The Stock Trading Reality Podcast

Being wealthy is something we all dream of. I say this with complete confidence because I define "wealthy" a much different way than many may. To be honest though, even if you want to be wealthy in the sense of driving a Rolls Royce, there are some initial steps that you must take in order to make that dream a reality. Whether you acknowledge it or not, there is one fact that we ALL have in common... we're all a CEO. While that may not make much sense now, I promise you it will after you're done listening to this podcast. Notes: In today's podcast, Clay and Chezz discuss personal finances and the power of a budget. The goal of this entire podcast is to help reduce your stress with a set of good habits and routines. The foundation for all wealth building, no matter what avenue you take (stock market, business ownership, etc) is going to be your budget. You are the king of your castle in the sense of you are in charge of your spending decisions. Your budget will be able to tell you what is financially responsible and what is not while helping you target your longer term goals. Another way to create peace of mind is growing a 'rainy day fund.' Setbacks happen in life (your car breaks, furnace stops working, unexpected medical expenses) but if you have prepared in advance for when Murphy strikes, this can alleviate your stress greatly because you were ready for whatever the world threw at you. Clay brings up a great point about choice of college and career choices. Please do the math and budget to help determine what your potential salary will be versus your college loans that you will be paying for years. More often than not, you can find a comparable school that will offer the same degree for a lower cost. The power of a budget can help you achieve your long term goals and it really is as simple as addition and subtraction. Take some steps and a hard look at your income stream versus your spending and start to be the CEO of your financial future. Quotes: "To me, wealth is the ability to sleep. If you can lay in bed at night and have no worries, that's a beautiful thing." "You become the CEO of your finances. We are all CEOs of our own personal life." "Get organized with your personal finances and odds are you will have money leftover. That leftover money can be put into investments." "It's a list of priorities specifically. Now I always bring up is 'is this money better on a purchase or better for the land fund?' " "Once you get a job, you see this sparkly new paycheck and you think 'wow, I've waited so long to have money' and I threw it around." "How does it know it's not in the cards? Because he has a budget. Because he's organized. Because he's CEO of his life." Links: Course: Cash Flow Creation Guide Mint: https://www.mint.com/ You Need A Budget: https://www.youneedabudget.com/

We've done many interviews at this point in our podcasting journey, but thinking off the top of my head, I can only think of one other person who is taking the approach Ward (our guest and chat room member) is using. According to Ward's logic, which makes perfect sense to me, he is first focusing on developing as a person, to which he believes will then allow him to develop better as a trader. The awesome part is, Ward has a few years under his belt, so it just goes to show that it is never too late to work on oneself for the better. This was a refreshing interview and inspired me for sure. Notes: In 1998, Ward read a few books about trading but wasn't in a financial position to put money in the market. However, the fire was lit. After getting married, his wife had her money in a mutual fund that wasn't growing fast enough in his opinion and thought he could do a better job. He didn't even fully realize that the market just experienced a huge downturn. Ward started to trade in stocks that had a steady uptrend. After reading 40 books about how to trade, he would still look back at his trading journal and question why exactly he entered particular stocks. He recognized he did not have a solid methodology. Unfortunately, Ward went through a cycle of trying a strategy, getting discouraged and then taking a break. This lasted for 4 years until he found Clay's youtube videos. He thought that looking over someone's shoulder and watching them execute trades would be more beneficial than reading the theory of trading from books. Ward was actually in retirement when he discovered Clay's videos. After seeing how well the course was structured, he went back to work for 2 months to pay for Claytrader University and to keep from having to utilize his savings for the package. At the same time, Ward discovered the power of self development and the power of a plan/goal. This ties into such a larger topic such that life isn't all about trading. Trading is a part of Ward's life but it is not the only thing that matters to him. Developing solid plans and planning the path to success played a crucial role in turning Ward's trading around along with many other parts of his life. Quotes: "When I thought about trading this money, it didn't even occur to me that the money hadn't grown because of the market correction." "I wasn't losing any ground but wasn't making any either. Even after all those books I read, none of them taught me how to trade." "I've got money and read a bunch of books and think I can compete against professionals. I realized there was an education problem there."

