Inside the Mind of a Young Retail Day Trader

t F trades in my head. So the only day trading we ever do is sometimes my wife will be like, hey, do you see ge she the value investor. Do you see gees trading for like six bucks or something? And she might want to buy that, and that's what she might do. But I don't touch anything. I'm just stick divine hold. When I stopped covering ETFs, that's when I might go nuts with day trading. But I get it. I think it's fun. You know. I'm not some good ideas,

but I'm not a day trader either. But day trading is I feel like one of the themes of the year, certainly of the pans, right, and so we had this idea to go actually talk to a couple of day traders and we found something. Yeah, I mean, you hear a lot of pundon's talking about them, um, but we never really hear from them. And it's just great to talk to the actual people sometimes who are doing it

and to find out more about them. And I thought, you know, one of the moments that I thought was besides Dave Portnoy of bar Stool and the rise of robin Hood, you know, we saw that the media mentions of the word robin hood actually passed Vanguard about a month ago, and that says a lot about how big this is getting. And then stocks like Hurts, there's some certain stocks that have definitely moved by this sort of

robin hood trader. Um. But if there's a lot of experts who are frowning on this and they think it's going to end badly, it's bad for the market, um. And then there's another side that says, no, it's good for them to get involved, get experience. Even if they get hurt it will learn from it. So it's become this huge debate. Um. It's called top three story of

the year. So the two guests that we found Brad Trong, who is a nineteen year old student at the University of Texas, and Michael Guzzo, who's twenty four year old and works insurance and annuities company. So we spent some time talking with both of them about what it's like to be a day trader right now, this time on Trilliant The Mind of a day trader during the pandemic. Brad, Welcome to Trillian. How are you doing today? Hi, I'm daring good. And where are you coming? Where are you

coming to us from? I'm coming from Houston, Texas right on. The reason that we really want to talk to you is just to kind of get inside the mind of what it's like to be a day trader right now. So, so tell us a little bit about yourself and how what you're doing right now. UM nineteen full time on a college dident, but part time I work on a startup and I have a small business on the side which generates the cash I used for me to be able to have capital to trade. And I have two accounts.

I have a row I or A and I have a brokerage account which I trade off Fidelity that's pretty awesome for being nineteen. I gotta tell you, what's the small business that you're running. The small business I run I started back in high school, which is the window cleaning business, and basically I employe high school students from the local town that I'm from, which is Cyprus, Texas, and it just cleaned storefronts, like the windows and things like that, and I just get an ride fee since

I manage everything. So how long have you been investing. I've been investing I think about a year. How did you get into it? I got into it through books. It was because one day I was walking through Barnes and Nobles and I saw the investment like the investing section, and I was like, oh, this seems pretty interesting. So I was like, I mean everyone talks about it and this is like the way to wealth and all that.

So I picked up a book and ironically it was was um The Intelligent Investor, and that was my first book. And then from there I just read a lot of personal finance books which help have helped me a lot and my businesses. So how old were you when you were walking through Barnes and Noble and picked up an Intelligent Investor? I think either late sixteen or early seventeen, but I couldn't start trading until eighteen. So is that so you turn eighteen and did you start trading on

your birthday? Yes? I made Well, let's say this is an eighteen know you don't have all the money in the world, not when out where I'm from, at least, so I've made an account, and I think that was a milestone for me because I was like, Okay, this is the start to my unquote career, my portfolio, things like that. So I started eighteen, I just added cash.

I didn't really trade for about a good six once, and then I mean, you can't really trade because you don't have enough like day trading, what was it like dollars today trade without getting flagged or anything like that. But I was just saving up a lot of capital and then just putting into more slow and steady things like some dividend stocks, even though I didn't really make much returns considering the capital I had, or just some

ets and knows about it. How much when you signed up and you had your account, how much did you mentally allocate to like maybe something safer like a dividend stock or buy and hold investment versus money to sort of speculate on or trade with. I think sometimes people think that a lot of the younger investors, like a hundred percent of their money is the trading money. Um,

maybe it is. I don't know. I'm just trying to find out, like how you mentally allocate buy and hold long term versus maybe the more speculative, you know, let me have fun with this this portion of the money. I what I used to do was E T S, slow and steady E T F and mutual funds. I literally just went onto Fidelity. I picked up They're one of their tools was like mutual funds, like you can like check out the morning Star ratings, what's the return.

