312 · Vincent Bruzzese - Battling Irrational Markets - and the Battle Within

Chat with Traders is brought to you by Trade the Pool. Did you know that every decade the market reinvents itself? Online brokers opened the doors, mobile apps made trading seamless, and commission-free trading erased barriers. Now a new era has begun. Meet, trade the pool, limited risk trading. And now you also have unlimited time to reach the profit target. From now on, your trading risk is capped, and your trading opportunities are limitless.

Trade the pool funds home-based stock traders with up to$200,000 in buying power. That means you can trade larger positions and scale your strategies without risking your own savings. It's time to trade with more capital, making it truly worth your time and effort. Ready to trade the pool? Click the link in the description and join the stock trading revolution today.

Trading in the financial markets involves a risk of loss. Podcast episodes and other content produced by Chatwith Traders are for informational or educational purposes only and do not constitute trading or investment recommendations or advice.

I think this the this market right now is like the love child of I.M. Sam and Gilbert great. It's the stupidest fucking market I've ever seen in my life. It literally is. It they say the market can be irrational longer than you can be solvent. This is beyond irrational. This is just fucking stupidity. If you just eliminate all the stupid shit.

From your trading that has no real justification. I'm talking out-of-the-money calls and puts. I'm talking counter-trend trading. Every time you short something. that is up on the day. Every time you go long something that is down on the day because you feel like it's gonna it it's already dropped too much. It's certain to bounce. Every time you you you did all of that shit.

You went against the market, that would probably cover about 70% of your losses. All that stupid shit. And if what you're left with are defensible trades. I took this trade because on the daily chart, it's not extended. It's above all of its SMAs. It's above its technical indicators. It's strong, relatively uh strong against the market. It's got all these things ticked off. And that becomes the bulk of your trading, then you'll start seeing a dramatic shift.

Welcome back to Chat with Traders. This is episode 312. It's Ian Cox here, and today's episode is a special follow-up with a guest many of you will remember from episode 255 a few years ago. Back then I had a chance to sit down with Vincent Brizizi, known by many as Harry Selden from the real day trading community. He's been known to be one of the most transparent traders out there, posting his trades live.

His returns over the past several years, multiple years north of sixty percent and even eighty percent speak for themselves. Vincent is a former statistics professor, a longtime poker player, and someone who spent years in the Hollywood film industry analyzing audience behavior and forecasting human reactions, all before becoming a full-time trader.

This time, though, Tessa is taking the lead on the interview, because this conversation comes at a moment when many traders are struggling with discipline. Second guessing their reads and trying to navigate a market that often seems disconnected from both fundamentals and traditional technical cues.

Vincent has a way of stripping away the noise, calling out the psychological traps traders fall into, and offering his perspective on a market that often behaves in ways that feel irrational, even to seasoned professionals. You'll hear his unfiltered take on narrative-driven markets, the mental patterns that wreck traders, the practical edges that still work, and what it really means to treat trading like a business rather than gambling.

As always, with Vincent, there's honesty, humor, and a lot of insight packed in. So with that, here's Tessa's conversation with Vincent Brzezizi.

Hi Vincent. How's it going? Good. How are you? Going well. Enjoying this market drop. You are? Not Hey, just a quick note. This conversation was recorded on November 6th. You'll hear Vincent reference what the market was doing that day or around that day. Oh yeah. Are you shorting? Oh, I've been shorting Tesla all day and uh Uh have some spy puts on and yeah, I think I think uh I think we're gonna test the fifty SMA on spy here soon enough. So

Yeah, I'm trading the cues and I just really messed up today. It's something I haven't done in a long time. I I didn't put a stop in. And the one time I don't put my stop in, this is what happens. I I don't know why I did that. It's just I I think it's complacency and I thought, oh, I'm just trading a very, very small position, but still, even though it's small, it really hurts. It's like it's more like I'm mad at myself, not like

you know, like of the a mountain lost or anything like that. It's more about just the the mental, the the emotional energy I spent on like being mad. I think that the only time I've ever used stops if I'm gonna go out for a cigarette, so um I generally don't use them. I know I remember that in in the the last interview you did with Ian uh on the podcast.

you use mental stops. And um I was just really I'm still amazed by that because you would really have to monitor it. You're like glued to the screen, right? Yeah, I have I mean I have uh my four monitors here and then I've got some other monitors there and I have TC two thousand, I have option stalker, I have think or swim. And then I have the one option chat room always going over here. So Yeah.

But yeah, I generally will monitor them and and use mental stops. I mean, you know, depends if I'm scalping. Like today I was scalping Tesla on and off throughout the day. um and had mental stops on that. But you know, if I'm doing a longer term trade like I'm well, I went long Apple, I'm not gonna have a mental stop. I'm just, you know, if it breaks down a major support level, fine. But other than I'm holding

Well, obviously you know what you're doing because very few people can can do mental stops. I I don't trust myself to do it. I'm just not at that level yet. And um and I feel like I I trade options, but I also now trade futures. And the one I was doing was just on futures, but I feel like If you're just trading options, I can see why you don't have stops. And like me, when I trade options, I don't, I don't use stops because Right.

a long call or something like that, there's like a built-in stop in a way already, you know? There is. I mean there's a max loss there, right? But you know, options can drain you obviously. They can y you know, you you buy an option for say five dollars or spread for two dollars and fifty cents.

And now it's down to a dollar ninety, but it's still close to where you got in. So you're holding it. And then but next time you look, it's got 40 cents left in it. And you think, well, what's the point of closing it now? It's only got 40 cents left in the thing. Um I think I once put out a thing to people and said every time you looked and saw that it only had 10 cents, 20 cents, 40 cents, whatever, um, and keep track of it in a journal. And at the end of the month.

Just add it up the total loss you had because you didn't close those 10 cent options, 40 cent options, and and add in the times that those actually came back and rebounded. Look what your net is at the end of the month. And most of the Not people found that, you know, if you just close them even when they're at thirty, forty cents, it's a loss, uh it adds up. A little bit of savings, you know, every little bit counts I guess. But um

It's uh it's you know, I guess we'll talk about in the interview. It's a it's a very different market than the last time we spoke, certainly. We're already kind of interviewing. It's nothing totally formal the way I do it. Um, but um, well, I can be a little formal. Vincent, welcome back to Chat with Traders. Thanks, glad to be back. Yeah. Um, it's been about two and a half to three years now since you were last on the show. And I remember in early

Uh well when you were on in early 2023, you said that that market was like one of the most difficult markets to trade. Um well, what do you think about this market in 2025, now that we're almost at the end of the year, too. Well let's take a look. Um So I mean I do remember then twenty twenty three, twenty twenty four. uh was a strange marketing trade. It was very volatile, a lot of ups and downs with it. Um I think I did.

about an 82% return in that year. And every by the way, all for the listeners to know, um all my trades are always posted live. I post the entry and the exit, the position side, you can check it out in time and sales. Any broker has time in sales. So if I say I'm going long a thousand shares or 20 contracts, whatever. It's you could just see that I went long or the where I exited.

You can look up my stats, but uh I did around 82, 83% return that year. Uh about similar the next year, uh 2024. This year I'm down to around 63%. Um I'm kind of averaging out to the end of December would be around 63% right now. So a little bit off the last two years because it is a very different market. But, you know, to me, one You have to treat trading like a business, right? And I I think that's that's something a lot of

Traders, they focus very much on the the wins or losses on that day. And a lot of people uh look, let's face it, a lot of traders are degenerate gamblers, right? And so what they're looking at is their their individual P and L day in and out. What you have to look at is your monthly. You have to look at

This is how much I set out to make every month. And you don't want that to range too much. So if you say I want to, I need to make$10,000 a month, you want that to be within$8,000 to$12,000. You want a standard deviation of two grand. You want a business plan to go with that. That's what people should be looking at is am I going to be consistently profitable month after month? Now in this market right now, here becomes the contradiction or the problem.

