012: Adam Ryan – Game-Changing Lessons that Propelled Trading Success, and How to Crush Your Goals This Year

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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, To learn the markets and discover what works and what doesn't. But how can you hear about these? And get in on the straight. Here's your host, Aaron Feich.

Hey, what's going on? Welcome back to another episode of Chat With Traders. This week I'm pumped to introduce an incredibly humble, relatable and overall genuine trader, Adam Ryan of Optic Trader. He's actually also the first Canadian guest on the show, which is really cool. But just like the majority of those who make it, Adam will not hesitate to tell you he was no overnight success.

He went through the same struggles and faced the same challenges that many of us can relate to. However, the one thing that set Adam apart was the fact he never gave up. And it was that determination and perseverance that landed him in the hot seat with a trading mentor who was able to steer him in the right direction. Jumping forward a few years, Adam has now forged his own method for success and actively trades crude oil, gold and the S P five hundred futures.

During this interview, you will hear about his journey on a much deeper level and you'll pick up many great pointers, especially around the topic of setting goals and how to actually achieve them. Okay, here it is, this week's interview with Adam Ryan. Adam, how's it going?

Pretty good. Yourself? Not too bad at all. Man, thanks so much for coming on. It's really good to have you on the show. Oh, no problem. Thanks a lot for having me. Glad to be here. Awesome. So um how'd you go on the markets today? Did you do all right? Uh yeah, today was a pretty pretty good day, pretty easy going. I went long in the S P in the morning. uh a little break out of balance, but we were actually in a longer term balance so it kinda

Chopped midday till it got up there. Not too exciting. Okay. Good stuff. Good stuff. So we'll just run through a few different topics. We'll start off with sort of how you got started. And um I know you had a mentor early on, so we'll have a few questions around that. Okay. And then we'll speak a little bit about your actual trading style.

and how you're approaching the markets. And I notice you're using some sort of probably not so common indicators on your charts. So I'd like to ask you a few questions around that. And then um just some advice for other traders who are at that beginner intermediate level who are, you know, on their way to becoming pros and, you know, that should probably take us through. How does that sound? Oh yeah, that sounds good.

Awesome. So um, you know, this is gonna be great. So let's just get right into it, eh? Okay, perfect. So um Adam, if you'd like to just give us a bit of a background on yourself and um tell us how you actually got into trading. Okay. Well I got back into trading. I was actually working two full time jobs at the time back to back. I only had about forty five minutes gap in between the jobs where I could quickly run over to the bus, get on the next job and I was doing it to save up for a car.

Now I couldn't really keep this up because it was just two full time jobs. It was pretty, pretty tough on me. And then when I did get the car, I quit one of the jobs. But having half the income, I was kind of like, Man, I need to do something else to get up there again. I wanna make some money and I don't really know what to do. And I stumbled across the stock market and I thought, Yeah, this is it, you know, like this is it for me.

And I did a little more research and I seen that, you know, the same guys year after year were coming out ahead, the hedge fund guys, they were on top, they were able to make money, so it was more to this than just gambling.

And I thought, you know, I'm gonna open an account and uh I thought I'm gonna start with penny stocks'cause it's affordable. I only had about a ten thousand dollar account, so It was a pretty small account and my thinking was if I trade penny stocks, they're more affordable, they're cheaper, then I can get started that way. Now at this point I had no clue about anything. I didn't know about how the market works, risk control, nothing. So

I didn't even have a strategy. I just went in there and I knew I wanted to buy penny stocks. So the first stock I ever bought was Turbo Power Systems. I don't even know what it did. what the company did. But I went in there and it was trading at one cent to two cent, one point five, going up and down like that. And I figured, wow, if I just buy this at one cent, goes up to two cent, oh, I got a hundred percent profit right there.

