005: Steve Burns – What Separates New Traders From Rich Traders—and How to Cross the Divide - podcast episode cover

005: Steve Burns – What Separates New Traders From Rich Traders—and How to Cross the Divide

Jan 29, 201537 minEp. 5
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Summary

In this episode, Steve Burns shares his journey from early market fascination to overcoming a severe 50% drawdown, highlighting the lessons learned about position sizing and market direction. He details his reactive technical analysis approach, influenced by Nicholas Darvas, and underscores the critical importance of a 1% risk management rule. Steve also stresses that aspiring traders must prioritize thorough education and develop a personalized trading methodology to achieve sustained success and avoid emotional pitfalls.

Episode description

With tight risk management being one of them, he shares some of his own rules that could potentially save you a lot of money. And it’s worth noting, these rules have prevented Steve from returning to the severe drawdowns he experienced first-hand when starting out.

But really that’s just the tip of the iceberg. We also go into the methods that Steve uses to actively trade in today’s market, and he how he found a system that works for him. So hit ‘play’ and enjoy some quality trading tips for the next 35 minutes.

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Transcript

Intro / Opening

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chat for more information. Tasty Trade Inc. is a registered broker dealer and member of Finra, NFA and SIPC. The biggest secret of the best traders in the world is that they're just like everyone else. However, they've worked hard to learn the markets and discover what works and what doesn't. But how can you hear about these? Here's your host, Aaron Feiff.

Welcome and Steve's Trading Genesis

What's up guys, it's great to have you here listening to episode number five of Chat With Traders. Now before we get into anything today, I just wanted to say a really big thank you to everyone who has emailed in, subscribed, shared with me some feedback, um connected on Twitter, left a review on iTunes. All of that, it's been awesome. So thank you and keep it coming. The support is awesome. So if you haven't had a chance to leave an iTunes review just yet.

Please do it now. It's a great time to do it just while you're listening in. Um it doesn't have to be anything crazy, just a single line is really helpful. So, today's guest. I'm stoked to introduce to you. His name is Steve Burns. He is undoubtedly a successful trader. He runs an active blog and on top of that, he has published several books, including the New Trader, Rich Trader series. So Steve is here today to talk about exactly that.

What are the traits that separate new traders and rich traders? Tight risk management and a solid knowledge base seem to be two traits that get a regular mention, but over the next thirty minutes we will uncover much more than just those two topics, so stick with me. All right, let's get into it. Here is today's guest, Steve Burns.

Hey Steve, thanks for coming on the show today. It's it's really good to have you here. Hey, uh thanks for having me, Aaron. No, y you're more than welcome. So Steve, how's your week been? You you been keeping busy? Uh yeah, it's been a interesting uh week in the markets. What getting getting toppy up here and been really watching the interday action to see

Okay, great. That's that's really cool. So I've got plenty of notes here and a a lot of things I'd love to ask you about. So um let's get right into it, eh? So Steve, give us a bit of an introduction um and bit of your background on where did it all start for you and how did you get into the stock market and talk a little bit about what was the attraction for you? Yeah. I I've always been fascinated with numbers and uh the stock market itself, you know, really the technical side of how

prices move and what causes them to move. I mean I remember looking at newspapers when I was a child, just looking at the st stock uh tables and the arrows up and down and just being absolutely fascinated by it. I don't remember a time where I wasn't fascinated by the stock market and the the daily pricing.

So, you know, when as soon as I was old enough to have the opportunity to uh actually start putting money in the stock market, whether it be in individual stocks or in uh indexes or index mutual funds, you know, I started when I was really eighteen, nineteen as soon as I possibly could. And uh been uh growing capital and building capital uh since I was a teenager. Okay, so when you got started, I mean, how did you know what you were doing? Um, where were you where were you learning from?