We tell traders you focus on price action. Fundamentals are for long-term investors. Fundamentals are for people that are putting together their portfolio. And if your trading can't beat that return, stop fucking trading. Right. Just go be an investor. If you can't beat the average return of the SP every year, there's no point in spending all the time and energy trading. You need What's the average return again for the the S P. Bye-bye. What is the average return for this?

average is gonna be around between twelve and, you know, certainly in the bull markets here in twelve and twenty percent. So if we if we can't beat if you're you're saying if we if we as traders cannot beat um that then don't even trade.

Right. If you put$10,000 into SPY on January 1st, if you can't beat what your your portfolio total is going to be on December 31st of that year, there was no point in doing it. Right. Um Because sure, everyone can just put their money into SPY, or you could just put it in the Mag 7 or any other combination, you know, a couple of risky stocks.

Trading is meant to beat that return, then you've got to do it consistently. The problem with this year is this is probably the most hated rally in the history of stock market rallies. Continues to go up with excuses of, oh, they're going to cut rates or inflation isn't that bad, the economy's doing well. Valuations have gotten so stretched that.

People no longer believe the rally. So what happens is you become skeptical of these huge moves up in SPY or in the market. And what That results in is you take profit really quick. Right. Let's say you're long uh Apple or Tesla and you're you're up a dollar a share. You grab that dollar share and you run out because you constantly think this isn't gonna last. This is gonna run out. My luck's done. And traders in general do not come from a rich mentality.

Rich mentalities are things are gonna work out. Why? Because things always fucking work out for them. Why wouldn't they work out? They, you know, things are good today, they're going to be good tomorrow, and they're going to be good a week from now. People who aren't rich, people who aren't born rich, certainly, they're always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Always. Something is going to go wrong in their life. Even when good shit happens.

Some bad shits right around the corner and everything's gonna get screwed up. So they bring that mentality to trading. The moment you get a dollar profit, two dollar, they run away with the money because they are just so certain it's going to reverse. Mm-hmm. Now when this market hits and you're looking at these constant, like it's just nonstop up ever since, you know, the the big liberation day. It's been a nonstop ride and nobody believes it.

Talk of AI bubble, talk of valuation stretch, however the feds aren't going to cut, makes it very hard to hold on and let those winners run. Do you believe it? I I think this the this market right now is like the love child of I am Sam and Gilbert great. It's the stupidest fucking market I've ever seen in my life. It literally is. They say the market can be irrational longer than you can be solvent. This is beyond irrational. This is just fucking stupidity.

Oh Do you think it's temporary or is it gonna is this is this the new normal? It's temporary. It it is absolutely temporary. Um, they're going to be a correction at some point, right? When it you mean calling cops is is not a very profitable business model. But there will be a correction simply because put aside rate cuts, put aside all the other tariffs and all the other shit, valuations are just out of control. The stocks are too expensive.

And people have to remember, most of the liquidity in the liquidity in the market aren't from me and you and traders. They're from institutions. They're from 401ks. They're from portfolio. And in order for that liquidity to keep up, you need JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to continue pouring money into the market. They need to be able to look at friggin' uh Nvidia and they need to be able to look at half these stocks and go, that's a good price for me to buy.

right now. And it's not, you know, sure, there Google might still be a decent deal and maybe Amazon, but by and large, the valuations on these things are disconnected from reality. um it it doesn't make any sense at all. So no, I don't believe it, but I do believe that a bull market can run and run and run until there is a catalyst, until something causes the bubble to burst. Um What will that be?

It could be, you know, Nvidia bad earnings, which I doubt would happen. But um, you know, it could be anything. It could be um an escalation, it could be inflation hitting harder, could be the Fed saying, you know, no rate cuts. Um It could be any one of these things that can cause and spark. When you said that the market is irrational, um, when you say irrational, are you talking more about the the structure or like the sentiment or or something more psychological? I'm talking about, you know.

Markets are always not based on what you see today. It's based on what the market believes a year from now or two years from now is going to be the reality. So, you know, they're not buying uh Amazon for what it's valued today. They're buying it for what they think it can go, you know, forward Pete and all that. Um and that's where you can get these bits of irrationality in, right? Where um

story and narrative become more about are are bigger part of the valuation than the actual fundamentals. That's what happened in the big dot com bubble, all right? Where it was all narrative. There you there were companies with almost no revenue, no profit, and it was all about what it could do. Going forward. I mean, look at PLTR. PLTR is a$500 billion company right now in terms of valuation that has what, a billion in revenue? 500 million a profit?

I mean if you just look at the book, so that's based on clearly not what it's is now. It's based on what it will be. Look at Tesla. Tesla couldn't sell a car for its fucking life right now. It's dropping across it's dropping everywhere, but people are buying Tesla based on robots. People are buying Tesla based on robots. They're optimistic. Uh they're optimistic. And so when that optimism or when narrative becomes

too much of the story, that's where you get bubbles, right? Because eventually some of those narratives pop. Some of those narratives aren't reality. And when a big enough narrative pops it causes a domino effect that, well, if Tesla's narrative wasn't true, then all these others probably certainly aren't because if you know, we all believe this one was a sure thing. And when one pops, then they all and that's where you get that whole cascading effect down.

Uh it would take a lot to do that. I don't think that we're gonna see a AI bubble popping anytime soon, but I do think a market correction certainly is something. Have you ever watched a stock explode and thought, if only I had the capital, or sat on the sidelines because your account balance felt too small to matter? Good news.

With Trade the Pool's limited risk platform, you don't need millions or even thousands to start trading the U.S. stock market. Bypass the PDT and tap into over 12,000 U.S. listed equities. From penny stocks to big caps, ETFs, even the newest IPOs, and short anything you like, with zero locate or hard to borrow fees.

Start your evaluation. Get funded with up to$200,000 in buying power so you can go big without risking your own savings. And now you can also have unlimited time to reach the profit target. It's a game changer. Not ready to trade yet? Trade the Pool offers a free demo and educational resources. Practice on live data, master the platform, and build confidence risk-free before you even pay a cent. Click the link in the show notes to start trading with Trade the Pool's capital.

If this market is driven by narratives right now, do we need to be better at the timing? Relying on price action and not relying on what we feel and what we think. will happen. I mean, look, there are a lot of great, even if your people are afraid of playing the market, there are a lot of great passive ways. Um, for example, uh Pete, you do you remember Pete Stolzers who from One Option? And I got to go All the problem I've been a member there for what now?

Six years. I don't own the company. I don't work for the company. I've just been a member. I help them run the chat room there. Um it's uh one you spell out one option.com. And uh he's been advocating for just selling puts, you know, uh just put selling puts, doing some bullish put spreads.

on stocks you might want to own and collecting premium because you got some high premium right now. And so, you know, if you look at something like Tesla, for example, you can go in on Tesla and sell the four hundred you could sell the four oh five puts for a dollar right now that expire tomorrow. Are you okay owning Tesla at four oh four if it crashed down? Yeah, probably. It's not a bad price for it, I guess. Um it would have to drop forty dollars for you to get a sign.