Uh so it went down to one cent. I put an order in and it just sat there for a while. It moved off. It sat there, moved off, sat there, and I wasn't getting filled. I'm like, well, what's going on here? Market's trading at my price. Why am I not getting filled? So I decided yeah, I'm just gonna put a market in above the or above uh put an order in above the market.

and I'll get filled for sure that way. So I got filled at one and a half cents and I was like, this is awesome, you know, once it goes up to two cents I'll sell and I'll still get a fifty percent profit. So the market ends up going to two cents. and I just can't get out and I'm wondering, okay, what's going on here? So the market goes down, keeps going back up and then it the market closes and I didn't get out of the position. So I'm like, okay, maybe I'll get out tomorrow.

So the next day comes and the same thing happens and I'm unable to get out of the position and at this point I don't know anything so I'm thinking oh this is the broker's fault, it's definitely the broker. So I call it my broker And I say, Hey, what's going on here? The market's trading at two cents. I'm trying to get out. Why can't I get out? And he's like, Well, there's not anyone on the other side of the trade. There's a long line of people

waiting to get in at that price. And I'm like, Well, what do you mean there's a long line of people? Like, how long's the line? And he's like, It's really long. So I thought okay, I better just you know, liquidate the position at a lower price again and I did that and I ended up losing half my account in two days'cause I put all my money into that thinking it was gonna be this great idea. And at that point I thought, okay, I'm gonna have to step back

from the markets for a little bit and I'm gonna need to learn something. So I stepped back, I stopped trading for a while and I just did some research, looked around on the net and I found technical analysis. And I thought, okay, this is it, technical analysis. So I gotta learn this technical analysis stuff and then I'll be gold and I'll be a professional trader and that's it.

So I went on Amazon, I bought this six hundred page book on technical analysis, all the patterns, all these setups and everything, and I thought, yeah, this is it, I got it now. but they don't teach you why the patterns are occurring or what context you need to take the trades in. So it really didn't really get me anywhere. But after about a year of doing this, I started seeing a little bit of results and

I was paper trading because after that big hit I didn't want to put any more real money into the market without having a system and knowing what I'm doing. So I was paper trading for about six months or so. And I started seeing some decent results. I thought, okay, well maybe I should uh take this live again.

Doing it with a job. I I didn't feel like I was fully committed and I wanted to be a trader and I just thought this is for me. So I quit my job. And just before I did that I was about to buy my first home. I had twenty five thousand dollars saved and I said, you know what, I'm gonna just trade and then in six months I'll have a hundred thousand, in a year I'll have a million, you know, this crazy idea. And

I just went at it and it didn't go as well as I thought it would go. You know, I I I was struggling at the beginning. I I never really lost too much money because the main Main thing for me was I made a million mistakes, every single mistake a beginner trader could make, except one. I always respected the market and I never went above and beyond my risk parameters. I set risk for myself and I stayed within it. And the main reason for that was because I had no job. This is all the money I had.

I had the twenty five thousand dollar account and then I took out a ten thousand dollar line of credit on top of that. And if I if I lose this, I was just a dun. I kinda I don't recommend traders doing this, but it's what I did. And uh I went that way. And then I kind of stayed, you know, even a little bit up, a little bit down. My first week kind of what set me up what I thought I was gonna be so successful is because I made twenty three hundred dollars in my first week.

And then it was just back and forth from there. It was kind of a little beginner's luck and I thought, you know what, I need to get some education here because I'm definitely not doing doing so I'm doing something wrong here. So I found this educator and I thought, yeah, this this guy seems like he knows what he's talking about. They got a couple of courses. I took their courses.

And then I spent months and months and months learning this guy's system, executing it in the market, practicing with it. and to only find out that I had no real edge in the market. What this educator was teaching me. was nothing. It wasn't even proper anything. It was just terrible. He didn't trade for himself. And I was I was devastated. I was like, man, I spent all this time learning this guy's system and now I'm back at square one. It has doesn't help me at all in the market.

And I just kinda kept chugging along, went back to my old system and here and there I would look online and see, okay, let's see if there's any good education out there, if you know, I can learn something from some forums here and there.