Well, I started off like as an investor, so I really looked at the fundamental side and and looked at, you know, what companies that I liked and what companies I thought had potential to grow. A lot of time whatever company I was working with at the time I would study the price of the stock itself on a daily basis for the price action and also looked at a fundamental earnings growth.

and um and w and what would happen trend wise with the company itself is if I was looking at like uh sort of like if you were in high school and you had all the people you went to high school with and you trying to project which one of them would earn the most money and want to invest in them as a person. That's how I looked at companies. When I first started out I was more of an in investor sorta, but looking at a trend in a uh in a future individual stock.

Early Mistakes and Market Lessons

Okay. Right. So how did you go in your early days? Did you have, you know, much success right away or was it sort of bit of a bit of a slow grind? Yeah, I think I had the unfortunate uh uh success of being in the nineties and I I I got really more aggressive towards the mid to late nineties with a capital and I just got too i it became too easy and I got too lucky with the tech. I was mainly just in tech for the late nineties.

So it was very little pullbacks and uh a lot of uh exponential growth, especially in the the web based companies. So I sorta got spoiled in the late nineties and then uh didn't react quick enough in the March two thousand and two thousands. I tried to uh adjust and kept trying to swing trade to the upside and found out very quickly that stocks don't always go up and I'm I'm not the genius I thought I was in the late nineties and I had to really learn how to

how to trade b trade better to survive through two thousand one, two thousand two. Okay, right. So you were sort of kept trying to go long as the market was definitely sort of on the fall.

What were some of the other things you might have struggled with early on? Was there anything that stands out as being particularly difficult for you? Yeah, it's trading too big and being too aggressive, you know, taking too big of a position size as 'Cause it worked so well and I was so rewarded in the the late nineties in tech.

and had to learn the components of position sizing where you don't wanna have you have enough losses in a row, you end up being fifty percent down in your account, which I I learned the hard way by the end of two thousand two. So, you know, I learned position size from that point on. I never traded so big again. I traded more controlled position sizing and was really focused on from two thousand three on. Risk was my biggest focus and uh not having a drawdown again like I had.

Okay, yeah, I I did hear you talk about that fifty percent drawdown you had in your sort of earlier days. Um at another interview I was um listening to with you. Um, you promised yourself that you'd never get back into that situation. Um and so what do you think it was that led to that and how did you end up in that position?

Yeah, it was uh I didn't understand the dynamics of shorting or the uh you know, buying protected puts. I I just thought, you know, investing from what I saw from the even looking at charts back when I was a child from the

the mid eighties all the way through to two thousand, really from like nineteen eighty two to two thousand, outside of a few, you know, smaller bear markets. I mean it was a pretty straight up trajectory. And if you bought and held even, you won the long term. So I was so long biased I couldn't even I couldn't believe that the Nasdaq could go from five thousand back to what was it two thousand or so. I couldn't even comprehend that.

So I learned that it can go both directions and that really, uh really made me understand the risk involved. If you can't just buy and hold. I mean you can stay stagnant like it did from from two thousand all the way through to uh two thousand eleven, two thousand ten, where pretty much was a side of people that bought in two thousand were still even um buy and hold after a decade.

Confidence, Trends, and Darvas Influence

Okay. Before we move on, um I'd just like to dive into that a little bit. What gave you the confidence to continue trading after you'd essentially just lost half of your account? I mean it it could have been very easy for you to get discouraged, admit defeat and move on. So why did you not walk away then? Yeah, I mean I had you know, I learned from the time I was in my late twenties I had had enough of my uh my

largest capital trading account to pay off my house at twenty eight and that beats the heck out of a thirty year mortgage of fighting with it. So I knew the potential was there, given the right trends and the right um trading methodology. So, I mean, I knew that I could get back to where I was and then once I got back there again I wasn't gonna give it back and I was gonna use it to uh grow more capital. and have more money to spend in other ways by just simply selling my time to an employer.

So I knew the potential was there, I knew I did it before and I I knew I could do it again, and I knew many other people studying the the legends of trading had done it, so if they can do it, I figured I could do it. I mean what other game promises you such an upside potential? Okay, great. No, I think that that's really interesting that you could identify the potential and it was just about learning how to actually take it, I guess you could say.

