Hey, hey, what's up a friend! So today we have Brian Lee a professional gamer who became a day trader Brian is known right for taking $5,000 and then growing it to seven figures and Beyond So if you want to connect with Brian right? I'll put his link to his social media profile in the description below. For now, here's what we've covered in today's conversation: Number one: Life of a professional gamer. We talk about the mindset, the process, and what it takes to play with with the big boys, and throughout the conversation, I realized that there's actually a lot of parallels between professional gaming and being a professional. Trader Number two: Why Brian chose right to leave the gaming career behind and to focus on becoming a day trader.

Number three: How Brian finds his age in the markets. Number four: This is, uh, something that you guys are pretty excited about. Brian's Lee's own day trading strategy. We talk about his trading setup, the entry, the stop loss, the targets, the trade management, and how he manages the trade from start to finish.

and finally, number five, right: how he took $5,000 and grew it into millions of dollars. So all this and More in today's conversation sounds good, then go listen to it right now. All right. Brian Welcome, Welcome to the show.

Happy to have you! Hey, thanks for having me And by the way, I I've listened to a few of your podcasts and I feel that you know if you are not in trading right you could Jolly just you know be a DJ I hear that voice man. that's really a voice you got. so something to consider right? You know you want to stop trading someday you know DJ you know might be an option I thought about um like doing audio books or something like that. Yeah, maybe I I would say you have a a gift for that right? So yeah to kick things off I'm just uh Curious right in one sentence right? how would you describe your your childhood my childhood okay uh, very competitive like I had a I had a cousin that was about a year apart and he was kind of like my brother from another mother I didn't I had a younger brother now but he's 10 years younger I grew up with a younger sister and so um sorry I think I killed this one but like very competitive just we would always play video games Smash Bros Halo try to get the best of each other.

Okay so so you have understand you know you're from you play Esports we'll get to that later but just kind of like want to understand what kind of person you were like back in school so you're like kind of like Competitive Gaming so what's maybe the first game you you played right? I guess that should be you know something you remember I think it had had to be one of those uh like Mega Man or something on Super Nintendo Mega Man oh Super Nintendo All right yeah, that's kind my time. so I played uh yeah Super Nintendo that was my first one carriers back then I me cost like 70 80 bucks. my my dad used to spend money on that. Yeah so in school then what kind of kid were you like in school? were you the I know the studios type right? the the the one getting to trouble what? I think I think people thought I was smart uh but I always thought it was just because I put in a lot more effort like I felt stupid so I just put in a little bit more effort than other people and so people thought I was smart.

that's how it was. so so get like pretty good GRS consistently true uh I almost I almost flunked out of uh high school and I didn't graduate from University I dropped out of University as well. but when I was applying myself I was a St student I just wanted to do other things like I don't I didn't really see the value in school very much. Why do you say that? I just feel like you can't really apply a lot of it.

you know there's no direction I feel like if they taught us things like taxes and like stock market and how to uh, basically transition into adulthood like practical skills, you know I felt like everything was just leaning towards like you're either going to be going into like like a science major or doing something more like engineering. but um, like literally when I went to college, I was like I'm just going to do creative writing because I like writing and I realized how useless it was. So I was like there's no way that I'm going to go through school and come out of this like with a career. So when you decide to, uh, drop out of school right? despite people think that hey, Brian is actually pretty smart.

So what was like your your your parents, uh, take on it? um my parents are pretty relaxed. my my dad's really smart, he went to um, one of the top universities and he is a doctor um and my mom is comes from Cambodia she's very impoverished background. she's actually Refugee from the uh genocide and um, right, okay, sorry to interrupt you. I I I was please continue and I'll just take it from there later on.

Yeah, okay uh so basically she just really pushed me very hard to. you know, do the traditional thing just be a doctor or whatever. but my dad never really put pressure on me. so I got away with a lot like I pretty much ditched like half of high school and just played video games all time, right? Maybe just to to dig a little bit further back in time about your parents because you mentioned the genocide and I was in Nen I think a couple of years back and I went to the Uh the the the Killing Ground.

So I think was it 1960s or 1970s? There's this particular I won't call it organization but you know people in control right? and they killed like a quarter of the population. Maybe the numbers could be higher, probably higher right? but I think where I read was like quarter of the population right because of that event. So was it like during that event that's where your mom decided to know move away to to Uh to the states? Yeah uh. my grand my grandfather was a considered education educated person because he was a professor and anyone who was educ educated was going to be killed.

So my entire family was basically on the chopping block and uh, luckily one of the Um army officials actually had a crush on one of my aunties and helped them escape and they basically had to cross over to Vietnam through like snakes and landmines and she did lose some siblings on that journey. and um, they got sponsored by a like a Christian family here in the States and eventually one by one just started flying over here. Gosh, that's that's a crazy story man, that's wow. I mean I Can't believe what your family went through because I I was actually at The Killing Grounds and they were showing us you know, kind of like a whole level of all the the bones, right? the skulls that were being penetrated by what object? Yeah it's crazy so so.

