OI19 BONUS: Living With Ed Seykota ft. David Druz

What's your biggest drawdown? You know, like in his trading. And he thought for a while, well, that's how he would talk. Well, I don't think I've lost more than 50% in a day. I mean, it's like, wow. I mean, this is a guy who probably has made more money trading return-wise. You know, it's like he knows if you want to get the optimal return, you have to push that bet size. And the heat has to be high. And most people can't do it. But if you're wrong and you're too far, you're going to wipe out.

It's like, don't do this at home, kids, kind of thing. Imagine spending an hour with the world's greatest traders. Imagine learning from their experiences, their successes, and their failures. Imagine no more. Welcome to Top Traders Unplugged, the place where you can learn from the best hedge fund managers in the world so you can take your manager, due diligence, or investment career to the next level.

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Here's your host, veteran hedge fund manager, Niels Kostrup-Larsen. Welcome to another episode in the Open Interest Series on Top Traders Unplugged. hosted by Moritz Siebert. In life, as well as in trading, maintaining a spirit of curiosity and open-mindedness is key, and this is precisely what the Open Interest Series is all about.

Join Moritz as he engages in candid conversations with seasoned professionals from around the globe to uncover their insights, successes and failures, offering you a unique perspective on the investment landscape. So with no further ado. please enjoy the conversation hi everyone and welcome back to the open interest series on top traders unplugged this is part two of my conversation with

Dave Drews. This is the bonus part where he speaks about his time with Etsy Coda and a couple of other things. Some really interesting stories there. I hope you'll enjoy that. I thought it was really great. We appreciate any feedback you have on this. So please let us know if you want. You can always send us an email. It's info at toptradersonplugged.com. But let's get into it. Here is part two with Dave Drews.

So we'll keep it trading focused. Just speaking about how you designed the system, what's important to you, how to trade, you know, emotions, things like this. I could give you some anecdotes here and there about my… apprenticeship with Ed Sakoda, if you'd like. Some people find that interesting. You can ask me some questions about that. He's sort of a...

private guy in certain ways. So it's not like I can tell you everything, but I can give you from my perspective, some of the things that I picked up from my six months living with him. Oh, you lived with him. I heard you mentioned that in Tahoe. I was his first apprentice back in, I think it was 91 or 90, somewhere in there. And he had several after that. I don't know what he's doing now. We've fallen out of touch in the last several years.

um yeah no i i was fortunate enough to be his live-in apprentice and i lived with him for six months straight and traveled with him wherever he went and just um you know picked up what I could and what he shared. And there's some pretty interesting things that he had to share that are different than my approach that some people might be interested in. A lot of the things that Ed does, no one else can do, and you might as well don't even try. What is this? What do you mean by this?

So you've read The Market Wizards, the original book, right? In the 1980s. Anyway, so wasn't it Jack Schwager? Was he the author? I can't remember for sure. Yes, yes, he was. But anyway. You know, he gave a beautiful chapter on Ed, and he was, you can tell he was absolutely astonished by Ed when he went to visit him. He visited him in Tahoe, and he saw...

you know, Ed's computer on his desk and all the programs Ed was doing. And at the time, you know, it's quite advanced. Now it's, you know, anyone can just download an app and do these things. But Ed had written all his own programs. So Jack assumed that Ed was a systematic technical trader. That is absolutely the most incorrect assumption about Ed that... I think most people take away from that book.

You know, like you use a computer for your trading if I glean from what you're saying. And we did. And we have algorithms that we follow strictly and back-tested everything before we... It would implement anything, right? So this is what we think of as a systematic trader. But Ed isn't that at all. Not even close. Ed is a technical... discretionary trainer. He wrote all these programs to support the data presentation.

that he then used to make discretionary calls about buying and selling. He does have, or I don't know what he's doing now. He did have some very specific... general rules that he followed that he felt were you know sacrosanct to trading and these are the general rules everybody follows um you know cut your losses short, let your profits ride, diversified, so on and so forth. But he did not have a computerized system to do this at all.

