though you've made multiple eight figures in your trading career so far you've broken one golden trading rule you don't use stops that no stop it's been everything it's what's really set me to get to eight figures cuz I was stuck at seven figures for a little while but to get to the eight figure Mark and making millions of dollars in a month or two months that's what you need to do this is what set me into a different tier of Trader I think if you want to learn options and you want to actually grow your account effectively efficiently you have to that's I think what separates like a good Trader from a great Trader would you say you're someone who's always had a high tolerance for risk yeah I I have a highrisk appetite not everyone can get to six figures seven figures eight figures even nine figures going from I would say four figures to the six figure Mark is the hardest part you don't need to be a genius to be profitable or to figure out like how to find the right trades I I think it just comes down to just 2021 remember gme I bought 50,000 shares of gme at like 40 something bucks I was in uh Maui with my wife within like 2 hours 3 hours the stock had a short squeeze that was my biggest trade I I ripped 2.7 million in 24 hours on that stock on average in a month I'm probably taking about 75 to 80 trades that would all be A+ I I like to think so yeah probably logged over 6,500 trades and my win percent is like 74% or something 73 74% there's one type of setup where you're winning like 80% of the time and for me it's [Music] the number one podcast in the trading space the fastest growing and that's thanks to every single one of [Music] you welcome everyone back to the words of wisdom podcast we are back once again and still the number one trading podcast in the world and the fastest growing thans to all of you and our incredible guests we're still on our huge US tour we're on state number four or five I think five now and we are in the one and only Las Vegas now we've come here to speak to an incredible Trader and just before we get into that the tour has only been possible thanks to our sponsor trade Zella the number one trading tool for all Traders out there so make sure you check that out so thanks to them we've been able to make this possible but today I'm very very excited we've been waiting for months to be able to do this podcast in person it's a podcast exclusive their first very first podcast we always love that we're always honored to be able to host incredible Traders and talking which this Trader has been trading for over 14 years there done multiple eight figures and that is all verified as well it's the one and only also known as the elite options Trader Brando thanks for having me app my pleasure it's my pleasure and I want to kick things straight off I know we've been waiting for months to do this um but I'm going to go straight into deep end because what a lot of people at home might not know is though you've made multiple eight figures in your trading career so far you've broken one golden trading rule as they may hear of you don't use stops yeah and why is that so when when trading options especially weeklys or monthlies there's going to be high volatility so in a given week your option position can move 50 60 70% both ways so I size for zero I I every position that I have I'm ready for it to go completely in the red and over time for me that's produced the best gains because you're mentally prepared for every scenario so even when I started with $6,000 I I knew that me trying to set a 10% stop loss 20% would never work because you have to either be right right when you click buy or you're going to get stopped out within the next day or two days especially as it approaches expiration so me sizing for zero was the best way for me to see the full potential of a trade and when I started scaling up to $100,000 $200,000 trades this worked in my benefit to the most extent because Because by the time you get there your confidence in your ability is so high that the probability of you being right is much higher so that's what's going to set you apart from the average Trader to the good Trader to the great Traders is being able to take your max risk and be okay with it so when you say that though you're not are you risking essentially the whole account or is it a portion like your trade allocation or for the ideal allocation yeah so it's just um let's just say it's like a million account so max risk you should be taking for just an average Trader is like maybe 3% 4% maybe so it's it's just per trade so if it's like an A+ setup or a prime setup where the Stock's about to break out then you'll put in 40 Grand right and you have to be okay with the outcome of that meaning if you're not okay with it going to zero and you're okay with the losing 10 grand then just buy 10 grand right and over time you'll hit those 500% th% gainers and the money you make from that is much more than if you held the $40,000 position you're going to sell before you hit 80 grand every time and um how important has that been though for you to be able to achieve the results you have do you think I think that if you want to get to a certain level you have to understand how to risk manage your risk first and setting my stops at at no stop has it's been everything it's what's really set me to get to eight figures cuz I was stuck at seven figures for a little while but to get to the eight figureure Mark and making millions of dollars sometimes in a in a month or two months that's what you need to do because the outcome you can't control the outcome but you can control how much you want to lose and if you're okay with winning and losing then it the results will come was it something that you struggled to implement to begin with was it was that having a stop one of those rules that you had heard of as well coming up open yeah yeah like uh because that's what you're taught you're taught to okay make sure you set a stop for every trade you know stocks or options or whatever you're trading and it works for some people that there's nothing wrong with setting a stop but if you're trading options and there's of course higher volatility compared compared to trading you know stocks or maybe even futures um you have to size for zero I I think that you know I've been trading for 14 years and I've tried everything I've tried all types of strategies I I've tried everything to try to be profitable and this is what set me into a different tier of Trader so I think if you want to learn options and you want to be successful and you want to actually grow your account effectively efficiently you have to size for zero yeah and would you say that that advice though is it less so for the beginners coming in more so maybe maybe edging towards intermediate more experienced trade it yeah so I would say if you're just starting out you can't trade every day right if you have a $1,000 $5,000 $10,000 not every day is a day for you to trade so what I did was I started with 6,000 and there was times where I'm waiting days to weeks at a time to take one trade really right so there's obviously momentum right there's people that only trade momentum and that's mainly what I do and when I see momentum I will go pretty aggressive during that that pocket of time when the Market's ready to rep higher so you can apply it when you're first starting out if if you're competent and you understand that even if you grow the account from $5,000 to 20,000 you're still broke like you can't really your situation doesn't change so if you focus on learning the right fundamentals right sizing for zero you know understanding when to actually trade when this momentum those fundamentals will carry on to when you have a much larger account versus trying you know the stop loss in the beginning and then having to relearn it later on there's you're already in your habits right and it takes more time to convert from using the stop loss to getting that mentality of allowing everything to go to zero would you say you're someone who's always had a high tolerance for risk yeah I I have a high risk appetite um personally like when I didn't have money I didn't necessarily care about money I don't really have an attachment to it like in terms of like my Identity or emotionally so yeah money and I I just see it as a way to make more money and to use for different things like take care of your family you know take care of you know your friends and whoever needs your help but yeah I I have a very big risk appetite do you think that is almost necessary to be able to go with that sort of rule set as well I would say uh to a certain extent right and every person is different in the sense that success in trading means different things to different people and not everyone can get to six figures seven figures eight figures even nine figures and there's nothing wrong with that right because I have such a high risk appetite I I was able to get to where I'm at but if you're not that type of person that you don't have that personality trait there's nothing wrong with making six figures or five figures a year but you have to understand that about yourself because there's people that want to be my position they say I want to be like Brando I want to make a lot of money but can you handle losing 100,000 a day 200,000 a day right like my friend uh visiting asked me uh on Friday he said oh how much did you lose today I said I lost 120,000 he's like wow like if you didn't say that I would could never tell you lost any money so you have to be okay with losing if you want to get to the top would you say that you were always that way even when you were say first starting out and taking some losses then or would they impact you a little bit more at that stage yeah there was definitely a little bit more pressure when I first started because uh you don't have a lot of capital to work with and you have to kind of handpick really carefully what you want to trade and yeah taking a loss in the beginning was going from I would say four figures to the six figure Mark is the hardest part really yeah why is that because because you don't have your margin forever is so small and typically when you only have that amount you're total net worth is probably very low and it's probably the last amount of dollars that you actually have so when you get to that uh six figure mark from four