Famously I Read on Twitter that you turned three thousand dollars into 1.6 million in less than two years. That's right, because if you're trading on scared money probably won't end well. It's a lot of pressure and it could crumble. Yeah, and scared money don't make money.

And if you're trying to make the jump from a nine to five person to a full-time Trader then you need to make it worth your while with enough Capital Earned on these plays. How to create a highly profitable trading system Today we're gonna be learning from Chris Verma A Very Profitable Systematic Trader Chris has been inspiring many other Traders through sharing his knowledge and trading executions. on: Twitter He famously turned three thousand dollars into 1.6 million in less than two years. I'm really honored today to have Chris on the Humble Traders podcast to teach you his strategies and systematic approach if you're serious about becoming a better.

Trader This episode today will answer some of your biggest trading concerns such as: how to create a profitable trading system, how to become more consistent with your executions, how to back test your child allergies and improve your executions Chris's opinion, automated trading, and how to overcome a losing streak. As a Trader it takes us a lot of time to organize and plan these trading lessons for you. so if you're learning a lot from these videos, please make sure to smash the like button. And don't forget to share this lesson with your trading partners.

Welcome! Chris Welcome to the show! Thank you Shay Pleasure I'm glad we finally can make this happen! Yeah, it's been a long time. yeah. I've been following you on Twitter for a while because I think everyone, including your followers they know you as a very systematic Trader right? And that's how you found a lot of your trading success. That's right, how long have you been Trading systematically? Um, I would say about six years now.

Oh wow, Yeah, but I started with more of a discretionary approach and I think that once I found success with a systematic approach, it just kind of stuck. Okay, so how many years did you into your trading? Journey you said six years did you actually transitioned into tracking everything and becoming more systematic with your trading approach? Well, I think it starts with back testing for me to find conviction in a trade I need to have the data to support the actions that I'm taking. So when I first started as a discretionary, Trader I was more or less just clicking buttons and I think a lot of us have been guilty of this at some point. so it was after that I lost probably a hundred thousand dollars of my own money just kind of clicking buttons and paying my market tuition if you will.

a very expensive one because I had a successful sports betting career before I came into stocks and I thought it would just be so easy to transition into it and it was a bit of a mistake on my part, but it was a learning process and then once I lost that money I I deep dove into back testing and from there I transitioned into a systematic. Trader once I found the data and you know, small cap edges. Mostly on the short side because we found that a lot of these stocks would fade off if they gapped up or if they were spiking really high and that is what gave me the conviction to put money on these trades and become a Pure system. Trader Oh wow.

Okay, I didn't realize he had lost a hundred thousand dollars before. That's a hefty uh Market tuition. Yeah, it was quite painful, but you know I think it was necessary for me to kind of teach me that this is not going to be easy. and I'm about to start from scratch and you know I I use trade IDs back testing to really hone in on my ideas.

So I would see these patterns occurring on the tape and then the charts. but then I'm thinking how can I turn this into a system with defined rigid boundaries, entry criteria, position sizing, profit targets, stop losses All of this stuff was just guessing. if I were to look at chart patterns and try and and and figure out what was happening based on that. So once I was able to export data from Trade ideas into Excel then I could see.

Okay, this is making sense if we use a 20 stop and a 20 profit. Target And you know a 30 position size. so I would tweet I would tweak and play with all these numbers to maximize the yield. and then once I saw that it worked through the back tests, that's what gave me the conviction to put real money on these trades.

I see And it's also with that system that you are you start sizing in more, right? because eventually you recover from the 100K loss. Yeah, and Google account famously. I Read on Twitter that you turned three thousand dollars into 1.6 million in less than two years. That's right.

That was during The Covid Craze so it started in December of 2019. I Started with that 3K account at trade zero and by February of 21, I was able to turn it into seven figures and all with the same strategies that we used today, just shorting the parabolic moves. And it was during that phase that we had so many plays each day. I Remember, you know 10, 20, 30 plays a day.