I'm glad all is well, all is safe for you and you know your future generation as well. I think in the States is a lot more safer and yeah thank you for sharing I think that is something a history I think not many people know if I myself I did not know it until I went to to Nan for a holiday and realiz I didn't know that man they have such history which is actually quite recent like just 20 30 years a bit a bit further back. yeah so yeah so okay so we we I hear a lot about you know gaming and no surprise and on other podcast you know you mentioned you know Esports Competitive Gaming So so let's talk about how did that happen? How do you transition from just a Casual Gamer to you know got let's do this right. Let's go to the international you know and you know go big right? How did it happen u I I used to be a pretty popular kid in school like I didn't play many games and uh mostly hang out with people but one of my neighbors who lived down the street was really into Starcraft and so naturally we just started hanging out and I was like what is this game and I started like it was with dialup internet and I was like you can play versus other people this is amazing cuz before you just playing games by yourself and you're like okay well once you start seeing like all these different people on line and like all these different personalities and stuff like that it's just like it's so engaging and then other people started playing it and eventually at some point I was just so competitive I was like I just got way better than them and I was like I need to find new friends otherwise you know these games are just too easy and at that point I just started looking for like competitive teams, stuff like that and just doing as a hobby.

but I just really loved it because you know, like as a young person especially as an Asian kid like not very athletic and things like that. so being able to like do something really competitive um was super fun especially on a team environment. so I was like always trying to compete in tournaments and stuff like that with my friends. So you started off with Starcraft and if I recall you end up playing competitive do too right? if I'm not wrong mhm cuz my one of my older cousins recognized I was playing a lot of like a lot of Starcraft and he uh showed me this documentary I think of I think it was of Moon.

he's a very yeah Moon was a Warcraft 3 player and he's very very famous because he's really unconventional but he was basically one of the greatest of all time Korean players and they were doing a documentary about showing how he um like made a living playing video games which was like not a thing and then my cousin's like look you can make money playing games stuff like that I was like oh that's awesome So then at the back of my mind I was just thought about like well why can't I do that too So you mentioned that you're getting a way too good for your peers and you had to find new So-Cal teammates or people to play around with. So how how do you find it? Was it based online or you were you in the land shop? you know. kind of like you know socializing with other players. it's just online, you know you just you.

naturally just make friends because you like if you're good you know people just want to talk with you and like add you best reality you got money people just come to you hey you know let's be friends same same forgiving okay I me sorry it's not. It's not un like trading where you know if you um well trading is a little bit more difficult to tell like who's real and stuff like that but uh you just shoot your shot. you know if you kind of like put yourself out there a little bit and show like hey I have this kind of skill or like I'm trying to improve. You know even if you don't have the actual skill, if you show effort, people kind of want to connect to that because if they have the same kind of ambition, you just kind of attract each other and so um you know it's not.

It's not very unlike trading as well, you just attract people that you're looking for and try not to be so isolated and just kind of try to do on your own. So when you got into a professional gaming right, you know what makes you think that you know you can do this as as a career you mention you just watch the documentary and then you know what gives you the I conviction confidence to know hey you I can do this too um to be honest I just I I did it as a as a passion and um it was more fun than anything I just consistently felt like I was getting better and better and at some point you know it just kind of felt like a little bit too easy. So I wanted to see if I could do this like in a tournament style like how far I would go through tournament and we just played this tournaments for like pizza every month. it was held on a forum and like every week my goal was just to get to the next round.

So like if you're in round 32, get to 16, get to the quarterfinal Etc and eventually we won it and when we when we won it I started recognizing like look I like we literally just beat everybody in North America like right now like the best player so when you conquer your region you naturally you want to think about like International stage as well. so on the Forum where you guys came in first I suppose it's a pretty big Forum right to actually be top of the Forum and then conquer the whole of North America Yeah it was like it's a it's a small Niche like you know if um I know you're not like necessarily part of the small caps Community but kind of. everybody knows everybody. You know anyone who's like very serious or just kind of out there you you're only like a couple degrees apart like you're usually just one person away from the next person.

So it's kind of like the same thing was gaming. It's a small community, everybody knows each other. It's just the one place we met um cuz we there was no like Twitter or stuff like that so we just use forums and chat rooms. stuff like that and from my understanding DOTA is it's five play So where do you find the remaining four players right to to form that team? Well I actually um made a post like saying that hey like I really want to compete and I'm looking for these kind of teammates so you just list out like the roles you want and I was like okay I play I'm going to be the leader I play this support role and I'm looking for like a carry.

uh I'm looking for other support players and stuff like that and then eventually you just kind of try people out and see if you mesh and if you have the same goals and then eventually you know that's you, just kind of commit to it. I I made everyone uh at different points of my career there was different teams but like the main team that really like pushed me into the international stage. U it was a team that like we did this process and then I made them sign a contract that they were just going to like go hard for a whole year and then we pretty much did it like more than full-time like all of us. So it's like a interview process where you're interviewing the right candidate, is going for a troll and deciding is this a good fit or not? If it's a good fit, sign that contract and you know let's go All in yeah, it was not as official as these days.

These days there are so many incentives like you have I mean if you have a sponsor you can be like hey, we'll pay you a salary and stuff like that you want to join us. We're very reputable. Whatever. Back then you had to convince people to play for free every single day for 16 hours like it's a different skill back then.

That's really passion at his highest level. like playing for free and I and I'm curious. do you have to like when you say play for free? I'm guessing that they have to be at home playing right? Not say at a land shop paying like you know, $1 or $2 an hour and stuff like what? playing from home remotely 16 hours a day? Yes. and everyone's scattered all over the United, States and Canada And so we have time zone issues and uh, we also competed on the European servers.

CU They were just way better than Americans. So we were up like 4 5:00 in the morning and uh, you know, motivating young people to wake up earlier than they wake up for school is very difficult. The incentive has to be right. Clearly, you guys have the you know, the incentive at the top of your head, right? You know? let's do this.

