All right everybody what's going on, my name is bryce toohey, and this is the tui talk, show a really special guest live in the office with me today. I'm really excited about this episode i'll. Let him introduce himself he's a really good friend of mine. His name is ron and i'm actually going to switch the camera over to him, and he can give you a quick introduction about who he is kind of how we met and um kind of, just like the your style of training.

Then we'll get a little more into it. This is going to be a really fun episode for a lot of you guys, watching. I'm really really confident in that so ron man, thanks bryce, for having me on the show. So, like bryce said, we actually met through a mutual friend of ours, shout out connor and uh and john as well uh for introducing us um.

So i think we met actually in the gym. He was at at the local lifetime gym here in austin, and i was like damn. This guy looks really familiar he's like some guy from finn, twit um he's like maybe this is like the guy that connor and john are friends with you. Guys.

Just came back from a trip to aruba or something i was like huh. He looks like the guy in the photos, but never said anything. He ended up. I think leaving the gym - and i was like uh texted connor and i was like hey - does bryce live in austin and he was like yeah so anyway funny little story about how we met.

Um ended up seeing him later that week and uh have known this guy since so a little bit about me is uh, i'm i would call myself a full-time trader, but i still have a full-time job. So take that for what you will i trade i mean day trade every day, all all during the day, so whatever mostly stick to large caps, i'm primarily an options, trader options day trader, definitely trying to get into swing trading. More, i wouldn't say, i'm a swing trader just because i'm way better at day trading right now, but swing trading is definitely something that is my primary focus on improving at the moment. In terms of my immediate goals, i would say um yeah, but mostly just large caps, um and and day trades, sweet yeah, and no.

So that was why i'm actually really excited to have ron on, for this episode is because i know that ron is a really great trader and he works full-time and it's he's kind of living, proof that it can be done, and i know that's something. I'd argue most traders when they're first getting started right. You kind of you have to pay the bills you're not just going to go right, full time into trading, but it is a transition, as you kind of are learning to trade and trying to you know, find out that work. Life balance, then, with a work, trade, life balance and i'm sure you've had your fair share of um difficulties with it.

But that's something i'd love to love, to talk about uh in the in the future or in this episode a little bit later um. But i'd like to get started so, as ron mentioned, he's actually more focused on large cap stocks, options trading and that's very, very different from when i trade. You know i'm primarily small cap, almost almost exclusively a small cap trader and it's something. I've definitely looked to.

Try to get into, but it's really it's it's a it's a whole different ballgame as ron, i'm sure you know and i'd love to kind of hear your experience. You know where you learned from where you got like when you got started trading and just a little bit about your journey as a trader as you've kind of you know, developed and we'll get into some charts on the overall market, because i'd love to hear ron's Thoughts on this crazy market bounce we're having right now, you know down from 410, we broke what 460 just the other day right, um. So i'd love to hear ron's thoughts on all that, but ron. Let's get started with like your the beginning of your journey and kind of how you got to where you are now um.

You know maybe from when you got started trading and when you really, i know you got started early, but then you really started taking it seriously: um yeah at a different time, so i'll, let you get started, get right down into that yeah. So i had a couple stints in the market. You know i'm uh. First in the otc and then uh i was doing some earnings plays just kind of like essentially gambling.

I look back on. It didn't know that at the time, but uh got caught in one earnings play that was really bad and uh. Some some company announced an accounting error during their earnings call, and i was like oh well bagged so yeah but yeah. So i mean you live and learn um and then it kind of got into like paying attention to cnbc and then obviously that only worked for so long.

But then i uh kind of took it to the next level. I would say um january of 2020. um before coveting anything happened. I was going to say right before copenhagen, yeah yeah, so covid was actually happening in china, and this was like the end of the cnbc phase.

For me, jim cramer was on mad money and he was like oh well. I think the chinese market is going to go down, so i essentially shorted the chinese market. I bought the -3x yang chinese etf that tracks their their index. Okay, um, whole port.

You know full port into that uh minus 3x etf and did pretty well. You know the market pulled back and then anyway, fast forward, three months later and uh, it comes to america right. It's like around the marsh time frame and um. My friend shout out joe introduced me to options trading and i did the same thing, but with options i went in all-in, spy weekly puts um talk about going from one one extreme to the next yeah, so i just bought a house at the time and my Only account that i had was my roth ira, which funny enough is like, like not the account that you want to be like, like learning how to day trade in um.

So i started off with ten thousand dollars. I ended up taking that account to 160 000 within, i think, less than two months um. Just writing. Spy puts just doubling down on my portfolio on those weeklies out of money puts um.

So that was like my first experience in kind of harnessing the power of like oh, like this is like the potential of like the power of like learning, how to trade. Obviously, zero risk management, zero trading strategy trading off of you know what i thought was going to happen. You know, which is completely opposite to what i do now so now like fast forwarding to what i do now is all technical chart based. I don't use any indicators, really i use just volume and price.

