The Stock Trading Reality Podcast

For those in our trading community, odds are, if you've been around long enough, you've seen the name "Stock Gambit" appear in the chat room. He has been around since nearly the start of our community. He is in "ninja mode" for the most part, in fact, as you'll hear on the interview, I wasn't even aware he was a full time trader now! It's always fascinating to hear about people's journey's from working at the 9-5 J-O-B to being their own boss and working from home. That's what we get to hear all about in this episode. We hope you enjoy! Notes: Stock Gambit has been a long time member and we’re excited to interview him today. His parents were always involved in the stock market from the time he was a child but it didn’t appeal to him until many years later. His father used technical charts for many years for his own trading. Gambit wanted to find some people to learn from and this led to him following traders on twitter and puppet trading him. After some further reflection, he realized that he needed to learn to spot trade opportunities for himself. This led him to get involved with Claytrader courses. While he found some success in penny stocks while the OTC market was filled with volume, that eventually fizzled out and led him to close all of his positions. He credits the Penny Stock Survival Guide for him making that decision to look elsewhere for trades. He started to trade common shares and paper traded forex. Gambit has traded almost every trading vehicle under the sun but he thinks that it is important that people realize what is out there and what works best for them. The repetitions of starting small and getting comfortable gives you the ability to scale up your strategy without spiraling out of control. Quotes: “My father gave me a book and said read it. I read it and was completely confused. It was all about technical charts.” “My father would say ‘I didn’t care what I would trade as long as I made money.’ “ “I was always concerned that forex pairs would crash. Clay suggested I look at basic options since I could limit my losses.” “You feel comfortable when you feel comfortable. It’s the number of repetitions and staying small.” “If you believe this is something you should be doing and it is right for you, you should persist.” Links: https://claytrader.com/courses/penny-stock-survival-guide/

We're at it again! Our 2nd ever in person video podcast. The special little twist this time is I'm checking in with our esteemed co-host "Chezz". He was the guest on episode #1, so yeah, it's been awhile since we've gotten an update on his trading journey in the markets. We talk about an abundance of issues including how important it is to factor in "life events" with trading goals. Chezz and I talk about what I believe to be very practical tips and considerations that need to be made in order to assist yourself in improving as a trader most efficiently. If you normally listen to the podcast, be sure to check out our YouTube channel or show notes page to watch the video. Notes: Today we interview Chezz, the cohost of the podcast while we were in Columbus for a community meetup. We pick up the story from 2 years ago when he did his first podcast. To summarize, Chezz quit his job and decided to trade full time after going through the courses and paper traded for many months. He directionally traded long options but struggled with the fact that he may loser 7 out of 10 trades. While he didn’t blow up his account, he mentally struggled with the success rate. Chezz would go through 6+ hours of content at a day at a minimum and it was definitely overload. You need to pace yourself as you venture into something new. You can’t learn a brand new trade overnight and everyone will take a different amount of time to digest what is taught. After giving forex a try, Chezz started trading advanced options. While he was finding success, he wasn’t pleased with the returns. Waiting 21 days for a trade to play out to make a few hundred dollars didn’t seem like a feasible way to make a living. This led him to trade futures for faster returns. That futures account he funded was strictly to pay for bills related to his wedding. While he almost doubled that account, he took a big string of losers when the market was in consolidation and he says the best thing he ever did was stop trading a few weeks prior to the wedding. Big life events will affect your trading especially if you tie those funds to a tangible purchase you’re trying to make. Your trading capital should be looked at as working capital and that’s it. Chezz is back to trading advanced options since he’s always found the most success with that vehicle and his confidence comes from understanding how to spot trades and how to manage trades that go wrong. Quotes: “I realized I needed something with structure and closed my SureTrader account to pour the remainder of it into my education.” “I had trouble accepting I was wrong 70% of the time. Mentally I couldn’t handle it.” “I promise you that big events in your life will affect trading. It sits in the back of your mind and makes you do foolish things.” “Foolish me, I’m either going to blow this account up or I’m going to recover. Stupidest trading I’ve ever done.” “Recognizing that it’s a numbers game helped me overcome the recency effect. It still sucks to lose money but it’s the long game.” Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode001/