Okay, so so when do you first you know, meet your teammates right? Like in real person? Oh yeah. so we uh, the first time we met was when we qualified for the the international that's the biggest tournament and uh, we all got picked up like by Valve and they kind of like had someone pick you up in a limo whatever at the airport and we went to our um we stay at our man house. We slept on his floor, he had like a one-bedroom apartment. we had like six guys sleeping on the floor and uh we just uh we we contacted like a local land shop and said hey we'll like give you some exposure if you let us practice here for like two weeks three weeks and so we got to know each other there.

but I feel like on the internet I feel like you you get to know people pretty well like I don't feel like there was any um, shock about like who they were or like anything like that that we spend so much time together so you know being in person doesn't really make a big difference to be honest. So they were actually quite close to how they were like online. yeah you can't You can't really fake that I mean when when you spend so much time together you can't fig it unless unless you're crazy I don't know some people so so I think I read on I mean I Heard on podcast that your goal was just to join the international so I don't from me back in Singapore I I think the biggest competition it's called World Cyber Gamings wcg is is that like a different thing all together at your end? it is. That's uh I think that that that organization is basically trying to be Olympics which is which is pretty fun.

like I've I've competed in that tournament before trying to represent USA uh but usually that's pretty fragmented because like like I said, a lot of these teams were kind of like spread all over some Canada So when I competed like we had to form like a USA team and then my Canadian teammates had to form team Canada Um but all I knew is they had a lot of money which is why everyone wanted to play. they had a lot of money. I See so the international is kind of like even more bigger competition to really assess the the skills of people all around the world. The international is like the Pinnacle of orts.

I mean like even amongst all the the games today I Don't think any single esport has the prize pool of the international. Uh, it's the top 16s in the entire World um and so I think it holds the most prestige like in the entire esport scene. almost. I See yeah.

so I understand right your goal was to just to join the international If I'm not wrong to just take part in it right? I think that was like the goal. it's not even to win right? if if I hear correctly from the other podcast that you were on. so I'm curious what if your goal right was instead of just to take part. but it's actually let's say to win or even to be the top three.

Do you think do you think that uh, things will be different? uh I I did want to win I mean everyone wants to win I did. My goal was to get there but um kind of similar to trading. it's like you know the be the most you can do is basically perform your best right. so the result is just it's a factor of like luck and timing and stuff like that at the time I felt like I was probably top two in the world at my role and so I did have the confidence in myself.

However, like when I formed that team, we were basically all amateurs like I I didn't pull any former profession, uh, professional players or high tier players. So like our skill ceiling was actually reduced pretty heavily compared to the international scene. The main advantage that we had was that our Um discipline was very high just from like Drilling and practice and our strategies were rarely refined. So in a lot of cases um, we basically won on strategy alone or just teamwork.

But when it came down to the individual skill I knew that we didn't necessarily have what it took to win compared to the rest of the field. so my ambition was basically to see how good I could do uh with all those in mind. but you know, as an individual I felt like I I was good enough so mentioned that you thought that you were like the top two in the world for the role that you're playing. So how do you define where your positioning is like? because it's a 5v5 game.

how do you like kind of assess your skill on the individual level. So every every player on the team is assigned a specific role um one through five. So like one is the most important, the most important person. they're the one who gets all of the resources and they're the ones who are supposed to kind of carry the game to the end.

Um, they're like the damage dealers and then like my role was number five. so in rank of priority I was number oh no, I was actually number four. sorry number four is like the second support character and essentially like they're the ones who make the shot calls. they initiate fights and they um are usually the first to go in.

So on my end like I'm comparing myself to other players in that position position four and so uh it's pretty easy to tell like who's playing what? because um at the time I had like the I had a very diverse uh pool of like characters I could play strategies and I felt like my skill level was very high so I kind of I kind of knew at that time like I was very confident at a competitive level. you mentioned that there individual skills and then there like like strategy. So from what I'm hearing I mean in ideal scenario the each player in the team is very high skill and as a whole their strategy is pretty top-notch as well. But let's say a theme like yours right where the SK is not so high but the strategy is is pretty top-notch it can actually get you to pretty far places am I right to say that? yeah it's actually um I lost faith in that after a while.

but when I look back I I Do think the strategy and teamwork uh, discipline was like the most important thing because like what a lot of really good players do, uh is they just kind of go in without a plan and they just rely on their skills and their instincts and that works cuz a lot of times they can just outplay people. but like when you play against a team that knows what they're doing, they know how you're going to counter them, They know how to react, it's just on a completely different level. So as I relate that to trading, it's kind of like I always try to go into trades now with like a strategy that I'm going to follow. um that I already pre-planned versus just kind of trying to react, react, react and um I think that's one thing that we did really well because when we had good strategies, we actually had like a like a 98% win rate over like 50 games.

And um, that's when that's with people who know what you're doing and they're trying to counter you all the time. And the thing is we just know we just knew how to play. But we did so well that when they trying to counter us like they're playing our game, we're playing our game. So um, we had the advantage.

You know it's like completely different when somebody comes in with their strategy and you feel like you you're on the back foot because they just know how to do it better than you. But when you make it so that other people are constantly reacting to you what you're doing, um, you can take control of so many different variables. So I think it's a really important concept to just have a strategy that's really well thought out and am I right to say that just like trading there in in gaming, there's no like best trading. I mean best gaming strategy because every strategy can be ComEd by by something else and it's up to the team to kind of like react or adapt accordingly when someone uses a strategy that is supposed to come.

do you? Yeah, I think so I think in I think the uh feeling that you need to win everything is just kind of ridiculous. but that's the feeling that most people have, like people expect always to win. Uh, when you figure it out they feel like oh I'm just going to crush the competition 100% But um in reality like the teams that will win championships are the ones that just you just win the best of Threes over and over again you win the best of three. You win the best of five.

You don't have to win all three games, you just need to win two games out the best of three so effectively you have like a 66% win rate. Um and really it's just about being consistent. Like if if you try your best your strategy didn't pan out. next next game Run another strategy and if you perform well you know hopefully you take the take, the game and then eventually the series.

