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I think this market right now is like, the love child of I am Sam and Gilbert Grape.
It's the stupidest fucking market I've ever seen in my life.
It literally is.
They say the market can be irrational longer than you can be solvent.
This is beyond irrational.
This is just fucking stupidity.
If you just eliminate all the stupid shit from your trading, that has no real justification.
I'm talking out of the money calls and puts.
I'm talking counter trend trading.
Every time you short something, that is up on the day.
Every time you go long, something that is down on the day because you feel like it's already dropped too much.
It's certain to bounce.
Every time you did all of that shit, you went against the market.
That would probably cover about 70% of your losses, all that stupid shit.
And if what you're left with are defensible trades-
I took this trade because on the daily chart it's not extended.
It's above all of its SMAs, it's above its technical indicators.
It's strong, relatively strong, against the market.
It's got all these things ticked off and that becomes the bulk of your trading.
Then you'll start seeing a dramatic shift.
Markets, speculation, and risk.
This is the Chat with Traders podcast.
Welcome back to Chat with Traders.
This is episode 312.
It's Ian Cox here, and today's episode is a special follow-up with a guest many of you will remember from episode 255 a few years ago.
Back then I had a chance to sit down with Vincent Brzezzi, known by many as Harry Seldon, from the real-day trading community.
He's been known to be one of the most transparent traders out there, posting his trades live.
His returns over the past several years multiple years north of 60 and even 80 speak for themselves.
Vincent is a former statistics professor, a longtime poker player and someone who spent years in the Hollywood film industry analyzing audience behavior and forecasting human reactions, all before becoming a full-time trader.
This time though, Tessa is taking the lead on the interview, because this conversation comes at a moment when many traders are struggling with discipline, second guessing their reads and trying to navigate a market that often seems disconnected from both fundamentals and traditional technical cues.
Vincent has a way of stripping away the noise, calling out the psychological traps traders fall into and offering his perspective on a market that often behaves in ways that feel irrational even to seasoned professionals.
You'll hear his unfiltered take on narrative-driven markets, the mental patterns that wreck traders, the practical edges that still work and what it really means to treat trading like a business rather than gambling.
As always with Vincent, there's honesty, humor, and a lot of insight packed in.
So with that, here's Tessa's conversation with Vincent Berzisi.
Hi, Vincent.
How's it going?
Good.
How are you?
Going well.
Enjoying this market drop.
You are?
Oh yeah.
I'm not.
Hey, just a quick note.
This conversation was recorded on November 6th.
You'll hear Vincent reference what the market was doing that day or around that day.
Oh, are you shorting?
Oh, I've been shorting Tesla all day.
And uh, I've had some spy puts on and yeah, I think we're going to test the 50 SMA on spy here soon enough.
Yeah, I'm training the cues, and I just really messed up today.
It's something I haven't done in a long time.
I didn't put a stop in, and the one time I don't put my stop in, this is what happens.
I don't know why I did that.
It's just, I think it's complacency.
And I thought, oh, I'm just trading a very, very small position.
But still, even though it's small, it really hurts.
It's like, it's more like I'm mad at myself not, like you know, like of the amount lost or anything like that.
It's more about just the mental, the emotional energy I spent on like being mad, and I think that's the only time I've ever used stops if I'm going to go out for a cigarette.
So I generally don't use them.
I know.
I remember that in the last interview you did with Ian on the podcast, you use mental stops.
And I was just really, I'm still amazed by that because you would really have to monitor it.
You're like glued to the screen, right?
Yeah, I have.
I mean, I have my four monitors here.
And then I've got some other monitors there and I have TC 2000.
I have option stalker.
I have thinker swim.
And then I have the one option chat room always going over here.
So, yeah.
But yeah, I generally will monitor them and use mental stops.
I mean, you know it depends if I'm scalping, like today.
I was scalping Tesla on and off throughout the day and had mental stops on that.
But, you know, I'm doing a longer term trade, like, I went long Apple.
I'm not going to have a mental stop.
I'm just, you know, if it breaks down a major support level, fine.
But other than that, I'm holding it.
Well, obviously, you know what you're doing because very few people can do mental stops.
I don't trust myself to do it.
I'm just not at that level yet.
And I feel like I trade options, but I also now trade futures.
And the one I was doing was just on futures.
But I feel like If you're just trading options, I can see why you don't have stops.
Like me, when I trade options I don't use stops because you know, if I have a spread or if I have a long call or something like that, there's like a built-in stop in a way.
Already you know.
There is.
I mean, there's a max loss there, right?
But, you know, options can drain you, obviously.
They can.
You know.
You buy an option for say 5, or spread for 250 or, And now it's down to 190, but it's still close to where you got in, so you're holding it.
And then the next time you look, it's got 40 cents left in it.
And you think, well, what's the point of closing it now?
It's only got 40 cents left in the thing.
I think I once put out a thing to people and said every time you looked and saw that it only had 10 cents, 20 cents, 40 cents whatever, and keep track of it in a journal And at the end of the month just added up the total loss you had because you didn't close those 10 cent options, 40 cent options.
And add in the times that those actually came back and rebounded.
Look what your net is at the end of the month.
And most of the time people found that you know if you just close them, even when they're at 30, 40 cents, the loss it adds up.
Yeah.
A little bit of savings, you know, every little bit counts, I guess.
But it's, you know, I guess we'll talk about the interview.
It's a very different market than the last time we spoke, certainly.
We're already kind of interviewing.
Oh, we are.
It's nothing totally formal the way I do it.
But, well, I can be a little formal.
Vincent, welcome back to Chat with Traders.
Thanks.
Glad to be back.
Yeah.
Um, it's been about two and a half to three years now since you were last on the show.
And I remember in early uh well, when you were on in early 2023, you said that that market was like one of the most difficult markets to trade.
Um well, what do you think about this market in 2025, now that we're almost at the end of the year too?
Well, let's say, look, um, So, I mean, I do remember then 2023, 2024 was a strange marketed trade.
It was very volatile, a lot of ups and downs with it.
I think I did about an 82% return in that year.
And every, by the way, all for the listeners to know, all my trades are always posted live.
I post the entry and the exit, the position side, you can check it out in time and sales.
Any broker has time and sales.
So if I say, I'm going along 1,000 shares or 20 contracts or whatever.
You could just see that I went longer than where I exited.
So you can look up my stats, but I did around 82, 83% return that year.
About similar the next year, 2024.
This year, I'm down to around 63%.
I'm kind of averaging out to the end of December would be around 63% right now.
So a little bit off the last two years because it is a very different market.
But to me, one, you have to treat trading like a business.
And I think that's something a lot of traders.
They focus very much on the wins or losses on that day.
And a lot of people, look, let's face it, a lot of traders are degenerate gamblers.
And so what they're looking at is their individual P&L day in and out.
What you have to look at is your monthly.
You have to look at This is how much I set out to make every month.
And you don't want that to range too much.
So if you say, I need to make $10,000 a month, you want that to be within $8,000 to $12,000.
You want a standard deviation of two grand.
You want a business plan to go with that.
That's what people should be looking at is am I going to be consistently profitable month after month?
Now, in this market right now, here comes the contradiction or the problem. to me.
