Whoa there we are. Hey everyone Alright, I'll give you guys a second to get logged back in. live with Ross standing in front of the apartment where I lived ten years ago. this was before I started trading just before I moved back to Vermont move back in 2008-2009 Actually, yes, 2009 then I moved home and yeah I lived here when I dropped out of college the year after or yeah, that year after I dropped out of college the next fall that next winter I was living down here in this apartment.

It's kind of crazy to be back here I come down to the city from time to time but it's been I don't think I've come down here to this street in front of this building since I moved since I moved back home. So you know, thinking back like ten years ago, you know that might have been me walking down the street. I might have been me coming down the stairs to run out to go to the blockbuster you know, or go to the grocery store just down the street. and you know to think if I could have just like whispered in my ear me of today to me of that even just to say it's gonna be alright.

You know, right now life isn't as good as you might like it to be at that time. You know I was a college dropout you know, in a not a great room I wasn't in a particularly great relationship I didn't know what I was gonna do with my life, you know I was going through with a lot of people go through in their 20s which is like all right, you're out of high school, you're in college, but you don't know what you want to do. Take a break from college and then it's like the real world now. what are you going to do? How are you gonna pay your bills? How are you gonna get by and you know you gotta figure it out pretty quickly.

I Ended up getting a job at a Design Firm, Architecture and Design Firm down on 27th Street and I started riding my bike down there every morning to work and that was sort of the beginning of me having like a real job but it was not a it wasn't a really good fit for me. I didn't end up being really happy working. there was a lot of pressure, a lot of stress. It was a tiny little office with you know, ten of us sitting in a little like you shape.

but I wasn't making that much money. The rent here at this apartment ten years ago. it was sixteen hundred dollars a month for a studio and I was making 40,000 a year at that design firm. so that was pre-tax so you know after-tax was thirty something.

Thousand and half of that was going to rent. cost me a hundred bucks a week to keep my car parked in the garage. And what I used to do instead of keeping my car in the garage is I would park it in either in Brooklyn or in Queens in front of a friend's house and then that meant that in the middle of the week usually on Tuesday yeah Tuesdays I'd have to take the subway out to Queens to move my car for street cleaning. say you know take 40 minutes to get out there, move my car.

hopefully I'd find parking, drive in circles for a while behind a parking spot and then come back out here. and then if I was gonna go back up to Vermont for the weekend, go back out there Friday after work some weeks I just especially in the winter I Would just say you know what I'll just take the parking ticket. it's a $50 parking ticket that's half the price of parking in the garage. Here is that to make sure I pay the parking ticket each you know each week on time.

so I don't get my car towed but I did that for a while I just got a parking ticket once a week and dealt with it one one week I went out there and I had a flat tire I had to change the tire so you know between the rent the car you know and then you know life. I mean that only left about $200 $250 a week for for spending money you know I mean it was like that wasn't a lot and you know I'm standing here today today I made 1,500 bucks. Trading wasn't a great day, but I'm up almost half a million this year alone. you know, maybe millions of dollars and life is now completely different I mean it's it's completely different in the sense that I I don't have the stress of what am I gonna do with my life because I found my passion I found something that I love and that I'm excited about every single day which is day trading and and I love teaching.

You know I love everything that I do on Monday this last Monday I worked 14 hours I was in my office for 14 hours I got there at 8:00 right around 8 o'clock in the morning and I didn't leave until about 10:30 at night and as I was driving home and looking at the clock I was like you know what, when you love what you do, you don't work a day in your life and it's so true I love what I do I was teaching students from seven o'clock until you know ten o'clock and I loved it I mean it's just it feels good and even back in those days I was doing a little bit of teaching I was teaching summer ceramics classes and that was a lot of fun working with kids. So you know I think when I was in college during my first year I was going to school. hey Bud! Hey I was going to school hey yeah hi this okay hi hey mister hey you're so cute there he goes it's a cute dog. even when I was in college my first year I went to school for ceramics and I was trying to get a certification to be a teacher I was just going to school New Hampshire so New Hampshire state you know licensing to be a school teacher and I didn't really think that I was going to be a school teacher but I just figured that's at least making the most of a you know of an art degree.

at least if I have an art degree, get me certification to be a teacher so it's not total waste. So that's what I was doing and during the summers I was I was teaching ceramics at a little pottery studio but you know then things really kind of you know fell apart for me. I've had a couple times in my life where I was on a really good path and things were going good and then you know things sort of fell apart and that first time things fell apart for that that first time in that face of my life you know it was it came back to my my anxieties and my worries. this part of me that has just always been there and made it too difficult for me to go to class and the be around people and seems now like over stuff what would have been so hard about that but at the time it was I couldn't do it and so I dropped out of school and moved home and that's when you know my dad who hadn't been super healthy for a while was diagnosed with cancer and over the next two years you know I just watched him age it's just so fast every day's saw him get older and older you know and then he died and he was 61 years old and you know at that point I didn't know what I was gonna do with my life I you know was going back and forth between living here in this apartment and going up to Vermont to be with him you know I I was just I had no direction and you know for those of you that are in that place now you know maybe I can say to you that there is another side of it.