But like you know back then I I really felt like the goal was to win 100% but now I feel like you just have to win more than you lose. That's all you have to do. So so you and your team you guys like putting like 16 hours a day. so I'm curious to know what does putting in the Reps right look like for gaming cuz take for example like weightlifting right? You know if you're going for competition right you go to race like four sets or five sets.

you know 10 to 20 reps twice a day and and just you know, clock in the the volume right when lifting weights right? Same for swimming they probably W up 600 a.m. you know, 2030 laps in the morning, maybe waight training and blah blah blah. So what what is it like for gaming when you say you guys are putting in the Reps Okay, so we wake up, wake up at 5:00 A.M on the West Coast uh I purp I purposely. uh, just roll into the game like I just roll out of bed, go straight to my computer.

We have uh, scrim Partners already scheduled and so we usually playing at least two to three games with another partner. Um, each game lasts about an hour after that set. We'll either do a review or we would have had another scrim partner scheduled for another two or three games right after that. So that's about like basically six hours of gaming non-stop Um, if I was feeling very feisty, I would do the reset so we'd go up to nine games nine hours afterwards.

It was my responsibility to review, so we'd go over the replays. uh, figure out what we did right and wrong after we're you know, basically done with it. like not having any motions about the game and we can kind of look back at it. So usually that takes you know another two hours and we have a team discussion.

Uh, after the team's done, I'm basically thinking of strategies and uh, figuring out if I can Implement them and I'll sometimes I go test them in the game to see if it will work. After all that basically we'll play like public games individually and each person basic should just be practicing their own um their role and like what they want to do and getting more insights to how they can improve the team. So that's how it pretty much goes. and then in your off time you're just thinking about all the time.

So wow from what I'm hear it's like gaming your life right from the moment you wake up up to the time you sleep. Yeah, but it's fun. like it's it's really fun. Is there any aspect to it that you you you didn't enjoy? Oh yeah I hate how immature people are.

It's a it's a Young Person's game. A lot of the newer talents are like 17 18 years old or 20 year, 20 years old. and um, even if they're let's say 22 or 23, they are typically four years behind mentally. So when it comes to conflict and uh, you know if if you are literally just trying to say the truth uh the emotions will flare up, people will get defensive or they'll walk away from situations and it's very important that you basically have like this huge trust between each other.

So like at the end of the day I Just really disliked how individual people were about their emotions and not really thinking about the team or having any empathy for basic leadership role which is like I'm not any different than you guys like I'm just more person but like so much responsibility is on the leader to make sure there's Harmony trust and that you know like if somebody's upset you have to go and talk to them. everyone else can go watch anime or something and uh it's just a lot of it's just a lot of work for things that I feel like could be very simple like just let's work it out let's talk about what we can do better. we all want the same thing I'm not trying to be malicious right or they might not be malicious either but improving and having like a growth mindset and just thinking about how to win is the most important thing and not everybody was equipped for that mentally. I can imagine how much work right the leader needs to put in because not only you mentioned doing the review they got of strategize like for our team you know what new strategies should we? Implement you got to manage the HR as well.

who's upset with who and you got to be like a nanny to kind of like you know I figure that would everything a manager role to come like do but okay you know what do I know yeah so the leader everything so so yeah SK I I used to come from gaming background so that's why I got quite a few questions about Competitive Gaming I'm just curious to do how how the world works right? So yeah. so I would like to hear from you know what are the different levels of of uh Competitive Gaming right? So for example I believe there's the Hobbies is like playing maybe one 2 hours a week, then they have those like playing 5 10 hours a week then those are more serious blah blah blah. So how many levels do you think there is before they reach the level that you did at the international level. So in in every single game like in every sport, in every single game the top 300 or 500 players in the world are not good.

Um you have to be within the top 1% of that to be in a pro level. So like you'll play uh, like rank games or whatever. And if you have happen to team up with people who are like rank let's just say rank 200, Rank 300 Rank 150. Every single one of those players will get Trashed by a professional player.

So the difference between those players and professionals is really just that the professionals are on another level in terms of skill in terms of communication and in terms of strategy. Um, the only way really to kind of pick up those skills is to actually be a part of a team. So if you are just good at kind of like playing the game normally but don't know how to play within a team environment and know how strategies work, then you'll never be capable of playing on a professional level and the difference will always be there. Wow! and what's the average lifespan of a a professional gamer I'd say? I I Think people in their 30s is kind of where it starts top off but um, the way like kind of these uh teams work is usually you have a fresh mix of like older veteran Talent So people in their late 20s 30s and then you have kind of like newcomer rookies who are like highly gifted mechanically and have no fear and those people are usually like 17, 18, 19 years old kind of players, very flashy and uh, it's kind of a balance.

like it, most teams that are skewed too heavily one way or the other are not really that successful. It's usually having the wisdom and the experience to share and pass down to temper young individuals, but also like having younger people bring in Innovation and just being quicker. You know to react and not having as much baggage because things are always changing like the game is always updating and improving and like it's harder for older people to just constantly pick up new things over and over again. Earlier you mentioned gifted mechanically.

What what What does that mean I Think just when you're younger you you just have uh, the synapses are just firing you like much quicker. like you are connecting the dots. Quicker you're reacting and adapting quicker. You and like I said, you don't have the baggage.

So like a veteran player would be like oh, you know, like five years ago, that was the preferred strategy and this is how we played it. But like newer people, they don't think about that. They just see like what works now and they're like this works and I'm going to do this and so they don't bring any preconceived notions into the game. and I just think overall their um, their ability to basically put pressure on their bodies is much higher.

like I don't have as much tolerance. For example, with how long I can sit at the desk without like getting a back ache or like my hand cramping up or something like that. You know, like young people never have to care about that. You could literally play like 24 hours a day and ear.