figures you're bu you probably have built some type of system that actually works so now it's scalable meaning going from 100 Grand to a million is a lot easier so that's the way I did it this way I I try to teach people is once you can get to that six figure Mark that's when you can build momentum in the way that you trade and build like a system that can and that is you can scale to seven maybe maybe eight figures if if you're if you have the competence was there anything in particular that you had to to go through besides just the numbers we mentioned for example like the scaling and having that system um that helped you with the risk appetite and handling those the losses and the wins that were coming along as you were growing you know what like was there ever a barrier that you had hit where it was a bit of a struggle to overcome yeah I I would say seeing seeing myself go like from the like 50 Grand to 100 Grand it's a lot of one step forward two steps back so it it's hard to kind of deal with that the frustration of not seeing any progress like at face value meaning you're not making any money and it seems like you're just you know starting at at zero every single week but you're actually learning a lot more about yourself learning more about your trading style and if you have the competence to fail and pivot and adjust I think that um breaking through those obstacles will be a lot easier so that's I think what separates like a good Trader from a great Trader is there's nothing wrong with failing but as long as you can see what you actually did wrong and you pivot right the ability to Pivot I think is what is great in business it's great in trading so they're you know they're very synonymous but the benefit of trading is you final very quickly if you're wrong versus when you're doing business whether to retail you're you know you're in clo fashion you know you open a restaurant you know if you're in fashion you have you're buying inventory 8 months out right and then you have to sell it you have to Market it you don't know if it fails until a year later but if you're trading options I mean you can find out within a couple hours yeah right so that's what I like about options is you learn quickly and you you you should adjust based on like your failures quick so as part of that that learning curve though and being able to learn from it I'm guessing there's a review process of your reviewing your data is that a big element of of that progress yeah so the first thing that I always try to tell people is there's a time of day where you perform best right it's either it could be the first two hours of Market open or it could be maybe the last hour and that's where you first want to start there's this pocket where most people like okay this is where I'm comfortable trading this is the most volatility in the first hour and that's where I make my money so I would say try to stay within that window and yeah so that that's that's the number one thing so in terms of uh reviewing data though what would it is there anything specifically you would look at yeah so uh so another thing too is there's certain trade setups that you perform best in right so if you look at like a Year's worth of Trades uh there's one type of setup where you're winning like 80% of a Time profitable trading really boils down to two things opportunity and volatility and that is why the podcast is partnered with Market Journal because between the year 2016 and 2020 the amount of opportunity that was available as well as volatility to take advantage of was at the highest has ever been and all of that really pointed towards one man president Donald Trump during his period in office all it took was one tweet and that would present so much volatility and the right Traders would take advantage of that and would create their record pnls and that is why those same Traders are so excited for this new period between 2025 to 2029 when we have President Donald Trump back in office now Market Journal is going to give you the weekly insights you need across crypto Forex Futures and the stock market so regardless of what happens whether it's a tweet a particular stock running up hundreds of percent whatever volatility and opportunity that market Journal can identify it is going to share with you every single week so you can purely focus on taking advantage of those opportunities and taking advantage of that volatility to create your record p&l now Market Journal is absolutely free all you do is click the link in the description below put in your email and you will receive key updates on the markets every single week so you are always up to date with what's going on and ready to execute when the time is right links in the description below thank you for enjoying this episode if you want to trade like a professional Futures Trader well Alpha Futures is here to make that happen now you can trade up to $450,000 with Alpha Futures and they have every platform that Futures Traders love trade ofate ninja Trader and trading view directly absolutely incredible the Futures traders who watch the podcast and there are thousands of them say that they love Alpha Futures here's just some payouts that you can see on screen that have consistently gone out with them what I personally love about Alpha Futures is they have the highest draw down to Target ratio in the entire Futures industry meaning you get the most draw down to trade with to hit that Target which is absolutely phenomenal now I don't know if I should be saying this but Alpha Futures has actually brought Alpha Prim which is the first of its kind in the entire industry where Traders can get a salary and trade with real live Capital get access to so many tools and Risk Managers all by being a consistent Trader at Alpha Futures they have advanced plans standard plans now on both of those plans you can get 20% off thanks to the podcast and that is using the code Riz that's RZ the links in the description below now let's get back to the episode and for me it's it's breakout trades so when a stock or an index breaks a certain level uh that's when you're going to see you know buyers and money start to really Pile in so for me I'm waiting for very simple support or resistance levels to to hit and then you basically wait for the price to react there and then you take the trade so would you say that's your you know your key process is looking for those levels yeah that's that's really all my strategy is it's just supporting resistance yeah do people get surprised by that yeah yeah they're they're like okay Brando like so what indicat genus like what how do you like find that trade and then I'll just say like okay SPX you know 6100 wait for that level when it comes that's one like big level it's like alltime high so when I tell that to to people they're like well what else do we like what else should we know like about that I'm just and it's it's very simple just wait like the patience part is the hardest part it's just waiting for a level that I talk about like Tesla when it broke the recent alltime High 414 and I keep telling people like wait for that level and just see how the market reacts and it went from 418 to 488 within a couple weeks so if you're trading options you're going to you can make a lot of money what what reaction would you be looking for say at these levels Yeah so basically like let's say Tesla is approaching 414 and SPX is at let's say it's approaching 6,000 like around psychological level that you either see a selloff or you see more momentum and for this example you know Trump got elected right Market kind of did a big gap up and everything started to really break out so if you see SPX line up with a really important level and then you see like a sector leading stock line up as well those produce the best gains right so that correlation that correlation between the index and the stock like that's like my bread and butter is just lining those two up and making sure they're kind of moving kind of ins sync mhm yeah what would invalidate sort of that level for you yeah so like let's say SPX 6,000 right and it drops 50 points um and then Tesla also gets rejected then that's a clear the inverse of that yeah but but I would say though if let's say Tesla got to 414 the alltime high and then SPX rejected at 6,000 drops 50 points but Tesla only drops like Five Points then there's like some relative strength in the stock so two things can happen either the stock bounces or Tesla will break lower so in in that case um I would say there's a higher probability that SPX will come back up yeah but it's but with trading you know it's it's Case by case of course so you got to really analyze like what other stocks are doing as well like the the mega cap tech stocks that you know they move the market a lot too so you kind of have to try to line those up too but it's uh we talked about uh your strategy now being quite simplistic as we said the levels and the correlation there but was there in your process and in the development as a Trader did you have like did you try out other more complex strategies indicators and all sorts yeah yeah like in the beginning like my charts were like filled with like moving averages and using like Fibonacci and RSI like magd like it was just a whole cluster of uh of all these lines trend lines like you know try to confirmation bias of like you know the trade will work the trade will work but um I found out like over the years I would say probably four years in that the best Traders don't really use any of these things it's really simple strategy of like support and resistance right and within support and resistance there's more to it like there's the you know horizontal lines obviously and then you have uh trend lines like a bullish Trend or bearish Trend drawing these lines and you have you know you have Fibonacci retracements and then um the psychological levels like the round numbers like 50 100 200,000 so when I say support and resistance it's there's like subcategories within it but it's very simple you're really just waiting for important levels and you don't need to be a genius to be profitable or to figure out like how to find the right trades I I think it just comes down to just being patient and and waiting for just the right levels to trade off of so what allowed you to to make that realization to keep it more simplified versus you