A community staple is back to update us on how his trading has been unfolding. For those of you who have been around awhile, the name RDTrader12 should sound familiar. He's been on two previous podcasts and I've also interviewed him for the live webinars in ClayTrader University. He's a great human being and someone that continues to improve with his trading. As you'll see, his job and schedule took on some changes which altered his trading situation, but he rolled with the punches beautifully and is back in the swing of things. The coolest thing is how he determined he needed to "slow down" in order to "speed up". I realize that seems like an oxymoron, but I promise it isn't as you'll hear. Let's get to it! Notes: Today we revisit with RD and pick up from where we left off in his last episode. In summary, he was solely day trading options in 2015/2016. He recognized that he wanted to trade futures and began working toward that with paper trading. The only reason RD wanted to trade futures was because he believed futures were a better day trading vehicle. He didn’t enjoy the factor of theta working against him in his option trades. RD knows that it is just one of the nuances of options and really comes down to personal preference. RD took 12 weeks to paper trade futures exclusively and he admits that he unfortunately was a victim of fool's gold. Those 3 months were very volatile and when he went live the market was the complete opposite with very little volatility and movement. He wasn’t able to adapt at first. While he knew his strategy had worked, it wasn’t until he hit the brakes and evaluated his live trading that he recognized that the volatility of the market as a whole had changed. After taking a hard look at his data, he realized he was overtrading and instead of taking 10+ trades a day, he now tried to find one or two great setups. It was a very big step forward in his trading to trade less and he found he was actually able to split his attention to both options and futures again since he wasn’t forcing trades the entire day. Since RD’s new job took him away from his desk, he decided to reduce his position size and widen out his time frame for trading. He also started to utilize trailing stops and other methods to manage his positions since he couldn’t actively watch them. He also does his ‘market homework’ such as identifying levels and trends before the market opens so he can set his orders and go about his day. RD is also looking into utilizing advanced options to supplement his swing trading of futures. His new trading style much closer resembles swing trading instead of day trading which works well with him having a very busy work life. Quotes: “A chart is a chart. Once you learn the nuances, it’s trading as usual. I shut down the options platform and paper traded futures.” “Once you understand it’s not this big mysterious thing, it’s just another chart, I felt pretty comfortable pretty quickly.” “I stepped back, got my confidence back and adjusted my strategy to not only the market conditions but my risk vs reward.” “I reduced my risk as I adapted to the environment. I really like to put my stop losses under consolidation points.” Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode005/

This is Part 2 of a two part interview, so for the best listening experience, be sure to go back and listen to episode 114 first. Chezz and I pick up right where we left off with tfletch and the craziness continues. With that being said, things begin to calm down too as we learn about how he is now putting everything he has learned into a sustainable and consistent trading plan. He had to learn a tough lesson when first going live with a bit of false confidence, but his self-awareness and lack of ego allowed for him to quickly realize "what" the issues was. When you know what the issue is, implementing a solution becomes much less of a challenge. Like Part 1, there are several tid-bits of great wisdom from experience dropped that everyone can learn from. Notes: After going through the courses at Claytrader University, he found that he struggled with paper trading because he wouldn’t pay as much attention as he normally would if he had a live position on. By no means does he advocate people cut their practice short but he personally struggled with it for the reason above. Tim now carries many positions to keep diversified and utilizes advanced options for this portfolio. The next step in his journey includes learning to trade futures with what he has already learned so now he is extensively studying the chart to learn the in’s and out’s of the product. Even though Tim thrives on fast paced environments (since he works primarily at auto auctions) he found that day trading just wasn’t possible to fit in his schedule just yet. In the future, possibly, but right now with how his current work schedule is, it’s just not possible. If Tim could go back and give himself one piece of advice it would have been to start sooner. He recommends if you’re a young guy or any age really, buckle down, work hard and accumulate money while at the same time focus on your education. Within a few years you will have quite a large knowledge base and have the largest chance at success in trading. Quotes: “I have to tell myself if I’m going to carry 30 positions and they will all be in my favor, you’re nuts. There are always problem children.” “I think it’s as important to learn what not to do as it is to learn what to do.” “I want to be totally comfortable day trading before I commit to it but I’m not there yet.” “Develop a plan. Say ‘this is where I want to be at this point and this is where I want to be at this point’. “

