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Having the ability to take care of my family, having the ability to help my communities, the markets also have pushed me to become a better person myself.
Every day is unique and provides unique challenges and unique opportunities.
I also continue to be challenged and develop on a psychological basis, which allows me to be basically the best that I can be.
Every day you need to be on your toes because every day is a brand new day with new challenges that we will face.
Also the emotional aspect of the game.
You have to work so much on yourself in the long run.
I'm pretty sure I'll be a better person.
What I've found along the way and what keeps me in it really is the challenge.
It's the hardest thing I've ever tried to do and I'm completely addicted to the challenge.
What other profession can you look at where you specialize in and only have to work one to three hours each day?
And creates that ability for more time and room for hobbies, time spent with friends and family and other business ventures.
So that's my answer.
Just the ultimate and absolute freedom in your life.
I'm doing it to be financially free and break out of this Babylonian debt slavery system that we're in, which is worthless fiat currency and make a positive contribution to society in some meaningful way.
I love it, I dream about it, perhaps it's an addiction.
I love to be proven right, I need to be proven right, I hate being wrong.
It's my retirement and my second career.
What keeps me in the trading game is my passion that keeps growing and the fact that I'm getting better at it every day.
There has to be the money.
It's the reason why all of us are doing this.
And further I have to say the freedom to do what you want whilst making money and the learning, the constant improvement.
You just have to keep improving, you have to keep learning and being better than the person you were the previous day.
The allure of one day being financially free.
It's all about money.
Other motives keep trading our freedom and a certain lifestyle.
I also think that trading helps me improve myself and be humbling.
I think it makes me a more disciplined person, but the main motive is money.
It's the challenge of the person you have to become to gain the success you want.
You have to be humble enough to change your perception of things.
Nobody is born perfect, but we do have the ability to change.
That's why I like to trade, to reflect myself in the market.
What keeps me in the game of trading is the fact that with financial markets, every day is a brand new day.
Filled with tons of opportunities where you and only you are responsible for making the best out of those opportunities.
What keeps me in the trading game is easy and simple to explain, it's money.
Passion, intellectual stimulation and challenge, every single day I learn and improve.
No matter how good I think I can get, every single day I can learn something new.
And lastly, freedom, I can trade whenever I want, from any geographical location I want.
What keeps you in the game of trading?
No cat or no fire you can go.
The sky is the limit.
No office politics messing up your game.
I've been there and I'm telling you, that makes a lot of difference in your life, in the quality of life you have.
The freedom that you have, for sure, the market is going to lend you a few punches on your face.
Nice question. It's so valid today, because trading really goes against all of my human nature.
All of the way I handle life.
But yet I still consider it to be worthwhile with time and effort.
I have not had a consistent profitability for five years now.
The worst is I do it for fun, but I can openly admit that to myself.
The best reason is I do it for really independence.
To free myself from being dependent on anyone.
And that's really all there is to it.
The hope for a better future, I think that is why most people are doing this.
If it's for fun, or as a hobby, it's not going to work out, fortunately.
It is something that I've learned to take very seriously.
I have had to learn the hard way, that this is a long journey, and it can be very frustrating at times.
Some days I do want to give up, but changing the mentality from short -term benefit to what you actually want your life to be.
I think it's huge, and how you can use what you're doing to help other people.
It's this great competition against yourself.
It's challenging to look at yourself for the reward for it.
It's as pure as it gets.
If you master yourself, and that can mean a multitude of things to different people.
Because there are all these edges in the market that make sense, depending on who you are.
You don't get that in other places, you know?
What keeps me in the game of trading is this daily fight with me, not with the markets, with my mindset, with my conscience, with my cycle trading that I have to always be aware, and knowing my role in this business.
And my role in this business is just to follow the money.
Currently, I'm slightly at a breakeven point, not profitable, not losing that much, improved a lot.
As I am getting improved, I feel that trading is getting boring, and I feel that once it felt very, very boring to do trading, then it could be profitable.
That's all I want to share.
When I was younger, I was never really sure what I wanted to do with my life, both in school and professionally.
My dad always said that one day the light bulb would just go on.
Now I'm 36 years old.
I discovered trading in late 2019.
And since then, I've just never looked back.
I spend every waking hour looking at charts.
It's just my passion, my calling, and eventually the light bulb did go on, and things will never be the same.
For me, it's the constant challenge of becoming a better version of myself today than I was yesterday.
And I've not been a stranger to failures in my life, so I had the discipline to look back, review, and then to improve on my system by tightening my risk, getting my whole risk management system, and then having a positive feedback from it is what kept me in the game.
And of course, the money.
Yes, completely, totally, 100 percent of the money.
I don't want to be dependent on what few people on the other side of the planet decide that we just got it.
Independency to me is the biggest motivator.
You have 100 percent control over your own faith, over your own life.
With trading, you can have unlimited potential, unlimited profits.
There is no sky, the limit literally.
Now, that's beautiful.
That's amazing. The grind is the grind that keeps me in the game.
The love of the grind because the grind is exactly the characteristic you need to survive the markets for years and years.
Please understand it.