Um if you could, tell us a little bit about your actual approach to trading. So how would you define your style? Well really everything I do is based on trends, whether it be a the longer term trend of the stock market, a sh shorter term trend, even a swing trading inside of the prevelp prev

prevalent trend. You know, everything I everything I do is is based on how I can best capture a trend in a specific time frame. And there's many ways to do that, even going into options where you're betting on a lack of a trend or you're betting on the end of a trend. So ever everything I do is also a filter of what is the trend in each time frame.

Okay. Now I understand you tried several other methods of trading. Um you kind of mentioned that a little bit earlier on too. Um but I believe you also tried sort of things like day trading, um value investing So what is it that you like about this approach that has had you stick with it? Yeah, I I I like the r reactive technical analysis approach where I'm not trying to predict anything, I'm just reacting to what's going on.

in a particular time frame. You know, I'm I'm just trying to be with the market itself. I'm not trying to beat it. I'm trying to do what it's doing. And it's much easier than, you know, being a fun trading off fundamentals as a value investor and you you think there's untapped value there in earnings and you're just holding it what could be a year or two years, never knowing, you know, when it's gonna move up.

or, you know, being a day trader where you're sitting in front of a computer for anywhere from eight to ten hours a day, wasting all your time when the m the money I've made, all the big money I've ever made's been in a trend where I've done nothing, where I've bought something, whether it be a stock or an index.

and held it for sometimes up to a month, two months or longer, and that's where the real money came from. Not sitting at home every day trying to find a few nickels and pennies off beneath the steamroller. I just uh got on a rocket and l and let her fly. I like it. Great answer. Um, I believe your approach is also influenced by the Nicholas Darvis system. Could you shine some light on this and and maybe explain uh what this is?

Yeah, it's uh a lot of it. I'm not as aggressive as I was when I was younger, as my accounts have gotten bigger, I've gotten much more conservative with my capital, but uh but the d the Darwin system fascinated me. Because uh a dancer who became a multimillionaire in the in the sixties by simply finding the biggest, fastest moving stocks in the entire stock market based on nothing but the actual price action and people buying it.

And uh bought them, never watched the market in the daytime, saved all the emotional trauma and stress of watching it, just simply bought in the fastest moving stocks. if they went down to a certain point under a support he sold them. If they went up he held them as they kept going up and trailed his stop and uh made an absolute killing, which goes against all the the common accepted common sense of uh trading, even to this day.

So I found it fascinating a lot of the things he did, and I even find fascinating that he did a lot Nicholas Darvis did the same thing in the sixties that a lot of modern day wizards

of uh trading to today, like Ed Sakota and um and William O'Neill and uh different traders that have found uh that his system worked, which really he was a trend follower of individual stocks, you know, the most world changing stocks. I think he was in stocks that you know, like created the first rocket fuel and uh the growth behind that and the first um uh the very first uh filtered cigarettes

with Lori Lard and he was even in companies that were takeover candidates that kept going up. And his approach was so simplistic and he was so ahead of his time, I always found that incredibly fascinating for his method and his psychology he used to capture his method. So uh it was very fascinating. Okay, so h how did you sort of discover that and and learn about um his system?

Well, I I saw his uh book on Amazon, How I Made Two Million Dollars in the Stock Market, which sounded like, you know, I saw it so many times I was sounded ridiculous.

But then I kept coming across it online where so many people uh talked about it and how amazing his story was, so I finally had to buy it and read it and it was I found his simplicity of his approach and the power of his approach was amazing and then to see all the similarities to the m modern day trend followers and the modern day traders with you know, he was looking at

support and resistance, but he called it Darvis boxes and looking at the psychological approach to what the traders were doing that were accumulating his stock. He was simply getting in stocks that were being accumulated heavily by uh by traders and and uh he was playing he trained with a psychology dynamic instead of a predicting guessing uh random dynamic or fundamental dynamic. So I think he really was way ahead of his time.