I do have the 50, you know moving average and at the 200 moving average on my charts, i post all my charts to twitter, so you can check those out, but you know it's. It's mostly. Just simple price action and just developing patterns and patterns that i'm familiar with um and then developing a thesis from that yeah and guys by the way. If you want to learn more about ron, there will be all of his links to uh his his socials and everything down in the description after this video is posted um because you you share.

Quite a bit of you share a lot of chart ideas on twitter right now. Yeah, i uh. You know i go through waves of sharing a lot of ideas um, but i try to stick to the ideas that have the most conviction behind, because i think once you dilute your feed with you know, just anything and everything, then it kind of loses meaning um. So i mean i will occasionally just be like oh day, trade.

You know like yesterday, for example, great great example: i posted gamestop um. I think i posted 1617. I took shares of gamestop. I was like it looks like it's bottoming out for a bounce, and you know: um ended up ripping to like 200 and after hours after they announced uh that they were splitting the stock.

So that was a that was a pretty crazy opportunity. There um but uh yeah. That was like a trade idea. I posted live, but mostly it's like my.

My essential strategy is you're deriving levels and patterns from the daily chart, um and then using those for day trades um. I do swing trade as well. Like i mentioned, but it's uh, i mostly take those big big breakout, pivot levels like the inflection levels and then um take that just for day trades um. So for me, like the conviction, is there to hold overnight, but i'm still like smaller size overnight.

So i'm not quite you know, hitting the homers off of like the overnight swings um but yeah. That's essentially the strategy hitting those inflection levels and right and so a question that you know i kind of was talking a little bit about before. But you are you're trading, you know options and common stock right like what oh again, i know we talked about this before, but what what's the difference for you like? When? Are you deciding okay, i'm going to take an options, position position on this or i'm going to trade, the common stock? You know, what's that, what's that uh? I know what does it take for you to take one over another yeah. I would say primarily i'm an options trader, because the ideas that i take are more so bigger picture ideas that i day trade.

So, for example, i will take an options: trade that is uh. You know i'm eyeing a breakout over a certain level and it's like trending up towards that inflection level. You know on ramping volume or something like that right, so you're kind of curling up towards that level. So i'm like adding every dip.

You know raising my stop along the way big picture in mind, and then those are options: trades um, where i'm scaling in slowly and then hitting that breakout right right, okay, um versus common shares is like your income producing trades, i would say so like you're hitting Like a support level and it's like coming down - and you want to just scalp it for a dollar right on that bounce, so i'll use common shares for that um kind of going into what we were talking about about trading full-time and also, you know, working full-time Yeah, if you're scalping, with options that becomes increasingly difficult because you have to look at i trade exclusively off my phone, so fun fact really um. I actually didn't know that yeah so uh, just a quick uh aside here. So all the money is made when the market's closed, my uh, my mentor, matt flex trades on twitter, he uh. He says that and it's it's the truest thing that you could possibly you know hear in trading all the money's made when the market's closed.

So all the preparation, all the stuff that i do is is like you know when the market's closed, when everything's, you know, there's no motion in it. There's no, you see everything with black and white. You know, there's no lens that you're looking at it. You know if you have any positions or whatever but anyway, so i set all my levels.

I use trading view for for my charts, so i set all my alerts on trading view, which is nice because they have like you know the iphone app and you know i i have an apple watch and so, if i'm in a meeting i'll get like a Buzz on my watch, i'll, look and i'll be like oh got ta, you know, take care of this, or maybe it's just something else right right, so that that helps a lot um. It helps scaling into positions. When alerts go off. You know it's like when it gets to this level.

It's like okay, i should be paying attention or if it's like my stop-loss um, then you know you set an alert for that too. Right so goes both ways. Um but yeah definitely do the work when, while the market's closed, if you have a full-time job, i would say: that's that's crucial um. If you can spend more time during the day.

Looking at charts, then, obviously that changes, but definitely you make all the money when the market's closed. No, i i don't think any truer. Words could be spoken. You know it's it's.

I think a lot of people compare it to you know any like a sport right. I play i play basketball in college and i can promise you that anything that was produced on court. Any any points you were scoring any blocks. You were getting whatever the case may be that didn't come from just playing a bunch of games.

It came because you're practicing every day right, i mean, if you look at like any especially i'd, say a swing trader, but even day, traders right that that work comes from a lot of reviewing of charts a lot of reviewing patterns, seeing how different uh different thesis Reacts to different catalysts and really putting in that work after hours, and i think that's something that, especially when you're you know learning to trade with a full-time job. You don't need to necessarily you don't need to one be in a trade all day right. You don't need to be actively checking your phone, especially if it's a bigger picture plan which i'm sure that's a big part of you know why you were able to um more or less you know, learn to trade at the same time, because you, like you, said A lot of your trades are based on big picture charts right, like you're you're, looking at the big picture. So, let's, let's get into that so kind of segwaying from uh the original um you know putting the entire port and the spy out of the money puts, and then you know so i didn't get to finish that story.