And it's, we tell traders, you focus on price action.
Fundamentals are for long-term investors.
Fundamentals are for people that are putting together their portfolio.
And if you're trading, can't beat that return, stop fucking trading, right?
Just go be an investor.
If you can't beat the average return of the SP every year, there's no point in spending all the time in energy trading.
What's the average return again for the S&P?
What's that?
What is the average return for?
On average it's going to be around between 12 and you know, certainly in the bull markets 12 and 20 percent.
So if we, if we can't beat, if you're saying if we, if we as traders cannot beat that, then don't even trade.
Right.
If you put ten thousand dollars into SPY in January 1st, if you can't beat what your your portfolio total is going to be on December 31st of that year.
There was no point in doing it, right?
Because sure everyone can just put their money into SPY, or you could just put it in the MAG7 or any other combination.
A couple of risky stocks.
Trading is meant to beat that return, and you've got to do it consistently.
The problem with this year is this is probably the most hated rally in the history of stock market rallies.
The market continues to go up with excuses of oh, they're gonna cut rates or inflation, isn't that bad, the economy is doing well.
Evaluations have gotten so stretched that people no longer believe the rally.
So what happens is, is you become skeptical of these huge moves up in SPY or in the market.
And what that results in is you take profit really quick.
Right.
Let's say you're long Apple or Tesla and you're up a dollar a share.
You grab that dollar share and you run out because you constantly think this isn't going to last.
This is going to run out.
My luck's done.
And traders in general do not come from a rich mentality.
Rich mentalities are things are going to work out.
Why?
Because things always fucking work out for them.
Why wouldn't they work out?
Things are good today, they're going to be good tomorrow and they're going to be good a week from now.
People who aren't rich, people who aren't born rich.
Certainly, they're always waiting for the other shoe to drop, always.
Something is going to go wrong in their life.
Even when good shit happens, they know some bad shit's right around the corner and everything's going to get screwed up again.
So they bring that mentality to trading.
The moment you get a dollar profit 25, they run away with the money because they're just so certain it's going to reverse on them.
Now, when this market hits and you're looking at these constant like it's just nonstop up.
Ever since you know the big liberation day, it's been a nonstop ride and nobody believes it.
Talk of AI bubbles, talk of valuation stretch.
How the feds aren't going to cut makes it very hard to hold on and let those winners run.
Do you believe it?
I think this market right now is like the love child of I Am Sam and Gilbert Grape.
It's the stupidest fucking market I've ever seen in my life.
It literally is.
They say the market can be irrational longer than you can be solvent.
This is beyond irrational.
This is just fucking stupidity.
Do you think it's temporary or is this a new normal?
It's temporary.
It is absolutely temporary.
There's going to be a correction at some point when calling cops is not a very profitable business model.
But there will be a correction.
Simply because put aside rate cuts, put aside all the other tariffs and all the other shit valuations are just out of control.
The stocks are too expensive.
And people have to remember, most of the liquidity in the market aren't from me and you and traders.
They're from institutions, they're from 401ks, they're from portfolios.
And in order for that liquidity to keep up, you need JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to continue pouring money into the market.
They need to be able to look at frigging what do you call it, Nvidia?
And they need to be able to look at half these stocks and go.
That's a good price for me to buy it right now.
And it's not.
Sure, Google might still be a decent deal, and maybe Amazon, but by and large, the valuations on these things are disconnected from reality.
It doesn't make any sense at all.
So no, I don't believe it.
But I do believe that a bull market can run and run and run until there is a catalyst, until something causes the bubble to burst.
What will that be?
It could be, you know, Nvidia bad earnings, which I doubt would happen.
But, you know, it could be anything.
It could be an escalation.
It could be inflation hitting harder. could be the Fed saying no rate cuts.
It could be any one of these things that can cause and spark a sell-off.
When you said that the market is irrational.
When you say irrational, are you talking more about the structure or the sentiment, or something more psychological?
I'm talking about markets are always not based on what you see today.
It's based on what the market believes a year from now, or two years from now, is going to be the reality.
So, you know, they're not buying Amazon for what it's valued today.
They're buying it for what they think it can go, you know, forward peak and all that.
And that's where you can get these bits of irrationality, right?
Where story and narrative become more about our bigger part of the valuation than the actual fundamentals.
That's what happened in the big dot-com bubble, right?
Where it was all narrative.
There were companies with almost no revenue, no profit, and it was all about what it could do going forward.
I mean, look at PLTR.
PLTR is a $500 billion company right now on terms of valuation.
That has what?
A billion in revenue.
Maybe 500 million in profit.
I mean, if you just look at the book.
So that's based on clearly not what it is now.
It's based on what it will be.
Look at Tesla.
Tesla couldn't sell a car for its fucking life right now.
It's dropping everywhere.
But people are buying Tesla based on robots.
People are buying Tesla based on robo-taxi.
They're optimistic.
They're optimistic.
Yes.
And so when that optimism, when narrative becomes too much of the story, that's where you get bubbles right.
Because eventually some of those narratives pop.
Some of those narratives aren't reality.
And when a big enough narrative pops, it causes a domino effect that well, if Tesla's narrative wasn't true- then all these others probably certainly aren't, because we all believe this one was a sure thing.
And when one pops, then they all, and that's where you get that whole cascading effect down.
It would take a lot to do that.
I don't think that we're going to see an AI bubble popping anytime soon, but I do think a market correction certainly is healthy.
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If this market is driven by narratives right now, do we need to be better at the timing?
We're relying on price action and not relying on what we feel and what we think will happen.
I mean look, there are a lot of great, even if your people are afraid of playing the market, there are a lot of great passive ways.
For example, Pete, do you remember Pete Stolzer from OneOption?
And I got all the props.
I've been a member there for, what now?
Six years.
I don't own the company.
I don't work for the company.
I've just been a member.
I help them run the chat room there.
It's a one spell out one option.com.
And he's been advocating for just selling puts.
You know, just put selling puts, doing some bullish put spreads on stocks.
You might want to own and collecting premium because you got some high premium right now.
And so you know, if you look at something like Tesla, for example, You can go in on Tesla and sell the 400.
You can sell the 405 puts for a dollar right now that expire tomorrow.
Are you okay owning Tesla at 404 if it crashed down?
Yeah, probably.
It's not a bad price for it, I guess.
It would have to drop $40 for you to get assigned.
Okay, again, that's probably not going to happen tomorrow.
So You can collect a dollar in premium off of selling four or five puts that expire tomorrow.
That's not a bad way to safely play this market is to sell puts in stocks that you don't mind owning.
If you sell a put, the rule is the premium is great, but you cannot be unhappy with being assigned.
You have to also want to own that stock.
There's a little bit of fundamentals with it.
I feel like, I mean, I never do that because I'm more of a trader, a day trader or swing trader.
And I can try that, but I just feel like that becomes more like a longer term.
Yeah.
And it doesn't really appeal to me, but that's something to consider in this high volatility environment.
It's not a bad way to just put some passive income in there.
Particularly.
I recommend in this market right now, if anyone also has their long-term stock portfolio, that they keep.
A lot of traders have a separate account.
They have an account that they just keep some stocks in and that's their long-term account.