It was amazing and yeah, the beauty of that is that the action was so spread out and there was so much volume. Let's say you took a loss early in the day, you would still have four or five more plays coming to make it back. So if on most days you were closing green and that just kind of gave you confidence to keep going. Keep sizing up and just that repetition and practice of having that non-stop action.

So what's your process like when you're tracking these different strategies that fit your system? do you have? Let's say do you use Excel spreadsheets I know you mentioned trade ideas for back testing. Could you kind of walk us and I'll viewers through how you would create a profitable system and how many uh homing data sets you need to prove that it's worth worthwhile for you to put your capital in right? Good question but also a very difficult one. So what I like to do is run long-term back tests. So I'll have an initial idea like let's say I want a short a stock that's going up 20 in 20 minutes.

So at that point what happens afterwards I See So if we track the last 100 times that occurred in the stock market, what were the averages right? how far did it close from that point, how far did it? Spike From that point and when we use the Excel spreadsheets, we can run back tests and I have a lot of these templates on my website so people can you know view that as well. Okay, and once we see that from the back test that okay, this stock after spiking up usually Fades off ten percent then we can find an edge through that a mathematical Edge and from that we can use Kelly Criterion and other mathematical Concepts to maximize our profits on these moves. I See So that's how you would first discover a strategy, right? Okay, and then you track. do you export all the data that say, how many data sets do you need to to kind of prove to yourself and analyzing the data that this thing has? Let's say um, 70 win rate and you can make at least 20 yield like how many data set do you need from that? Well, in terms of the sample size, I have more confidence in a larger sample and also over a larger period of time.

So I would say at least like 200 data points you want in your database to have a lot of confidence in it and you also want it spanning over a six month period or longer because if the data is too congested in one time frame, then maybe the market cycle was just very favorable for that pattern. And it was just a small time frame thing, but on a larger scale it's not as effective. It makes sense. So that's why we look at yearly data usually four years.

I look back until 2019 to make sure that a pattern consistently performs and there's not too much fluctuation in the returns for a year. Oh interesting, yeah. I Noticed I Said in the summer months small caps are generally you might see a play like every couple of days, so in the summer months and that probably kind of skews your data or do you size down during particular months of the year and then size up more during the other times that fit your strategy and your data. I Would say my sizing is mostly based on the liquidity and the volume of the stock in play.

so if it's a low volume play, then I'll try to keep my volume low because I don't want to stand out too much whereas if it's higher volume then we can probably size it a little more and be more comfortable getting in and out of the position without causing any liquidity problems. I I know you just mentioned Kelly Criterium Yeah, I Also, just I had to look up what that is a couple days ago when I Was preparing to talk to you. so if you don't mind, could you explain to our audience what is Kelly criteria and what's the pros and the cons of using it in trading? Okay, so the Kelly Criterion is more of a gambling based mathematical formula so they use it A lot of things like Blackjack sports betting where the probabilities are known whereas in trading it's not as black and white, so it's a little harder to apply the Kelly Criterion but I still think it's a good sizing way to maximize your bankroll growth and try and compound and account aggressively. Now I Do see a lot of the the criticisms against it when it's applied to trading and this is where we use fractional Kelly Stakes So we use a very small percentage of the suggested Kelly size.

So this way we kind of protect ourselves from over leveraging our account because the biggest danger of using a Kelly Criterion sizing is that if you risk too much, you can actually negate your Edge mathematically. And if you risk too little, then you also under capitalize on some of these setups because in small caps, there's not as many opportunities as there was during the coven. Market Yeah, you have to. You have to be fearful of under capitalizing just as much as over capitalizing because there aren't as many opportunities.

And if you're trying to make the jump from a nine to five person to a full-time Trader then you need to make it worth your while with enough Capital earned on these plays. So I think aggressive but smart sizing is recommended and that's what the Kelly cried Cedar and especially the fractional Stakes helps you do okay. So for example, that's A in a regular Market you will use uh I Know the formula is something along the lines of account size times your win rate and then divide by your Edge percentage. That's right, right? and then that's A that gives you a number That's just okay.

let's just say a thousand dollars. So that's it. In a normal Market you would risk a thousand so that's and that's it in, you know, solar markets less liquidity like right now. would you go 0.5 or 0.3 of that Kelly stake.