know having a more complex strategy cuz a lot of people who come into trading I think everyone almost yeah for the most part unless they have like really good education early on which is isn't usually the case um they come in with that same mindset it has to be complicated or you know this shiny object over here and a lot of the time they're jumping between strategies um so what was it for you that allowed you to go and have that realization of of simplifying and and you know making it cleaner on the charts for you yeah so like in the beginning like these things can work if if you know how to use the indicators like the mity the RSI like I don't deny that it can't work it it can and it does but when you're in the wrong trade right you're going to find 10 different reasons for it to work right and trying to find 10 reasons for one trade to work is usually a recipe for failure like and I found that every time I was in a bigger trade I would like read up news and find upgrades and find anything to like see the market in a way where maybe the trade will actually pen out and I make a profit but over time I realize you should only have maybe one or two reasons to be in the trade right number one is the level and number two is like just kind of overall sentiment like is there bullish news being produced in the stock is there an event that that's coming up that could move the stock and if it's above a certain level and there's a catalyst coming then that's really all you need to be in a trade and you know I'm not the smartest guy like I don't like I don't read all the fun fundamentals I don't read Financial reports it's just simply just waiting for certain levels and then having the conviction to just take the trade so one question I get asked a lot in terms of me asking a a guest I have on the podcast is like what did you have an aha moment like a moment that things collect in a different way and you saw a lot of progress from I think when I realized that you know kind of coming back to what I said in the beginning is when I started sizing for is when I started to actually be in the right trades because at that point I'm objectively just taking what I want to take as a trade and not trying to chase my loss on another trade or trying to make back something from two days ago um so that was when I really started to make a lot of money is when I started sizing for zero in terms of the difference is there any key differences that you've seen from yourself or even other you know traders that you know for example that between the six you five figure Traders versus the 78 figure Traders so number one as we said is the risk appetite right like if if you're not ready to lose like six or even seven figures which has happened to me in a day then you can't get to that level as like a younger person maybe when you get older when you you know really develop um the risk appetite over time but to get there you know your 20s and your 30s you have to have a big risk appetite and and that's the that's the number one thing that separates people from to make like real money um so that is really the main thing I I think that cuz there's a lot of smart people that understand the charts they they understand what trades to be in but they just don't have you know that ability to size the ability to size up and not everyone is supposed to be on that level either not everyone can get there it's it's just a matter of like it's kind of like in your blood right having a big risk appetite can you talk to about uh you know a large loss that you faced yeah so uh April 2023 I'm trading SPX and that month I think I was down at 1 Point like 1.5 million really in April yeah so um yeah and listen every great Trader breaks their rules right and I was averaging down to the point where I thought like okay I have a large bank roll this will come back and it it never came back so I took that L and uh moved on from there but what was your the process you know going through your mind at the time though well the thing is like uh you kind of have like an ego like you know when it comes to money and you think like oh like I've made so much I'm successful I've my track record's amazing like I there's no way I can be this wrong right and you know a $200,000 loss turns into $400 and then you know you're down 800 but then it comes back down to 500 and you're like oh okay no we're on the right track now and then you you know you wake up the next day you're down a million and uh yeah it just it just and then you hit max pain at 1.5 and then I was that yeah what did you do after that what was like the the process you took after that the steps you took after that um well you kind of have to just uh res like reassess like what what you did wrong which is very clear the averaging down um and did I take any time off no I didn't I didn't take any days off but I just sized down like dramatically to kind of build up confidence again so I'm probably trading like 12th size just to see if I'm on the right side of the trades now and yeah after that you know spent probably three four weeks kind of just getting back in the right mindset to bounce back so yeah here's interesting because I can imagine I've seen people who take even smaller losses than that you know probably maybe not as consistent traders that would be fair to say you know not as consistent yet so they probably haven't built that experience so they haven't built the the experience and knowledge of like you as you say like you will make mistakes those mistakes will vary depending where you're at in your journey some will be very large some will be smaller Etc but they happen versus I think the early on Traders don't they assume that you know Traders are perfect when you're when you're consistent and profitable that's it you w't make a mistake and if if if you do it's very very minuscule uh to the point where you wouldn't even class it as a mistake um so when they then do it they feel crippled you know have you ever faced that in your your career at all where you you really felt you had to take a break and you and you would question if you know trading was real or question if trading was for you and if it was going to be possible yeah yeah no I I think that um like like you said like with new Traders they think like a Trader like me or someone that's very experienced is that the money just Flows In it's we've got it figured out and we wake up and you click a couple buttons and you make a lot of money every day but I think that even for me I'm still very much on my toes every day because one wrong decision and I could be right back in a situation where you could lose seven figures like very quickly so um I think there's always a lot to learn there's always more to learn about yourself and about the markets how they move because the Market's extremely Dynamic it's it's always changing so um I try to stay in that mindset because complacency you know it's it exists it's real and especially when you get comfortable financially it's easy to kind of fall into a space where um you think you're you know you think you know it all I remember you mentioning in terms of that period between the five to six figure Mark uh being the hardest part especially because uh financially you know it's not going to crazily change your life and uh no doubt you probably can't pay yourself from Trading as much as You' probably like to because you need to scale but you know what does that look like for you in terms of financially wise is trading your only source of income or have you now been able to diversify so that you don't actually need trading income to live essentially yeah yeah so um so I've been trading since I was about 19 and I never had a day job other than that but um about six years ago I started a trading service so I was start an account on X had about 50 followers and when I reached 100 followers I said I think I'm on to something I kind I was like happy about that win so I started a trading service uh scaled it you know making multi-millions a year so I would say if you are looking to be a Trader I think having a second income is not a bad idea because it takes a lot of pressure off of you to make money and to pay the bills so having that extra income really is Extreme AB say extremely helpful because it forces you not to not have to trade every day and trading you're not making the same amount every week or every month right it's when the market presents an opportunity you either take it or you don't and you may not make any money for 3 weeks two months 3 months but I I know a lot of traders in November and December that made you know more money those two months than they did like all of 2023 so like if you are competent you can find those Pockets where there's momentum um yeah you can make you can make a lot of money but uh it's not consistent I say well that is the the hardship of trading I think again it goes back to that misconception about that a lot of Traders have is that once you're profitable you make money every single month and uh you will never make mistakes that same that same premise that same mindset and I think it's a dangerous one because then you're setting yourself up for not failure necessary but you're setting yourself up for a rude awakening at some point right or you're always going to be chasing and that I think does lead to that strategy hopping I think that's the mindset that really leads to the strategy hopping because they might have a good strategy I've seen people with they got a good Edge and it's performed well month on month but it's not winning all the time 100% some days are slow some days aren't and because of that literally because of that it's like ah let me try this next thing because that might be the thing that gives me 100% strike rate and gives me really strong strong confidence and Clarity on the markets and then that misconception just like it never goes away for some Traders I think I think for some Traders they they will stay in that hole versus the ones who can start to very quickly realize and listen to Traders such as yourself and others out there who have actually gone through that journey and have the the verified receipts to say okay well every every single verified receipt Trader is saying the same message maybe I should take that on board but uh in terms of the the process of paying yourself in trading how have you gone about