So me, trying to be greedy sort of on my age, I was like, I want the highest return, lowest costs, and I just put that in and I just picked some ets that we're at the top. Let her on no not ets, excuse me, mutual funds. And that was it. Yeah. But then now I've I've switched away from that, and so what what have you switched into? I've switched into stocks and I have E T S. But I like to use aggressive ets because I'm at the point in my life where I just want to grow my account

as aggressively as possible and tirish reward. But it's it's a it's centered a lout on tech. Yeah, you sent over some tickers, so let's go through some. You have w c l D, which is the Wisdom Tree cloud Computing. Um, what drew you to that? Because also that's not the biggest one of the space, So how did you pick that one out? It's always intriguing to me when somebody whose retail doesn't just go for the obvious big dog

in the category, which would be Sky Sky. Well, I mean to be a big dog, you have to me an underdog first, right, So that's why w c l D. That's that I honestly picked it. Well. Also, w c l D I think has a lot of zoom in it, and I think it might be the best performing this year. Now that's the problem. That's that's a problem I personally

have with such an e T F like that. It's because some of these e t s, like the A r K e t s and the w c l D, they're carried by certain stocks that have grown so much and I know it's during the time of coronavirus and fundamentals from a retail my personal retail perspectives that fundamentals that kind of the window right now and the pe ratios of a lot of these things are absurd, but it doesn't have to capitalize on it in the meantime. I think I might pull out depending on how I

feel after everything settles from Corona. So so I'm curious about UM trading during the pandemic because UM a lot of investors um UM with I think kind of say, like the best way to invest is a buy and hold strategy right where you're looking over this for a long horizon. So even though you're you're nineteen right now, you know like this is money that hopefully you're not going to need for a long time, and like the

horizons very far. But I'm curious, like, is this is this money that you're playing with UM on a day to day basis that you envision holding for a really long time, or is it stuff that you think has a far shorter term horizon for you. Well, initially, when I first got into quote unquote investing, I was doing I was thinking long term, but considering our how how volatile things have been, even though it's been kind of flat recently, and I push more towards the trader side

of things because I just want to capitalize that. That's just simply I just want to make sure I do a lot of swing trading, a lot of day trading, because both my accounts are above that point to where I'm allowed to day trade. I do a lot of day trading, scalping and swinging trading. That's really all I do. In the meantime. I do have ets that I have left, like a r K, like a r k K, r k G a r k W. I've been holding onto

them for weeks and I just left them there. I made what returns already and I put several thousands into them. Just let us sit now. When this is over, I might take a different look onto how I currently manage my portfolio. And I think, okay, let's do a long term. Now walk me through, Brad, what a typical day of day trading looks like for you. Gosha, all right, So I know I don't how we will correct me if

I'm wrong. I think we will. You're allowed to open up like four am Central Standard time something like that. But for since I used Fidelity. I have pre marketing, after hours extended trading available and I I've used it. And I wake up at five am Central Standard time every single day and I scan the market for about thirty minutes. And I know this sounds done because a lot of institutional investors are gonna get mad at me.

They're gonna be like, oh, you're just supposed to like do more due diligence and you know things like that. But I literally just use Reddit and stock tweets, and I might look around Twitter. I don't have a Twitter account. I just look around. I'm just like, Okay, this is what people, this is trending, this is that, And then I look at the graph. So I do look at some technicals. I try to see where the support is.

Sometimes there are support, sometimes there's there's not. And I just see what the news is, the hype, things like that. And I always trying to get in before or like just as it's starting, and get out before it could potentially come down or it could be a pump and dump, because I just don't want to be too great. I'll take if I can make five percent a day, I'll make five percent a day. I'll take that I'm guessing this is because you have you gave us a list.

