203: "Going against the crowd - a contrarian approach to trading profits." – Jason Shapiro

And that's right. We've got a unknown market wizard here today, Jason Shapiro, Contrarian Trader. Thanks for joining us today, Jason.

and a book believer and you know read about people that have been successful at doing something and it can help you maybe. So I've read Market Wizards uh basically that whole afternoon and that night and I woke up in the morning and said, you know, now I know kind of what I want to try and do with my life. Trying ever since. Thirty years since that day. That must have been like nineteen ninety, let's say, nineteen eighty nine, nineteen man, maybe ninety. So talking about uh

And when it hits in a certain market, um, you know, I trade that market. I was actually just talking to somebody about this last week. I was like, it's like I'm basically counting cards. I have thirty-five teams sitting at thirty-five tables. at the uh casino playing blackjack and when the one hits, you know what I mean? The guy raises his hand, I go over and I play at that table, you know, and that's

Yeah, if the card count is right over there, guy raises him, I go over there, I play at that tail. But I'm playing the same process. waiting for it to to hit at the right place.

Come on. He's not. You know, he might be an okay broker because he's a friendly guy, but he's not going to make money in the market. So the easiest thing he could do is go opposite. And that's what he would do. He would sit in this brokerage house.

And he would watch all of us idiots. I mean, he was like a forty-five, fifty year old guy with a lot of experience. And we'd watch all us twenty two, twenty-three year old kids on the phone selling Hang Seng index features to different people, knowing there was no shot that we we were gonna make money over time, right?

And that gave him a huge advantage to towards making money, you know. When we were all buying, you know, he knew it was time to sell. When we were all selling he knew it was time and that really instill it just made logical sense to me, right? Um that made Perfectly perfect sense to me. There's no way all these kids are gonna sit here and walk out of here rich. You know, there's just no shot, right?

And truthfully I've looked at businesses ever since then, the same way. You know, when someone approaches me as an investment and all that, and a lot of times I won't know anything necessarily about what they're doing in the business in their business, but I kind of look at the person and I say,

Is this person going to be rich? You know, does he strike me as a person that's going to make a lot of money?'Cause if not, then uh w why am I gonna invest in him? His idea might be great, you know what I mean? But And so anyway, it kinda started with that whole idea, with this guy, uh Crazy Isaac, um, who I have no idea where he is now. Um

It just kinda made sense. Um Yeah. And well I guess and it makes sense if you really think about it, right? I mean, the majority of people are not going to make outsized returns by definition. Right? Yeah. So the majority of people, if they're doing something and you go the opposite way, then you can make outsized returns. You know, it's kind of as simplistic as that. And it gets a little bit deeper when people are acting, if you look at history, right?

When people are acting without thinking, they're acting just because everybody else is doing it. Look what happens, right? I mean you get whatever you want to call it. The Nazi Party. You know what I mean? Like I I'm sure there were plenty of German people where

if they stepped back a second would have been like, Holy shit, you know, what are we doing here, right? But everybody gets involved, you know what I mean? The momentum goes and everyone's involved and you know, you see that time and time again in life, right? And it always ends up being a mistake. Right? Yeah. So it's the same thing with this, right? When everybody's doing the same thing, then opposite that thing is probably what's gonna make you money. I mean, a year ago

This just came up'cause I was talking to a friend's son, I know, who joined I've known this kid since he was in junior high school. Now he's in his twenties and he works for uh remember the big trading houses um that Mark Rich started. And a year ago when ESG or whatever they call that w w was the talk of the world and we were just clean energy and all that.

And everybody was selling coal and all that stuff. These guys bought billions of dollars of coal assets for penny on the dollar. Wow. And I mean look where they are now. They're the only people in the world that have coal.

It's one thing. I mean, look, who doesn't know? You have to be contrarian to make money in the m everybody knows that, right? The question is how do you do it? That took years to develop and is still developing. Yeah, I mean it's a constant development. You know what I mean? It it's all, as you know, a psychological game, you know. Am I being contrarian?