It is the grind that makes us traders.
A losing trade. I already know this could be the best trade, and a winning trade can be the worst trade.
The exact same as gambling.
The best bet I ever placed actually lost in the whole history of my last 12 years.
It all came down to expected value of that particular bet.
And the same thing applies to trading.
The ability to actually get on and get set is much better than that of the gambling industry where the bookmakers restrict you in Australia.
So it's actually hard to even place the bets here, extremely hard.
But with trading and all the different markets and various markets, the more I turn over, the better.
That's the reason I'm sticking to it.
And I absolutely love this podcast you guys do.
And I appreciate it.
Thanks. You're listening to the one and only Chat with Traders podcast.
And this is episode 270.
I'm Tessa Dow, and Ian Cox is with me here today.
We're the hosts of the Chat with Traders podcast.
Every once in a while, we like to do something a little different and take a break from our regular programming.
And this is that episode.
So what keeps you in the game of trading?
What you just heard earlier was a compilation of our listeners' voices from across the globe.
Thank you listeners and traders for sharing your voices.
This is as real as it gets.
In fact, many of the voices you just heard are also our members of the Chat with Traders community that I have had the privilege to meet and get to know.
We wanted to share these voices with you because we know that you can hear yourselves also in these voices and what they have to say.
So, Ian, I'm so glad you're here with me.
In the present and last couple of years, it has been one of the toughest markets to trade in.
Don't you think, Ian?
Yeah, definitely. 2022 was pretty choppy.
2023, you know, it's not we haven't experienced a typical bear market, as you'd say, of steady, continuous declines in a trend.
And so it's definitely been choppier than usual.
And I guess it depends on what side of the market you're on.
And for some, it doesn't matter, especially for some, you know, if you're trading options, you can benefit in any market direction.
But in general, from your perspective, what do you think makes it so hard about this market?
Well, we've been accustomed to nice trending markets, right, from the bottom of 2021 2020, the covid low up to, you know, the end of 2021, thereabouts.
Very strong trending markets, lots of liquidity coming in, lots of action in in a variety of stocks, especially the meme stocks, penny stocks and what have you.
In the past, often we've had nice trending markets, whether they're up or they're whether they're down.
And this is one of the different markets that despite the rising interest rates, we'd have a sharp rally.
So that that part is different.
And I don't know. Maybe part of that is due to the all the money that's been created over the last few years.
I don't know if that's distorting the markets, but it doesn't seem as clean and consistent as some of the bull and bear markets of the past.
Has it been personally challenging for you in your own trading and investing as well?
Yeah, it has. I'm a trend trader.
And and in the past I got trained, you could say, by, you know, these strong trending markets where I take a position and then hold on to it for a while.
Ian, so you've interviewed at least a couple of dozens of guests now.
What are some of the things that you have learned and observed that set them apart from many traders out there?
Yeah. So, for example, recently I interviewed Dan McDermott.
And I was impressed by how he phrased this.
He says with every chart that he looks at, he asks the question, what is a bull thinking with this chart and what is a bear thinking with every chart?
So he tries to take the side of both bullish and bearish sides to see how they think.
And then he chooses the bull side or the bear side, depending on what's going on with the market direction.
And that way he doesn't get married to a particular ideology, whether it's bullish or bearish, which is so easy to do.
And also I liked what he had to say about the relationship between different time frames, you know, looking at whether it's a one minute chart, five minute, 30 minute hour daily, weekly, and see how they correlate with each other to get a comprehensive viewpoint, correlations between different asset
classes. Like he looks at the dollar and its impact on gold and influence on market trends using, you know, different time frames, that kind of thing.
Also, correlations are real important within the same sector, just looking for different pieces of the puzzle.
And lastly, with Dan, I enjoyed what he had to say about, be aware, be consciously aware of the conversations going on in your head, because psychology is such an important part of the process.
And this awareness of what his mind is going through, either being ecstatically bullish or being fearfully bearish, this awareness helps him avoid being ruled by his emotional extremes.
Yeah, so you were referring to Episode 267, just to bring that up in case any of our listeners want to go back and listen to that episode.
Any other episodes stood out for you that you felt had an impact on even your trading as well?
So one guest who I interviewed who I was really moved by his determination and passion was Patrick Peterson, a trader from Germany in Episode 260.
So I was really impressed by his determination to self -study about the stock market as a teenager.
And he was so excited that for his birthday, on his 18th birthday, he ran down and opened up a trading account, and he was so determined to make it work.
And this is in a country, mind you, where the culture and his family did not approve of trading for living.
Sure, they are into investing, long -term investing, but trading is almost incompatible with their culture because they're much more conservative than what we frequently find here in the US.
He was so determined.
Yeah, back then, I mean, this is 20 years ago, admittedly.
So back then, he was so determined to make it work that he ignored his family and cultural attitudes against traders.
He blew up many accounts, and he actually endured months of homelessness, sleeping in his car, because his family would say, hey, that's your tough luck, you know, it's your problem.
And so they didn't show any love and support for him.
And so, but he still had the fortitude to approach wealthy bankers and say, hey, look, here's what I'm doing with trading.