And it was this was about a couple years into my trading now. And I still I still wasn't uh where I wanted to be. I was seeing marginal success, but I wasn't really getting ahead. And I found this one trader and just by hearing him talk, after being in the market for a little while, I could understand who

didn't know what he was talking about and who did and this this trader really sent different. He wasn't just pressing, oh, make easy money here, buy this, you know, you're gonna be rich in a week. He was saying it was difficult. It was tough. And he laid out, you know, kind of a little path for success and he had a course and I thought, you know what, I'm gonna take this guy's course.

So I took this guy's course and it was quite a bit more expensive than the previous course I took, but I figured that, you know, if it's a better course it'd be a little more expensive. And I was just blown away. I couldn't believe it. What I was learning was just totally different than what I was doing. And I was using all these different indicators and, you know, always on this quest for the holy grail. And this was saying, No.

Get away from the indicators, learn price action, market structure, and kind of simplify the trading a little bit. And that's what I did. And then from that on I started moving forward, moving forward. It wasn't an overnight success. I still wasn't doing that great with my trading, but I could see it kind of moving in the right direction.

So then I shot I shot this trader an email'cause I was just blown away and I said, Yeah, I'm blown away with your course. It's such a breath of fresh air to finally meet a real trader who's offering this education. And he was living in the US at the time, I was living in Canada and just by chance he emailed me back pretty quickly and he said, Hey, I see in your re in our records you're from Calgary, Alberta, Canada and I'm like, Yeah and he's like, Yeah, I'm actually there right now.

Uh, you wanna go out to lunch? And I was like, Yeah, sure, I'll go out to lunch. And I was just like, Wow, this is awesome. I'm gonna get to sit down with a professional trader and talk. You know, I've n at this point I've never even met a professional trader or even known one because around where I'm from I no one even trades. I don't even really understand what I do when I explain it to people. And here I am gonna get to sit down with a professional trader and he's gonna take me out to lunch.

So we went out to lunch and we ended up talking for about two hours and it was just I kinda got to pick his brain a little bit. He was kind of picking my brain a little bit is how I found his course and why did I choose him and all that and uh we kinda left at left it at that and I went on my trading for a little bit longer.

And I had my first really devastating loss a little while after that. Now The account wasn't that large. It was maybe thirty five, forty thousand around there, just a little bit higher. and I took a loss of around thirty five hundred in one day. And I was a guy who always respected my risk. But I got I was into this position and I thought, yeah, it's gonna go up. It's all the market signals are pointing this way. I'm gonna get long and then I got stopped out right away.

And I let the emotions kinda take over. I got really angry and I thought, you know what? I'm gonna revenge trade. I'm gonna double up my size. I'm gonna get this back. I'm gonna show the market kind of thing. And I went in there and then I took a loss, a bigger loss, and I was just like, What the heck have I done? This is just massive and I I stopped trading for the day after that and my heart kinda sunk and

At this point, I was actually moved back home with my parents. I was renting a condo. I decided to move back home so I didn't have to be forced to earn. and there was a spare bedroom beside the office I had upstairs and I just walked over to the office and I I collapsed in the bed with my head down and I felt like I was in the dumps. And my dad came home from work a little while after that and he walked in and he said, Hey, what's going on? And I'm like, My life's over. I just lost.

so many thousands right now. Like I don't know if I can make it as a trader. Like it's just too tough for me and then He said something to me after that that I don't even think he knows kind of picked me up and motivated me. He said it as a joke, but it actually is what got me up and going again. And he's like, Don't get so down on yourself, you know? One day you're gonna be the professional trader taking money from a sucker leggy and he kinda laughed it off and walked away.

And it was weird as that sounds, that actually kind of motivated me because I'm like, wait a second, I am a novice trader. You know, one day I will be a professional, but I'm still learning. I gotta stop putting so much pressure on myself to earn here. You know, I I'm gonna make it one day and I just gotta keep going. And I got up, I went back to the charts, I started dissecting what went wrong and you know, I've typed the entries into my journal and I went from there.

And uh that kinda gave me the courage to message my the trader who kinda mentored me again and I said, hey man, you know, I just had this terrible day. I kind of explained it to him in an email. And he c he said, you know what? I'm gonna call you up and we're gonna have a talk and you know I'll get through this with you. So he called me up. And he said, Listen, Adam, you know, this happens to the greatest traders, okay? Everyone makes mistakes.

