The Stock Trading Reality Podcast

For some people, they need to grow up fast and get the ax to the grindstone right away. Our guest from the chat room, Ricky, fits that description perfectly. Due to some rough patches in his personal life when he was young, he was forced to grow up and become "the man of the house" very early in life. This personality dynamic has given a very interesting outlook on not only trading, but life in general. It was very refreshing to sit back and listen to someone who has been through a lot, but never made excuses for themselves. There is a lot to be learned from this experience. Notes: Like many of our guests, Ricky was introduced to the market via his economics class with a paper portfolio.’ Ricky was forced to be the man of the house at a very early age and this led him to find the drive to take his education and finances into his own hands and push forward into what interested him. While trying to accumulate education related to trading, Ricky realized very quickly that there is so much information spread out erratically across the internet. After frequenting lots of message boards and seeing the ‘poison’ of opinion, Ricky decided to invest in his education with his hard earned dollars. Ricky recognized that he is much better at taking logical trades on a higher timeframe. This gives the brain much longer to process and form plans that prevent you from taking a trade ‘on a whim’ or because you need the ‘action.’ With a set of criteria, Ricky is able to identify stocks that are aligned on multiple time frames and have momentum indicators showing an increase. He developed this system himself and the important part is that it works for him! Trading techniques certainly have an element of personal touch and what works for him may not works for others. Quotes: “I figured nobody is going to take care of my money the way I will.” tweet this quote “In life, it’s all about the process. It’s not about being right. It’s about doing it right.” tweet this quote “I need to see things move up and down and that’s why day trading for me isn’t my strong suit.” tweet this quote “Charts definitely can’t see the future. You can see the indecision, the strength at support or at resistance with good chart vision.” tweet this quote

We have almost done 50 episodes, but this interview is a first for both Chezz and I. Our guest, Tony ("elkhuntn" in the chat room), had his journey start by literally working for a penny stock company that was in the mining sector. Can you say "shady???" By getting an inside look at penny stocks, this gave Tony a very unique start to his journey which contains many twists and turns. It was an enjoyable interview that includes what I find to be very valuable nuggets of wisdom that can only be gained through experience. Notes: Tony worked for a very small mining company that was publicly traded and this is what led him to get interested in penny stocks. After losing a little bit of money, he decided to invest in his education and learned about penny stocks from Clay. After moving away from penny stocks, Tony hit some fools gold trading options right away but as most fools gold goes, he gave it back relatively fast. Even with some nice size gains on a few trades, just a few 100% losses in options completely wiped out his gains and then a majority of his account. Recognizing that he needed to focus on his strategy to emphasize consistency, Tony now has a set basket of options stocks he watches and utilizes the same setups over and over when he is able to be at the computer trading. Tony has time to trade in the morning before he starts work so he can focus on strictly day trading. With some self diagnoses, we determine that if he had only traded the morning session and skipped the rest of the day he would go from being red on the year to green. Less really is more in trading. Quotes: “Working at penny stock company, I pretty much quit trading penny stocks after better understanding how they worked.” tweet this quote “I have a hard time paper trading but if I take a really small positions I can at least be honest about it.” tweet this quote “I denied the losses at first. It didn’t slow me down like it should have. It should have been a red flag but it wasn’t.” tweet this quote “If I would just trade the first hour of the day, I would be green for the year.” tweet this quote Links: Course: The Penny Stock Survival Guide Video: About Pattern Day Trader Rules

At this point, hopefully I don't need to say much because you are already "in deep" with this member's journey and looking forward to hearing the conclusion. If you're not aware, this is Part 2 of our interview with chat room member "MR", so if you have not listened to Part 1, then be sure to go listen to Episode #46. Without further adieu, let's get right back into the action... Notes: When he arrived at the Inner Circle, MR was blasted for talking about fundamentals. His biggest use for a chart was to see where all time highs/lows were and if he was close. After going through CTU, he started to focus on smaller timeframe equities to apply what he just learned. This eventually led him to trading the futures market which meshed with MR’s appreciation and study of the overall market movements. MR went from a long term tech supply chain investor who used fundamentals to a trader who is capable of trading time frames as small as the 2 minutes. This is a shining example that if anyone is willing to put in the effort to learn how to trade with technical analysis they can do it. Quotes: “I’ve made trades where I made $1600 bucks. Well actually, we lost $200 bucks because it was $1800 in commission.” tweet this quote “In stocks, I see value there and I find it hard to short sell that value. But in the market indexes, I just see it as bulls and bears.” tweet this quote “As soon as you lose your plan and won’t admit your plan is going wrong, you’re going to lose it. You’ll get buried.” tweet this quote “Be realistic, don’t be greedy, stick to the plan, don’t listen to anyone but yourself and when the market isn’t safe, get out.” tweet this quote Links: Course: The Trading Freedom Pathway