that is that something you do on a maybe less so now but generally speaking for your journey is that something you do on like a monthly basis quarterly basis yeah so I would say a monthly so at the end of the month you kind of like I would say in the beginning I'm just kind of taking out to pay like Bill bills but um I would say weekly is too often because like I said like every week is different so if you have a really good week you make you know a th000 bucks you withdraw the Thousand the second week you lose two grand so now your account's much lower than it should be so I would take it out less frequently just to see if like the strategy that you're doing is actually working right because you have you could have a really good week but that week proba everyone might have made money cuz it's easy week but once a month I would say is a good Benchmark to start at and you know as you grow your account you don't necessarily need to take it out as often would you say that throughout your journey you've you experience and and noticed as we talked about like you know one or two months those sort of periods being very common in terms of the highest p&l like the large portion of p&l coming from a small selection of of tickers or or options and contracts and a small number of uh you know a time period versus every month like a cumulative of every month being the huge p&l yeah like I would say in a given year there's 12 to 14 weeks where the Market's hot right and if you can wait for those weeks to to trade which is hard it's really hard um then that's where you make most of your money most of your money I would say in in a year it's off a handful of Trades let's take a break for a minute there guys cuz I want to tell you about our sponsor trade Zella trade Zella is the number one trading tool for all Traders doesn't matter whether you're a crypto Trader a Futures Trader or Forex Trad Trader whatever Trader you are all you do is connect your trading platform directly with Trad Zella it automates and makes your trading journaling so easy if you want to be a profitable Trader you need trading Edge and that is exactly what trade Zella does it allows you to identify Edge maintain your Edge and optimize your Edge by automating your trade journaling in-depth analytics back testing bar replay and so much more now W gets you 20% off your yearly subscription with trade seller so use W for 20% off your yearly subscription or RIS 10 for 10% off your monthly subscription the link is in the description below do you want to trade up to $400,000 in simulated Capital well thanks to our sponsor Alpha Capital you can do just that Alpha Capital has been leading the way in the prop firm industry they have actually paid out over $80 million $80 million for Traders all across the world just like you if you have Edge they have a plan for you they have one step plans twep plans and three- step plans so no matter what you prefer they have it for you on on top of that what I personally love is that they cater to all types of Traders and as we know through the podcast we have all types of Traders so whether you're a swing Trader whether you're a scalper whether you're a day trader it does not matter they have a plan ready for you on top of that they have all the very best trading platforms so no matter where you are in the world you have a platform designated to you even your most favorite and loved trading platforms now I don't know if I should be telling you this but Alpha capital is about to launch Alpha Prime and that is the 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trade Tesla Nvidia SPX the NASDAQ and I've mastered these stocks to a certain extent to where what I've learned from them I can apply it to another stock if I happen to need to do that in terms of what strategy worked of trading you know support or a breakout level so do you feel like uh that rotation you mentioned is that not something does it sometimes like draw you in when it's outside of what you're focus on or at this point is it just doesn't bother you it it depends right like if if a stock is hot and like like a meme stock or something like I've traded it and and and I've made a lot of money um like 2021 remember gme mhm yeah so I I bought 50,000 shares of GM at like 40 something bucks right I was on I was in uh Maui with my wife we were for Valentine's Day and the whole week was super super slow and the Market opens at like 4:30 in the morning so it's super early mornings it's it's Thursday by that time so that's that's 4 days of like grinding it out and the Market's not moving and so I bought 50,000 shares at like 40 something bucks and uh within like 2 hours 3 hours the stock had a short squeeze so that was my biggest trade I I ripped 2.7 million in 24 hours on that stock really yeah so what goes for your mind when you you go for something like that so so it was interesting so I I I bought the shares and then uh jumped in the shower and then I got out I'm up like $7 $800,000 and I was like and I told my wife like let's go grab lunch so we go you know down where downtown whatever Maui and we order fishing chips and we're sitting at a bench I look back at my phone I'm up like 1.4 1.5 million and emotionally I'm like I need to sell like Europe this is your biggest trade ever and it it was a weird moment where I was like you shouldn't sell based on emotion so I was like let me just hold overnight you this is a ballsy move woke up the next morning uh scaled out out of all of it and yeah RI 2.7 on that what goes through your mind after that how do you control yourself not to get overconfident or greedy or start to you know start sizing up you know quite aggressively yeah well in that situation I didn't um do you remember when they kept hulting the stock on the way down so I I got caught pretty badly on that so I I I was buying shares and I and I just kept buying more as it got halted but it kept going lower and at one point I was down like 1.3 million when when they kept halting it and you can't get out but I kept buying more to where it actually and I got out like didn't I mean made a decent amount but like 100 and something thousand but after being down that much relative to the risk you so like it was a moment of like you have a lapse of judgment where you was that after the the the big win that was after it so you feel that like Euphoria and you're like oh my gosh like I'm I'm up huge so you kind of have a laps of judgment where you get greedy and that happened to me but I thank God I got lucky and I kept buying more which is you know breaking another rule but um yeah I I couldn't control myself so go back to your question yeah I kind of just wanted more after that big win so have you found that uh happens you know on other areas as well or is that something that happened and then you you learned from it and kind of avoid try and avoid it in the future yeah yeah no I I definitely learned from that that was a moment where like you could have turned a good situation into a terrible one so it's kind of traumatizing I would say for sure I can only imagine yeah but you know earlier we talked about you know how you can't you sometimes you won't win for a month maybe three months like what can you talk to us about like a losing streak a period of time maybe maybe one of the longer ones yeah that you experienced and then one the thoughts that were going through your mind and two you know how did you come out of that what did you do did you have to make any changes yeah I would say um 2022 when the market like really sold off when a lot of stocks were down like 70 80 90% there was probably like a seven8 week stretch where it was very difficult to make any money like everything just kept going lower every week so for me the way that I trade is let's say week one you take 20 trades and you win 17 out of 20 which is a great week and then week two um the market starts to shift a little not much and you win 14 out of 20 still made money you know no reason to change up the strategy but then week three comes and things start to really get volatile and you're you won 10 out of 20 trades so on that week when I only won half my trades that's when you start scaling down and I'll scale down by at least 50 60% for that fourth week right and then you notice on week four you're taking number one half the amount of Trades and then you're still losing let's say you you win five out of 10 and from that point forward you have to scale down even more and I think that's what helps um keep you in the game being able to recognize when your strategy isn't working in the right environment was there ever any moment in your trading career where you you doubted yourself oh yeah yeah yeah um I would say all the time really all the time yeah even today right um like Friday lost I think it was more than 120 I think I say a video you might have seen in the screenshot yeah did you saw it I like maybe 150 or something I forgot um so I mean you're going to doubt yourself all the time because like I said the market is always changing and you have to have the ability to adapt and me being 14 years in you think PE people think oh he's got it down he figured it out but you also have to think on the sense that like how many good years do I have left of like focusing every single day M you get what I mean so you're always going to die yourself especially like I'm 34 there's kids coming up 20 21 years old that are just crushing it so I feel like I have to work even harder so I don't doubt myself you get what I mean no I he it's an interesting mindset and uh you know it's an interesting topic you brought up there in terms of the mindset of how long will I do this you know focused every single day like what are your thoughts with that do you have like an idea of when you would not maybe more do you think you would step away entirely it's hard yeah it's hard um cuz I I I love the idea of trading um just the competition you know facing against other you know retail Traders and institutional and just trying to be right I think the idea of winning and the feeling of winning is it's unmatched and if you can do it and make a lot of money um in some sense it's it's addicting so um I love what I do I I think that it's a blessing to be able to actually just even trade for a living so do I see myself stopping anytime soon I don't think so yeah it was never something I