If you're going to add stocks in any type of long-term fashion in this market, I would recommend certainly don't buy the stock outright.
Just sell the puts, just sell the premium and just keep doing it until you get assigned and then you'll own that stock.
It's a much better way than just outright buying the stock right now.
So if you're like oh, I want to add Tesla to my long-term, don't buy Tesla, you know, just sell the 430 puts for four bucks.
Yeah, and then if you get it, great.
You get it.
You would have bought it anyway, and now you get it at a better price and you've collected the premium.
So it's just, you know, not a bad way to do that.
Assuming, you know, the trader has a lot of capital.
I mean, it's not for everyone.
It's funny.
My son, who is 20, he's a junior in Berkeley.
And this summer, he came home from the summer.
I'm in L.A.
And he wanted to get a part time job just to have spending whenever.
And so I suggested to him that he should do trading instead.
And he had an account, it's about, I don't know, $5,000, $6,000 in his account.
It's a small account.
Every time he got money or whatever, he just put it in and he bought NVIDIA and he bought different stocks and he built up the 5000, 6000.
College student.
And so he traded it over the summer.
And I posted every one of his trades in the chat room.
He had 13 straight successful trades.
And he made around $3,000 off of his $6,000, consuming like a 50% return over the summer.
So he turned his summer job into spending one or two hours a day trading.
I didn't tell him what to trade.
He texted me and said, hey, I'm going to go along Google.
Do I see any red flags?
But you are, as an example.
But he did a 50% return.
And to me it was a great validation of even with a small account you can manage to, you know, because 3000 that's pretty much what he would have gotten, making you know, being a barista at Starbucks over the summer.
What was he um?
Was it options or credit spreads, debit spreads, a couple of debit spreads, or straight call in the money calls or in the money puts.
Uh, you know, he'd buy one or two contracts at a time.
Um, So if he wanted to go long Apple, he'd buy a Delta.
07 08.
Call on Delta.
Maybe one or two contracts, because they're like 800 each.
And he had 13 straight winning trades.
He used some of the scanners here on OptionStocker and he used some of the charting on TC2000 and did great.
I mean, he woke up at 11 a.m. every damn day, but fine.
So just recently he started trading, you're saying like as a part-time kind of thing.
Yeah.
He never traded before.
Oh.
I mean, I taught him how to trade leading up to it, but he's never acted.
Well, it helps to have you teaching him.
He's lucky.
Well, he lost.
I would have disowned his ass.
So he hasn't lost.
So that's, I mean, you know, every trader at some point will go through that and, you So he hasn't gone through that, though, yet.
No, but he is also a degenerate gambler.
And he's on the Berkeley poker team and he's really good at poker.
But he's had some pretty bad gambling losses, I'd say.
But no, he hasn't lost trading stocks yet.
But most you're right.
Most traders.
I mean look, when I started I think I told you last time when I started I lost six figure account twice.
I got my ass beat.
Yeah.
And you crawled back out of that.
Yes, I did.
And traders hate to hear that if you want look in this economy right now, it's a very appealing prospect to be a trader because there's very not much job security.
People are getting laid off.
Trading gives you the financial independence and a skill set that allows you to make money, be your own boss.
All the things that people want, right.
So it's a very attractive idea.
What's not attractive is the idea that it takes two years minimum to master this shit.
And I'm talking two years where you're not spending two years losing.
You're spending two years paper trading and trading one share and getting your ass kicked.
And I mean if you can imagine any type of job that gives you, you know, this job security, the freedom, all of that the training does, that doesn't require you to put in either years of schooling or years of sitting at a desk working, grinding your way up through the bureaucracy to get to where you want.
Any job takes hours. time, effort, dedication to get what you want out of it.
Trading is no different.
The problem is is that because the rules are so fucking easy, go in, get an account buy, sell done?
Everyone thinks they can just go in and do it.
It's kind of like playing poker or playing chess.
It takes a minute to learn.
And then you go in and lose because most of it isn't just about the rules.
It's about the mindset.
It's about the patterns, all of that shit.
So yeah it, It's a great job.
If only traders would realize they need to actually put in the time to learn it.
Exactly.
Given your statistical background, you have a statistical background in human behavior model.
You model human behavior in the past.
Yes.
Did that impact your trading at all?
Did that give you an edge?
Did that help you?
Absolutely.
It kind of hurt in the beginning because I was an arrogant motherfucker and thought I can do this.
I can read the patterns.
You know, for me, ever since I was a kid, it was always being about obsessed with predicting human behavior.
And the stock market is the ultimate representation for that, which is why I hate when shit is so irrational, because predicting irrationality is irrational.
So in the beginning it was, oh, I should be able to predict this.
And I fell into that trap in the beginning, that a price action is one thing, but I could rationalize why a stock would go up or down right.
Like oh, I'm going to go long Netflix right now, because I just found out how many people a million people were laid off.
Well, they're home.
They don't have money.
They can't afford really to go out to the movies or any other entertainment.
So they're going to, you know, Netflix subscriptions are going to go up because of that.
As if institutions haven't thought of that shit.
As if that's not already priced in.
I would sit there when I'm in the beginning thinking I was smarter than all of them.
You know, they have hundreds of millions of dollars in their research departments, but no, no.
I knew something that they didn't think of, right?
Like they're going to call up, no, no, Vinny from LA has an idea.
Like they fucking knew that, right?
You very rarely will come up with something, a rationalization that they haven't thought of already.
That's what the idea of being priced in is.
And that's why price action is so important, because all that matters is what our institution's doing.
Yes, retail traders have a bigger impact on the market today than they did 5, 10 years ago.
But institutions still move the market.
And you want to be on the side of the institution.
So when I finally figured out right and when I started learning and when I hooked up with Pete and started seeing what he was doing at relative strength, and then I found the real day trading on Reddit, because I realized okay, I got it.
I've now been consistently profitable for whatever it was when I started it, over two year, year and a half straight.
And everyone else out there is losing all their money.
And all these other subs and all the other YouTube channels.
They're all trying to sell people the shit.
That doesn't work.
So if you're all right, I don't need their money.
I want to take money from people who have money.
Most people who are trading or who are trying to learn how to trade, or paying money for a stupid three-bar method, how to scalp low floaters.
Those are the people that need money the most.
I don't want to take their money.
I want to take the rich fucker's money who has way too much money and is sitting around playing on the market.
That's why I started the sub real day trading to help maybe teach people.
Look, you're doing it wrong.
This is how you should be doing it.
Stop the fucking scalping.
Stop the out of the money calls and the out of the money puts.
Go buy a fucking scratch off ticket or go to Vegas.
You'll have more fun.
Don't don't do that shit.
This is how you should trade if you want to consistently make money.
So what really turned your trading around from losing to becoming profitable?
Was it more the strategy or more the mindset or just the time in the market experience?
What really?
I'd say about 90% mindset.
I think it was one realizing when gambling was gambling, right?
And a lot of times it was simply saying it out loud, like I'm gambling, like not trying to justify a trade.
That's clearly a gamble.
Just admit it.
You're gambling here. like this is a gamble.
If you just eliminate all the stupid shit from your trading, that has no real justification.
I'm talking out of the money calls and puts.
I'm talking counter trend trading.