So what I normally do is like 0.25 to 0.3 Oh okay, so I use a fractional Kelly stake and this helps prevent oversizing and negating your Edge through aggressive sizing and it also helps with your execution. This is something that I've really worked on this year is trying to reduce my emotions and my stress during trading because if you're too emotional then it doesn't really matter what your edges or what your Kelly size is, you're probably not going to execute it that well. So keeping your emotions and your stress levels under control is really important to helping you profit be profitable long term. I See, yeah, but it's also with Kelly criteria now.

you're probably able to stay with a trade even if it's going against you for like a couple percent, right? Because I I Understand, From reading your tweets, you do use wider stops, but that also allows you to write out the the when the stock in, write it out until the stock eventually reverse and to hit your profit goals. That's right. Okay, because in small caps, there's a lot of fake out moves. Yeah, we're trying to get people to stop out because a lot of people are shorting these moves.

So instead of trying to get perfect entries or trying to tape read or do any of these chart analysis, we just let the stop work for us and say we're not going to touch this unless it hits my 20, 20 or 30 stop and majority of the time it will fail before hitting the stop and then you're in the profit and then you can. You take your profits and you just repeat that process over and over. whereas I see a lot of Traders trying to read chart patterns and tape reading and level two analysis and those things may work for them. But I Just think they're very discretionary approaches.

They're very subjective in nature and they're also very hard to teach right. It just takes a lot of screen time, a lot of experience, and a lot of intuition to be profitable trading in those methods. Whereas if you're a pure system Trader you can basically be profitable from day one with little to no experience. Oh wow.

Really? Okay, yeah because there's very defined, rigid entry and exit criteria, stops, targets, sizing, It's all kind of laid out and you just kind of follow the plan. We are incorporating a little bit more discretion now just to oh okay, just to be a little bit harder to predict our movements. but I would say you know it's 80 system 20 discretion. So I guess I guess Pros or the benefits of um, doing systematic trading with especially with Kelly Criterion Is that is it true that you don't really need to? Like you said, rely on level two.

No price action? Okay, but just volume is a factor. Yeah, still okay. Yeah, There's a lot of criteria that we look for in a volume is probably the most important one, especially that I've honed in on this year and I'm trying to focus on lower volume plays because what I found is that the higher the volume, the more likely that it's going to be manipulated. It's going to be crowded, there's going to be a lot of games, a lot of action that are is not favorable to a short seller, so avoiding volume in my opinion, is one of the biggest things that you can do as a short seller.

Okay, and does it help with your emotions? Do you feel like obviously there will always be some emotions involved? But does it do you feel like you stay a lot calmer trading, especially when you're sized up. But you're trading a strategy that you know has a high win rate 100 because that's where my conviction comes from. Yeah, I found so many times that I would take a non-system trade. Let's say out of boredom or if I was you know Revenge trading something yeah, I wouldn't have the same conviction in that because there's no data behind it.

I'm just kind of guessing that's when you get actually emotional because you know you don't have the exactly Edge makes sense. So I try to stay on course as long as I can and just follow my system and so many days that I won't have a trade and I'm okay with that, right? I Think a good skill of a Trader is being patient, being disciplined, and being able to sit on your hands when there's no action. right? Instead of forcing trades where you don't have an edge or you're just guessing. Okay Traders I Hope you take Chris's advice seriously.

don't let your emotions get in the way and start forcing traits. If you resonate with his advice on Trader psychology, please remember to drop a like on the video. I Noticed that you mentioned a lot of Short Selling or how many strategies are you kind of regularly playing right now and are they all on the short side? Yes. So we have basically three main strategies that I use.

One is a parabolic short that I recently tweeted about and this is the same strategy that I've used. you know for years now and have had most of My Success with this same pattern, so start going up very quickly. usually has some mean reversion and reverses and comes down especially on low volume small caps. They're very manipulated so they can easily drop back down to where they came.