I'm guessing this is where you use t q q Q and s q q Q. Yeah, right, this is up because that's gonna be what is that two or three times the queues? Yes, So are those your go to tools for playing like the what you think the market is going to do that day or that week. Yes, but not not often because I I've seen it happen more often than not during the last three months. Because what happens is we either in vice persa, we open green and we close red, or we open red and

we close green. So I try to like ride within the first hour and get out. So like this morning, I got into t q q Q because I knew it was gonna be a green day, and I got in and wrote in a couple of percent I think it was like two percent, and then left and that's just that. So you are just actively trading the hot hot stock of the day or hot hot vehicle of

the day, right. I try to, But sometimes there are days where I actually don't make a single trade because I feel it's not worth the risk of putting so much cash into a certain stock For me to make a return. So I try to see what's worth it. If it's if I see that. If if it's something's up fourteen dollars and it's bounded hit fifteen, I'll put five thousand out of automatically put up in order for

it to sell. Okay, So I'm really curious if you rewind the clock a couple of months to the beginning of the pandemic, and the stock market obviously had a really frightening uh stretch there, what was that like for you? Well, I sat on the sidelines too much, and I kind of I mean, if I could go back in time, I'll put everything to sqq Q, make a lot of turns, and then Ryan March twenty third around there, I would flip around, go t q q Q and then put

some other things to like the airlines. Well, I think I think everybody would. I mean, that's like that me, that's Juel. That's negative three x the cues during the crisis, and then you pivot exactly on the two three times the cues, which I think the cues are up since then that would be the immaculate trade. Um, I guess given that the FED came out of you mentioned this date.

I always am curious is how much retail investors um like yourself factor in the FED because a lot of the pundits will say that the robin Hood crowd, Dave Portnoy, these are just products of a FED induced market where everything goes up and they don't know how good they have it. Um, So how do you factor in the FED to your trading? I factor in the FED depending on what stimulus they might provide. So I mean, like we have I think the unemployment ends on July one,

and that that can be a make or break. So we're trying to see because if the simulus gets extended, I'm pretty sure the market is going to go great for much longer and we're gonna have the rallies gonna continue on. But if the FED doesn't step in when unemployment ends across the country, that's when you know, we might see, well, the market might realize what's happening. Because I know that there's been a common saying market is

not the same as the economy. They aren't the same thing, right, And we've seen the market go up basically ever since that Marche date. Well, the economy is sort of sputtered. What do you make of that. Well, I've only lived on this road for so long, so I can't say too much, but I would have liked for the market

to completely collapse. Now my rationale, what I think during my little knowledge is that the reason why the Feds have been propping of the market is to ease the drop so it's not as hard and to help people who are about to retire. So that's that's what I thought. But me being on my my my perspective is that since I'm younger, I want the socks to keep this fossil. I wanted to drop all the way. I don't care how hard, I don't care, and all the sounds messed up.

People will lose their jobs, but in my post opinion, everyone everyone will be fine at the end of the day. So you know, just let it drop all the way down rock bottom, get everyone get it, or ride it back up. That's how I should have been. So speaking of yeah, you know, it makes sense. And your mindset of looking for cheap is interesting to me because when when we study et flows, it seems like when something goes up, it's like a shiny object. Retail jumps in

and tries to write it and sometimes they're late. But what we've noticed is that the retail trader, the millennial, the younger one, seems to look for deals and that you own a bunch of airline stocks. Um, is that what drew you to the airline stocks with just they're so cheap? Or did you think that the expert class was overdoing the COVID fears? Why did you buy those

at the time? And how did that trade go? It was oversold, completely oversowed, just just like at thin getting I I I personally believe COVID is a serious thing, but I think on the investment side of things, people were wearing way too much and everyone was just panic selling and it kept heading what stop limits and everyone just kept going down and down and down, And I think that's that's what caused such a worry. And then

