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So when I talk about going all in or having just the whole account invested in a particular name, I know many thought that many might still think that that's so much risk.
How can you be fully invested in one name or how can you do that?
It just means that I've been able to find a lower timeframe entry on a multi-day or multi-week swing approach.
Or if I'm looking to swing trade the ES mini or the NQ mini in futures.
I can identify a two or five minute entry model where my rules are met.
I can manage my risk in that timeframe.
And for those who day trade a two or five minute timeframe, you can have very little risk.
And if you find a good opportunity where you can do that, you can leverage that entry into a larger timeframe, larger holding window on your trade.
And therefore you can have a fully invested account while still risking very little.
So that's my definition of being all in.
Markets, speculation, and risk.
This is the chat with traders podcast.
This is chat with traders podcast.
One of the original trading interview podcasts sharing real conversations with traders since 2015.
I'm Tessa Dow and it's an honor for me and my co-host, Ian Cox, to carry forward the legacy and great work begun by Aaron Fifield, who started Chat with Traders nearly a decade ago.
Ian and I have been working together since 2022 on Chat with Traders and we've, Let me tell you, there's never a dull moment in podcasting or in the markets.
I trade too, and so it's a lot of work, but I absolutely love what I do, especially when I know you enjoy the podcast.
If you're new here, a warm welcome to you.
We hope you'll find Chat with Traders to be a steady companion on your trading journey.
Visit chatwithtraders.com to explore our archive.
Many of the episodes are timeless and you can discover traders with diverse backgrounds styles, perspectives.
And if you or someone you know would make a great guest.
You'll find a short intake form on the website too.
And for those who've been listening for a while and love what we do, thank you so much.
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One of the most challenging things about trading is learning to stay patient, to wait for the trade that truly fits your plan, and And sometimes it's life itself that teaches us that kind of patience.
If you've been listening for a while, you may remember Christian Carrion from episode 254.
Back then he was trading through stage 5 kidney failure still showing up each day while waiting for a donor.
Just a week after being added to the transplant list, he got the call from UCLA.
That call changed everything.
Nearly three years later, Christian is back on the show with renewed health, even deeper gratitude and a stronger edge in the markets.
His well-known box strategy, a rules-based breakout framework he first shared here in 2023, proved its strength in real trading accounts, generating triple digit annual returns during his standout year of 2022.
Now, After recovery and reflection, we catch up with Christian to see how he's applying that same discipline and structure in today's market environment.
What's changed, what's evolved, and what lessons endure?
Today he's partnered with Ninja Trader, where he trades live each week and mentors a growing community of traders.
In this conversation, Christian opens up with Ian about how he balances day trading futures for cashflow with swing trading leading stocks for growth, and how patience, structure and gratitude continue to shape both his trading and his outlook on life.
Just a quick note before we begin, this conversation was recorded on September 12th.
So if Christian references a chart or trade setup, that's the timeframe he's referring to.
Now, without further ado.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are so pleased to welcome back Christian Carrion to the show.
Well, Christian, I'd like to welcome you back to Chat with Traders.
We had you here yesterday, on the first episode, back episode 254, back in February, 2023.
So welcome back.
Thank you.
Good to be back.
Good to see you.
And hopefully you've been well.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Last time we talked to you, you were waiting for a kidney donor because you had stage five kidney disease.
And for the listeners who go back and listen to that episode, get to hear about all your challenges that you've had in your life uh, being in jail and getting kidney disease uh uh, and being unable to work.
Uh how, what happened?
Uh, since February of 2023, you said you were expecting a donor in the fall.
Yeah.
I think the last uh few comments we made around that was that my dad was getting tested to see if he could be a match and ended up being that he was not.
And, you know, interesting story here.
I was getting started to go on the waiting list, which can be a six to 10 year waiting period.
And I was also mentally preparing myself to start dialysis once again, because it was getting to that point where I did need to start that process.
I think maybe a week or two weeks before I was going to start that, UCLA calls me.
And mind you sorry, this is A week, literally a week after I get on the waiting list, I officially get on the waiting list.
They call me on a Saturday night and say, hey, we have a kidney for you.
You need to get down here to UCLA ASAP.
So I did that.
At first, I didn't believe what was happening.
And you know what?
I also didn't want to say anything because it was an eight to 10 year period.
And all of a sudden, a week later, I'm getting called. you know, somebody must've been praying.
Somebody must've been manifesting for me because it was a miracle that that happened.
And it was on an early Sunday morning that we ended up doing the transplant from somebody up North in California who you know.
His organs were delivered around the state to help others as he, you know he passed away.
So truly grateful for that and the donor.
And ever since then, It's been three years now, almost four years in February of next year.
But it's been a little bit of a journey a new kidney, a second chance at life, or actually a third chance now.
And it's been great.
I've been able to continue to focus on my work, on trading, and on just living healthier.
How is the recovery process?
How long does it take?
And then what do you do during this time? whole recovery process?
So for two weeks, you're in the hospital.
If you're feeling better and you're getting stronger day by day, then you can leave earlier.
But the first two, three days, you can imagine that's very painful.
You're on pain medicine.
You start to learn how to walk again very painfully.
It was a journey.
And that happened for a week.
I think on the 10th day I went home And I was on bed rest for two months, three months really where I couldn't just we can't really do much because you need to let the incision heal from the inside.
So you're just on mandatory bed rest, 23 hours a day.
And I did that for a few months.
Luckily, my family was around.
I had a friend, my girlfriend helping me out.
So I had a support system there.
And eventually little by little, I was able to get back out in the world.
And now I'm not exactly where I was.
You know, there are a little bit more complications.
They're mild, but only because it's been many, many years of medicine.
Another transplant that sort of, you know, it just shocks the body to go through that again.
But much better than how I was when I was sick.
And I was in stage five kidney failure with 20 blood pressure medicines.
And now very little of that, very little of the other medicine and uh, doing much better wow, fantastic um.
So, part of this recovery process, do you have to be very careful on what you eat and and drink.
And yes yes, yeah.
So no alcohol for me, no sugar uh, no fast food, no pizza.
No, you know i, i have to limit my, my um, my sodium, my potassium, things like that, to really make sure that i'm able to keep the healthy working as it should and not put a lot of pressure on it as it works over time, to cleanse out my system on a daily basis.