I had the pleasure of meeting our guest at our Nashville meet-and-greet and after talking to him there, I knew he needed to be a guest. I guess I'll pat myself on the back a bit and proclaim that I made a wise choice. Our guest, "tfletch" as he is well known by in the chat room, has been through quite a bit during his journey of life and the markets... how much so? Well, this interview turned into a two part episode. From his beginnings in the car industry, to his wild ride of being a future's broker, to his desire to "get serious" about trading... the man has gone through a lot. Oh yeah, I didn't even mention the part where he authored a book! New or veteran as a trader, I have no question you'll be able to gather a few nuggets of wisdom. Notes: Today we talk with T. Fletch from the community. He actually started his trading journey by trading a ‘tip’ he got from a coworker when he was in his early 20s. It was a penny stock and it ultimately went to zero. Quite a few years later, still in his late 20s, Tim got his hands on a stock/futures trading manual that both him and his brother read. His brother ended up opening a futures brokerage and was doing extremely well for himself but he needed help with the huge amount of clients. He offered Tim a job and he decided to leave the car dealership and work with him. After four years at the brokerage firm, Tim decided that it wasn’t for him and it was starting to take a toll on his personal life. He left that industry to go back to what he knew, the car business. As both him and his wife had saved up in their retirement accounts, Tim’s wife actually told him that he needed to learn how to manage them since she knew financial advisors did not have their best interests in mind. This led him to search out some books and podcasts to start the learning process. Quotes: “Years ago when we lived in California, I got introduced to penny stocks. A whole bunch of us decided to buy into one. That money is gone.” “We just puppet traded. Ken Roberts had a hotline that you would call in and I started a spreadsheet of his recommendations.” “In four years of being a futures broker, not one client closed an account that had made money. Not one single one.” “Young people, trust me, before you know it you will be turning 60 and if you haven’t saved it’s your own fault. Time goes by fast.” “Claytrader University was the structured program that I needed and what I was looking for. It couldn’t have been better for me.”

One of the more common problems have as newer traders is shiny objects. You hear about one thing in the market, so you focus on that. Then you hear about something else, and before you know it, you are off focusing on that. While there is certainly nothing wrong with having multiple tools in your trading toolbelt, you must master one tool in full at a time. Thanks to our guest's openness and transparency, "GeeSama" from the community, we get a great look into just how annoying and frustrating chasing shiny objects can be. To bring things full circle, we all get to hear the benefits of simply slowing down and putting all your brain power into a single tool. This is an interview any new or veteran trader can benefit from. Notes: In today’s podcast we speak with community member GeeSama. His introduction to the market was through the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, that was passed around at his day job. It outlines a few ways to get out of the ‘rat race’ and he gravitated toward the stock market to achieve this. After funding an account, Gee had some nice fool's gold to start with a sizeable gain on his account. He never actually had any blowout losses because he had a max amount of money to lose per trade in terms of a stop loss. While it helped, his stops were not always in logical locations. After joining the community, Gee realized that he wanted to learn from Clay and purchased University. After he would finish each course, he would paper trade each strategy for a few weeks but recommends that people paper trade longer. While he was focusing on shorter term day trades, he eventually realized he has a much larger success rate at a longer term time frame. This is what ultimately led him to advanced options trading. Unfortunately, Gee has a bad habit of ‘style hopping’ and he ultimately abandoned that successful strategy to try to day trade futures. Futures actually led to his largest loss which totaled about $5,000 dollars in one day. After that he took a 6 month break to regroup and figure out how not to repeat the mistakes of that day. He went back to advanced options and finds he trades much better being the casino versus the player. He is a big believer in the probabilities. Quotes: “I didn’t have any business ideas. I’m an introvert so real estate was out. The only option I had left was the stock market.” “I decided to take a leap. Obviously he knows what he’s talking about. I have no idea what I’m doing. I wanted some sort of structure.” “That led me down a bad rabbit hole of averaging down on contracts to try to get to break-even.” “I was pretty much riding the coattails every day I came in and had significant profits. I was overleveraging myself.” “I’m taking a little bit out of each paycheck and funding the account so I can consistently add more positions.” Links: ClayTrader Guns: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeMTq2i6G59CkanJsHMQIVg