But the way you feel right now, you don't ever want to feel that again. So don't ever do this again. I'm like, yeah, I feel terrible. Like I don't want I don't want to go through this again. And we talked for a bit about 30 minutes or so and I was really feeling a lot better. And he was telling me about how some struggles he went through in his trading and how he overcame them.

And then I was like, Hey man, do you think you can like do some private coaching, like kinda mentor me a bit? You know, I'm s I'm close. I know I'm close, but I just I need that extra little push and he said, I don't know, I'm I'm getting ready to write a book here and I don't know if I'm gonna have the time to do it. Uh but, you know, I've already met you and I seen, you know, how dedicated you are and how much you wanted and you remind me of me.

When I was starting out and he's like, you know what, I'll do it, but we gotta start on Monday and it's only gonna be be a month long. Right. And I was like, Oh, that's all I need. Thank you so much. So we started on Monday and Every day after the close I would write down my trades. I'd mark them up on a chart. I'd send them to him and then he'd kind of critique my trading.

over Skype and we did that for it was only a month, but just doing that for a month and seeing where I was going wrong, having a professional trader tell me, okay, You know what, the market gapped way down here and you're still thinking you're getting long at changes occurred now. So I was like, Oh wow, you know, I never really thought of that and a bunch of other aha moments I had and after that

You know, a little while after that consistency started to set in. It really started Reaping the rewards of all that hard work I paid off, so I was pretty happy with that. But it wasn't an overnight success. Like I didn't just take that mentorship and then I was doing crazy. What really boosted me up there was when I started going above and beyond the training. I started making my own observations. I started understanding

what's really going on in on the market. And I started to be able to understand, oh, at different times in the day, prices being controlled by different participants. on a given day. So sometimes the higher time frame participants are controlling the market. They got different buying and selling patterns and the market moves a lot different. Sometimes day traders are controlling the market.

and they have different buying and selling patterns and the market moves different when they're controlling it. And I got a really deep understanding of how the market operates and what drives price. And that's kind of what really took it from there. I was able to buy my first home. My son was born. I started a family and trading's been really good to me and

I decided, you know what, I want to start a business and help traders like me. Cause I remember how it felt when I was just struggling and somebody helped me out and I wanna do the same for other traders and that's Pretty much my story in a nutshell.

And here we are now. Yeah. That's awesome, Adam. Thanks for for sharing that in in such great detail. That's awesome. Yeah. Just uh taking a step back there to the the mentoring side of things. So how important do you feel that was to your success? If you hadn't had that, where do you think you would be now? I think it's absolutely crucial. to my s to anyone's success, to get a mentor because

I think I would have done it because just the kind of person I am, but I think it probably would have took years and years longer. Because a mentor's already been through all that. They know what works, they know what doesn't, and they can kinda get you on the right path very quickly and they can say, okay, you're doing this wrong. You kind of need to come this way.

Um, this is not gonna work in the market. You gotta get away from all these crazy indicators blinking things across the screen and doing all this crazy stuff and just understand price action and having a mentor there who's already been through w all the ups and downs and who's where I wanna be. Like he's right where I wanna be right now is huge.

Yeah, yeah, no, definitely. I agree with you on that one. That's that's really good. So for others who might be in sort of like a different sort of situation, who might still be in that learning period and sort of still trying to get profitable and trying to get some s consistency in their trading. What would be the best way for them to find a private mentor? Like how would they reach out to someone who they think could, you know teach them, you know, on a private sort of level. Like that's not

an easy thing to pick up. How would you say would be a good way to approach that? See, that's extremely difficult to say because it's very difficult to find a mentor, first of all. And second of all, you may find one, but the majority of them out there they're teaching terrible methods and they don't really know what they're doing, so

it's really difficult to find a mentor. But if you do find a mentor, you wanna hold on to that mentor and stay as close as you can. And that's kind of why I offer a mentorship program as well, because I've seen that there's a void here that's not being filled. Hmm. It's definitely an important one and a tough one to get hold of. So