I see.
So over time, your new kidney will help to clean out the previous toxins.
And then hopefully in the future, you get back to a more normalized level.
Yes, yes.
Right now, it did that, I would say, for the first year.
It really cleared out a lot of the things that I was retaining.
And so now it's functioning as it should.
The levels are a little bit elevated, but they're sort of controlled at the moment.
And I think that's the best case scenario for me.
And as long as I can maintain that moving forward, it's a dream come true.
Yeah.
Well, how did things go mentally for you?
Were you able to concentrate during this recovery process and look at the markets or what happened there?
I was trading right before the surgery.
I was looking at the markets right after And then mentally, I would say I was there.
I've already been through that.
I know what the process is like.
It didn't really affect me that much, but I did keep an eye on the markets until eventually I started to step back into it and continue doing what I was doing.
Well, good.
Good to have you back.
When I talked to you last, you mentioned that in 2022 you had a really bang-up year of 200 total return.
And at that time, you said that your goal would be to achieve 30% return per month for 2023.
And just curious how that unfolded and if you had to make any adjustments in your goals.
I, you know, I I sort of stopped pursuing that just because I I'm both a swing trader and a day trader.
And for the day trading account yes it's, I would say.
You know, I don't want to say that it's easier, but you can imagine that because of the trading volume the account can grow much more, especially if it's a lower account value of of a certain you know, let's say 25000, that can grow more than if you have a 500000 or a million dollar account because of the dollar amount that you're making.
I still day trade.
I mean, that has been my future day trading, just to be clear.
That's been my main focus.
But the strategy has changed over time.
I've been able to incorporate new things as I've progressed.
And I've sort of you know, my new sort of focus is the first two, three hours of the market.
I focus on day trading and then swing trading where I can manage my swing trades portfolio.
And that's sort of taking my focus because the swing portfolio has grown more.
And so I see the futures trading account as an opportunity to create cash flow, to then move over to the swing trading account and continue to grow that even more.
Last time I asked you what was one of your great challenges and you said sizing up was one of your great challenges.
What does I mean, how does that play out and kind of what does going all in mean exactly for you?
Yeah, so that was a very good question that, you know, there was some feedback on that.
It's when you can manage risk to a point where, let's say, you are risking 1, maybe a little bit more, maybe a little less.
If you're still managing that risk for your account, that percentage.
But you can find a low interest versus your stop on the chart.
You can size that appropriately.
Meaning if the dollar amount that you're risking in that trade equals 1 of your account.
Well, the position size can be anything in order to meet that 1 requirement.
If your entry and stop are very tight together, then you can imagine that with a very tight stop your sizing can be significantly larger, even while still remaining meeting that one.
So when I talk about going all in or having just the whole account invested in a particular name, it just means that I've been able to find a lower timeframe entry on a multi-day or multi-week swing approach.
Or if I'm looking to swing trade the ES mini or the NQ mini in futures.
I can identify a two or five minute entry model where my rules are met.
I can manage my risk in that timeframe.
And for those who day trade, obviously a two or five minute timeframe.
You can have very little risk.
And if you find a good opportunity where you can do that, you can leverage that entry into a larger timeframe, larger holding window on your trade.
And therefore you can have a fully invested account while still risking very little.
So that's my definition of being all in.
I know many might still think that that's so much risk.
How can you be fully invested in one name or how can you do that?
It's just about how you've identified the risk between your entry and your stop.
That then will sort of tell you, or inform you, the sizing that you need to do in order to meet that 1 risk allocation.
And so, with this, what you would be calling an A-plus setup And, if so, how often do these type of setups come around?
It depends on the environment, of course.
It depends on the strategy that you have.
If you have a trend falling strategy or a mean reversion strategy you want to identify.
For example, I buy pullbacks a lot in uptrends.
And so an A plus opportunity for me would be buying a hourly pullback within a daily uptrend.
So you can imagine that an hourly pullback can look like the two or three day retracement within a daily, you know two to three week uptrend.
So that two to three day pullback is maybe in a strong hourly retracement.
And if that aligns with whatever it is your other requirements are.
For me, are we above sort of the daily 9MA, 20 EMA.
Are we pulling back?
Are we fresh out of a consolidation?
You know, my name on Twitter is Boxus.
Did we just break out?
Right now it's September 12th, but recently, in the last week, the indices have broken out of a two-month consolidation.
So that's a fresh new uptrend.
Right now we're in an A-plus environment for my approach, because the contraction that has taken place over the last two months has just broken out.
Energy's expanding and we're moving to new all-time highs.
So the least path of resistance, as long as that breakout holds is higher.
And what I want to do as a trader that buys pullbacks is I want to buy the pullback of a two month breakout.
That is the best sort of opportunity that you can find, where you just have so much momentum to higher prices that every pullback becomes an A plus opportunity, as long as your rules are met, of course, as long as you're managing risk well for each idea.
And that's when I can size up because I have all timeframes aligning with my strategy, my approach.
And then when my rules are met, in that current all those conditions are met, then I can execute flawlessly.
And maybe that may not work out, but over time, under these conditions, it will do much better than in the long run.
And how do you determine the support and resistance levels?
I mean, how far back do you go and how does that play out for you?
You know, so I have created a indicator myself to identify these zones.
Well, I manually identify them over time.
It's as simple as looking to the left of price history and understanding where the you know where price has found some sort of topping area And you can go back and compare and say okay, is that a viable resistance area?
You go into lower timeframes to say okay, can this sort of and if you can move up and down to identify other areas of interest.
Meaning, if we reject it from 300 and we came down to 260 and we bounce, can that be support?
Well, you got to test that idea.
Can I draw that 260 support area?
Can I drag it to the left, look at what has happened over the last year to say hey, does this 260 area, is it a viable support area over time?
Um, it's not as easy as as plotting that, but you have to understand how price um, you know the interaction between price and this potential area, or what i call a zone, and uh, see over time if it does respect that.
Eventually, what i ended up finding out that i was i created this indicator is that um, For futures, for ES, we have rotations of 12 points, 12 to 15 points.
And so every 12 to 15 points.
There's an interaction there where price can get a rejection, or if we form acceptance, which means a little bit of consolidation at that zone, then we can move on to the next area.
So it's a little bit repetitive in approach where every sort of 12 to 15 points we're finding this area of resistance and support.