So let me fix that one so went from 10k to 160k and then i stayed short in april. You know when the market was ripping. No, because i was like you were, you were working. You were working at this.

I was working yeah, yeah um and i was like well coveted cases are hitting all-time highs. Why would i you know not be short? The market so ended up going from 10k to 160k. You know the market ripped obviously in april, took that back down to 20k. So you know 100 gain off 10k.

I was like all right. Well, i screwed that up was that was that one trade, a result that was a series of trades. You know um and then so i was like like like i said you know, i understood the power of options at that point and i was like all right time to take this seriously. You know develop a formula develop a strategy develops like some technical analysis.

So what i started doing at that point was looking at all these twitter guys and kind of back testing all of their charts that they were posting so looking at all their charts, like understanding like why they were posting them studying. This is all like, while the market's closed, while the market's open, as well like, just as they were posting in real time kind of, like snapshot, that image of the chart and like what it looked like and then kind of understanding like what was going on. You know what were they looking at? Was it volume? Was it like the 50 day? Was it the rsi? Whatever you know, i looked at probably every indicator out there and i was like all right. Whatever i came down to my strategy, which is just price action.

Basically, um and then back tested all those strategies and then arrived at what i do today, so that process took took a while you know um i took me i mean i i want to say it took me a year to be consistent. Yeah from that point. Um, but i was also watching every single tick every single day of every like minute that the market was open. So what i would do is, i would come into work.

I would wake up at like three in the morning come into work early. Do all my work for my day job and then you know i'd obviously have meetings here and there, but um. I was doing all that work and i i was in person. I wasn't.

You know, working remote like a lot of people. Unfortunately, i didn't have that option um, but yeah. So i was watching every tick and that is that is truly how you learn as a beginner you're. Like understanding, i would say you have to take trades to understand.

You know how how things work, but first of all, watching every tick and then taking you got to take trades because once you take trades, you kind of understand what it means to have skin in the game. And then you get that emotional reaction right when you're uh when you're in the trade, so it kind of teaches you you know size and like motions with size and then um how to like manage that as you're trading. Now this is a question i you know. After what you just said, the first thing that i think of it is because this is something i talk about personally, a lot you're you're talking.

You need to have that skin in the game. You know you learn, there's no way around it. I hate to. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but, like we all know, there's no way it's the dues there's no way to avoid screen time you have to put in the screen time, but but at some point you can only put in so much screen time Without you know, actually putting the skin in the game, i'd love to hear your thoughts about paper trading versus trading with real money, great questions, i i think a lot of people probably know my opinion on it.

I i nothing wrong with paper trading, i believe in starting with small size, so it's actual money actual skin in the game, but everyone has a different opinion. I'd love to hear yours absolutely paper trading is probably an invaluable resource for only so long right, um you're, starting out and you're back testing strategies that are posted by these twitter furoos or whatever and uh. Maybe you you learn something from twitter and then you want to put it to use test that out for a little bit um, but you, like, i said you don't really learn anything in terms of what trading is really all about, like understanding the technical aspect of Trading is probably the easiest thing about trading agreed understanding. The charts is super easy um, like obviously once you get to that point right, yeah um, but then to take your training to the next level.

You really got ta have skin in the game, because the hard part of trading is that that emotion, like we see the same thing on the same chart and we do different things right. So the way everyone trades is different. You got to figure out, you know what your strengths are, so that comes in when you put money put skin in the game. So what i would say is uh yeah.

Do that and start gradually right. You paper trade for maybe a month three months figure out. Some technicals and then you start off with maybe a five ten thousand dollar account. You know whatever that money is that money amount? You know it's different for everybody, but um, don't trade with more than what you're willing to lose um i traded with more than what i'm willing to lose.

Actually, i uh went into debt trading when i started out yeah, oh fun fact about this story. Yeah i mean so i was um yeah, don't do this, i i guess i was accustomed to a certain amount of lifestyle in my life. You know i have an engineering project management job, so i make decent money um, but then i was losing all that money in the market. I would get a paycheck and then you know five thousand dollars lose it.

Ten thousand dollars lose it whatever build. My account up almost to pdt, you know lose it i'm like, but um - and this is like you know not my ira account. This is my regular trading account now right um. So you know it was a battle you know and then eventually i was like.

Oh, like i can't pay my bills and then it kind of like mounted up and i'm like. Well honestly, it only pushed me to work harder um because i'm like it's like not really sink or swim. You know obviously there's things that could have worked out for me. You know i could have just stopped trading but, like i didn't want to do that, i was like this is i had so much passion for this and i saw the potential of trading.