Okay, again, that's probably not going to happen tomorrow. So you could collect a dollar in premium off of four selling four or five puts that expire tomorrow. That's not a bad way to safely play this market, is to sell puts in stocks that you don't mind owning. If you sell a put, the rule is The premium is great, but you cannot be unhappy with being assigned. You have to also want to own that stock. There's a little bit of fundamentals.

I feel like I mean, I I never do that because I'm more of a trader, um, a day trader or swing trader. And I I can try that, but I just feel like that becomes more like Longer term, yeah. And it doesn't really appeal to me, but but that's something to consider in this v high volatility environment. It's not a bad way to just put some passive income in there. Um, you know, particularly I recommend if any in this market right now, if anyone also has their long term

Stock portfolio, you know, that they keep. A lot of traders have a separate account. They have an account that they just keep some stocks in, and that's their long-term account. If you're going to add stocks in any type of long-term fashion in this market, I would recommend certainly don't buy the stock outright, just sell the puts, just sell the premium, then just keep doing it until you get assigned, and then you'll own that stock.

Um, it's a much better way than just outright buying the stock right now. So if you're like, oh, I want to buy add Tesla to my long term, don't buy Tesla, you know, just sell the 430 puts for four bucks. Yeah, and then if you get it, great. And now you get it at a better price and you collected the premium. So it's just, you know, uh not a bad uh way to do that. Assuming uh you know the trader has a lot of You have a lot of. Yeah. I mean and it's not for for everyone.

It's funny, my son, who is twenty, he's a junior in Berkeley. Um, and this summer he came home from the summer, uh, you know, I'm in LA and he wanted to get a part time job just to have spending money, whatever. And so I suggested to him that he should do trading instead. And he had an account, you know, it's about, I don't know, five, six thousand dollars.

in his account. That's you know, it's a small account. Every time he got money or whatever, he just put it in and he bought no video and he bought different stocks and he built up the five, six thousand dollars college student. And so He traded it over the summer. And I posted every one of his trades in the in the chat room. He had 13 straight, successful trades. And he made uh around three thousand dollars off of his six thousand dollar counts. You made like a fifty percent return.

over the summer. So he turned his summer job into spending one or two hours a day trading. I didn't tell him what to trade. He texted me and said, hey, I'm gonna go along Google, do I do see any red flags? But um you are as an example. But he did a 50% return. And to me it was a great validation of even with a small account, you can manage to, you know, because three thousand dollars. Pretty much what you would have gotten making, you know, being a barista at Starbucks over the summer.

What was the um was it options or Credit spreads, debit spreads. uh couple of debit spreads or straight call in the money calls or in the money plus Uh, you know, he'd buy one or two contracts at a time. Um, you know, so if he'd wanted to go long apple, he'd buy uh, you know, Delta 0.7.8 uh call on Delta, maybe one or two contracts because they're like$800 each.

And uh he had 13 straight winning trades. He used uh the some of the scanners here on Option Stalker and he used some of the charting on TC two thousand and did great. I mean He woke up at eleven AM every damn day, but fine. So just recently he started trading, you're saying like as a part time kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, I taught him how to trade leading up to it, but he's never acting. Well it helps to have you teaching him. That's he's lucky.

Well, if he lost, I would have disowned his ass. So you know, changed hand lots. So so he hasn't lost. So that's I mean, you know, every trader at some point will go through that. And so he hasn't gone through that though, yeah. No, but he is also a degenerate gambler and he's on the Berkeley poker team and he's really good at poker, but he's he's had some pretty bad gambling losses, I'd say.

But no, he hasn't lost uh trading stocks yet. But most you're right, most traders. I mean look, when I started, I think I told you last time when I was started I lost six figure account twice. Uh got my ass beat. Yeah.

And you you you crawled back out of that. Yes, I I did. And Traders hate to hear that. If you want, look in this economy right now, it's a very appealing prospect to be a trader because there's very n not much job security, people are getting laid off. Trading gives you the financial independence and a skill set that allows you to make money, be your own boss, all the things that people want. Right. So it's it's a very attractive idea. What's not attractive?

Is the idea that it takes it two years minimum to master this shit. And and I'm talking two years where you're not spending two years losing, you're spending two years paper trading and trading one share and getting your ass kicked. And I mean, if you can imagine uh any type of job. that gives you, you know, this job security, the freedom, all that the trading does.

That doesn't require you to put in either years of schooling or years of sitting at a desk working, grinding your way up through the bureaucracy to get to where you want. Any job time, effort, dedication to to get what you want out of it. Trading is no different. The problem is, is that because the rules are so fucking easy, go in, get an account, buy, sell, done.

Um everyone thinks they can just go in and do it. It's kind of like playing poker or playing chess. It takes a minute to learn and then you go in and lose because most of it isn't just about the rules. It's about the mindset. It's about recognizing the patterns. All of that shit. So yeah, it it's a great job if only traders would realize they need to actually put in the time to learn it.

Exactly. Given your statistical background, you have a can't say statistical background in human behavior model. You model human behavior in the past. Yes. Um, did that impact your trading at all? Did that give you an edge? Did that help you?

It it kind of hurt in the beginning because I was an arrogant motherfucker and thought I can do this, I can read the patterns. Um You know, I for me ever since I was a kid, it was always being about obsessed with predicting human behavior and the stock market is the ultimate Representation for that, which is why I hate when shit is so irrational, because predicting irrationality is irrational. Um

So in the beginning, it was, oh, I should be able to predict this. And I fell into that trap in the beginning that. A price action is one thing, but I could rationalize why a stock would go up or down, right? Like, um, oh. I'm gonna go long Netflix right now because I just found out how many people, a million people were laid off. Well, they're home, they don't have money, they um

They can't afford really to go out to the movies or any other entertainment. So they're gonna, they're gonna, you know, Netflix subscriptions are gonna go up because of that. As if institutions haven't thought of that shit. As if that's not already priced in, I would sit there when in the beginning thinking I was smarter than all of them. You know, they have hundreds of millions of dollars in their research departments, but no, no, I knew something that they didn't think of.

Right. Like they're gonna call up, no, no, oh wait, yeah, Vinny from LA has an idea. Like they fucking knew that, right? They it it You very rarely will come up with something, a rationalization that they haven't thought of already. That's what the idea of being priced in is. And that's why price action is so important, because all that matters is what our institutions do.

Yes, retail traders have a bigger impact on the market today than they did five, ten years ago. But institutions still move the market and you want to be on the side of the institution. So When I finally figured out, right, and and when I started learning and the the um when I hooked up with Pete and and and started seeing what he was doing with real relative strength. And then I found the real day trading on Reddit because I realized, okay, I got it.

I've now been consistently profitable for whatever it was when I started it over two year, year and a half straight. And everyone else out there is losing all their money. And all these other subs and all the other YouTube channels, they're all trying to sell people the shit that doesn't work. So if you're all right, I don't need their money, I want to take money from people who have money.

Right. Most people who are trading or who are trying to learn how to trade or paying money for a stupid, you know, three bar method, how to scalp low floaters, um, those are the people that need money the most. I don't wanna take their money. I wanna I wanna take, you know, the rich fucker's money who has way too much money and is sitting around playing on on the market. So I that's why I started the the sub real day trading to help maybe teach people look you're doing it wrong

This is how you should be doing it. Stop the fucking scalping. Stop the out-of-the-money calls. And the out-of-the-money puts, go buy a fucking scratch-off ticket or go to Vegas, you'll have more fun. Don't, don't do that shit. This is how you should trade if you want to consistently make money.