Or am I just being a jerk or should I be contrarian to myself? And if I'm being contrarian to myself, then am I not being contrari you know, like it's this whole psychological mind game, right? Yeah. So it's one thing to say, oh yeah, I like to trade consurance. Another thing to say, well, what does that mean? How do you do it? Right. Um you know, if you were You could be contrarian and be shorting the stock market for the last hundred and fifty years. You know, where's it gotten, right?

What are you looking for? How do you measure um a market or a si a situation where it kind of piques your interest that there may be a contrarian trade uh getting ready?

That's what I try very hard. Well, I don't do it, right? But I think that's the mistake that people make when it comes to that, right? Right. Um what I'm trying to be contrarian is participation, right? Like my old friend Isaac used to say, he used to scream it.

You know, I'd be like, Isaac, Isaac, this thing's going up a lot. We should sell. He goes, No, they actually have to buy. They actually have to buy. Wait for them to buy, then you sell it, right? So it's one thing to say, well, if the market's going up, they must be buying, right? Um and in a way I guess that's true, but um so what can tell you

That's the trick to it. How do you know that everybody's in? Like it comes from this theory. If everybody in the world put every dollar they had into one asset, then that asset could never go up anymore, right? Because every dollar is already in it. So it doesn't matter fundamentally what happened doesn't matter because there's no more money to go in it, except that the central banks will print another trillion tomorrow. But that aside

to the T V, you know, you can read what the commentators are talking about, you know what I mean? Um, and you start to hear these key words, right? This thing can't go down, you know, stuff like that, right?

I'm looking to go long. Now there's problems with oscillators obviously because it has to have a a length of that oscillator. And then you get into the problem of, I mean, you're a systems guy, right? Yeah. Okay, so I need a length for this oscillator, so what am I gonna do? Here you go. Hit that back test button, you know, hit that optimize button, right? And oh there it is, fifty eight and a half weeks. This is the perfect time for this oscillator, right? Yeah. Except as you know.

That was the perfect number for that oscillator. That doesn't mean it's going to continue to be, right?

We all know the story, right? You listen, you read, you follow, you all know whether buying oil here. So now I'm looking for something that confirms what they're looking for.

And I can assure you everybody saw the news, right? The reason it closed negative, because there's nobody left to buy, right? So that's when I get short, right? So here they are. They're all long. This bullish news came out. The market failed on it. I get short there. And it gives me a few good things. One, it's a change in market tone, which is always good to have, but it also gives me like a great stop point, right?

Here was the high of today. The bullish news came out this thing traded a hundred. Well it closed at ninety eight, right? Closed yesterday at ninety-eight and a half, it traded to a hundred today, it closed today down at ninety-eight. I shorted at ninety-eight. Well my stop's at that new high. I'm picking a turn. So by definition, if it goes through that high, I didn't pick the turn. So I'm out. And since I have that defined stop and I have my defined entry.

I then can size my trade, you know, to get the vol that I'm looking for. In my case, you know, I I size it to like seventy five basis points of loss, which gets me to, you know, like a ten to twelve vol or like an eight to ten vol on my portfolio. Um And then that's basically what I do. And then same thing on the short side. They're all short, bad news comes out, probably trades down, it ends up closing up on a day. I get long. I put my stop in on that new low. And

Either I get stopped or the trend ends up changing and all of a sudden all these shorts starts getting squeezed out and it goes up, up, up, up, up. And when they get back to neutral, there's no more edge for me anymore. So I take my profit.

In other words, I don't go from the low to the high, I'll go from the low to the middle. Once the trend followers and everybody start coming in, you know start showing on the data now people are getting along, I give it to'em. Here you go. You guys do your job. Trend follow, do what you do. I did what I was supposed to do. Now you go do what you're supposed to do. Right. And then we all get too whacked out long, right?