You know from my experience with options starting out yeah. Obviously that was a crazy freak event, but, like once, you understand how to time the market. You know that power is super powerful right without a doubt, yeah, so yeah went into debt um like multi-five-figure debt and yeah and then um. Obviously i became consistently profitable and actually that debt was erased like within a month or two yeah, congratulations, yeah that i mean.

I can't tell you how good that felt. That was like you know financially, like the first step of like i don't want to say financial freedom. But, like you know, it's like you, don't have that debt and, like you, look back and you're like. Oh all, my hard work is finally paying off and i'm like seeing it in my chart.

You know my p l so now can i'm sorry not to cut you off here, something i really actually want to go back to is you you were saying this is crazy to me. You were going into work at three in the morning to get your work done. Yeah i mean now, that's obviously an extreme and it's a great extreme because it it paid off. You know i'm sure i ca on millions of folds, but yeah um is that is that the kind of mindset you have to have when you're you know when you're working full is there a way around it? Is there how how uh could you have seen yourself doing it another way and being where you're at today yeah, so i mean a lot of people that start trading, i would say, are looking just to make money yeah, which is the wrong mindset right.

You know the mindset is you have to learn how to trade and to learn how to trade. Like i said you got to watch ticks you got to have skin in the game. You got to just pay your dues, whether that's in the form of time or money or most likely, both right yeah um. So for me, coming into work early meant that i would be able to focus more time on doing that right.

So putting my skin in the game putting my time into just focusing on trading, so i attribute you know my success, which i think is you know that i accomplished pretty quickly in terms of like um learning, how to trade um. Due to that, i was just grinding it out. You know every single day, looking at charts. Looking at like after the market closed, i was still looking at charts.

You know, like back testing strategies, i was journaling trades. You know why did this work? Why didn't this work? I was figuring out my strengths and weaknesses and then, after that, i you know, started developing consistent strategies and patterns that we're working out more probabilistically than other things and then cutting out. You know the weaker strategies right so figuring out. What's strong, what's working for you and then cutting out the rest, a lot of people will say you know like work on your weaknesses, but i completely disagree with that.

You know you got to find your strengths hone in on those and then just like, develop your niche and just nail that i and i actually just so. I just gave a webinar on wednesday and it was almost the exact same exact same topic. Is it's so easy? It's it's probably debatably easier when you're first getting started there, you and you said it best. I mean you, you get to a point where we're trading the same.

You know more or less we're. Looking at the same stuff, we see the same exact patterns developing, but we trade them differently, we're going to be trading different strategies, we're going to be trading different. I mean even market caps right and so it's so easy to get blinded and crowded with all the noise of different strategies, different setups and yeah. Like i said as a beginner, it is a little bit tough in my opinion, but once you really find what almost speaks to you? What fits your personality, which i think is a big part of learning to become consistent.

You have to get rid of the rest of the noise. You have to do everything you can to not not necessarily work on the weaknesses, but really refine the strengths and you're going to have weaknesses within your own strategy that you probably want to cut out a little bit. You know if you're lacking risk management, if you're choosing the if you're chasing stocks, you know chasing socks that well it's my pattern, but all of a sudden you bought it a dollar share higher. Now your risk is all sorts of skewed, but you can refine that stuff, but it really really comes down to refining what you're doing well, and i couldn't agree more with that.

Do you have any examples of like when you were you know kind of going through that same battle, trying to find what worked and did you ever go through a spot where you were trying to fix your weaknesses instead of work on your strengths um? So in the beginning i was taking anything and everything that was coming along. You know i saw a trade thesis. I was like oh intraday flag on the one minute on five minute on ten minute, or maybe it's a curling off the bottom or like bounce off support or a scalp. Whatever i was taking every single trade um, probably with like the same size.

You know i was like: oh a thousand dollars, you know is my trade every time you know most beginners make the mistake of sizing every single trade same amount um, which is so damaging. You know you don't um, we'll we'll get into that, but um yeah. So i i would say you got to try all the trades see what works out for you and then kind of like reduce that list, filter it down um. A lot of this comes from journaling and a lot of it comes from doing like statistical analysis in the form of like maybe it's just excel.

Maybe you use one of the trading um tools that are available to you like tradervue or tradersync, whatever it may be, or whatever you want, there's so many yeah. I mean if you're good with excel just start there, but yeah. It all comes down to journaling and knowing more about yourself and your personality, like you said, um and then getting that strategy. No, i think we actually talked about this on last week's episode, but you guys are asking like different ways to you know find what works for you and i i will never under emphasize how important journaling is like don't get me wrong.