So what really turned your trading around from losing to becoming profitable? Was it more the strategy or more the mindset or just the time in the market experience? What what really I thought about 90% mindset. I think it was one realizing when gambling was gambling. Right. And a lot of times it was simply saying it out loud, like, I'm gambling, like not trying to justify.

a trade that's clearly a gamble. Just admit it, you're gambling here, right? Like this is a gamble. You know, if if you just eliminate all the stupid shit from your trading that has no real justification. I'm talking out-of-the-money calls and puts. I'm talking counter trend trading. Every time you short something that is up on the day, every time you go long something that is down on the day because you feel like it's gonna it's already dropped too much, it's certain to bounce.

Every time you you you did all of that shit. Um you went against the market. That would probably cover about 70% of your loss. All that stupid shit. And if what you're left with are defensible traits. I took this trade. Because on the daily chart, it's not extended. It's above all of its SMAs. It's above its technical indicators. It's strong relatively strong against the market. You know, there's the market with when I say market.

Uh, I'll think of SPY. SPY's the proxy for the market. It's strong relative to SPY. It's got all these things ticked off. And that becomes the bulk of your trading. then you'll start seeing a dramatic shift. If you start Going into things without confirmation. Too many people try to front run shit going long before it's confirmed because.

Everyone's afraid of missing the move. Yeah, you're gonna miss the fucking move. A lot of it. What you're looking for is the scrap. The institution gets the move. Sorry, they do. JP Morgan will get 90% of that move. But guess what? That 10% of the move you can make a damn good living off.

So if you see something break through the SMA and you're like, oh, now I want to go long, make sure it closes above the SMA. In fact, if you want to be real conservative, make sure it opens above it the next day, then go long. Did you miss a lot of that move? Sure. But you also misrun ninety percent of the time you're gonna get your ass kicked. So if it's ninety percent for you of the mindset, how I mean, how did you overcome it? I mean, how long did it take and

Because I'm going through that right now. And I there are days when I'm like, oh yeah, I've I'm doing much better. And then like today, like I told you earlier, I just completely like didn't follow my rules. Everyone's rules might be different, but I knew better not to not have a stop for me. And I did it anyway. And I don't know like why am I doing this? It's like Why? I know it's wrong. So it's such a challenge for me sometimes. How did you overcome that part?

Heart. You know, sometimes as I said earlier, arrogance hurts and sometimes it helps. In the beginning it hurt, right? Because I went in thinking I knew everything and I could do But where it helped was When you look around and see, whenever you try to do something, anything, the first thing you got to ask yourself is, is it actually possible? Right? Is it possible to be consistently profitable trading or is it just a scam?

And so when I looked around and set out and found out and looked in certain traders and found not only yes, they're saying it's possible, but I was able to confirm that it's possible. I saw the trades. I saw that, you know, I was able to go back and look over a year at their trades. That's why I post everything so people could see. That it is possible that what I'm doing is provable and you can do it. Once I found out that yes, this can be done.

Then the arrogance helped because if it can be done, no one's gonna tell me I can't do it. There's obviously a way to do it. So for me that was the first step was realizing If you wanted to play poker for a living, the first thing you would do is say, are there people that can actually play poker for a living? Or is it if it's just pure gambling, there would be no way, right? No one is lucky enough if it's pure gambling to be consistently profitable.

to make a living off of something. Right. There's just no way statistically to do it. But obviously there are poker players who do make the living, so it's possible. If I were to say become a want to become a professional poker player, I would take that same mindset. I would be like, they're doing something right. I'm not. What are they doing that I'm not doing? And a lot of the times it's adding to winter.

A lot of the times it's if you look at the imbalance between their winners and their losers, their winners are much bigger than their losers are, right? There's not a fear. There's we we have the wrong type of fear because when our trades go against us. We suddenly become super fucking hopeful they're gonna turn around. But when our trades work, we suddenly become super fucking pessimistic that they're gonna reverse on it.

If we actually became if flip that and became hopeful when we're right and pessimistic when we're wrong, Okay. That mind shift alone. Could could change your entire trading game. Because if you think about it, when you make a trade and it's working, you are right. You're you're you're looked at, you looked at it, you said, this is going to go up. I'm taking a call or buying the stock, and it actually starts going up.

You were correct in your assessment. So why is it then that most traders become most afraid? You were actually just proven right and now you're most afraid that it's going to turn against you. That's part of the key issue that traders have, as well as, oh shit, I was wrong, but yet believing, oh, it's going to come back. It's going to reverse. I'm holding. Flip that. Just flip it around.

Yeah. So did journaling did you journal to kind of help you see these things in the I did. I use uh I still do. I use Trader Sync.

as a journal. Um I mean there are plenty of journals out there. I just I I I like it. It it's I'm comfortable with it. I came away I came up with the walk away analysis. I developed the walk away analysis, which is the Um idea that if you take a look at all your trades and you say, okay, what would happen if I held this five minutes longer, one hour longer, held it to the end of the day, held it for two days, right?

And you just entered in, have, or the system will enter in what the price was, five minutes after you closed it, an hour after you closed it. You could set any intervals you want. Chances are you will see that on most of your winners. If you held them longer, right? And mostly a lot of people come out, if I held my winners like an hour and a half on average longer, my profit would have gone up 30, 40%.

And doing the walkaway analysis is one thing that helps people with that mindset because it's it shows them that ride those, if you ride those winners longer. And just hold them sometimes even for an hour, an hour and a half longer, instead of jumping out the moment you hit a profit. That alone will will boost your PML.

So for the listeners, can you remind us of your like your bread and butter um trading trading strategy, trading approach. Yeah, it is and um one The market comes first. Right. So everything revolves around the market. 75% of all stocks, whether they're in the index or not, will go with SPY. If SPY is up, 75% of stocks in general will be up and 75% will be down if it's down.

Right. So you're looking for days that aren't what we call in the in the chat room low probability trading environments, LPTE. We're looking for days that are trend days that have actual direction in the market. So the market comes first. Then second is, is a stock relatively strong or relatively weak to the market? In other words, if you look today at Google, right? Now Google's still up 29 cents, but the market is down.

Almost one percent today. That's like an anchor around Google's legs, pulling it down. It wants Google wants to drop because the indexes are dropping. But it's still Greek. In order for that to happen, and that's relative strength, that means it's relatively strong to the market. In order for that to happen, institutions have to be in there supporting Google.

They have to in retail traders can't give that type of volume. So institutions are buying that stock even though they're selling the index and selling other stuff. I want to be on the side of the institutions. So now I now identify, okay, Google, Apple, two stocks that if I wanted to go long today are relatively strong. So the next thing I would do is look at the daily chart. That's the third step. I now look at the daily chart and see, okay, Google's in is above all the SMEs.

It's not overextended from the EMA 15. It's already had earnings, gapped up on earnings, and has not yet gone back into that gap. It's held the gap. And it's near its all-time high at 291.90 something. I like stocks that are by their all time high. Why? Because there's no bag holders above that number.

You know, there's nobody who once it hits, you know, if it gets a two ninety two is gonna be like I'm selling because I've been holding this damn thing for two years at this price and I'm finally breaking even. Every almost anyone who bought Google is in profit right now. So unless there's a reason to take profit, Google will just continue to go up.

And so now I've identified a good daily daily chart, um, relative strength. The only thing I don't have in my favor is the market. And this is where this market is different than the last time we spoke. Because normally I would say. You need to wait and make sure that the market isn't going to continue this downward trend. But what we've seen now for almost nine months straight.

