032: Dan Shapiro – How to Handle a Run of Losses & Grind Through Slumps, While Keeping Your Emotions Intact

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Alright, what's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Chat with Traders podcast. And this time you're listening in to episode number 32. So let me just say to start this off, I've actually received a lot of requests for this week's guest in recent months. Maybe it's because he's a straight shooter who doesn't mix his words, or maybe it's because he's bounced back from

A multiple harsh failures to become an exceptional trader. Whatever the reason may be, I know for certain you're going to appreciate the raw honesty and insight of this week's guest, Dan Shapiro. Coming up from humble beginnings, Dan called on the neighborhood Loan Shark to fund his first trading account, which got him through the door to one of the largest prop firms at the time. This is where he rubs shoulders with many phenomenal traders who helped shape him into the trader he is today.

In this interview, we ultimately focus on the mental and psychological aspects of trading. So we discover some of the darkest moments from Dan's trading career, how to handle losses and grind through slumps. Trading the setup and not your PL and why you should care more about trading right rather than being right. So all in all, Dan was really great to talk to and I trust you'll enjoy this episode and actually it may even be worthwhile for you to play this through twice.

Just to ensure you don't miss anything. And of course all the show notes and links, everything that's mentioned during the interview, can be found at chatwithraders.com forward slash thirty-two. Alright guys, I'm Aaron Firefield, your host of Chat With Traders, and here is this week's guest from New York City, Dan Shapiro. Dan Shapiro, welcome to the podcast man. How are you?

It was a pleasure, Aaron. Thank you very much for having me. Thanks a lot for coming on. How's your day been? Uh was it a good day trading? It's a good day, we're all alive and kicking. Everything else is a cherry on top. Thanks a lot for coming on. I've actually had a number of listeners uh mention that I should get you on the show, so it's really good to have you here.

And I appreciate it, man. Thank you. You're welcome. And I know you've got an interesting story to tell. You're well experienced and speak about trade in a very raw and a very honest way, which I certainly appreciate. And I'm sure everyone listening is about to also.

So don't hold back with your answers and um I mean let's just start from the very beginning. So share with us how you initially got started trading. Where did it all begin for you? Cool, cool. So just uh very briefly, I know some of you guys know my story, some of you guys don't. Uh I am in the New York City area. I grew up in Brooklyn. Um a lot of my

friends, um, you know, a lot of my friends were stockbrokers. If you guys remember all that crap that used to was going on in the nineties, um, a lot of them went away to camp for for a little bit of time. Um the rest of us who were fortunate enough that weren't good at it, uh, we had to do something else. So I went into uh the restaurant business with my dad and this uh some other guy. And that business basically blew up in about a year, year and a half.

and I kinda needed some direction. I really didn't have any direction in my life, uh, which was kinda sad. I mean r I mean looking back at it, it really it really is sad. And um one of my friends who uh unfortunately two years ago passed away uh from cancer. He started uh he was also a stockbroker at one point and he was started trading in a place called uh generic trading, uh Carlin Financial.

And for all your listeners, if you Google uh Carlin Financial or uh generic trading and though if any of you guys have heard my interviews with Luci and uh Pete from uh the Luci Group, uh St. Luci Group, Um you know they uh Carl Equity's uh Carl Equity slash generic trading was one of the biggest uh prop uh prop shops uh from about nineteen ninety nine to about two thousand and Whatever it was, two thousand five, two thousand six, and then

Uh they sold their business to the Royal Bank of uh not Royal uh RBC. RBC r uh Royal Bank of uh Canada, one of those RBS is RBC, one of them, for exorbitant amounts of money basically for their uh execution system and all that stuff. But Um so my friend was there. He was there for two weeks. He blew out of his account and he told me about it. And I was like, hey, you know what? Let me let me give it a shot. I don't know why.

Um I borrow I had no money. I literally had no money. I borrowed money from a neighborhood loan shark. which probably wasn't uh the smartest thing to do, but again, where am I gonna get the money, right? Um I r I really don't have any too many choices. So I went uh to generic trading

And I got hired by uh one of the partners. His name is Ron Shear. If you guys Google Ron Shear, uh he's just, you know, he's just uh you know a pretty, pretty known, respected guy. And that's where I met uh Meyer Hoffman. And Meyer turned out to be uh one of my uh mentors. Uh and there from there, uh, you know, nineteen ninety-nine rolled in. Uh for the first you know, first year I made money the first month and then in s didn't see a check for the next year or so.

And then the internet craze rolled on. Uh just to kind of fast forward the story. Um, you know, it was pretty damn good. Pretty good. Um, you know, we did we did we did all right. You know, we did all right. I made uh a lot of great uh lifetime friendships. uh with some of these guys who if you Google, uh they've turned out to be huge fund managers and um uh just just a just a great group of core guys that we met along the way, learned a lot from each of them, took try to take a lot of

Attributes from all of them. Uh the driving force behind my early success was definitely Meyer Hoffman. Probably top five. best traders of all time from the prop world. Uh guy made, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars. Um you know, we all traded together. It was it was pretty awesome. And like I told uh the the Luci interviews, um, you know, I was a byproduct of the internet craze. And um, you know, at first it was it was great.

Uh but the reality is nobody knew how to trade back then. Uh we were all products of uh the f the you know the the sidewalks that were paved with gold. Uh all we did was Buy dips after three days of uh buying, and um you know, stocks would gap up 20, 30 points, and uh that was for about a year and a half.

And then the reality struck that it was just more to that because uh after 9-11, everything changed. Uh and I said it before and uh you know I'm not ashamed of it. Uh you know, I did it very well during the dot com era, but then 2001 rolled in, 9-11 rolled in, uh I had an office of generic trading uh with when Nasdaq was at 5,000. And when the planes hit the building, my business completely fell apart. I lost a lot of my own money.

And it took me basically about two, two and a half years to figure out what trading was. And uh I didn't make money for two years and that's the reality. Uh I didn't make any money for two years. And the one conversation um you never wanna have with your spouse and I'm sure a lot of your

uh listeners will really appreciate this, you know, um, you know, that conversation. Well, you know, Dan, you may you may you did all right. You know, you did it right during the internet craze. It's two years later. You you haven't taken home a single uh check. It's time to do something else for a living. You know what I'm saying? And when you're a trader and you hear that and you had

um some pretty decent success, the last thing you want to have is that conversation because reality really kicks in. I mean the reality really kicks in and bad enough during that time I was incredibly depressed. Uh the best parts of my uh num you know days and nights were going to sleep. I used to l literally certain nights just just sob myself to sleep because I couldn't believe how much, how fast I completely crumble down to the earth. and had no control of of trading because there was no

path to profitability. There was nothing. There was no guidelines. There was no blueprint. There was nobody there to help me because everybody was in the same shoes as me, because everybody was, again, the products of the dot com era. And again, when people asked me about how great those days were, yeah, they were great. You know

I you know what was great also when I was sixteen. I'm not sixteen anymore. I'm forty one and you know, as much as I'd like to reminisce when I was sixteen, as much as I like to reminisce when during the dot com era, the reality is it's a completely different market right now. And the greatest thing about um the dot com era, um, those two years.

that I didn't make money, it really made me appreciate what happens when you actually go on a good run. So when I finally started making money once again, roughly around two thousand in the middle of two thousand three, towards the end of two thousand and three, once I started making money again consecutively, that's when I really, really appreciated what I went through.