There is a unique twist to this week's interview, and I'm a huge fan of it! Based on the feedback we've received from you as listeners, whenever we touch on the topic of personal finance, people get value from it. This is exactly what we're going to do by bringing back former guest Pendar (same name in the chat room). We do talk stock market and trading, but the main focus to is offer inspiration and show that it is 100% possible through pure hard work to take a messy situation within personal finances and get it cleaned up. Speaking for myself, I know I was motivated after talking with Pendar and got plenty of the "no excuse" mentality that I always try and focus on. Notes: Today we revisit with Pendar from episode 16. After finding initial success trading his IRA he suffered some significant drawdowns after being overconfident which led him to the path he is currently on. It was a very big eye opener for him. After giving back his gains, once he got to break even (which is always a big psychological level), he started to put on even riskier positions to get back into the green which ultimately led to that accounts demise. He took a hard look at his finances and realized that he had to get rid of his debt but that would take some big life changes. Budgeting and multiple income sources were going to be his solution. He has no desire to pay the interest rates on his debt and that is his big motivator. Pendar is big into having separated accounts for various expenses such as auto maintenance, vacation, bills, savings, etc. Keeping these separated makes it easy for him to not only budget for the future but to also make it easier to allocate his income so that no ‘surprises’ will clear out his checking account. He’s a big believer in being prepared. He has also invested in a steam cleaner which has already returned 60% of it’s value. This is just one example of his multiple sources of income. As he said, he gets paid to literally just push a button. Pendar is not going to invest in any more business models since he doesn’t want his overhead to get too large. Quotes: “I was trying to beat the professionals at their own game. Instead of going 45 days out I was trading 21 days or shorter.” “One of the biggest signs of maturity is saving up for something you really want to buy and paying for it in cash.” “It’s all about the process, not the goal. Follow the correct process every single time.” “By 10pm at night I’m going to sleep and I’m up at 4am. That’s 6 hours. I want to be up and working by 5am.” Links: STR 16: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode016/ Mint Budgeting: https://www.mint.com/ Pendars UBER code is: https://partners.uber.com/i/7zm95 Pendars Lyft code is: https://www.lyft.com/drivers/PENDAR120983

It's been a while since we've last spoken with community member "Etan" (alias in chat room), but there is quite a bit to report from our last conversation. Our previous interview had Etan with his ax to the grindstone paper-trading and fine tuning a trading strategy; however, as you'll hear, life got in the way and knocked him off course. What I like best about all of this is Etan did not pull out the pity-party-card, he just adjusted and did what needed to be done. We once again have some interesting free flowing conversation... so by all means, please come be a fly on the wall. Notes: Today we revisit with community member Etan. He was focused on shorter term equity scalping and had paper traded for quite a long time with modest success. Unfortunately, his day job picked up very quickly so his time to trade had shrunk considerably so he decided to go back to his old style of swing trading after trying to trade futures. Etan summed it up very well about how he had a lack of ‘chemistry’ with futures. When you are uncomfortable trading something, no matter what it is, you will not make rational decisions. Comfort in your trading is key and comes with practice and persistence. What he really enjoys about options is that he can set and define his risk in advance. It is much less rigid and much more flexible than futures for him and this fit with his personality much better. Etan is a big believer in logging not only his trades but his thoughts/feelings on the trade as well so that he can look back when he gets in a similar situation and recognize that it’s not as bad as he may think and that he has proven he is capable of managing this regardless of the outcome. Quotes: “It’s funny sitting at the table and seeing everyone with their emotions and how bad they get.” “I tried futures and it did not work so well. It moved differently. The risk per tick was different. There was no chemistry for me.” “I’ve been doing Advanced Options since before I even learned charting. So I papertraded and traded those for a couple years.” “It’s a lot slower. It’s really just looking for support levels and resistance levels. It’s a lot less stressful for sure.” “I just pull up the positions, check the probability of profit column to make sure I don’t have to do anything. Takes me 30 minutes or less.” Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode038/