Okay, whereas if a more legitimate stock did that, a blue chip stock or a higher volume stock, you wouldn't expect the same reversal because the move might be more legitimate. Okay, so the main pattern that I do is shorting parabolic stocks and then also I short gappers that are Shoring weakness. So let's say 100 Gap or if it starts fading from the open then that kind of confirms the pattern that it's a weak stock, that it might be a dilution play and then I might short it and then ride the wave down. Okay, and one other pattern that I use is a backside short.

Okay, so it's basically a parabolic stock that hasn't met the criteria for a frontside entry, but it may be valid on the back side to take for an entry. Let's say if it's up 50 percent, the volume is decreasing and then it will trigger on our scanners and then we can enter and then and safely ride it back down. So uh, this super para setup on the short side I also saw this on your Twitter that you it's uh, has an aggregated win rate of 84. That's right.

Okay, so did you. Was this invented or you started tracking it this year and you started trading the setup. So this is a setup that I introduced in April and it's kind of an evolution of our original setup, which is the parabolic short the P20 I called it okay and it's basically over years of refining and Data Tracking that we've been able to improve upon our original idea which was already a very strong strategy a strong pattern, but we were able to improve upon that in terms of the metrics and the execution just from our own personal experience because as strong as a back test is, it doesn't have that. Personal Touch right? If it doesn't have your own personal experience trading it like years and years of seeing the same patterns where you can pick up on small nuances.

And that's what we were able to do with the Super Para. And since introducing it, the win rate has been incredible 84 percent and getting very high average gain per trade over 10 percent even though the back test would indicate a lot lower because we've been able to incorporate some of our discretion into the trades and cut some plays that are, you know, not behaving properly. If they're not working right away, we're not getting that instant resolution, then we're losing patience on the trade and quicker quicker to bail out. whereas if it is paying instantly and it's working right away, then we're a little more patient because it's kind of showing that it's working, it's behaving properly, and that it's going to continue.

Kind of fading in our Direction So on a high level, how would you teach someone? Let's say someone approaches you today. How would you teach someone brand new this super parent setup? Like a high level rough idea? What Is the Super Para setup on the short side, right? So it's basically a strong parabolic move in under 30 minutes. So my criteria is roughly 30 in 30 minutes. Okay, so if a stock goes up that amount, at least that amount has other certain variables that I can't really discuss.

But that's the main criteria for the short. for the short: I See. So as soon as it triggers that criteria on our trade idea scanners which I've coded, it will trigger the entry price and you know the ticker symbol, the time, all that information, and then all of that is given to you. You just enter that into your broker with a certain amount of shares that we use based on the Kelly Criterion which is optimal sizing.

I See and then we use. We've introduced some more scaling now, so it's not a pure fixed stop. let's say 20. There is some scaling, so we may add a little bit higher.

So the approach is a little bit more complicated now, just so that we're a little harder to track our movements and Algos can't really trade against us. Yeah, so that we, you know, can kind of avoid the typical short Stater short short seller approach. So our approach now is that we just want to short these parabolic moves with our scaled entries. Okay, and then we're also taking covers with more discretion and you're looking for let's say 30.

Move up. You enter and then you what's kind of like the expected yield. let's say a 20 move down that you cover. It also depends on how extended the stock is on the day, right? If it's only up 30 on the day, then our profit Target would be a bit lower because we can't expect it to drop 50 from there right? But if it's up 100 on the day, then the profit targets would be a little wider because there is more expected fade if a stock is more extended.

Okay, so all of these things we track from the data and we can say all right, if a stock is more extended, should we hold for a 40 Target or 30 Target or if it's just up 20 30 percent, then should we shorten our targets? So everything is based on the large sample back tests and everything's predetermined. That's the beauty of systematic trading, right? More or less? Yeah, Okay, so you your entry is predetermined your potential Target depends on the percentage Gap and the only thing that's discretionary is your ads and covers right around those lines. Okay, very interesting. Yeah, and is that kind of your favorite setup this year? Well, I've made the most money on it.

