The Stock Trading Reality Podcast

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

For you longer time listeners, you know nothing gets Chezz or myself fired up more than someone who "takes action" and offers no excuses... particularly when it comes to finding money to use to trade. Our guest from the chat room, Brandon (alias in room "bfaust25"), shares a journey filled with many ups and downs. The common theme however is due to Brandon's awesome attitude which has allowed him (and continues to allow him) to get up whenever he may get knocked down. Brandon is a shining example of just how powerful the combination of attitude + work ethic can be. My guess is after listening, you'll be ready to pick up a few part time jobs! Notes: Brandon's introduction the market was his father-in-law who suggested he put in $200 a month from his paycheck into a brokerage account so he would have a decent size account in the future to use. He decided to focus on sector ETFs. From what he had read, he knew that market crashes were a great time to get invested in the market at a discount price. He was able to capitalize on that during 2008 and 2009. Brandon did a lot of research on selling options and decided to save up for another account to try that. The problem is, he still had no tool to forecast which direction the stocks/market would go. He grasped the concept of being directionally neutral but he knew there must be a way to figure out general direction. He looked into technical analysis and that's when he found Clay and invested in his education. After he took a few courses, he rolled into Claytrader University where he discovered that there is quite a story in all charts and with that, there is many moving parts that need to be understood. After going through the courses, Brandon completely changed his tune from selling option premium to buying option premium and using charts. He unfortunately let his emotions and greed get involved after this which led to a downtrend in his account value. He struggled for a bit to grasp how to trade long options based on the underlying movement. These things all take time and take practice. This led to some frustration and disappointment so he took a step back. During this time, he learned how to properly prepare his family's budget. Brandon has now picked up a few part time jobs to continuously fund his account and while he does that he is paper trading short options combining what he learned initially with what he has now learned technically. Quotes: "I read some Warren Buffett books. I was more in an investment mindset instead of trading." "Now there is only 1 problem. I don't know what way the stock price is going to go. Those guys are cool and all but there is a disconnect." "I completely avoided risk management and didn't use it. I pretty much blew that entire account over time." "I took a huge step back. I took the Cash Flow Creation Guide and I needed to hear that. I needed the discipline." Links: Course: The Cash Flow Creation Guide

We've decided to push the bounds of the podcast a bit and try something new... a VIDEO interview. I would not call it flawless, but the early feedback for those that attended it live was still positive. As weird as it may sounds, I've become good enough friends with a member from our community, Nate Wilson, to have invited to my house where we recorded this episode. He has been on two previous podcasts, but Chezz and I wanted to touch base with him and hear about how his trading has been unfolding. In fact, he literally traded my account the morning we recorded this, so we talked about that a bit in the interview. I'd highly recommend "watching" this one instead of "listening" to it, but do what you gotta do. Notes: In this live episode we have guest Nate Wilson with us and we compile some questions from the community to ask him. Many of our members trade options and wondered why Nate does not. He prefers the simplicity of day trading equities and considering no two traders trade the same, it is all about finding where your comfort level is. He has no need to branch out considering his success with his current strategy. We discuss the detriment of counting how many days you've made profits and how it should be avoided. Every day is a clean sheet and needs to be treated that way otherwise you will be making irrational decisions based on previous days performance. Nate discusses how he turned the corner and became more consistent. He reduced his position size and this helped him logically manage trades instead of just going all in at one shot. Smaller risk helps you stay focused on managing trades correctly since you are more comfortable. After watching Wolf of Wallstreet, Nate utilized his background in fundamental analysis to invest in marijuana stocks. This led him down the path of message boards and he started to buy into the hype. This is when he found Clay's chart analysis videos. Nate is always looking to improve mainly with his entries. Picking quality entry points is not always the easiest and we are always trying to make sure we don't force an entry at a non-ideal location. Quotes: "I looked at options for a little while and realized I didn't like it. I prefer the fast in and out day trading of equities." "If I revenge trade, I will literally get up from the computer and go talk with a coworker to get away from forcing trades." "If you can't manage your personal finances, don't bother trying to trade. It's a business." "I totally got suckered in. I had no idea what was going on but they would say 'BOOM! News is coming out!' " "I always want to constantly improve on picking a quality entry instead of forcing an entry. It's a struggle." Links: Video: 64 Trading Days - 2 Losing Days Blog: How I Ruined My Month

