back. I'm looking for open or the close or the previous candle to get in.

Yep.

Usually I'm okay, but I miss a lot of my trades just because I'm trying to really control my stop at the uh bottom end of it.

Yeah, I use limit orders exclusively. I don't like using market orders. I feel like I don't have control when I use a market order because I could be executed at whatever hell price it is.

Exactly. I usually get the worst.

And I always get the worst one, too. That's on purpose, right? They do that on purpose.

Yeah. I always get stuck with that.

Yeah.

Thank you. Of

course. Appreciate it.

Just had one followup question.

Yep.

Let's do it.

Um, how how do you determine when when the chart is broken or the backside is in if there's no death candle?

Yeah, usually what if it's if it's a if you're looking on the short side and the stock is down, you ideally need to see it under VWAP and you need to see it under the low of the day. If it's under the VWAP, which means the overall big picture is broken and it's under the low of the day. I mean, that's enough of a signal for me to be like this thing's broken.

And if it's like a day one runner is and I guess like between VWAP and the low of the day is not that much of a range, would you still take

No, if there's not enough range, I'm not going to take the trade.

Okay.

because there's no point of if a stock is up 10 or 15% and you're trying to make a little bit of pennies, it doesn't make sense. You need a stock up hundreds of percent so you can make more money.

Okay. Thanks. Of course.

Hey, Alex. Uh just a quick question on tracking. Um let's say for instance, um you have a day one runner and you short a VWAP, then you get stopped out.

Then maybe you re-enter at um like pre-market high, right? Uh would you consider that two trades when it comes to tracking in your win rate or like are you looking at setup versus win rate or the actual trade? So in that case

I consider that two trades.

Okay.

Because there are two different trades because you had a trade, you stopped out or you exited. Done. And then trade number two would be the secondary trade that you take.

Got it. And can you give maybe some categories for the trades that you tra for instance VWAP rejection or can you maybe give a few categories?

Yeah, it could be uh day one short into resistance, day two short into resistance, day one, you know, reclaim of support, day one uh reclaim of VWAP, first red day, sell the new setup, um stuff like that. Just pretty much basic, you know, whatever the setup that you're taking, you could just add a name to it. If you're shorting the VWAP, it's a VWAP rejection. If you're looking to buy the VWAP reclaim, it's a VWAP reclaim. If you're shorting the high of the day, you're shorting the high of the day. If you're buying a higher low, buying the higher low, or just whatever trade you're taking, that's essentially what you would name it.

Nice. Thank you very much. Of course, exits and trade management, knowing when to get out of the trade,

Alex. Um, Sunny and I are what two of here are the blessed ones that get to uh witness what we refer to as I won't say it here but uh starts with the I um what basically you your strength is entering a trade from what I've noticed you have a a knack for entering a trade. Um what makes you exit that trade at that time and not leave a tail as they say or lotto shares? Why do you exit fully when you know and I know Sunny as well that a lot of times there's more quote unquote meat on the bone?

Yeah. So, I got into trading for freedom, right? Specifically financial freedom and time freedom. And in trading, if you allow yourself to stay at the desk or stay in front of the setup, you're going to make sure that you're not getting one of those freedoms. So, for me, if the stock is going in my favor and hitting my key levels, I'd rather just take the money and enjoy my day, I'd rather have the freedom to at 10:30 go get a nice lunch or leave the house or go for a walk. That extra couple dollars that I'm going to make by holding or stressing is not worth the joy that I will make by leaving my house and enjoying my life. So, for me, it's more of a matter of I got into trading for freedom and by walking away, I unlocked that freedom that I was looking for.

Great answer. And what makes you not consider re-entering? Same thing.

Uh same thing, man. Same thing. I don't want to be stressed. I've been stressed very too long in my trading career, you know, trying doing everything wrong. So these days, I rather focus on my own personal happiness rather than trying to squeeze out a couple extra dollars because a couple extra dollars are not really going to make much of a difference, but the extra happiness that I feel will then pay dividends onto my trading longer term.

Great. Um, thank you. Cool. Ladies first.

All right. So, trading exit. Um, so when I started trading, I uh was learning from a totally wrong person, but I should give some credit to him. Anyways, uh he always like um advocated for taking at least 10% profit and leaving a runner behind.

So back then when I was trading like that, I would take actually take all my profit at 10% and I never left a runner behind. Uh finally when I did get a catch of it that I should leave a runner to like get a little more of that particular trade, I was noticing that like if I left like 100 shares behind that would like go back up and I like sometimes would in stop out and then I'm like adding to a losing trade like

totally a bad story but anyhow then I noticed that there's probably like a change in the market cycle Because like couple of months ago when you left a runner behind you actually could take some profit but now when I did start leaving a runner behind the thing like goes back up. So how do you identify that like change in the shift uh of the market cycle.

So my honest answer is I assume that every single stock is going to trap my ass. If I assume that every single stock is going to be a problem then I have no reason to think otherwise. So, my thought process is I'm just going to get out and assume that it's going to trap back up. And if it doesn't trap up and it keeps going lower, at least I made money. If it continues to go higher or rebounds or goes against me, then I was right. But I just assume that every single stock is going to trap. And if I assume that every single stock is going to trap, I just play my trades based on that. Now, obviously, that's not the scenario. A lot of these stocks, they might not trap, but at least takes away the guessing game for me. It takes away the overthinking for me. and that's kind of what works for me.

Okay. Yeah. A few weeks ago, there was like one uh particular ticker I shorted it and that went like 5,000% up. In pre-market, I made money thankfully. I mean, not thank that's not what I'm thankful about. I shorted it. I left like 100 shares.

Went to get coffee. I was telling him that story.

Coffee.

Yeah. Super expensive. And actually when I closed like like 90% of my position, I made money on that. and uh went like came back to my desk because it was premarket. 100 shares it within 30 40 seconds it went up by $10. So it was $1,000 down. But guess what? This time I didn't freeze. I got

out of the trade.

Good.

And then I reversed my position and made some money because it was just like a super long parabolic.

Okay.

Uh but that was like one clear like thing like well the runner didn't work for me. If anything, that would have like been very devastating. So, all right, just like close the position.

If you assume that every single stock is going to trap you, then you don't have any reason to think otherwise.

Okay?

Right? And obviously, it's an extreme example, but I would rather use that extreme example to make me feel more comfortable. You know, I'm assuming that every single time I every single time it's got a trap. Yeah.

The times that doesn't trap, oh well, time to times that it does trap. I was right. You know, it's an extreme way to think about it. But if you always assume the worst, you know, you get to protect yourself.

Yeah. Yeah. It's it's it's tough because like I have written the ticker name and like on a post-it note and put it on my monitor, but now I see it every day. I ignore it. So anyways, I need to work on it.

Use a bigger post-it note. Maybe use a big paper or something.