He would look at the charts each day and then decide what he was going to do the next day. So he was looking for setups like chart patterns and stuff like that.

is the best trader the world has ever seen in terms of being able to make money in the markets. Now, no way is he the kind of trader any... institution would want to invest in because his his equity swings can be gigantic and you know his job and his mind was make as much money as I can in the markets you know But he would look at the charts each night and then decide what he's going to do. And it was absolutely amazing. I remember one time.

This was back when they were called German boons, the German boon chart. We're looking at the charts, and these are chart programs Ed wrote. This was way before you could... buy a chart program and just have the thing chart. And we wrote some of our own in-house before you could get them commercially too. But Ed had written his own chart programs and he had the ability.

in his chart program to use his mouse and draw a hypothetical of what the market might do or what patterns might look like. So one day we're looking at the charts and we're looking at the German boon chart. And, you know, I'm just, my favorite part was looking at charts with Ed to see what he's going to say. So we're looking at these charts, and I say, Ed, what do you think is going to happen with those boons tomorrow?

And he takes his mouse and he draws a bar, you know, with a high, low, and a close. Okay? The next day, Boones did exactly what he drew. Okay? I mean... exactly what he drew. So it just had this amazing ability to anticipate what the markets were going to do. This is something that you can't program, you can't teach somebody directly.

When I visited him, right off the bat, when I'm starting out to be his apprentice, he gives me this little teeny book that he wrote. I can't remember what it was called. The Traitor's Window. This book has nothing to do with trading. He wrote this little book called The Trader's Window, and in it it talks about a jade master. And the jade master, somebody comes to the jade master and says,

Master, Master, teach me about jade. And the guy doesn't say anything. And the guy comes back and goes, teach me about jade. And the guy gives him a little rock. You know, and the guy looks at the rock and, you know, comes back the next day and the guy says, well, you know, this doesn't look like jade to me. The jade master doesn't say, here's another rock. This goes on forever. You know, it's one of these Zen kind of teaching things. And then.

After a number of years, the guy that's been coming and sitting with the jade master, he knows what jade is. He knows everything about jade. And the master has basically told him nothing. They just sat together. Okay?

So he gives me this book and little did I realize this is Ed's teaching style. You know, you just hang out with the guy and you see what he does and see if you can do it. So. anyway so what was it like on a day-to-day basis where he's sitting next to him on a desk like chair by chair and watching him no no no most of the time it was just

whatever i was doing that day you know like hey dave let's uh let's go down the hill to reno and and go to the grocery store okay and so we'd go down to the grocery store you know and And that's what we, and we come back and then Ed would play banjo, you know, he's a great banjo player. And then like at the end of the day, when markets close, we look at charts. I would take about maybe 10 minutes. That was my favorite part.

And then I said, well, Ed, what do you think about this? Well, I think I might buy that. You know, I said, well, where are you going to buy that? Well, you know, somewhere around here. And he'd draw the little mouse. They never tell me exactly. I said, well, but where are you going to put your stock? Well, somewhere around here.

And that's it. That's what we do. And I just watch him do this. And he is very, very big, very big on psychology. And his idea was, you know, like from Market Wizards, everybody gets what they want from the markets. And markets are a vehicle for people to work out their psychology and if they have any hidden psychological kinks.

They're all going to come out in the markets. You know, this is his idea. And if you've got anything that's screwing you up inside, you're going to bring it out of the markets and you're going to screw yourself up. So he was very big on trying to understand your own psychology. But it wasn't like he sat down and gave you a shrink session. But he did have these.

these sessions where traders would come together and they'd talk about their problems and stuff like that just to try to get it out so that it didn't come out in the markets. So he was very big on psychology and he spent a lot of time. with his programs to display different things, but it was mostly just charts, things that we can get easily today, but it was not easy back then.