If there is one personality trait that is a "must have" for long term trading success, I think I'd choose: self awareness. If you are not being honest with yourself and admitting what needs to be admitted, you will spin your wheels in the mud and never improve. Chat room member, Eric, is a shining example of being self aware and using that personality trait to progress his path forward. I really enjoyed our talk with Eric as he was very passionate and energized about the markets; however, was also extremely aware of his situation too. Notes: Eric's introduction to the market consisted of watching his father and some coworkers always checking their trading portfolios. He decided to open his own brokerage account in college with his student loans and that was how he first entered the market. He used basic fundamentals and general knowledge of what he thought would be a good stock to own to choose where he put his money. He decided to subscribe to a weekly newsletter that offered trade picks and after trading these for a while (with not much success) Eric decided to continue his search to find a system that worked for him. He struggled to find an education suite that worked for him. After college, he saved up another $3,000 to swing trade but he couldn't put his finger on proper entry and exit criteria. After a long YouTube search for helpful info, Eric found ClayTrader and perceived him as an honest person who will shoot straight and tell it like it is. This is when he started to invest in himself via education. The beautiful thing that Eric realized is that once you have learned how to read charts and manage your risk, you are FREE to find trades on your own. You no longer need to seek a 'guru' for 'hot picks.' As Eric increased his education in terms of risk and options, Eric has found lots of success trading advanced option spreads. He can control his probability of profit and his max loss, all of which are crucial for long term success. A few members have also inspired him to stay mechanical in all his trades instead of style jumping. By no means is he saying that this is the be-all end-all and he always wins but when he is wrong, he is wrong small and it doesn't take much to recover. Quotes: "When I was 15, my dad traded futures and used to tell me that trading in the stock market was dangerous." "I noticed every time, what basis did I have for deciding when to buy and when to sell? There was just nothing." "I didn't want to go down the path of watching 1000s of videos and in the end I'm not a better trader. It was a waste of time." "My whole life has been cycles of getting into and out of the market." "Once you start learning you can come up with your own plays." Links: Book: Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less

I really enjoyed this interview because it was a change of pace (in a good way). We've had many guests who rant and rave about the power of options, which is true for sure, however our guest (minor spoiler) was not a huge fan and chose another trading opportunity: Forex (the trading of currencies). Chezz and I sit down with community member Jaime and hear all about his journey with options and why he ultimately chose to take another path. What caught his eye about Forex? How is he doing with it? We cover that and much more in this refreshing interview. Notes: Jaime's introduction the market was a co worker who traded penny stocks. After watching him trade for some time, Jaime opened up a brokerage account to 'dabble' himself. His first few trades turned into investments in the hold and hope fashion. Jaime also only focused on playing the long side and avoided the short side (where he thinks the price would go down for profit). After sitting in a few tickers for a while with very little movement, Jaime wised up and decided to take a few years off before returning to the market with the goal of avoiding penny stocks. He wanted to focus on some larger names that actually had good liquidity. While Jaime began focusing on high volume options he unfortunately did not have a true risk management strategy yet. After learning about the nuances of options including the greeks, he started to realize all the things he was fighting when he first started trading them. This led him to the Forex course offered here which opened his eyes to the opportunities available for him (especially since there is no pattern day trader rules). Jaime practiced for a month before going live and has been doing very well since going live to the tune of tripling his account value. The glaring differences between his old trading and how he trades now is his outlook on risk management. Now, instead of focusing on only recouping his losses, which makes him greedy and stay in his winning trades too long, he willingly takes small losers because he knows that one winner will pay for many losers. This is the recipe for long term success and steady account growth. Quotes: "There was no strategy at all. Just going off of penny stock fundamentals which we all know is laughable." "I was able to get out of most of my investments. For the most part, I wised up pretty quickly and decided to be done with it." "There really was no risk mitigation or stop loss. Put some money in and it's either going to go up or not." "I'm at 50:1 leverage. I paper traded for a month and now trading live. I've done remarkably well. The chart just agrees with me."