This was supposed to be a single interview, but as we chatted and got sucked into the story, we had no other choice to be break it up into a two part interview. Chat room member "MR" breaks down his journey with us which is truly fascinating. He's been around for a long time and has seen multiple Bull and Bear markets, including some epic "bubble pops". This included oa "pop" that took his seven figure portfolio down to below zero... in other words, he owed his broker money! Get ready for a wild ride! Notes: At a young age, MR was able to witness his parents retire at a very young age and started to wonder how we would achieve a similar feat in his lifetime. After graduating high school and college, MR joined the same electrical union many of his family members were in. While working in the field for 5 years, he had accumulated a good amount of money as he continued to live a very frugal life. MR was put in touch with an accounts manager at a brokerage house and after much resistance from this person, he agreed to take on MR’s account. While MR ideally wanted to be very aggressive (considering he was a 25 year old), he decided to respect the manager's style of trading the market conservatively. To move toward something more aggressive, MR decided to open a smaller account at another firm and strictly focus on the supply chain for these major tech companies that were booming. Toward the end of the dot com bubble, MR suffered a huge portfolio swing which just about wiped him out. This has helped him recognize various topping patterns which serve as warning signs for him to close positions and stay in cash. MR went back to his roots and traded suppliers for various tech names and not only recouped his losses from earlier but took it to new all time highs. Quotes: “I asked my boss how he was going to retire. He said ‘the working man is a sucker. You gotta be in the stock market.’” tweet this quote “I really knew nothing about the stock market besides it was a way to retire early.” tweet this quote “I did not want to take the risk buying a ‘.com’ website. I wanted to be involved with their suppliers.” tweet this quote “This space was on fire and I had dollar signs in my eyes. I was margined heavily. Seven-figures margined.” tweet this quote “On December’s closing statement my account was over 7 figures then March 31st my statement was -20,000 dollars.” tweet this quote “People don’t understand how much of it is psychological. I believe I punished myself for all the people who got hit by not selling.” tweet this quote Links: Blog: Most Effective Order Entry Blog: How To Make $51,000 In A Single Day Guide: Futures, What are They and How Do I trade Them?

The marketing out there is crazy. Fancy cars, mansions, beautiful women, exotic vacations... all intended to fill your mind with how the stock market can give you a life of pure perfectness. This is all twisted to imply that with the right strategy or system, it all "happens quick". So, how does the get-rich-quick hidden promise play out in reality? That's what we discuss with chat room member Exploerer76 ("E76" for short). He started out with this mindset and has since ended up with a much different view. Let's connect all the dots in between.... Notes: Explorer76 didn’t get involved in trading until some of his coworkers told him that they were day trading during the work day (when it was slow). One of the members of Mike’s band was heavily involved in the financial market and he looked to him for advice. His advice was to put his money into no load mutual funds since he could self direct his retirement account. After some big changes in his life (both work and personally), that retirement account had to be purged so now Explorer had to start fresh and was looking for a way to get rich quick. After investigating many traders who promised ‘quick riches,’ he came to the realization that when it seems too good to be true it usually is. In 2015, some old accounts that were locked came back into Explorer’s possession and this would soon turn into his trading account (to which he was ready to apply his new found trading education). Instead of shooting for home runs, Mike is now trading advanced options and going for base hits over and over again with a high probability of success. Quotes: “Wow these day traders are so edgy! They’re taking chances and that was so cool. I wish I could do that but never did.” tweet this quote “I tried shorting the market but I couldn’t figure it out with the mutual funds. Ultimately, I just held what I originally had.” tweet this quote “I’m thankful I was smart enough to realize there are no shortcuts to learning how to trade stocks.” tweet this quote “What’s that saying? You’ll never plow a field if you only turn it over in your mind. I wanted to get in there with real money.” tweet this quote “Honestly, I look at the chart more than anything. I draw lines all over my charts and that’s how I start making decisions.” tweet this quote Links: Course: The Trading Freedom Pathway Here is a live video from that band playing a cover of a song from the band Killswitch Engage: youtube.com/watch?v=Eap1zTa8afI These are a couple live videos of the band I was in prior to the above band: youtube.com/watch?v=uuS5qDXfK3g - youtube.com/watch?v=4HogPZUlBzQ