Every time you short something that is up on the day, every time you go long something that is down on the day because you feel like it's already dropped too much, it's certain to bounce.
Every time you did all of that shit, you went against the market.
That would probably cover about 70 of your losses.
All that stupid shit.
And if what you're left with are defensible trades.
I took this trade because on the daily chart it's not extended.
It's above all of its SMAs.
It's above its technical indicators.
It's strong, relatively strong against the market.
There's the market, when I say market, I'll think of SPY.
SPY is the proxy for the market.
It's strong relative to SPY.
It's got all these things ticked off.
And that becomes the bulk of your trading.
Then you'll start seeing a dramatic shift.
If you start going into things without confirmation.
Too many people try to front run shit going long before it's confirmed because everyone's afraid of missing the move.
Yeah, you're going to miss the fucking move.
A lot of it.
What you're looking for is the scrap.
The institution gets to move.
Sorry, they do.
JP Morgan will get 90% of that move.
But guess what?
That 10% of the move, you can make a damn good living off of.
So if you see something break through the SMA and you're like oh, now I want to go long, make sure it closes above the SMA.
In fact, if you want to be real conservative, make sure it opens above it the next day.
Then go long.
Did you miss a lot of that move?
Sure.
But you also miss around 90% of the time you're going to get your ass kicked.
So if it's 90% for you of the mindset, how did you overcome it?
I mean, how long did it take?
Because I'm going through that right now.
And there are days when I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm doing much better.
And then like today, like I told you earlier, I just... completely like didn't follow my rules.
Everyone's rules might be different, but I knew better not to not have a stop for me.
And I did it anyway.
And I don't know, like, why am I doing this?
It's like, why?
I know it's wrong.
So it's such a challenge for me sometimes.
How did you overcome that part?
You know, sometimes as I said earlier, arrogance hurts and sometimes it helps.
In the beginning it hurt, right?
Because I went in thinking I knew everything and I could do it.
But where it helped was when you look around and see, whatever you try to do something anything, the first thing you got to ask yourself is is it actually possible, right?
Is it possible to be consistently profitable trading or is it just a scam?
And so when I looked around and set out and found out and looked in certain traders and found not only yes, they're saying it's possible, but I was able to confirm that that it's possible.
I saw the trades.
I saw that I was able to go back and look over a year of their trades.
That's why I post everything so people could see that it is possible, that what I'm doing is provable and you can do it.
Once I found out that yes, this can be done, then the arrogance helped, because if it can be done, no one's going to tell me I can't do it.
There's obviously a way to do it.
For me, that was the first step, was realizing, like, if you wanted to play poker for a living, the first thing you would do is say, are there people that can actually play poker for a living?
Or if it's just pure gambling, there would be no way, right?
No one is lucky enough if it's pure gambling to be consistently profitable, to make a living off of something right.
There's just no way statistically to do it.
But obviously, there are poker players who do make a living, so it's possible.
If I were to say I want to become a professional poker player, I would take that same mindset.
I would be like, they're doing something right.
I'm not.
What are they doing that I'm not doing?
And a lot of the times it's adding to winners.
A lot of the times it's if you look at the imbalance between their winners and their losers, their winners are much bigger than their losers are, right?
There's not a fear.
We have the wrong type of fear, because when our trades go against us, we suddenly become super fucking hopeful they're going to turn around.
But when our trades work we suddenly become super fucking pessimistic that they're going to reverse on us.
If we actually flip that and became hopeful when we're right and pessimistic when we're wrong, That mind shift alone could change your entire trading game.
Because if you think about it, when you make a trade and it's working, you were right.
You looked at it.
You said, this is going to go up.
I'm taking a call or buying the stock.
And it actually starts going up.
You were correct in your assessments.
So why is it then that most traders become most afraid?
You were actually just proven right, and now you're most afraid that it's going to turn against you.
That's part of the key issue that traders have as well as oh shit, I was wrong, but yet believing oh, it's going to come back.
It's going to reverse.
I'm holding it.
Flip that.
Just flip it around.
Yeah.
So did journaling, did you journal to kind of help you see these things?
Yeah, I did.
I still do.
I use TraderSync as a journal.
I mean, there are plenty of journals out there.
I like it.
I'm comfortable with it.
I came up with the walkaway analysis.
I developed the walkaway analysis, which is the idea that if you take a look at all your trades online and you say okay, what would happen if I held this five minutes longer, one hour longer, held it to the end of the day, held it for two days, right?
And you just entered in, or the system will enter in what the price was five minutes after you closed it, an hour after you closed it.
You could set any intervals you want.
Chances are you will see that on most of your winners, if you held them longer, right?
And mostly a lot of people come out.
If I held my winners longer, like an hour and a half on average, longer my profit would have gone up 30, 40.
And doing the walkaway analysis is one thing that helps people with that mindset, because it shows them that if you ride those winners longer and just hold them, sometimes even for an hour, an hour and a half longer, instead of jumping out the moment, you hit a profit.
That alone will help boost your PL.
So for the listeners, can you remind us of your bread and butter trading strategy, trading approach?
Yeah, it is.
And one, the market comes first, right?
So everything revolves around the market.
75% of all stocks, whether they're in the index or not, will go with SPY.
If SPY is up, 75% of stocks in general will be up, and 75% will be down if it's down.
So you're looking for days that aren't what we call in the chat room.
Low probability trading environments LPTE.
We're looking for days that are trend days that have actual direction in the market.
So the market comes first.
Then second is, is a stock relatively strong or relatively weak to the market.
In other words, if you look today at Google right now Google's still up 29 cents, but the market is down almost 1 today.
That's like an anchor around Google's legs, pulling it down.
Google wants to drop because the indexes are dropping, but it's still green.
In order for that to happen.
And that's relative strength.
That means it's relatively strong to the market.
In order for that to happen, institutions have to be in there supporting Google.
Retail traders can't give that type of volume.
So institutions are buying that stock, even though they're selling the index and selling other stocks.
I want to be on the side of the institution.
So now I've now identified okay Google, Apple two stocks that, if I wanted to go long today, are relatively strong.
So the next thing I would do is look at the daily chart.
That's the third step.
I now look at the daily chart and see, okay, Google's in is above all the SMAs.
It's not overextended from the EMA 15.
It's already had earnings, gapped up on earnings and has not yet gone back into that gap.
It's held the gap.
And it's near its all-time high at $291.90 something.
I like stocks that are by their all-time high.
Why?
Because there's no bag holders above that number.
There's nobody who, once it hits, if it gets to 292, is going to be like I'm selling because I've been holding this damn thing for two years at this price and I'm finally breaking even.
Almost anyone who bought Google is in profit right now.
So unless there's a reason to take profit, Google will just continue to go up.
And so now I've identified a good daily chart, relative strength.
The only thing I don't have in my favor is the market.
And this is where this market is different than the last time we spoke.
Because normally I would say you need to wait and make sure that the market isn't going to continue this downward trend.
But what we've seen now for almost nine months straight is this market I mean nuclear fucking war could be seen as bullish for this market right now.
So this market, nine times out of 10, is going to bounce back, is going to continue up.
I would be willing now to take along our Apple or Google where two years ago I'd say I'd recommend wait, make sure that today's drop in the market doesn't continue.