thought about in terms of uh Traders sort of just stopping very early in terms of lifespan like they could continue for you know 10 20 30 years because I have met traders who have done that like in their 70s and still trading for example which is insane uh but shows as you said I think it is that that competition I think it is that unrivaled feeling of you know participating in the markets win or lose to be fair but especially obviously when you win yeah uh but then I met a Trader recently who you know has done phenomenal you know phenomenal multi eight figures closing in nine figures and uh that's what they're was their choice was to essentially step away and retire you very early from the trading game and focus on other things that they're passionate about their reasoning was one obviously they they Lov the markets and you can tell as well and even this year they got they were meant to like kind of step away but got drawn in by the the volatility and the well say 2024 sorry um but drawn in by the volatility and the opportunity still and performed very well but yeah like they want to step away because they said the lifestyle of trading for them in particular and I'm sure it might be similar to for yourself as well is like when those opportunities are there and you have to be active and you have to be quick your your day-to-day lifestyle is terrible like you'll probably sleep way less the the amount of mental energy and fatigue of of really focusing while still handling all the other things that you have to handle in day-to-day life I think he doesn't enjoy that aspect of it anymore you know and uh he PRI prioritizes or has a stronger emphasis on those things now in terms of his priority list so therefore yeah made more than enough from the markets so therefore was going a step away is that a thought process you think you you would uh have or what do you think to that yeah you know I I think maybe when I have kids I I think that um my mindset could change maybe I want to spend more time with them which I should probably don't say that to me I've left my kids for a month to do these podcasts so um yeah I I would say it's hard because I have only known trading yeah right I've been doing it since late very late teenager so uh I don't know what else I would do right but yeah as of I say as of this moment still love it still it kind of wakes me up in the morning like and I'm ready to go every day so definitely yeah that's great and in terms of early on like you started very early as you said 19 years old like what was it about the Marcus that got you intrigued in the first place yeah so so I was in undergrad and I had a friend his name was Edwin and we were both on track to go to med school really we were kind of like pre-med M and uh we're in class and he's always on his phone and one day I just asked him like what are you doing on your phone he's like I trade options I just made 300 bucks a day and you know I was the kid in in college where I'm buying Domino's Pizza $5.99 for two mediums and I'm trying to stretch that out as long as it can last so like me hearing you know this kid just made 300 bucks um I asked him to teach me you know he kind of showed me the ropes and I start just looking at charts right there was a stock called American Apparel back in the day and I it was I think it was a penny stock but I saw it go from like a dollar to $2 and I'm like wow if I put 100 Grand in if I had it I could make 100 Grand in like a year and then to me I was like why am I in school if I can figure if I can figure this out then I don't need to be here anymore so he graduated went to med school became a doctor um and then I graduated I took the m cat graduated but I did not pursue uh med school really yeah so and when I decided not to go to med school I didn't even have any money I had a few thousand dollars so I'm working I I worked as a painter I worked as a dishwasher and uh saved up money while trading and just kind of slowly built it up and built it up and I I hit some uh there was this stock called Inovio Pharmaceuticals that was one of my big hits it was like a biotech stock it like heati uh vaccines or something and then Bank of America was another one where I I hit a big trade on that and that kind of kind of pushed me to like not towards six figures yet but much bigger than six grand yeah definitely and what was that uh like obviously you know not having sort of capital what was your period of time before you could go full-time fully trading I would say by my third year I made a million dollars really yeah so no one actually this is no one that knows me personally has has that knows that but yeah I made my first mli and I was 20 about 22 23 so that's new to anyone listening but um so I would say by 22 and a half 23 I was like pretty confident to be full-time and back then that was a lot of money you know a million dollars at 23 like before the inflation it was a lot of money so but it it's it's scary when that happened because you think you are on top of the world you think that um you're Invincible right and I was spending the money so fast really oh yeah like going out clothes jewelry watches this that you name it I was in that lifestyle kind of like you know like Instagram kids nowadays yeah yeah I was like doing that but um but yeah so about two and a half years three years where I I was uh like fulltime but what on during that Journey all the way up to until 2021 I was pretty secretive about my life of of trading because my family thought I was going to go to med school they thought like I was going to be this like you know book you know I was very book smart and they thought I was going to be a doctor and uh for a long time I was just the black sheep like no one really like my parents were always like what are you doing at home all day why do you stay at home all day like what are you doing and I'm like oh you know I'm trading I'm learning how to trade I'm you know trying to make money this and that and they couldn't understand it you know they're from Vietnam they were born in Vietnam so they there's a big like culture difference between here in America um they in America so um 2021 is when I kind of reveal to my parents like okay you know I I flew him out to Vegas and I'm like okay here's here's the life I live and you know paid off everything for my Mom they're retired now but uh yeah I I kept it secret for a long time what was their response when they I mean they they couldn't believe it yeah like I I at the time I had a Lamborghini you know different cars like watches like you know multiple homes so uh they they they uh they their jaw dropped essentially because like I was so secretive about it like because no one in the beginning no one want to hear about it of course you know what I'm saying that's good yeah everyone's against you everyone's like what the like you think you're going to make money doing that and uh I I think the feeling of success after everyone says that to you uh it's there's nothing like it it's unmatched why didn't you uh drop out yeah of med school or you didn't go to med school sorry but did the yeah what did you what was undergrad the undergrad yeah so why didn't you drop out when you first heard about trading because I was still learning yeah I I was like halfway through so I only got two years left and like I think it would have been like even more crazy to for my parents to hear that you know that I think they would be like so stressed but the reason I asked you that though is simply because I've come across Traders uh independent Traders and and people into trading and they're in that position they're at University uh they're I think it's the equivalent of college here and uh they're a year in year and a half in sometimes two years in you sometimes only got you know a year left and they say to me uh you know whether it's on DMS or I've met them in person or or other people you speak to other people Etc and they they say to me I'm going to drop out because I want to give more time to trading yet no results or anything but I want to drop out you know it's not for me yeah and uh I've always not I understand the the the passion drive you want to you want to succeed at something but equally it's like if you're already there and you've only got x amount of time left like why not just complete that because you can learn trading you know on the side as well as that especially if there's no results there's no really any reason to drop um so that's why I asked you yeah that's why I asked you with that uh how how what was the mindset of not continuing to med school then because at that point you hadn't made money from Trading just yet right yeah so the learning process it was tough cuz like so I was like dating a girl like at the time too and like she came from from a relatively like good family like you know well off and they were expecting me to go to school um met school and stuff and ended up like breaking things off with her because like they you know they can't see the vision yeah well I guess it was a vision at the time but they couldn't see like the dream like what what I wanted to really do so yeah it was it was tough it's it's it's tough when um when only you see it m right and um what got you through that period Then I think just believing in myself I I I I always Daydream it's like I nowadays they call it like visual visualization and manifestation but I was always a Daydreamer I always kind of saw myself in a life where um a life where I had everything I wanted right and I always was like that ever since I was a kid I always day dream and um am I surprised to have everything I have now yes and no because I I always thought i' be here I I didn't know how but I always thought I'd get what I wanted I I was always kind of naive growing up in terms of uh even to the state to be fair but I always think that everyone kind of has a similar mindset you know and everyone sort of believes in themselves want the best for themselves and the best for others and so on and so forth and as we get older you know we come into more contact with more different people and you know you realize that's not the case unfortunately but um yeah it's quite rare you know to have that sort of mindset of self-belief by the sounds of it because of all the people I've interacted with it's quite a unique trait uh but one that I believe is definitely necessary