It's super important to know the the statistics of your actual strategy and whatnot, but it's even more important to know how you trade it and how you feel during that trip too right. How you feel you know are you: are you uncomfortable because, if you're uncomfortable in a profitable strategy, you probably have too much size right? There are so many things that you're, probably not thinking about mid trade, that you can then reflect on afterwards and fix it from there i mean when i started. I don't know i want to ask about your journal experience, because i think it's super cool that you know. Someone else is pretty big on it, but when i started really taking that seriously and journaling every detail of every trade which was time consuming, like you said time off, you know time away or after market closes right like i was spending like two or three hours, A day journaling reflecting my thoughts and like it was a parabolic from there i kind of want to hear oh yeah yeah.

I mean that's exactly like when i started to see the losses kind of like fading off. You know if you think about a stock chart. That's like reversing that's how the p l was for me. It was like down down down and then kind of like sideways, i'm like a break even trader now, and then you hit that inflection spot.

It's like, oh, like now, we're breaking out and like making money right. So it's like slowly creeping back up and i was like, then it just got a lot faster um, so that period of like going sideways was that that journaling phase, um and kind of understanding. Okay, oh, let me cut out the strategy. It's not working losses.

You know capped my losses. Well, you're instantly going to increase your win rate right right, i'm taking out strategies that don't work. You know it's so it's so simplistic right! It's like! Oh, but you're. Never going to get to that unless you start journaling, you know it's like.

Oh, i never understood why you know i'm losing money on until, like i'm doing that analysis. So well! No, it's you know. I you just said another thing that resonates so well with me. It's trading is is hard, but it's also simple right.

It's a lot of times it's hard because we make it hard. We over complicate it and realistically we don't put in the work to make it simple. Yeah, it's uh, it's burning, yeah and i mean i've. Had i can share a trade idea with you guys i don't remember what what the ticker was but um.

I had so much size in that uh that trade. I i can't remember what it said, um and i was so confident in the trade, but i fumbled the trade because i had so much size in it. You know, and i was like man, it did exactly what i thought it was going to be like what i was going to do, but i just fumbled the trade because i put too much size in it. I was like god damn it like.

I should have nailed this trade was like should have been my number one trade ever, but i just fumbled it because i had too much size. You know it's like. No, that, oh, my god, that same thing happened to me. I was i.

This was a really really toxic state, but i'd come off of a really hot summer june july and then the beginning of august was so hot, and i i just one of my my biggest trades have actually been small cap swings that i built into over a Period in the day of that breakout, add in you know full like true full size, and you know it was coming off of the like. The secondary cove would run where we were getting like hpi pushing back up and um. There was a stock vrpx that i had been stalking. I love this daily chart and i was on a vacation actually right before i went to aruba and i saw this chart setting up at lowe's and i i just thought to myself like this.

This is the one, and so you know all of a sudden. I found myself. I think i was trading like five bucks. A share - and i was like this is gon na, be my first hundred thousand dollar trade.

The most toxic thing you can have as a trader, and so i was like all right. I'm loading in 25 000 shares i'm just going to keep building in 5 000 a day and my risk is going to be uh. I had like a 450 average, like i'm gon, na risk right around ten thousand dollars on this trade, and my risk is gon na be four dollars and the day i cut it, it got down to like 410. It had been basing up at, like you know, 440 450.

It could pop up to like 520. So i was, you know i was up more than i was comfortable with, but i was like i'm not selling this and then the day i sold it dumped down to. I think 408 right above four and i was like well, i don't want to get caught with all this size and get massive slippage. I'm cutting the next day.

The next day it dropped up to nine and then ran. That was one of the ones that ran like thirty, something you know i haven't even had that trade plan like worked out. I would have been all out in pre-market, you know, but still it was that sense that i was way too big. My my thesis for the thesis was correct, but i was oversized, and that makes you emotional right like it makes you emotional.

So this is what i would say is a lot of people, like i said earlier, are focused on making money when they start trading yep, which is completely the wrong mindset. Let the process work of learning, how to trade, and then the money will come yeah. You know if you force it, it's not going to work, it's you're trying to force making more money like another time i was uh. This is the complete opposite of what i just told you.

I was trying to level up my size and i don't know something happened in my brain where i was like i'm going to double my size on this trade um. You know it was for me like a five-star setup yeah, and so i'm like all right. I'm gon na have conviction, so i had my my skills. You know whatever here here, i'm gon na buy whatever and here's my stop limit it gapped up like a dollar over.

You know my entries and i'm like all right, whatever i'm still confident, you know whatever my size should have been lower at that point right, because it's over my it's gapping over my entry points, but you know i still went in with double the size that i Was you know my normal size because i'm like i'm ready to level up and then you know it went through my stop and then i doubled down, which i never do it's like breaking trade rules, i'm like i'm so confident, i'm so confident. But at the same time it went through my stop. It's like what it broke. Your thesis broke, my thesis.

Why am i still in the trade? It's like? Oh i'm leveling up, i'm so adamant, but no, i wasn't ready for that because, like you know, it's just something happens in the brain and it's like so i ended up losing a ton of money on that trade because i broke all my trading rules and i'm Like i look back and i'm like wow, everything in trading is 20 20. In hindsight you know it's it's just i looked at that. I'm like wow, i'm embarrassed. You know like this.