And a lot of the new traders, I'm sure a lot of you new listeners are are are going through the same thing. And I always tell you know, I always tell, you know, the people in my live webinar every single day, there's no difference between me and you. There's absolutely no difference. Um

Trading is a by product of your process. I don't care who you are, you could trade uh credit swaps, you can trade derivatives, you can trade bonds, e-minis, whatever you want to trade. Okay. You are a product of your process and there's nothing the market can do to you that you can't do to yourself. So once I started really figuring things out, it kind of clicked for me there. And uh trading for me, in my opinion, uh it you don't need to go back to the drawing board.

uh every single time. Uh it's more about tweaking, it's more about recognizing what you are doing wrong and just completely stopping it. I know for a lot of people they're so emotionally attached. to trading, uh and that's a whole different you know, that's a whole different story. Uh they're so emotionally attached to trading they can't see what they're doing wrong because they're so

Um, they're so absorbed by what they're seeing on social media, how fantastic it is. People are on vacation, trading off their iWatches, trading under a pool. I mean, who knows where they're trading? And the the sad part is

Uh, there are a lot of really great people out there that will show you things, but you know, you have to let go of all your bad habits. And that's, you know, pretty much the first stop for kinda c cutting yourself off, you know, cold turkey and starting to the road, you know, to prosperity. Alright, that's excellent. So

What we'll do is since you've recently done a few interviews with uh the guys at Sang Luci, I'll link to those in the show notes. So if you want um sort of a deeper insight to Dan's journey, um sort of from day one to to current times. Um you can check those out. So they'll be in the show notes at chatwithraders.com forward slash thirty-two.

Um definitely check those out, they're awesome interviews. But um I'm I'm really keen to sort of not recycle old information and get into some sort of the the meat of this interview. and um get into some some actionable advice. So Let's let's not brush over those few years which you you talked about, how you just lost money. So you were day trading, you were showing up every day to to trade and for two years straight you just lost money.

Wha what motivated you to keep going and why did you keep going and not quit to go find something? See see here's yeah, see here's here's the deal. Here's the deal. Once you taste'cause re you know, keep this in mind, okay? I grew up very, very poor. Okay. I grew up in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn and you know it is uh predominantly uh middle to lower class

um people. That's the reality. And my mom was a manicurist. My dad was a waiter. My dad eventually left my mom. My mom was on on welfare. So I I grew up very, very poor. Incredibly poor. All my friends grew up incredibly poor. And the one thing that I never wanted was to be rich. I just wanted to be have enough money so I can eat. That's it. So when you go back to those two years and I caught my first bit of pretty decent amount of money during you know, during the heyday.

it was discouraging that I couldn't figure out how to get back to there. So it wasn't more of, it wasn't much of m motivation. It was more of I didn't have any other options. You know what I mean? I didn't have any other options'cause I couldn't quit a business that I've tasted a very good amount of success in such a very, very short period of time for that year and you know, year and a half run.

And that's all it was. I mean, if a lot of people listening, you know, listening, you know, dot com wasn't 10-year run. It was, it was, it was 15 months. That's all it was. It was 15 month months. of of the greatest euphoric I mean people look at it now and say, you know, like ITK goes from, you know, five to eighteen, they're like, oh my God. You have twenty five ITKs a day. You know what I mean? They're all giving up ranges of fifteen, twenty dollars a day.

So it was more of desperation, man. I was hanging on for deal. I had no I had no I had no plan B. So I you know, my plan B was was killing myself. I mean, that was my plan B. I mean, that I mean, just to keep real talk. That was plan B. You know, this didn't succeed. I was going to take myself out. And uh that's where the emotional, you know, the emotional hate started coming out of me. And I and I really uh took this business for what it is. It's not this euphoric love fest that everybody

uh things they you know things they're in love with. It's it's a it's it's torture. Uh every single day to this day there's vomit coming out of my mouth and these are on good days because there's always something that agitates me about trading. And when you finally come to the realization that trading is nothing but a job, okay, you're going to treat it like a job.

And that's why there are no highs, there are no lows. It's work. Okay. Um whatever m the market gives you is the market takes. Because I am a swing trader by nature. In the last two years I haven't seen a run.

It's that go went straight up since you know, since uh the bottom of two thousand and nine. So this was all all new to us. Okay. This is all new the last couple of years, this whole unicorn effect, this whole QE, it's all new to us. So we don't expect the market to keep going, going, going.

So at some point about a year and a half ago, I just stopped putting on positions. I I had two t two positions on, three positions on five, but I used to have, you know, ten, twelve, fifteen positions on the whole time. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. So Going back to kind of what my motivation was, it was a pure act of

uh desperation because uh if I didn't succeed me um we probably would not be sitting here and that's you know completely real talk. I've I've you know I've um spoken to many traders That went through mentally and psychologically the same scars. uh that I went through. Um and uh the most important part is uh to be strong enough to kinda wake up the next day. I mean, that really is the strongest part about it because

Uh it's depressing, man. It really is depressing because when you go from uh when you go from highs to lows and you can't get back to that you know, you can't get p back to that top of that the heap again. Um that I mean basically that was my motivation. Just uh if I if I couldn't figure it out, you know, me and you are not having this conversation today. Yeah, right. No, I appreciate you being so honest with that. So What's uh how do I say this? So

So you were making money initially and then you went through a a period of two years when you you lost money consecutively. What was every day. Yeah. What was it that changed so much? Well, uh first of all it was that it was that kind of r uh wake up call by my wife and she's like, Listen, you gotta get a real job. Uh you know, we have bills, uh you know the you know, the bank account is depleting.

Um so you gotta you know you gotta get your your stuff together. And uh you know, one night I remember I just opened up my um I forgot what system I was using before. Was it Reuters or whatever the hell it was, and I just started looking at charts. Just just thousands of thousands of charts.

And I wanted to figure out what am I doing wrong? What am I not seeing? Where's the correlation? Where is the advantage? Where's my edge? Where's the ability to find something and hone a process and absorb a process that can get me forget about to where it was ninety-nine to get me where I can make a hundred dollars.

Okay, take home that check a hundred dollars. Because people ask me all the time, How do I make five grand a day? How do I make ten grand a day? How do I make twenty grand a day? My answer is always the same. You have to figure out how to make a hundred dollars a day first. Okay. So my goal was Figure out a process. Forget about the process. Figure out in the charts. Okay, what is gonna be there that I can make$100? That's it. Where can I make$100 and we'll go from there?