Then I'll short it and you know, hopefully write it back down, take my profit and do whatever, right? So that's kind of how my trading looks for about ninety-five percent of my trading looks exactly like that. And the rest of it just becomes a question of um risk management around it, you know. So now I have some trades on and I start to look at, you know, the portfolio, right? In other words, if I get a buy on

NASDAQ S P Russell and Dow, you know what I mean? And that's all I have on, you know, then I'm not going to do that, right? I'll do'em, but I'll probably shrink'em all down. You know, I start changing my size a little bit. to fit a portfolio risk, you know, thing. And it's n it doesn't usually look like I have four of the same exact trade on, but you know, I can look at the portfolio and that's really what I do most of my day is I'm watching

the markets and sort of feeling. I I know you can do it with value at risk and all this type of stuff, but I find that to be too slow. I think I can do a better job. I hope I can. By watching the the correlations between all the different positions and know what's going on. Is this an environment where all the risk on stuff goes on at the same time and all the risk off stuff which is not that environment, you know? And therefore I kind of

do that with my portfolio. And once in a while, because of that, I'll maybe, maybe put on some kind of offsetting trade. um if the portfolio is too skewed. Usually what I'll do is just shrink the positions if the portfolio is too skewed. But sometimes in a certain situation I might just put an offsetting trade on so that in a essence you're just shrinking you know the other side of it.

They're capturing the cost of hedging to the hedgers. So why am I trading on the same side of the hedgers then? Well, I'm only doing it at extremes, right? When when speculators are extremely long or extremely short, that's what I'm taking the other side.

Then be disciplined and be patient. All right. And if I want to lose money and have like a whole bunch of fun doing it, then hey, let's just trade it up just for the hell of it, right? I've done that before. You know what I mean? And I've lost money doing that, right? Um, and I've been a bankrupt because of it, right? I don't want to do that anymore. You know, I don't want to be bankrupt anymore.

I had enough of that, right? I've been it's been knocked wood quite a few years since that. But I've done it. I've done it, man. You know what I mean? And I know, especially when you're trading contrarian, right? If you're going with the trend, then there's certain room for error because the trend is your friend at that point, right? And okay, the market might go against you.

But unless it's that exact if you just happen to buy the the market only tops once, right? So if you happen to buy that one time, okay, you're screwed. But any other time it's gonna come back and you'll be okay, right? If you're trend trading, right? Counter trend trading, you know, you have to be ex it only tops once. So you've gotta wait for it. And sometimes you miss it because you're waiting. And you know what? So what? You know what I mean? Sometimes you miss it. Um

So it's just been, you know, that's part of an experience thing. You know what I mean? Do you want I mean you should not just sit there? Do I feel like making money in this life or do I feel like losing money in this life?

crap load of discipline, right? Yeah. So that's what I see my job as. I have to be disciplined. So it's easy for me now to not do shitty trades like that. I still have losing trades all the time. Yep. But there's such a thing as we know as a good losing trade and a bad losing trade, right? If I do what I'm supposed to do and it loses, okay, I can live with that, right? If I do what I'm not supposed to do and it loses My day is ruined.

You know, my days are ruined. Look, when we have losing days, you kinda are in a bad mood anyway. But I can live with losing days at this point'cause I have a long enough track record and I feel confident that okay, I'll lose today, but whatever, over time my my you know, my penal is going to be okay.

But when I lose on a trade that I wasn't supposed to make, I'm beyond beyond myself. And then I'm in a bad mood and then my wife is mad at me'cause I'm in a bad mood and my kid you know, and I don't want that either. You know, so all of this stuff Helps me be very br I'm I'm really, really disciplined with this stuff now. At fifty four. You know what I mean? Much more than I was at forty four. And much, much more than I was at thirty four, and infinitely more than I was at twenty four.

Um, it's not logical. If it were logical, it would be simple, right? Read a thousand books, be really smart, and you can make money. And people think that's what it is. Oh Warren Buffett just a really smart guy and he does all this great research and, you know, buys cheap stocks and all that and that's how he's made billions of dollars. Well, truth is he's you know

He hasn't really beaten the market by that much and he you know, he's beaten it because he's been tax advantaged the whole time, right? Nothing against Warren Buffett. I'm jealous of him every day, but you know. My point is, you know, that's not really what to me what the market is. I i i it's a gambling place, right? It's gambling because it's efficient. The market is for the most part efficient, right?