I learned a new phrase in this interview, greedy goblin. Yes, without question that sounds pretty rough, but as you hear our guest from the community, Caemeron, explain, it is actually a characteristic that all of us as traders should have. Having a passion and enjoying the challenge of seeing numbers add up, like a game, is an attribute that can be very beneficial. There is certainly some gray area in this regard, but with the right approach and mental mindset, the waters can be navigated in a profitable way. Notes: Cameron's introduction to the market was from his teenage years where he would read about the big moves that biotech companies were making. He knew that if he could acquire the knowledge to trade those, he could significantly increase his earnings. At 18 years old, he moved out of his parents house and moved into a pretty run down trailer in the woods. Cameron worked at a gas station to help pay for the rest of nursing school. When he finished school, he was able to get a job at a hospital and stayed in the low cost trailer to save money. After a discussion with his father, he realized that his idea of putting all his money in dividend paying stocks would not make the gains he desired. While working in the nursing field, he noticed very quickly he did not enjoy it so he decided to leverage his old contacts to find a different profession. When he did open his trading account, he put his money into household names that he was familiar with. His thesis was invest 80% and swing trade the other 20%. He had no knowledge of chart usage at this time. After losing quite a bit of money trying to trade penny stocks, Cameron invested in his education and took RvR Trading because he recognized that if he could control the downside, the upside would take care of the rest. Cameron is now paper trading with his new found knowledge and recognizes that practice makes perfect. Quotes: "My friends call me a goblin because I love making money. I think it's really fun and very challenging." "I'd love to have enough money in the dividend paying stocks where it's like I'm getting paid to hold these stocks." "I opened up an account and got 3 free trades. My dad told me to stick to things I know. I bought AT&T and MSFT since I used them." "I'm collecting aluminum cans, working at the gas station, mowing lawns, I'm doing everything I can to get money." "He told me, if you can get through those guys, you can get through the FDA. That was a horrible investment thesis." Links: Course: Risk vs Reward Trading Video: How and Where I Learned To Trade

While some may call the over-arching theme of this interview "common sense", the problem with that is common sense isn't very common anymore. Our guest from the community, Jody, approached the market in a very strategic, yet simple way. Again, some may say "duh!", but it is also one of those things that in many cases hides in plain sight. Bottom line, when you are unsure of something, go find something that you feel safe in and don't push the envelope. Jody has done, and continues to illustrate a great job of doing exactly that. Notes: Jody's introduction to the market was similar to many, a 401k that a job provided matching for. This was back in 1999. It wasn't until 2008 that he took a more active approach. After speaking with some fellow co workers, he had the idea to take his entire portfolio and reinvest it into the company he worked at since the shares were down 75% due to the market crash. After doubling his money in about a month, he decided to take profits and put it back into other funds. He got a love letter from the brokerage saying that he is not suppose to be actively trading these accounts since they are managed. As time goes on, Jody went back to school and changed jobs a few times. In the transition between companies, some of his funds went into an eTrade account. He makes an important decision in the sense that he recognized he didn't know what he was doing so rather than gamble with that account he moved it back into his new companies managed funds. He finds Clay online and checks out all the free training material available. At the same time he notices a co worker who is trading at work with Robinhood. Jody now was interested in lower priced penny stocks so that he could theoretically turn a larger profit based on a larger move these stocks sometimes make. He still had an uneasy feeling and went back into cash. After watching the video regarding penny stocks versus options, Jody decided to learn how to trade options. He went through a few courses and is now working on honing his trading methodology. Quotes: "My 401k wasn't really growing much. Then 2008 hit. Our company went from 30 dollars a share to as low as 7 or 8." "I didn't know what I was doing. It was kind of scary to have money in a brokerage so I rolled everything back into my 401k." "In programming, you can see what's breaking during debugging. In trading, when you lose money, you have no idea. You're just losing." "I made 300 dollars from CIE. I pulled that money and bought RvR Trading. My account is trending up now." Links: Video: Work Smarter Not Harder Video: Trade Penny Stocks On Steroids