Yeah. Something like that. Cuz the thing is like you from the conversations that we have, you know exactly what you're doing wrong is there's just a couple little things that you have to do. So think about it. You change your candle color and your trading changed. So you might just have to keep doing a little bit more tweaks instead of a little bit post note. We might need a big thing like this in front of you, you know?

So whatever it takes is not something to be ashamed of, but you got to know what works for you. Yeah.

Right. So what works for you might be I gotta put a giant poster board on it or something. I I once knew a a trader that was similar to me and was losing money in the afternoons. And what he would do is he would set an alert on his phone as an alarm at 11:00 a.m. to beep. And he had a calendar invite every single morning at 11:00 a.m. giving him like a popup. So he had a popup on his calendar at 11:00 a.m. that says stop trading. And his phone was beeping at 11:00 a.m. So both of those things are what he used and that helped him. Well, thanks to you, because of the whole zombie hour, I have my alarm set Monday through Friday, 10:30 a.m. It goes off and

Good.

So, I close my trades.

That's what you have to do sometimes. Everyone's different. You know, everyone everyone's not going to be in the same situation where they have whatever type of mental aptitude that is necessary. But if you do, if you know what your problem is and you build guard rails around those problems, that's that's the game.

Okay. But do you like adapt your strategies based on that mar market cycle shift or you're just like consistent like you think that every trade is actually going to go after you rather than profit you? So

uh I mean I'm always assuming that the market is going to trap me. But you know as the market changes you have to adapt with the markets too. So early on in my trading career I was trading pre-market stocks. I don't really trade premarket anymore because a little bit too aggressive. The market has changed. So now I focus primarily on the market open you know.

Okay. All right. Thanks.

Of course.

How you doing, Alex?

What's up?

All right. So, I have a question for you, right? You know, um and it's pretty much straightforward, right? You know, it's um how do you assess when to take a partial and when to leave a runner? Because from what I've seen, you know, every successful model that I've seen has convexity baked into it where like there's always a runner in place, you know, that outpaces your stop losses, right? You know, do you trail stops? Like what's your thought process when it comes to managing your trade from your stop loss to that first TP? Is it at break even? Your runners like like how do you go about that?

Yeah. So for me, I'm using basic support and resistance. So for example, when I first got started my trading, I would set arbitrary price targets in my head that wouldn't really hit. I'd say if the stock breaks $5, it's going to go to $2. And if I'm not going to get out until it goes to $2. And then what would end up happening is it goes down to like 350 and then bounces all the way back. And I'm like, [ __ ] what the hell did I just do? So for now, I just use basic support and resistance. If I'm shorting a stock and it gets to my support level, I'm taking a little piece off. If it goes down to the next support level, I'm taking another piece off. But for me, like I said earlier, is I'm not really leaving a runner anymore simply because I want less stress in my life and I want more time freedom. So that's what I find works for me is if it goes to very simple key levels on the chart, if you're buying a stock and it goes to resistance, sell some at resistance. If it goes higher over that, sell at the next resistance. So for me, I've I'm done setting arbitrary price targets in my head because the market doesn't care about my price targets. All that matters is the chart. So as long as you're using basic technicals, these algos and these robots are programmed on something and they're programmed on technical analysis. So you're just trying to piggyback that.

Makes sense, Alex. Course.

Thank you so much for your time.

Yeah, dude.

Hey, I'm writing, man. So I feel like one of my biggest issues trading as well is maximizing profits where if I trade my edge and I aim for let's just say daily highs which is what I normally like to aim for and price let's just say takes internal liquidity and clears 1 hour uh highs I see a retracement and I maybe get out at times this decision works there's times that price immediately reverses and my best bet was taken out at that 1 hour high. But then there's chances where it continues to go higher and I miss out on better opportunities, better riskto-reward, and overall deduct the win of size on what I could be potentially gaining. Since you're very disciplined, I feel like you're the perfect person to ask. Do I stick to my process of aiming for those daily highs or do I adapt by taking out maybe partial liquidity on those 1 hour highs and continue to let it run?

Yeah, I think take a little piece off to give yourself some patience because for me, I found that I always make the most money when I take a little bit off. Calms kind of calms me down and allows me to say, "Let me let my trade work now."

Okay.

If I don't take a little bit of my profits off, then I get a little bit antsy. I get a little bit worried. I start overthinking, I start whatever. So that's kind of what works for me. So my advice would be take at least a little bit off, maybe like 10, 15, 20% of your size on that first level of whatever it is, and then give yourself the ability to be patient after that.

Okay. So, it sounds a little bit subjective because it's mainly just to make me feel better and then let it run. But that's what you're pretty much saying, right? To be subjective so I can be objective overall.

Yeah. And like you can never go wrong taking some profits along the way because if it hits that first resistance level and ends up crashing after that, at least you took some off, right? Cuz it's never going to hit that first, it's never going to hit that first level and always go to the higher low. It may hit that first level in reverse. It may not even hit that level at all. But as long as you at least take some profits off there, you could at least give yourself an insurance policy in case it doesn't go right.

Okay. Okay. Well, thank you. That's literally my question. Of course. Yeah.

So, I've become really good at entries,

but I'm scared um at giving money back. So, I cut my winner short. When did you start breaking the habit of cutting winners short and letting the trade run to its full uh potential target?

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, it's all based on emotions, right? It's based on the fact that you don't want to lose money or turn your winning trade into a losing trade. So, it's all pretty much in your head. The moment that it kind of changed for me is after I kind of again, it's I'm starting to see a very clear relation now. It's talking about just looking at my numbers and looking at my data. So, if I have confidence in my strategy and if I have confidence in my process and I have confidence in my numbers, then I just have to let uh trade do its thing. So, with enough data, it kind of gives you that confidence. But for me, it's like I I just started to trust my process more because it proved that it was working you know. So and also another thing that you could do is like for me I felt more comfortable after like I would take some profits and put it into my bank account. So a lot of people they always want to keep their trading accounts as large as possible because you think that to be a big trader you have to have the largest account. For me, I find that the larger account you have, the more risk you have. Because, for example, all it takes is one day to go on tilt, one day to screw up, one day to fight with your girl, one day to do this, a death in the family, something that ends up screwing your trading, and all of a sudden, all your money is gone. But if you have some of that money that you put into your bank account, it helps you be like, you know what, I'm good with this month's bills. I could be patient. I could be risky. I could do this. I could do that, you know?

So, you would like um advise people to make withdrawals

100%. even weekly just

100%. I with dude there's been a time I mean my phone is over there but you can see I called my broker and there was a time every day of the week I was withdrawing because I was doing well you know what I'm saying so I don't want to keep my accounts so large that I am overexposing myself at risk also as you level up in your trading career you start to realize that there's other investment opportunities outside the market so by pulling out money I'm able to invest here I'm able to invest there I'm able to do this I'm able to do that but if all my money is locked in my trading account It's a little bit too much pressure. Yeah. Thank you. Of course.