So yeah, yeah, okay, that's good. Okay so we just heard about the beauty of uh, systematic trading and it sounds like it sounds like it removes a lot of the Traders problems like emotional issues or like finding place Because now you can code your scanner to find plays for you right? So the only thing left that still requires human or manual entry is the execution part. That's right. So how as a Trader How long did it take for you to be consistently able to execute those desired systems that you created and any tips for? Traders Who are you know kind of struggling with consistency in their executions, right? Very good question.

I Think what helped me the most is just Years of Gaming experience and being very quick gaming experience. Yeah Oh okay. which games did you play I don't know like Counter-Strike yeah Starcraft Okay, all the typical games and these games will help you with your mouse speed. Keyboard speed, Just being able to type things quickly.

Nothing where to find what you're looking for and it's just practice and repetition at the end of the day. So it takes you a couple of years before you really know how to execute the trades properly and quickly because in this small cap Realm Speed is everything. So many times so many times you'll find that a stock is spiking up and 10 seconds later it's back down. So if you don't have your orders ready, your locate's ready your you know everything ready to go and every little step.

I Try to shave time off so with trade ideas you can do something called symbol linking. Okay or if you click on the symbol it will automatically link it to your broker so you don't have to type it in the level two so that shaves off time right. And then you can locate your shares. So if you have your your position sizing we have these little cheat sheets I call them and all you have to do is type in the locate price, the entry price.

It will tell you exact number of shares to put in. So when okay when you streamline all of these little things it helps you get in faster and that's your Edge over the competition. I See So this is something that we practice and I really preach this. Just try and get in faster and practice executing the trades.

even with small size use hotkeys. The probably helps a lot too, right? What I actually use now is not hot keys but hot buttons on the level two. There's like hotkey window buttons. Okay, and there's a key reason why I do this because once I had a fat finger mistake where I applied a hockey and it was selected the wrong Montage I see the wrong level too.

So I didn't know what I was actually applying to trade to and that was a very costly mistake. With the hotkey buttons, you know exactly what you're clicking and you have that you have those mistakes kind of. you know, avoided. So I use those and those are all pre-programmed with all the common actions that I use.

And another key tip that I'll say is don't program hotkeys for things that you don't do So right for longing trades. Basically I don't have any buying hotkeys? Yeah, it makes sense. So I don't want to have that temptation of being able to go along because if you have that button available, maybe you'll just you know you're bored. One day you want to click it.

Okay, yeah, the YOLO traded or whatever. So okay. kind of limiting yourself and just giving yourself the ability to do what you need and nothing more. I Think that's very critical.

I think those are really good tips. basically trying to shape your environment or your platform so you have less urge or a tendency to to boredom, trade and go outside of your system essentially exactly. Oh, that's a very good tip. Yeah, okay, Is there any.

Gamers Watching this right now? I'm noticing a theme that there's a lot of traders who are previously gamers. Are you guys really trading a lot better than non-gamers like me? Let me know in the comment section below. So we have three main trading systems and they are all coded in your trade ideas scanner. That's right.

So does that take? Do you still? In that case, Do you still need to prepare for your trading every morning before Market opens? Not really. That's the view. That's the beauty of my system. Okay, I Literally wake up at 6 20 a.m and I'm ready to go I Don't really do any pre-marketing by 6 20 a.m Yeah.

I know you're on Vancouver So West Coast Time Yeah West Coast Time I wake up like 10 minutes before Market open and I'm ready to go. That's it. Say what's up guys and we're going. That sounds amazing I Wake up.

Well I've been waking up a little bit later, but I I wake up at 5 30. but do you trade pre-market No. I just kind of watch the market. Oh okay, yeah, really yeah and do some planning because I uh then I'll also use trade ideas to scan for stocks and I pick up stocks and then kind of plan for them first.