When it comes to just flat out being lucky, in the history of the podcast, I think we have a new winner! To give credit where credit is due, our community member, Josh, worked hard and saved up $1,000. So it is not a situation where he just lucked out in regards to having money, but yeah... I don't want to run anything, just listen - haha. After the initial luckiness, Josh quickly discovered that there is much more to trading than what he had originally thought. While he joins a long list of many who have thought this same way, the way Josh conducted himself after this realization is something we can all learn from, myself included. Notes: Josh's introduction to the market was a virtual game and after he learned the mechanics of it was able to pad his virtual account. This led him to want to do it with actual money. After saving up $1,000, he asked his dad for some tickers on his watch list but his dad is a notoriously bad typist and ended up giving him a recommendation on something he didn't intend. Lucky for Josh, after holding for 8 months that ticker was bought out for triple what he paid. Josh and his friend had been following the marijuana legislation in 2013 and decided to spread their money into a few different names. They had actually caught the start of the 'pot stock boom' and instead of holding and hoping, Josh ended up taking profits to be safe and not get caught in the dump. After finding little success in the penny stock market, he shifted his money back into larger names that he didn't mind holding longer term. He was busy with school and life so he prefered to not sweat the small moves that stocks tend to make intraday. After watching some of Clay's videos he decided to change brokerages and find a good platform for day trading. While Josh didn't have a risk management plan on paper, he was extremely protective of his money and refused to let any future trades go against him by a large margin. He falls into a small percent of people who DO NOT go big and ultimately go home. Josh is now keeping himself accountable by paper trading with an Excel spreadsheet. He also realizes that less is more when it comes to indicators. Price action and volume are king. Quotes: "I figured out I was good at reading the programming of the game, make a bunch of money and get really ahead." "We saw that legislation was coming out for marijuana. My friend and I did some research and spread our money into some penny stocks." "I started looking into .0001 stocks. I've been trying to sell some of these since 2014 but liquidity trap for sure." "I thought, oooh all IPO's go up right? I'm going to get in and get out but I couldn't get out quick enough." "I stopped putting money on the line to figure out why I was unable to predict the market right." "I used to have bollinger bands and histograms but didn't know what any of them meant. I thought I was cool like the Youtube videos." Links: Video: Sales Pitch or Belief

The concept is nothing new. For you longer time listeners, you've heard it time and time again... not to mention, you've probably done it yourself: make mistakes. Our guest, Thomas (alias in the chat room is "thwidra"), did exactly that, but he provides an excellent example of how traders need to blame themselves, not others, and then improve. He actually made some money at the start to, but quickly realized and admitted to himself it was pure luck and he had no idea what he was doing. Something that many new traders fail to realize (myself included when I was new!). He has had to do some reinventing of himself, but Thomas is progressing by leaps and bounds. Notes: Thomas began his trading in 2016 with mutual funds. After doing some research into the funds he had allocated, he saw that it was not increasing at an acceptable rate. After being unable to reach his advisor, he pulled out his funds and decided to take control of his money in the market. He found a site similar to iHub (message board for stocks) in Germany and after reading through the board a few times he decided to put some money into a few tickers. He admits that he got into a lucky trade which was a 100% gain but the important part is he realized this was pure luck. After some new found confidence based on his previous large winner, he started to purchase stocks while at work and then letting them sit. After reopening his broker account later in the day he saw that he was completely in the red and gave back half of his gains. Thomas did a great thing throughout all of this. He took complete responsibility and did not try to blame any external factors. Thomas learned not to put his whole account into one position and did a much better job of diversifying across multiple tickers. At this time he also found some of Clay's stock chart analysis videos and he saw the value in technical analysis and invested in his education to be a more knowledgeable trader. After going through some courses, Thomas began to paper trade but more so in hindsight. He realized the error of this and began to paper trade realistically. As he continues through the courses he continues to paper trade and hone his craft. Finding what works best BEFORE trading real money is a real key takeaway. Quotes: "I was not looking to trade penny stocks but what I noticed is that those people were looking at stocks with a low price." "At that time, SDRL reached its top and was falling down. It started climbing again but I thought it would break down." "I tried to search for some sort of holy grail. I tried to find some hot stock picks. This led me back to break-even." "It wasn't good paper trading. I didn't have a real plan in place. At this point I was struggling a bit with my emotions." "At the moment I'm not that confident. I won't go live until I have more confidence and paper trading experience."