Is i broke every single rule. I've been consistently profitable for, like, however long and like it just crumbled under this like one, you know lapse of judgment right so well and what's this is always the way right. I i look at those in the moment. It's probably one of the most painful things like you contemplate like.

Should i even be trading anymore like what am i doing, but then you give it a week two weeks and it ends up being one probably you know. Unfortunately, you have to kind of take losses that are bigger than what you planned on, because it makes you better. You probably i'm sure you rewrote rules after that, or at least like really reinstated rules, just reinstated yeah for sure i mean, like you said it's like you, look at the loss number in your p, l and, first of all, you should really never like look at Your p l and trade, your p l um, you should trade, your plan um and you should size according to your plan and then the p l will work itself out um. So i looked at my piano, i'm like wow, that's big, you know bigger than it usually is.

So i'm like all right. Let's double down. You know that was like the thing going in my head. I'm, like oh man like looking back why'd.

I do that. You know like i would never have done that. Otherwise, like my plan went out the window, but i screwed it up, you know it didn't work out and i should have just cut the trade, but it could have reset itself and, like you know, the thesis would have come back, but it wasn't in that position, But broke all my rules, and you know when, when was when was this? This was uh. This wasn't like you know, exceptionally long ago, this was uh like q, three or four last year, yeah, okay, it was one of the memer trades like i think it was amc breakout and that's the other thing it's like i, trade gme was my number one um Gainer of 2021 yeah, uh, p, l, wise uh dollar amounts, and i was like oh, i know how these memers move.

You know it's like. Well, it didn't do what i thought it was gon na do and i you know, paid the price um, because i stayed wrong. You know it's okay to be wrong, nothing wrong with being wrong. It's been more.

I i'm wrong more than i'm right yeah, it's about when you're right, knowing how to counsel exactly exactly your winners pay for your losers, but you can't stay wrong. You know. So that's that's another thing for newer traders. You know manage your risk and make sure you don't stay wrong even after you're, like hope, is not a strategy right, you can't be in a trade hoping for it to like bounce over your stop again or like whatever right.

So you need to have emotionless black and white decision making um when you're trading and it all comes through experience. I would say no, i absolutely love that, and i kind of want to ask now. You know i kind of want to bring it back a little bit more to the you know. This is all stuff you were going through while working does that make the emotion side harder, or does it make it easier? Knowing you still have money coming in regardless i'd love to hear that aspect of it um having obviously cash flow, you know is great um cash coming in from my day, job is definitely what kept me trading, because i was losing money and then replenishing my account.

You know um, i would say it definitely helps from that point of view um, but then it got to a point where i'm like i'm not putting any more money into my account and i'm like all right. This is all the money i'm gon na put in and that's it and so it kind of was like uh like this is all you have make use of it moment for me, and i was like i need to learn otherwise, like you know, reevaluate right, so It got to that point and i was like just i need to do this, and so because i looked at the number of my credit card bills, and i was like really like this like. I need to be more responsible here. Um so obviously put in the hard work and everything and it worked out, but that's why i say: don't don't do what i did.

Obviously i'm not financial advice but um, but yeah i mean it definitely helped. I can't say it didn't help you know, and so that's you know, building off of that. I know a lot a lot. A lot of traders are that, are you know, just getting profitable just getting consistent, whatever the case may be, that are working a lot of them want to.

You know quit that full-time job. What are your thoughts on that allocation? So i mean so here's yeah. Of course i mean here's the thing it's like once you take that cash flow away. Are you going to take the same risk as you normally? Would you know if you don't have that money coming in like if you're trading for a living are you gon na? Have that money coming in to support you know your same risk, tolerance that you have gotten successful at trading today, because something i'm sure changes once you go full-time trading psychology, wise um! That's like i'm trading for a living to put food on my table to pay.

My rent, you know um, so if you're, using trading as like a supplemental income, that's a bit different. I would say than you know, trading for a living um just in terms of the psychology. But if you get your trading down to a system where it's just black and white, then i don't see why not? You know after you're, making a certain amount of money and you're consistently doing it. Um yeah.

I think that's when you're ready to make the leap. No, i love that answer. That's a really uh! Really fantastic again. I can't you know i i do work here at stock straight, but you know i'm trading most of the day and i'm you know it's trading related stuff.

So it's all very you know easy to work around but um. I would love to kind of hear now and you know we'll we'll get into some charts at the end here, but to wrap up like this portion of it. If you had to do this all over again right, if you had to you're brand new today yeah knowing the lessons you learned, what would you what would you do different? Would you do anything different yeah? You know i kind of wrote some things down on. Like tips for newer traders, so that's kind of like really good.