But now I'm looking at the SMA 50 on SPY as my line.
And that line right now, for anyone listening, is at 664.73 on SPY.
SPY needs to break that line for me to no longer want to take bullish links.
So that's kind of your mental stop?
Yeah, that would be.
I don't use hard stops unless I'm going to go out and smoke a cigarette and I'm scalping something um.
So i use method stops.
Do you uh trade one stock at a time or do you trade as a portfolio?
Do you have like a group of stocks?
I have a group.
I mean i'm long gold right now.
I am uh long apple, long oscar.
Uh, i have short tesla.
Uh again, i shorted it.
I have a um a time spread on ttd.
I have leap puts on a spy at the moment.
And I have the one side of a call debit spread on meta for a bounce back tomorrow.
So I have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven positions on.
Okay.
So you manage it like a portfolio.
That's a lot to manage.
So I can see why, like when you trade like portfolio style and they're I don't know if they're diversified enough, but like I can see why some people can be more comfortable like not having stops, you know and and cause it's?
There's a bunch of different stocks in there.
Is it, are you using, um, straight out shares or are you using options on all of them?
Oh, well, um, you know, I have shares on Oscar, for example, but options on Apple, um, I'll go both.
I had a short 1,000 shares on Tesla today.
So I'll go back and forth on it.
And also, from 2023 to 2024, I was posting just insane sizes, 10,000 shares of Tesla.
And what people obviously told me hey Yeah, it's great learning, but it's not very relatable if you're taking 500 calls on Amazon deep in the money calls.
I get it, okay.
So now I'm kind of running two different.
I'm running an account where I'm saying okay, I'm short a thousand shares on Tesla, or I took 25 contracts on Apple, large enough that you can go in time sales and still confirm my trade and see that it's there.
But the larger trade, like if I do that, sometimes I'll be like okay, and I'm also going to do 250 contracts on Apple.
I'm just doing a separate account, not posting that one.
But it's just a matter of proportion.
So if I'm posting, I did 25 calls.
There are times I'll also do 250 calls, but I'm posting 25 that is confirmable and you can see it.
What's the average duration of your portfolio?
Oh, about a day.
A day?
A day.
Oh, okay.
So, so you are a day trader.
Yeah.
I mean, I'll tomorrow, if you ask me tomorrow, I mean, all these positions will be different.
Oh, so then how do you do, how do you prepare for this?
Is this all in a pre-market or are you doing this end of day for the next day?
Like, how do you, um, what's your, your process?
I wake up at 6 20 in the morning, 10 minutes before the market starts, drag myself out of the bed.
Uh, quickly grab a cigarette, drink coffee, run to my monitors here before the bell rings, look up at the charts and start the day.
That's how I prep now.
And then I answer any messages and texts I get off of X or in the chat room.
Yeah.
I mean it used to be I would wake up way early and do all the pre-market prep and see what was up pre-market and down pre-market and you know what it just it didn't.
It didn't help.
But again, that's when i was in the um, whenever i taught, when i was a, i was a professor, when i was in the movie industry and i had to give presentations and sometimes, for example my, my staff would make this like long power.
Back then, when we use powerpoint presentations or whatever um, and i even and i like cinema con in Las Vegas I would get up in a room and there'd be two, 3000 people in there and I'd stand up on stage and give it.
I always insisted on not seeing the presentation beforehand, not a word of it.
I wanted to read it fresh off the cuff as I was presenting it.
I was never someone who did well with prepping anything.
So the fact that I I basically sit in this chair a minute before the opening bell and is probably not something that people should should look at and go Oh, I should do that.
Just, just my style was to never prep and I never ever prep for anything.
Yeah.
So you just wait to see what the market does and then you react.
You don't have a trading plan going in.
Um, I mean, not like a structured one.
No, I'll look at.
Uh, I'll quickly, the moment it opens, I'll look at option stalker over here and I'll see what.
Is relatively weak, relatively strong.
I'll look at TC thousand over here.
Take a look at the charts and spy and I'll look at my positions.
I should say, look at my overnight positions first.
Should I close any or not close any?
And I'm more likely to close a short in profit faster than I will close a long, because of the way this market is right now.
And then I will start searching to see if there's anything that's really popping out at me in terms of this is a good trade.
I'll also check to see.
For example, if I have too many longs, I might look to see is there a good short I should put on?
If I have too many shorts, it might go all right.
I need to balance this and maybe put on something that's a decent long.
So I'll do that to check.
I love scalping Tesla, for example.
I scalped it three, four times today.
It's an easy stock to scalp.
And it's an easy stock.
For example, I fucked up when I short Tesla a week ago.
It was around eight, nine days ago.
And I shorted at 436, 437.
And I held that short all the way up to Tesla being at 470, 1,000 shares of it.
Because I knew the great thing about Tesla is that frigging stock is going to stay in a range.
Right now, Tesla has gone between 400 and 470 since September.
You just have to wait that damn stock out.
It's going to come back, right?
So that's one I like to scalp, because I like stocks that I can hold on to if it's not going in my direction.
Granted, I prefer holding it long, any stock long, but you can hold on to a Tesla.
Yeah, it has a personality.
I mean, every stock sounds like, yeah.
Yeah. it's very helpful to know the personality of the stocks that you trade often.
Yeah, like Oscar's personality is an asshole.
It's a pain in the ass stock.
Which stock is that?
OSCR.
It's a total pain in the ass stock.
The stock will be up $1.50 in the morning and down 40 cents before you close.
Every damn time.
So that stock's a pain in the ass, but I do like the stock fundamentally.
Why not just trade...
I feel like I mean, I used to want to do that like look for relative strength to the SPY and drill down in stocks and scan.
I just feel like it's so much work.
And so I ended up just trading either SPY or QQQ.
I just think it's simpler, but I don't know.
What are your thoughts on that?
You can make a lot more money trading the stocks.
And the simple reason for that is, let's say I go long a stock that is relatively strong.
Let's say I go long, let's say here on SPY.
SPY is at, earlier today, SPY is at 673.
And at the same point in time, Google is at 286.
SPY then drops down to 671-ish, 671, 670.
Because Google has relative strength, it drops down to 285.
So the buffer I got there, if I just went long SPY at 673, I'd be down $3 a share on that ETF.
Yeah.
Going along Google at 286 because it's relatively strong.
When SPY dropped, Google did not drop proportionally as much as SPY did.
So I'm only down a dollar a share on Google.
And percentage-wise, I'm down less than I would be on SPY.
So it gives you that buffer.
Now, SPY had gone up.
Google would have gone up proportionally more than spy would have gone up.
So again, I'm making more on Google.
I totally get that.
Yeah.
And that's the beauty of relative strength.
Like that.
Right.
Relative strength analysis.
Right.
Yeah.
And I'm not predicting, you know, spy is obviously, um, very new sensitive.
It can move very quickly.
So having that buffer, um having the idea that something is separately driving the stock is certainly gives you an advantage because with SPY and like SPY futures, you're just kind of predicting the direction on SPY, which is always a challenge.
Now, do you use AI at all as part of your trading process in your analysis or anything like that?
No, not really.
I mean, I will use ChatGPT every now and then.