He just didn't spend that much time looking at markets at all. And during the day, it's not like he had screens, didn't have live screens. And anyway, it was. It was an amazing experience to hang out with him, not just to watch and train, but he's so perceptive about people's psychology that you could not hide.

anything from this guy. If you had any psychological problems or things you were working on, he could see it instantly and he would nail you on it. And it's very uncomfortable, actually, because... You know, most of us have these ego defenses. And, you know, we walk around all day with them and we're fine. But Ed would just nail right through them, you know, because, you know, that's how you get to be a good trader. I think it was his idea.

then you have to make sure you understand your psychology as well as possible. Because if your style of trading doesn't fit your psychology, you're going to fail. That's his idea. and everybody has a slightly different psychology, you won't be able to stick to your system if your psychology doesn't match it. We're computerized systematic traders.

You take someone who just doesn't have a psychology that can do that, even if it's a fabulous program, they won't follow it. They'll go in and tinker with it. They'll screw around with it. They'll do something, right? Anyway. You understand your psychology well, make sure your system is based on it. Now, he always tried to encourage me to get away from systematic computerized training because he felt that the returns on that...

were not nearly as much as you could get from discretionary trading, but technical discretionary trading. In other words, never listen to the news. What does the chart tell you? What does the price tell you? and then make your decisions based on true factual information. He always tried to get me to learn to trade this way.

And I said, I can't possibly do that for my investors. I don't have any backtesting. I don't have anything to go on. But he's always encouraging me to learn to do that. Well, after I apprenticed with him for that time, I thought, well, all right, I'll try it with my own money for my own account. And he always also said, you always have to trade with money that's meaningful in order for you to learn.

and understand yourself. Like if you're a millionaire, you don't put $10,000 in an account and trade or you're never going to learn anything because it doesn't mean anything to you, right? So you have to put something meaningful into the account. This is very scary because if you're wrong, you're going to lose a meaningful amount of your equity, right? Of your assets, right? But this is his idea. This is what you have to do. So after I apprenticed with him, I...

I said, okay, I'll try this for myself. And so I took, you know, for me, what was a significant amount of money and set up my own account. And I let my investors know, you know, that. That, you know, I do have a proprietary account and it has nothing to do with what we're trading and I'm not trading ahead and blah, blah, blah. Just to disclose. Well, so what I did is I continued to run my systems.

for my investors, but I traded this account for a little over a year, and every day I would say, okay, pretend you're Ed. Okay, all right, you're Ed. You're sitting with Ed. Okay, look at the charts. Okay, what would Ed do? Well, I'd probably buy it around here. Well, I'd probably put a stop about here. Okay, so I did this for about 15 months, made 300% return, and absolutely went crazy.

because it was not my trading style. At the same time, my systems made 20% for my investors. I closed the account and I saw a psychiatrist for a year because I so messed up myself. by pretending I'm somebody I'm not, even though I somehow was like, you know, the guy that went to the Zen master. You know, I pretended I was Ed for a year. I couldn't do it.

So it's just he has a completely different style than you get from that book. And I think that's maybe one of the most interesting things that, you know, we could bring up if people were interested about it. But, you know, we don't need to go into zillions of Ed stories. You know, if you've read all the things you can find on me online, Ed and I once wrote an article together on optimal bet size. Did you ever see that?

It's out there online somewhere. Yes, about heat distribution and these type of things. There is actually an optimal bet size if you have a system with a known edge per trade. Now, that's the thing. Systems don't have a stable edge per trade. It varies depending on the period of time. And so it's only a rule of... of thumb. I mean, it is true that there is an optimal bet size. And so that's the thing to take away from that type of a study.

You do a back test. You see what the edge is or what would have been the optimal bet, you know, for this particular system on that particular portfolio. And this, again, this is a computerized systematic trading method. He knows how to do all this. It just isn't the way he did it. So we wrote this article on optimal bet size. And the optimal bet size is just a lot bigger than most people would want to use. Because, you know, you go too far and your risk of ruin is douche.