You're not gonna come up with anything. You you're telling me I'm gonna sit here and I'm gonna come up with I'm just looking at my position. I know more about what the Australian dollar is gonna do than the rest of the world combined? And there's there's no way. There's just no chance, right? And people end up. giving themselves the false belief that if they do get a trade right, you know, oh I knew it. Oh my my analysis was so good, right? And that's why I got it right, you know.

And I just don't believe that that's what the market is, you know. I think it's a gambling place. And so where how are you gonna get an edge as a gambler? If you're playing blackjack, you're gonna count cards, right? The only people that win Over time at Blackjack are people that count cards because they're getting the odds on their side. And that's why they get kicked out of the casinos, right? Because they can win. That's the only people that are gonna win playing blackjack, right?

They have the odds on their side. So how are you going to get the odds on your side? That's all it is to me, right? There's no difference to me between this and betting. sports, you know, or anything else. You know, with sports it's the same thing. Here's two teams that are playing. Okay. I can do all my analysis and tell you that this team's better than that team. Okay, that's pretty easy to do, right?

I mean, is, you know, whatever. Disney a good company? Yeah, Disney's a good company. Does that have anything to do with whether the stock's gonna go up or down from right now? You know? I don't think so. Everybody knows Disney's a good company. That there's no surprise there, right?

So same thing here, this team's playing this team. Well this team's better. So I'm gonna bet on this team? Well, there's a point spread, you know what I mean? And the question is not who's gonna win the game. The question is who's gonna beat the point spread. And Everybody knows this team's better, so how are you gonna get an edge in in getting that point spread, right? It's the same thing to me, right? Everybody knows what's going on in the energy market right now, right?

So is there an edge to being long crude here? Well, there certainly has been for the last few weeks, right? Yeah um But over time, is that gonna work? I don't believe so. I don't believe so. When everybody on the TV is talking about energy is a no lose trade here, when a guy I know uh who knows nothing about the market but likes to play it is telling me he's buying XLE every day. Um

No, no, that's not where the edge does it mean the crude can't go up? No, it doesn't mean crude can't go up. It just means it's not the odds trade, right? You know, you could be sitting there with blackjack and it doesn't mean that you can't, you know, just because you have the numbers on your side doesn't mean that, you know, you're not gonna get a four when you're waiting for a ten, right? You still might get that four, right?

But overtime, which is what we're talking about here, if you want to put up returns, it's all about overtime, right? Any individual trade really doesn't matter, right? It's all about overtime. So I forget what the question was, but that's why I think people lose money because they're they're approaching it as an intellectual endeavor.

You know? Right. Oh, I whatever. I know that this company's good, so I'm gonna buy the stock or or or however they approach it, you know. Um, I also think people lose money because they treat it as as a hobby, as something that that's fun, right? I have a few hobbies. I don't make money out of any of'em. They all. You know what I mean? I buy a new guitar, I buy a new C D or you know, I guess people don't buy C Ds anymore, but you know what I mean.

That's why I think people lose money. Those two reasons. Th th they're approaching it from the wrong angle and they're looking for entertainment.

Yeah.

if people have actually put the money to work, right? And in truth, we talk about crude oil, like I haven't shorted crude oil once this whole way up because the commitment of traders has not shown that people have gotten massively long, right? They have shown they've gotten massively long in heating oil. But I haven't shorted heating oil yet because there hasn't been the the market confirmation, although arguably today might have been one.

So the commitments to trader is the systematic way to gauge sentiment. Um divergence between price and sentiment I'm looking for if we want to call positioning, it's really positioning, not centering, but if we want to say positioning

is one way and then the price starts to diverge, but it can't just diverge because markets go up and down and up and down. I mean, crude oil hasn't gone straight up, right? It goes up and down and then up more and then down a little bit and up more and down a little bit. Every time it goes down, I'm like, oh short it, short it, short it.

To me, you need to have this market confirmation on news failure. To me, it's just as important as the other side of it. I tell my guys all the time, commitments of traders is not enough. I've gotten burned plenty of times.

selling something just'cause people were too long, right? It's that old phrase, right? The market could be irrational longer than you can stay liquid, right? You have to wait for the market to tell you. And I tell you something, everybody wants to go jump ahead and I've done it a million times in my life. Everybody wants to jump ahead, right?