And that's one way to look at it as well from a sort of algorithmic level.
But it's a lot of manual work to go back and look at prior levels, how they acted.
And then if you can combine that with an algorithm that can plot them for you moving forward, then you have a good way of understanding that in the future.
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I see.
So you have an algorithm that computes this and does it draw it on the chart for you, or do you visually?
Yeah, it's an indicator that.
I wouldn't call it so much an algorithm, but it's just an indicator that plots these horizontal zones on my charts.
And they're based on a deep study that I did of how do I identify zones in alignment with trend structure.
There's a specific trend sequence that I follow regarding market structure.
And through the help of somebody, I was able to create it into an indicator.
And so it plots them for me now automatically.
And even if we go to all-time highs, based on how it was programmed, it plots those areas moving higher and it acts as a reference to identify new resistance or support.
Mm-hmm.
I recently saw you in a video at Ninja Trader and how the moderator talked a little bit about fundamental economic reports to be released and so forth.
Do you ever get sucked into debates and fear-based arguments of how the market is wildly overvalued and let it influence your trading?
Like, for example say, during the tariff correction last April.
Do you pay attention to the news more And or do you think it's just better just to ignore it, because it could unduly influence you into trades that you didn't want to take, or ignoring the market when you should be in?
So I would say there's a two-part answer for that.
First being, if you come to rely on what's happening like that, that sort of has a big emotional pull on you.
It will remove you or it would rob the opportunity for you to focus on a process that is repeatable, right.
All strategies from all the guests that you have here and all successful traders.
They have a repeatable system that has a positive expectancy.
Where the rules are met, they execute and over time, they make more than what they lose.
That disregards news because we're focused on things on the chart.
So you can imagine that if somebody is focusing on things outside of the chart that can influence either their confidence to buy something or their fear to not buy or sell anything, it will get in the way of that opportunity to execute a profitable system or create one based on things that are happening in the chart.
I don't get myself involved in that because my belief is that anything that's decided in some secret room where handshakes are made, At the end of the day they're going to leave that room.
They're going to make buy and sell decisions that we will see on the charts.
Like what happened in April, there was a lot of fear there.
There was a lot of selling there.
Well, whoever it was that kept selling and bringing the market down well, we could see it in the charts.
And if, for example, I think we can all agree that whenever the market's above the 200-day moving average, or in an uptrend or a bull market, Whenever we're below it we're in a downtrend or a bear market.
If you develop or you identify trend filters like that, when price gets below it, price is telling you hey, it's in a downtrend.
It's below a huge trend filter.
So things on the chart will come to help you understand what price wants to do the behavior that it repeats over and over again.
And if you can sort of remove your emotions, remove your that emotional pull that you have for things that are happening in the world which are bad, and just focus on a repeatable system that you create, then you will do well more over a longer period of time.
So for our new listeners who didn't hear your previous interview, could you go through and briefly describe what you call the box strategy, which is, I assume, still your bread and butter?
You know, it is.
I would say I do incorporate those boxes.
Over time, I've done more deep dives into my process to get better, to refine my rules.
I've come to see that what I used to define as boxes, a contraction through time or a base or range, whatever we call that, inside that contraction, we create wedges.
And so a wedge is simply more than well.
Before a wedge is formed, you have, let's say, a series of higher highs, higher lows.
That is an uptrend.
When that sequence ends, price will revert back to a certain support area.
That prior uptrend will end, and then price will now consolidate.
Inside that consolidation we will ping pong back and forth in sort of like a wedge structure, meaning the top of the trend before it ended is sort of like a swing high, The bottom of that initial retracement is a swing low.
And then we create higher lows, lower highs inside of that.
I used to draw.
I still do to understand where the consolidation is taking place, but I used to draw those boxes and say okay, this is a contraction.
When it breaks, I am going to enter.
But one thing that I did and that everybody goes through is, well, how can I make my process better?
And I did a deep dive and I understood that hey well, if I enter at this area, it can mean a few points below the box break and it'll allow me to manage risk better.
And so, with managing risk, better going back to our being all in in a trade.
Well, if I'm now able to risk less, let's say my entry is now at 8 and my stop is at five, versus a normal box break or a range break that's at 10.
Well, I just decreased my risk by 2.
Well, guess what?
I can now put on a larger size because the spread between my entry and my stop is less.
And in my quest to look for a way to extract more for the markets, I identified that there's a deeper, tighter contraction in ranges or in boxes that once that breaks, that is actually the trigger that creates the box break.
So I've modified my own specific entries on my strategies to getting in that specific sort of wedge breakout.
And then my stop will go below the lower boundary if it's an uptrend.
It has then allowed me to decrease my risk overall.
I'm able to put on larger size.
And in doing so I've also incorporated some other things with my overall understanding of trend structure.
But it has adapted a little bit.
And I think, you know, we all go through that.
We all identify over time say hey well, I'm leaving.
Either I'm leaving too much money on the table or I'm not making what I should be making.
You don't typically go through those thoughts as you're learning how to trade.
You're learning, well, how can I buy right?
How can I put my stop right?
Eventually you grow to a phase where you're saying, OK, I'm doing this well.
How can I make more now?
How can I manage my risk better?
And through that process, that's how I was able to identify hey, This is a better structure for me to engage in.
And my strategy developed over time to that.
I incorporated a mean reversion strategy as well, which looks to buy pullbacks, like I said, let's say, like an hourly pullback in an uptrend.
I've incorporated that now.
And so I'm combining both a directional setup, which is a wedge or a box breakout, and then a mean reversion setup, which looks to buy pullbacks in an uptrend or short sell rallies in a downtrend.
So, to be clear, are you trading inside the box when it's in the consolidation phase or do you mainly wait until-.
Yes, that's a good question.
So, in incorporating a mean reversion approach, it has allowed me to trade inside the box a little bit better, because you can imagine that when we're consolidating and we're ping-ponging inside this range well, if we're in a bullish structure,
I want to look for an opportunity near the bottom of that range as price pulls back.
If my mean reversion rules are met, I want to engage there and look for a long opportunity there.
And then where that is also now moving to in the future is.
I'm now thinking well, instead of waiting for the box to break, what if I can incorporate the buy that I do in that last pullback to the bottom of the box or the bottom of the range as my entry, and have that be my entry to that box break?