Is this market? I mean, nuclear fucking war could be seen as bullish for this market right now. So this market, nine times out of ten, is going to bounce back, is going to continue up. I would be willing now to take along or Apple or Google, where two years ago I'd say I'd recommend wait, make sure that today's bull uh drop in the market doesn't continue. But now I'm looking at the SMA 50 on SPY as my line. And that line right now, for anyone listening, is at

664.73 on SPY. SPY needs to break that line for me to no longer want to take bullish line. So that's kind of your mental stop.

Yeah, that would be I don't as you know I don't use hard stops unless I'm gonna go out and smoke a cigarette and I'm scalping something. Um so I use metastops. Do you uh trade one stock at a time or do you trade as a portfolio? Do you have like a group of stocks? I have a group. I mean, I'm long gold right now. I am uh long Apple, long Oscar. Uh I have short Tesla. Uh again, I shorted it. I have a um a time spread on TTD.

I have leap puts on uh spy at the moment. And I have the uh one side of a call debit spread on meta for a bounce back tomorrow. So I have one, two, three, four, five, six. Seven positions on.

Okay. So you manage it like a portfolio. That's a lot to manage. Um, so I can see why like when you trade like portfolio style, um, and they're, I don't know if they're diversified enough, but like I can see why some people can be more comfortable like not having stops, you know, and and cause it's there's a bunch of different stocks in there. Is it are you using um straight out shares or are you using options on all of all of them?

Both both. Um, you know, I have shares on Oscar for example, but

options on Apple. Um I I'll go both I'll you know I had I short a thousand shares on Tesla today. Um so I'll go back and forth on it. And also um In from twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four, I was posting uh just insane sizes, you know, 10,000 shares of Tesla or um and Which people obviously told me, you know, hey, yeah, uh it's great learning, but it's not very relatable if you're taking 500 calls on on Amazon, uh deep in the money calls.

Uh I get it. Okay. So now I'm kind of running two different I'm running an account where I'm saying, okay, I'm short uh a thousand shares on Tesla or I took 25 contracts on Apple. large enough that you can go in time sales and still confirm my trade and see that it's there. But the larger trade, like if I do that, sometimes I'll be like, okay, and I'm also gonna do 250 contracts on Apple. I'm just doing a separate account, not posting that one.

But it's just a matter of proportion. So if I'm posting I did 25 calls, there are times I'll also do 250 calls, but I'm posting the twenty five that and it's confirmable and you can see it. What's the average uh duration of you know your portfolio? A day. Oh. Okay, so so you are a day trader. Yeah, yeah. I mean I'll uh tomorrow, if you ask me tomorrow, I mean all these positions will be different.

So then how do you do how do you prepare for this? Is this all in the pre market or are you doing this end of day for the next day? Like how do you um what's your your process? I wake up at 620 in the morning, 10 minutes before the market starts. drag myself out of the bed, uh quickly grab a cigarette, drink coffee. Run to my uh monitors here before the bell rings, uh look up at at

the charts and start the day. That's how I that's how I prep now. Um and then I answer any any messages and texts I get off of X or in the chat room. Yeah, I mean it used to be I would wake up way early and do all the pre-market prep and see what was up pre-market and down pre-market and you know what it just It didn't it didn't help. But again, that's when I was in the um whenever I taught when I was a I was a professor and when I was in the movie industry and I had to give presentations.

And sometimes, for example, my my staff would make this like long power back then when we used PowerPoint presentations or whatever. Um, and I some even in I like CinemaCon in Las Vegas, I would get up in a room and there'd be two, three thousand people in there and I'd stand up on stage and give it. I always insisted on not seeing the presentation beforehand. Not a word of it. I wanted to read it fresh off the cuff as I was presenting it.

I was never someone who did well with prepping anything. So the fact that I I basically sit in this chair a minute before the opening bell is probably not something that people should should look at and go, oh, I I should do that. Just just My style was to never prep and I never ever prep for anything. I don't

Yeah. So you just wait to see what the market does and then you react. You you don't have a trading plan going in. Um I mean, not like a structured one. No. I'll look at uh I'll quickly the moment it opens, I'll look at option stalker over here and I'll see what is relatively weak, relatively strong. I'll look at TC thousand over here, take a look at the charts and spy. And I'll look at my positions. I should say I'll look at my overnight positions first. Should I close any or not close any?

Um and I'm more likely to close a short in profit faster than I will close a long because of the way this market is right now. And then I will start searching to see if there's anything that's really popping out at me in terms of this is a good trade.

I'll also check to see, for example, if I have too many longs, I might look to see is there a good short I should put on. If I have too many shorts, it might go, all right, I need to balance this and maybe put on a rel something that's well looked a decent long. So I'll do that to check. Um I love scalping Tesla, for example. I scalped it three, four times today. It's an easy stock to scalp. Um

And it's an easy stock. For example, I fucked up when I short Tesla a week ago. Well, it was around eight, nine days ago. And I short it at 436, 437. And I held that short all the way up to Tesla being at 470, a thousand shares of it. Because I knew the great thing about Tesla is that friggin' stock is gonna stay in a range. Like right now, Tesla has gone between 400 and 470 since September.

You just have to wait that damn stock out. It's going to come back. Right. Um so that's one I like to scalp because I I like stocks that I can hold on to if it's not going my direction. Granted, I prefer holding it long. any stock long, but you can hold on to a Tesla. Yeah, it has a personality. Uh I mean, every stock sounds like yeah. Um it it's very helpful to know the personality of of the stocks that you trade often.

Yeah. Like Oscar personality is is an asshole. It's a pain in the ass, Stock. Which talk is up? O S Cr. It's a total thing in the ass stock. The stock will be up a dollar fifty in the morning and down forty cents before you close. It it every damn time. So uh that stock's a pain in the ass, but I do like the stock fundamentally. So Why not just trade? Um, I feel like I mean, I I used to wanna do that, like uh

you know, look for relative strength to the spy and and you know, drill down on stocks and scan. I just feel like it's so much work. And so I ended up just trading, you know, either spy or QQQ. Um, I just think it's simpler, but I don't know. Is is what do you what are your thoughts on that? You can make a lot more money trading the stocks. Um, and the simple reason for that is let's say I go long a stock that is relatively strong, right? Let's say I go long um

Let's see here on SPY. SPY is at, you know, earlier today, uh SPY is at 673. And at the same point in time, uh Google is at 286. Spy then drop. Down to 671-ish, 671, 670. Because Google has relative strength, it drops down to 285. So the buffer I got there, if I just went long spy at 673, I'd be at I'd be down$3 a share on that ETF. Yeah. Going along Google at Q86, because it's relatively strong, when SPY dropped, Google did not drop proportionally as much as SPY did.

So I'm only down a dollar a share on on Google and percentage-wise, I'm down less than I would be on Spy. So it gives you that buffer. Now spy had gone up, Google would have gone up proportionally more than SPY would have gone up. So again, I'm making more on Google. I totally get that. Yeah. And that's the beauty of relative strength. Like you that a relative strength analysis. Right. Yeah, and I'm not predicting, you know, spy is obviously

Um very news sensitive. It can move very quickly. So having that buffer, having the the the idea that something is separately driving the stock is certainly uh gives you uh an advantage because with spy and like spy futures, you're just kind of predicting uh the direction on spy, which is always uh always a challenge. Now, do you use AI at all on a, you know, f uh as part of your trading process in your analysis or anything like that? Um no, not really. I mean uh I will

I'll use chat GPT every now and then. I mean, look, I have uh trade exchange up, right? Um Uh, which is just a news service. It gives you all the news coming. But um I will if I see a big move on a stock, you know, let's say Google jumps up six, seven dollar, whatever, and I'm looking at trade exchange and I see no news on that thing.