So I started looking at a bunch of charts and I started back testing and back testing thousands and thousands of charts and I noticed something back then which I w which is so ironically that I that I i i it's kind of the backbone of the whole hashtag PS sixty theory. I noticed that stocks and I didn't know I didn't use the word supply back then or or demand back there. But I noticed stocks used to trade in intervals. Okay. Just like

Uh just like climbing upstairs. So you know if you're gonna go to the top of the Empire State Building, you're not gonna jump from step one to step 15. You're gonna go step one, step two, and you're gonna stop. Take a breath, right? Step three, step four, take a breath,'cause you're tired. On and on and on and on. And I started looking at all these things that I heard people talk about. Moving average. Well, what the hell is a moving average? I used to buy dot-com.

If you know if Yahoo went from 260 to 220 in three days, I bite at 220. Henry Blodgett would with would would upgrade it with Merrill Lynch and this thing would be two fifty the next day, two sixty the next day. So there was no such thing as technical analysis. So I started looking at all these things. So what are these moving averages? What are they? What is this? Why are people using these things? And I and I and I put it on my charts, which I never used before. Again, it it was it was.

I mean we looked at charts just to see the direction where a stock can go, but it was never an instance of Well, you know, if the RSI goes to ninety, it's over, it's overbought. If the MACD cross, I don't know what these things are. I still don't know to to this day what MACD and RSI are. I'm not that smart enough, okay? If you if a stock is up twelve days in a row, I don't need to know that the RSI is at ninety-five. The stock's up twelve days in a row. I can tell it's overwhelmed.

So back then it was more of let me figure out what these things mean. Okay. And what I started noticing were that stocks go, and again, I didn't use the word supply back then, but I started noticing that stocks go. from supply to supply, which we use in modern day now, and stocks go from demand to demand.

And the only way they ever have a clear path to the goal line is if all these moving averages, all these supply zones, all these linear regression lines, all these Bollinger bands are out of the equation. Other than that, they are all stocks that are trading within ranges. And people hear that all the time. Stocks are trading within ranges. The problem is a lot of new traders. are can't tell the difference between a stock trading in a macro range within a micro channel

uh or a stock that's naturally organically coming out of a channel. And that's why you see a lot of stocks. Hit supply, you don't even realize it because again, nobody's ever explained that to you. Hit supply, get rejected, bam, bam, you're out of your money again. Again, you sit back and you sit to yourself, Well, I'm the dark cloud.

someth the you know the evil bug is on me, somebody is putting a voodoo doll on me. It's not that. It's just again, you know, majority of stocks they don't, you know, they're not tradable. It's just the reality. M most of the stocks are not tradable. They're they all move, but they're not tradable. And uh the problem with Uh most traders and and you know and most and most traders tell me is number one, they have no patience.

Number two, when you're a young trader and it doesn't mean your age, you have pretty much no bank. Let's be honest. You know, you when you have you know, not everybody borrows money from loan sharks to trade, okay? So normally you don't have any money. Uh normally you don't have any pain tolerance. Normally you don't have any uh technical education. What you see is you see is on social media.

which is, you know, ninety percent of it is all, you know, is all a gimmick, let's be honest. Uh I mean I trade I'm trading sixteen years. I traded w with some of the most phenomenal traders out there and I know when they're struggling, when I'm struggling, I see some some, you know, twenty two year old kid talking about he's hit the last sixty trades in the same market I'm trading for. It it it's it's it's it's comical. But it's okay. You know, it's okay. I wish everybody the best.

Um but the ironic part of trading for me and the whole mental uh mental cycle was trying to really desperately figure out. what everything meant. Okay. And uh I just went s countless hours and then I figured out what the common denominator

For stocks that were working and stocks weren't working. And what I came to find was There was an arbitrage and that arbitrage uh turned out to be um supply that was confirmed l years later by um uh by um um by a pivot which I use now uh and it's confirmed on a sixty minute cycle which has been

kind of a godsend for me where we are present day. But uh yeah, man, that was I I don't even remember what the question was, but mentally but mentally, man, that was it. I mean, that was um you know, that was uh kind of a big deal for me at that time.

Out of pure desperation. Yeah, no, that's that's an excellent answer. And just while we're on that subject and you're looking through these thousands of charts, you know, day after day what were you actually looking at? So if someone's listening and, you know, they're, you know, not yet profitable, they're they're still losing money most, you know, let's just say months. um, you know, struggling to to find a way to exploit the market.

And they go through looking at all these charts, what sort of things can they look at on these charts to try and find some some common denominators that that might lead them to profitable trades or help find an edge? Well here here here's here's here's what here's kind of my my open ended question, everybody. Number one, and I talked about this on the on my original interview with Pete. Uh Luci.

Number one, you have to figure out who the hell you are. That's number one. Okay. You can't be somebody else. And that's why I I believe all these alert services are probably probably the worst thing that can that can really uh curb the progress of a new trader. Okay. Because they're looking at social media and one guy is making everything look so phenomenal. So when they can't duplicate the results, again emotions kind of kick in.

But you have to figure out who you are. Okay. Do you want to be a swing trader? Do you wanna be a scalper? Do you wanna trade e-minis? Do you wanna trade options? Uh do you wanna trade um you know pairs, you know, a lot of people trade pairs, they're very, very successful. Uh do you wanna be a rebate trader? I know guys still to this day trade rebate, still do very, very well.

Um, you know, what do you wanna be? I mean, what do you wanna be? And th the the magic answer it to that question is there's nothing on a chart, okay, on a specific chart.

That is going to jump off the page and say, this is the right thing to do. Okay, there's nothing. Everything is trial and error. So I can tell you, hey, Aaron, look. Here's what I look for, right? In a normal uptrending market, here's what I look for. I look for a stock.

that puts in an initial move, bases out for at least five days, and once it gets above that initial move, I buy the stock. Okay, fantastic, Dan. You've done everything what every other trader has done for the last 25 years. Okay, great.

But here's the here's the problem. When you look at a chart, okay, you're looking at a very gray area. Look at the top of the range, you look at the bottom of the range. In between, there's a lot of moving parts, there's a lot of gray areas, which I've discussed in in in nausea. Um there's a lot of there's thousands of moving parts within uh a little, you know, a little a little bubble. Okay. And the problem is you can't just look at a chart and say to yourself, well

If the stock breaks 25, because that's the high for the, you know, for the last uh seven days, I'm gonna buy it. Here's the problem. If you don't know, okay, where your supply zones are, there could be a supply zone Right at$25.6. Okay, stock hits that supply. And for for all you guys who are new listeners who have never heard me talk about supply and demand.

Um supply zones are, let's use it to the upside. Okay. Supply zones are where emotional buyers meet technical sellers. Okay. And if you don't know that supply zone is there. you are gonna get rejected 90% of the time and then the stock is gonna fail and you're gonna say to yourself, well, this doesn't work, or again, um, you know, the anti crisis in me. Uh there's a poltergeist in my room. Something's wrong because everybody else is making money except for me.