Technical Trade Setups and Execution

Okay, that that sounds really interesting. Um it sounds like your trades are mostly based off technicals. Do things like fundamentals and news have any impact on your decision making? Not not anymore. I mean they did early on, but I never made a lot of money with the fundamentals. All my money came from uh identifying and capturing long term trends. So I really, over the last several years, have abandoned fundamentals completely, probably since about two thousand eight.

Or went strictly to the technical technical side, trading off charts themselves. Okay, so you've just hundred percent technical analysis now. Um That that that's it, no more fundamentals and news. No no. No more fundamentals. No more news. It's purely a a chart trading. I mean I might use some psycho psychological dynamics if the market rallies on bad news.

is a additional indicator or if the market sells off on good news and I and and but mainly it's chart patterns and just price action, everything's based on quantit quantitative charts. Okay. Cool. So what does a good setup look like to you? Um what sort of things are you looking for uh to get into a trade?

Well there's there's a trend trades and then there's swing trades. I mean I'll also if the uh stock indexes are in a long term uptrend, you know, over the two hundred day and the hundred day and the fifty day moving averages I'll also use an RSI oscillator as a filter for swing trades where on a daily chart Around the thirty to thirty five RSI will give me um a swing low bottom and then a

s uh sixty five to seventy RSI high will give me a place to exit and locking in profits or even selling bearish credit spreads at a at a high level. Uh I also use moving averages like if uh it's in a price range for a long period of time then suddenly it breaks out of the price range to to new all time highs, I'll buy it and I'll trail it with a five day exponential moving average or a ten day simple moving average and simply let it run.

Okay, so once you're in, um can you tell us how do you typically manage that trade as far as placing stops, uh do you have profit targets, are you monitoring this, uh just at the close of day? Um how do you how how do you typically manage a triad? It's I will once I once I purchase I'll have a stop loss. Like say um the S P five hundred broke over the two hundred day moving average.

I'll uh buy at the end of day and then I'll place a stop either you know right underneath the two hundred day, a close below the two hundred day moving average. So it can still fluctuate under during the daytime, but at the end of the day if it closes early to two hundred day then that would be my initial stop loss, which will be you know relatively close to my first entry. But if it continues to trend, then I'll move my stop to a ten day simple moving average.

You know, if it trends up it starts going up faster, I'll I might try all the way to a ten day um to a five day exponential moving average as my end of day stop. But I'll trade small enough where I can use end of day stops where I don't have a physical stop in during the day.

But wherever my my stop is, I'll initially I'll attempt to never lose more than one percent of my total trading capital. So if I'm trading with a two hundred thousand dollar account, I'll set my stop end-of-day stop where I won't lose more than two thousand dollars in the trade.

that's one percent of my total trading capital. You know, and I use my position size and be based on the volatility of the underlying equity. You know, if it's a if it might m if it m if it if a if what I'm trading may move two dollars a day then I'll probably only trade five hundred shares of it. So if it does move the two the the full range, it won't cost me one percent of my trading capital.

So the and so there's a initial stop loss to prevent the loss of too much trading capital. There's a a trailing stop, if it's a winner, I trail behind it to lo to get it to get as much of the trend as I possibly can. Or two of the dynamics that go into it.

The 1% Risk Management Rule

Okay. That's that's really good. So you're you're trailing stops to sort of lock in profits as the market moves in your favour. I know you really pushed the the topic of risk management. Um what would you suggest are some solid risk management rules that could potentially save a trader from blowing up their account?

Yeah, this is this is something that so many don't understand where uh Larry Hyde and several other market wizards talk about never lose more than one percent of your trading capital per trade. And so many new traders and even experienced traders think, Oh, that's too small.

I'm not gonna trade with more than one percent of my capital and and it's not saying trade with one percent of your capital, it's just saying don't lose one percent of your capital in any trade. So I mean you can trade relatively large with um even stock indexes. You just can't lose more than one percent. I mean you could put half of you could put twenty five percent of your account in like say the S P five hundred index.