You might have touched on it in your story at the beginning there, but how long was it after you got started before you were reasonably profitable and sort of consistently profitable with your trading? Okay, well about year three, um, I started seeing like the consistency was going pretty well. I know that's Sempt like forever to me, but you know, three years

is a decent amount of time to not be really making much money. Uh but it wasn't long after that. Once year four came around, it was like exponentially it grew right away because Consistency is just the hardest part. And although that's just one step, once you get consistent, then you can move on from there and uh it kind of grows very quickly after you get consistent. Hm. Would you say that the sort of three years is a reasonable time to allow yourself or to like go in with that expectation that

learning to trade and become profitable could take me up to three years or more. Yeah, I think you should definitely think like that. Now, I know my mentor it took him, I think a year and a half or something like that. Like he was really quick at it. So I kind of always thought, you know, I gotta do that. That's how quick I gotta be. And when I didn't get that quick,

I was thinking, Well, am I really straggling behind here? And he said, No, like I just did it quick. This is a normal timeline. So I think you should expect three to five years around there. You know, if you can get a mentor, you can definitely shorten the time of that, but

It's not a get rich quick kind of thing at all. It's gonna take time. Yeah. That's that's really good. So I'd like to talk a little bit more about um how you're actually trading the market right now and get a better understanding of that. So let's focus in a little bit on your approach to the market.

I believe you're a mania day trader. So was this something you naturally gravitated towards or did you try other various styles of trading as well before you sort of stuck with that? Yes. So first I was started off swing trading. And I actually wanted to start off as a day trader, but it just seemed way too complex and too much going on. So I thought, you know what, I'll start swing trading first and then I'll move my way into day trading. So I I swing trade.

at the beginning and I was just holding for two to ten days. Um this was when I I just had a simple uh moving average crossover system, nothing else. And I was doing that for a while and it was actually going not too bad. And then I I wanted to move into day trading pretty much after I had a pretty big hit overnight. And I didn't really like that overnight exposure. I I tried to get out of the trade uh pre market and I couldn't get out. So I just thought, Yeah, you know what, I wanna get my risk

lowered and just exit positions at the end of the day. And then I decided I'll try to day trade from there. Okay. So what what do you think are the sort of main advantages um of day trading compared to swing trading. Um you mentioned uh overnight exposure, but is there anything else that has you sort of more in favor of being a day trader? Uh yeah, the risk, but also I believe that it's easier to predict the shorter term moves than the longer term moves, which is kind of

not what everyone else says. And I don't mean like moves within seconds. I mean like the intraday swings, like when I can see the higher time frame players coming into the market. I can expect price to go a certain way and It's just easier for me to predict short term market action than it is long term.'Cause many different things can happen, many different news items can come out and change.

the way that a market can move long term. Okay. I mean, what are you trading? You train stocks, indexes, commodities, currencies, like where do you sort of lean towards? So I trade futures Like I'm actively trading futures. That's what I mostly trade. But my method works on any instrument with sufficient liquidity. But what I do is First I take a top down approach to the market. So I look down at the furthest time frame. Even though I'm just a day trader, I have to be aware of

key reference areas on the bigger picture scale. So I'll start with a monthly chart where each bar represents one month, showing me several years of data. And then I'll drill down to the weekly chart and then I'll drill down to the daily chart and then I'll drill down to the five minute And I'm drawing key reference areas on each of those charts, finding support and resistance zones where I think buyers and sellers are likely to become active and where one of the two is going to be aggressive.