Um I can maybe search uh Twitter X and just type in go and see if anything's there. But I could also just go on ChatGPT and say, hey, you know, why the hell is the stock up so much today? Give me your give me, tell me what you find. Um I'll just as soon as use that as I'll use searching on on Twitter or using change trade exchange, but I'll use it for like a news search, but I won't use it for hey, what should I?

go long or short, or what do you think, or pasting in a chart? It's just not there yet. It's not good enough yet. Yeah, I mean I use it more and more now every morning for Find it. I like it. Uh especially I can like give it the I look at pre market, so I give it oh, you know, the the current um prices of key um you know like q um the n q um what is it nqes the dollar um the yields all those key um symbols

And it'll help uh kind of paint a picture like what's going on compared to the day before and then also what's going on in the news. It's just kind of an overall, I don't like a hundred percent rely on it, but it kind of gives me a picture of what the sentiment might be for then at least for the next hour or so. So I find it really, really useful. What's my name is? I I use I pay the the subscription. Four five or what is it? Uh Yeah, five, I think it's five years.

Not the free version because I feel like the free version, it's limited, but um and and I even talked to it. Here's a great tip. I don't know if you use it, uh, do this or not with Chat GPT. I do it um certainly'cause I also have a uh six year old son. uh who loves talking to it. But um you can tell it uh to save things in long term memory.

So for anything that you want ChatGPT to uh remember, now it'll remember certain things over conversations, but it it tends to quickly forget over time certain things you might tell it. If you say store if you specifically say store this into long-term memory, update long-term memory with this, whether it's facts about you or the way you like you want it to report things on the market.

it'll put it into its long-term memory. And you can even say this is stored this long-term memory when I say in when I say trading mode. This is what I want. And you list out all the things it needs to do when the moment you say trading mode. And that way in the morning you can just open up and go, enter trading mode. And it'll go right into it. So like with my six year old, I say, end your kids mode.

And it knows explain things to him as if he's six years old. Use examples that a six-year-old would be able to understand. Make it fun. Make it these are the things that my son likes. These are the TV shows he likes. These are the stories that he likes. All that's stored into its long term memory. So when I say enter kids mode. It automatically knows how to speak, what to talk about, and all of that. And when my son asks questions, it knows how to how to interact. Almost like a babysitter.

Take what you can get. But it is it the more you update long-term memory on these things, the better they they become at whatever. Yeah. I I um yeah, I think that's a great idea. So it then it can know your um it it'll know your kind of your trading style and your your psychology and maybe even step in for accountability and things like that.

Right. Like also you could always one thing that's definite, every any depend no matter what, whether using Brock or whatever, hard code hard code into your long-term memory, stop glazing me. What pleasing me? Glazing, like stop with the fantastic question. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've hit right at the heart of the matter. You really nailed this one. Like, stop that fucking bullshit. You do not need to fluffer me. Uh Just be real.

Don't do it. Be re and if you like hard code that in because that's just annoying crap that it tries to do to get you more addicted to it. And if you hard code that in, it'll it will not hundred percent, but will eliminate some of that shit.

Yeah. Um, so is there any kind of trading style um or approach that that is outside of your current, you know, the way you trade that you would love to um explore more and and experiment? I mean, I never I mean look I oh wow the Tesla board is approved must pay package and you could see the response on Tesla actually is not That's strong. It uh continues to um actually be down for the day, which means a lot of that was priced in. Uh I never got into crypto that much.

I trade obviously I trade MSGR and I'll trade coin and all those stocks, but I never traded uh Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of those directly. I've never like played around with that. Um And to be honest, it's not my area of expertise in my forte. And I have so many people ask me questions about it. And I have to say, I don't I I can send you to someone I know who knows, but I don't know the fucking answer to that.

Um, but if I can go up back in time to learn, I probably would learn more about that world and trading in that world. Um I like and one of the reasons I find this market frustrating, I mean look, I'm up 62%. Again, not that frustrating, but uh frustrating still, is I like things that have rules.

Right. You can predict them. That's what tech all traders are technical traders. They all go about it different ways, but you're all trying to find levels of support, levels of resistance. What are those numbers and how is the stock going to react when it breaks those numbers or not? Right.

Those are boundaries. What makes this market so difficult is there's constant news, whether it's news coming from the the the the administration or world news or company news that is just uh destroying those technical boundaries constantly, right? where you think you can rely on the strongest technical boundary there is is 200 SMA. And those get blown apart all the time by a news story. So Bitcoin and crypto have even less of that, of those, of those boundaries, right?

what was difficult for me to get past, other than the almost cult-like belief, and and it's not that cult-like if it if it turns out to be correct, that look, just gravitate by Bitcoin and it's just gonna keep going up, right? There's a finite source, blah, blah, blah. Um It's hard for me to trade something without looking at it and reading the price action and having some relative certainty with some sort of edge that this shit is going to go in this direction. Well maybe AI can help with that.

You know, it certainly would be better than me. Um, you know, I'll trade MSTR because it it still file follows some technicals uh, you know, a bit. It's been certainly bearish, but what I won't do is look at MSGR and go, it's a two hundred thirty eight right now. This thing used to be at five hundred and forty three.

Uh Bitcoin's over a hundred. I'm gonna buy it. I see no technical basis whatsoever to buy MSTR right now because What you can do is look at the chart and go, okay, was that argument applied on October 29th when it was at 286? Yes, you would have gotten crushed because it dropped fifty dollars from there. Would have that argument applied back on October 10th when it was at 323?

Yeah, you could have said, oh, I'm buying it now. Look, it's dropped$250 from its high. It it's gotta come back up now. Bitcoin's at uh at$115. I might at it. You would have lost uh a hundred ninety-four dollars a share at that point. So You know, that argument of this thing has dropped so much, it's gotta bounce back. I see so many people posting, now's the time to buy MSTR. Good luck. Like that's your got just, there's nothing more behind that than your gut.

So going back to this irrational market, how do traders stay sane in this market and how what's the best way to approach it? Hydrocodone, uh, oxy. Um those help. Nicotine, good, caffeine, good. It's look, I mean If you can somehow realize and look at it and just play the price action, which is much easier said than done, you're going to be a lot more sane. If you look at it today and go like today is down. Today I am going to day trade short.

And I'm going to try to be in cash by the end of the day because I know these trends don't seem to continue and it might be up tomorrow. Great. You'll stay seen doing that. If you start going, I'm not going to go long here because this market's going to implode. then you're just going to keep getting frustrated. Every single day you're going to look at it and go, Well, I missed it. I missed it. I missed it. And there are people who are looking at this and going,

I was, you know, short back when I look, I bought leap shorts way back and now they're a hedge. I have them as a hedge. Um That is another way to deal with it. Have yourself a hedge, right? Go long, play the market, go in the direction. But if you're that friggin' worried about an implosion, keep a hedge there. Buy some spy lead put. That way if it drops, okay, well at least your leap puts are gonna are gonna are gonna print.

I mean that's another way, but if you keep looking and waiting for a black swan event, because yeah, look, shit doesn't make sense right now. Not the pri the the everyone knows. Anyone who goes to the fucking store knows how much prices are up. I don't give a shit what the CPI says. I know how much it costs right now for a person to go shopping and get groceries for a week. Or take an Uber somewhere or get DoorDash.