You head right into it. But you go too little and, you know, your risk of ruin is almost zero, but you're not going to make a lot of money. And so, you know, I was curious. I asked him, Ed. what's your biggest drawdown, you know, like in his trading? And he thought for a while, he said, well, that's how he would talk. Well, I don't think I've lost more than 50% in a day. I mean, it's like, wow. I mean, this is a guy who probably has made more money trading return wise.

And, you know, it's like he knows if you want to get the optimal return, you have to push that bet size and the heat has to be high and most people can't do it. But if you're wrong and you're too far, you're going to wipe out. So it's a... It's a very, you know, it's like, don't do this at home, kids, kind of thing, you know? But that's another really interesting thing that I got from him is...

Here's a guy who actually made a lot of money in the markets, but he did it by, you know, the rule is, you want to make a lot of money, you have to bet bigger than you think, but not too big. You know, enough that you have to take a lot of heat. And most people, this could never, ever, ever do it. And also the other amazing thing is, you know, you think about it. If you're a discretionary trader.

You have to learn to deal with what it feels like when you take a big loss or several big losses in a row. And most discretionary traders that do that... Even systematic traders. I mean, I know I would feel it. You just feel awful and you can make you feel down. And it can make it like you just don't want to get up there and swing again the next day, you know, because you've just been hurt. But a discretionary trader.

just like a systematic trader, has to somehow cope with this and be able to get up there and still do the right thing the next day, even if he's had a string of losses or one big loss, you know, just recently. And in this regard, Ed was absolutely flawless, flawless. He had no, like no memory of what happened. It was like every day was new and every day was.

Do the right thing. And he was never affected, at least outwardly. You could never see that he was affected by any losses that had happened recently. That was an amazing thing I learned from hanging out with him. He just never expressed anything other than the right way to trade every time. Sounds like he didn't take any of these losses personal.

Like you wipe them from the memory and you just, you know, rinse and repeat the next day. Exactly. Did you also do this? Is this something that you learned from him? Is like there's no memory type of thing about the markets? You mean when I did my year of discretionary trading? Yeah, I just pretended I was Ed every day. I did it for like 15 months. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah, but…

It was just so not me. I can't tell you. It's like, I can't tell you. I don't want to do that ever again. You know? Yeah, you said this. So then when you had your own firm. Did you feel that pain again? I mean, it doesn't mean that you need to take it personal. Systematic trading? Yeah, I'm not going to lie to you. Absolutely. When I would lose money for investors by following my system, it always hurt.

But, you know, it's like I'm doing the right thing. My research is really good. It's solid. I have confidence long-term. But, of course, it hurts when you are in a drawdown. You know, how people handle drawdowns, I think it makes some of the biggest difference in who is successful over the long run. As we're during a drawdown, your psychology really affects.

what you're doing. People question their systems. If it's an algorithmic system, they'll go, oh man, something's wrong with my system. Maybe I need to change something. What a mistake. You know, that's the worst time to change something is in a drawdown. You have to make absolutely sure that there's something wrong or you should never tinker in a drawdown.

That's not to say that you can't improve your systems. And, you know, it's a good idea for people to always try. But don't let the drawdown psychologically affect your... your appropriate assessment of your research. So many people tinker with their systems and drawdowns, and you've got to let the statistics play out.

Yes, which is a tough thing to do because it means that you have to trade at the appropriate size when you are in a drawdown. You can't have a drawdown reduction rule where you're all of a sudden dialing back because you may not. It may take ages for you to come out of the drawdown if you ever come out of the drawdown. Unless it's part of your system. If it's part of your system to do that and you've tested it, you should do that. But if it's not part of your system...

You should follow your system, whatever it is. There's a problem with this too, though. If you remember John Henry, I'm sure you probably have heard of him, famous commodity trader from the 80s and 90s. and then bought the Boston Red Sox and quit trading. Well, John, if I remember this right, John did not ever decrease his bet size when he was in a drawdown.

This, that does not work indefinitely. You get out of the drawdowns faster. But if you don't decrease the bet sign as you draw down, your risk of ruin goes way up.