So the very bare essence of a chart will never paint a picture. Okay. Because again, there's so many different grenades within that chart, within that cycle, within that channel that you're looking at. If s nobody's ever sat down with you and showed you what those things are, you will never be able to even anticipate that there's a monster coming in potentially out of the closet. And you will lose money consecutively and eventually again roll out that revolving door.

uh that many traders unfortunately uh have to uh uh have to face reality and go out of. So uh it's it's it's a very it's a very tough ans you know what I'm saying, Aaron? It's a very tough answer. It's it's not as simple as

Well here's what I look for, Mag D cross. Well I d well Dan Shapiro doesn't wor what a Mag D cross is. So how can I explain to you what a Magd if a if a stock Mag D's, right? Um yeah there's a lot of moving parts. I mean there's a lot of moving parts I think Uh the longer uh the longer you do this for a living, uh I think and it kind of using in a poker uh poker analogy, I think the more hands you see, okay, uh the more chances than you'll figure out.

that how the movie ends. Okay. And I say this all the time. The new trader, the modern trader, the whole um, you know, the whole m uh renaissance that we've seen in the last several years that everybody's kind of jumping back into day trading. Um The real you know, the reality is they're not um they're not prepared. You know, they're not prepared for uh all these moving parts. They're just not. It i it's just a a scenario of

uh looking at something black and white, you know, and and taking it for fair fair value. But with all these different scenarios that are out there with high frequencies, and um, you know, different you know, different uh you know hedge funds placing, you know, placing different I I can't wanna go into that, but uh th there's a lot of moving parts. And I I think what a trader needs to do is

Uh watch a lot of hands, play a lot of hands, but play the premium hands. Okay. So not every single day is tradable. Uh as my second interview with Meyer Hoffman, he said, you know, this market you could sit two, three days and not catch a wave. And on the fourth day, uh, like the stars and the moon

uh everything aligns and you'll make your, you know, X amount of dollars. So, um it's a different tape, man. It's a different tape. It's for you know, it really is for uh responsible traders, responsible adults. Uh you could be the nicest person in the world and I say this all the time. This is the only business in the world uh that, you know, you could want it bad enough. You know, I I hear it all the time. Do you want it bad enough?

Yeah, you could want it as bad as you want. It just it doesn't translate into you being successful. Um it's like, you know you know, i yeah, I wanna be six foot two, but if I don't put on, you know, my wife's four inch heels, I won't be six feet two six two. So you can want as is as bad as you want. Um The reality is, you know, you y luck does play a big part of it. I'm not gonna deli uh deny it, being in the right place at the right time.

Um, you know, gave me basically a couple of years that that I bought my time. I basically bought my time. Um you have to look at premium setups once you figure out, you know, who you are, what type of trader you wanna be. Um, and then you really have to avoid, you know, shooting yourself in the foot because again I say it all the time. You know, there's nothing um that somebody else can do to you that you can't do to yourself. And uh once you figure out what not to do.

Uh I think you'll be okay. I think you'll be okay. And the most important part is it'll buy you time, it'll buy you shelf life to figure out where your specific edge is. Okay. I really like that. That's that's an awesome answer, Dan. So Are you ready to get serious about trading? Then join Tasty Trade, Investopedia's best platform for options trading in twenty twenty six.

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We've talked about how you lost money s you know, throughout that two year period, um in quite depth. So Let's talk about how you go through losing periods these days. Sure they're not quite as as dramatic as two years at a time, but you know, you still go through losing periods. I mean everyone does. So how do you Stay.

And I know good spirits. How do you how do you keep your head up through losing periods and how do you break out of that? Yeah, that that's a great that's a great question, Aaron. A as we previously discussed, I I I get tons of emails all the time and they're never They're never asking me, well, what do you think about this chart? You know, I again what do I think about a chart is irrelevant. Um the question always is.

How do you make it through, man? How do you do it? How do you mentally stay afloat? And you know, there there's a there's a great answer to that. Number one, and here's my advice. Number one, guys.

Turn off your PL. Turn it off. Um, you know, turn it off. I I you know I completely I don't even know where my PL box is on my platform. Turn it off. And the reason why you have to turn off your PL is number one, this whole business is all emotion versus reality. Right? The more you're emotionally committed to a trade. the more chances than not you're gonna completely mistrade it and everything you're gonna do in this trade is wrong.

And then everything is gonna is gonna happen after the the trade is over is probably gonna make you angrier and angrier because eventually the trade will probably work out your way. Okay. So the first thing to do is turn off your PL. Okay. Uh number one, and here and here's kind of relevant advice here. Also, you want to turn off your PL because if you're having a good day, and I hear this all the time, Dan, I have a$30,000 account. Okay. What should be my goal for the day?

And my answer to that is your goal for the day is to make it to the next day, okay, which has nothing to do with your PL. And what happens is when you're trading, you're trading well, okay. If you look at your P L and you say to yourself, well, my goal is a thousand bucks for the day. Okay, you hit your goal within the first

hour or so. And then I know a lot of traders, they'll shut off, they'll shut off their day for the they'll shut off their day, right? They'll completely shut off the day and they'll leave. Here's the problem. The day that you can make their thousand, two thousand, three thousand, five grand, whatever it is, whatever interval you trade, whatever tier size you trade, the day you can make that money really, really quickly.

You don't realize it, but you're playing a premium hand. You're playing the kings. You're playing the jacks. You're playing the aces. You're playing the queens. Okay? So that day is turning out to be a premium hand. And what you're doing is you're taking a pair of aces and you're putting in a bet of 50 bucks. That's basically what you're doing. And you're telling the guy on the other that's uh playing against you, I'm all in for 50 bucks.

And once you hit that pot, you say to yourself, okay, I'm done for the day. So you're losing out on a premium hand. Ever every professional trader will tell you. What we're looking for is premium. We're looking for those pocket aces. Okay. So the day that you can make two, three, four, five grand for the first thirty minutes, forty-five minutes, you're in a very, very bullish scenario, playing a premium hand. So the last thing you want to do is say to yourself, well

I'm up a grand for the day, I'm done. And you don't realize you that one grand could turn into three thousand, could turn into six thousand, could turn into ten thousand because you're riding that euphoric euphoric hand. You're riding those pocket aces. And I don't care How you know, how misguided you are, everybody eventually plays pocket aces. And the most important part is if you remove your PNL box, those pocket aces really turn out to something.

Um on the way down, it's even more important to turn off your P and L. I already know on my tier size, let's you know, let on my tier size, and let's just use Any any example. Let's just use a thousand show lots. Just make it easier. I already understand if I'm putting on a trade and the stock goes a dollar against me, I know p I know mentally I mean, I know I could do the math, you know, put on a thousand shares, down a you know, down a point, you're down a grand, okay?

But mentally, if you see it, visually, if you see it, that thousand turns into a hundred might as well turn into a hundred thousand because your next trade, you don't want to get down twelve hundred. You don't want to get down fifteen hundred. So what you're going to do is you're going to you're going to trade the PL and not trade the setup. Okay. So you could be looking at a five-star setup. A stock comes out of a two-month range, comes out, you know, takes a 20, 30 cent spike.

comes back into your, you know, turn comes back into your entry, goes down 10, 15 cents. You're already down a grand. You're mentally already destroyed. You sell the position at a ten, fifteen cent loss. Next thing you know, thirty five seconds later, the stock's at the highs of the day.