I mean, look, I have Trade Exchange up, right, which is just a news service.
It gives you all the news coming.
But if I see a big move on a stock, let's say Google jumps up 6 7, whatever And I'm looking at trade exchange and I see no news on that thing.
I can maybe search Twitter X and just type and go and see if anything's there.
But I could also just go on chat GPT and say, hey, why the hell is the stock up so much today?
Tell me what you find.
I'll just as soon as use that as I'll use searching on Twitter or using trade exchange.
But I'll use it for like, A new search, but I won't use it for, hey, what should I go long or short?
Or what do you think?
Or pasting in a chart.
It's just not there yet.
It's not good enough yet.
Yeah, I mean, I use it more and more now every morning.
How do you find it?
I like it especially.
I can like give it the.
I look at pre-market so I give it.
Oh, you know the, the current um prices of key, um.
You know, like you um, the NQ um, what is it?
NQES, the dollar um, the yields, all those key um symbols, and it'll help uh kind of paint a picture like what's going on compared to the day before and then also what's going on in the news.
It's just kind of an overall.
I don't like 100 rely on it, but it kind of gives me a picture of what the sentiment might be for the, at least for the next hour or so.
So i find it really, really useful.
Which one do you use i?
I use i pay the, the subscription, um or chat, gpt or five or what is it?
Uh, not the free version, because i feel like the free version it's limited, but um and, and i even talk to it, Here's a great tip.
I don't know if you use it, do this or not with chat GPT.
I do it certainly because I also have a six-year-old son who loves talking to it, but you can tell it to save things in long-term memory.
So for anything that you want chat GPT to remember now it'll remember certain things over conversations, but it tends to quickly forget over time certain things you might tell it.
If you specifically say, store this into long-term memory, update long-term memory with this.
Whether it's facts about you or the way you want it to report things on the market, it'll put it into its long-term memory.
And you can even say, store this long-term memory.
When I say trading mode, this is what I want.
And you list out all the things it needs to do when the moment you say trading mode.
And that way in the morning you can just open up and go enter trading mode and it'll go right into it.
So like with my six-year-old, I say, enter kids mode.
And it knows.
Explain things to him as if he's six years old.
Use examples that a six-year-old would be able to understand.
Make it fun, make it.
These are the things that My son likes.
These are the TV shows he likes.
These are the stories that he likes.
All that's stored into its long-term memory.
So when I say enter kids mode, it automatically knows how to speak, what to talk about, and all of that.
And when my son asks his questions, it knows how to interact.
Almost like a babysitter.
You know, take what you can get.
A friend.
But it is, the more you update long-term memory on these things, the better they become.
Yeah, I think that's a great idea.
So then it can know your, it'll know your kind of, your trading style and your psychology and maybe even step in for accountability and things like that.
Right.
Like also, you could always one thing that's definite, no matter what, whether you're Hard code into your long-term memory.
Stop glazing me.
Stop pleasing me?
Glazing.
Stop with the fantastic question.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
You've hit right at the heart of the matter.
That's right.
You really nailed this one.
Stop that fucking bullshit.
You do not need to fluffer me.
Just be real.
Don't do it.
Be real.
Hard code that in, because that's just annoying crap that it tries to do to get you more addicted to it.
And if you hard code that in, it will not 100%, but will eliminate some of that shit.
So is there any kind of trading style or approach that is outside of your current?
You know the way you trade, that you would love to explore more and experiment.
I mean...
I never, I mean, I, oh wow, the Tesla board is approved, must pay package.
And you could see the response on Tesla actually is not that strong.
It continues to actually be down for the day, which means a lot of that was priced in.
I never got into crypto that much.
I trade.
Obviously I trade MSTR and I'll trade coin and all those stocks, but I never traded Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of those directly.
I've never played around with that.
And to be honest, it's not my area of expertise or my forte.
And I have so many people asking me questions about it.
And I have to say I can send you to someone I know who knows, but I don't know the fucking answer to that.
But if I can go back in time to learn, I probably would learn more about that world and trading in that world.
One of the reasons I find this market frustrating.
I mean look, I'm up 62, not that frustrating, but frustrating still is.
I like things that have rules.
You can predict them.
All traders are technical traders.
They all go about it different ways, but you're all trying to find levels of support, levels of resistance.
What are those numbers and how is the stock going to react when it breaks those numbers or not, right?
Those are boundaries.
What makes this market so difficult is there's constant news whether it's news coming from the administration or world news or company news that is just destroying those technical boundaries constantly.
Right where you think you can rely on the strongest technical boundary, there is 200 SMA.
And those get blown apart all the time by a new story.
So Bitcoin and crypto have even less of that, of those boundaries.
That's what was difficult for me to get past.
Other than the almost cult-like belief and it's not that cult-like if it turns out to be correct that look, just grab take, buy Bitcoin and it's just going to keep going up right.
There's a finite source, blah, blah, blah.
It's hard for me to trade something without looking at it and reading the price action and having some relative certainty, with some sort of edge, that this shit is going to go in this direction.
Well, maybe AI can help with that.
It certainly would be better than me.
I'll trade MSTR because it still follows some technicals a bit.
It's been certainly bearish.
But what I won't do is look at MSTR and go, it's at 238 right now.
This thing used to be at 543.
Bitcoin's over 100.
I'm going to buy it.
I see no technical basis whatsoever to buy MSTR right now.
Because what you can do is look at the chart and go OK.
Would that argument applied on October 29th, when it was at 286?
Yes, you would have gotten crushed because it dropped $50 from there.
Would have that argument applied back on October 10th when it was at 323?
Yeah, you could have said, oh, I'm buying it now.
Look, it's dropped $250 from its high.
It's got to come back up now.
Bitcoin's at 115.
You would have lost $194 a share at that point.
So that argument of this thing has dropped so much It's got to bounce back.
I see so many people posting, now's the time to buy MSTR.
Good luck.
There's nothing more behind that than your gut.
So going back to this irrational market, how do traders stay sane in this market?
And what's the best way to approach it?
Opiates.
Hydrocodone, Oxy, those help.
Nicotine, good.
Caffeine, good.
Look, if you can somehow realize and look at it and just play the price action, which is much easier said than done, you're going to be a lot more safe.
If you look at it today and you're like, today is down.
Today, I am going to day trade short.
And I'm going to try to be in cash by the end of the day because I know these trends don't seem to continue and it might be up tomorrow.
Great.
You'll stay sane doing that.
If you start going I'm not going to go long here, because this market's going to implode then you're just going to keep getting frustrated every single day.
You're going to look at it and go.
Well, I missed it.
I missed it.
I missed it.
And there are people who are looking at this and going, I was, you know, short pack.
I bought leap shorts way back and now they're a hedge.
I have them as a hedge.
That is another way to deal with it.
Have yourself a hedge, right?
Go long, play the market, go in the direction.
But if you're that frigging worried about an implosion, Keep a hedge there.
Buy some spy lead puts.
That way, if it drops, okay, well, at least your lead puts are going to print.
I mean, that's another way.
But if you keep looking and waiting for a black swan event because, yeah look, shit doesn't make sense right now.
Everyone knows, anyone who goes to the fucking store knows how much prices are up.
I don't give a shit what the CPI says.