because as you said it's not about how you do it it's just knowing that that's what you want to create and and and Achieve eventually and then what's a big component of that though so like when you started to go through your learning process how meticulous how strong was your work e how much work were you putting in in those early days to actually then get to a point where three years in you're making a million dollars yeah so so trading hours is about 6 and a half hours a day so that's standard that's what you need to do but after hours you're kind of spending at least for myself about 4 hours 5 hours sometimes a day reading news and studying charts and reviewing your trades and this is still something I do to this day not the same amount of hours but I wanted to be the best when I was younger I I said to myself if people can click these buttons and you know you see these stocks like apple go from 10x over the past 10 years like why can't I be rich like that like if if people are doing it so my work ethic is I think it's unbeatable I think especially as I get older there's a lot of competition and I want to remain sharp and when I was 19 20 years old I'm the same exact person I'm just a little older but everything the way I operate I either try my best or I don't do it how important is it to be able to achieve success in trading to have that that meticulous process and you be putting in that time and effort yeah um you you need it right if if you want to be the best and you want to be on top of the game and you want to have long-term sustainable success you have to put in the work there's no there's no such thing as easy money there's a big there's a term easy money it doesn't exist right people like when they look at me or anyone that's successful they think sometimes they say he got lucky or they got lucky or it was great timing to enter this industry or enter this trade or whatever it is and I think when people say that they're kind of downplaying what it actually takes to become successful so if you want to get to a certain level you have to put in the work there's there's no easy there's no way around that say if there's someone right now who's a year in let's say on average and uh they're not quite seeing as much progress as they want to be what would you recommend to them in terms of like how they should be running their day um and the things that they should be doing to really start to scale that that progress and and their knowledge base yeah well the first thing I would say is like even being a urine you have to be patient with yourself enough to see yourself develop most people will quit after like 6 months so even being a urine that's still something worth like talking about to other people because most people give up well before a year like 3 months in 6 months in it could be a week but they blow up an account and they're done they say day trading is a scam so being a year in you have a Year's worth of data right you have all these trades that you took probably more losing trades than winning so if you can look at your losing trades and see what actually went wrong meaning you should have a list of trading rules right you should have rules that you never break right and it can be a stop loss right it can be certain environments it could be trade size right if if you're breaking these rules like averaging down all the all types of rules if you're breaking most of these rules on let's say 50% of Trades then you have a lot of information in front of you to where you know you need to correct this and the thing with most Traders is they don't like to look at their losing trades because it's painful right no one wants to think they're a loser and no one wants to look thems in the mirror and and have to face you know all these like pages and pages of losing trades it's it's difficult um and that's to me why most people can't get better is because they don't do that they look at the winning trades and say okay I'll stick to these but you have all these bad habits that you need to actually work on First and correct before you can get to that next level and yeah like averaging down is like I would say one of the biggest uh things that people do that really hurts you and you know even for me it's hurt me a lot yeah definely in terms of reviewing trades is there any specific metrics you think that are important for a Trader to be to be identifying it and looking over um I would say kind of like what we talked about before is like like there's certain times a day where you do best in and for me I would say mine for me the first two hours of the day is like my bread and butter that's where un usually I enter I might exit after that 2-hour window but knowing when to enter I think is extremely important you can always work on your exit like in terms of are you going to scale out or exit completely in one in one lot but knowing when to enter and and when you do best is everything because there's people that shouldn't be Trading at lunchtime right for West Coast is 9:00 a.m. Pacific so between like 9:00 a.m. and 11:00 a.m. typically the Market's a little slower and I I know people that try to just trade all day long and that window time is when they typically either Break Even or they lose a little but if you look at that over a year period you calculate how much you've lost you know whatever the number is you could have made like 80 grand 100 Grand more that year or 200 Grand whatever it is so knowing when you should be trading is is everything cuz people can't handle the volatility sometimes routine 6:30 a.m. and 8:30 so don't trade that window wait until it settles down a little and then and then jump in your trade do you still Journal your trades even now yeah yeah yeah I Journal my trades why why is that important even now you you want to see what you're doing right and what you're doing wrong all the time because what worked one week may not work the next week and you want to see um the data behind that too like I have been logging my trades for not since all the way in the beginning probably have 10 years worth on an Excel sheet with like the entries the exits um the reason for the trade the the ticker the stock everything so it's all on my computer and I I'll even review it like sometime when I'm on the weekends I'll just look back and see what type of Trades I was taking just you know just a sometimes they make you laugh what you were looking at what sort of things you you're doing yeah you you kind of like reminisce and like some weeks are terrible like it's just all red sometimes but yeah yeah so it kind of brings back memories definely I can imagine how often are you reviewing generally like more recent stuff like do you do it on a the weekly basis quarterly basis monthly basis um I I'll review every day like after the market closes I'll just kind of look at what I took that day and see like am I following my rules did I go outside of that window and um make sure that I'm not going down like a route of just new bad habits because it's easy to fall off the wagon and just start trading because you're up and just trading to see action and I I try to make sure I'm not falling into that that common Pitfall of just being in a trade just to see action yeah yeah in terms of your rules I know you said obviously time um and I'm sure obviously the the stocks that you're you're selecting but is there any other rules that you must follow each day when you are trading one big one that I I have done lately is not oversizing because as you're account gets bigger you want to see more profit you want to like sometimes you want that Rush of being in a big trade and hitting a big one so I have a rule where I don't go above a certain amount and it's a hard rule to follow because it's tempting to size up so that's a big one that's going to save you especially as your account grows do you grade your setups at all do you have like a high hierarchy of setups like something that's an A+ setup or or or not that's a good question so I only take a A+ setups like I won't enter a trade unless I think it's a good trade um I know people do that grading but I don't see a point of taking like a c setup like why why being a trade in the first place so I try my best to think like to think I only wait for A+ so how how often would you say on average you're trading like how many trades would you say you're taking like a month or yeah yeah so on average in a month I'm probably taking about 75 to 80 trades yeah it's about so they would all be A+ I I I I like to think so yeah so um I've been doing the trading service for about six over six years and I've as of today I've probably logged over 6,500 trades and my win percent is like 74% or something 73 74% so I like to think that I wait for the best trades and people that know me people that been with me they can kind of you know attest to like that too is that a regular amount of Trades it sound sounds like a lot but then is that something that is quite common in in options trading yeah yeah I I it just depends on the trader right like I trade a lot of weekly options so you buy like you buy a Monday spies on Friday so it it just depends on the trader right like if if you for example like when Tesla broke 414 that alltime high it went to 488 shortly after and it gives you the ability to trade multiple strikes in the same week okay so like Tesla breaks 44 you take the 425 call mhm right gets a 425 you sell it you roll to a new strike 435 call so that trade alone could be worth like seven or eight trades okay does that make sense versus like um people thinking like oh he's 80 trades it's 80 different stocks or 80 it could be like five or six of the same stock for one for for one uh five six different trades for one stock yeah no definitely and uh how many stocks would you say you would have in play at one time would you have multiple that you'll be trading with the same week yeah so like in terms of open positions probably like three or four at a time Max yeah and then if the trade works you I'll roll it and then you keep rolling until it doesn't work anymore yeah and then that's that's how it adds up yeah no that makes sense that makes sense um because there is one Trader for example who I'll be doing a podcast with later in in the in the tour and they have like hundreds I don't think they're in options uh maybe I think they're in multiple