on my side, I saw, Okay, these airlines are cheap. Yes, the travel tourism ministry is completely like destrot in the meantime, but it's gonna bound like it's it's it's gonna it's bound to rebound. So I got into it and I erode it to the first peak, and then I left because I knew that after that there was more news, Well, there was more news coming out saying that, oh, we're having delays for cruises. Now we're having delays for parks, and um, that's not gonna ask many flights and this

and that. I was like, Okay, I made my return to made returns on these airlines. I'm out now, so or even a hundred cent in returns and some of them. Okay, Brad, you mentioned returns. I gotta ask your to date. Where do you stand? Off the top of my head, on my rock I am over, and on my brokerage, thank you. On my brokerage, I think I'm up. I'm up over four call my brokerage. So what advice to other day traders do you have? Well, my advice would be two,

don't fight the fed. Don't don't fight the fed, and just be realistic and don't be especially if you're thinking long term besides like day training, like everything in long term. Don't be like complaining over like a couple of pennies or a dollar, because if you know the socks is gonna go up anyways, who cares you to get hurt in the short term but the long term? Making me just fine, Like you're not gonna be looking back and be like, oh, Boeing's like currently what when seventies something

right now? And you're not like, oh I wish I got out one sixty, but now like Boeing's worth like to fifty or something made no difference, Like you'll be fine. As for day trading, I just think more like just technical kind of makes sense. But just since since considering our all todd time, day train should be focused a little bit more on the market sentiment and the hype around things two do well. So that makes me wonder does it feel like you're gambling? It's not gambling if

you know what you're doing. So I know people that I trade with that do gamble. But me, on the other hand, I'm like, what is it currently? Am I in before the wave comes in or the robin Hood wave? That's and And it's funny because ron that kind of makes or break things because when they come in on the Central Stanards time, they come in at eight am. I think they get in thirty minutes before the market opens. I believe everyone always worries on like stock tweets. They're like, okay,

are they going to make a break this stock? Like this this this hype stock right now because robin hooders can shift the market just a little bit to the point where everyone starts panics on which is unfortunately it's the truth from what I see. So that kind of is in tune with what I think the media portrays robin Hood is the ability to move stocks a little bit even though they are you know, the total assets

on robin aren't that big relative scheme of things. So what do you think of the robin Hood class of investor? Describe them for us? What do you think that? What do you think of them? A lot of them are young, A lot of them, a lot of them are very well. If what's young, if you're nineteen, well, no nine. There's there's people that trade under like their parents account and

and I know them. I know them person They trained on their parents account and they're like what sixteen and they go up to like my like college age students. But I think in my personal opinion, I don't know, I don't want to get I mean, there's great people on every single platform, but I think the common class of people on robin Hood are a little bit more than novice because because one of the first things I did do when I made an account. I made two

broke produce. I made one not triality, I made one on robin Hood. But then I quickly realized, Okay, yes, the ui US looks pretty here and everything, but this looks so tacky. I gotta move something to a little bit more professional with the tools the actual news. So I went straight to Fidelity. And that's why I said to that. I see robin Hood is more of like it's fun, but I see it more it's like a

little bit more novice. Whereas the professional traders with a bigger accounts move, they moved to like a trade um, Charles Schwab and Fidelity. That's what I see mostly. So you've been pretty fortunate so far this year. What would you do if the market took a turn for the worst. If it's a turn for the worst, and it could be during election time, that's what a lot of people

are saying right now. It could be during election time it took turn for the worst, I would have half of my account, like, both of my accounts, I would have half of them like on the side and the other half out either the day trading, depending on how it is, Like if one side wins and the market sentiments like all right, stocks go up, I'm actually throw

my whole account into it. But if stocks go down because one party wins, I'm just gonna put half half my portfolio to the side and then the other half until like st Q and write it down by the day and then to see where stocks go. Things like that, You're you're I mean d smps down what a couple of percents this here? So if you were a hedge fund, you'd be like a big deal. You're being getting phone