And he had the confidence to get back up and say, here's what I'm doing, being very transparent on how he trades.
He says, ask them, you know, can I manage your money for you?
And he was convincing enough to get them to agree, so he can manage their money.
And they're used to getting quarterly reports, like most of us are, right?
You know, what did you do for the last three months?
But he wanted to be different than all the rest.
And so he gave them daily reports.
And this transparency helped attract other investors.
And so then he was able to sell himself and prove that he could deliver to them.
And that was, yeah, that was quite quite moving.
I found I really enjoyed that interview.
So he's a very much of a feeler.
He feels his way into the market and considers himself an intuitive trader.
And don't forget that he, yeah, he he breathes.
He breathes in and out the markets.
Right. Yes. He's known for in this episode as well.
Amazing episode. Yeah.
Right. Yeah. He said, I must become the feeling of the market.
Something like that.
Yeah, exactly. So, you know, what other topics like trading themes that you can recall in some of the episodes that really stood out to you?
Yeah. Vincent Bruzzese in episode two fifty five.
His knowledge of statistics.
Actually, he was a statistics professor and a long term poker player.
How he used these statistics to in his quest to find, can I beat the market?
Is there a statistical edge that I can get to to give me that edge so that I can get the edge over, say, just buying the S &P 500.
He got into the market long after he had a well established career and it was his quest to investigate whether this was possible.
So he first he focused in on mindset.
Right. And he found that to be the most important aspect for him, because being a poker player, which he nearly did this professionally, that he found that, yeah, mindset is so critically important, knowing when to walk away from your losses, when to add, when to add and when to fold.
And so he looked for certain setups which put the odds in his favor and he was patient enough to wait for those setups.
So, for example, a setup might include stocks with strong relative strength in conjunction with market or sector direction.
Breaking out of these compression zones was key to help him wait until the right times, wait until he gets that good hands, so to speak, like what he was used to in the casinos and then add a sizable position and trade, wait for the trade to unfold.
Yeah, something I remember about this episode is that stood out to me is his approach to trading everything in context, contextual trading.
Do you remember that conversation?
Yes, yeah, yeah, exactly.
In other words, he would look at many different factors that would be going into, you know, why is a stock moving up or down?
And it's an accumulation.
It's a kind of a mishmash of all these different factors which will help him give context to, well, yeah, it looked bullish before, but now it's not quite so bullish because of these additional factors that are coming in.
So he's juggling different factors as are going on in the markets, both technical and some fundamental as well, to color his, you know, to give a different flavor of how he should go long or short these stocks.
Prior to this, he worked in the movie industry.
Yeah, that too. That stood out to me.
To go from Hollywood to trading is just completely different.
Yeah, exactly. So he had a well -established career and he was making plenty of money.
He didn't need to get into trading, but it was his curiosity as if he could beat the game, so to speak.
And he has a very giving back attitude and he created a site called Real Day Trading, which is free of charge.
You can see exactly what he trades.
He posts all his trades live when he goes long, goes short, and when he exits the trades.
So that is nice to see that he wants to give back to fellow traders and he's very upfront and says, look, this can take years of education and it's not an easy path.
But his wiki that he has is very packed, densely packed, full of great information, helpful advice on how to start the journey of trading full -time.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Any other topics or episodes that stood out to you?
Well, every episode stands out in its own way.
Some are more moving than others, obviously.
One interview that I did with a guy named Christian Carreon in episode 254, I was really moved by his story of growing up in a financially illiterate family.
They came here from Mexico when he was quite young.
His sister had issues with her kidney, I believe it was, and then he got kidney disease as well.
So from a very young age, he was hampered by his freedom to learn and do all the activities that normal kids do.
And it was out of the 2008 financial crisis where his mother's business went down the drain and there was problems with alcoholism.
And he said to himself, I have to learn ways to develop a passive income because here I'm stuck here at home, I've got this machine that's trying to clean my kidneys and I can't get a normal job.
So out of sheer necessity, he found out about the markets and he became obsessed with it out of necessity and passion as well.
And then he developed a trading system.
He convinced wealthy people so that he could manage their money.
And he's done quite well for himself in trading the S &P through this compression zone system that he's got.
And he actively shares his views on Twitter.
So I felt really connected to him.
I remember, I mean, right around the time, actually during this interview, he was waiting for a kidney transplant.
Remember that? Yeah, yeah, right.
He was like stage five kidney disease.
Yeah. And then right after, I think shortly after we recorded the interview, he had found a kidney transplant, which was so amazing.
You know, just the timing and everything.
We were so relieved to hear that.
Yeah. Yeah. And I last caught up with Christian not too long ago, maybe a month ago or so on Twitter and he's doing well.
He's doing well and, you know, trading and just taking it one day at a time.
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The three episodes that the three guests that we had in the show, they actually are well, Patrick is part of the Chat with Traders community.
He's one of the hosts.
But Vincent Bracisi came back into the community and gave a couple of presentations and updates on how things are going.
Since the episode 255 with him, I thought that was cool that we got to know him more and his strategy and thought process even more.