One question, Alex. Um All right. Okay. So how do you keep yourself operating at peak performance you know year after year you know and what's the difference you know between going from 100k to 200k and to where you are today where you've made millions of dollars you know um for me I find you know that is obviously easier to trade when you have a cushion as well you know you're more patient you wait for trades to develop right you know But as far as making this a a career for the next 10 years, 20 years, you know, like what does it truly take, you know, mentally, you know, to to just stay operating at peak levels?

It's called sacrifice. It's what are you willing to sacrifice to get to your destination, right? So, for me, when I first started off in my trading career, I didn't have too many friends. I wasn't leaving the house. I wasn't partying. I wasn't doing I wasn't hanging out with girls. I wasn't doing anything. I was just stuck in my room learning and improving and adapting and you know trying to get better at trading. So I sacrificed a lot of my younger 20s to be able to live you know my 30s and the rest of my life whichever way I want. So the question now becomes what are you willing to sacrifice? Are you willing to sacrifice your weekends instead of going out and spending a couple hundred dollars, you know, getting messed up and having that extra money in your trading account? Or are you willing to sacrifice, you know, instead of hanging out with girls or instead of hanging out with whatever you're into that you then use that time to watch trading videos? Are you watching Netflix or are you watching trading videos? Are you, you know, uh, recapping your trades or are you, you know, smoking weed? You know, it really depends. Like there's so many different things. Like even now, like I find myself like I mean things like this, think about it. We're here, what is it? Saturday in the afternoon. Like I could just be screwing off now. But by doing something like this, it refineses my trading even more. I am nailing down the fundamentals even more, right? I'm I'm getting my foundation even more solid. So as much as this helps you, it helps me as well. So what are you willing to sacrifice to get to those levels?

So you're saying that no matter where you're at, pretty much never stop doing the things that got you there.

Yeah, it's true.

Again and again and again.

I mean the reason why you do certain things, well at least for me is trading is there has to be a little bit of passion involved too. So I was actually on a podcast recently and the host ended the question by asking me, "Do you think you'll be trading forever?" And the answer was yes. Right. I might not be as aggressive as I am. I might not be doing anything too uh crazy, but I'll probably be trading forever because I love the game. Right. To support. Gotcha. Yep. Our addicts. Thank you. Of course. revenge trading and tilt.

So, at times I've I've had the problem of revenge trading. What trader hasn't? Right? But it's the accepting of the loss that I feel like makes it easy for me to revenge trade, right? Where at times if let's just say this specific scenario, my trade is going in my favor, I break even and now it reverses on me and retests my level. It starts giving a little bit of a reaction and instead of accepting that reduced risk of a loss or that break even trade, I jump back in and revenge trade. Well, feeling like I I deserve that trade back, you know, and I realize that that's an ego thing. I realize that that's not going to be helpful towards my trading. I just want to see what is your perspective on it.

Yeah. So as humans whenever we take a loss in our trading it takes one nanocond for us to think how am I going to make it back as fast as possible. So in trading what I found is directly after taking a loss that may be a little bit outsized or a little bit above what it should be. It took me a long time to realize that I should just be getting up and walking away for 5 minutes. If I get up and walk away for five minutes and I clear my head and I get back to a point of just like relaxing, it helps me control that urge versus a second later trying to make back the money and then digging myself in a bigger hole. Right? So that's kind of the advice that works for me. I still, you know, sometimes revenge trade not as often as I used to, but having the ability to just say, you know what, I ate the loss. Let me get up. Let me walk away for five minutes, recollect my thoughts, has done a lot for me to kind of just get back and be like, it's okay. I'll just wait for the next setup.

Okay. So, I like that. I feel like that can help me a lot with my trading. I feel like it could help a lot of amateur traders as well. Now, something that does happen to me is if I make a mistake like such um and I do revenge trade, it carries on for me personally throughout the week where now my vision is skewed. My objective process that was normally objective is now more subjective than ever. And I feel like I just make more and more emotional decisions. I want to know maybe is there a process that you do to help you keep calm throughout the week or maybe after a session like that?

Yeah. What I find for me is in the past I would let my profits or losses dictate my regular days life.

If I had a good trading day, I was on top of the world. If I had a bad trading day, I was in the gutters. Right. Tell me. So for me, what I find is whenever you have a good trade or a bad trade, it ends when the market closes. At 400 p.m., dude, that's it. You're resetting. Doesn't matter if you made the most money in your entire life or you lost the most money ever. Hopefully not, but at 4 p.m., bro, you got to reset or else, like you said, it's going to drag on for the week.

So, there's been plenty of times that I've made six figures in a day and, you know, I have Chick-fil-A after, right? You know, I don't need to be going and getting the fanciest steak every single day because I don't want my life to be dictated based on my profits, right? I want my life to be dictated based on if I stuck to my process, if I did the right thing, and god forbid if I didn't do the right thing, I leave it at the door at 4 p.m.

Yeah. So, um, how did you separate that? Because it seems like you've had that same issue that a lot of amateur traders tend to have like us here. How did you learn to separate that? I know it takes time, but maybe there was a certain level of experience that helped you.

Yeah. I mean, look, for me, first is always recognizing that what the issue is and setting a process to fix it. You know, for me, a loss is never a loss unless there's a lesson attached to it. So, what does that mean? That means if you lost $10,000 on a trade, you must you better make sure you learn something from that trade or that $10,000 was wasted. If not, you could think of that $10,000 as your tuition to get to the next level. So, when I had my largest losing trade ever, I lost $450,000 in a single day. It was the worst day ever. And I tried to revenge trade the next day and try to make it back. I ended up digging myself into a bigger hole.

But what ended up working for me is taking it day by day and just slowly but surely building it back. That was a $450,000 lesson that taught me not to consistently add to my losers. Okay? I just kept adding to my losers and adding to my loser and add to my loss and it ended up ballooning on that setup. So that was a $450,000 lesson that taught me never to add to my losers recklessly.

Okay.

And now, as you can see, I'm only adding to my winners.

So the question now becomes is what amount of losses are you willing to pay in tuition to teach you that lesson? And hopefully, it's not $400,000 like me.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I appreciate that for real, man. So on the [clears throat] issue of revenge trading, so when you let's say you take a loss, right, and and there was an acceptable loss and then the pattern a pattern arises again and you see a good entry point. Um, do you ever or do you have any advice on how to um prevent yourself from accepting higher risk so that you make that amount back plus plus an additional amount? So sometimes I'll go from 50 shares on my initial trade where I took the acceptable loss to then going convincing myself that a 100 shares is fine because maybe I want to make the uh amount.