calls from Cowper's um and that's fun, right. I guess my question is, like, to Joel's point, let's say you were down ten percent this year, would you have as much interest in doing it still? Like how much of the fund comes from being up versus just the interesting part of analyzing stocks in the news and whatnot. Well, if I was down, let's say I would still invest. I would still trade, because I think that's the part of change and considering our time that that can be

an excuse, like why your account is down? Do I think your accounting You down't know what if your account is down, it's like, well it's it's during COVID. You'll you'll be fine, you'll you'll make it back and it's sorry, but I mean, considering our recent rally, I think everyone should at least be in the green in the meantime, assuming you weren't like trading like some speculative like stock that went down or something. I forgot to ask something. What do you think of E t f s in general?

E t s in general? I think they're great for people who want to like invest passively, but if you have like an aggressive mentality to make risky trades and things like that, I would I like e t f s that do high returns. I don't care how much expense ratio is, but I want them to be as high as possible. And the problem nowadays what I see, well, not really a problem. I to see that a lot of the stocks are still at a quoin unquote discount

right now. So I'd rather capitalize on the stocks than to put money into an e t F because the E t F might not make enough returns fast enough as much as I want to stock. It's interesting. Thank you so much for all the Yeah, thank you for having me, Michael, Welcome to Srilliance. Thank you, thanks you as thanks for having me on very excited. So, Michael, who are you and where are you coming to us from? UM? My name is Michael Guzzo. UM. I'm from Old Bridge,

New Jersey. UH, small town in Jersey. UM. I graduated from Rutgers University with a biodegree, currently working in finance. UM. I worked for UM, an insurance and annuity company, doing basicool clerical stuff. And you know, I'm here obviously to talk about trading and day trading. So that's something I

got into as recently as March. And I'm not very experienced or anything like that, but it's something that really just came about out of nowhere because obviously with the pandemic UM there is really a void less for a lot of people. So stay trading was something that came up, and now I'm really interested in it. So I've been doing it for a little bit now and something i'd love to talk about. So how and how old are you?

I'm four years old, so I graduated in Okay. UM. So that I'm kind of curious about investing in general. Have you had you ever invested before the pandemic or did was that was the pandemic what got you into investing? So? No, Yeah, I never actually invested before the pandemic. It was the pandemic that led me into this. So really I think what happened was it was kind of like a perfect storm situation. So I think there is really a void left by the pandemic for a lot of people like

me my age. So I'm really into playing poker and a little bit of online gambling, and that was something that was really halted as this happened. So that void was left, and then we kind of turned to the internet and we saw that it was really an up and coming thing among younger people, especially um this day trading whole phenomenon with retail investors coming in. So I mean, I really think it was a result of the pandemic primarily. And then you just go online seeing these online communities.

There's a bunch of people it's just like me who are just getting into this try to you know, be really risky with their with their money and investments because we're at a young age where we want to try to get off to like a really good start, and we could afford to make really big risks. So what was the moment that you said, you know what I'm gonna I'm gonna get into the market. So my friend

had actually been talking to me about the market. He told me um he was doing options, and I had no idea what that was at the time, so I looked into it and I did a little research, and obviously it's a very complicated thing, so it took a lot of time to really learn what was going on. And my friend who initially introduced me to it, had started off doing very well, and it was something I obviously wanted to look into and see if there was

an opportunity. And I noted this that at the time, obviously of the market crash, it was an extremely volatile time for the market, and it seemed like there was a huge opportunity for people to make a lot of money or you know, lose a lot of money they don't know what they're doing, which of course happened to

I'm sure a bunch of people. So yeah, it was it was really just my friend who introduced me to it, and as I did more research, it was something I became really interested in this following and of course I had a family grandparents who were always big into investing, and I was always very interested in maybe trying it out and I thought I could start here is a good learning experience, but really just go right into it.