Now once I pinpoint that I go to the profile charts, which their market and volume profile. And market profile is showing me how much time the market spent at a particular price. And volume profile is showing me the actual quantity that's traded at each price. And without getting too in depth with that I use that to find

key reference zones as well. And I'm pretty much trading around those levels. Yeah, that was actually one of the things I was gonna ask you about was those profile charts that you've been using. So for those listening who might be unfamiliar with this, it kind of looks like a volume bar that

running um instead of horizontal it's sort of been turned ninety degrees and running sort of vertical up the side of the chart. Um so can you just speak a little bit more on those and what they sort of actually show you? Okay. So they show me where value is at any time. So when the profile gets fat and you see a lot of those bars running, that's showing me that a lot of volume is transacting at that price. So that's where the market perceives value at. So now I don't trade price.

as much as I trade values. So if I the price could be going up, but values moving lower. So the volume on the profile or the fat area is is going down. Then that's where I'm thinking the market's likely going. Now it's kinda hard to just do a quick quick rundown of this without kinda pulling up a chart and showing what I'm saying, but That's kind of the the gist of it.

Yeah. Now that's cool. I I noticed you've got some um some good videos on it on your um YouTube channel that you sort of touch on it briefly. Yes. What I might do is I might put those in the show notes underneath the episode on our website. So if anyone wants to find out a little bit more about that, they can do so. Perfect.

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Just taking a step back, um, do you have like a select few markets that you follow religiously or are you sort of more looking across a broader range of markets and just looking for a very particular kind of setup to trade. Yeah, so I've pretty much narrowed it down to crude oil, gold, and the S P five hundred mini contract.

uh all futures and that's what I trade actively every single day. Now I I look here and there for other setups and other futures markets and uh maybe a couple stocks here and there, but this is what I'm actively trading every day. And pretty much I come in in the morning, I see what happened overnight, I write my trade plan out, I get ready to trade the day, and I have eleven setups that I use.

Um it sounds like a lot, but some of them don't occur that often. So I have a eleven different setups I use and I'm just preparing myself for when I'm gonna see one of these setups. And I'm just hunting for the trade. So most of the times I have my orders just sitting at the market waiting for the market to come to me. And then when I get filled I go with the position.

Okay, that's really cool. Um what would maybe if you'd like to just share one of those setups with us? Um not in great detail, but just sort of give us an idea. Maybe one of your favorite sort of setups that you you tend to watch. Okay. One of my favorite setups is actually the balance failure.

So when we talked about uh market and volume profile, when the market's chopping around and the profiles are getting fat, that's cup the market coming into balance. So if you see a con consolidated range, tight range on the chart, that's all a balance area. And when you're in a balance area, you want to be trading from the low of the balance area to the high of the balance area because the extremes are where the real opportunities lie. In the middle is just a bunch of chops.

Most of the time. And when you break out of this is when when that's what starts trends. So when you break out of this'cause there's a lot of stops accumulating above these highs and above these lows. And they just get hit plus new money steps in and you get an explosive trend. Now what you can also get is you can get some smarter, larger traders that come in and they purposely push the market up.

Because they want to hit those stops and get the liquidity there, and then they want to slam it back down right away and it goes violently the other way. Now, this is one of my favorite setups because it gets so many traders off guard. They think, Oh, a huge breakout's coming. Yes, they're getting ready for the breakout and then when the failure comes, it just stops all those traders that were getting long out and it

flushes the opposite direction and it it goes pretty fast and violently and it's a one of my favorite setups. Nice. I like it. I like it. So let's talk a little bit about maybe some advice for those sort of in the beginner intermediate level of trading. Where is one of the areas you often see traders who are not yet pros continually getting it wrong?

And maybe what would you like to say to them? I gotta say it has to be searching for the holy grail and using way too many indicators, just always trying to find a new indicator, always switching your chart, going from a new timeframe, not being consistent in applying the method you're using. Uh you gotta get away from searching from the holy grail. There's no holy grail.

and get away from indicators altogether at the beginning. I think when you're first starting to trade, the most important thing you need to do is understand price action and market structure. Because In order for an indicator to populate, it needs price. So it's populating from price. So why not cut that off and learn what price is doing yourself? Because no indicator is going to be able to tell you something better than you can tell yourself. So don't use the indicators at the beginning.

And now I'm not against indicators. I don't say no the indicators are bad, but you gotta get that price action and market structure down first. And then if you want to add indicators later on, you can move on to that. Okay, that's a really great point, Adam. Um, thanks for sharing that. And this question might be a little bit similar, but what is it that you believe stops the majority of traders from ever making a huge success?