So you're mentally already destroyed. You're you're done. You're done. Once you're once you're trading your PL instead of the setup, you might as well, you might as well, you know, wrap it up for the day because nothing good is ever going to happen when you're trading the PL.

And the more deeper and deeper you get into the day, the more erratic mistakes you're doing, the more eager you are, the more you're if you're a man, the more testosterone levels are rising, okay? And all you're doing is committing further and further. And to emotionally protecting your P L and not trading uh trading the setup the proper way. So that's my kind of my first tip. Everybody goes through slumps. Okay. Everybody goes through slumps. I've had I had a week um

Two months ago, okay, two months ago, I went from having one of my top three biggest weeks to prior prior you know, prior week. to just not getting anything going. I mean, I went through Monday through Thursday. I couldn't make a dime. I wasn't really losing any money. I just couldn't make a dime. Like everything was wrong, right? Everything was wrong. Stocks were

um snapping back out of breaking down out of bottom channels on shorts. Stocks were getting rejected on longs. There was reload sellers on my longs. There were reload buyers on my shorts. Just nothing went right. You know, nothing went right. And I sat there, you know, I sat there a couple of days and I started laughing. I there's no eventually you start laughing. You you can't You know, you can't take this business

Um you can't take this business to heart. Okay. You can't think that th that this is

This is you know, every bad thing is pointed at at you. Okay. You'll go through these horrific times that you can't get anything going. You'll go through these horrific times, like perfect example. I I l last year About about a year ago, uh I don't know if you any any listeners remember, there was a huge run into the clothes on clothes on these ag stocks, these uh potash and intrepid potash and all these stupid things.

And I took um Intrepid Potash overnight and the whole group was like down twenty five percent the next day. The next day. I mean it was just I was like, what? Wait, wait a minute. You telling me there's no specific company news and I'm down four bucks on this trade, which is insane. And mentally I was like, well, I could try to make this money back today. Okay. Let me see what the market gives me today. Okay, let me see, because I I've learned long enough.

The revenge trade does not work. Okay. Anytime you have any type of raw emotion going into a trade, you're gonna mess it up. Okay, so what I learned a long time ago is There's not one event, bad event in your trading career that should be able to take you out of your game. Okay. Uh Things happen all the time. Stocks get downgraded. Uh bad, you know, FDA news. You know, I try not to trade a lot of biotech, especially overnight.

Um because they blow up all the time. Um but the most important part of everything is I understand the highs and lows of this business because what I went through after two after nine eleven. So For me, when I go on a really big hot streak, I I'm not impressed because I expect to make money. Obviously, uh every trade that I put on, I feel like I'm gonna make money. I feel there's certain days.

Um, I can walk on water. And then there's days I can't get anything going. You know what I mean? And those days you just say to yourself, you know what? It just wasn't meant to be. You you don't need to keep on piling on positions. I could fe I could figure out within the first 30 minutes if I'm gonna have value in the day.

Uh so if I'm wrong in the first couple of trades, what's the point of me keep on piling it on? Right? Because it escalates. It escalates very, very quickly. You could go from being down Three grand to be down eight grand. Eight grand turns into fourteen, fourteen turns into twenty one. What's the point? Cut yourself off. Understand there's you know you're not getting a premium hand, okay? Uh emotionally, there's nothing you can do. You can't cry your money back to you, okay?

Um, so you know, but the most important part when you go through a slump, okay, just realize that you know sometimes the easiest thing to do is just take a step back. Okay, take a step back. Just watch the market. Watch the watch the order flow. Sometimes order flow won't translate into what's going on on the surface. It just won't, because order flow

most of the time will not be organic. Okay, and that's where social media that a lot of these people, you know, tout and hype these stocks for everybody to jump in, you know, all that stuff. Uh so you gotta just take a step back and just say, hey, look, you know, it's just not my day. Maybe it's not my two days, but you know what? I know what I I know what I need, I know what I want, and until I get those premium hands, there's no point to do it.

Um, the problem a lot of traders have is just they can't accept defeat. Okay, and there's a bigger you know, there's a big there's a big picture there, okay? And you go back into the theory of war, right? There's plenty of battles that are lost, right? Plenty of battles. Battles are lost all the time. The most important thing is to win the war. So I could lose a battle, right? I could fight with Tesla.

And you know, there's a reload seller sitting there at the top of the range. And it just the guy won't let go. The guy won't let go. And you know what? I'll figure that apart out. You know, once it breaks the range, I'll get out. I'll take my loss. But it I'm not gonna lose the war on one trade. And I see it all the time that many traders are so fixated about being right. Instead of fixated about trading properly. And that snowballs into day after day after day until they realize, you know what?

This is just not for me. And the saddest part about the whole trading cycle is people will most people will never uh trade up to their potential. Okay, because they won't give themselves a chance to playing those premium hands. And they take everything to heart.

And they believe that everything they do is the result of bad things. Just everything bad. You know, some somebody just has this evil eye on you. And the reality is, you know what, the market most of the times won't get you won't give you what you want. Uh most of the times it won't celebrate your existence.

All the market wants to do is take your money and take your confidence. Because remember, I could go on, and this is this is a very important point. I could go on a run three weeks in a row, right? Three weeks in a row, have a magnificent run. And this is how fragile us traders are. You can go two days without making money and you've completely lost your confidence.

Think about that. Think about how many times trade traders have done that. You could go on a three-week run doing the same thing every day, every day, every day, every day. You lose money two days in a row. You start questioning everything you did for your whole career. Okay, and I say this all the time. You don't lose your confidence. It gets transferred to another trader.

Okay, it gets transferred to another trader, okay? Because you can't lose something that is obviously shown you promise or prosperity in the past. You're just a product of what's happening in the moment. And just sometimes we can't control what we see in the markets. So instead of snowballing it, letting it go out two, three, five days, take a step back. You know, do something nice for yourself.

Okay, get a massage. Okay. Go to the beach. Go to the pool. Go to the sauna. Do something nice for yourself. Okay. Um and when you clear your head, you come back Just watch the order flow. Is it telling you the same thing that it told you two weeks ago? Is it telling you the same thing hell that it told you two days ago? What's different about this tape today that wasn't different from a week ago? Okay. And little by little, when you take the step back, you finally kind of see it.

In a weird way. You kind of see it. And once you see it, you can start making adjustments. And remember, at the end of the day, everything we do is all adjustments. It's one big adjustment, because I say this all the time. The stock market has been around God knows how long, you know. What was it? 1887, 1897, whatever it was. But trading, the art of physically trading for yourself, is less than 25 years old. Okay? So we are all still looking for answers.