So so the time frame that you're sort of describing, you know, March was a pretty traumatic and dramatic month for a lot of investors. Did you get in as the market was going before the market went down, as it was going down, or or after it reached bottom. So I've got in basically as it reached the bottom, maybe like a day or two before it actually hit the bottom, talking of you know, the E, T S,

the S and P one hit bottom. So there was a very heavy sentiment at that time that we were going to continue to go down in the market because there was just panic all around with this virus. People were really thinking that, you know, this is going to be like a really catastrophic thing for our country and it was going to have a lasting impact, which who knows, it's still may but we didn't expect, you know, at least people among the online communities didn't expect us to

have the comeback we've had so far. So I did get in near the bottom, and with that strong sentiment that we were going down, I started off expecting that we would continue to go down, which platform did do you use to trade and how did you divide the money between maybe more long term versus pure just trading money that you're trying to get a quick buck off of. So when first of all, the platform that I used exclusively is robin Hood and that's a very popular one

among you know, new traders. I'm sure you guys know that. So that was the most accessible and easy one just to start off with. It's a very easy going platform and like the the way it looks and everything is very accessible and easy to use. So that was good. And then to answer your second question, um, I really was just trying to make a quick book and that continues to be the theme. It's not really much about

long term investment as of right now. I'm trying to build up a you know, a capital, a large amount of money to start into long term investing um because you know, with options, it's a really volatile thing where prices can go up and down very much, where if you're investing a long term you want to hold that for a long time, and you kind of need a lot of money to start off with if you want

to make a big amount. I'm really curious how you go about your day are you are you trading throughout the day or basically, what's describe a typical day for you and what are your inputs? Like? What are you looking for? Right? So, I would say the main thing I'm looking for to decide how I'm going to trade.

Because I'm obviously not very experienced with this, I don't know any of the technical analysis of the stuff that goes into you know, price action and determining where the price is going to go, So I rely heavily on online materials, you know, online communities, places like Reddit, Twitter. Although a lot of this stuff is not very professional, professional or reliable in a sense, um, there are some

really great things you can find, especially on Twitter. There's there's some great resources professional traders too, you know, give out great advice. And it's not to say just follow every single thing they say, but you know, for someone like me who who's not very experienced with the market, you've got to look for those resources at and see what you can do with them. As for a day

by day basis, That's basically what I do is. You know, now that I've been doing this for a long time, there are certain stocks I like to follow, and you know, look for buying opportunities where you know, try to buy dips where I think they're gonna go back up and such. Um, But looking online for you know, people I've been following and just kind of following on the sales is up. Tell me about sort of some of the dips that you've been sort of looking for, what kind of what

kind of stuff. So a lot of things I'm focused on is tech stocks at this time and online retail selling things like cloud services, Star and cloud Services have seemed to be doing very well, um, And any time you find a dip in those, I think it's a good buying opportunity. But yes, to remember that this is kind of not a long term thing. It's very short term. So it's all about you know, getting in and getting

out quick to make a profit. And although I haven't been that great as far, I think I'm learning a lot to get to a point where the future that I'll be able to do list more successfully. So you know, specific stocks all. So online gambling ones were good for a point, but they've been going down a little bit now. Just about doing the research online and looking for the right opportunities and you know, knowing when to exit well

that's a good question. So let's say you go into something, how do you know when to exit if it doesn't go up in a day or two? Are you out right? So, I mean it's a lot of risk management. It is very difficult doing this from a very you know, inexperienced perspective that I have, because someone like me, I get very scared when you see the price to go down and you know you're down the money. So it's like when you when I first started doing this, it was like, oh,

I'm down a little bit. I need to exit right away, and then you know, the next day or the two days from then, it goes up and you're like you kind of regret it. And then on the flip side, it's like, oh, you hold it for you have profits and you want to hold it for longer and try to build it more, and then it goes down and you lose it, and like, you know, just being so an experience than impatient with it, it's kind of difficult to gauge when the right entry and exit points are.