It's astronomically expensive, right? I mean, all that shit is expensive. Housing is rent is expensive. And you just compare it to five years ago or 10. Wages have not gone up proportional to that, which means people are more in debt. So that shit doesn't make sense.

Tariffs don't make fucking sense. None of that makes any sense because someone is paying that bill. Either the company is paying that bill because it's a tax on the company to the government, in which case the not passing it on to consumers, but then that will show up in their earnings as gross margins drop, or consumers are paying that bill if it's being passed along to them.

Some is it it's it's not a political thing, it's a simple economic thing. Uh uh the c if if if there's a 50% tariff on China and Microsoft is an American company that buys, you know, the the glass for China for their hardware. And they pay two hundred million a year for that.

And then now a fifty percent tariff. They're still paying two hundred million a year for that, but now they're paying a hundred million dollars to the US government as part of that tariff. That comes from Microsoft, doesn't come from China, it doesn't come from anywhere else, it comes from the company. So okay. Now, how are they going to make up that$100 million? They're either going to charge more for that product or they're going to eat it and their margins will show it.

Where is that money? That makes no fucking sense. Yeah. While at the same time saying the damn economy is gonna do four percent growth next next quarter. Well, if it's gonna do fucking four percent growth, why are you cutting range? Like you want inflation to go up more? That doesn't make sense. So none of it makes sense. The PE ratios and and and and like companies that make a billion dollars in revenue worth a half a trillion dollars.

Okay, but I know what the price action is, so I'm gonna play it. Nothing makes sense. Uh and but you know what makes sense? Trading. Trading makes sense. Yes. Trading. Even though it's hard, trading makes sense right now. Yes, to keep you sane actually, ironically. It can keep you sane because it doesn't matter if Tesla right now should be worth$100 or$1,000. What matters is right now it's worth$455.50.

The board has already announced the pay package agreement. It has it's still down six dollars for the day. It has not gone green. That tells me there's weakness in Tesla. And if I were going to trade Tesla right now, I would probably short it. The news is out. The volume is already drying up. Anybody buying it because of the pay package, it was clearly priced in.

I would short Tesla right now at four fifty-five sixty. So mark that down four fifty-five sixty and we'll see where it is tomorrow. But I would short Well, this is recorded. Uh it is 116-2025. I would short Tesla, 455-16. We'll see where it is in the morning. I know we're um a little over an hour. Do you have a few more minutes or or are you Oh, okay. Well is there any um anything that uh you would love to talk about that I didn't ask?

Um well, I mean, look, uh, I'm gonna be doing a podcast called Call Tradecraft, uh, to try to help people. Tradecraft. Uh sorry my dog here is being a little Oh, my dog too. My dog I I locked him out. Oh my god. Excuse the last interruption here. This is Tessa. We hope you're enjoying this episode so far. If you love the podcast,

Please give Chatwith Traders the best review you can on whatever platform you're listening from. This will help us to keep the episodes coming. Also, if you haven't subscribed to our email list, please hop on to chatwithraders.com and click on subscribe. so we can keep you posted of information that may be of importance. Thank you. Now back to the chat with our guests. Uh he's this he's the dopiest like friggin' golden retriever in history. Oh you have a go that I have I have a mix.

Yeah, I got up here, I'll show you. Oh how cute! There's my there there he is Ryder. My son named him after the Paw Patrol Ryder. But uh yeah, he is he's not a very smart golden retriever, but it's okay. He's cute.

Yep. Um, I mean it's hard to do this along alone. It you know, it's why I do things like like plug that the Pete's thing because what you wanna do as a trader is you want to treat it as a career, you want to uh realize the time it takes to do it. the difficulty that there is involved in it. And having a community around you certainly helps, having guidance certainly helps, but it it it's sort of like you have to prepare yourself like you're going to college.

Like you're going to uh, you know, go into class, you're going to learn, and you're not gonna just jump in and make money as a lawyer or a doctor uh without first going through the process of getting there. And there's a good reason for that. And to thinkorswim's credit and all the other I like Thinkorswim on this for this more than the other brokers, but they all have

some version of paper trading. It is a paper trading, particularly if you're able to get it with live quotes, is a fantastic way to train.

Right. Because it it allows you to do the trades, to journal your trades. And yes, there is an emotional element that's missing, right? Because it's not real money at stake. But One thing about When when I put together like these are the milestones, you know, be successful, have a win rate of seventy-five percent, profit factor, two to one, you know, et cetera, et cetera, before you progress to actual money, you know, go to that, go to one share and so on.

Is if you if you're able to do that and you look back at your journals and you go, Okay, I've done 500 trades over the last six months, whatever. There helps your mindset to be able to look and say, this trade has been successful 80% of the time.

Like if I did a bullish put spread where my short strike is has at least two levels of hard support above it. Right. So bullish put spread out of the money. Um basically um saying I'm going like if I were to do it on well even like Tesla right now and I went out to November 21st and I sold the 400 uh the 400 and puts and bought the 395 puts for a dollar credit. Okay. So I need Tesla to stay above 400. Which gives me two good lines of support. I have the fifty SMA.

And I have a trend line coming off of the bottom of nine fifteen's candle, the gap up candle. So I have these two level level supports. So in order for that trade to be in jeopardy, I had to break through the 400 and break through the 395 level. Those type of trades, if it's set up correctly, have around an 87 to 92% win rate. We did it once and we did like over 400, like 370 of them, and it was like 91.4% successful.

Knowing that and putting that trade on, that helps your mindset because you know, okay, even if this Tesla gets in trouble, I know that 91% of the time this type of trade works out. That type of repetition and doing that really can help when people start to freak out when they see their trade turn against them or when they jump in to take profit.

Having that evidentiary stuff in front of you, journaling helps with that. Um, doing walkaway analysis helps with that, seeing if you hold on to a trade in profit longer helps with that. It's the hardest thing in the world to add to a trade that's in profit. Like if if you go long something and if you're up a dollar in it, you want to take profit. But the best thing most times to do is to add to that trade. and and double your trip. But most people won't do it.

Because it's it's like counter counterintuitive. You know? It's like if I you bet me uh on a on a baseball game and you're winning in the in the fourth inning, your team is up five to two, and I came to you and I said, would you like to double the bet right now? You'd say yes every time. Like every single time if we've had$100 on a game and you're winning five to two in the fourth inning, I go, I'll give you a chance to double your bet right now. You'd say yeah.

Yeah. That's the same thing in trading, right? I mean, you said you bought Apple at 270, it's now at 272. And you go, all right, you have a chance to double that bet. But now you go no because it already went up$2. It's going to, it's going to reverse. Well, that's because you think the other street. It's scarier. Earlier, yeah. And we remember with startling clarity every single time those trades have reversed on us and it it leaves that scar.

Um I remember in the last interview you mentioned that you don't like people. Do you still not like people? never like people. Um I don't mind talking to large groups of people because they're nobody's individual. Um no I don't I don't like people. Uh and You know, I don't expect them to like me. I don't give a shit. Uh I have very little use for most. Uh I I try to avoid people as much as I can. Um but

You know, people ask them, well, if I don't like well, you know, I'm full of shit because if I don't like people, why am I help why do I give like I give away all my shit for free? For example, I give away my wiki for free, help people. Because I really don't like people who take advantage of

Like I don't like if you have someone who's broke and they're trying to make a better life for themselves and their family, look, I don't like you. I I probably would not want to sit down with you and have a drink with you. But the person next to you who's trying to scam you out of money, I'd love to fucking curb stomp that person.