So I thought that was really cool that he came back to give us more information.
And then also Christian Karian also came back into the community and provided more insight into his strategy.
Yes, yes. Well, what was helpful about their presentations within the community being that it was video is that we got a chance to see exactly what they're talking about the exact setup.
What does a chart look like when they take a position long or short?
How do these compression zones look like?
That was definitely helpful.
Any other episodes that you just can't help but smile, make you smile.
Yeah, I found I really enjoyed talking with David Capablanca.
He has from the friendly bear and he calls his site that because he focuses exclusively on short selling.
And he got into the business of identifying essentially scams.
Scams really annoyed him because of, you know, the very nature trying to fleece money out of people.
And so he would sign up for these message alerts from these companies, or penny stocks, essentially companies.
And he would get an alert every time they come up with a news story designed to pump up their stocks so that the insiders could dump their stock on unsuspecting traders.
He would follow this so that he would time his was able to time the shorts to an area of maximum liquidity.
And given his study of the charts in the past and the companies in the past, that he was able to time this quite well and make a living exclusively shorting penny stocks.
One story that he shared with us is he was hauling the cannabis sector quite closely back during their run up.
And he actually went down to Colombia to visit a site that supposedly this company was growing its marijuana.
And this company's publicly traded on the US exchanges, but they have this place down way out in the outskirts in the country in Colombia.
And he'd go there and the security guard wasn't expecting them there.
And it was, you know, he got nervous and called the CEO.
And so David had a chance to briefly talk to the CEO on the phone, who was obviously trying to hide something from him.
And it was a total scam.
The site, there was nothing there.
It was just a front.
And so David would end up shorting this stock, just as they're trying to do a secondary offering.
So they pump up the stock, and David would short it and with great success.
So I found that the adventure, the traveling trader, yeah, enjoyed the stories.
I really enjoyed that episode as well.
I mean, I can't help but feel like I was watching a movie, an action movie or something.
Doesn't it feel that way?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah. I also found it interesting how he focused in on sympathy plays to the meme stocks.
So stocks which had this huge run up like a GameStop or an AMC.
But he felt were more were less risky than the meme stocks, and that he would jump on the sympathy plays because investors were looking for the next greatest thing right after GameStop and AMC.
So he would short the sympathy plays.
So I found that episode 257 quite entertaining.
Yeah, me too. That was a very fun episode to listen to.
What about Jack Kellogg?
Oh, yeah, Jack Kellogg, the episode 249, the penny stock specialist is how I call him.
He concentrated in this area because of the what he says are cleaner chart patterns that are easier to read because the institutions aren't really involved in penny stocks.
And so he felt it was less interference, less noise that you normally get in a stock that's traded by algos and institutions.
So he concentrated in this area and would follow the liquidity flows into and out of the stocks and ride the wave up and the wave down.
And he became incredibly successful turning what 10, $20 ,000, I think is what he started off with and turned it into over 6 million.
And I believe it was six years.
His performance is impressive.
Very impressive. And I felt moved by his gift to his parents on Jack's birthday and going to the bank and pulling out $100 ,000 in cash and giving his mom.
I think it was 50 and his father 50, something like that.
And it was kind of heartfelt to see this sense of gratitude to his parents who were not rich at all.
They were just regular working class people as a way to say thank you.
Thank you for being such great parents to me and being so supportive.
Yeah, I remember that episode very well.
And Jack's candid way of speaking with you, with us, basically.
He just felt like the guy next door.
Actually, that reminds me.
I did an interview with Lucas Frolic, episode 259.
I was moved by his ability to capitalize on that very rare circumstance of right coming out of COVID, where all this liquidity gets injected into the markets.
And many companies feeling like this is their last time to do a secondary offering because they were thinking that the market is going to continue to go down, and this is their last hurrah to raise money.
And so Lucas would focus in on these companies with very weak balance sheets, poor history.
These are penny stocks, mind you, mostly penny stocks.
He would study their patterns to see what they did in the past, how much money was being raised, what the secondary offering price was.
And he would time his shorts with amazing precision and would add to the shorts as it was going down.
So he would lever up his position, adding more and more and more as the stocks collapsed due to offering so many additional shares.
And he made absolutely mind boggling returns in the many, many thousands of percent, sought an audited report done by this accounting firm.
You can listen to that in episode 259.
Who can forget that one, right?
Oh, God, yeah. Yeah, amazing.
Any other episodes that do you want to mention?
God, there are so many of them.
One other one that comes to mind is the idea when we talk about being a contrarian investor.
We've heard that term, but is it simply enough to say, well, I'm a contrarian investor, people are bullish, I'm going to be bearish.
But going that route, that simple route, you can lose a lot of money.
Well, one trader who is actually in one of the Market Wizards books, his name is Jason Shapiro in episode 245.
He takes the approach.
So he takes a very contrarian approach where he looks at the commitment of traders report that comes out every week and he sees the level of institutional longs and shorts, as well as, you know, small traders, longs and shorts.
And he times his position such that he waits for extreme sentiment readings, extremely bullish or extremely bearish in, say, the indices, like, say, S &P 500, or it could be oil or gold or whatever.