So now you can imagine the potential points I can make now with managing a swing entry or just even if it's a day trade in a multi-hourly consolidation, the type of entry that you can leverage by buying the low of that consolidation and participating in that following breakout and then the trend away from that.
So that is sort of the combination of those two and how my thinking has evolved.
What percentage of the time do you get stopped out?
And how quick are you to get right back in the trade?
And do you suffer from any type of revenge trading?
No revenge trading because, you know, if... we can talk on day trading futures for a bit.
I have a limit of saying two to three trades a day.
I have a limit on how much capital I risk per day.
I have a limit on the time window that I'm looking to allocate that capital.
And then I restrict my trading to the plan that I create that morning before the market opens.
You know, I follow trend structure really well.
Like that is what I focus on.
And if my plan has three scenarios in mind for that day, if two sort of took place and I'm waiting on a third one well, I can't.
It doesn't benefit me to trade more than that last opportunity because, at the end of the day, what am I trading if I didn't plan for that?
How did I manage risk for that trade or for those trades if that wasn't part of my plan?
And so I want to make sure.
Over time, I had to realize, of course, if I want to do this consistently, I have to combine the restrictions that I place on myself in order to make sure that every day, as I review, did I plan things how I needed to.
Did I execute the scenarios that I had in mind or the trade ideas that I had in mind?
If so, cool, let's do that again.
If not, why not?
And through that process you become confident in saying no yes, I only need to trade this, the trades that I plan, because I know that over time that produces more, I get less stops.
If I get, if I do get stopped out, I do give myself an opportunity to get back in, only because there are a lot of sort of false breaks in the futures market in day trading really.
And so if I do take a stop and I give myself an opportunity to to take another trade to see if it will have that scenario that I have in mind,
And if not, then Hey look, it's not happening and there's no need for me to continue uh, allocating capital to this idea.
Last time we talked to you, uh, you talked about managing other people's money.
Are you still managing investors money?
Yes.
Yes.
It's a little bit more private now.
Um, but yes, it's, uh, I, I, I do what I, what I do for myself here for those others.
And, uh, i've been doing that i'll still continue to do that it's a great relationship and uh it's great for everybody for your investors do you have a particular strategy or is it more buy and hold is it swing trading or is it day trading with it's it's swing trading it's uh we're looking to swing trade uh stocks like tesla you know it just broke out this week um and and if we can be in leaders the main objective is to be in leaders or leading sectors that are leading the market higher, and then get defensive when the market trend deteriorates to avoid pullbacks like in April.
And if we can do that over time, then we can sort of create a up to flat sort of structure where we're participating in uptrends, we go flat during downtrends, up during uptrends and we're just trying to repeat that cycle over and over again.
How do you handle big events like the upcoming Federal Reserve meeting next week and how the markets seem to be pricing in rate cuts?
There doesn't seem to be any fear in the market.
Do you stay aside and wait to see the price action after the announcement, or do you carry your positions?
If you're talking day trading.
I mean, I think it's heavily encouraged that we all should wait, because –.
That uncertainty, if you're in a day trade, it can turn really bad.
If your swing account or your swing portfolio is in swing trades.
Well, you have to wait for the event to occur to then tell you what you need to do.
If you're a rules-based trader and we're in an uptrend really, either you have a rule to take partial exits at a certain area and then wait for that trend to turn and then say okay well, the uptrend is ending.
I'm going to exit the rest of my trades.
But for an event like that, I can't get in the way of what price is telling me as far as the uptrend that we're in and try to anticipate a possible reversal and get out of my positions, because it'll be me trading my emotions at that point versus trading the charts.
Because let's say all that could happen is it creates a small pullback.
And then the next few days we go higher.
Well, I'm still following the trend.
And it's my job to follow the trend.
And so I have to continue to do that.
If in that specific day the trend ends and that event is what terminates that trend, then I am in me following price structure
I am then getting confirmation that the trend is ending, and then I need to make decisions, but I can't anticipate anything.
And when you say the trend ending, what does that look like to you?
Like is there a particular moving average or other indicators that yeah, if we uh, you know it's been, i want to say yes.
But um, i do want to say that you know, i think we've all seen this, the strength this market has had, and when you think the trend is ending it, it sort of comes down a little bit and then continues back up right.
So i i've seen a lot of the the exit sort of criteria that is met in the last few months trigger, but then a few two days later or something will reverse back up and continue higher.
So i want to say yes, from a string trading approach.
I think Everybody has a combination of when either the 9 or the 10 moving average ends and we get below that or the 20.
It's worldwide, not worldwide, but I think it's well known that the 20 EMA is a good trend gauge filter.
And whenever we spend some like two days closing below it, then most likely that uptrend is over.
We haven't really quite seen that.
We've seen very little of that.
So as long as that stays in place, then the overall market is in an uptrend.
On your Twitter account you've said, quote you need to be fully invested in leading sectors in an uptrend and in cash and T-bills and bonds in a downtrend.
Why not apply your trading system to going short?
I would say for myself, maybe others have a good time shorting.
But in an environment like this one, you really don't know what the environment to the downside would be into your living in that moment.
A lot of the times that in the last few months where typically you say okay well, this is probably the end of the uptrend,
We're probably going to see a pullback.
That's just from historical, your own past trading, where you can say hey, we're sort of getting into that same environment.
We can get a pullback.
Would I like to short there?
I would say in the past, yes.
But now that I've gone through more cycles, the market has a way of continuing to show buys in those pullbacks where you say okay, it's now time to short.
And because of that I'd rather be conservative in the shorts that I take.
Protect my capital in case we do have a further drop.
But if not like what we've seen this summer, and we reverse back up, I don't want to have my mindset on shorts and have a bias to the downside when I could be more, I can have more clarity on buying the reversal back up from that pullback.
And I would say what influences that is the economical environment, political environment.
We've known the sort of risk on the markets has been with the new president.
And we know the anticipation with this possible rate cut.
So you combine those and you say, okay, well, the current environment is very strong.
I want to have clarity in pullback and say well, If we do get a pullback, I want to be ready to buy the reversal back up.
So, speaking of pullbacks and you said previously that you like to study how bottoms are formed throughout the markets in the past,
How did both the COVID low back in 2020 and the April 2025 tariff low compare to previous market bottoms?