You also mentioned that when they younger, they have no fear. So I'm thinking what's the kind of fear that's coming up in gaming Uh, the I think the fear is just being able to jump into unknown situations or like doing things really different. like I think younger players, they don't. they're more Innovative in the sense that they um, they see things differently just because again, like there's no baggage.

So like their fearlessness is like they they don't see uh, competitors as like Out Of Reach They just think of them as like people that they're going to dominate. They're like they're like I'm going to go in I'm just going to crush you and uh, older people are like you know this guy's Legend like he did this, he did that I looked up to that guy you there's so there's a lot of things that just psychologically affect you I can't relate to that. So it's like you see like a pro player, someone who is like a legendary status and you meet him in battle that that feel might even you or you know kind of like hold you back in terms of at a mental capacity where you just get nervous and you get your clicks might even fumble right especially back then for me was playing Counterstrike You know you know you see the opponent and you just kind of like freeze when you see like a you know someone with a Godlike status in front of you. Okay, have you ever talked to like a I I talk to Young Traders all the time and I'm like you got to be really safe with your risk management and they're like no screw you I'm going like 10% risk for trade I'm going to be a millionaire tomorrow and I'm like I'm like dude, stop and they just don't care like they literally I think it's because they have nothing to lose I think that's really what it is like when you're older you're like oh I I can't let these people down I have to I'm responsible for this.

whatever. and they're like they just don't care. You know they. they really can just go in completely Reckless and just find out by making mistakes they don't care about wisdom.

It's probably a rights of Passage I think all of us have to go through. Yeah yeah okay so so after the the international competition you guys play well right? Top it and then uh, you kind of like decided to. you know I can't do this anymore. You know then that's where you make the transition to to trading.

So before the transition to trading, what was the top process in your head to kind of realize man this is not something that you know I want to do for the rest of my life or for next five or 10 years. U A Lot of it was kind of those emotional issues I mentioned where I've had players in the midst of tournaments are like $3 million prize pool. they shut down completely. uh like literally we're in a room together.

Sit on the chair, sit on a swivel chair, flip completely opposite of the team, just like facing a wall, ask them questions, they won't say anything in front of your manager in front of the people. Person who owns the freaking company completely shut, shut down. totally uncooperative, like given up and I'm like dude, this is not possible or people will have a feuds with each other and will refuse to talk to each other, like come to meetings or or just be active and and helping the team and for just the most stupid reasons ever and so like when that happens, you're just like dude like it doesn't matter um how much work I'm putting in because it only takes one person to ruin the entire team and I don't I don't care if they're the best players or what. um that literally just attitude can sync the ship.

So I've been in so many situ like that where um like I'll give you a really good example. Like there was this tournament where we were going to qualify for the Inter National and I was playing against my my former teammates who we also qualified for the national the year before and uh, instead of practicing for that tournament one of my teammates who's like a young guy decided to go to EDC which is electronic dance music festival in Las Vegas and he's like no, I'm not not going to practice I'm just going to go do some drugs and like listen to music for like a week and I was like you can't be serious right? and so he left us as four players to practice without him for this entire time. um and when he came back he's like what's up guys, let's play and I was like dude, come on and the difference between us qualifying for the international which had like a I think it was probably like a probably 8 to 12 million price po at the time um was literally one game like we needed to win one game um in the final and this guy like did not practice with us the whole week because he want he didn't care and so there's just situations like that where you're like why is my fate in these people's hands if I could just do this by myself it would be so much easier and that's why trading was so appealing cuz I was like I don't have teammates anymore like I I was sick of teammates I don't want to have teammates I want to just be able to rely on myself because I know that like you can only control what you do I mean you can try to influence people but at the end of the day if they if they're irrational like there's what what can you do about it, have you ever taught then maybe I should play games that are individual solo like Street Fighter that comes to mind Starcraft I I love I do love theme games so I think there's something about the camaraderie and like just having this uh group that becomes like a family. they become like your brothers and every when you win it's so much sweeter because everyone's there with you right? Um, that's just the game I Love That's the game I I committed my life to so I there was no other game.

by the same time it cames with the risk where one player could just couldn't give a rip about. you know the consequences and just you know kind of YOLO and do what whatever he wants at the expense of the entire team. Yeah, it's it's rid it's I I'm gonna write a book about it one day just I have so many stories that you would never believe it. like there's a guy.

He we needed a fifth player and we paid him a salary and we're like hey, come over here like your talented, we can win with you He joined for one day after signing the contract. We played like three games and he quit the next day right before we had a qualification tournament for the international game. So like we at that moment we had to find another player at the last second and he completely breached his contract and we I don't know if we pursued it but like he just decided oh never mind like I don't want to do this and he never competed again. he never played on another team like what happened to this guy and I like to hear the story where I think I read on your blog post that you guys upset one of the top contenders in the international right and that's why you guys made it to the top eight.

What? What was it like? You know, upsetting, You know I mean you guys clearly were the underdog. So how was how was the entire how did the entire thing play up? I mean so it's so much easier being the underdog I Love You know everyone loves being an underdog cuz there's no pressure. Uh, this team was like the second they play second at the last. International So they're like a heavy favorite and not only that, but at the time China was the number one region in the world.

Like every every team from China is expected to win this tournament. And the funny thing is like when you play versus a Chinese team, you're not just playing against one team you're playing against all of China. The reason why is because when they scrim and when they practice and when they go to the Ti which is international, they literally help each other. They don't care which team wins, they just want a Chinese team to win.