And he takes if everybody is super bullish, and there's a news failure day, meaning that an important news comes out that is bullish, for example, and the market ends up, say, going down on that day or fails to go up.
He looks at that and says, OK, this is a very important news failure, meaning it should have gone up on this bullish news.
But yet it actually went down.
And so then he ends up going short that which everyone else is long because when you've run out of buyers, well, then in his view, you have nowhere else to go but down.
And that's he's made a very good living doing that for decades now.
So that was an interesting approach to be contrarian.
Yeah, I remember that was actually your first very first episode in.
Yeah, yeah, that was my first, my first interview.
Yeah. Well, thanks for sharing some of your thoughts on these trading themes and, you know, episodes that really stood out to you in the last 14 months or so.
There's obviously there's so many great episodes and there's something for everybody.
And some of the ones that, you know, that you didn't mention, but I thought, you know, stood out to me also were the ones that are related to risk management and trading psychology.
The risk management one, I remember in episode with Alexander Moreno.
Remember that one? Oh, yeah.
Where he had losses and he was homeless at some point and and he came clean.
And and what helped me in that episode was how he shared the different kinds of losses.
I don't know if you call at the top of your head, but there were different categories of losses that you should be able to, you know, distinguish like an acceptable losses, a loss versus a like a dumb loss or something like that.
Was the acceptable losses that that was connected to if you follow your system and you end up taking a loss.
Well, then that's normal loss that's acceptable because you were you followed your own rules.
Yeah, I believe that's right.
But it really just kind of helped you to see losses in a different way and how to handle losses in a more intentional way, I thought.
And it's a huge part of risk management.
Alexander focuses on risk, risk control, risk management.
Another. Yeah. And another episode was a recent one I did with Mark.
But now treating trading as a business, I thought that episode was really impactful.
And I think it's impactful to a lot of traders as well because a lot of a lot of times we don't think of it that way, trading as a business.
So there's just so many great golden nuggets in there, very in -depth.
And I think if people want to really take trading seriously, should consider listening to that episode again.
And that was episode 266.
266. Great. You know, one more category that's important to me is trading psychology.
So Ivan Bayaji is another good one.
Episode 252, where he's the trading composure guy.
And everyone, a lot of people know him on Twitter.
I thought that episode was quite like a different take on trading psychology and how to handle uncertainty in the markets.
Also, there were some great all -time past favorites.
These are the older episodes with Brett Steenberger and Lance Brettstein.
Again, there's so many great episodes and there's something for everybody.
Yeah, exactly. For me, it feels almost like a big trading family.
And each family member has something very important to share.
And we can learn nuggets from everyone in our journey.
So it's great that we get a chance to dive into their world and learn something from them.
You know, Ian, so from my observations on what most, I mean, most all of our guests have in common, I see a common thread.
And some of the things I've noted were that they've honed their own strategy.
They've ended up going with a strategy that worked for them and not really copy anyone.
At least I don't think from what I heard, like they had really unique strategies.
Yeah, their strategies often was derived and created through the troublesome times that they had.
Some of it fits their personality.
So oftentimes strategies to choose from are the ones that fit you personally.
Some people can feel the market, like Patrick.
Others say, no, I got to have my process, my statistics behind me.
And they take a different approach.
But yet trading is a very personal journey and you need to find that system, that methodology, you could say that fits you personally.
While also everybody's got to be aware of and develop their own risk management system.
The why is so important in trading.
All these guests had a very strong why.
Why do they want to be in the market?
What's the driving force to keep them in the game to keep them pursuing that they're pursuing their goals of pursuing finding out what did they do wrong?
And how are they going to fix it?
How am I going to fix my bad trading issues?
What do I need to manage?
And so this this fiery determination is a key factor, I believe, in keeping you in the game when the, you know, when things are going against you.
Yeah. I'm so glad you brought up the the why.
Right. I mean, I noticed I observed that the traders, the successful traders, they were either very good at, you know, figuring out their process or their one thing or they're, you know, very passionate about trading or maybe it's a combination of these things.
But you're right. I think it's important to have passion too.
And the why knowing why you're doing things because it's the why that helps you to get back up, to pick yourself back up when things are really getting tough.
Right. Now, whether it's necessary to have passion in trading to do well is a different story and maybe, you know, a different episode.
But I really think the passion helps too.
But the why is so important, like you mentioned.
Yeah, exactly. And I want to actually thank our listeners for suggesting certain candidates to be interviewed, which we would have never known about them had we not had such a close community to suggest, hey, have you heard about this trader?
Have you heard about that trader for us to interview?
And we've got some great guests on there that I didn't know about and Tessa didn't know about.
But thanks to our listeners who wanted to to support the community.
They suggested certain traders and we thank you very much for that.
Absolutely. So yeah, I'd like to add on to that.
If you know of any talented traders or traders that you feel like we need to get on the show for us to look into, feel free to get on our website, chatwithtraders .com and then click on the speak to chat with traders.
You can record your voice or send an email to hello at chat with traders .com and provide us your recommendation and any other information that you might have.