Yeah. My thought process is if you're wrong on a trade and you control that loss, your next entry shouldn't be a larger entry. It should only be a larger entry if the trade is confirming. So, in the example of if you're going short and it has a death candle or it breaks the low of the day, that's your signal to get in more aggressive, not just because you lost on a trade and you're trying to, you know, go bigger to make it back. So, if there is ever a scenario where you stop out on a trade, your next entry on the trade should be on some sort of confirmation. And if there is some sort of confirmation, that could be a potential signal to get in more aggressively on that setup. So, don't just get bigger just because you took a loss. I mean, it makes no sense, right? It's like you're getting uh slapped in the face and you're saying, "Slap me again harder." It makes no sense, right? You'd rather wait for it to go in your favor and then be more aggressive on the trade.

So when you're saying more aggressive, so it's okay to increase size >> if and only if it's doing exactly what it should be doing, not if you're just trying to get in for the sake of making back the money.

Right. Okay. Um, and I guess when you when you were trading like when you were starting off trading and building consistency, did you find that you know you you would go from 50 shares to 100 to 300 to to make the amounts back and and >> I mean, everyone does when they start, but now the question is how again, how much in losses are you willing to pay to learn the lesson, >> right? So for me, my it always goes back to the same thing is let's say you were wrong on 50 shares. I mean, if you're wrong on 50, you think it makes sense to be wrong on double the size after?

Probably not. No.

Probably not. Right. So, you would rather wait to save that size, reserve that size, reserve that aggression for when the trade is in your favor. If it's not in your favor, you don't have the trade.

Awesome. Thanks.

Yeah. Um, how many times do you actually take a trade before you say no to a trade?

How many times? Could you elaborate maybe a little bit?

Um, I take a long, it gets back there, exactly what I'm looking for. It shows me long again. I take it again. Then I lose again. Then it comes back to exactly what I want. Then I want to take it again and I take it again.

I understand. But in a day, sometimes I'm taking the same trade six, seven times, and I'm losing all six, seven times. So how many times do you take that trade to confirm that?

Yeah, I usually give myself a three strikes and you're out rule. So, three strikes and you're out. So, if I'm wrong three times on the stock, chances are I'm not I'm not I'm not feeling it that day. Something's wrong. I'm not in tune with the market. I'm not feeling it. If something's not right, something's something's wrong. So, I keep it very simple. Three strikes and you're out. If I'm if I'm wrong three times, that's my signal to say, you know what, I'm done for the day. I'm not going to dig myself in a bigger hole. Something's wrong with me and I'm just going to walk away.

Okay. Now, is that apply to the same trade or is that also with a different trade? Like, let's just say if you how many times do you have a losing trade before you're walking off of the day?

Uh, the overall just three for the day because at that point it's like revenge trading. I lose three times here, I'm going to go here and do three times. It makes no sense. Something's clearly wrong that day, right? Whether it be I had a fight with my girl, some there's a death in the family or there's something that's going on that's messing up my mental. Clearly, clearly if I'm wrong three times, chances are I'm not going to be right the fourth time, right? Something's wrong. Something's wrong. So, I'd rather just say, "You know what? Three strikes, you're out. That's it. Come back tomorrow."

Okay. Is that three straight losing uh ones or is that three just losing trades for the day? Cuz

Go ahead. I'm sorry.

I say three like three losing trades for the day.

Okay.

Three losing trades for the day.

Not even just three straight losing and then you have a couple winners in the middle. That not

Three for me. That's keep it simple, right? Don't overcomplicate. Don't say I made money on five stocks here. I lost money on three stocks here. I don't know. Maybe it evens out to two at one more trade. Three. Keep it simple. Keep it simple.

And what is your percentage loss on your account for the for the day?

I mean,

or so for me, it's I have a max loss rule. So again, same thing. If I'm making $10,000 a day, I set my max loss no more than two days' worth of work. That way, on my worst possible days, I only lose two days' worth of work. So if my average win day is $10,000, my max loss is $20,000.

Okay. You don't have a percentage on a like let's just say my account is $100,000. What should I be losing max in a day uh to protect myself?

Same thing. What are you making? What are you making a day?

Um, usually about $1,500.

Then your max loss is $3,000.

Okay.

So, no more than two days' worth of work.

Okay.

So, in your scenario, if it's $100 grand, that'd be 3%.

Okay.

Thank you. Of course.

Going on tilt. So let's say that you've um gone beyond the point of taking many losses and you've gone and taken even more losses and you're at the point where well I come to the point where I'm just like [ __ ] it, I don't care anymore and there's this some kind of detached not detached because it's obviously very passionate about like okay so what does it matter if I lose another $100, what does it matter and then my question is how do I do you I mean, you you haven't stepped away obviously you've missed that point right? Do you give yourself some breathing room and give yourself a few days? Is it I I mean, have you has that happened to you? And how do you kind of come come back, so to speak?

Yeah. I mean, if anyone says that doesn't happen to them, they're not really trading, right? I mean, it happens to us all, right? So, you start to get to the point where you're like, "Ah, [ __ ] it." Like, who cares? Like, it's I'm going to lose. I'm going to lose it. And then at the end of the day, I look at it and I'm like, "Dude, did I just lose an extra $20,000 on this stock? What the hell am I doing here?" So, for me, it's after I would exit that trade of just being like, "Fuck it." I'd be like, "What the hell did I just do?" Right? You put yourself in a scenario where you're like, "What like how did I lose this much control?" So in that moment where you start to say [ __ ] it or whatever, that should be your trigger that says, "Wait a second. I got to slow it down."

So I was working with Dr. Brett Steamberger for about a year. He's the number one trading coach out there. And what he told me is >> whenever you're in a trade and you feel your heart beating or you feel stressed or you start sweating, chances are that's your body's way of telling you to >> just double-check on the trade, right? If you're panicking, if you're nervous, if your heart is beating, if you're saying [ __ ] it, like chances are your body is telling you that something is wrong here. So that should be your trigger to say, you know what, let me reduce some of my size. Let me stop out a little bit. Let me just adjust here. Because your body has a natural way of telling you that something is wrong. So next time you get that urge, that is your body telling you, wait a second, right? Wait a second. Let me just double-check here. Right.

And often times if you take a little piece off, >> eat a little bit of a loss, it'll help you kind of reset back to normal.

That makes sense. Thanks. Appreciate it.