So, and, you know, he eventually blew up after training for many, many years. And I don't know why particularly he did. But perhaps this was one of the reasons. So you have to have some way to manage your bet size in drawdowns or in gains. Because, you know, you start with a million-dollar account.

and your bet size is X. Well, when you're 2 million, it should be 2X or approximately. I mean, your bet size needs to change with your equity at some point. If it's day-to-day or month-to-month, it does need to adjust. And you can't just, as it goes up, increase, and as it goes down, stay the same unless you're willing to increase your risk of ruin probabilities.

It's, you know, just follow the system in the drawdown, however, whatever your system is, unless you're absolutely sure that there's something wrong with it. That's right. Like when you go into a drawdown.

with your example of the million dollar account and you're down at say 500 000 your bet size should no longer be one million it should be approximately depending whether you use closed trade equity open trade equity but say it's 500 000 that's that's the base that you're using to size it but it probably shouldn't be 250,000, which would be too...

little risk put on to get out of the drawdown. A bunch of these drawdown reduction rules do exactly that. The system goes into a drawdown and they start putting on risk betting smaller than They, you know, should. Simply because they want to get our, we don't want to get into more pain, we don't want to get into more trouble. But that also, you know, there's a price to pay, which means you're not getting out of the hole. Right, and if you statistically...

It screws up all the statistics of how your trading system should work. Anyway, yes, I agree with... what you're saying there. Your bet size should be proportional to your equity depending on how much heat you want to take in that particular system. And somehow there should be an automatic adjustment within the system.

to change the bet size with respect to equity fluctuations and how you time that and whether it's based on open or closed equity. Open equity. It never works, really. People can try it. But closed equity or equity after everything would be stopped out, something like that's much more stable. And there should be some type of adjustment.

rule built in that's my opinion yes because the open trade equity is also far more volatile it includes all these you know big open profits that you have and when you then use that capital as a base to size your trades, you have a propensity to over-risk, whereas the closed trade equity is more of a step function that's supposed to go from the bottom left to the top right and therefore much more stable over time. I agree. I totally agree with that.

How does one get to be an apprentice of that, say, code? Was this because? Yeah. Well, OK, so I can tell you how I did. I don't know if he's doing it anymore. In fact, you know, I doubt he is. I mean, he did it for a while. And, you know, it's like. he tried it for a while after me there were a few other guys um i don't know how long he kept it up but um all right so this is how it worked you know i've read the market wizards and

I got the impression that this guy is a systematic trader, algorithmic trader like me, you know? And I thought, I want to learn from the best. Well, I didn't realize, of course, he's not that. But nonetheless, I wanted to learn from him. And in the book, it doesn't say like exactly where he lived, but you got the idea that it was near Lake Tahoe, Nevada from the book.

So one day I was in the Tahoe area, and this was in the days before cell phones, of course, and this was in the late 89, 90, somewhere around in there. And so I just... stopped at a little 7-Eleven store and there was a pay phone and there was a phone book. And so I looked up, I said, I wonder if Ed Dakota is in the phone book. I looked up and there it is, Ed Dakota in public. So I called him up on the phone.

He answers the phone. He doesn't have a secretariat, I think. And I said, hey, Ed, my name is Dave Drews, and I'm a quantity trader, and would it be possible to... learn from you or study with you or, you know, have you look at my trades or something. And he pauses for, I said, send me your trades, send me your trades. I'll look at them and we'll talk later. And I said, okay, okay, where do I send them? And so he gives me some address.

So I go home and for the previous year, I got all the charts from the previous year and I marked on the charts, you know, like our exit or entry point, the size, the stop point, you know, where we got out, all this kind of stuff. So I. I express mail or FedExed, you know, all my charts to Ed for the last year.

You know, I put in there, okay, when you get these, give me a call like you said you would, and I'm waiting to hear from you. Well, so, you know, about a week and a half or two weeks go by, something like this. I didn't hear a word from Ed. And I thought I had to get it because I know the FedEx people delivered it. So I called him up again on the phone. And he said, hello, Ed, this is Dave Drews. I talked to you a week and a half ago or whatever. You told me to send you my trades. I did.