I know how much it costs right now for a person to go shopping and get groceries for a week or take an Uber somewhere or get DoorDash.
It's astronomically expensive.
All that shit is expensive.
Housing, rent is expensive.
You just compare it to five years ago, where wages have not gone up proportionally, that which means people are more in debt.
That shit doesn't make sense.
Tariffs don't make fucking sense.
None of that makes any sense because someone is paying that bill.
Either the company is paying that bill because it's a tax on the company to the government in which case not passing it on to consumers, but then that will show up in their earnings as gross margins drop or consumers are paying that bill if it's being passed along to them.
It's not a political thing.
It's a simple economic thing.
If there's a 50 tariff on China and Microsoft is an American company that buys the glass for China for their hardware and they pay 200 million a year for that and they're now a 50 tariff.
They're still paying 200 million a year for that, but now they're paying 100 million to the US government as part of that tariff.
That comes from Microsoft.
It doesn't come from China.
It doesn't come from anywhere else.
It comes from the company.
So OK, now how are they going to make up that $100 million?
They're either going to charge more for that product or they're going to eat it, and their margins will show it.
So where is that money?
That makes no fucking sense.
Cutting- cutting rates, while at the same time saying the damn economy is going to do 4 growth next quarter.
Well, if it's going to do fucking 4% growth, why are you cutting rates?
You want inflation to go up more?
That doesn't make sense.
So none of it makes sense.
PE ratios and companies that make a billion dollars in revenue worth a half a trillion dollars.
OK, but I know what the price action is, so I'm going to play it.
Nothing makes sense.
But you know what makes sense?
Trading.
Trading makes sense.
Yes.
Even though it's hard, trading makes sense right now.
Yes.
It can keep you sane, actually.
Ironically, it can keep you sane because it doesn't matter if Tesla right now should be worth 100 or 1000.
What matters is right now it's worth $455.50.
The board has already announced the pay package agreement.
It's still down $6 for the day.
It has not gone green.
That tells me there's weakness in Tesla.
And if I were going to trade Tesla right now, I would probably short it.
The Volume is already drying up.
Anybody buying it because of the pay package, it was clearly priced in.
I would short Tesla right now at $455.60.
So mark that down, $455.60, and we'll see where it is tomorrow.
I will.
This is recorded.
It is 11-6-20-25.
I would short Tesla at $455.60, and we'll see where it is in the morning.
I know we're a little over an hour.
Do you have a few more minutes?
Yeah, of course.
Oh, okay.
Well, is there anything that you would love to talk about that I didn't ask?
Well, I mean, look, I'm going to be doing a podcast called Tradecraft to try to help people.
Tradecraft?
Sorry, my dog here is being a little.
Oh, my dog, too.
My dog.
I locked him out.
Oh, my God.
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 guest.
He's the dopiest, like, friggin' golden retriever in history.
Oh, you have a golden... I have a mix.
Yeah.
Here, I'll show you.
Oh, how cute.
There's my... There he is, Ryder.
My son named him after the Paw Patrol Ryder.
But, yeah, he's not a very smart golden retriever, but it's okay.
But he's cute.
Yeah.
Um...
I mean, it's hard to do this alone.
It's why I do things like plug that Pete's thing, because what you want to do as a trader is you want to treat it as a career.
You want to realize the time it takes to do it, the difficulty that there is involved in it.
And having a community around you certainly helps.
Having guidance certainly helps.
But it's sort of like you have to prepare yourself, like you're going to college, like you're going to, you know, go into class, you're going to learn and you're not going to just jump in and make money as a lawyer or a doctor without first going through the process of getting there.
And there's a good reason for that.
And to thinkorswim's credit and all the other.
I like thinkorswim on this for this more than the other brokers, but they all have some version of paper trading.
It is a paper trading particularly if you're able to get it with live quotes is a fantastic way to train right, because it it allows you to do the trades, to journal your trades and yes, there is an emotional element that's missing right, because it's not real money at stake.
But one thing about when I put together like these are the milestones you know, be successful, have a win rate of 75, profit factor two to one.
You know et cetera, et cetera, before you progress to actual money, you know, go to that, go to one share and so on is if you're able to do that and you look back at your journals and you go okay, I've done 500 trades over the last six months.
Whatever there helps your mindset to be able to look and say this trade has been successful 80 of the time.
Like if I did a bullish put spread where my short strike has at least two levels of hard support above it right.
So bullish put spread out of the money.
I'm basically saying I'm going like if I were to do it on, even like Tesla right now, and I went out to November 21st and I sold the 400, the 400 and puts and bought the 395 puts for a dollar credit.
Okay.
So I need Tesla to stay above 400, which gives me two good lines of support.
I have the 50 SMA and I have a trend line coming off of the bottom of 915's candle, the gap-up candle.
So I have these two level-level supports.
So in order for that trade to be in jeopardy, I had to break through the 400 and break through the 395 level.
Those type of trades, if it's set up correctly, have around an 87% to 92% win rate.
We did it once, and we did like over 400, like 370 of them, and it was 91.4% successful.
Knowing that and putting that trade on.
That helps your mindset because you know OK, even if this Tesla gets in trouble, I know that 91 of the time this type of trade works out.
That type of repetition and doing that really can help when people start to freak out, when they see their trade turn against them or when they jump in to take profit.
Having that evidentiary stuff in front of you, journaling helps with that.
Doing walkaway analysis helps with that.
Seeing if you hold onto a trade in profit longer helps with that.
It's the hardest thing in the world to add to a trade that's in profit.
Like if you go long something and if you're up a dollar in it, you want to take profit.
But the best thing most times to do is to add to that trade and double your trade.
But most people won't do it.
Because it's like counterintuitive.
Right.
You know?
It's like if you bet me on a baseball game and you're winning in the fourth inning and your team is up five to two, and I came to you and I said would you like to double the bet right now?
You'd say yes every time.
Like every single time, if we bet 100 on a game and you're winning five to two in the fourth inning, I'll give you a chance to double your bet right now.
You'd say yes.
That's the same thing in trading, right?
I mean, you said you bought Apple at 270.
It's now at 272.
And you go, all right, you have a chance to double that bet.
But now you go, no, because it already went up two dollars.
It's going to it's going to reverse.
Well, that's because you think it's scarier, but it's scarier.
And we remember with startling clarity every single time those trades have reversed on us and it leaves that that scarred.
Yeah.
Yes.
Um, I remember in the last interview, you mentioned that you don't like people.
Do you still not like people?
Never like people.
Um, I don't mind talking to large groups of people because they're nobody's individual.
Um, no, I don't, I don't like people.
Uh, and you know, I don't expect them to like me.
I
I have very little use for most.
I, I try to avoid people as much as I can.
But you know, people ask them.
Well, if I don't like, well you know I'm full of shit.
Because if I don't like people, why am I help?
Why do I get like I give away all my shit for free, for you know, I give away my wiki for free.
Help people.
Cause I really don't like people who take advantage of other people.
Like, I don't.
Like if you have someone who's broke and they're trying to make a better life for themselves and their family look, i don't like you.
I probably would not want to sit down with you and have a drink with you, but the person next to you who's trying to scam you out of money, i'd i'd love to fucking curb, stomp that person, because that person is disgusting right, the person who's trying to take advantage of people.