Ideally there's like five stocks every day, but I think our trading styles are a little different. Yeah, very different. Yeah, so adding to that. So if everything is so systematic, you can technically let's say use and uh, there's a lot of um AI trading Bots or systems where you can just kind of automate a lot of these entries and exits right? You can link it to your trade ideas.

Have you thought about doing that? I have actually experimented with automating the trades and there was a few issues that I ran into. Number one was trust I didn't trust the system to execute the trades properly and I would always be on a kind of over the shoulder of the system just watching it. So I was like I might as well just manage this myself. And then also, I ran into a lot of Errors like it wouldn't locate the number of shares properly or I wouldn't execute the the trades properly.

And if there is a fat finger mistake for example, how can you trust that the computer will correct that problem? Okay, um, there were just a few issues that I had with it. And also think as systematic as you want to be, there has to be some discretion, some intuition involved based on stock selection. Like there's just some plays that are like spax recently. Oh yeah, or there's a, you know, different scenarios that are kind of rare or unique.

Then you can't be 100 systematic and trade exactly the same way. So we do. Hopefully some discretion. Say okay, this stock is you know, manipulated or it's a a lot of the times the information on trade ideas or some of these stock fundamentals are incorrect.

Yeah, that's true. So we have to check the sources and be like okay, is this really accurate This source is saying. You know that this source is saying this, what do we use as the correct information and if it's like conflicting data, then sometimes I'll just pass on the trade. and so many times save me money because it's like a different type of stock than we anticipate.

So there has to be some human input into these trades. No matter what you know, it's great to follow these systems that allows you to execute. Are there still periods of drawdowns? even with systematic trading? Oh, of course. Okay, so how do you get through those periods of drawdowns while drawdowns are tough for any type of Trader And for sure I experience a drawdown myself personally this year in the beginning part of the year, I was doing more wide stops and more heavy sizing and that resulted in a lot of volatility in My Equity curve.

Okay, I was able to double my account in the first week of the year. Oh wow, and then I managed to lose all of that all of those gains over the next few months because of that volatility. I See so since April coincidentally when we introduced that super pair of setup, I've been able to regain all of those lost profits, but in a lot smoother. Equity curve just kind of grinding up slowly with less drawdown.

also less parabolic growth. but it's been a compromise that I'm okay with because it's just easier to deal with. That's been my approach this year in 2023 is just decreasing the stress, decreasing the emotional you know, spikes of the trades and just trying to profit slowly and consistently not having these wild Equity swings. But my biggest thing is the back testing.

That's what gets me through a drawdown. Okay, let's say I'm in a deep drawdown I'm not really confident in my trading I just go back to my databases and my Excel spreadsheets and I say you know what this strategy worked for the last four or five years. Maybe it's having a period of time where it's not working, but it stands the test of time. Eventually it will come through if I continue and stay on the path.

and I think a lot of Traders they make the mistake of tweaking things and they bail on their strategies or they start trading crypto or futures or something. completely different, right? Yeah, whereas if they had just stayed the course, they would have recovered. But I think it's that first drawdown that a lot of Traders give up on a strategy or themselves. So this is where data comes in and really strengthens your confidence and conviction in a strategy.

So what happens So does that mean uh, let's say there's those Black Swan events like HKD those crazy uh were they us back? It was just super low float. Yeah right. Does that kind of would when I don't know if you traded those but those kind of surprise a lot of Traders especially on the short side. So how do you deal with these Supernova black swung events that kind of through.

That's kind of was originally part of a criteria but kind of through your system out of the expected range, right? Yeah, so in any data set there's going to be outliers that's yeah for sure. and they happen once or twice a year. But if you have a large enough data set, you're going to capture enough of those outliers to know how big of an outlier it is and how often they happen. So then you can prepare for it.

Okay, and what I found is that the majority of these have a common theme is that they're very low float. Yeah, or they're Chinese stocks that are very easily manipulated with incorrect fundamentals. and they're very crowded on the short side. And that's why we have these massive squeezes.