Think about that. We're all looking for answers. Everybody's in the same boat. The market changes all the time. The nuances change all the time. Technology is changing by the second. Okay. Um Chart patterns get obsolete. Uh strategies go away. Okay. Um, so we're we're all in the same boat, man. We're all looking for that next edge. The problem is most traders.

are fixated or what they think is the right thing to do. And I say it all the time, if ninety percent of the traders are losing money, why would you be in the same boat as them? Right? Why would you be looking at the same thing? Why would you be looking at the same indicator in the same studies? Uh in the same matter. Hell in the same stocks. Um so slumps are

controllable, okay, for most of my friends. Like I I don't hear anymore any of my buddies for years that, you know, are going through something more than like a month. Like you can have a bad month. I mean, I've I've I mean knock on what I've been doing, you know, pretty, pretty well.

uh for the last several years. But, you know, it's very common that you can go on a big run and then just things don't work. It just happens. And I think mentally you just have to get away. You know, go on vacation, take a couple of days off. Go to the Hamptons, you know, it's summertime. Uh take you know, take your kids to the park. Do something. You know, do something that's for you, that has nothing to do with

uh bids and offers. Uh get mentally centered, man. And I tell people all the time, like I used to listen to music every single day. Certain days I want to be depressed. Sometimes I trade better when I'm angry. So I'll listen to Sade. And that woman gets me depressed as hell, right? Can you imagine listening to Sade before the bell rings? Right.

Some woman in Somali with no shoes. My God, man. You know, you know, I don't want to hear this, but you know, it gets me depressed and sometimes I trade better when I'm angry. Some people, you know, do yoga, meditate, right? Um, take Pilates, uh, go for a run. Do do something that mentally is gonna make you happy. And slumps are are there, they're part of the business.

Uh it's the cost of doing business, but at the end of the day, everybody goes through it. Okay. Um everybody um absorbs them eventually. Uh but they embrace them at the same time because it it it makes you uh go through your adjustments. And again, at the end of the day, the modern day trader or the modern trader in in general is just one adjustment away from being

uh from from not being profitable to being profitable. And once you get that one edge, you you ride it until you know until it stops working. Absolutely. No, that's that's an awesome answer, Dan. Thanks for really really going deep on that. That was really cool. So I'm keen to ask you about um another topic um slightly different from what we've covered already and that would be routine.

How important is routine on a trading day? Um like do you have a routine that you follow? Yeah, I have absolutely. Um here here's here's the deal kind of putting how you know, generally how I look at a day. Well number one, when there's when there's a tr up trending market, I don't even want to day trade. I I couldn't care less about day trading. Day trading for me is

subsidized cash flow. Uh that's all it is. Uh I make my money as a swing trader when there's a trending market, there's defined ranges, everything is moving in a direction. Uh so for me, you know, just managing my book is the most important part. That's it. I don't care about day trading. You know, it doesn't make a difference to me. There's scalp, uh, Apple, Google, it's irrelevant. My core positions are my core positions. I trade around them. Uh when they're down I try to protect them.

Um so but in a market like this, which I believe right now is a phenomenal, phenomenal uh cash flow market. I think uh the ranges have been just phenomenal. Um I think the consolidation of these ranges have been great.

My routine every day, you know, every single day is number one. I used to hear this, and I think a lot of traders hear this also. There's an old adage. And it says that smart money actually I'm sorry, dumb money trades in the morning and smart money trades in the afternoon. And I used to sit there and I said to myself, well, that doesn't make sense to me because I trade in in the morning and and again, as I I you know, I I joke around all the time.

You know, I might be the self-proclaimed king of the idiots, but I'm not stupid. So by somebody telling me that the dumb money trades in the morning, it I didn't understand that. Okay, I didn't understand that. But if you break that down, if you break down that statement, think about this. There's two kinds of people n there's two kinds of traders. The one that was profitable the day before.

And the one that lost money, right? There's nothing in between. You either lost money or you made money. Okay. So the psychology behind this is. The guy who made money can't wait, right? You see her all the time. Oh, is it is it you know, oh I can't wait for the next day, you know, again, which is completely rid ridiculous. But That person, okay, is already emotionally committed because he feels, he or she feels, that they are

That they've turned the corner, right? They turned the corner and they're waiting for day two uh to start trading, start putting together a winning streak. The trader who lost money is say is waking up and saying, Well, it's a new day. Forget about what happened. It's time to redeem myself, baby, right? Today's turnaround Tuesday, right? Today's turnaround Tuesday. Today's the day. So they're gung ho This is good this goes for a lot of new traders.

A lot of young traders, a lot of young men as well. You got your juices flowing. Again, your testosterone is off the charts. 930 rings. You are ready to jump out of your shoes, right? That damn opening bell rings. You're ready to go. So the emotional money always flows in the first three hours of the day. Okay. One guy is playing catch up. one guy is trying to increase or add on to what he did the day ex day.

So the candles, if you notice, the first hour and a half or so, two hours or so, the candles are much more exaggerated to the upside and to the downside because people are chasing. Chasing the rainbow. Okay. One guy is trying to play catch up to get his money back. The other guy is trying to extend his gains. Okay. So they're trying to jump on the hot stock. Or they're trying to try it on, you know, jumping on the hot trend or the the hot range or the hot news.

and the biggest exaggerated moves are for the first three hours. So

I try to if I'm trading cash flow, number one, I already have an idea what I want to do. You know, I already have an idea from the night before if I'm trading G Pro, if I'm trading Apple, if I'm trading uh the IWM, like for example, tonight I already have a specific plan course of action for tomorrow. So if we gap down tomorrow, right, and uh the market starts going red to green, look I wanna buy spies. I wanna buy IWM. So I already have a course of action.

So I feel that if more sh for example, like specifically for tomorrow, so if I feel that if shorts are caught on a washout, you know, and they capitulate on the bottom of the range and all the volume is, we're we're gonna have the snapback that can bounce. So my mental mental approach for the next trading day, specifically for tomorrow, is okay, I know what I want to happen.

And if the dumb money, right? If the dumb money as we were all taught that the dumb m money trades in the morning, if the dumb money starts chasing that Specific course of action, everything should be fine. Okay. And that first three hours will give you the biggest emotional commitment. to the market by traders. Whether they're uneducated or whether they are educated is a different story. But that first three hours is the most important part for me. Now

Ninety percent of my cash flow day is done by by lunchtime. You know, maybe I'll do a trade here and there in the afternoon, but the afternoon it's more of a positioning period, okay? Because traders A lot of traders, they're positioning for the next day. So if you notice a lot of stocks, and I talk about this in live webinar all the time.

A lot of stocks are pinned or pegged to their specific range breakout level. So that's why a lot of stocks, people will buy these stocks in the afternoon and they'll go up a little bit and they'll crash and only to see them go up the next day.

Because think about it, a stock usually will put in ninety, ninety-five percent of its range in the first three, three and a half hours. Okay. So by the time the afternoon rolls around, it's exhausted, right? It's like you're you're you're you're climbing the Empire State Building, they say, Hey You just climbed 60 stories and you're like, oh great, I did it. It's a victory. Oh, by the way, you got to climb up another 60 to get to the top.

Right? You're gonna be exhausted. And that's exactly what the stocks do. That they get exhausted by the afternoon. And most traders will not recognize this and most traders will commit to the afternoon session realizing that there's no money there most of the time. There's no money there unless you're trading uh the fades because a lot of stocks do give up gains.

uh towards the end of the day and that's where a lot of the stocks really get washed out. Uh that especially high flying throughout the day that are starting to put in uh lower highs on several uh several channels. Um But the interval in the morning is the most important part for me. Um I can make make it a you know, make my day in the first two, two and a half hours and kind of babysit my positions from the morning uh going to the afternoon. If I have a good runner, I'll keep it overnight.