It might sound a bit backwards, but "going small" in order to get "big results" is something that is overlooked in the world of trading all the time. Our guest, Chad (same name in chat room), explains this bizarre concept via the journey he has been on, and is currently still exploring. Although only being involved in the markets for a relatively short amount of time, Chad has already been through a lot and learned many valuable lessons which he graciously passes on to the listeners. Notes: Chad first got interested in trading after setting up a Roth IRA and decided that he wanted to make his riches with penny stocks. He did some googling for hot penny stocks and eventually found a list of high volume names and did his message board research to see what others thought would go up. After finding quick success in his first penny stock trade, his profits soon turned into losses and that’s when Chad decided he needed to learn more about technical analysis before he traded again. As he went through the courses, he was paper trading alongside of it (which we recommend). However, he was not using realistic trading size so this did not help him prepare for the live market when he decided to return. After a few rough trades when he went live, Clay helped Chad realize he could trade smaller than 100 share lots which still helps him get used to having money on the line (and deal with the voices that appear when money is on the line). Even though Chad is in the beginning stages of his journey now, he is taking steps to ensure he is forming good, consistent habits which will eventually turn into long term consistent gains. He, like many others, approached this as a way to get rich quick but was quickly humbled by the penny stock market. He knows what he excels at and where he is weak. With that knowledge he is capable of fixing the issues and improving. Quotes: “There was about 2 weeks where the stock doubled. I thought ‘this is going to be my new job.’ The next day it tanked.” tweet this quote “Here I am paper trading 1000 shares and making 2,600 dollars in a few minutes. It was very unrealistic.” tweet this quote “One of the things I’ve learned from you guys is to create good habits.” tweet this quote “Now when I take a loss it’s just like ‘okay, it broke support or resistance and I don’t want to be in it anymore." tweet this quote

Have you been here before? You place your buy order, it executes, and then down...down...down... the price goes. This is where our guest, Jules (same name in chat room), found himself during the early part of his trading journey. Wandering the world of penny stocks, Jules located himself a good ol' fashioned pump-and-dump to blindly buy. After this experience, Jules found himself needing to find a new way if he was going to survive in the world of trading. Where did he go from here? What has he learned so far? That and much more in our interview. Notes: Jules introduction to the market was based on someone he idolized in the professional Call of Duty scene that was talking about how well he was doing in marijuana penny stocks. After funding his account, he decided to follow trades from a known stock pumper on Twitter. Jules was just blindly puppet trading him in an effort to emulate the success of one of his idols that introduced him to the market. Jules went through Penny Stock Survival Guide in a very short time and after he completed that course, he closed out all of his penny stock trades leaving him with about 15% of his initial account left. After learning about options, Jules was swing trading advanced options making weekly income by selling out of the money spreads. These are Jules ‘set and forget’ trades (to which he now checks on daily to ensure they are acting how he would like). Jules recognized that his over confidence is something he needs to keep in check but by abiding by his trading rules, he is establishing good habits that can lead to long term success. Quotes: “I dropped 10,000 into an account and as soon as it was ready I jumped in headfirst.” tweet this quote “I literally bought the top. I bought the day it stopped moving up. It never moved up further than the point I bought it.” tweet this quote “You have a higher percent of profitability when you are selling options. You can profit in many different ways.” tweet this quote “My directional trading wasn’t good at the time. For the last 3 months I’ve been paper trading and it has helped a lot.” tweet this quote “When I take a loss, it’s just part of the game. I just move onto the next trade. Wipe it off and move on.” tweet this quote Links: Course The Penny Stock Survival Guide