So like you're playing against like three or four Chinese teams that are the best in the world who are like collaborating with each other. whereas like on the American EU side, nobody wants to talk to each other, no one wants to help each other and so like you just feel like this. The odd are stack because you could have been practicing for someone and they leak your whole strategy to another team. so like we're playing in those kind of odds and basically like like no one expects us to win.

We go into the game and it's very slow but eventually we just started picking up this momentum and eventually at some point we're like wait we can actually win this game and once once that triggered in our minds like we everyone got so hyper, like we got so hype and like we just started making plays that we never made before just super in the flow and catching them off guard and just creating like a lot of chaos and like that was one of those games where like every single thing you did right like even if you walked the right way like literally cuz everyone's watching you right even if you just walked the right way the crowd is cheering for everything you're doing and so like we're like it felt like we could do nothing wrong and every single play that worked we just kept getting more cheers and more collaps and stuff like that so it's like let's keep doing it and eventually we just won the game and like um the entire crowd was like on their feet everyone was just super excited like there's ACH bunch of recordings online where like my teammate literally ripped his headphones off before the game was even over and just started running out on the stage because we were so happy and we like everyone was treating like USA USA USA and I was I was so happy but like the thing that we didn't realize is that you can't celebrate your wins too early. so like we were so happy that we didn't even think about the next game at all and that was a very tight game. We lost that to another Chinese team which is also favorite and it was like I learned at that moment like you just can't celebrate your wins too soon like you still have a job to do like you you have to be like okay we won this is awesome but then like go back to work so that could have been a miracle run that we just kind of cut short because of our own like happiness I guess like we never really got that far in anything so it's too can imagine the the crowd. so I believe the Chinese team would they like silent like you know all they cursing all the the vulgarities in their head as you guys are yeah winning the game.

Okay so let's make let's move on to to the training. We talk quite a bit on gaming and then yeah I really enjoy that portion man and you talk about why you you wanted to leave uh gaming because of you know uh Teamworks do comes with this disadvantages as well. So so how do you first get exposed to trading? Um I was always thinking about investing afterwards with my funds because I knew that gaming might not last forever and so um originally I was just going to invest in the stock market but I learned that with trading you could actually do a lot more and I didn't necessarily leave Esports with the amount of money that I wanted. so um like I I would say I walked away with Esports with like less than 100K 50 00k and um after taxes got worse.

So it's kind of like I didn't think that I could retire on that like I in my in my vision of playing as Esports player I was like I'm going to place highly at TI and I'll probably walk away with a couple hundred thousand I can invest that and I'll be good but cutting my career a bit short I was like no I think I have to trade and so um, you know just YouTube you go on YouTube you find a lot of different things and um it's very, very appealing right? they the marketing is very good I could say that so you just like okay well I mean like uh, it's faster, less risk. Okay, let's I mean you think it's less risk because you're in and out and you don't have to like hold through things. but um of course there actually more risk in a way. So yeah, I got I just got into just to the marketing channels basically and I think I I I Heard somewhere about your journey on learning how to trade.

so how do you then learn how to trade or rather, how do you find your AG in the markets I think I think the what I treat is very heavily marketed so it wasn't difficult necessarily to find Edge I think it was difficult to like figure out who understood the edge. Well so a lot of people just kind of rely on the fact that uh, small CS have like certain percentage Tendencies because a lot of them are gaps and gaps tend to like fill and things like that so people could rely on just overall kind of like mechanics of gaps to explain why there's Edge but um, there's actually a lot more that goes into it in terms of like doing fundamental analysis and technical analysis. It's not all just like things Gap and then you train them. um so like I think naturally what people do is they uh what what you should do actually people go to YouTube but I went to Twitter and I just started finding people who I feel like were credible and just investigate their thoughts and their feeds and eventually figured out like who I thought was legit and then started cutting out people.

got scammed a couple times, got um into bad chat rooms or whatever or paid for things that weren't very good but like at the end of the day I could just figure out okay I don't trust this person anymore and just unfollow them and eventually just narrowed it down to like one or two people and studied everything they had to say and it was constantly hitting like what they were saying was constantly congruent with the market. So I was like okay the these people understand the best and so that was all I had to to focus on. So you mentioned about Twitter I like to hear more about how you use Twitter to then find people that you want to learn from I Believe use probably the search function but is there any more things that you can expand on? Yeah so uh early on I learned that on Twitter There's like like the cash tag kind of feature where if you you know use the dollar sign and put the symbol. it'll connect you with other people who are trading similar things.

so like naturally in a small small comp like the small cap space that I traded you would see reoccurring characters a lot of times and uh I also tried to participate in that by like putting the cash tags of the stocks I was trading or that I was watching and making comments about it or like sharing my chart or my or my thoughts and eventually like just started to understand who was consistently here and started sending messages out like hey you know like I see that you traded this and I was curious if you want to talk to me about it or like if you could look at my stuff and what I did was I basically um used the feed as a kind of like Journal SL content blog where like even if I didn't know anything I was just kind of explaining what how my trading Journey was like and what my ambitions were and stuff like that and so I think when I was sending out messages and stuff like that people saw my feed was not just like an empty thing with like an egg. um it was actually like someone really trying to do this and so that I think that attracted people towards me but uh more or less like I I think I only really made a couple really good friends on Twitter The main way was like making one friend who knew other friends right and then they just you just kind of bring other connections from your like you know you know and trust and really like someone and then their friends come in so they they. they're more trustable as well and you just kind of create a group and then at that point like you're just pulling resources because it's kind of like you know if you have five five, 10 guys in one room and someone sees something or sees some kind of information that's relevant they'll pull it in and you just have like this aggregator of information and to me that was like the most helpful at the time. So when you see small cap stocks, are they like below a certain market capitalization that you trade? Yeah, in the they're like stocks that are below, um, like $15 Like $1 $15 They can't.