So I've kind of I've kind of started to take a more conservative approach and just try to take profits wherever I could, and you know, set up stop losses at certain points when I think it's gone too far. So I'm curious because what you're sort of describing there is, um the day trading mindset versus sort of a buy

and hold long term investor. And I'm curious have you thought about sort of do you think you're going to continue to day trade or are you see yourself transitioning into becoming more of a buy and hold long term investor. Right So that's a really good question. Um. I do envision over time that I'll gradually change my strategy to more a long term position, But the goal right now is to be as risky as possible, I think, because like I said, I want to build that capital before

I transition to more long term positions. The way to do that quickly is, you know, trading these options and day trading and playing like very short positions. So that's the goal I would say, ultimately is to get to a spot where I feel comfortable I have enough capital to start investing long term and then maybe set aside

a little bit for the day trading. But you know, I think right now we're in a time where the market is so wilid hoiwer that there's there is a lot of opportunity where you can make you know, a large amount of money in a short period of time, and that's really the goal for now. And those opportunities have come to me, just just hasn't been the right capitalization on my part. So how much are you willing

to risk? Um, I mean on a on a specific trade or just overall both, I mean overall, I would I have invested around pen grant, so that's like the starting point, and then on specific trades I try to you know, keep a percentage of that amount as the limit. So you know, that's obviously a strategy that people use, and I know kind of grand Pobaby isn't a lot to really start with, but you can you can make

a significant amount of money with that. So you know, on a specific trade, I try not to go over like a five amount, I guess, but if I really feel confidently about something or or I'm seeing some feedback, you know, I'll go, I'll go, I'll go a little higher than that. Okay, let's some you know, one of the things you mentioned earlier, just want to go through how you like what you're using. You said you use options on spy and i w M, which is the large and small cap ets. What kind of options are

are you using? And like how do you because options side options like this is a different end of the swing pool then then most people. Yeah, yeah, it's a little more complicated, right, It is very complicated, and and that's kind of like I kind of just jumped right into the fire. You know, I really didn't know much about investing, so we went straight into options and it's really h it's really a you're playing with fire when

you're doing that, and it's an explosive game. So, um, the type what you mentioned this spy and i WM options, that's really what I started off with because those are the major indexes, and I really didn't know much about other stocks. So, you know, at the time when I went in, when we hit the bottom, I was doing mainly put on spot, which you know, I'm sure you know, is you're betting on it to go down over a

certain period of time. So, like I said, when I first got in, there was a really strong sentiment that we were kind of going to continue to crash down.

And I think we were around you know, like two fifty two forty range, and I was kind of just piggybacking on these online communities, taking out positions, monthly positions on spy puts, like in the two hundreds the two hundred and five range to start off, which you know is very far out of the money, but people were really expecting from kind of like apocalyptic thing to come from the market. And you know, like when I first started, it was I had no idea how to manage or

when I went to exit a certain position. I kind of just held on my first trade until it expired, which essentially became worthless at the end because I didn't know what I was doing. So as the market went up, you know, I should have probably cut the losses. It sounds like you've transitioned to other things as well, from options on major indexes, like what have been the last Like what are you using these days to get that? I guess juice right, So, um now I don't focus

as much on those major indexes really. Over the time I started with the indexes to kind of learn how it works as far as the pricing, how the pricing changes with the movement of the stock price, the pricing of the option. Um Now I moved on to know your general mostly like popular stocks, Facebook, Apple, Twitter, things

that you know are common among people. Day trading has been like such a phenomenon during the pandemic as as you mentioned, and you know, you're an example of someone who sort of got drawn into the markets from this. What have you learned about investing through this? UM? Well, I definitely learned about options a lot. And that's the main thing that I say. I really took a huge

leap in learning. I mean by no means am I an expert on this stuff or you know, knowledgeable about how technical analysis works, but just as far as how you know, puts and calls operate, as far as their prices in relation to you know, expliration dates and the prices of the stocks. So I think that's been a very good learning experience for me for the future if I want to continue to do this and you know,

develop a more conservative approach. And you know, through these online communities I was mentioning, like Twitter and Reddit, um there are some really great, you know, resources for learning on there as far as you know, people providing input for trading and just overall information. And there's a bunch of people taking advantage of these retail investors splotting in by providing conscription services on you know, learning more information

about trading and stuff like that. So yeah, so what what advice for others um interested in doubling in options?