So So this is my data here. I mean, you could see, you know, it's been down on a down streak since since I started. Um, I find a trade uh the win percentage I think is a lot lower because there's there's the days that I have like massive losses compared to to the other ones. Um, but I try to Where do we go to here? Right. Um, I can have some winning trades. I find it's days that maybe I go on tilt and start revenge trading that wipe out you know, a lot of the other days um even when I try to impose you know, a max stop loss um on myself I I will cross it or I won't uh abide by it and end up overtrading revenge trading and and, you know, those those kind of losses just balloon out of out of control. Um,

So real quick, right, what I see here is the first thing that I see is your losses are almost 20 times larger than your winners. So that to me probably says that you're adding aggressively into your losers and not adding large enough into your winners. Because if your winning day is $100, $126, and then a $2,000 losing day, it's way too big. You should at least first from based on what I'm seeing is start with implementing a max loss of like $300. That way, on your worst possible day, you're gonna lose $300. And let me tell you something. If you lost $300 here, if you lost, you know, $300, $300, $300, you might have even made, look, you're minus $2,000 here, minus $2,000 there, it's minus $5,000, right? So at the end of it, if you saved yourself $5,000 in losses, you might have even been green on the month. You see $6,000 here. I mean, if you just control those losing days, you would even have the potential to make more money and even be green. So, my first advice would be set your max loss to at least two days' worth of work. That way, these $2,000 days are only $300 days, and you'll make up the difference.

So, another thing I see here is you had one day that you made over $1,000, but you had one, two, three, four, five, six, seven days where you lost over $1,000. So to me, this is very clearly a risk management type of thing where as long as you mitigate these losses and set that max stop auto liquidation at no more than two days' worth of work, I mean, your trading should turn around. Seriously.

Right. I did notice, and we talked about this earlier, usually the days that I have the biggest losers tend to be the most trades in the day. So, I think um, you know, I'm overtrading a lot on on these big days, whereas

Because probably what's happening is you're losing money. You're trying to make the money back by revenge trading and you're digging yourself in a bigger hole.

Yeah. Like I I noticed like even when I you know when you go through the trades, it's I'm upping the size as well on on the subsequent subsequent trades trying to make it back and then some or, you know, making a I use Trade Ideas as a scanner and sometimes I get FOMO and I'll see things run and then I'll you know, try to make a quick 10-cent scalp on the thousand shares only for it to drop 30 cents quickly.

Here's the honest feedback, man. I'm going to tell you straight up, no [ __ ] is the honest feedback. Is you can make money.

Clearly are making money.

Yeah. As long as you mitigate the losses, you could be profitable. It's really right there. I mean, you're not not able to make money, right? It's just when you're losing, you're losing way more than you should.

So, my advice to you is set that max loss. Try for a month. Right. Worst case scenario, your losses are going to be capped at $300.

Right.

Right. Yeah.

Even if you lose every single day in the month, you'll still lose less than what you're losing now.

Right.

Okay. Appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you. You can do it, man.

Yeah.

So, as you can see, unfortunately, I'm profit I'm unprofitable. Fortunately, you are. So, hopefully, you can teach me something.

Okay. So, let's go through the maybe some stats, some recent trades, some everything. So,

This is September. Uh, November, I've haven't really been trading as cons. Well, well, for the month, yeah, I have actually been trading. Let's go back maybe one more month and see. Okay. So, so this is actually very interesting. If you look at this month, I mean, this is a month where you kept all of your losses controlled and you were green.

Yeah.

And then you look at this month and I mean, to me, this is actually not too bad.

Okay. Because, you know, I'm seeing you're making $300 here, but you're losing $200 there, you know,

$500 here, $550.

Yeah. So, this is, let me see what else is there. You want to pull up maybe one of your recent trades and we could kind of go through, you know, maybe a trade that you did really well on and a trade that you did really bad on and we could have.

So, I have these specific trades. Um, this is an October. This is October as well. These are November and this is also November. I can show you this one if you like. US30 through it.

Okay, perfect. 11:06, 11:06 US30.

So, um, a little bit of a problem with this specific setup. It was hard for me to accept the loss, right? By this specific scenario, I will show you. I believe it's this. I had a possible break-even trade, right? But I couldn't accept that loss, right? Throughout the week, I sold US30 here, bought US failed to buy US30 here, bought US30 once again here and scaled in here. When I lost the scale-in, as you can see, I lost the scale-in. I had a hard time accepting that loss and jumped in maybe two minutes before >> and two minutes after >> this. Of course, this was a quick loss, 20 minutes pretty quickly, and I, as you can see, I could just could not accept that this was a possible loser, especially because there was a long wick to the upside during that time.

So you started revenge trading, essentially.

Yes, this definitely was a revenge trade. Um, it might have started from the beginning of the week where let me show you a better >> It's funny because if you go back to the TradeZella, you know, on your first initial losses, you lost $47 plus two calls, $50, $53, you know, add $67, you know, you're at $110 something loss, right? Had you just taken that $110 loss, you would have been fine. You lost $140 additional on top by revenge strength.

Yeah. [laughter]

Right. So, so what I would do is I would put that in my head and be like, "Listen, dude. I lost $140 bucks additionally. I lost more than my initial loss by revenge trading." So, what that tells me is like, if you could just do the numbers in your head and say, "Had I just not revenge traded, I would have made an extra $140 bucks, $150 bucks. If you multiply that by five times, dude, you're making an extra, you know, $600 bucks a month. I mean, $600 bucks a week by not revenge trading." So that's how for me is how I stop this this habit of revenge trading is I bring it down to math and I'm like, "Dude, how much more money could I make by not making these decisions?" But let's continue.

So um, you're 100% right. I do believe that in me revenge trading, I only reduce my equity curve and making decisions like this constantly is my problem. Right. So with this specific trade, I I'll rather review the beginning of the week just to show you a little bit better. This beginning of the week, I took US30 as you can see >> here and I sold, but I only made $110 bucks. So that was a very small win.

Here again, I take a revenge trade cuz I planned for US30, but I took NAS100.

That made no sense for me, but I still did it. As you can see here, it's a bunch of NAS100 buys, but the goal was US30.

Yeah. I mean, so unfortunately, you deserve to lose there, right? [laughter]

100%. Here I come the next, I believe it's Wednesday. Here I come on Wednesday prepared to take US30 as I still see signs of it still holding through while NAS created lows. US30 still stuck during these r during this range. I buy again and I make some type of profit, >> right?

I didn't close it. I did not close it. I held through the the day and well, I scaled in on this specific trade aiming for these highs here.

As you can see, this ended up being a bigger loss than needed to. And had I just taken this original trade here, accepted this original trade here, and maybe just lost properly here, I would have been somewhat profitable. That's so I believe.

Yeah. I mean, dude, you know exactly what you have to do.

You know exactly what you have to do. It's just a matter of now doing it.

Yeah.

A lot of people, they don't know what they do wrong. Your issue is not that. It's the opposite. You know exactly what you're doing wrong, and now it's time to fix it. So, um, from your opinion, you think I'm all right in my

I think as long as you cut the, uh, revenge trading,

as long as you cut the random trading, saying you're going to trade X, but then you start trading Y, there's a probability that you could make money, right? Again, you've shown that you could make money. The only difference is in this example, it's not an example of uh your risking too much and losing too big. It's an example of your revenge trading is taking away from the P&L that you would have. Okay?