I mean, they both happened recently. very quickly, right?
I mean, is there, is the nature of correction, has the nature of corrections changed?
Or I don't know, do you have any thoughts on that?
You know, the only thing I can say on that is because I was sort of talking a lot on Twitter on the potential low that we were making in April, only because I, like I said, I follow specific trend structure and I wish I could share here.
But whenever we reach a, this is a second higher high or a second lower low in a 90 may uptrend.
We typically find that 80% of the time, these are my studies, 80% of the time, the trend will end.
And so we'll revert back down.
Or if we do have, we do make a third higher high, it'll be 20% of the time.
And then at that point we will sort of the trend when we're going into the April low.
And so and the same for March 2020, on the weekly trend that we had from the highs this year in February, we created two weekly lower lows.
This is along a downward 9MA.
We created two weekly lower lows.
Into that lower low, we had divergences showing up with breadth, with RSI.
A lot of the other sort of the leaders were not making new lows with the indices.
And if you have strength in leaders that are not breaking lower, that's telling you something, right.
And then going back to, I'm very big on multi-time frame analysis.
On the daily structure and again going back to the wedges, we had a internal wedge contraction which you can imagine that a typical 9MA consolidation is four to six candles.
If you apply that to the weekly time frame, it'll be four to six weeks.
Inside that consolidation will be a 50, like what I call a 50 EMA wedge.
It's a daily wedge contraction, like we just had over the last two months, and we're now breaking out higher.
Into that bottom.
We had a daily contraction that was attempting to break lower and that ended up being a failed breakdown of that contraction.
So instead of that contraction leading to a new downtrend lower and creating a third lower low I know we're just speaking here.
I wish I could show that in a chart.
But the internal contraction breakdown into a possible third lower low failed.
And due to that failed breakdown, that triggered a reversal back up in the markets.
Again, somebody can go back to my ex-account, my Twitter account, go back to that period.
I cover that extensively.
I cover those scenarios where, hey guys, if this breakdown fails, we're confirming all the divergences that we're seeing in breadth and RSI.
And we can trigger that reversal back up to find a bottom.
We did the same thing in 2020.
The top at the end of 2021 was the same thing.
The top in February of this year was the same thing.
And I covered all of those in my X account.
So whoever wants to go back and look at that, I covered the structure.
So I was just you can imagine, I was very loud during that time saying hey guys, this could happen here.
So from a technical perspective, that is what I saw.
That is similar to 2020 and in that low period.
I noticed that you follow and trade individual stocks and crypto.
Is this because trading the ES or the NQ doesn't provide enough trading opportunities?
Or you just go with whatever's moving and bounce back and forth?
No.
Yes, NQ definitely provide a lot of opportunities, but I...
I move I tried to trade the stocks that are leading the market higher.
And if that's a crypto or just risk on assets like growth names related, like Tesla coin, I want to put on my larger accounts in those names.
And so I will swing trade those those names that are leading.
And in the smaller day trade account, I will day trade futures.
When you're looking to go long, say the SP 500.
How important is it for you that the NASDAQ and or the Russell 2000 is matching the price action to the upside?
And if it's not, do you reduce your position size or do you wait for like, synchrony between those markets?
Yeah.
So that's a good question, because in the futures market for ES and NQ RTY, which is small caps, What happens a lot is they either will create divergences between each other.
In the last week or so, I think we all saw that the SP 500 made a new all-time high, I think a week before the NASDAQ.
The NASDAQ just made a new all-time high today.
And there was a divergence there, right?
Where ES or the S&P 500 was leading.
When I'm day trading, if one...
I mean, I just strictly day trade NASDAQ now, but sometimes I'll day trade ES or the S&P.
From a business perspective, if one index is leading, I want to allocate my capital there, because that means that I have a higher probability of making more in that potential trend right.
If I'm risking one and I can make six with a leading name, I will do that.
If it switches to NQ.
I will do that because you know, I think we can all say that trading is a business.
And on the business side, I want to open a business where I can make the most revenue.
And that's how you sort of say okay, if there's a divergence okay, which is the index that is leading?
I want to participate in that.
That's how I view that.
I see.
So, in your view, what would you say are some of the biggest investor mistakes, trader mistakes, and how to correct them?
I think it's creating a library of environments where a set of rules or strategy can thrive in or cannot thrive in.
What happens a lot is that we go through these different environments where somebody may have done really well in an uptrend and now we're in a downtrend, or we're in a range period and the aggressiveness that you had in an uptrend is not being rewarded and now you're in a drawdown and you're questioning why and you're going through a lot of losses.
Well, to me, that just means that there hasn't been enough time allocated into going back to review how your strategy does in an uptrend or in a downtrend or in a sideways market and how you can refine that and adapt to those environments.
I think if more of us did that, if more of us created a library of how our setups or our models work in different environments, we can come to understand and say hey, in real time hey, you sort of know that we're transitioning into a different sort of trend, structure or environment and say okay well, now I need to adapt and I need to change how I trade.
If I'm buying pullbacks in an uptrend, we can imagine that those pullbacks in a downtrend are not going to be that.
The moves lower will continue lower.
And if you don't adapt to that, a new scenario, well, you're not going to do well.
What can help with that?
It's going back and reviewing and creating a library and saying okay, this is what works well in here, what works well in there.
I think if we can all do that more, you can come to find more consistency in how you apply your trades or your set of rules through different environments.
So for yourself, for your day trading experience side and your more swing trading side.
How have the last three years been for you?
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Now back to the chat with our guest.
It's been great.
I applied the same strategy.
You know, a lot of people say that you can't really trade a swing trading strategy to a day trade.
You totally can.
The markets are a fractalized structure and what happens on a daily time frame will happen on a five minute time frame.
So it's been great.
Obviously, the change in sort of the cycles that we've gone through has changed.
I think the bull market has shown its legs over the last two years and has allowed swing trading to really thrive in that environment.
And then on the day trading side, it's been fantastic.
They trade live on the Ninja platform. trader network.
Um, I'm on there every Thursday morning, uh, sometimes on Tuesdays, but, uh, I, I all day trade futures there with other traders and, uh, it's, it's great.
Uh, you know, so it's that combination for me, it does wonders.
Uh, and, and I'm just blessed to be, to be able to have the health, to be able to do that.