Of course, we have our own review process and that's a normal part of what we do.
But we would love to to hear from you if you have any great suggestions.
Oh, and continuing on to the common thread.
Another thing I noticed too is that with all these traders is that they all went through a lot of pain and a lot of losses.
I think people just don't realize that, you know, success didn't just happen.
Exactly. Recently, right?
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah. Well, they their determination allowed them to plow through their multiple blowups of their accounts and say, I will not stop.
I will not stop until I become successful at this and they had to constantly innovate, relearn, get these lessons drilled into them and they self studied as well.
I mean, they're they're seeking out advice from other traders, reading lots and lots of books.
This determination is the drive that keeps them going.
So what I noticed is that they didn't give up when when when things were getting tough and they found a way to pick themselves back up and bounce back.
So that's what keeps them going after having gone through the tough times.
They didn't give up.
They believed in themselves.
From my observation, I'm guessing that I would say that this is probably why these traders are in the top one percent to five percent of traders that make it.
One important factor that's been mentioned in the previous podcast is that when one takes losses, it's to shrink the size of their trades, get it down.
But to keep mentally in the game, you got to keep in the game.
You got to have some skin in the game.
So you keep some interest.
So there's debate on whether paper trading is really that effective because emotionally you're not in the game.
But after having big losses to keep trading, but make the trading size super small so that you can build yourself back up mentally because it's a mental game.
And it can be devastating to have large losses and you feel like, oh, I just want to quit.
And it's a natural thing to want to do.
You say, oh, maybe I'm not cut out for this.
Fail often is a common word that's used.
The more you fail, the closer you are to success.
Yeah, I mean, people where they have the most growth is that they learn from their mistakes and their failure more than they do.
Yes, you can still learn from your successes, but the most impact, I believe, happens when you're able to learn from your mistakes and your failures and your losses.
And then intentionally apply what you learned and practice and get better at it.
Yeah, exactly. Another thing that I noticed, a common thread, is that they're all hardworking.
They're all willing to put in the work.
They put in so much of their blood, sweat and tears in this.
I mean, you can't just manifest, you can't just think positively.
You actually have to put the work behind that.
Yeah, certainly. And for some traders, their attitude is, I cannot get a regular job.
So not only are they motivated on the positive side by having rewards from trading hopefully in the near future, but they're also motivated to avoid a regular job that most people work because they find it so distasteful that the combination of avoiding the distasteful aspects of a regular job and the rewarding
aspects of a profitable trading account make it kind of an unbeatable combination to say, like burning the boats, I will not go back to my regular job or jobs which I hated in the past.
I will make trading work.
There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
Yeah, I can see your perspective on that, Ian.
However, I think there's no shame in keeping your full -time job or your part -time job or whatever or a business that you're running until you feel you're ready, until you can prove that you can make money trading part -time.
Because how I see it is that if you cannot prove to yourself you can make even just a little bit of money consistently doing it part -time, how can you make money trading full -time?
Well, that is a good point, right?
And some traders we've had on have said that them being supported by their family or having a full -time job allowed them the discretion to take on more risk and knowing that they had something secure to come back to.
Whereas if they had no job and they were relying only on trading income from the get -go, that it would make them too scared or too nervous.
They would get spooked by their own psychology, so to speak, and then that could lead to taking reckless trades because they got to make the rent that month, right?
So it's a very individual journey from my point of view.
I certainly agree for myself to have a regular job on the side and then have trading income to supplement that so that you're not dependent.
You're not trading because you have this deadline of money that you have to raise for just to live, but that you are trading for future profits and that you can have the discretion of not taking positions if you don't need to or don't want to.
Yeah, good point there.
I guess it also depends on your tolerance level for pressure.
Exactly. I want to get your thoughts on this, Ian, how we mentioned risk management and all that is important, but what do you think of people or traders who are trying to get better?
What if they have too much risk management and they're not taking enough risks?
That's another – that could be a challenge as well.
Yeah, okay. So not being able or willing to take sufficient position size, again, could be a sign that they don't have total confidence in their system or they haven't really fleshed out their system yet.
And so hence, position sizing is not only important to avoid losses, but it's to take advantage of the good opportunities when presented.
And so having a system where you get lots of chart time in, you know what you want to see in the charts, but having the patience to wait until you see those great setups and all that training that you went through all those months prior.
And then when you see the setup that rings that bell that then you say, ah, it's here.
Now I have the confidence to go in with bigger position sizing than I had in the past because I didn't see that great setup.
This is really important to get that screen time in so that you train yourself over time to see those opportunities, which may be rare depending on what you're looking at, depending on the system that you've created, right?
Yep. That's part of putting in the work.
And you mentioned the word patience, and patience is so important too.
I feel like that sets the successful traders apart.
And I'm not just referring to patience in the actual trading while you're trading, but in general, patience in a trader's trading journey.
Because it's hard to have patience these days when everything is just all about instant gratification, you know, and getting results instantly.
Yeah. This also applies to regrets on missing out.
FOMO, you know, fear of missing out on all these different stocks that make these big moves.
And then you say yourself, oh, I should have seen that.