And so When I look at trading and this world of trading, I see so many people just trying to make a better life for themselves.
They're either down on their luck or they're not going anywhere at work.
Other than the degenerate fucking gamblers out there and there are plenty of those, but a lot of people just want to get ahead.
A little taste of something that everyone else seems to you know, all these other people seem to be able to get.
Millionaires and billionaires now.
Millionaire doesn't mean shit.
Well, it means shit to people who aren't millionaires, I guess.
But all that, they want some of it.
And they have every right to want some of that.
There's no reason why they shouldn't.
And they look at their trading and they go, I can do that.
I can become part of that.
And what happens is they get preyed upon.
Everyone jumps out of the woodwork with their three bar men, this method, and I can teach you this.
Or, you know, I'm going to sit here and give you advice on Reddit with a five page dissertation, even though I've never been fucking profitable in my life.
Doesn't matter.
I'm still going to tell you.
It's like getting a relationship advice from the person divorced 10 times.
Like, get the fuck away from me.
All you're doing is hurting these people.
And these people, of course, become disillusioned.
They become cynical.
And so eventually they blame the market.
Everything's rigged against me.
Well, it's not.
Is it rigged?
No.
Are there unfair advantages to people who are wealthy?
Of course.
You know, I can call JPM or I know plenty of people much more.
You can call JPM and get exotic options.
You know, a person on E-Trade can't fucking do that.
They can't get an exotic option.
They can't get the types of trades that these other people can.
But by and large, no, it's not rigged.
No, they're not hunting your stop loss of your five shares.
They don't give a shit about your five.
You think someone in JPO or Goldman Sachs is sitting there going, oh, look, Bob from Virginia is-
He's got to stop there with his 10 shares.
Let's go.
Let's go nail that fucker.
No, they don't give a shit.
They could care less about the retail traders.
It's just a matter of these people have been burned so many times that, yeah, I get it.
You don't want to say, look, I got burned.
So it's easy to blame everything else.
I noticed that just from my experience, people who say they don't like people they actually are the people who really care about people the most.
Well, I mean, I don't know if I care.
I definitely care that people are assholes and take advantage of other people.
I don't want to sit down with them.
I don't want to hear about their life problems.
I don't want to come on over and hang out, But you tell me that someone is taking advantage of you.
Yeah, I'll make it my business to make sure that I have a problem with that person.
Yeah.
And that's part of the reason why you created Real Day Trading, which I think is really awesome, a very awesome community.
It is.
And a lot of great mods there that are doing good work, because I know I've posted a lot there but they've taken up a lot of that.
And-
Yeah, that's the idea behind it to give people a place where they can actually learn both day trading and swing trading as a business, as something that they can actually do for a living, and to avoid not just the scams but the bad advice.
A lot of people who are just well-meaning.
But look dude, you shouldn't be giving people advice if you can't do it yourself.
Yeah.
All these people say, you need to be able to be profitable to help other people.
It's not a hard concept.
Yeah.
So have you moved closer to your goal of going to Kansas, living in Kansas and chasing those tornadoes?
Yeah, actually.
I mean literally waiting for my son to graduate from college from Berkeley, because I want to be here during the summers and all that.
But when he's done, if I can, you know, get myself a nice little compound out there and enjoy watching tornadoes as I sit on the front porch, and then next neighbor is like five fucking miles away.
Yeah, I am a hundred percent with that.
I'm also good with any apocalyptic event that might be coming our way.
I always have the same delusion that everyone else does that I will survive an apocalyptic event.
So great.
I'm good with that too.
Humanity might need a reset anyway, but yeah, Kansas would be nice.
But you know, as long as I can have a fiber optic internet, I'm good.
In the meantime, you're chasing the tornadoes of the markets.
So it is a storm and it is.
It is, I mean, There will be a drop, and that SMA 50 is really your bellwether, your telltale sign for it.
So that's what I encourage everyone to really look at.
Everything else is noise unless that breaks.
If that does break and breaks with volume and there is a confirmation of that break, certainly the next day it continues down, that tells you that there is a correction starting to happen.
And that's what people should look for.
Until then, you're really looking at this back and forth that's going to go up and down.
You're talking on a daily timeframe?
On a daily timeframe, yeah.
Okay.
So I look at the SMA 50, SMA 100, SMA 200 on the daily chart because that is what institutions look at.
I like the EMA 15 on the daily chart.
Others like the MA8, they're all fine, just however long you want the trend to be.
Volume, obviously, and trend lines.
Trend lines are your best friend.
Sadly, whenever we try teaching fucking trend lines and alga lines, like 75 of the people can't figure them out.
They can't draw them correctly.
And then they wind up using the wrong trend lines.
So it's like, I don't even know what to do there.
I did a video on it.
I tried explaining it.
And then every time someone goes, all right, I got it.
And then they show me their trend line.
It's like, oh my fucking God.
I mean, okay.
Like, like very simple, Jack, you got it.
I don't know what to tell you.
If you can't figure out how to draw a trend line, I don't know how much you have, but if you can figure them out, they're very, very useful to use, because they are one thing, that they are your friend.
Actually, you build algos around.
Yeah well, it was really nice chatting with you vincent, so happy that you wanted to come back on the show.
Yeah, it was fun.
Yeah well, for those who want i know you don't like people, but for those who want to reach out to you, what's the best way to?
Three ways, really.
Uh, i'm on x.
You can message me on X.
I respond to almost all messages, unless they're asking me for some promotion or something under Real Day Trading.
I am on Reddit, the Real Day Trading sub.
You can go there.
Or you can come to the OneOption chat room, which is Pete's community.
And that is oneoption.com.
I think he has a thing where you get two weeks free sign up.
I'm in there every day, from open to the market to end of market, answering questions, posting trades, talking to people.
Those are the three ways to interact with me.
And I try to respond to everyone.
The only thing that I would caution is if you just go, what do you think about, you know, Google?
No, tell me what you like or don't like about it.
You know, be like, Hey, I like that the daily chart on Google looks strong.
It's relatively strong.
It's above SMAs, but I'm worried about going long right now.
What do you think?
I will answer that question all day long in detail, but don't be lazy about the fucking shit.
Like, don't be like, Hey, Google question mark.
So I'm guessing you don't do one-on-one mentorship.
No, I don't.
I once did that.
I gave it away for charity and people bid on, on that.
And I did like a, like a one-on-one four hours spread over four weeks tutorial.
I don't need the money for that.
So why would I do it?
That's why I wrote.
I mean look, if someone reads the wiki that I wrote like a 300 page trading guide, follows my trades and wants to DM back and forth with me about some questions they have, I'll answer their, I'll talk to them.
I mean, no problem.
Like you want to go on and chat with me on X or Reddit or whatever.
Sure.
We'll go back and forth.
I've had people be like, hey, I can't get over this gambling idea.
I keep leaning into how can I get through that?
And there are people that I've messaged back and forth for weeks on end, helping them get over that.
I don't know if you call it mentoring, but I'm certainly not going to charge.
Like that would be why would I charge someone for that?
But thanks so much, Vincent, again.
Oh, of course.
It's been a pleasure.
And I'm sure we will talk again soon.
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