Thankfully, I've been able to avoid all of those. That's good. But another key thing is that you have a hard stop loss. You're not allowing these to run thousands of percents against you.

you're cutting it sooner than that. So you know whether a stock goes 100 past the stop or one percent past the stop, it's the same. I See So this is where. having a determined hard stop that's at the broker level, that's a very key.

Point Don't have hard stops like mental stops because too many times that you'll be in that moment and you won't stop out, you'll just hold it a little bit longer and hope for a reversal. So When you say sorry, let's uh, we're not zoning on that a little bit. The heart stops at a broker level. Do you mean that's part of your system to tell your broker? hey, stop me out at let's say 10K loss or part of your system to stop you out at let's say 20 loss, right? Good question.

I Have actually two levels of stops of my system. So I have a position based stop loss based on a percentage. Okay, and then I have an account Equity Stop based on the daily P L I see. So this is to protect yourself from massive intraday drawdowns.

Let's say let's say there's a theme running. Like recently: weed stocks are running. Yeah, and let's say you short four of them based on your strategy. So you basically have correlated risk in One Direction Yeah against the weed market.

So if all of those turn into max losses, then you could possibly exceed your daily Max loss or have a very large drawdown that would be very uncomfortable to deal with. So that's where the broker level stop loss will help you and prevent those major drawdowns. Thanks this These sites I Think our audience really need to hear. Everybody needs to hear yeah I Need to remind myself sometimes we're not.

We're never immune to these beginner lessons. As experienced as you are as a Trader you're always humbled by the market and and all it takes is one mistake to wipe out weeks or months of gains. And that's what these black swans are doing. I've seen a lot of people on Twitter get wiped out.

Yeah, and they can have weeks, months, years of profits gone in the blink of an eye. If they're not, you know, executing all the time. Yeah, so that's where the broker level will help you if you're unable to execute. and let's say your internet connection drops out or something like that happens, it's out of your hands.

That would be terrible. That's every Trader's worst nightmare. Yeah, so that's where the broker will help you out. Yeah, I think that's the dangers of discretionary trading? Oh yeah, yeah, a lot of Traders have the habits of kind of oh, let's see what happens, right? And that kind of when you see a stock going a thousand percent, that's uh yeah.

I'm usually not a talkative person, but when it comes to trading, it just comes out believe me. But I am curious before trading. Uh what? What was your former career before you stepped into trading full-time Well I was a full-time pharmacist for about 10 years here in BC and I was also doing a pharmacist? Yeah a pharmacist I Thought you would have like a math or Finance background or something like well there's a lot of like required math and statistics classes in pharmacy school. Oh really and it's an ironic story.

It was my Pharmacy um first year Pharmacy statistics professor that got me kind of intrigued in the gambling side of things because he was a sports better on the side. Okay so he would always bring these examples of point spreads and over unders and such into the classroom and you know he would discuss like how the mathematics worked and how the markets worked. And in a way, trading is not much different, right? There's two sides to a market. there's buyers and sellers, there's an equally agreed price, and the markets are always moving based on available information.

So if you can turn that into a systematic Quantified approach, then you can make money if you know how to find edges based on those imbalances or inefficiencies in the market. You were a pharmacist for 10 years, 10 years and when you decided did you, uh, start part trading part-time while you're still at pharmacist? Yeah, I was doing it part-time initially and the benefit of being on the west coast is that you can trade yeah in the morning and still do a day job without really interfering. So I did have an employer that was a little lenient on that. so I was able to bring my computer into the pharmacy and kind of just keep an eye on things.

Really? Yeah, so you were like, uh, prescribing someone, uh, medicine and then your trading systems on the side? maybe? Okay, so depending on how you did that day, that person may get an extra dose. Yeah, there were some hazards in the job in the workplace based on my P L of the day, but okay, I try to keep it separate as much as I could and then once the coveted Market hit. I Kind of just focused on The trading because it was just overwhelming and I couldn't juggle both and obviously it was a lot more, you know, financially beneficial. So yeah, I did that and I never looked back.