I wonder if you had a chance to look at him. He goes, who? You know, it's like, oh, who are you? And I said, well, I'm Dave. Where are you calling from? I'm calling from Hawaii. You have anything to do with my... Ex-wife's attorney. She's in Hawaii. No, Ed, I'm just a traitor. You know, he's yelling at me and he's like, I'm tired of talking to attorneys. No, I'm just a traitor.

I sent you charts. He said, I don't remember anything. And I said, and I got, and then I got like sort of upset with him because I worked really hard on these charts and he told me to do it. I said, okay, look on your desk. I said, look on your desk. Do you have a FedEx package there? He said, oh, yeah, I got one here. I said, Ed, open it. He opens it, and he says, oh, all right, look at these trays.

You trade a little bit like I do. He says, why don't you come out here and be my apprentice? That's how it was. That's how it went. Funny. I thought you were working together at Commodities Corp earlier, so you didn't overlap there. We didn't overlap at all. Not a bit. Not a bit. Nope, that's how it worked.

And I said to him, okay, don't forget that you told me to come out there to be your apprentice because... I got to get a plane ticket. I got to change my health schedule. I got to fly out there and do not forget you told me to do this. Yeah. Cause I could just see this guy like totally forgetting the whole thing. Right. And.

So, and I thought I re-raced things, and I did call him back and said, you know, we're still on on this. You know, I'm planning to come. Yeah, yeah, I'll come get you to the airport. You know, and so, anyway, that's how it started. Funny. I didn't know you were already in Hawaii back then. I thought you were on the East Coast at some point. No, no, no. I was in Hawaii. Hawaii and Alaska is where I was. Anyway, so when I went out to live with Ed...

To begin with, this was, I mean, living with this guy was, it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life. He was, he had a, he had two places in Tahoe, one gorgeous, huge house. And then one condominium, both on the lake. And so he was staying currently at the condominium. And he had a big room, a big, like, beautiful living area.

It looked out over the lake with his main desk with his computer on it. And then he had this little room in back, you know, and the little room in back had like no heat and it had a little bathroom, but, you know, it wasn't. It wasn't heated and the toilet seat was freezing but cold. And anyway, so I got that little room in back. And my job was to clean data for him. So this was in the day when... when data would get end-of-the-day downloads, and there was a lot of bad data. And so I would...

Each day I would look through all the data and try to, you know, that data looks bad. Then I try to find what the good data is somehow and tell them. And then totally forgot about me. 100%. Didn't even know I was there. Okay. And I, I. I would have to come out from the back room, you know, to see him at his desk. And I would come out and he'd go like, who's this guy coming out of the back room?

I said, hey, Ed, do you remember me? I'm apprenticing back here, cleaning data. Oh, yeah. How you doing? I said, Ed. Is there any food around here? I hadn't eaten for a day or so, you know. I was expecting he's going to come back and say something. Is there any food around here? He goes, probably something in the fridge. And then he goes right back to this. Yeah.

It's like, I didn't even know I was there. And this went on for a while, you know? And then it just, the whole thing is like, you couldn't make it up. You could not make these stories up. But anyway, he finally realized that I was actually there and I did have some value at cleaning data. And anyway, we got to be good friends after a while, but it was quite the experience. So anyway. Amazing.

Thanks for that, Dave. Yep, yep, yep. Fun stories. Let me tell you one final Ed story. So Ed has this idea that we limit ourselves. in our success in the markets because we don't believe that we are deserving of great success. or we feel that we're not worthy or that we're not adequate or not good enough. We hold ourselves back. That's one of his...

psychological ideas. So you're always trying to clear our psychology and help us feel that we do have the ability to succeed. And if we have that mindset, we will attract the success. And if without that mindset, it works very much against us. So I got this. I understood this. Well, so we're now in Maui, where he also had a house.