markets actually but they'll have hundreds of position positions open across the board which is you know something that's quite unique I can't imagine their day to-day then they're just managing positions that's crazy um but I think they probably have like a very long-term uh sort of more view on the markets um so be interested to see that be interested to have a talk about that but that's the one thing I found of trading is like there is no right way like a right definition way like CU if there was then everyone would just do that right how important was it for you to sort of create your Unique Style and focus on what worked for you versus you know maybe something that had worked for someone else and you're trying to copy it yeah so it I would say in the beginning you're going to you're going to try like 10 20 different strategies learn from different people but finding your Edge that matches your risk appetite and your trading personality is is everything because if you don't have a big risk appetite then maybe you shouldn't trade weekly options and you have to understand that about yourself because there's people that I know people that signed up to trade with me that don't have a highrisk appetite and they're trying their best to trade like zero DTE and same week expiration and just doesn't work versus if if you don't have a large risk appetite you should trade monthlies or trade two months out or just buy shares and you have to recognize that about yourself before you um pick one strategy for you because you can't be exactly the way I trade like you can't just emulate my style and expect to to get rich you have to really objectively analyze who you are and what your what your actual potential is is there anything that you could you maybe Point towards or or advise for people to be able to do that do that sort of process to to work out where they're at yeah um I would say you have to ask yourself what's your pain pain threshold in terms of when you lose money like if you have a $25,000 account you lose let's say you lose 10 grand how that make you feel right and if if it's if it's a terrible feeling and it would ruin you and you you know you get sick to your stomach then you know that you have a long road ahead of you versus when I had 25 Grand i' I've lost 10 grand you know it's substantial a part of the my net worth I always thought I'll make it back you know like this is a Learning lesson and I'll make it back I always try to find like a silver lining in every situation you know even when I lost 1.5 at one point and when I was at 1.5 I'm like okay well we'll figure it out if it if it's a realized loss right or April 2023 I was down 1.5 um I always tell myself I'll make it back right but if you can't be in that mentality and you don't have a risk appetite then you you it's it's difficult right it's difficult to just be like the type of Trader have you always been that way I've always been that way always been though yeah and it it's just not like we're trading like anything that happens externally I would try to find like a silver Ling and just try to think positive is there anything you feel like that that comes from somewhere or is it just something you naturally feel like you have um I just think that it's you know when I first started um it was so difficult to kind of live my life like openly where I had to just always kind of think for myself and just kind of like kind of like survival mode in some sense and you kind of have to develop a positive mentality if if you want to you know go down this journey of pursuing like your dream essentially um so I think it's important to do that because you're going to lose a lot in trading and you have to always be positive I think it's really important is there anything that you feel like Traders should know about when they're if they're starting to perform well so right now we've spoken a lot more on the beginning section right but let's say you're in that intermediate section you're hitting you're you're starting to hit towards the seven figures Mark or multiple you know maybe higher six figures um and you know the goal is to hit the eights uh and hopefully maybe even beyond what would you was there anything that what happened in your journey maybe some sort of challenge something that you had to overcome something that really helped you to make that transition yeah that Traders out there should you think they should know I I think that once you get to the close to seven figures you you should realize that at this point it's just a numbers game it's the scalability is you don't need to change really what you're doing you just need to make sure you stay in the same type of Trades because if you're scaling from whatever 10 grand or 100 grand to and you're getting close to a million nothing should change in what you're doing except taking just a little bit larger size trades like for me my when I started scaling up it was very gradual right it wasn't like okay I'm at a million now I'm going to go 3x of my normal size it should be very very gradual to where you almost don't notice your scaling up um so like the past like two three years of my trading like I made more the past year and a half two years than I did the first 12 years of trading really but the the process was so gradual like you don't even notice it's weird it's a weird thing is that like that compounding effect of all your time experience as well as being able to to scale you know through your account in terms of risk though like what do you how do you uh Define your risk is it a percentage base is it just a dollar amount it's um I I would say it it's a dollar amount um for example like I would say my Max size on a trade would probably be like 250 250,000 um but it ranges it just depends on the day of the week and like the setup I guess but like the trade size could range from like 25 only to 250 but really yeah it just depends on the what would Define that D um like for example if if it's a Friday and I'm taking like like we call like a lotto trade cuz it's going to expire soon you're putting in like 25 probably less like 15 to 25,000 and see if the trade works but if it's like a prime setup where Stock's about to break out I mean you have to take a shot right and I'll do 250 is Max risk yeah so would you say in in essence maybe you don't grade them by the traditional sense or what a lot of people say in terms of A+ and C but you do have a form of scaling risk depending on the setup so it's it's almost in a way similar thing yeah yeah yeah I I guess it's a different way of looking at it so because as you mentioned like the when when the Market's hot and in play that's very short amount of period you know in the year and and it happens a few times a year I think the premise of having the scaling um sorry the the different grades for your trades is so that as you mentioned earlier like why would you take a c setup I think the mindset if I'm not mistaken is that you take the C setup and the B setup and the and the a so that when the AAR does finally come along the few times that it does you actually have made money off those setups that allows you then to size up and and really maximize that a star when it comes along does that make sense that that makes sense yeah yeah that that that definitely can work like in different markets like it could be like a b or c like Market condition and you kind of have to recognize that and just take what you can from the market whatever the Market's offering to you and then like you said when there's momentum and it's A+ environment yeah you take all those profits and you you you flip it essentially yeah yeah and in terms like you've been trading for 14 years now and and in that time the markets have changed different rotations um yeah how important is it as you you did mention earlier obviously being able to Pivot is very important but what are the key things you've had to do when the markets have shifted you know going from a bull market to to a bare Market going from uh you really strong consolidation for long periods of time like what things do you have to adapt and change if any um you you when when experiencing those moments when Co happened right SPX was at at the right before Co February it was at 3400 it dipped to 2200 and to me I've never seen no one's ever seen anything quite like that where on the way down they're you know circuit breaker circuit breaker they keep stopping everything so that to me was brand new um but I think recognizing uh when the markets are super boleton there's a lot of fear um that is a moment where you it's too situations where on the way down you have to recognize that that the market is in a situation where you need to take risk off because every day is gapping lower and lower and I think if you can see that in in that moment it'll help avoid help you avoid taking big big uh loss on your account but at the same time uh recognizing when everyone has the same sentiment as well is when uh you should go the opposite way so at the bottom when it hit SP ex hit 2200 I know a lot of people that sold everything they sold they got out their retirement accounts like they completely got out of the market and then when it hit that bottom you know a month later 2200 you know SPX ripped from 2200 to 4,800 right within I think two years right so that was like a market bottom but yes seeing seeing downside and and being having to Pivot and adjust it's it's difficult in the beginning recognizing that the trend is truly changing and at the end of 2021 when the market did Peak SPX hit 4,800 um the first two months that was hard because I didn't believe that the market was going to I I didn't think we were entering a bare Market even though it was it was clear right the FED wasn't cutting rates anymore they were talking about you know um raising rates um so yeah that that was the market top and I think after two months is when I realize okay uh it's time to size down and just appreciate the profits that you made and just wait for the market to kind of settle down and it eventually did at the end I'd say the end of 2022 uh SPX went from 4,800 to 3500 and that marked the bottom and what do you do when you're in those periods so as you said you're taking the risk down uh risk off um is there anything in terms of uh strategy of like the type of Trades you're taking do they start to change or do you just