Confidence is a great thing to have in the world of trading the markets, there is no doubt about it. With that being said, if you allow the confidence to transition into stubbornness, your trading capital is going to get smaller in size. Our guest, Tony ("TonyAcaiBowls" in the chat room), walks us through his journey where this whole idea played a pivotal role in creating some headaches. The one characteristic I need to give Tony credit for is his wild ambition, which is certainly a good thing; however, once again, too much of a good thing can be bad, as you'll see... Notes: Tony's introduction to the market started with his family having CNBC on the television while he was a child at home. Tony's father would watch it in an effort to keep an eye on the stocks he personally held. As he grew up and got to college there were not many majors that interested him but his interest in trading from childhood presented an opportunity so one of his majors included finance. After reading an article about a trader who turned a small sum into a few million, Tony decided to save up some money during college and get involved in trading. Realizing that he shouldn't jump in blindly, he was smart enough to invest his money in what he thought was a good training program but realized he needed to learn more. Tony decided to try a paid chat room subscription and puppet traded based off of alerts made there. While he increased his discipline, there were still a few trades he got stubborn with and this led to a large decline in his account from the losses. By no means is having confidence in a position a bad thing but as traders, risk management HAS to be on the forefront. After going down the rabbit hole of Stocktwits and other message boards, he started trading off of hype again. He came across Clay's stock chart videos and was intrigued at his unbiased analysis and started to realize that the charts tell a story which can help determine trading plans. He joined the community and was pleased with the lack of 'hype' and strict focus on technicals. This led him to join Claytrader University and now he is currently going through the courses. Quotes: "I came across this article about this guy who took $10,000 and turned it into 2 million. I thought 'wow, I want to do that.' " "I thought I could catch a bounce for 40c and make my money back. I was able to take a little profit but it wasn't a good trade." "I was holding and hoping. One trade I thought had to go down and that blew up a big portion of my portfolio." "You were analyzing these charts and were very unbiased. It helped me understand how the charts tell the story."

Yes, it is possible to make progress as a trader without spending a dime on education; however, you better have a great source of income via a normal J-O-B. This concept is exactly what we see unfold with our guest Mark Raison (same name in the chat room). He decided to venture the sea of free information himself, and it proved to be a very very costly and frustrating experience. In fact, listening back on the interview, I'd say he still has a ways to go in regards to a few areas, but with his good paying job in place, he can just keep inching along. Let this episode serve as a warning of just how tricky and difficult the "I will use free information" pathway of learning to trade can be. Notes: Mark considers himself an adrenaline junky. The surprising thing though is that he exhibits a great amount of risk management as he moved through his trading career. We generally see this the other way around. After searching around the internet, Mark realized that he wasn't going to buy into the nonsense marketing of living the 'yacht life' and making millions while trading on the beach with an iPad. He found Clay and recognized that he seemed down to Earth and had nothing to prove to anyone but Mark wasn't willing to put any money into his education yet. His internet research led him to find a million different strategies and he realized quite quickly that he needed to find what worked for him specifically by trying multiple indicators and moving averages. Mark started to put these strategies into practice and found out that his lack of live data wasn't good for trading news driven events. Unfortunately, he funded a live account and due to lack of proper risk management took a string of losers that ended that account. Mark was fortunate enough to have a good paying job to refill his trading account even though this wasn't ideal. It was able to give him peace of mind that he can continue to search for what works. Eventually he told himself he can't refill the account and had to work with what he had and be very selective. This led him to choose much more ideal setups instead of mediocre ones which has helped his profitability. Quotes: "I basically put money in and started trading blindly on the Toronto Stock Exchange. Over time I learned to trade the American market." "I didn't want to do any training. I didn't want to give someone else my money to learn or pay hundreds for a chat room." "Everybody needs to find their own trading style. It's one game played thousands of different ways." "You need to try different things. You need to know what works and what doesn't work with trial and error." "You should see what they are saying, why they are saying that, and then do your own search on why YOU want to trade it." Links: Video: Paper Trading: How to Properly Practice as a Trader