When it comes to Mom's, our guest Rena ("RenaB" in the chat room), is no slouch. Not only did she introduce her son to the stock market and trading, but she has instilled in him extremely valuable principles that will last a lifetime... and that's just the surface of the interview! Rena has been in the market for several years now, and even with that, due to the massive variety of different strategies available, continues to try and narrow down the perfect fit for her own personal risk tolerance. There is some great conversations of psychology and emotions that take part in a "live coaching call". This is one of you don't' want to miss! Notes: Rena’s introduction to the market was with mutual funds back in 2009. She immediately started to work on her market education because both her and her husband take these matters very seriously. While she had a solid grasp of the basics, there were some holes in her strategy. Rena is a big believer in continuing to always learn more. Her risk management included a few different methods. The overall methodology mainly pertained to her emotions. She was willing to cut trades that didn’t feel right and take profits on ones that did. One day, her son came home from high school and after learning about stock trading, he expressed interest in learning along with his mother. Unfortunately, since he did not have much capital, this led them to trading penny stocks. After getting stuck in a few pump and dumps, they abandoned that idea pretty quickly. Rena used StockTwits to help find stocks that were moving for the day and that’s when she ran into Clay’s chart analysis videos. She liked the content and joined the community. Considering she’s a big believer in continuous education, she went through a few courses before joining Claytrader University. After learning about options, she has broken her trading into thirds. She buys/sell stocks, buys options and also sells options. Rena just came off a 5 day profit streak and was very disappointed in her one red day that followed. Her disappointment is not uncommon and it leads people to think their system is ‘broken’ when in reality, not all trades will be profitable. If you follow your system and strategy which you know works, the probabilities of profit will work out over time. Quotes: “I wasn’t going in completely blind but I know a lot more now than I did then.” “My son said he wanted to learn about stock trading so we started on that journey which did not go so well.” “I tried daytrading penny stocks. They pump it up in the morning for the first ten minutes then if you’re not out, run for the hills.” “I’m a believer in ‘you never know too much’ and ordered a few of your courses, then a few more courses.”

This trader is no stranger to the podcast, but he's a great trader so why not talk to him again and see where he currently stands in his trading journey? For you members of the community, Dave (or "h00ch" as he is known by in the chat room) is someone who has essentially been around since the start and continues to be a pillar of the community. Although he has been trading for more than a decade, he still continues to make progress and discover new areas of the market that assist him in adding more tools to his trading toolbelt. This isn't really an interview, more-so just a laid back conversation, so sit back and enjoy! Notes: Today we speak to long time community member h00ch. Since we have already interviewed him, we decide to throw some new questions at him. To summarize his background, he worked at a bank for many years and would take some investment advice from friends. He definitely struck some fools gold and then when his job eventually downsized, he was out of a job and decided to make day trading his job. He was able to capitalize during the dot com boom by putting most of his income into stocks with websites but he did take some significant losses when the bubble burst but he still came out net positive. H00ch has expanded his trading vehicles to include futures. After paper trading them for 4 months, he did open a margin account and mainly trades futures in the evenings after the regular market session is over. Even though he is a day trader primarily, he does swing trade as well. That’s the beauty of technical analysis… it applies to all timeframes. He looks for the same setups he would use on a shorter term chart as he would on a longer term chart. He has slowly ratcheted up his size over the years for his day trading but it is contingent on the market conditions. H00ch is smart enough to realize not to push it when the market is stuck in a tight range and to take advantage of trending markets instead. Quotes: “Any company that had any mention of a website would just take off during the dot com boom.” “At first I wasn’t interested in futures so I paper traded it. I did eventually open a margin account and trade 1 contract at a time.” “I’ll look at the longer term charts in the evenings. You can make all the plans in the world but a big gap can ruin that.” “With my swing trading, since I trade smaller size, I am able to use wider stops. You’re looking for the same patterns and setups.” “My day trading size has increased slightly. It depends on the market if it is trending or in a channel.” Links: The Stock Trading Reality Podcast: Episode 2 The Stock Trading Reality Podcast: Episode 75 The Stock Trading Reality Podcast: Episode 100