The one thing that amazes me is despite the fact that many guests have had "wild journeys", there is always a unique little twist that people bring to the table. This show's guest, Jaime (goes by the same alias in the chat room) first got started trading mutual funds. A pretty bizarre thing, but an interesting way for sure to get him interested in trading in general. From there, Jaime made many pit stops along the way until now where he has arrived at BEING the casino in options trading. Notes: Jamie joined the Navy at a young age and they had him set up a retirement account. He had set the account to take 10% of his income every paycheck and didn’t check on it for years. After a few years he started to investigate various funds and attempted to catch the top and bottom of the line graphs for fun. It was only after he got in trouble for too many transfers that he once again let the retirement account sit. Seven years later, Jamie revisited the market after hearing coworkers talking about the marijuana penny stock boom. The interesting thing is that he didn’t actually trade penny stocks until a few years later. That phenomenon was just the catalyst that rekindled his market interest. After putting his entire account in the Facebook IPO, he stumbled upon Claytrader from a Youtube video and that led him to the education available to further his skills and become more proficient in technical analysis and trading. Jamie has found great success selling options premium on expiration Friday with 2 hours left in the session. To translate, Jamie is selling options to folks who are looking for large outlandish move at the end of the session. The probabilities are highly in his favor that a move that large will not happen and this leads him to capture the entire profit. Quotes: “I decided to see if I could find the top and find the bottom of these funds. After 2 months I got in trouble for too many transfers.” tweet this quote “I was using CNBC to scan and it would list the top losers for the day which I would then buy.” tweet this quote “I found that options premium in the first 15 minutes gets skyrocketed or drops out during that time.” tweet this quote “I wish I would have stuck with regular stocks instead of trying penny stocks. I wouldn’t have taken the time off from my losses.” tweet this quote Links: Podcast: Episode 34

Well... this episode may be ground breaking, or a total train wreck, but we're about to find out. ClayTrader.com has officially been active for two years now, so I wanted to try something different to celebrate this event. Chezz and I decided to bring back some past/former guests and just shoot the breeze and talk about whatever topics organically popped up. We talk about everything from hateful emails to trade management to favorite memories thus far about the community. We all had a great time doing this, so I hope you enjoy it as much as we did! Notes: In this episode we are celebrating the 2 year anniversary of Claytrader.com . We have RD, Nate Wilson, and Doc as guests this week and will be discussing various topics we encounter in trading. Topics discussed in this episode include: Passing blame upon someone else instead of owning up to your decisions and mistakes. Liquidity problems in penny stocks, stocks, and options. The addiction that we call trading and the pitfalls of overtrading (and how to avoid it). The importance of a trade plan. How low the barrier to entry is for trading and how that hurts new traders who are uneducated and treat it like gambling. Our favorite memories from the Inner Circle over the past 2 years. Quotes: “I think he was hoping for Clay to wave his magic wand and make his problems disappear.” tweet this quote “You can buy it. Someone will be happy to sell it to you but good luck trying to get out of it.” tweet this quote “For me, winning streaks is like crack cocaine. It just gets to where I can’t get enough of it.” tweet this quote “There is more to a trade plan than ‘I’m going to buy and it will be a swing trade.’ That’s not a trade plan.” tweet this quote “There are zero shortcuts in this game but it’s been the most fulfilling and challenging thing I’ve done in my entire life.” tweet this quote

There is one thing that stops many people dead in their tracks before they ever get started in the markets: FALSE assumptions. That was the case for today's guest, chat room member "Zep". For the longest time his mind created a faulty illusion about how the markets actually worked causing him to avoid getting involved. He finally was able to overcome this illusion and is now going strong in his journey as a trader. He has done quite a bit right in his journey so far, but like anyone who is being honest, he's also experienced some bumps. Notes: Zep was a musician on a cruise ship for quite a few years but came to realize that he wanted the ability to be more selective in choosing his gigs. He wanted to have a music job and a ‘numbers’ job. After joining Robinhood (commission free broker), we placed his first trade and made 3 dollars. This opened his eyes to take his finances into his own hands. He realized that it would be in his best interest to get educated so he dove straight into the courses from here. On a $10,000 account, he had grown his account to 23,000 in just a few trades. Zep was smart enough to realize that he might be losing control of his risk management and decided to scale back. Even while finding success relatively fast, Zep realizes that he is very fresh on his path to consistent profitability. He strives for perfection and this takes its toll on him when trades go against him but the more seat time he accumulates, the more comfortable he will become with his proper trade management habits. Quotes: “The market always seemed inaccessible to me. Like there was a barrier there or you needed a ton of money.” tweet this quote “I would be up until 8 in the morning studying, take a 20 minute nap and then wake up for market open to watch the action.” tweet this quote “If I would have just slept in, I would have been up 2 or 3 thousand dollars.” tweet this quote “Options will bite you fast. That’s the cool thing about them is you can make high percentages but the opposite is also true.” tweet this quote Links: Course: Robotic Trading Blog: The Most Effective Order Entry Breakout Chart Band: Older American Junk Band: KyleMenga.com