Had you not revenge traded and dug yourself into double the hole for no reason, it's a lot easier to get out of a $100 hole than it is a $300 hole. You know what I'm saying?

I never really thought to to notice that.

Yeah. So it's just it's again, these are all the same things that a lot of traders struggle with is if you know that you have a tendency to revenge trade, if you know that you have a tendency to make a plan for X and trade Y, as long as you know what those problems are first, it's very easy to fix it. So this is not an example where you're losing, you know, 10 times more than you're winning. You're just placing stupid trades that are leading to your equity going down for no reason.

Yeah.

Right. There's no reason for you to take those trades. There's no reason for those that P&L to disappear.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like maybe it's a level of self-confidence then. Maybe because at times I feel like well, I took Naz100 in this example because they move in tandem or so I convinced myself that they're going to move in the same direction, right? And of course, as you can see, they didn't, right? Then the revenge trading is the convincing myself that these things are still working even though they're not.

The revenge think about this. Uh, if we go back to the, which day was it?

It was F. Yeah, Thursday. I mean,

you know, it was I think the other example was I think a few minutes later is when you enter the stock again to revenge trade, right? So to me, like if you just took that example of taking the loss of walking away for like five minutes, you would have at least controlled that first impulse, right? And as long as you're able to control that first impulse, like that's super powerful.

Yeah, I think that's what I really need to do. It's that impulse to want to make a decision or have this idea clear as day and then instead of actually executing upon it, making a plan behind it.

Right.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. So that'd be my advice is anytime you have a loss instead of >> primarily going to the first trigger of emotion, which is revenge trading, to get up, walk away for five, 10 minutes, collect your thoughts, understand what you did wrong and say, you know what, I'm going to get back in the seat, but I'm not going to place a trade unless it's in my direction, in my favor, doing exactly what it is. I have to pre-plan the next trade. I have to have my entry, exit, stop, and target. If I don't have my entry, exit, stop, and target on the next trade, it's not a real trade. It's a revenge trade.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And honest, Alex, this has been very, very helpful, especially with this overall interview because I see the difference. You're very clear on your data. You know exactly what you need to do, exactly where you need to buy, sell, and etc. While me, I at times make random decisions and make impulsive decisions that don't have a plan behind it.

Yeah. The thing is like again, this is if we treat trading like a business and you want to do it the right way, you have to understand that there's certain, let's say, I'll give you an example. Let's say you have a business and you have an angry customer that comes in the door and says, "Your business sucks. You're an idiot. F you. F this. F that." Your first initial instinct is going to be, "Fuck you. You suck. I'mma slap you." But in business, you have to say, "The customer is always right. Yes, you know it. You're right. I do suck. You know what? Thank you. If you I'll give you $10 off your next order. Just leave me a five-star review." Right? So, it's the same thing in trading is you have to understand that there's certain times that your emotion doesn't matter. The business comes first, which is your trading business. And you see that's where I would I'm I'm a need to adapt because I can tell from what you just said. I would have told them, "Hey, [ __ ] you."

Yeah.

You know, I'm I'm rather leave than get disrespected. But in this market, it's not a level of respect or disrespect. It's

It's you want to make money or not.

I want to make money or not. And how about you, but I'd rather make money.

Me, too. So, I appreciate this, Alex. I really do, man.

Of course, dude.

So, let's run through it, bro. What do you uh you want me to pull up like a calendar, chart, or anything? You you

You call it, man. I'll tell you when my uh when I went the other way right here, though. [laughter]

Let's go through some Yeah. recent trading. Let's go through everything and we'll run it.

Let's do >> whatever you want, dude.

Um, January wasn't bad.

Let's go to bad.

Let's go to bad. Okay. Let's go May. This is when I started back with Cobra. That was the offering that day and then I proceeded to pretty much bleed that out as revenge trading. You see it >> over the next few days.

What about the next day? Next day was worse.

Yes, you noticed that, huh? You are sharp. Uh, shorted lows. Um, could have exited the whole thing and moved on with my day.

I think I actually remember this stock, dude.

I know you do.

I think I actually remember the stock. I think I had a trouble with this one, too, actually. So I think what you did so what I think you did right here is I think your stop here was beautiful, right? And then obviously it might have been in a little bit too big and you know, you kind of screwed yourself up by >> 100% >> here, but I think that this first initial stop was great. I mean, it's just if you took the whole position off there, it would have been butter, but >> If you see the other trade that was the stop, there's two that was like $80 loss and then the other $7,000 loss.

Right.

That was what that was me.

That was Hey. Yeah.

What about some >> June was a little bit lesser. Um, not as bad, but still a lot of room for opportunity.

See what went wrong here.

Scroll down. I see. Yeah, that's new. Yeah. Overtraded. um refused to just close it out when I knew that was it. Um, and something I talked to you about before when again having the ability I sort of recognize that I'm someone that needs parameters >> sort of like a child.

Um, I think there's a lot of us uh when you have the ability to think you can fix things, you can just get out or I'll get back in. I you know, what is it what is it called the average or or what is it term is when you fix the loss or whatever the term we use >> um that just doesn't work for me that only gives me more trouble because we like a lot of people that are trading where we all have that addictive personality, right?

Um, you know, we're going to double down >> right? And and I definitely go on tilt >> and it's almost you go on tilt so not so often, but what happens is when you go on tilt, it's so familiar. It's such a familiar. You almost want to go on tilt. It's almost disappointing when the trade goes your way, sort of because it's not familiar and sometimes it feels like um when the trade doesn't go your way, it's almost like, oh, I was expecting to lose anyway. And you you talk yourself into these losses that are that should have just walked away. Should have been $80 loss that day and I should have gone on and and worried about you know, the rest of my day, but that doesn't happen like that.

And and that's why I am uh kind of making a move and without without choice is to go back under under PDT because I need to be able to say what happens to me when I have the ability to to to trade more is I just trade more. I just say, you know what, I'm not I'm not going to wait until it gets to $5. I'm going to put my whole size at $450. I'm going to just take a quick scalp. But you don't take a quick scalp. You loaded more and it's at $5. Now you have the debate. You're down $1,500, $1,300. and and you're like, "Oh, if I can fix it here and I just add more here," and you end up in this predicament where you're you're now looking at it for the rest of the day. But, um, I I think it's a lot of issues that we all experience as traders. And for me, I think my experience has sort of been a double-edged sword at this point. Um, because I seen a lot and it makes sit almost um it there's no describing it, just a just a losing trader and then when you lose a trader, you you justify the losses. You find a way to sort of spiral yourself into thinking that's not what's happening. You're having the same problems every other trader has.