The market, I'll tell you, ninety-five to ninety-nine percent of the time will give you the sign. I promise you, if you wait, it will tell you when. It should have gone up today and it didn't. Why? Well, because everybody's frickin' too long. Sell it. And if it goes to new highs, get out. Who cares? You can do it again in a week. You know what I mean? The market will give you the tell. It always, almost always does. A market is not just gonna go up, up, up, up, up.

On good news, good news, good news, and then suddenly there's gonna be bad news, and then it's gonna go down, and then it's gonna be bad news and go down, down, down, down, down, down, down. The market tops on good news. The market bottoms on bad news. It has to. If you think about the dynamics of what a market is, a market has to top on good news, right? It has to top when everything looks the best.

Right? And it has to bottom when everything looks the worst. It i it it just has to because of how a market works. So I hope that answers his question.

So why do I determine how they're correlated? I sit here and I watch. That's really how I determine. And I listen to what people are talking about. You know, a lot of times we get to these points where, you know, it's like the whole risk-on, risk-off trade, right?

And everything that's sort of a risk market is going up and everything that's uh you know, risk off market's going down. There are times like that. And there are other times when it's not so much like that. But I sit here and I watch and you know, I I I sit here for all day and night. And I watch these markets and I put together the puzzle of A they're correlated and B, you know, I listen to the people on T V and all that. Why are they correlated? W why are people I don't even care why.

I care why do people think they are correlated, right? Because that's the divergence I'm looking for, right? What they're thinking and then what the market actually does, right? Um So it's just a question of of watching. I've run value at risk before in my portfolios and all that and I just found it to be too lagged. It was too late for me, right?

Um, so I feel like I'm quicker by just sitting here and watching. And I hate to say it, it's work and it's not it's not um systematic as I I think a lot of your You you people are systematic people and it's not but you could systematically do it if you wanted to. If you were I'm a programmer, you know. I have programmers that do work for me. I've had programmers work for me full time, but You know, I I just prefer to to kinda do it by watching.

Which by the way, I read a thing with Stanley Druckenmiller. He said he does the same thing. Not that I'm Stanley Druckenmiller by any way, shape, or form, but uh he says that he uh there's a quote that he has somewhere where he says, I can do a better job of seeing these correlations than any computer can do.

Because you get into the habit. I mean I've been sitting in front of this thing for thirty years. You gotta you know, ten, twelve, fourteen, sixteen hours a day, you know. It's just you you get into that habit and you start to see the correlations and you know it becomes second nature.

What type of mindset do you think that you need to be specifically for uh to be a contrarian trader? What is it that um makes it makes it easier to overcome some of the challenges of that trading style?

Um, I I I said on my newsletter this the past weekend, I've had a nice run the last three weeks, very steady, very slow, kind of steady up, which is like what what I like to have. Nice and slow and steady, you know, not big and I've been wrong the whole time. I I haven't had these markets right.

You know, I don't care. I I don't even think it exists. You know, I I being right or wrong and ego, it's all about that. Ego, right, wrong, being able to tell your friends how right you were and all that shit. I don't tell any of my friends like You know, hey man, what do you think of about the market? I'm like, I have no idea. Like, what do you mean you have no idea? You manage a hedge fund. I'm like, I manage a hedge fund because I have no idea, right?

Because then you get all caught up and that's the whole fear, greed, stop, loss, all that risk management stuff that hurts you, right? Because of your your ego. Why can't you take loss, right? It's ego. I take losses all the time. I and not once do I override a style. Now have I done it in my life? You better believe I have.

Have I done it since I've been managing money, you know, professionally for people for the last fifteen years? I will tell you, not even once. Not even once. Even if I find myself hesitating for a second. Oh well no. Boom. It's out. I don't care. I'll put it on tomorrow. I don't care. I'm stopped. I'm stopped. That's it. The trade didn't work. I don't care. Right? Um, I think that's the most important thing. Yeah.

I'm along the SP. Okay. There are times, and this is a couple times a year situation, where all of a sudden I hear, okay, the Fed's about to speak. And it's everybody's scared of it. Everybody's scared of it. Everybody's scared of it, right? And the market's kind of going down for a few days into it. And I just get this feeling where I'm like, as soon as this guy opens his mouth, I know it.