They can be below a dollar as well. The market caps are usually less than like 100 million. Like very small companies. The floats are VAR varying sizes but considered low float like relative to everything else.

So could you then share a little bit more about your trading methodology to how you trade the markets today? Yeah, so I trade primarily mean Verion strategies and so uh, I do that to the short side just because a lot of the small cap companies are very volatile and they move large percentages so it it's easier basically to let it come to you. I Mean obviously you can do mean reversion both ways, but just the nature of of this Market it lends itself more towards the short side because there's constantly new uh candidates to evaluate versus kind of like trying to pick bottoms. which is like in a small cap. You know if you're picking a bottom on a small cap, you're basically catching a falling knife.

Uh, versus like if you're dip buying the Spy during like Co or something like that. That's a good me version. Trade so kind of like I can't really I don't really trust the company's long side Me: so I am trading me Verion and I am systematizing it so that I can eliminate kind of like the discretion in terms of like using signals to know when to start in or to build build a position. and I'm typically starting in very small as there's the most risk when you're kind of like lower probabilities and it's going against you.

but I will typically manage risk very tightly, get back in and build positions based on price action working my favor and usually that is kind of like enhanced by um, fundamentals technical analysis, understanding of the market psychology at the time cycles and U being able to understand like news. So combining all those four things really helps with this uh, disadvantage. Okay, that's that's quite a quite a handful of That's So Let's kind of like unpack them one by one so just to make sure we on the same page. So when you say mean reversion trading uh, on the short side, I'm imagining that it's maybe a stock that has made a parabolic move for whatever Catalyst or Reason and then you're looking to short that move down lower in anticipation that you know that move is it's a fake breakout something along those lines.

Yes, these moves are like sometimes th% move. You know something very insane. 50% 100% 300% These are very large moves, right? Like you don't see those in large GS which is kind of for the opportunity lies is just that the volatility allows you to take advantage of these ranges. I mean even if even if something does a normal correction of like 50% or something like that when it ran up very large percentage, you know there still like a lot of the meat on the Moone Okay so I I'm I'm visualizing that the stock is in a downtrend and then for whatever news or Reason boom right we have this huge Spike up a th000 2,000% and then you're looking to to shot it because you don't believe this stock is valued at is whatever this price is.

So then what's kind of like the next step What kind of like gives you a trigger to say oh now it's it's the time to enter or let's wait and see. You know if it goes up higher, what's what's your top process when you see such a pattern? So there you pretty much start understanding that each type of mersion trade has different variations. Like some of them have technical setups like they run into certain resistances or they, um, trap one, they trap Longs like in a sense of you know, like you mentioned, fake breakout. That's a perfect example.

Example: just something where everyone is anticipating a bigger move and the stock stuffs really quickly and starts selling off like those kind of moves trigger additional selling pressure. Um, there's but most of the times it has to do with like uh, fundamental pressure. So these companies are usually trying to raise capital in order to stay alive And so they do it by means of dilution or offerings. And when you can kind of understand the way that company raise capital from the markets, um, you recognize that they're they're either adding additional supply to the market which creates that me verion trade or they'll do like very quick offerings that will, um, impact price rather quickly Like you'll see these 20 30 40% drops instantaneously on news of like pending offering or like an offering that's effective or something like this.

And so that risk gives a benefit to the short sellers because we're able to kind of, uh, anticipate that or play around the fact that those companies do need to use dilution to raise capital. Okay, so maybe before they they try to raise Capital there's a spike up higher. What usually led to the huge Spike up higher? Uh, it's it's typically manipulation U these companies higher institutions that specialize in generating liquidity. So a lot of these companies do not trade actively every single day.

They typically trade very sporadically, and usually when they do it, it's based on news or based on some sort of, uh, like literal, literally manipulation from these institutions. So essentially like you're like, hey, my company is going to be bankrupt in like three months. um, what can we do about that? You have run and done offerings for a lot of these companies in similar situations. Could you help me out and they'll be like yes.

But in order to do that I we need to strike a deal where you you give me something in return. So they'll basically be like as part of the uh dilution process we're going to give you some percentage of the um additional shares that you can raise capital on your own and so those companies will are then incentivized to run the stock as high as possible so that not only are they raising capital for the company themselves, but they're going to have like a huge sweetener deal such as like hugely in the money warant or additional shares that they can just sell off onto the market and generate like large large amount of capital. So basically the higher the better you know for them as the incentives match at that point, right? Oh, that's really insightful. I I I didn't I I'm not in a small cap space so this is a very new to me.

So okay we have a a huge spike run up and it's back by fundamentals because companies is trash is trying to raise Capital to survive. so that's why Supply will come in when Supply coming. Naturally the stock price will will go down and whoever buy that high get caught holding the back. So since you have this uh kind of like Insight note when Supply comes in the price is about to hit down lower.

So where you know where do you feel it's a good time to enter the trade to go short. MH So personally I never I try not to guess my entry I systematize it in the sense that I try to create a signal that will put a probability on a level holding based on selling pressure. So like I'm never adding or starting a position into a straight up Spike Because if you do that, you're basically entering where there's 0% probability like you have no idea if it will continue going higher or what because buying pressure is just based on momentum. However, like if the St if the stock starts giving signs of selling pressure, you can now start assigning like a probability towards that risk So you can say like hey, it started this is the first pullback it ever had.

It might have like a 5% chance of holding like at that point. maybe not not enough risk. but when it starts creating structure, let's say like putting in lower highs or um, you know, whatever Head and Shoulders patterns. whatever.