you don't I I'm imagining you don't take you know completely set out the market yeah but do the the types of Trades you're looking at differ depending on the market conditions so I would say we're definitely trading puts more betting on the downside and I'm also selling premium more so basically um most people will buy calls and buy puts so it's like a directional trade um there's the other side of the market where you can sell a call and sell a put to where you collect the premium so essentially you want the premium to go to zero so it it's a slower way to make money but it's um it's a type of I guess strategy where you should be right about 80 to 90% of the time you all the options just go to zero you you take all the premium so during that time in 2022 I was selling a lot of calls and just collecting the premium as the market went lower so you're not making a huge amount but you're at least making money yeah and you're P purely focused on options right have you dabbled into other areas um I mean I buy shares of stock um I do own Bitcoin but um yeah I'm pretty pretty much primarily opt options Trader in terms of the markets now coming in with President Trump right he's going to get inaugurated soon um you know does that change anything for you and obviously the 20 you know the last fouryear period that he had the the markets were hot there there's a lot of movement a lot of volatility does that uh is there anything that you do in preparation for that or you just you know wait to see what happens and react accordingly um I would say it it doesn't really matter who's President um the stock market will make its move regardless um whether it's a Democrat or Republican um the market has always performed it always goes up so um even when when Democrats are President um the markets have have ripped right especially when Biden was in office 2020 to 2024 the market has trended higher so I'm more of just waiting to see what happens at the inauguration and then you react to the price action so right now the markets looking a little toppy in the short term so we'll see if they break it low over the next week and a half and then maybe when Trump's inaugurated it'll pop back up so and uh just before we have a little segment at the end I collected loads of questions from the audience this is a good one so this person is asking how to enjoy the process I'm they said they're too focused on the goal and therefore not enjoying the process versus how do they actually enjoy the journey as they're going along yeah so I think that the first thing about joying the process is you actually have to like the stock market you have to like finance and and and being in an environment where there's risk so most people want the goal of money because they want just the money so to truly enjoy the process you have to you have to like this world of volatility and stocks and the unknown so that's where I would start like you have to ask yourself that question first and then if the answer is yes yes yes to all those then that's where you start to really begin to enjoy the process because when I first started I I looked at that chart American Apparel and I'm like wow this $1 to $2 and I could make that much I was like okay well let me study more charts and if I study the right charts then I can make a lot of money and that's what the proc how the process starts of you diving deep into all these different elements of trading in the stock market so ask yourself those questions first and if there's more yeses than NOS then I think you can enjoy what you're doing at this point this is a question for me but at this point would you say you're more motivated by the money or more motivated by the your performance as a Trader within the markets I think I'm more motivated by uh the process of just winning like having an idea having a a thesis on what you think the Market's going to do and being right right and the thing that I like about trading is most people will think a certain way meaning right now everyone's very bearish every one thinks okay oh it's a double top head and shoulders are we're going to go much lower SPX is going to go to the 200 day moving average and me I like to think contrarian to a lot of people and when I'm right in those situations it makes me feel good because I think that having that type of mentality and that thought process um Can in turn make you a lot of money and with money you can help a lot of people this is very true and plus I always see it as it's a double it's it's like twofold cuz when you focus on the process you end up getting the money anyway as a byproduct of that versus when you focus on the money no nothing wrong with that I'm sure there's people who are motivated by money who make good money right and perform very well as well but I think when you focus on the money there's two sides there's those people but then there's a lot of the other side where I think you become more emotional because when you're focused on money in trading inevitably you're going to lose money so it's the opposite of what you're focused on and what your goal is so how does your mindset go then when you're like imagine being that 1.5 million down yeah but your your focus and goal is purely money what's going to happen to your mindset cuz you've just completely gone backwards right yeah um so I always find that interesting I really do I think we've talked about this but I'll ask it anyway just in case but he said what was the specific change that you made to become profitable then they put in detail okay so I I'll kind of tell you how I went from like 6,000 to 100 MH so kind of talked about a little bug I'll go into more depth is when you start with a small amount of money you can't take a trade every day and you can't have these daily monetary goals where like I'm going to make $100 a day and I saw that people around me um people that I knew that tried to do that and every day presents different levels of risk and reward you can't make the same every day it may work for a week or two weeks but in the long run it's not possible so I I quickly realized that waiting for momentum right those 12 to 14 week weeks in a year if you can just wait during those weeks you can go from 5 grand to 100 Grand very quickly like when the market breaks certain levels right like when SPX was at 3500 pre-co it dipped to 2200 if you just waited for it to get back to 3500 traded that all-time high breakout level it went from 3500 to 4,800 within a short period of time you if you bought a long-dated option you could make 1,000% right so you go from 5 grand to 50 Grand or maybe 100 grand if you trade it shorter dated SO waiting for momentum waiting for that 12 to 14 weeks when you have a small account it's it's everything if you want to grow an account that's how I did it to focus on like quality over the quantity yeah and one thing I was going to ask there as well in terms of breakouts at being your bread and butter and being like sort of the the trade that you're more mainly focused on what would you what happens when you have a false breakout so price breaks out then comes right back into the range again or even ends up you selling off like what happens in that scenario in that situation um that's when number one you take I take the L on the trade but then you have to be more defensive because if if one stock let's say Nvidia is trying to break out above 153 the alltime high projected very quickly and pulled back I I was in that trade and when I saw how quickly it sold off um I didn't try to enter again because it sold off after the after an event where the CEO had to talk here in Vegas um that's when you have to just not be stubborn and not try to just jump back in again and again to try to make your money back I think that's really important on false breakouts is when it fails at a very important level you need to let it drop and it went from 153 to like 134 within a couple days so if you kept trying over and over you're going to get your account blown up definitely was that something you had to learn the hard way oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah is it a case though like if that happens does that essentially make the next time around when you get back to that level maybe a stronger case for it to take place cuz the more times it get you do the ShakeOut it was someone gave me a good analogy on on gold I believe it was um where you had an alltime High and the alltime high was hit three times every single time sold off every single the fourth time is when it actually blew up because the Psy ology of the average Trader now is it's going to sell off again so now they're positioning themselves for that that sell yeah providing liquidity for them to buys to take place and and then not only do the buys take place it has such a strong surge because it's just clearing all that liquidity yeah so I would say like let's say Nvidia is at 153 again the second time if SPX is still under 6,000 like the alltime high is near 6100 so if SPX is still 100 points under where it should be and then Nvidia is retesting 153 and other chip stocks are not quite where they should be either meaning well below alltime highs then the pro I would say the probability of that second breakout attempt is is less likely interesting versus SPX is at 6100 amds finally moving back higher you know broadcom's you know near alltime highs all these stocks that led the market and the last run are all lining up together then the probability of that breakout becomes much higher so I would still try the 153 but if if it's the first scenario where stocks are lower and the next lower I'll just take a smaller size yeah so that that that correlation is what then dictates as well the condition yeah in its Essence the grading and therefore the size yeah that's everything yeah having the index lined up with the stock that's in the index it's everything I love that I love BR I'm sure we can do this uh for even longer I'm sure hopefully we'll we'll see you again in the future and maybe even get you on one of our round table podcast as well for sure but it's been an absolute pleasure links for br will be in the description below so make sure you check those out drop a comment with your biggest takeaway from this episode I know there was so much to take away uh hit subscribe other episodes are on screen and until next time everyone take care