So, like i said you know, i would stick to that process. The process over profits keep saying that in your head. You know, that's that's what it is. It's the process of learning.

You got ta like you go to you go to school, you get an engineering degree. It takes you four years to get that bachelor's of science of engineering whatever right. So why do you think you'll become a profitable trader in you know? Yeah it takes time you have to learn, you got ta, you got ta pay your dues um. So what i would say is watch every tick, understand your strengths and filter out those weaknesses after you put in the time and understand um but yeah, like i said, paper trading is good.

Try that out, for, i would say a limited amount of time and then add some skin in the game, put some size behind your trades. Like you know, money i mean um and then one of my tips is set up a trade formula and determine the strength of the trade that you're about to take right, have like a score sheet or a rubric that you like physically, have when you're starting out Trading, i do this all like more more so mentally now, um and and it can be like you know, this chart pattern is like one of my stronger patterns so plus one point you know this is this is like you know, volume is really good. Plus one point you know this is bouncing off the 50-day. You know, plus one point.

Um fundamentals are driving this as well. You know that always helps plus one point um whatever it may be, make a rubric for yourself based off of how you trade well. Like, first of all, understand how you trade well, then make the rubric and then every trade you take score that trade before you take it and that'll determine okay. If this is a five out of five, then i'll take five out of five size.

You know based off of my risk level, if it's like you know ten dollars above, like your supposed entry level that you would plan for, then obviously you can't take the same risk. So like ask these questions to yourself. A lot of traders don't really size. Every trade like properly um so develop that trade rubric it'll determine the size and strength of your trade and then actually do the charting on on.

Like your charts, your charting platform, you know, i said trading view is what i use, but you can use think or swim you can use whatever you know, there's a zillion other charting platforms, right um. So do the charting set your levels. You know have a game plan put that game plan and, like i used onenote when i started out like the microsoft one, oh yeah, it's what i use for journaling um. So like write out the trade plan.

You know my stop is x y z. My profit target is this i'll start scaling out 25 here um and then you know everything will fall into place as that happens. And then, if you do that trade plan before the trade, then you can go back and update that when you're journaling right, so you can say hey this didn't work out. Oh, this loss was too big for me, like i should move my stop up or take less size right, yeah.

So that's all part of the journaling process, because you're putting in the trade plan and then revisiting it and reviewing it um. I love that yeah and so a lot of this i've said already um guys, while ron's going through this too. If you have any questions for them, drop them in the youtube chat, we'll try to get to a couple of them at the end here, but drop that right in the live chat. If you're watching yeah and another tip i have is like you said, i'm gon na make a hundred thousand dollars on this trade.

You can't think like that. You got to think i'm gon na lose a thousand dollars on this trade, because that's your stop. Yeah right! Yep um you size to your stop, not based off of your reward right. Obviously, the risk to reward is what determines the trade so, but that real driver is the risk, so you can't be going into trades thinking.

I'm gon na make a hundred thousand you're gon na you have to say, and you have to be willing to lose money right yeah. You have to be willing to see your thesis out because, if you're not like, if you take too much size, you're going to stop yourself out too early, you know so on and so forth right. So, as you take the trade you should realize in your head that money is gone, you know that to your risk right immediately, just think it's not there anymore in your account um, and if you kind of accept that losses are a part of this, then you Will trade so much better, because losses are part of the game? A lot of profitable traders lose more than they. You know they're percentage-wise they lose more than they win.

You know some of them. Some of the best traders have like a 30 30 win rate exactly but they're, just in those big breakout trades that pay for all their losers tenfold. So you have to be okay with losers psychologically, and you can't let that like deter you, you can't let that you know it's part of the process. So that's that's, that's the thing you will lose and you have to accept that um.

If you're not a good loser, you're, not a good trader like plain and simple, it's such a funny way to think about it, but that's really what it is. You know i love that um yeah and here's another thing dial in so, like i said you get your strengths, get your niche focus in on that dial in and get really really good at that, and then just eliminate everything else, because you don't need to be A jack of all trades, you know if you're good at everything, you're not really the best. At one thing, you know it's like all right, i'm a mediocre trader at that point, right right, i'm making good money and i'm losing good money right. It's like just make really good money in one strategy you know, and that takes time don't rush it.

You know like do the journaling process and things will fall into place. You know that'll go into my next point about controlling your emotions comes from all those other things. I talked about journaling size control and everything and uh don't be in a rush to make money focus on the process of learning and the money will fall into place and uh. The last tip i have is: don't just have trading rules stick to them.

So a lot of people are like. Oh i have this rule like you know xyz, but then they're like i broke my rule today. You know it's like. What's the point, what's the point of having the rule, if you're going to break your rule right um and it happens - i have a question about that and this is this is definitely a.

This is a tough. This is a really tough one to answer, but there are times where it's acceptable to break a rule, now very very few and far between right. You have those set for a reason. So do you have that same mindset, or is that just is that just me? I would say if you're gon na break a rule um it's got to be an exception with the caveat that maybe your due size.