Yeah. No, I get it, man. I get it. And I appreciate you being honest and I appreciate you putting yourself out there. But the thing is like these are all things that we have to go through to learn through our trading process. I mean, like for me, like if you come into the market, you have to come in confident. You have to come in, you know, assuming that you're going to come in and do the right thing. If you're coming in assuming that you know, you're not going to win or assuming that you're not going to be profitable, like that's not the right. It's not you need confidence, right? And the way that you get confidence is by sticking to the process that you know works. So, just based on, you know, just some rough stats that I'm seeing here, looks like you're making the most money on Tuesdays. Man, it sounds like you should be stopping trading every other day except Tuesday, right?

You know, like these are all like little things that you could start like paying attention to. Like, you know, in May, you have the largest loss in May. Maybe you should take off trading

Every single year. May it just hunts me, man.

And for me, it's April. For me, it's April. I know that April is my worst month for whatever reason. Every single time in April. So these stats are, you know, a combination.

Down here, just more data.

Let's scroll down.

Let's see. I have over 50% win rate.

Yep.

Just >> Yeah. But your average daily loss is larger than your average daily gate, right?

It absolutely.

So you have 71 winning days, 72 losing days. But even if you have 50/50, you're still losing $100 more per every losing day that you had. So in my opinion, I mean, my thought process is, you know, keep it simple, dude. Like it's just if you know, so do you know yourself what you're making the most money on or like what time frame or what exactly you are the most profitable trader in that window is

10 to 11:00. Um, not necessarily uh sec day two.

Yep.

But could be a day one with not a lot of of I guess a lot of promotion, a lot of attention, a lot of eyes. Right. So, you get one of those that we don't we don't know anything about in the pre-market. Never popped, never was on the radar in the pre-market, pops up in the in the open and other things have attention. I noticed that me taking that short sort of without anyone's attention, that works out well for me and I just execute that short.

That's it.

That short and then close it. But that's not what ends up happening a lot of times. Again, having an account that you sort of have like a playground.

Um, I take that short. I'm going to be the $5,000 day. And whether I make something there, I I I might continue. Yeah. So my my thought process is like imagine you have like a sports car. You have like a Ferrari. A Ferrari at any point you could drive 200 miles an hour. Just because you have the ability to drive 200 miles an hour doesn't mean you do it every single day. So that's the way that you have to think about in your trading is you have to think about even if you have the opportunity to trade every second of every day of every moment, doesn't mean that you have to place that trade. So if you find that your time frame is that window, stick to that window exclusively. Stick to that window exclusively for a month and see how the numbers go. If the numbers improve, that's what you got to do. Dude, think about me. My window is 9:30 to 10:30. I don't trade any other window. So, if your window is 11 to 12 or 10 to 12, whatever the window may be, you got to at least stick to it for a month straight of only that and see if the numbers change. If the numbers change, you're done. You're golden. You're set to go. It's just people try it for two days, they try for three days, they try it for a week, and they're like, "Ah, I don't know." But like, try it for a month. Try it for a month and see what happens. Those are your numbers. Those are your stats. Those are your everything. And make sure that you're controlling those losses too, right? But you should make it so that your average green day is larger than your average uh losing day as well, you know? So, that's the main thing. That's my advice is if you find that time frame, that window works the best for you, eliminate every other window because every other window does not matter.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right. So, um, we'll start with this was an area where I did really well >> and then um, I gave everything back.

Okay. And so that was >> let's go through it.

I don't know what prompt. Now you're gonna see one thing about me. I overtrade like crazy. So just guilty of that. I know. And I'm also not too familiar with the trades software. So um, not too sure.

That's a lot of trading. Oh, jeez. Holy [ __ ] [laughter]

Oh man.

I know. And that that's my standard.

That's fine. We'll get through it. We'll get through it. Okay. So let's go to dashboards.

Sure. Sorry.

Let's see.

I know they're young. That's right.

So it also goes down. It's like yes, overtrading for sure. But even if like looking at this, I mean, let's say the win day is, you know, $100, $200. The lose days are $900, $300, $200, $700. So already here, number one is we have to work on risk, right? If this if I'm chalking this up to an average win day, let's say $100 bucks, you have to set your max loss at least $200 bucks. That way, if all these little days are $200, $200, $200, $200, I mean, you're going to avoid this outside $900 loss and this outside $700 loss. So, that's number one is aside from the overtrading, which again, you've accepted that that's kind of the problem, which we could fix as well, is number one is risk. It always is always the same thing that I see with traders. They always are smaller on their winners because they just want to take the money because they could lose her for so long. And on the losing trades, they just want to keep adding and adding and adding and adding to like try to fix it and try to rebound it until it kills them.

So my advice is this average win, we're going to just chalk it up to a $100 bucks. You have to make sure that whatever broker you're using, you're setting your stop at $200 or your hard stop, your stop market order at that $200 to at least control this area of losses and this area of risk to start, right? That's number one.

Now, in terms of the overtrading, I mean,

it goes back to what we discussed earlier on is,

you know, as soon as you take a loss, I mean, I'm sure a lot of these are revenge trades as well. I'm sure a lot of them are, you know, trying to make back the money. My advice would be again after you take any type of losing trade, whatever it is, get up for five, 10 minutes, walk away, collect your thoughts, come back, and only place a trade. If you write it on a post-it note, entry, exit, stop, target. If you don't write that on a post-it note and it doesn't hit exactly what it hits, you don't place that trade. That way, it'll control the revenge trading as well. If you stop that revenge trading and you control the risk, I mean again, you can make $300, $300, $600, $200, $400. Like, you're making money. The problem is not making money. The problem is losing money. You're losing more money than you should, right? You're making $200 here, but you're losing $1,200 there. It's six times the loss.

Six times the loss.

So, imagine if you only capped it at twice the loss. How much more money you would make?

Indeed. Yeah. So that's all it comes down to is after you enter every single trade, your next thing should be I want to set my stop to where it be a $200 loss. Right? That way

That's it. I'm walking away. And if you do hit minus $200 for the day, you can't walk away. You can't. That's it. You're done. You're done because you can't come back and say, "All right, I've lost $200. Let me try another stock and try to make it back." Then you're going to be minus $400. You're going to overtrade, take 59 trades, and lose.

Right. This is this is the feedback that you need to hear, right? It's at the end of the day, this is what's going to help you >> hopefully make some extra money by doing this. But it all starts with risk. No more than two days' worth of work. After you take a losing trade, get up and walk away. Make a plan. If it does not hit that exact plan, you do not take the trade.

Try it for a month.

Okay?

Try it for a month. Not one day, not one week. Try for a month.