Yeah.
Fantastic.
Um, so your, uh, was 2022, uh, your return for 2022 at 200%.
It was at your, um, Your peak year?
I would say, yes.
I have not put that much focus into growing the day trading account like I did back then.
I think now, as I've been able to make more money, what I've done is I've moved that over to the swing trading account.
And because now it's a much larger value, I like the idea of, hey, can I just generate cash flow from the day trading account? move it over over here and that can grow and and become my own fund over time you've had some good quotes on your twitter feed um uh one of them is entitlement is birthed in the absence of gratitude and uh you've on your twitter feed you've certainly expressed a lot of gratitude for everything that you've had in your life and the second chances that you've had and uh that's great and the most recent quote that i saw which i really enjoy is is what a privilege it is to choose what exhausts us yeah it's uh i i read that and i was like wow that that hit me i never uh uh thought of it like that but it's true it's definitely a privilege to be doing something that we love um i i i'm extremely grateful for that i think if we can all find uh, you know, a way to move closer to what we, we love and what we do and if we can get paid for it, um, and then just, just focus and go at it and maybe reach a period of exhaustion.
Uh, yeah.
What a privilege it is for that.
Yeah.
Well, it's been a privilege interviewing you for a second time here at chat with traders.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
How can our listeners, uh, get in touch with you?
Uh, they can, uh, connect with me on X at trading underscore boxes.
They can see me on YouTube on the Ninja Trader live network.
I'm on there every Thursday.
They can, you know, I talk a lot about the strategy.
I talk a lot about the market structure and then I'll, I trade live on there.
They can tune in, ask questions or just send me a message and I'm happy to help.
Great.
Thanks for coming on the show.
Thank you so much.
We hope you enjoyed this interview with Christian.
Next, join me in my catch up with Christian.
Again, really appreciate you coming back for an update.
And I'm just so glad to see that you've been recovering well and you're healthy.
And it really is a reminder for all of us to not take our health for granted and to really take care of ourselves.
Because a lot of times we, as traders, we're just so focused on ourselves, on trading including myself and just trying to make it, you know, and that we forget all about like getting our sleep, staying healthy, you know, going to get our checkups and things like that.
Yeah.
I want to know like how, how do you manage stress and how, how should we manage stress while trading, like in the moment?
You know it's.
It's a little bit harder for me to answer that because I've.
I don't find it stressful.
Like I, I show up, I'm excited.
I make a joke with this and my friends are like, what's wrong with you?
But my Mondays are like my Friday, because I get to wake up.
And I can only say this because I've been doing this for so long that I know what I need to do when I need to do it right.
Because I've gone through the failures.
I've gone through the many lessons that need to be learned.
I'm still going through them, but not at the same.
It doesn't have the same impact like it used to.
Was it stressful in the past?
Absolutely.
And I think I would say for that is that, I mean, again, I don't know, I'm a little bit hardheaded.
It's tough for me to really take a break from things that I'm so passionate about.
You know, like I shared, like When I was trying to make it, the pain of what I went through in my life was greater than what I was going through here and the losses that I was going through.
There was just so much commitment to this that I learned how to push myself and force myself to move past those emotions, past that anxiety.
But I would say, look, if you can find a way to...
Remove your thinking from that and think about other things, whether it's yoga or working out or hiking.
Things where you are in your body instead of in your mind, will help you much more because, you know, I think when we're stuck in our mind, we're thinking on the past or the future, right?
It's either fear or anxiety.
And when we're in our present, if you find yourself lifting something heavy well, you're trying not to have that thing fall on you or fall on your toes.
And so you're not in your head, you're living in the present.
I think that's what I'm trying to say is, if you can find activities where you can live in the present, push yourself, maybe physically.
That will help over time much more.
And it's what helped me.
And you know when I can work out.
I try and work out walking hiking biking, going to the beach mountains, if you can.
Things like that.
Little breaks during the week, if you can do that, it'll help over time.
Yeah.
To be present, be in the now.
Yeah.
So that also when it's time to trade, you're also in the present for trading and focus as well.
Yeah.
I think, if you can, It comes down to also creating a strategy and a sort of rules that help you know.
Like you know that by following these rules, because of the studies that you've done, it'll create a certain dollar amount, maybe not weekly, but maybe monthly or quarterly.
And eventually, as you progress and you apply those sort of rules and you start, you know, obviously we make human errors.
We will sell out of a position early.
We won't get in and trade because we have fear of this or whatever it is.
As you journal that and you grow through that, you start to correct those human behaviors.
And eventually you get to a point where I just show up to the desk and I just need to execute because I know my rules.
I know where I need to enter.
I know where I need to stop.
So all of that is gone when I'm trading.
I already did that so much that it's ingrained in me.
And like you said, I can be present in the moment because when it happens, I just execute.
And it's either.
At that point I either take a stop, or it goes to where I think it'll go and I get to make my points.
Yeah.
And it's also so inspiring to hear a seasoned trader such as yourself to continually evolve.
I mean you talked with Ian earlier about like your strategy has evolved over time in the last year since we talked to you like your entry strategy.
It's like this mindset you have of continuous improvement.
It's also a good reminder for us to be, you know, process-driven and to continually improve in our process.
I'm kind of in that in-between stage though of like, I know what to do.
I know how, I mean, I know I can follow my rules most of the time.
I'm losing less.
I'm managing my risk, but I'm stuck where I'm not able to like scale up.
I mean, I'm just kind of like just profiting very little and, but I'm not losing much.
I'm managing.
So I'm kind of in that, you know, in-between stage at this point.
Are you a mean reversion trader or a directional?
Trend following.
But I day trade.
I'm an intraday trader.
But yes, you can say that I'm a little bit of that too.
Mean reversion and trend following and momentum trading.
Yeah.
So you're looking to buy breakouts?
Yeah, breakouts and pullbacks.
Yeah.
So the thing that I would suggest here is to, For day trading especially, are they trading like penny stocks or tech stocks or futures?
I'm doing futures right now.
Okay, so what i would say is you want to have a good understanding of the higher time frame, specifically the hourly, because what the way i see it for myself is, i'm finding entries for the five minute, but uh, or i should say i call myself an hourly trend trader because i'm looking to participate in hourly trends as a directional trend trader.