Um, like a lot of us start out with sort of big dreams and hopes of, you know, becoming a pro trader, making a lot of money, but I mean, you know, as the statistics say, ninety percent of traders or I don't know, it might even be higher. fail. So what is there anything particular that you think sort of stops traders from ever reaching that level of success? Yeah, I think it's gotta be Two things. One is

they give up too soon. They don't realize how difficult it's gonna be. And I probably would have given up too if I didn't throw myself into it with no other option because if you look What other educators are saying or some videos you see where they're just ramming down your throat, trading so easy. Look how I made a thousand dollars with thirty minutes of work.

And people get into it thinking, Wow, this is gonna be so easy and then they finally get into it and it's not easy, it's extremely difficult and they give up. So I think traders are giving up too soon. Yeah. No, that's really good. I mean, and it comes back to what you said earlier on about how it, you know, it sort of took you around about three years to sort of start getting a little bit consistent with your profits, so Yeah, that's that's good to keep in mind.

Um, do you have any pointers around um sort of keeping your emotions controlled and maintaining a level head when you're trading? Yes. It's important to keep yourself in the optimal mental state.

when you're trading, especially when you're starting out, because once you get a little more skill and you develop they you don't really need to focus too much on it. But What I used to do when I first came in is I would do some visualization exercises, some breathing exercises, and really get myself in the optimal mental state to trade.

I'd go through what I need to do to be successful, things that I'm struggling, and I'd visualize myself going through those struggling times and doing them successfully.

And just making sure that you're calm because you're gonna go through a lot of emotions at the beginning. It's gonna be tough to control. But the main thing is confidence takes away ninety percent of all the emotional garbage that's gonna affect you during during the trading day and that's gonna take a while to get that confidence.

But during that confidence I definitely recommend I mean, during uh that time period when you're trying to gain that confidence, I'd recommend what I took is I took the Peak Performance Home Study course for investors and traders by Doctor Van Tharp. And that's just loaded with great information about how to control the psychology of trading and the emotional side and and I definitely recommend that to all traders. Okay, nice. We'll put a link to that in the show notes.

Yeah, on your blog um you've got an awesome post about how to achieve um your trading goals. And um, you know, this is something that I I personally have questions around too. So what are some of the key points to note if we want to actually achieve certain goals this year?

And in addition to that, how and what sort of goals should we even be setting when it comes to trading? Okay, that's a great question because I'm I'm big on setting goals and measuring performance Now, when you're when you're setting a goal, it can be anything like I want to trade a more challenging market. I wanna make a certain amount of money in the month or so or get my trading account up to to this much.

But if you're just setting the goal itself, it's not gonna do anything unless you're you're writing it down and then you're also writing down the necessary steps to achieve that goal. And the reason for this is you always wanna have something you can periodically review and say, Okay, am I moving towards my goals still or am I straying off to this side? Do I gotta move a little bit more back to center? And by writing down your goals, you're gonna give yourself

A method to achieve those goals. Now that method may change as you get closer to the goal and be like, okay, I thought I needed this, but really I don't need that. And I guess I could give an example with that is when I was first starting trading off I was trading uh when I first was getting successful, sorry, I was trading crude and gold.

And those were my main markets and I really wanted to trade the S P five hundred, but it was just very difficult for me. It seemed like it didn't move as fast. It was more choppy and I I couldn't really get it under control. So I set a goal at the beginning of one year that I want to successfully trade this market.

this year. So I had that as my main goal. Then I had to write down, okay, what are the steps so I can achieve this goal? So my first step was I'm gonna go through historical charts and I'm gonna draw my key reference areas in on the chart, write my trading plan out and forward through the chart just like I'm trading that and try to get some consistency doing that. Then my next step is while I'm trading crude oil and gold, I'm gonna add the SP 500 and I'm gonna trade it on SIM.