Uh, but it's very, very important to me not to play catch up. Okay, because if you miss your window, like if I miss my window in the morning, knowing that the biggest emotional commitment is in the morning, I don't play catch up. I don't need to play catch up in the afternoon. I don't need to see my P N L

uh green for the day because you know what, tomorrow's the next day. Tomorrow's another day. And I and if I if I get the premium hand the following day, then fine. I mean what premium can I possibly expect? If I miss my first three and a half hour window, three hour window, where's my premium in the afternoon?

Right? If I know everything's getting pegged, where's the premium in the afternoon? There is none. And you know, you go from back from playing premium cards to playing the two nine offsuit again. And uh most free traders just don't know know that. So routine is a very, very important part.

Um, you know, some people love trading pre market, somebody's loves trading after market. For me, I look at it and say, look, if I can't make money for seven hours in the day, what the hell is the point of me trading for another three hours? Okay, I have young kids, I'd rather spend my time with them. Um So a routine is very, very important. Um, I think you can't compromise your process. I think you can't uh prostitute your account, okay, and put it to uh you know, put it to the fire.

Uh, you know, trading is not a sport. It's not supposed to be fun. It's not supposed to make you happy. It's not supposed to give you a boost of a adrenaline. It's supposed to be boring, lethargic. um very uh s you know, very orderly and just treat it like a business. So routine is definitely important. Uh just the way a restaurant opens up every single day.

They uh you know, they set the tables, they uh you know, the lunch crowd comes in and if somebody orders uh you know a ten ounce filet mignon, they don't put it out on uh you know on on a paper plate, right?'Cause they're not gonna prostitute their business for the sake of of of of uh you know going through the motions. So same thing, you know, same thing as trading. Trading is a business. You want to make sure it's it's functioning properly.

And like every other business, you have to recognize that number one, uh just to use the restaurant analogy, your crowd on the Monday afternoon or Monday evening or Tuesday evening will be a lot slower than it will be on a Thursday night, Friday night, Saturday night. Um and you go with that approach. You go with that approach and you know you don't

You don't subsidize. Okay. You don't subsidize to the point of clicking a mouse. You do what you have to do to make sure you're around tomorrow. And I say this all the time. I don't care what your process is. There's not one trade out there that is more important that will compromise what you've been doing as a process as a whole. So um again, like we when we talk about there's a lot of moving parts.

there's tremendous amount of moving parts. And again, the more you're exposed to the markets every single day, uh the more you'll see them and you'll kinda have an idea how uh the movie's gonna end at the end. I like it. Awesome answer, Dan. So let's just do one more question and then that'll probably take us through. So I mean I have to ask you about uh your mentor. So uh Meyer Offman, who you mentioned briefly at the beginning.

What are some of the standout traits and maybe the characteristics that you believe make him such an insanely successful trader? Well, here it is. Meyer, here, we we had some notable guys with us. Um, we had some notable guys. We had also another guy.

that um for all you guys who are uh exposed to the prop world there was a guy uh that I started trading with years ago his name was Jason Lieber okay Jason was a disciple of Meyer okay a lot of us were disciple of Meyer he was a partner at this place uh called Schottenfeld. Uh Schottenfeld Associates that he left started a hedge fund four years ago. Uh he took the hedge fund from like four million dollars to a hundred million. Okay. And he used the principles what Meyer taught us

And Meyer, and here's the one misconception. Okay, here's the one misconception. Meyer was never a guy who would sit you down next to him and say, This is what you should be doing. He was more of You're being a pot. And what what your being a pots used to mean was You're completely doing something that is outside of your personality. So Meyer believed in the idea of stocks will go higher after they go lower, right? So your your complete principle of well

Warren Buffett, right? You buy low, you sell high. Okay? Meyer's thinking was If a stock is high, it's gonna come in and then it's gonna go much higher. Okay. And considering the environment we were in. Time will make you right. Okay. So there wasn't a specific thing he ever sat me down and said, Hey Dan

You know what, you should be doing this, or you should be doing that or avoiding this. Because remember, we were all products of the internet craze. But what he did teach me was something very, very simple. Okay, you're not smarter than the market. You're not. Okay. If something's going higher, okay, it's not overbought. I don't care it's up thirty five days in a row. It's not overbought. You know why it's not overbought? As long as somebody is willing to pay that price.

Okay, and there's a fair and orderly market, that means fair value for the stock is that price. So what Meyer used to tell me is very simple and people used to say this all the time. When the market was finally coming in, right? When the market was coming in. And he said whatever goes down should go lower. So in other words, Cisco people saying all the time, Cisco is 150. There's no way Cisco will go to 120. No way goes 100. Won't break a hundred.

Breaking seventy five? Breaking fifty? No way it goes to twenty. I'm a buyer at fifteen. So the reality of what Myers greatest influence and I think what I Um, what I really absorbed back then was price action dictates everything. Okay. My opinion means not means nothing. Means nothing. Means absolutely nothing. I could look at a chart, I could grab all the data, I could analyze it twelve ways through Friday.

Okay, my opinion doesn't matter. If price action is saying something that's different than my thesis, then price action is the king. And I am not smarter than price action. As as my wife says all the time, you're an idiot. You don't know anything, right? I don't know how to do anything.

I would have to pay three people to spoon a light bulb, okay? But I did figure out this game a long time ago, and the greatest gift that Meyer taught me was that don't fight price action. Forget about their trends. Don't fight price action. Okay. Price action is everything. Bad news comes out, the market absorbs it, takes it higher. Don't think about it. The market is screaming at you that they're embracing bad news. That's bullish. Good news comes out, the market is embracing it as bad news.

Don't try to fight it. Okay. Don't try to you know analyze a headline. If people are selling a headline, that means they're selling the head headline. That means the stock goes lower. So don't overanalyze. Be proactive.

Whether that's sitting on the sidelines, that's up to you. Because I see it all the time now on this specific tape. Well, you gotta be patient. Every day you gotta be patient, right? The big the big the biggest bull mark is you gotta be patient. Oh, you gotta sit on your hands. Why? Why? Sitting on your hands is for lack of process.

Right? Lack of strategies. And that's why there's a big difference between what a stock picker is and what a professional trader is. And there's nothing wrong with being a pro a stock picker. If you're a long bias guy, this is probably not the market for you. There's nothing wrong with it, but at least proactive. Be proactive about it. Um Own up to it. Say, you know what, this is just not for me, and that'll be an easier easier day down the road. But price action is king.

Meyer was uh a phenomenal, phenomenal trader. Phenomenal. I mean he would be managing thirty, fifty stocks at a time. His PL would be up, you know, a million dollars here, a million dollars there for the day, for the day. Um you know, i it'd be it'd be insane and I used to you know, to be all honest, I used to get depressed.

looking at it because, you know, you know, you see a million dollars, uh, you know, you know, you're trying you know, you you're trying to get back and you're up like twenty you know, twenty, thirty grand and you know, which is again nobody nobody's com complaining.