And uh fifty percent if it's fifty percent in it can drop um it'd have to drop two percent for you to lose one percent of your trading account. So that's one way to have a large position size and not uh lose more than one percent. And if if you have multiple positions on, I don't I don't wanna expose myself to more than three percent total risk. If if I have three stocks and all three

cause me to lose one percent, that's a three percent drawdown at one time. That's that's the most I want to on any bad day wanna lose is three percent of my total trading count. A lot of times I'll just do one trade at a time. I mean I'm very conservative. I don't ever wanna be in a situation where I can have four or five, six trades go against me and be down double digits in a single day.

Uh okay, so that one percent rule that's something you still stick to to this day? Oh yeah, I've I've become more believing in it more than I wa and I ever have because You can have uh you have a couple of one percent returns on your capital in a month, you can have great annual returns and still never expose yourself to too much risk.

The danger almost comes in the drawdowns where And they don't a lot of people don't understand, you know, you get down ten percent, it takes an eleven percent return to get back to even. you get down fifty percent in your trading account, you have to have a one hundred percent return just to get back to even.

And I don't know very many traders that have a hundred percent return in a in even a year, so it's important never to have those drawdowns to just slowly tip away and and get and and keep increasing your account. Yeah. One of the um A question I have about that would be um if you're risking one percent of your account, for for a lot of new traders who have a reasonably smaller account

Um say they risk in one percent, the market's gonna have to move quite away before they actually even cover their commission. Is am I right in saying that? Yeah, a a lot of times they e tha that's a b a biggest mistake new traders make is they start with too little capital and then they blow themselves up'cause if we've only got a few thousand then they're like you said, they're shooting just to cover commissions they have to make.

you know, so much percentage return so they go too big and they risk their whole account on even individual stocks and they blow up so many times because The probabilities are, you know, if you're risking uh several per s you know pr five, ten percent per trade, you only need a few in a row losses and you're blown up. So a lot of it they just need to wait.

and build up enough capital to trade with effectively. Because the the math goes against them sharply when they're risking too much money at one time because you're gonna have a losing streak every time the market changes its uh character and dynamics. where trend followers can make money for a while but then suddenly it gets volatile or a a reversal happens. And you don't wanna be trading big when that happens. So y it's important you have enough money to get you through.

Okay, so what would you suggest would be a good amount of equity to um or sorry I should have said capital to um start with as as a new trader? If you if you wanna do long term um trend following, I mean, and you're you're not only gonna make a you know, a trade or two a month. uh and trade really long term time frame then it's possible to um you know, start with a five, ten thousand if you wanna but you can't be an active trader. You have to

get on trends and and ride them and not cut yourself to pieces with commissions and bid aspirats. But to seriously get into some serious active trading, you need a minimum of twenty five to thirty thousand dollars in my opinion, if you really want to actively trade. Okay. And is is that a good idea for, you know, someone who's probably not traded before to take thirty grand and put it into a trading account?

Education, Methodology, and Avoiding Predictions

with with no knowledge of trading before. No, I th I I I think y they they get themselves messed up. They start trading first, then they lose, then they educate themselves. So I think you have to educate yourself first, then trade. Now if they spent a year or two or, you know, even a year reading all the top trading books, you know, going on social media, learning, Googling, researching, um

you know, there's so many free resources out there. If they educate themselves first, you know, they start really small chihuahua trades and, you know, they don't get their emotions engaged in it because they're trading, maybe risking fifty bucks, a hundred bucks per trade at the very beginning, then it is possible But they should never trade a dollar until they have a complete trading plan, a a trading system, a methodology and they've done their homework first. That can save a lot of money.

Yeah, th th which actually brings me to another point. Oh, I heard you quote something before um in another interview again, um, and that was the first thing a trader needs to do is not to trade for at least a year and do nothing but homework. Why is this? I mean a year is a really long time. Yeah, it which trading is like a per it's a profession, just like a doctor, a lawyer, a professional athlete, and I don't know any lawyers that would try to bust in a courtroom and start practicing law.

without first going to law school or studying. So I mean a year for trading to come out and beat, you know, ninety percent of other traders to be the ten percent profitable is still a very lofty goal.