Do you have? Um? My advice would be not to go in you know, so gung ho right away, I would say definitely if you're going to start off, start off with a very small amount and you know, try to learn how the price action works as far as like how the relation of the option prices change, how the option prices change in relation to the stock, and how it gets close to the aspiration date, and you know, just learn overall about how it works before before you

invest too much money. Right, do you feel like you're a gambler? Does this feel like gambling? Yeah? Definitely, So it definitely feels like gambling as opposed to investing, And I think that's an important thing to recognize. So I'm I'm a very big poker player. Um. You know, obviously

with the pandemic all the casinos were shut down. So back to the point I mentioned earlier, kind of less devoid and a lot of people like me, you know, I like to play poker and gamble on online online sports whatever e gaming and you know, gamble on sports com on, and this is really kind of similar to that in the sense that it is a gambling as

opposed to investing. Whereas, if you're investing long term more or less, if you're investing in you know, a solid company, you have an idea over a long period of time, you're pretty much guarante feed in the sense to get some returns, whereas this really is a gamble where you can you can get massive returns, but you can lose everything. And well, I guess real quick, how much are you up here to date? Would you say, I'm definitely not

up here to date? But you know, um, it's it's been a good learning experience as far as just the whole the whole use of robin hood and learning how the options work. Um. So, And so let me pivot from that, which is because a lot of people are worried about people having a great experience. They're up big and then are they going to be shattered when they lose? So if you're not up here to date, that's um kind of kills that whole critique from the pundit crowd

on the retail investor. I guess my think my other question would be something they say is well, as soon as sports come back, a lot of these traders are

gonna go back to that. Do you think this is going to be something you do in the future even when sports come back and other forms of like I guess gambling for lack of a better word, reappear, right, Um, I think for me and for a lot of people, it definitely depends on how well we do with this when that stuff comes back, because obviously that voice that has been left um by no sports has been fulfilled

by you know, playing with the market. So if I'm in a position where I have lost a lot of money when sports come back, maybe I'll take it easy and not continue to do this. But I think that it's something over the long term that I really want to continue to learn about and and probably continue to do regardless of this stuff coming back. And I think that will be a common thing among many people my age.

Like I said, they kind of just we're through into the fire here, and it's it's a thing where people who weren't previously exposed to it, who have now seen it really see it as a huge opportunity where they can make a lot of money if they if they want to put in the work and learn about it. So I do think that even as time goes by, we will continue to see um an increase in people investing in the market and and doing options. What do

you think of E T s? UM, I think the the E T s they're more of a kind of safer a safer play relative to stocks. Maybe I'm not really sure though. UM. Like I said, I started off in the beginning with the E T s. I think obviously they are a general indication of how the market is going. UM the ones that I really played around

with the most of the Spy and the Russell. I think there are opportunities there in the E T s because if there's you know, good news about COVID or bad news about it, you can generally expect a move, especially now in these times, up or down. So I think there's there's a lot um to be had as far as opportunities in the ets, because I think they're it's more easily predictable than a particular stock, because you know, there's news about particular stocks that can come out that

change the price in a kind of drastic manner. Whereas the EPs kind of moved with what's going on in the news, just general sense, all right, Michael, thank you so much for joining us on Trillions. Thanks guys, thank you for having me. Thanks for listening to Trillions until next time. You can find us on the Bloomberg Terminal, Bloomberg dot com, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you'd like to listen. We'd love to hear from you. We're

on Twitter. I'm at Joel Webber Show. He's at Eric Caltunas. This episode of Trillions was produced by Magnus Hendrickson. Francesca Levy is the head of Bloomberg Podcast, but then to death.