Like you, i'm looking to participate in hourly trends um, with a two or five minute entry so i can manage.
I can manage my risk on a smaller time frame, where do you trade?
Es or nq?
I, i do mostly nq, but i also use es.
Okay, so for es um, the the point that that sort of it moves, it's every sort of uh, six to seven and seven point, five points.
For NQ, it's around 25 to 35 points.
When VIX is normal, like it is now, if it's elevated, obviously that's going to be double.
But if you can manage your risk on a ES, let's say six points.
I'll talk about NQ, since that's what I mainly trade.
If I can manage my risk on a 30 point sort of basis every time and then participate on an hourly trend where I can make 100 to 200 points, then over time you can imagine that the losses that you'll have are going to be less.
And then I will also encourage for you to, if you are a trend follower, to consider leaving runners or partials.
What I do is I take half off at 1.5R.
That allows me to not only pay for my risk in the trade, but let's say the other half of the trade goes back to stop me out.
Well, in the first trade, I closed it out at 1.5R.
And then if the other part of the trade gets stopped out at minus one R, well I'm still positive.
05 R right.
Half R, And that allows me to minimize the losses, because instead of a loss well, it turned into a very small profit.
And you're sort of cheating the system that way where you're not experiencing a full loss because price didn't get to your target and it came back down.
But instead you took partials into your target halfway, maybe at 15 R or even one R, And in doing so you took risk off the table.
And if it does come back and stop you out, well, guess what?
You are, you pretty much lost nothing.
And in doing so, your mental and your emotional capital will be or your bank account will be, you know full, because you're not sort of getting emotional on your next trade.
Well, I just had two stops in a row.
Well, I would encourage for you to say well, what can I do?
Moving forward to say hey, can I turn one of those stops into a breakeven trade?
And that small adjustment where you can turn a series of stops that you typically go through into a breakeven trade.
It'll help you keep your account value at a consistent sort of flat basis, where then the rest of the trends that you try and capture will help elevate and create growth in it.
That's a really good tip.
And I'm trying to do that. but I think it's practice.
And I just need to size up too and trade a little bit more contracts.
Right now, I'm just trading one or two contracts, you know, just to practice being more consistent.
Yeah, I think at three contracts.
If you can do that, it'll allow you to take.
You know what I do is.
Let's say I put on like on the Ninja Trader Show.
I typically risk 1000 per trade and that's 16 micros.
And so what I'll do is I'll take half off, eight micros at one.
Maybe you know I'll typically do 12 15R.
If we're getting a big breakout, well, I'm looking for more, obviously.
But let's say I take eight contracts off at 1.5R and I'm participating in a trend.
I'll take four, a quarter of that at maybe 3R.
And then I'll leave the third on.
So let's say you're trading three contracts.
You'll leave the last contract on where they stop at breakeven.
So what that allows you to do is remove the emotion from that trade.
And if you're a truly trend follower well, you need to let that runner run, because if you're not over time, you're just limiting the potential points that you can capture.
And you're getting in the way of that trend that you're trying to capture, right?
How many times have you sold out and it just continues higher?
Yeah, a lot.
Right?
And so well.
Obviously, right now you're constricted on the contracts that you can trade, but that last 20 of your trade can go to 5R 10R, 12R.
I've been able to capture 800 points in NQ by holding my runners, and that day trade now turned into a multi-day hold where I'm just letting the runner go because I haven't gotten stopped out and I'm participating in the trend.
Curious, do you use stops?
I mean, you use stops all the time, I'm assuming, right?
But do you also use any form of hedging?
No, no, no, no.
I don't, I don't believe in that, because if you're trying, you know what is there to hedge.
If you're, if we're in an uptrend like, for example you know to sort of summarize what I do I'm looking at the daily timeframe and saying you know, the past two weeks I think you could see the NQA NES broke out of this five, six week consolidation and and we've started an uptrend since last Friday.
And so if on the daily timeframe we are in an uptrend and I am positioned for an uptrend um in my own traits that I make, why would I hedge?
If the, the environment is up, can we get pullback?
Certainly.
But if you're hedging, you are what you're, what you, what your.
Your choice in that moment is you're shorting an uptrend um, the hedge is there for your emotional side at that point, but it's not objectively, it's not serving the purpose.
That a you know.
What I would say is you need to allocate your the the, the mental state that you're sort of saying I want to hedge.
No, you need to allocate that sort of you know cause.
What you're doing with that hedge is you're also opening up risks in your account, because if that gets stopped out, well you might see it.
Oh, it was small.
It was the hedge.
No, it it's.
It's not negative, but it's robbing you of the opportunity to use that risk in a trade that goes with the trend right.
So I would like to save my capital in opportunities that are in alignment with the trend, where my rules are met.
And especially now, you know, when we break out of a five, six week range, like what we have been in, we are going to go up a week to two weeks after day three or day four.
Can we get like a one day or two day pullback?
Sure, but you know, i i want to be ready to buy that pullback and i want as much capital as i can to buy that pullback, instead of trying to hedge, because when you're hedging you're not really, you don't really have clarity on the opportunity that's presenting exactly.
You're right that's, that's exactly right.
I sometimes i hedge because i i'm maybe not clear in the direction or maybe, And sometimes I hedge on purpose because I don't like using stops sometimes.
I mean, I either use stops or I hedge.
But if I hedge, you know, it's because I don't want to be stopped out.
And I, you know, rather give it some room and see what direction it'll take.
And then I'll take off that hedge if I see like a kind of a clear direction.
You know what I mean?
So, yeah, because I am using stops.
But when I don't use stops...
I hedge.
So it was one or the other.
Yeah, I think as you progress as a trader, you'll see that what will benefit you more is to not hedge.
I think at that point, you're combining two different views.
And you know the way I see trading is the less emotional capital, not the emotional.
The less mental capital that can take up your trading, the better.
If you're in a trade and then you're worried about getting stopped or coming back down and you're hedging, well you know, you're just putting your your mind to work more.
If you, if you, again, I keep going back to, you know, pullbacks in an uptrend.
If you, if you allocate that sort of space that you're using for hedging and protecting because look, it comes from a fear area, right?
Fear of losing money that you're making because of money that you've lost.
But again, But.
What you need to do is focus on allocating that mental sort of capital into buying those pullbacks.