And the only thing that's gonna give them that edge over other traders is to to really understand what they do what they're doing, understand risk management, understand how their own emotions are gonna affect their trading, understand how the market itself's emotions are gonna make irrational things happen. and to understand uh understand historical price patterns and how they play out. And if if they don't

They're not gonna be in the the ten percent of profitable traders, they're gonna be in the ninety percent of frustrated traders that are losing their money and don't even understand why they're losing their money. So it it there's no other field can you walk into and participate

without first earning the right to. Trading's one of the few places you can get an account and get going. You know, they won't let you go to the NBA and play one on one with the NBA player. You're gonna and you have to earn that right. Of course, yeah. Which which brings us to another point and that's, you know, getting the edu getting educated. So

I'd like to ask you, how should those new to trading seek out an education um to be able to get those um those rules and everything you sort of mentioned just before? I mean it's very easy to purchase a high ticket workshop or something similar to that, but that's probably not always the answer. I mean what would you say there?

think there there's so many free resources nowadays, you know, the the they have to the problem with new turns is they don't even know what the right questions are to ask. First you have to know the right questions before you can even find the answers. You know, a lot of what I do with my um my blog, uh, New Trader U and my um my my books and my my book New Trader Is Trader is I try to give them the right questions to even ask. And once they know the right questions

Then they can move on to reading more advanced books. They can study uh historical charts and patterns. They can learn to do some simple back testing on uh some simple software, even uh web based software. They can uh listen to r r read books like Market Wizards is that all these uh other successful traders give out their wisdom and the principles behind what they do and um and it's just crucial that they uh educate themselves first in many ways.

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Practice on live data, master the platform, and build confidence risk-free before you even pay a cent. Click the link in the show notes to start trading with Trade the Pools Capital. Okay, so by reading so many books and having all that information there, you must absorb a lot of mixed messages. How do you filter the noise from all that information and use it to your benefit?

I think that's the key is people have to find the methodology that fits their personality. You know, some guys actually like sitting in front of the computer and scalping all day long. Other people, you know, want to look at the long term trends. You know, some are discretionary that like to find ways to beat the markets with their own decisions. Others like to have a m purely mechanical system that they're simply taking entries and exits. But the key is they gotta find what

is going to work for them personally and write a trading plan geared to their own personality. And they have to have their own entries, exits, position sizing, risk per trade, maximum portfolio heat. They need their own trading plan. They don't need to go get tips or ask people what they're trading. They need to have their own methodology and system. And really it all starts with a trading system and a trading plan. And that's what they're really after.

Okay, so would you say it's sort of taking bits of information from different places uh the bits of information that lie can sort of stand out to you as something you'd like to try. And then sort of putting it all together? Yeah, it's like a buffet where you're finding the trading rules that will work for you and what your own risk tolerance is and what your person what what what your personality can handle with risk and um and and

following trades.'Cause some traders are very comfortable with a high winning percentage system where they might win eighty, eighty five percent of the time with uh short term trades, and then other people, you know, are trend followers and make all their money from just a few huge trades through the year with a very long term uh

um trading plan where they stay in and they let it fluctuate a lot more. But y you have to if you can't follow your own trading plan then nothing will work. So you have to find what fits your own personality and is profitable. Okay. Right. So where is one area you see people reasonably new to trading continually getting it wrong and what would you like to say to them?

Yeah, i i I see even people that's followed me for years, they're just obsessed with predictions and they wanna know what do you think is good? What's what's your trade? What where do you think this is going? everyone wants to predict when you know, the future does not exist. The future is not gonna exist until until uh We move day by day into it. So

There's no way anybody can look at all the dynamics of all the buyers and all the sellers and all the variables that can go into any market. There's no way to predict the future. All you can do is trade each day based on what is actually happening, based on resistance, support, trade. Trend, moving averages, volatility, you have to trade what the market's giving you that day. You can't um you can't predict anything. It's impossible. Anybody who says they can is lying. Okay.

I I think that's really interesting, yeah.