You know you will get through it and it's really hard to picture it right now I'm sure but you know it's just all you got to do is find what you love and it might take you 10 years to find. It might take you five years to find it, whatever. but when you find it, hold on to it and don't let go because that's the thing that's gonna get you motivated to get up every day. And just the reality is if you love what you do, you're gonna put in lots of time trying to, you know, make it your thing and you'll find success.

even if it is something it might not even be something that you might think is you're gonna make money on I mean it could be just look at, you know, Etsy.com and all the shops that people have doing crazy things like you know, crocheting hats for dogs and they've made a business out of it. You never think it's possible but they did. so you know has been crazy. it's been crazy ten years so finally you know when I kind of got back on a good path after about a year after my dad passed away.

I got that job working in the city and I went to Community College and I finished my degree I started a degree and I finished it and so you know I ended up getting my four-year degree I'm gonna start walking again because it's cold but there's the there's the old apartment see how am I good to us? So yeah I got that job at the design studio and at that point I was like wow this is my thing I love it it's I'd always been interested in design I was really into architecture and so I was like this is this is perfect This is what I always wanted but then after you know about a year working there those anxieties started to creep back in and I found it more and more and more difficult to go to work every day. and yeah, I get eventually got to a place where I was like I can't do this. This isn't the life I want to live I don't want to work in an office every day I don't want to have a boss looking over my shoulder every day I think that was what was causing me the most pressure was my boss looking over my shoulder every day. So I moved back up to Vermont and you know was like all right time to start over.

got to find a job and I ended up being fortunate that I was able to work for the guy that I've been working for here in New York remotely for almost another year and a half which was awesome because it allowed me to keep making some money. It's got a six Subaru You see the Subaru with the reindeer antlers I'm gonna hear it go by in a second. Oh there it is. Those are four of the meanest cylinders you've ever seen.

But yeah. so anyways, when I was back up in Vermont that's when I started trying to figure out you know what was I gonna do what was my day-to-day Well you know what was gonna be my new passion and it took a while. but you know as things started to get tighter and tighter on money I Had this memory of my friend an event who I talk about all the time who made $16,000 day trading a penny stock when we were in high school and he bought a Nissan Pathfinder he bought a big-screen TV for his bedroom surround sound the whole thing and he works now in Washington DC he's got a regular job but you know at the time it was like wow, that's huge and so when I was thinking about that in my like around 24 25 I was like you know what if he could do that we were 17 I can do that and it was right around that time that I got an inheritance from from my dad, had to wait until my sister's 18th birthday and then I got that and so I used that as my starting point that money I bought a little farmhouse in Vermont and I set out to learn how to day trade and I started by trading penny stocks I lost money, lost like 15 grand instantly and then I switched gears and started trading stocks like Apple and I wasn't able to make money on Apple and you know eventually I found my way to patterns like bull flags and flat top breakouts and I realized the stocks that respect them the most are between you know, three and ten dollars and that's what I've been trading ever since, so it's definitely been a journey. but you know Here I am on the other side and you know since since I figured it out.

since I had that that turning point, things have been pretty solid. You know I haven't had I haven't had like another one of those kind of like retracements of like success that I kept having where you know I'm doing well and then I'm not doing as well. Things have been pretty good I think the only area that has been hard for me still even still is you know the public speaking stuff which you know. fortunately I only do when I schedule it for myself and then anytime I schedule it I'm like why did you do that? This was just so stupid.

You know you're getting nervous about it, you know? So the last one I did was in Orlando was about a hundred and twenty people or so and and it was a good workshop. I mean it was really good and I did pretty well I think but you know that's the area now where I got an opportunity or an invitation to go speak at my I don't think it'll let me turn sideways if I turn it sideways. it says orientation is locked, rotor to rotate device backwards. but yeah, I got an opportunity to speak at the one of the schools that I went to and it's like yeah, just kind of preferred not to.

That's probably the one area that I still struggle a little bit and there'll be other people out there that are much more like for Garius and willing to be public speakers and everything else. And that's not my thing. but that's okay, you know. I'm also kind of at an age where I'm like maybe I've got some quirks.

you know I like what I like don't like what I don't like and I don't really need to change that. It's kind of okay with me. you know it's not holding me back too much and if I just keep kind of doing my little thing trading each morning, you know I can live a pretty pretty good life doing this. So where I'm at now? But ten years ago when I was walking around here, it was a very different story.

Check out that color of that BMW same colors. Let's go say something about the choice of color, but you know it's not that bad. That's nice. This place is still here.

Japanese The big losses. Yeah I had a couple big losses. The biggest loss was a 30,000 bucks that was. That was a tough one.

That was at a time where I thought I was finally getting it and I was doing better. and then you know I had sat back but I broke my rules and you know even today, if I break my rules, it wouldn't be unthinkable to have that kind of loss. So it's just the way it goes. Yeah that our GST lost that one.

yeah, I was around nine or ten grand or whatever. but that wasn't that bad really because at that point, like if I had that kind of a loss today, it would be disappointing. But you know now I've got the confidence that I've been doing this for so long that any big loss is just sort of an anomaly. So I'm just not worried about it, you know? I'll bounce back.

But anyways, let's see. looking at the time, it's about four o'clock Yeah, four o'clock my battery's getting a little low. so I think I'm gonna I'm gonna go get a couple things done. but yeah, just want to come on here and say what's up.

Talk a little bit about my journey over the last ten years and I'll see you guys back in the chatroom. hopefully tomorrow. or if not, tomorrow on. Monday Alright everyone, I'll see you guys later.