Like I'm telling you, like 90% of my trades are buys in a pullback.
It's the most I don't wanna say the easiest, but the most repetitive opportunity that you can in an uptrend.
And look over time, I think, the uptrends, and we're in an uptrend 80 of the time It can be choppy.
We can go periods of ranges, but we're usually in an uptrend.
I think as you grow, it'll help to focus on that.
Oh, one more thing I want to bring up is you have your own community, right?
What are some of the things that you're seeing in your community, that are you seeing any like improvements in traders or things that maybe surprise you?
Like right now, I have 130 people in there.
And I've had a group since 2020.
And I would say that there's so many people that come from different styles.
I have conversations with people.
I recently had one with an older lady who was telling me how she's so glad.
Because the way I teach is hey, if we're trend following, we need to let the market do the heavy lifting.
We look for our entries first.
We take our partials.
And then if we are to create a trend out of this day and the daily candle is going to go up well, I don't want to trade again.
I don't want to open up my risk.
And so a message from her was that she's so glad, she's so relieved because now it's less stressful, because back then she used to make 30 to 40 trades in a day.
And I was like, what?
That's so much.
Because if you think about it, what kind of trends can we really capture in a day?
Three to four trends, maybe?
Like, what are we doing trading 30 times a day?
But that's like scalping.
That's like scalping though, right?
Yeah, but I mean, at that point, you're maybe looking at a 15 second or 30 second chart.
But just imagine as you're learning, you need to slow things down, right?
To learn.
But if you're learning and you're making decisions, microsecond decisions where is the time for you to learn?
Hey, this is where my entry should be.
This is where my stop should be.
Uh, so if you're scalping as a new learner, it's going to be very difficult.
Um, but I wouldn't say uh, I think um, I mean it's hard.
You know, I've talked to many people from we just have like 2000 in their account, people who have 500, 600000 in our account and they're down like 200000 short in the market.
Right.
Like I've talked to many of those um, a lot of what's happening right now is we're um, they're a lot using the prop accounts that you see on on X or online.
Um, I'm using one of those.
Okay, cool.
Yeah.
So that's my way of learning, you know?
Yeah.
That's a great way.
Right.
Yeah.
That's a great way because look, you're only risking 50 or a hundred dollars for two or 3000 of drawdown.
I wish I had that when I was starting out.
Right.
But no, I, I was risking real money and losing real money.
Um, yeah, but, uh, that's a great way to learn.
You, uh, I would encourage you to not chase the payout, not chase that.
I would say what surprised me from them doing that is they're a day away from getting a payout or a day away from passing their eval.
And then in the last day, they blow it up.
Because at that point they were trading the emotions that came from getting close to that payout versus the process that got them to that point.
Yes, yes.
And that shocked me.
Not shocked me, but that surprised me, because it's so easy for everybody to throw everything away and you stop, you know, you go through a stop and you're like at that point, you're like no, I was so close.
I need to make that back.
And that's it.
It's almost like gamifying that.
Yeah, it's not necessarily the best if we do that.
That's why, you know, I'm sharing with you, it's best to focus on the process, your rules.
Mm-hmm. you know, I don't look at the dollar amount anymore.
I'll look at the end of the day and say, oh, okay, I made this.
Because I know that I'm risking $1,000 each trade.
So it's either I'm... If I took two losses, well, I lost two grand, right?
But if not, I can make three, four, five, six grand.
And look, all this comes from not having enough screen time, right?
So it's just you're making those emotional decisions because you don't know any better, because you haven't really seen the cycles, you haven't learned more from yourself and how to create that discipline which we all go through.
I mean, I went through it.
It just takes time like that.
That's the only thing time.
And then and then, a heavy focus on you know, I would encourage you I don't know if you already have, but to create a library of your, your setups, screenshots.
You have to learn the variations of your setup.
You know, like what does price do?
Um, around a little bit before my entry?
What does price do after my entry?
How does a trend look after my entry?
Does it go straight up?
Does it go up and then has a pullback?
How does a consolidation after a breakout look, right?
Like I've created all those for myself and now it got me to a point where I can understand the different variations of structure after I enter.
So you could say that You know, if you put yourself into somebody in those shoes well, that person entered a trade.
He has a huge library of possible scenarios that repeat through time.
In real time, as things are happening, you're saying, oh, we're seeing this scenario.
Yeah.
Oh, I think you're frozen, Chris.
That's how you go from doubt.
What's that?
Okay.
You were frozen for a minute, but you're back now.
Oh, sorry.
You're saying that um, you have a library and then you have that kind of etched in your your, your head, so that when you, when something like that happens, you're you remember um, what that pattern is and how to react to it.
Yes.
Yes.
That teaches you more than just waiting for your stop to get ahead.
Because I shared in an interview how um I had to, I adapted and I and I brought, I was able to bring down my entry from box breakouts to a lower area.
Um, because I did studies to say okay well, how can I enter before the box break?
Right.
What is happening?
That price can tell me before that box break that I can look to answer.
Um, and it's through that process where I saved all the data.
I took screenshots, I annotated everything.
I'm like, I have years of this.
Um, and then now, when I say I show up and execute, is because I, I show up and I execute and I see price doing things.
I was like, oh, this is, this is what that's happening.
And now you know, right?
When you get to a period of knowing instead of sort of doubting or learning, then that's how your confidence can be at a point where you show up and just execute.
Yes, very valuable insights there.
Thank you, Christian, for the kind of the extra mentorship there.
Really appreciate that.
Well, I'm sorry I took up an extra 15 minutes, but thank you so much, Christian, for coming back.
And yeah, stay in touch.
Yeah, thank you both.
Ian, Tessa, thank you so much.
Yeah.
You know, good stuff what you guys are continuing to do and helping other traders.
And you too.
Yeah, thank you.
Yeah, I think, you know, the industry is growing more.
The product and the features, that industry is growing more.
And I think over time... it'll just help more and more.
I mean, we all grew up, you know, with Chat with Traders and yes, the work that you guys are continuing to do, I'm sure it's helping now the new traders coming in and just helping them go through that cycle and learning better.
And I think if you can shorten that learning curve over time with what you guys are doing, fantastic.
You know, I'm sure it's a great feeling.
Thank you.
You've reached the end of this episode of Chat with Traders.
We'll catch you next time on Chat with Traders.