And so I'm in the back room again, still doing my stuff, getting ignored almost all the time. But nonetheless, you know, come out, look at the charts in the afternoon, go with him to the grocery stores. you know, do errands for him because he didn't like to drive. So I would drive and he would tell me where he wants to go and he would sit there and, and doze off. Well, he knew that I liked.

cookies to snack on cookies you know like because because we would sometimes go a grocery store and he'd say oh what do you want to buy you know get you know get some food and so i would you know i'd always get some cookies to snack on well One day, after I'm sitting in back forever, and I come out, and he'd just been ignoring me forever. But still, we would go for walks on the beach. We'd talk about training at this point, and we were getting to be friends a little bit.

And he was trying to instill in me that I need, he said, you know, Dave, one reason you're probably not as successful as you could be is because you're limiting yourself. And I said, yeah, well, okay, if you say so. So. One day he said, okay, let's go down to Foodland. And Foodland is a grocery store. So in the evening. And so we take a drive down to Foodland. And I'm getting like...

I'm perturbed that I'm with this guy now for four months, and he just barely even recognizes me. So we're going to Foodland. He could tell that I was feeling a little miffed and a little discouraged. Says, Dave, why don't you buy yourself some cookies when we're in Foodland? And I said, I'd love to buy some cookies. You know, how many cookies can I buy? And he said, as many as you want. Buy as many cookies as you want. I said.

Really, Ed, as many cookies as I want? Yeah, as many cookies as you want. So it's like trying to be my buddy. So we go into Foodland. As soon as I get in the door, I go up to the manager's desk and I say, I want to buy every single cookie in the entire cookie row in the whole store. And this man's paying for it. He turned green.

And the guy, the manager says to me, are you serious? I said, yeah, he said he's going to buy me as many cookies as I wanted. And I want to buy every cookie in this store. And Ed. Ed lives by his word. He's a commodity trader. If he says, buy a million beans at such and such a price, he's going to stick to it because that's what he said. And I knew that. And so we bought.

every single cookie in the entire store. And the guys brought these big pallets out, you know, and they put them all in the back. And when we left, there was not a single... cookie it was an entire row of a grocery store you know all the cookies it's the grocery store because he he gave me his word

I thought he's trying to teach me to have no limitations. You know, he says, I can buy as many cookies as you want. You sure? I double check it. You're paying for just every cookie, you know, and I don't know what it costs him. Like. $10,000 or something, which might not have been, you know, not a whole lot for him. But still, he never expected that. But he was a man of his word. He kept his word. And then we...

Well, you know, he said, what am I going to do with all these cookies? I said, well, dad, why don't you donate them to, you know, the homeless shelter or something? I said, they're shelf stable. Someone will prop. And so he does. And then they interview him for the Maui newspaper, like this benevolent guy donates. He got the benefit out of it. Yeah, he got a big benefit out of it. But ever since then, he never ignored me and I gained his respect.

How did you put all these cookies in his car? What type of truck? We didn't. We kept them in back of the store. And the next day, the vans came from the homeless shelter or the church or whatever and picked them up. and took him away got it funny story but that's uh that just you know two things you know don't limit yourself and always keep your word you know are in that story but i don't

want to tell that story on the podcast. That's just for you. Perfect. Well, great, Dave. That's going to be fun on Friday, 48 hours from now. You'll be a great podcast guest. I can already say that now. Well, I hope that I can say something that will help your audience either trade better or not lose as much money or be a better person psychologically.

Thanks everybody for listening. This is the end of part two. I want to once again thank Dave for coming on to the Open Interest Series. I know this has been a first for him. It's been fantastic speaking with him for the first time. I really enjoyed it. And I'm sure that you can learn something valuable about trading from the conversation that I just had with Dave.

We'll also include some of the most important points and summarize them in our show notes. As ever, if you have any questions, please contact us. We're always happy to respond, and we will. I want to thank you again for listening. See you next time. Thanks for listening to top traders unplugged. If you feel you learned something of value from today's episode, the best way to stay updated is to go on over to iTunes and subscribe to the show.

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