Yeah, pharmacist. It's a good career too. Yeah, right. Was it easy to give that up like did you were you in love with a career? Or it was not easy because you know the amount of years goes into the degree? Yeah, the licensing exams and all of that.

So it was a little bit difficult to give that up. I gave that a lot of thought. but I felt like in order to fully Embrace this path as the traitor lifestyle and be fully committed to a full-time trading approach I wanted I didn't want to have any backups because I'm the kind of person I feel like I thrive under pressure and if there's nothing nothing you know backstopping me, then everything is all in on trading and I just felt like that was the right move for me. but I could always go back to Pharmacy if I needed to As a matter? Yeah, yeah, but I don't think you need to anymore I would hope that I wouldn't Yeah, but it's always there just in case.

I Think it's important to have a backup because there's a lot of people looking to make the transition from a nine to five to a full-time uh trading approach. And I get this question a lot Like how much money should I make before I make the move or you know how consistent should I be? And this is difficult to answer because everybody's personal finances will differ. It depends on your trading goals, your lifestyle goals, and but I would say show some consistency for at least two to three years. Have a good bankroll like in the bank just as a rainy day fund because if you're trading on scared money, it probably won't end well.

It's a lot of pressure and it could crumble you. Yeah, and scared money don't make money, especially not in trading. No, it doesn't Yeah, did you tell us how much money do you save up before you quit your job? Just other curiosity from the pharmacy job. Yeah, you know, when you quit, you say you quit during covet, right? So you found success in 2019.

So you already consistent? Yeah, um, it was actually funny. I was never a profitable Trader until that 2019 run I was losing up until that time. Okay, so in June of 2020 is when I gave up my Pharmacy degree. So after like six months oh wow yeah.

also like a covet Market can happen March March Yeah okay okay so after those three months I was just convinced and it was just too hard to juggle because I was creating in pharmacy and they were just like non-stop action I couldn't be focused on yeah, just felt like it was an opportunity cost and also being in the pharmacy I didn't want to expose myself to the virus and and the risks because like so many people would be coming in. Yeah and the doctors weren't seeing people in person. people were becoming in physically into the pharmacy, coughing all over the place and just like it was a very risky I think so? Yeah right? Yeah, you you still had a job or you still. You know a lot of people who had to work from home.

you obviously couldn't No, we couldn't Yeah and they needed you in person? Yeah and it was very busy. it was very hectic and it was just kind of clogged. The whole Healthcare System was clogged so it was not a good time to be there. It makes sense.

So I just said all right I'm just gonna trade. Okay well where can everyone find you if they have questions for you or they just want to follow your journey? Yeah, so you can check me out on Twitter it's at Chrisverma88 and I post you know pretty much daily. my P L's any insights that I have a few picks of the views that I have or you know you know some Trader lifestyle thing. I'll just stay Inspire guys and show them what's possible.

if you apply yourself and and you follow your dreams as a Trader never give up that's what I'll say because there were so many times in my career that I felt like giving up and and so many times where I just didn't think I would make it or be able to follow my rules. but you know if you put your mind to it eventually you will make it. Thank you Chris Thank you so much! Oh thanks for having me also predominantly price action Trader Myself after talking with Chris today I actually realized that there's a lot of similarities between the way he trades systematically and the way I approach trading we both have to really understand Trader Psychology have a good understanding of our own emotions and of course, following our risk, tolerance and discipline. I'm really inspired by Chris today.

He's only focusing on his best strategies on a small cap short setups and he doesn't deviate all of his normal routine and his normal executions and trade all the random harder stocks of the day. I Think While the number one key takeaways from this lesson today is that whether you are a discretionary Trader or systematic Trader you should only be trading when you see a proven setup or strategy that has been working for you. And what do you think? what's your biggest key takeaway from today's conversation? Whether you are a discretionary Trader or system active Trader let me know. Down Below In the comment section, if you enjoyed today's video, please remember to drop a like down below if you want to learn more from a conversation with many Pro: Traders You can check out these videos over here.

or if you want to learn more of my trading strategies, you can check out these videos over here. Foreign.