Because that person is disgusting, right? The person who's trying to take advantage of people. And so When I look at trading in this world of trading, I see so many people just trying to make a better life for themselves. you know, they they're either down on their luck or they're not going anywhere to work. They they they other than the degenerate fucking gamblers out there and there are plenty of those, but a lot of people.

just want to get ahead. They want a little taste of something that everyone else seems to to you know, all these other people seem to be able to get millionaires and billionaires now. Millionaires doesn't mean shit. Um well it means shit to people who aren't millionaires, I guess, but

um all that they want some of it and they have every right to want some of that. There's no reason why they shouldn't. And they look at the trading and they go, I can do that. I can I can become part of that. And what happens is they get preyed upon. Everyone jumps out of the woodwork with their three bar men, this method, and I can teach you this. Or, you know, I'm going to sit here and give you advice on Reddit with a five-page dissertation, even though

I've never been fucking profitable in my life. Doesn't matter. I'm still gonna tell you. It's like getting a relationship advice from the person who divorced ten times. Like get the fuck away from me. You all you're doing is hurting these people. And these people, of course, become disillusioned, they become cynical. And so eventually they blame the market. Everything's rigged against me. Look, it's not, is it rigged? No.

Are there unfair advantages to people who are wealthy? Of course. You know, I can call GPM or I know plenty of people much more wealthy can call GPM and get exotic options. You know, a person on E-Trade can't fucking do that. They can't get an exotic option. They can't, you know, get the types of trades that the these other people can. But by and large, no, it's not rigged. No, they're not hunting your your your stop loss of your five shares. They don't give a shit.

about your five you think someone in JPL or Goldman Sachs is sitting there going, Oh, oh look, Bob from Virginia is uh He's got a stop on uh there at uh with just ten shares. Let's go, let's go nail that fucker. No, they don't give a shit. They could care less about the retail traders. Um it's just it's just a matter of of These people have been burned so many times that, yeah, I get it. You don't want to say, look, I got burned. So it's easy to blame everything else.

I noticed that just in from my experience, people who say they don't like people, they actually are the people who really care about people the most. Well, I mean, I don't know if I care. I I I just I definitely care that that people are assholes and take advantage of other people. I don't want to sit down with them. I don't want to hear about their life problems. I I I don't want to, you know, come on over and and hang out.

But, you know, you tell me that someone is taking advantage of you, yeah, I'll, I'll, I'll make it my my business to to make sure that I I have a problem with that. Yeah. And that's why you part of the reason why you created real day trading, which I think is really awesome, a very awesome community. And a lot of great mods there um that are doing good work because I know I I've I've uh

Posted a lot there, but they've taken up a lot of that. And yeah, that's the idea behind it to give people a place where they can actually learn. Both day trading and swing trading as a business, as something that they can actually do for a living and to avoid. Not just the scams, but the bad advice people, a lot of people who are just, you know, well-meaning, but look, dude, you you you shouldn't be giving people advice if you can't do it yourself. Like All these people say now is a fair

You need to be able to be profitable to help other people. It's it's like it's not a hard concept. So have you moved closer to to your goal of going to Kansas, living in Kansas and chasing those tornadoes?

Uh yeah, actually. I mean literally waiting for my son to graduate from college, uh from Berkeley, and uh because I want to be here during the summers and all that. But um When he's done, uh, if I can, you know, get myself a nice little compound out there and enjoy watching tornadoes as I sit on the front porch. Uh, and then pe next neighbor is like five fucking miles away. Yeah. I am a hundred percent with that. I'm also good with any apocalyptic event that might be coming our way.

I always have the same delusion that everyone else does that I will survive an apocalyptic event. So great. I'm good with that too. Um humanity might need a reset anyway. But yeah, uh Kansas would be nice. Um But you know, as long as I can have uh a fiber optic internet, I'm good. In the meantime, you're chasing the tornadoes of the markets, so It is a storm and it is it is I mean There will be a drop and

That SMA 50 is really your bellwether, your telltale sign for it. So that's what I encourage everyone to really look at. Everything else is noise unless that breaks. If that does break and breaks with volume and there is a confirmation of that break, certainly the next day, it continues down, that tells you that there is a correction starting to happen. And that's what people should look for. Until then, you're you're really looking at um at this back and forth that's going to go up and down.

You're talking on a a daily time frame? Oh that's On a daily time frame. Okay. So I look at the SMA 50, SMA 100, SMA 200 on the daily chart because that is what institutions look at. Um, I like the EMA 15 on the daily chart. Others like the EMA 8. They're all fine, just however long you want the trend to be. Uh volume, obviously, and Trend lines. Trend lines are your best friend. Sadly, whenever we try teaching fucking trend lines and algalines.

Like 75% of the people can't figure them out. They can't draw them correctly. And then they wind up using the wrong trend. So it's like I don't even know what to do there. I did a video on it. I tried explaining it. And then every time someone goes, All right, I got it. And then they show me their trend line, it's like, oh my fucking God. I mean. Very simple, Jack. You got it. I don't know what to tell you.

It's like you can't figure out how to draw a trend line. I don't know how much draw it, but they're if you can figure them out, they're very, very useful uh to use because they are one thing that you Yeah, your friend. if you build algos around. Yeah. Well, it was really nice chatting with you, Vincent. So happy that you wanted to come back on the show. Yeah. Well for those who want, I know you don't like people, but for those who want to reach out to you, what's the best way to?

Three ways really. Uh I'm on X. Uh you can and you message me on X. I respond to almost all messages unless they're um asking me for some promotion or something. Um uh under real day trading. Um I am on Reddit, the real day trading sub. You can go there. Or you can come uh to the one option chat chat room, which is Pete's uh community, and that is uh O N E Option dot com. I think he has a thing where you get two for two weeks free sign up. I'm in there.

Every day from open to the market to end of market, answering questions, posting trades, talking to people. Those are the three ways to to interact with me. Um And I try to respond to everyone. The only thing that I would caution is if if you just go, um, what do you think about, you know, uh Google?

No. Tell me what you like or don't like about it. You know, be like, hey, I like that the daily chart on Google looks strong. It's relatively strong. It's above SMAs, but I'm worried about going long right now. What do you think? I will answer that question all day long in detail. But don't be lazy about the fucking shit. Like don't be like, hey, Google question mark. Fuck off. So I'm I'm guessing you don't do one on one mentorship.

No, I don't. Um I I once did uh that I gave it away for charity uh and people bid on on that and I did uh like a like a one-on-one four hours spread over four weeks tutorial. I don't need the money for that. So why would I do it? That's why I wrote, I mean look, if someone reads the wiki that I wrote, like a 300 page trading guy. follows my trades and wants to DM back and forth with me about some questions they have.

I'll answer their I'll I'll talk to them. I mean no problem. Like you wanna go on and chat with me on X or Reddit or what not wherever? Um, sure, like we'll go back and forth. You want to like I've I've had people be like, hey, um I can't get over this gambling idea. Like I keep leaning into like how can I get through that? And I'm there are people that I've e

message back and forth for like weeks on end uh helping them get over that. I don't know if you call it mentoring, but I'm certainly not going to charge. Like that would be, why would I charge someone for that? But thanks so much, Vincent, again. Oh, of course. It's been a pleasure and I'm sure we will talk again soon. You've reached the end of this episode.