This shit's gonna go straight up. Because everybody has been hedging into it, hedging into it, hedging into it. And as soon as he opens his mouth, it doesn't matter what he says, they're all gonna have to take their hedges off because the event's over, right? So if I'm already long SP. And one of these days happens.

I may add to that position. Like literally, and I'll do it right then. As soon as the guy opens his mouth. And I won't do it until I see it though. Like, okay, the market will be coming to he'll open his mouth. All of a sudden the SP's jump five points. As soon as he opens his mouth, I'll buy him and I'll ride that, right?

Again, this is a two or three time a year event and it's just adding to a position that I already want to have. And it's also a function of what my portfolio already looks like. If I'm not long enough, you know, risk and I really feel that this is going to happen, then I will trade those type of events. Um I call'em we had one just a few weeks ago, but I call'em um Career risk events, you know? It gets to a point sometimes where like people can't be super long going into this speech.

Because we all know that he's going to announce tapering. And if you're a money manager and you caught are caught super long, when everybody knows he's going to announce tapering and that's bearish for the market and you lose a bunch of money, you're going to get fired, right?

So you can't be super long going into that. Well I'm the guy that will be because you can't be. If you're looking to hedge, I will take your hedge because I will get paid for taking your hedge over time. That's how I trade events like that.

And looking at yen, right? Um, we're looking at this point for a new like yen's a perfect example, but I haven't gotten along yen yet. But it's now at a point where people are crowded short yen. So I'm looking for sort of a news failure on this yen, right? To get long yen. Um so then you can take it from there and say, well, what happens when the dollar, if I'm right, or if that works. What else happens if the dollar goes down? Well, arguably metals go up, right?

I'm not long medals because of that. I'm long medals individually because the COT showed that people were super short medals and we got a new study so I'm long medals. But that's what my portfolio kind of looks like here. Short US dollar, long medals. A guy came on TV last week. I love to watch the TV shows.

you know, the commentator shows and I I know the guys and I know the ones that are the worst and I know the ones that are wrong and I know what they sound like when they're wrong because they start to get stubborn and I I know all that because I've been watching for twenty five years, right? Yeah. Guy came on and said

Let me know. I'm in. Okay. Does it work today? Does it work tomorrow? Does it work in a week? Does it work at all? I don't know. But I believe very strongly that's a very good bet. So that's kind of where my what I'm looking at here. Short dollar, long metal. Um, and I'm trying to see. That's basically what my portfolio is. And maybe and short some commodities, cotton, cocoa, that kind of stuff. I haven't gotten short. The only energy I can get short is heating oil. I haven't gotten short yet.

I'll probably be sure by the end of this week, I'm thinking. Um But that's kind of what I'm looking at. The oil trade is I get it, okay? But people have to realize the fundamentals always look best at the top. The risk reward in that whole trade to me is is short. When people are on TV telling me

that it's their number one holding now. They weren't saying that three weeks ago. They weren't saying that three months ago. And they weren't saying it a year ago. Now all of a sudden every person on TV their number one holding is oil. Okay. Great. Three months ago their number one holding was biotech and biotech's down you know forty percent in three months, right? Now their number one holding is oil. Does it mean oil goes down? No. Does it mean the risk reward is there? To me, yes.

The car business is so bad and you gotta sell these automakers. I'm like, these guys have been saying buy Ford for the last five years. The thing's gone straight down. Now all of a sudden they're all saying sell it. So I mean, to me it's time to buy it, right? I'll do it just for that purpose, right? Um so but you know I once I'll I'll make fundamental trades, you know I I'm a horrible PA trader. I'm much better'cause I I'm much more disciplined man w with the money that I manage.

put five thousand dollars in that thing in two thousand thirteen, you and I wouldn't even be sitting here. You know what I mean? Um But whatever, but I did and I had it on one of the interviews that I did, that's on YouTube somewhere where the guy asked me about Bitcoin, and Bitcoin had obviously gone from whatever it was, what was it, twenty nine thousand, nineteen thousand, whatever, down to four, got back up to ten.