Uh but when you when you start making decent money and then you know you obviously get to the pinnacle of your of your of your uh you know session when you see a guy making a million dollars, it depressed you. Never motivated me, depressed you know, depressed the crap out of me. Holy crap, how's this guy making a million dollars a day?

Um, not every day obviously, but uh you know, he used to go on these runs and uh he was awesome. You know, he was awesome. Um again, a lot of us were uh disciples from his tree. Um listen again, I you know, I I never uh I've never been embarrassed to be uh to say that I'm you know, I was fortunate enough to be uh a by product of the internet craze. Uh but the the sad reality is I went through so much uh mentally, uh emotionally that you know scarred me for many, many years.

And the ironic part of it is I started trading in the end of ninety eight, start of ninety nine, but I became a trader roughly around two thousand and four. Uh middle middle of two thousand and three, two thousand and four. So Uh it's not easy guys. You know, it's not easy. Um by no stretch of the imagination. Um but the one piece of advice I will give to you, uh if you are committed to this business, uh turn off social media. Uh read read good

Blogs. I'm not talking about some tw 19 year old kid that made$3,000 read. And there's nothing wrong with that. I I encourage Young traders, if I started trading at nineteen, man, it would be it would have been great. You know, I I'm so jealous of these these young kids, nineteen, twenty, twenty one years old, they're making all this money and it's phenomenal, phenomenal.

But, you know, read depth. Read what, you know, veteran traders have done. Guys like Barton Biggs and uh you know, you know, uh uh you know, guys like um uh what's that guy's name? Uh man, a lot of these old older guys, um Um yeah, uh anyway, I'm skipping a lot I'm I'm it's getting late in the evening, I'm skipping a lot of names Uh but you know just read what people have gone through. You know, w read what their experiences and not the good experiences. Nobody cares about the good experiences.

Read what you know read what people have gone through, you know, personal lives. You know, every trader I know has blown out. Every trader I know. Uh Meyer blew out, you know, three, four years ago from first New York. You know? I mean it's the reality. Everybody knows it. So everybody blows out. Everybody uh has, you know, rough patches in their life. Um You know, g you have to have good people around you, uh no leeches, no blood suckers, no yesmen, uh no you know, no uh you know, no salesmen.

Uh, you know, really understand the nuances of this business. You know, try new things. And I hear people all the time, well, I'm only an option trader, I don't believe in equities.

Well, but you know, you trade weekly options. Yes. Well you do you you do realize weekly options seventy seventy, seventy five percent expire worthless. Well, I didn't know that. Well yeah they do. Um, you know, try to expose yourself to different things, you know, try to trade options, try to trade E minis if you can, uh uh try to trade small caps, mid caps, large caps, high beta.

Uh ETFs, which I'm a very, very big believer of. Haven't really traded too much too much E ETFs in the last couple of months, but

Um, you know, try everything. Uh and if you want it bad enough, sometimes it's just not good enough. It's reality, man. Uh I never sell dreams. I only only talk reality. Um you can want as bad as you want. You could be the nicest human being, but Uh you know, you really commit yourself to you know to omitting all the bad things that you're doing to yourself day in, day out.

Um and if you have a good mentor or p somebody that uh um you respect, just keep asking questions. Keep on spamming them, keep on uh you know, keep on uh annoying them until until you get it right, man. And um, you know, again, you don't need to be right, you know, you don't need to be good

on everything. You just need to be good at a few things. And um, you know, this market's changing. Uh I try to tweak every single day. Um, like I've developed this uh PS sixty theory. Uh nobody trades it but me. I stumbled on to bought it about a year ago because I was going through a couple of rough days. And by accident I just saw something I saw an arbitrage in the charts that uh I'm using to this day and it's it works pretty well. Um

But uh you know, stay up, man. Stay up. You know, don't don't think you're alone, man. Don't think you're alone. Um you know, guys, you know, we're all, you know, products of of bravado and we wanna show Uh we wanna show how how strong and manly we are and you know, you know, I'm uh I I I'd like to present that in front of my kids, but sometimes, man, we're all human beings. You know, we laugh, we cry.

Uh we have our bad days mentally, you know, we just sometimes don't wanna put up with anything. And, you know, those days of you know, those days are what makes us us. Those are the days that makes us human beings. Forget about being traders. So Um, you know, if it's meant to be. I mean that's the that's that that's the cruel reality. If it's meant to be, it's going to be. But

Uh don't shoot yourself in the process. That's the most important thing. Wait for premium setups, wait for premium hands, them no matter how you trade. Uh get that green light, man. Get that wind at your back and when you get it, you know, you gotta push

You know, push really hard because it doesn't last long. Okay. And uh stay up guys. You'll be all right. You know, you'll be all right. For all you new guys, um, you know, just keep studying, keep learning, filter out the noise, keep asking questions, and I I think you'll be all right.

Absolutely. Yeah, you hit on a ton of great points there and well, a ton of great points throughout the whole interview. So Dan This has been really, really great. Thanks again for coming on and I really appreciate it and Aaron is a pleasure, man. Thank you very much for having me. No trouble whatsoever. So before you go, can you share with listeners where they can go to find out more about you and also How they can connect with you.

Yeah, I'm on I'm on Twitter. Uh I'm on Twitter and uh stock twits at uh DanShep55. Um, if anybody ever needs to to reach me, you can just email me at uh uh accessatrader at yahoo dot com. I don't dwell on access a trader because just like everything else, just one cog in my you know, we I run a seven hour live webinar.

Um, I don't market the damn thing because again if you haven't figured out what I do by now, who I am and the people that I deal with every single day, then you just don't get it. Uh I think more people are are impressed about the wrong things, about the bright lights. And I say it all the time, you know, when people come to New York, they're attracted by Times Square, but n the rich people don't live in Times Square.

Okay, the rich people live on the Upper East Side, Central Park and all that stuff. So Uh yeah, you can get in touch with me. I am I'm pretty accessible, hence the name Axe is a trader. Uh we do run a live seven hour uh webinar, which we go through live scenarios every single day.

Uh everything is laid out in front of you. There's no trick photography. There's no there's no editing. Uh we have a great group of human beings, a lot of older people who really get it. You know, a lot of people get it. And um, you know, it's a g it's a cool place. It's a cool place and started out as a kind of a a hobby four and a half years ago, actually turned into a business and like

all my endeavors I try to make sure I don't prostitate I don't prostitute the the product for uh anything. So Uh feel free. You know, feel free to check us out. But and again, I don't really don't market it uh a lot and uh you know, everybody knows where we are. Uh so if you need to stop by, ask us some questions, check out what we do. Um, my pleasure. If not, we could always be uh

Uh social media buddies. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, I think everyone's gonna really, really enjoy this interview. Thanks again, Dan. Awesome. Take care and let's talk soon. Thanks, buddy. Have a great evening, guys. You've come to the end of this episode of Chat with Traders, but don't worry, more great episodes are on the way. And we'd love it if you leave us a rating and review.