I should have seen that.
Well, you know, not necessarily because you're focusing on a particular setup that you're honing your skills on, and you're going to miss a lot of opportunities.
It's just that the vast majority of these pumps you may miss, but you're setting yourself up for the opportunities in a system that you're focusing on, you're creating, so that you're ready when these moves happen.
And you don't have to make that many profitable trades at the right time to, you know, to do quite well in the market.
You just have to be disciplined to follow the strategy that you developed, and don't worry too much about the ones that you've missed.
Great. And what do you think of mentorship?
I believe that almost every guest that you've interviewed had some form of mentorship, whether it's casual or, you know, like a professional setting mentorship.
But I believe that played a big role in taking their trading to the next level, too.
What are your thoughts on that?
Yeah, the mentorship so that they could get guidance through their journey and get an outside perspective on what's going on at whatever stocks that they're looking at, right?
They think, oh, I should go along here.
I should go short. Well, the mentor can come in as a neutral player and point out things that the trader misses because it gets swept up in the emotion of the moment.
And it's fine to learn all these things.
Intellectually, you can say, oh, yeah, I've learned this and that, and I agree with all these things I've learned.
But when you're placed in the heat of the moment and your emotions take control because some stocks move, making a big move, either with you in it or you're not in it, the mentor can keep you balanced to help you have a clear head, give you a bigger picture.
So yeah, mentorship can be very important.
Yeah. As you can see, all these traders that have been on chat with traders have different trading styles and strategies and trading different markets, but they all have these things that we just mentioned in common mostly.
Were there any other common themes that you noticed in that we haven't mentioned?
Common themes, well, blowing up your account at least once or twice seems to be often a rite of passage for most traders, right?
Because there's nothing like learning a subject when it's burned into you emotionally.
Intellectual learning often is insufficient.
Right. That's so true.
You've got to not be afraid to put yourself out there and do the work and to fail, expect to fail.
So in a nutshell, I feel like what I was trying to get at is that even though these traders have maybe different trading styles and strategies, trading different markets, but what brings them all together that we can learn from and improve on is the trading mindset.
I think that plays a huge role, believing in oneself to be able to do that, having the discipline, the self -discipline to improve your behaviors and habits and to be consistent in that.
Yeah, don't forget about accountability.
Accountability is a big part too.
Exactly. So often traders, when they make trades and if they lose money, they don't have to tell anybody about it, right?
And so they can end up deluding themselves to a certain extent because they're not holding themselves accountable by having, say, an accountability partner to help them through this journey.
Yeah. Good point, Ian.
But guess what? Something that I think that is not talked about as much is that they were not all necessarily balanced in their life.
Some of them suffered physical pain.
I remember Jack Kellogg talking about his, you know, he went through a lot of physical pain or their health declined in some way to some degree.
But does that mean that the rest of us will have to go through this as well?
I mean, I personally don't think so because we can learn from the challenges that these talented traders face and do something about it.
So this reminds me of episode 256 with our special guest.
Remember Louisa Nicola on supercharging the brain and body with peak performance habits.
I honestly think that some of us avoid listening to this because if we do, we know that we have to change our habits.
But I feel like it's worth listening to again.
Yeah, habits can be challenging to create and also to break the bad habits.
So our brain is like a computer.
The brain likes habits.
It wants, it likes continuity and, you know, going to bed at the same time.
It likes eating at the same time.
So it's important that we take care of ourselves because some traders, like, for example, Jack Kellogg shared with us how his health suffered, his body suffered, even though he's a young guy by him not taking the time out to get outside, do some exercise.
Because many, we have to keep this balance so that our mind stays sharp and being too extreme, just staring at the screen all day, not moving, that could impact in a negative way our performance long term.
So it's a comprehensive approach involving, you know, mind, body, diet, exercise, that kind of thing to our trading in a top tip performance.
I know we can say this, Ian, but I just know that many traders are still gonna do what they're going to do, right?
But at least we did our part and share what we think is really important to stay healthy and balanced so that you can stay long enough to last and still stay in the game of trading.
Another thing I think that we don't mention a lot is taking action.
Taking action is really important.
One of the things I have learned and observed that if you hear something that clicks with you, whether, you know, whether you're listening to an episode or saw something on the internet, whether it's a strategy or an idea to test out, it's helpful to take notes and take action on it right away.
At least that is for me, from my experience.
I mean, I've heard a few things that resonated with me and I took a mental, just a mental note to check into it further.
But you know, guess what?
I never did. Then that's how you kind of end up being in this, you know, forever learning cycle.
I mean, it's great to learn and you can be, but then you can be in the cycle and never get out of it.
And that's when you start to feel stuck in your trading journey, in your trading journey.
Right. It's important to write down, make reminders for yourself to actually implement some of the things that you learned.
It's better to implement, you know, one or two things that you learned than to learn 10, 20, 30 items and not actually implement them into your life, into your trading.
And you say, well, I have all this knowledge.
Well, no, but you got to practice it.
It's got to be put into effect as a habit because habits take time to create.