Success Principles and Final Wisdom

I've been asking this question a lot lately and it's kind of similar to that last one but a little bit different. Um I mean I'm really interested to know. What do you believe is the difference between traders who make it and go on to have huge success and those who don't make it anywhere? I mean, I'm thinking you could probably do an entire episode on this subject alone, seeing as that is essentially what your book, New Trader, Rich Trader, is all about, right?

Yeah, it's actually I'm trying to refine all the winning principles that I've seen that are common amongst all traders. Like you said, they're different, but they all have some common principles. So what is it that you believe I think the there's a universal principles. You know, there's risk the the survivor bias where you see the ones that made it. and made it for a very long time were the ones that manage risk.

If you don't manage risk and you risk w you you put your entire account at risk enough times, you will blow up as Victor Niederhofer found out. You know, he was a amazing trader, had uh some of the best returns ever, and then blew up several times. If you're if it's too costly to be wrong once and you blow up, then you will eventually blow up. Also the discipline to follow

the a plan, whatever the trading plan is, without the discipline to follow it, it doesn't matter. So it doesn't some no matter how good someone is, if they don't have discipline to keep the position sizing right and keep taking their entries and their exits, you know, th they're not gonna make it. So we got risk management and we've got

And then we've got the other reacting. So many legends they they were reacting to what was happening all the way back to Jesse Livermore, Nicholas Darvis. You know, it's the predictors that believe they can't be wrong, also are the ones that blow up. So, you know, reactive technical analysis.

uh discipline, risk management. There's also perseverance. If somebody decides they're gonna be a winning trader and they're not gonna stop until they are, then generally only time separates them from success. So then they gotta find out how they're gonna do it. It's just a matter of time. Yeah, I think you you put that really well, Steve. Um what advice do you have for any traders who maybe struggle with the emotional side of trading?

Uh the the only thing that's gonna get them through is they've got to develop faith in themselves and faith in their system. They have to know that they're gonna do the right thing and when the real money's at stake and they gotta know that their trading system is a winner in the long term.

their risk management will keep them in the game. So they've gotta have a faith in themselves and a faith in their s in their system and also they have to not trade so large that they activate all their emotions. And once you start getting emotional in your trading you know, you're dead. You have to stay you have to stay unemotional and it it just be numbers and it it just be num you're just executing a plan.

and not have your ego, your greed or your fear or your stress stress engaged in the trade itself. It has to be a business transaction. Okay. I think that's really great. Well Steve, that kinda brings us towards the end of the interview. So um thanks so much for um coming on and sharing those answers, but before we let you go, we'll um we'll go to the closing bell, which is just a round of short, sharp questions. Um so the first one would be, what's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

I think it was uh Larry Hyde, I think he said, As long as you be as long as you manage your risk and go with the trend, this just has to work. I like it. What is the number one trading resource you couldn't live without today? Uh I think the book Market Wizards was a real game changer. Okay. So I guess that would kind of answer my next question here and that is

Well name one book you believe is a must read for any trader just starting out and feel free to mention your own book. Well, I'll I'll throw in uh Alexander Elder's uh uh trade f trading for a living. And he has a new edition. That that really goes into the the m managing your mind method and meth uh your money, mind and method. That was the the three things you have to manage. I thought that was a great point in that book.

Okay, and as always we'll we'll put a link to that in the show notes. Um No and everything you do now, what would you have done differently come day one? I think I would have done all my research and study first and then traded and not traded it first and then did all the study and research and learning. Okay. Awesome. Really good. Again, Steve, thanks so much for coming on the show. Um before we leave, do you want to share with listeners where they can find out more about you and connect?

Yeah, I'm on uh very active on Twitter at uh at S JosephBurns on Twitter and I uh I I'm uh I blog at newtradery.com And I also have one of my my best selling books is uh New Trader Rich Trader, which has been a huge success. Okay. Awesome. Now all those links will be in the show notes. And um thanks a lot, Steve. We will speak to you soon. Thank you, Aaron. You've come to the end of this episode of Chat with Traders, but don't worry, more great episodes are on the way.

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