Okay? Sounds good. Perfect. Thank you. Appreciate it. So, I think that you guys kind of see me up here talking and maybe you don't really understand the journey that it took to get here. So, I kind of want to rewind a little bit, talk about what it took me to get here in the first place to kind of show you guys the journey of becoming a trader. So, coming up on 12 years of trading, so 11 and a half years ago, I was a barista at Starbucks making coffee. I was making around $150 a week after taxes. I had a girlfriend at the time would spend $50 to take her out to the movies, spend another $50 for gas cuz gas was expensive. And whatever remaining $50, $75, $100 bucks I had, I would put into the bank, which is obviously nothing. Uh, fast forward, she broke up with me to be with someone that had money. And that really hurt me. And I always said that I have to find a way to get rich to get back at her. Fastest ways to get rich in America are real estate and the stock market. Real estate has such a high barrier to entry. You need a lot of money to get started. Stock market, you open up an account with as little as $500. So, as you guys know, opened up an account and my first year I lost money. I was taught that buying the breakout was the way to make money in the markets. And every time I bought the breakout, it would just go straight down every single time. So, my first year, I couldn't make money. But my second year, I started breaking even by discovering what short selling is, which is making money when stocks go down. I was like, "Dude, this is perfect. Every time instead of hitting buy, if I hit short, I'm going to make money." And the first short trade I ever took was a stock called VGGL. It's since been delisted. I shorted 2,000 shares at $4 a share, made 50 cents, made $1,000, and it was the most money I ever made at that point, and I was hooked. By my third year trading, I started making $100 a day. So, my first year, I lost money. My second year, I broke even. My third year, I started making $100 a day. And by my fourth year, I felt like I truly became a consistently profitable trader. And now, fast forward, you know, 11 and a half years later, I made over $16 million trading. So the thing for me is understanding how long this journey is going to take. If you want to make more money than a doctor, a lawyer, or an engineer combined. Doctor goes to medical school for eight years. Lawyer goes to law school for six years. Engineer goes to engineering school for five years. So as you as a trader, you have to go to trader school at least for like a year or two years, or in my case, it took me multiple years to get there. So I think just starting off by just explaining how long the journey actually takes is very valuable because we all get into trading to make money. But the difference is that our goal is to make money, but we don't realize how long it takes. So if you could just have at least a realistic time frame of how long it's going to take. Now, I essentially after sacrificing all those years, I never really have to work a day in my life again. So if you are willing to sacrifice a short amount of years to cut your learning curve and to learn how to trade the right way, the next 10, 15, 20 years, you could live life on your own terms. So I think just starting by that will help you realize how long the journey is supposed to take. And even if it takes a little bit longer than you expect, it doesn't matter because the rest of your life is going to be on your own terms. So what are you willing to sacrifice? Right? That brings me to the next thing, which is indeed sacrifice. So when I was starting trading, I was sacrificing girls. I was sacrificing going out. I was sacrificing partying. I was sacrificing friendship. I was sacrificing a lot of things cuz my priorities were different. My priorities were to be successful in this world. And now all those avenues are still open to me right now. You know, I could travel where I want. I have friends. I have a wife. I'm very happy. So to me, that sacrifice was worth it. So you have to ask yourself, what are you willing to sacrifice? Are you willing to sacrifice your weekends? Are you willing to sacrifice maybe not going out to eat so often to have extra money? Are you willing to sacrifice maybe instead of traveling once a year to travel once every two years? So the question becomes is what are you willing to sacrifice in the short term to get to your goals long term? And I feel like a lot of people, they talk about, I want to make money, I want to be successful, I want to do this, but they're not willing to sacrifice anything, right? For example, everyone knows that the best way to lose weight is diet and exercise, but everyone's using weight loss pills and Ompic because it's easier, right? But long term, that's not really going to help you. Everyone knows what you have to sacrifice to get to your goals of health. But if you're saying, you know what, I'm going to eat healthy once a week, but I'm going to drink soda and eat cake. I mean, you're not going to see the results. So, there has to be sacrifice. So, I think that's very, very important. Now, what we all talked about here, a lot of the same themes were mostly on risk management. So, what I've realized is anyone can make money in the markets, but the people that are truly successful know how to control their risk. They know how to make sure that their losses are not taking them out of the game. I feel like the biggest thing that triggered for me that changed my trading is when I finally accepted that I'm not right and the market is right. When I finally dropped my ego and say, you know what, I'm okay being wrong. I'm okay eating my loss. Even to this day, if I lose $1,000, if I lose $10,000, if I lose $15,000, it doesn't matter how many millions I made, it still hurts, right? It still hurts because we're human. But what I realize is that loss is what is necessary to get me to my goals and get me to my next level. There always has to be a price to pay to level up. Even when you have a business, you have to pay for inventory first, right? Your loss is inventory. If you can't sell it, it's a loss. So, I think about losses in different ways. I think of them as lessons for what gets me to the next level. You know, my biggest loss that we spoke about here earlier is $450,000 in a day. It was horrible. I still think about it all the time. It still traumatized me. But I did everything wrong. I consistently added to a loser. I got stubborn. I refused to accept my risk. I gambled on the setup. I went in the largest size ever on a losing trade and I deserve to lose. And since then, that was an expensive lesson to teach me that if I continue to add to my losers, I will not be successful in trading. So often times it takes these losses for us to realize that I need to make sure to control it or I'm not going to have a career. So you have to ask yourself, do you care more about making money long term or being right? I I'm the biggest idiot in the world, but it doesn't matter because I'm still making money. Right? So that's what you have to start to realize is as long as you're keeping your losses controlled, as long as you're making sure that the risk is controlled, whether it be losing no more than two days' worth of work or whatever type of risk parameter that you have, I'm a deer in headlights. I can't stop out manually. I need to use a stop market order to stop out. I need to have my broker have an auto max loss auto liquidation. I am setting up the guardrails ahead of time so that god forbid if I'm ever on tilt or if I ever have any problems, the stop order is taking me out or the broker is checking me is making sure that I'm being controlled. So whether you have to change the color of your candles, whether my buddy has to have his secretary pull the plug, whether you have a notification on your phone or whatever it is to have you walk away, whatever you have to do for yourself to control your risk is how you will level up. You don't make money trading by making money. You make money trading by controlling the losses. [applause] Well, there you have it, guys. My job was easy as you saw, not even in the shoe, but I appreciate every single person involved from Alex to all of the traders in attendance being so open, honest, and transparent with where they're at in their journey. It's incredible to have a verified 8-figure trader be able to give you feedback. Now, if you want to be one of those traders in the future, a form in the description below, go click that. But now, fill it out in detail because that's exactly how every trader got chosen. And it could be you next. Now, in the comments, let us know your biggest takeaway from this very special episode or even who you want to see in the hot seat next or even where you want to see us host these next. And other episodes are on screen. The links for everyone are in the description below. Until next time, take