You know it's like okay, it's through my stop and like i think it might bounce like a dollar lower. So, like maybe you'll, take off half your size or something right i mean i'm not gon na, be like all right broke, my rule like full size yolo. You know like there has to be like i'm sacrificing something here to like kind of move forward with the trade thesis. Maybe like.

Oh, like there's news out or something and like you know, it's moving extra vol, more volatility than you know normal, so like i'll, give it like a little bit more room, like just i mean, but it's rare that i break rules now you know yeah. If i do, i'm gon na reduce my size decently, at least half or whatever right. No, and that's that's actually that's one of the exact the only times i break my rules. If i start off or break a rule is if i start off in a trade where i'm i know, i'm undersized with a plan to add.

Ideally, i've got. I essentially will, if i really i'm strongly convicted on the chart, let's say: there's a risk level above low a day where it might be like a quarter size loss i'll still size in with low a day. If i want to give it more time to set a new low i'll, have my full size loss on low a day, but ideally being able to add into that cur the risk level i'm liking, but yeah very few and far between these days, that uh that I go out of my way to break a rule. Absolutely you can't yeah trade, i mean trading rules.

Are there for a reason: they're not meant to be broken. So actually to that too, then, how do did you create? Were your training rules all created through journaling yeah? It's all through the process of journaling learning about yourself. My rules are going to be different than your rules right because we're different people. We have different emotions in psychology when we're trading.

So it's all a process of kind of learning about yourself. Psychology is the biggest thing in trading. You know, like i said the charts are only say 25 of it. You know 75.

Is psychology, probably even more yeah learning how to deal with yourself? Yeah, because i mean when you think about it, price action is just psychology on a piece of paper. You know it's buyers and sellers how they feel about the stock buying and selling it. You know visualize on a piece of paper, so well now that we're kind of speaking on charts, uh and you know we're getting close to the end here - i'd love to kind of again you're you're, more focused on larger caps. Yes, um really i'll, i'm sure the overall market condition has to do a lot with, oh for sure, does it have to do with like the way you size into a trade, the overall market condition 100 yeah.

So one of the things on my rubric right that i think about is, is the market in a trend. Is it an uptrend and i'm going long or is it in a downtrend and i'm you know trying to go long against the trend? Am i you know counter trading or am i you know going with the trend? Obviously i'm a trend trader, so i i'm a trend and pivot trader. You know it's got to be like a strong pivot if i'm going to take a pivot trade um, but like, for example, one of the trades that i was in less than a month ago, whenever we made that bottom, you know after the russia, ukraine is um. I was watching the spy downtrend from highs.

You know it's clearly accepting this trend line right from highs, so i was like salivating at like this downtrend snap and man. I one of my best trades this year yeah, i think, maybe the best trade i've made this year good stuff um. It was first that wash out long and then break of that trend, snap um, so the first one was the washout long as a pivot. Off of that low, almost no, i i think i know exactly which state you're talking about yeah and then the next one was that break of that uh downtrend line, so trend lines are one of my yeah bread and butter um.

It's such a simple thing and, like i mean just use it, it's a trend line. You know a lot of. I mean everything follows a trend at you know some point in its lifetime in stocks right um so anyway, so it broke that down trend and uh. My target was 447 on spy, um, obviously spy ripped to like 460.

um. So i'm like scratching my head, i'm like holy. I minimized the out of this trade um but yeah one of my best trades of the year. I was like patient for my setup.

You know i wasn't really trading much. I was taking scalps here and there you know, i'm not making a lot of money doing scalping and all that yeah. It's like have your big trade ideas that you're good at pay for everything else like you might not be trading a day. You know it's like.

I don't need to be trading every day right. Well, and that's one thing: so they do the math matt, who taught you to trade, that's one of the big things he focuses on absolutely really being patient for your a plus, like what's the point of wasting mental capital actual capital, that's not an a plus set Up and that's i mean that - that's something i guess really every great trader always mentions right, yeah, patience, patience, wait for that, a plus setup yeah right, so i mean i was still trading like decently, like here and there scalping i like to trade. You know it's fun, you know i like to scalp whatever i enjoy it. Some people are like it's not worth my time.

You know i'd rather not make a thousand dollars today and i'll just stick on. You know that one trade that makes me 50 000. So i mean whatever whatever your style is like figure that out um so yeah. So i mean i was scalping a little bit but not like i'm not taking big day trades.

You know during market shop. You know that's a great way to lose money. I figured out that i'm not good at that. So i'll, stick to you know, sitting on my hands during those periods of market shop and wait for my setup patiently, right, um or i'll, just trade extremely small size.

You know try out different strategies. You know maybe something else but, like you know, i've gotten to the point where i'm not really doing that anymore.