And yet once you've created them, they actually work in your benefit in the sense that you don't have to expend the mental energy later to keep up with this positive habit.
Excuse the last interruption here.
This is Tessa. We hope you're enjoying this episode so far.
If you love the podcast, please give Chat with Traders the best review you can on whatever platform you're listening from.
This will help us to keep the episodes coming.
Also, if you haven't subscribed to our email list, please hop on to chat with traders .com and click on subscribe so we can keep you posted of information that may be of importance.
Thank you. Now back to the chat with our guests.
Exactly. But to be fair, I mean, sometimes people want to take action, but they feel stuck in their trading journey perhaps because they're overwhelmed because of like maybe work overload, having multiple jobs or analysis paralysis, or waiting things to line up perfectly, or even just putting too much
pressure on yourself or not putting enough pressure on yourself, so then you feel guilty.
But what I have to say to that is taking some action is better than taking no action at all.
And one of the things that I've learned in my own life on how to get unstuck, I'm still trying to get better at this, is to try to take micro or tiny baby step action.
Exactly. Yeah, an inspiring book that I've read recently is Atomic Habits by James Clear.
And you mentioned that a couple times as well.
What did you love about that book?
So, yeah, James Clear is all about, you know, creating habits, kind of the 1 % improvement per day type thing.
So you take off little bite size pieces, write down the things that you need to do the next day, say the night before.
Prioritize them. Some people argue, you know, get the easy ones done first when you start your day so that you can have a sense of accomplishment and that adds fuel for you to tackle the more difficult things later.
Different viewpoints on that.
Some say you should tackle the most difficult things first, first thing in the morning.
But it's important to make an appointment with yourself.
Because your mind, you need to train your monkey mind.
We all have this monkey mind, and the monkey mind will lead you astray as it frequently does, unless we create positive habits, which could involve making appointments with yourself the night prior, scheduling things in your calendar so that you keep a hold of yourself, that otherwise you can be led
astray. Is that actually in the book?
Or is this from your own experience?
A lot of it's in the book.
It's a combination of different books that I've read on the subject.
So it's like a kind of a mishmash of different things I've read on the subject over the years.
That's awesome. Yeah, so I, you know, this is what I really believe in.
It's okay to take imperfect micro action, you know, as long as you're moving forward, as long as you're in the right direction.
Then you're making progress.
So as you can see, there is no right answer to the question that we had, that we posed at the beginning of the episode, what keeps you in the game of trading, you heard those voices.
It's right for the person answering it.
So the thing to be intentional about, though, is whatever it is that keeps you in the game of trading, you want to remind yourself of your big why for trading every single day.
Maybe your why will change because it wasn't compelling enough for you to fight hard enough to stay in the game, then that's okay.
And maybe it turns out that through this process, you're discovering that trading is not for you after all.
So is it okay to quit trading?
Well, I want to say something that is probably not very popular, but absolutely.
Now, this may sound like I'm encouraging you to give up and quit trading.
And that won't obviously help the listenership of the podcast.
But I think it's more important to be straight up about this.
I believe that it is okay to realize that trading is not for you.
And there's no shame in that.
As much as it takes courage to not give up, it also takes courage to know when to admit it's time to quit.
Your thoughts on this, Ian?
I think a bit more in terms of taking a break from trading rather than just completely stopping the trading altogether.
Adjust your position size, right?
So if you're used to trading, say, with a, I don't know, $10 ,000 lot, maybe lower it to $1 ,000 or $500.
My view is stay in the game, even if you have to make the trades really small for a while.
Yeah, I'm not saying not to stay in the game.
You want to do everything, absolutely everything you can to stay in the game.
But at some point, because we kind of live in this this culture where it's all about, oh, yeah, you never quit, never quit, never quit.
But sometimes it takes courage to quit and say it takes courage to admit that this, for example, this path that you're going down is just not right for you.
But only after you've done everything you can.
That's what I'm trying to say.
Okay, yeah, great. Thanks for sharing.
I'm done. Why don't you have to add more to that?
No, no, we rehashed it.
Okay. So we're wrapping up now and to circle back on what keeps you in the game of trading.
If you feel compelled, get on our website, click on the Speak to Chat with Traders page and record your voice.
Let it out, say it out loud, and believe it and hold on to that feeling.
And remember it when you're having self -doubt or you're feeling overwhelmed.
You feel like you want to quit.
Remind yourself of that why, what keeps you in the game of trading, and let it energize you again.
Okay. Well, Ian, I had so much fun doing this with you today.
Yeah, it was nice having a review, kind of reflect upon the different guests we've had and what we learned from them and live vicariously through their journey so that hopefully our trading so that we learn not just intellectually, but emotionally as well.
Yes, we really enjoyed doing this.
If you have any questions for Ian or myself, you can get on the Chat with Traders website and record your voice or email us at hello at chatwithtraders .com.
We're very accessible as well inside the Chat with Traders community.
You can request complimentary access to the Chat with Traders community.
You just have to go to the community page on our website and request access, and we hope to hear from you soon.
Great. Thanks, Tessa.
Thanks, Ian. See you next time on Chat with Traders.
Thank you.