And all of a sudden, again, one of my favorite fades on TV who runs a Bitcoin fund. When it came back to ten, was saying he was selling out of Bitcoin and buying the other coins because you think Bitcoin has gone too high. I'm like, This thing is now a buy. So I bought some Bitcoin, not a lot, you know, like right at the ten. And I said it on the video, I go, This thing is gonna go from ten to twenty faster and anybody freaking knows what happened.

Hooray for me, it did. It was all based on again, I don't know anything about Bitcoin. I don't understand Bitcoin. I don't know what the freaking whatever they call the thing that Bitcoin is on. I don't understand anything about any of that. This is all based on this guy's a loser. I've seen it so many frickin' times. His thought process is completely backwards. He's trying to be smarter than the market, which he's not. And time and time again he's wrong because of that.

Gonna buy Bitcoin just because he's selling. So I do own some, but I do not trade it. What's it gonna do here? I have no clue. Uh any market at an all time high is not one that you you want to fool around with too much, I think, right? Uh especially when it's at an all time high like this one is. It seems to me the consensus view here on Bitcoin because it's coming out with this fund tomorrow.

Is that that's the top? Everyone wants to be a wise ass now and try to be the contrarian, right? And be like, oh well it's gonna top because everyone bought it in front of, you know, this fun that's coming out tomorrow, this whatever it is, ETF or something. So you gotta sell it here.

My feeling is that ain't gonna work. Like it might go down for a day, but I bet it's gonna rip those g it has to rip those guys in the face first and then maybe it can pop. But the guys that are being wise asses trying to sell here, I think they need to get ripped before it really ever tops. And why is it ever gonna top? I'm I'm a fan of the whole thing. Just on a personal note, I love it. I think Bitcoin's cool. Yeah. I like the idea.

So we started this webpage. Obviously I can't sit there and mentor five hundred people at the same time because I do have a job and I do have a family. But we started this this webpage called um crowded marketreport.com. And what is on there is um A, the guy who put it together has done a phenomenal job. I didn't even know it was gonna go this way. But I write a newsletter every week. I've done that for 20 years for myself. It was basically my own notes.

When I was at a hedge fund, I used to give it to the other PMs. When I ran my own fund, I had a bunch of man people that invested in me that were hedge fund managers themselves. I used to send it to them. They all seemed to like it. So this guy approached me and said, let's do that. I said, okay, so we put this newsletter on this webpage. It comes out every week.

talks about what I'm looking at with the C O T report, what I'm looking at psychologically for the market, where people are getting too long, where people are getting too short, where you know, I kinda have a different view than most people, so it helps people. But what really blossomed was we he put a Discord chat on there.

for people that that that joined and the Discord chat is very active. We have some really good people on there. I'm on there all day, but we have other people too. I've learned a lot from them and that's been really kinda cool about it. Um so More than happy to have people get involved there. Um I don't think it's too expensive. I think it's like a hundred dollars a month. I could tell you that a good portion of that, my half of it anyway, goes to charity. I'm not

looking to to necessarily make money off that. This is more of a conduit to help people. What I really try to focus on, yes, I talk about the trades I'm putting on and I give people the exact trades that I put on. Not in live time, but at the end on the weekly report, I say these are the trades I'm looking at this week.

And the next week they'll get this is what I did this week, right? I can't tell them live time, I manage people's money. I can't have a bunch of people front running my trades, right? But they know what I'm doing. But that's not really the value added to me. The value added is

I always tell people, don't try to trade like I trade. You know, don't join my webpage because I'm going to tell you when to buy SPs, right? Because that's stupid, right? Anyone who knew when to buy SPs, as they say, would never have a webpage. That's not what my web page is about. Yes, here's what I do, but I tell these people don't do what I do, do what you do.

But use the stuff that I do, hopefully, to enhance what it is you do. You can't trade like me, just like I can't trade like you, right? But you can use what I do to help enhance what you do. And that's what a lot of them have been doing. And a lot of people are on there talking about what they do. And it's it's been real interesting. So it's called crowded marketreport.com. Altyazı M.K.