Did I ever think I'd "talk trading" with someone from El Salvador? Absolutely not! But hey, that's the great thing about the podcast, it is allowing us to hear about journeys from literally all over the world. We speak with chat room member, "DarthRay" about his journey, which includes getting lured into a group where the leader was eventually sent to jail for essentially operating a Ponzi scheme.. yikes! He was also doing some real time trading as he spoke with us, which prompted an on air coaching call to unfold. I don't want to ruin anything, so I"ll just say the interview was very unique, and I mean that in a good way :-) Notes: Darth has had an interest in sales and the market for many years. After going to university, he transitioned into full time employment but once he arrived he recognized that he didn't like the fact that he wasn't in charge of his time. He started to investigate other income sources and considering he has some family who are in the market, this led him to try his hand on a simulator first. Three years ago, Darth decided he wanted to find someone to learn from. He thought he could make a good living trading off of alerts from guru's. Unfortunately he had to learn the hard way that penny stocks generally move off an alert and then get offloaded into the sheep of the service. This led him to recognize he wanted to avoid penny stocks and trade options. After growing his account 300%, he unfortunately was involved in a ponzi scheme and gave all his gains back and more. The service he was using eventually closed and an investigation ensued so Darth went to find another service that hopefully wouldn't dupe him. This led him to Claytrader.com . As Darth has progressed through his education he has developed a solid routine to prepare for the market and to trade accordingly. He completely abides by good risk vs reward principles which leads to long term steady growth in his trading accounts. As Darth has progressed even through some hard trading times, he has learned so many lessons and learned the reality of what trading is. Patience, focus, education, and persistence are all great words to define his approach to the market and also his life. Quotes: "I traded 3 Yugioh cards for a Playstation and 5 games. That is when I felt the first rush of trading." "My paper trading was unrealistic. Basically I was lying to myself. I wasn't preparing with my real balance." "He told us to buy specific puts and calls. What we didn't know was that he was selling them to us." "I got a contract with a firm in Chicago and I'm going to open the first Latin American introducing brokerage." "I can lose up to 3 or 4 times but if I have 1 winning trade it makes up for those 4 and gives me a profit. I focus on the winners." "Never give up. This business is very hard. Never stop studying. The more I learn, the more I realize I have much more to learn."

Freedom of time is a very noble goal as it allows for you to pursue avenues of life that may not otherwise be realistic. This is what community member "Dukes" (same name in chat room) used as his motivation to learn how to trade the markets. By using trades as a vehicle to free up his time, Dukes is able to strive after his dreams of building upon his acting career. I really enjoyed this interview as it goes to show that trading does NOT "have to be" a full time thing. It can simply be a tool to help you get ahead in other areas of life, which Dukes is a pristine example of. Notes: Ben is currently pursuing his acting career and while on the journey he was a manager at a clothing store. Because of his position, he was given stock options and that led him to get interested in the market. He would take odd jobs here there as well to further his career along with decreasing the debt in his life. A key point here is that Ben didn't get into the market to 'get rich quick.' His interest in the market was to free up his time to pursue where his real passions are and after seeing Clay's live trading videos he thought the market would be a good way to supplement his income. Once his life was at a stable point (stability defined as clearing all his debts and not trading to 'make ends meet'), Ben opened up a trading account and just invested into household names as many new traders do. It oscillated up and down and he realized that he had much to learn if he really wanted to grow the account. After learning about technical analysis, risk management and options, Ben decided to focus on options specifically because of the significantly lower cost. Using the options as stock replacement has allowed him to trade larger names without putting his entire account in one trade. Ben strongly suggests that people spend more time paper trading since he only practiced for a short period of time. While everyone struggles with greed, especially when it comes to trading, it is so important to realize that trading is a business and a journey. It takes a healthy amount of time and effort. The slow and steady approach is the real way to improve upon yourself and your trading and Ben is a living example of this. Quotes: "I decided instead of a 1% savings account to try my luck in the market and I'm not too upset with what's been going on." tweet this quote "If I can replace a day's worth of work in 4 hours, I got my whole day to do all the things I want to do." tweet this quote "I was so completely ignorant to the way that everything worked that you couldn't even call it trading." tweet this quote "I'm definitely a option trader now. In doing so it helps me avoid pattern day trader. I like that I can get more bang for my buck." tweet this quote "Even though you don't want to you start to put the stop losses in. Sometimes you were just wrong and have to deal with it." tweet this quote "Spend a little more time getting educated before you start burning through your money." tweet this quote