while I'm trading my two markets every day until I can get that consistency up. And then once that happens, I'm gonna add it to live with smaller size and then build my size up. to the same markets when I feel comfortable. So I gave myself a goal And then I also gave myself ways to achieve that goal. Okay. That that sounds really good actually. I like how you sort of while you were trading you did that um, you know, on sim like a

you know, not with not real money. That seems like a really good way to do it. Yes. One thing you said in there was about sort of setting goals around certain amounts of money you want to make. For someone who's not sort of consistently profitable, is that a good goal to set? Like is that realistic? Yeah, that's a good point there. You know what I mean? Like they want to make, you know, five grand a share off a five grand account, but they're not yet making money. You know what I mean? Yeah, so

You don't want to get too fixated on the dollar amount, but it's still good to set a goal like that and set the necessary steps that it would take to achieve that goal. So what's it gonna take for me to earn X amount a day? Well first I'm gonna have to show up on time every day. I'm gonna have to make sure I do my prep work and I'm gonna have to make sure I do this consistently. I'm gonna have to make sure I dissect my trades after the day's over, gonna have to make sure I fill out my journal.

I'm writing my stats in my Excel sheet as well, keeping metrics so I can review for later date and just not get too fixated on the dollar amount, but the process it takes to get there. And if you follow that process. You're gonna get there. You may not get there on your time frame, but you're gonna get there and following that process is key. Yeah, that that's really good. Okay. Well, this has been awesome, Adam. I really appreciate you coming on. It's been, you know

Really, really good. So let's just go to the closing bell, which is just a a few short questions that we asked all the guests. So the first one might be a little bit tricky. Sometimes people get a bit thrown off by it, but what's the best piece of advice you've ever received? I gotta say the best piece of advice I ever received. I don't even know if it was really advice, but it was probably the thing my dad said to me when I had

my worst day laying on the bed. That's good. That's good. That was a that was a top point. What's the number one trading resource you couldn't live without today? Yeah, I gotta say it's my trading platform, Ninja Trader. I've Been using it for a number of years. I Got all the hotkeys down. I'm really comfortable with it, so Okay. Nice one. Is there one book you believe is a must read for any trader just starting out? Yes, Reminiscence of a Stock Operator. That's a popular one. Yeah.

Yeah, awesome. Well, um again we'll link to that in the show notes. I've had like I think th you're probably maybe the third person to to say that and I still haven't read it myself, actually. I've got to get onto that. Oh, you gotta read it. It's a great read. It really lets you

know what the trading world's like, what you're getting yourself into. Yeah, yeah, definitely. I know I need to need to need to get onto that. Um And the last one is, knowing everything you do now, what would you have done differently come day one? Day one, if I had to do it all over again, what I would have done is stay on sim until I was profitable.

Now I know it's so hard, you just wanna you just wanna get in their live right away, but if you can't make money paper trading, there's no way you're gonna make it. trading live money, so I would have stuck it out sim trading a little bit longer.

and uh saved myself some uh devastating losses. Okay, cool. So before you go, um I mean you've recently launched Optics Trader. So do you wanna tell us a little bit about this and why you've now decided to start teaching? Yeah, once I got to a certain level in my trading where I hit the professional point. I really remembered the early on days in my career when

I was struggling and I wanted I wanted someone to turn to and, you know, luckily I found someone, but I still went through a lot of hell and a lot of traders don't find a mentor. So I thought, you know what, I'm gonna make a program built by a professional trader of what actually works in the market. And I I set out to make the best pro program there was. And I also want to make a mentorship program so I don't just leave traders. If they want a little extra help. That's really good. So

Um before we part ways, do you want to tell the listeners where we can find out more about this and um where we can connect with you also? Yes, you can go to optictrading.com and check out the professional trading course. I'm also on Twitter at Optic Trading. And I have a YouTube channel, Optic Trading as well. Okay, awesome. And we'll put links to um all three of those in the show notes at chatwithraders.com. So

Definitely make sure to check those out. And um again, Adam, man, been really good having you on. So thanks a lot. Oh, thanks a lot for having me here. I appreciate it. All right, we'll talk soon. You've come to the end of this episode of Chat with Traders, but don't worry, more great episodes are on the way. updated with each great new episode. And we love you. Next time on Chat With Traders.