That's a very basic technical analysis, but like I'm just trying to illustrate. Basically, like you can essentially assign probabilities to your risk and start putting position sizes that match that probability. So you know if you have a 50% chance of the risk holding, you could maybe put on half of your position right. And essentially like I've systematized that using indicators that are based on price action.

So if if the stock starts pulling back and starts being weak, I'll be able to get in with a small amount of size and then eventually I'll start having confirmation signals that are like much safer signals and those will allow me to go in full size and I may try to add into the winner as well to um, increase the win and pull my stop down to basically compensate for that risk. So I'm putting in more position, but you know I'm pyramiding the strategy basically at times. Otherwise, like you know you're just putting a risk on the high and my main advantage basically is like I'm very risk reward focused. So basically I don't really care if I lose necessarily because I know that when I win, it's going to be much larger than those losses, especially if you position size.

This way you mentioned that you I mean the inverse of catching a falling life is I Guess you don't shot a rocket that's taking off. That's how I interpret it. So you then you mentioned you would assign a a probability like for example, if he makes a head and shoulders pattern right, you know how do you then assess a probability? Let's say if a head and shoulders pattern form right, how do you then assess? Let's say there's 30% probability of it reversing down low. How do you like come up with that? figures based on maybe the structure that you see on the chart so I don't I was using that as a way to illustrate it for people to understand on a basic level.

but the the true logic is like using indicators that you can back test. So basically if you have enough samples of a similar scenario you can say like I can use x indicator like X moving average or whatever um as a signal and I can go over all those charts and say like when that moving average Cross or when this moving average form a cup or whatever it is um that produced like a 50% win rate on that signal and so you can go into those the the next trade with the understanding that you have back tested something that on the same niche within the same samples and you can put on the risk pretty confidently at that point because like I mean mean reversions. Typically you're just trying to like, you're mostly trying to trying to pick the top in a way or you're trying to pick the bottoms. but uh I think it's not really intelligent to try to get in the way of like a runaway train or whatever.

Like you, you don't want to step in front of momentum, instead you want to like see signs of reversing or um, like some people would say capitulation and essentially like using that information to make an educated, like a risk aware bet that there's a decent chance that this will hold. And so, um, it's a lot of back testing to figure that out, but it's not really difficult because meaner versions in a way are just kind of like uh, making a parabolic move and then topping out or bottoming out and then just going the other way. like it's really just kind of trying to catch the backside of that. Okay, we'll get to the back test, uh, part in the moment.

But for now I just want to kind of follow through right now I have understanding of how you enter right? Basically letting the market show you a market structure, price structure that sellers are coming in right. Take a position. So what about stops right? Where do you then place your stops right to to get out the trade if you're wrong or proven wrong. MH So th those signals are meant to put a probability on like the most extreme point.

So like if something made like an alltime high right, then you would probably assign a probability to that high. Like that's the most obvious point to place a stop because that's where the selling actually overwhelmed the demand at that point in time and so you typically would put a stop there. Now you can like put more risk against that so you can say like I'm in half size now I Going to go full size and that that's helpful for like using the same resistance level. but as the trade moves on like commun, reversion trades typically turn into trending stocks in a way.

So like you know, the difference between like a range bound stock is that it's just ping ponging between two ranges. But a trending stock is going to do like lower highs or higher lows Etc and just constantly. Um, do these retests finding sellers or buyers and then just going the other way depending upon if they're still there. And so if you recognize that it's a trending Market you can basically move your stops with the actual Trend and so that's a lot more discretionary there.

There's not really a good way to systematize that, in my opinion, but there are ways that you can kind of like thumb it down to learn. So for example, like if you're just trying to learn how to do it, you could say at this third signal or whatever I will put on like 50% size or something like that just like some very generic number and you know that it'll always pull your stop down a certain amount. That's a very good way to just kind of introduce yourself to the idea, but eventually it's mostly discretionary. You have to really have a good understanding of a how Mark how stocks move, what you're trading, and understanding that you could get stopped at when you're not even wrong.

Uh, you try to stack it to where like you place your stop where you have a very high likelihood that if it gets there that you're wrong but you're it's never 100% So for that reason I like I typically like to use the extremes initially and um I always Advocate that people don't add to Winners and move stops unless they really know what they're doing because it can absolutely kill your strategy and your mental. So it's very important that you just understand how to do the basics first. Okay so from what I'm hearing is that let's say you spot a setup and you enter your first position. Your first stops is usually at the extreme high alltime high for example where there's a maximum selling pressure and let's say if the market progressively moves in your favor, you could skill into your position meaning adding more size and then your stops could shift down to maybe for example to the to the the previous swing high or something along those lines so your stops will progressively move in the direction of the trade that's moving in your favor as well progressively and uh and I think uh from what I also heard I think maybe from other podcast is that your risk is always the initial risk that you have set for yourself and not anything more because sometimes if you let's say for example your original stops at the alltime High you add a new position but you don't shift your stops Now your risk has increased right because of the new position that you have taken up.

Okay, got it. So when you talk about scaling in right? So now understanding of how you set your your entries and your your stops right when you talk about scaling in uh, what are some of things you look for before you you skill in into your trip like I said I'm very I'm very systematic in this way. So I I build out systems that will or indicators that will capture these moves. Um how however, like as I've Advanced as a Trader I'm definitely a little bit more discretionary.

Sometimes it bites me in the ass to like with those ads. but I feel like you can't really achieve like the maximum potential if you don't use discretion at that point. Um, which is why I consider like very Advanced for Traders to actually do uh but essentially like what I would do is just use higher time frame confirmation signals. So like for example, if you if you use a signal on like the one or five minute CH you'll generally get a signal that's like relatively quick.

but if you use a signal that's like 15 minutes, it's only going to trigger possibly on