For so many traders that they're always asking like I'm I'm starting to become profitable or I'm starting to lose less money What is the fastest way for me to accelerate that progress? And what I would always say to these people is the traders that can make that leap from unprofitable to consistently profitable n out of 10 times that is coming from them really focusing on those easy trades and sizing those up. But if if you don't put that Lamborghini worth of risk, you're never going to make a million dollar trade. Even when I was at the top of my game, it still wasn't easy. Not a single day of my career has ever been easy.

It was some absurd start of the Year where I ended up having like a $12 million month or something. Wow! And what separates the Traders what failing versus the ones who are succeeding and making a lot more progress. Seen so many classes over time and I think the short answer to that is if 95% of old Traders lose money then what really separates a winning Trader from the rest of the losing crowd? Today you and I are going to learn from a prop Trader and an advisor who transforms good Traders into some amazing Traders Lance Brin was a verified eight fig Trader at one of the largest prop firms. Besides trading at a firm, his career has expanded into coaching hedge fund management and empowering women and minorities in trading.

In this episode of The Humble Traders Podcast With Lens, you're going to learn how to find your Edge in trading trades are a Trader needs to develop in order to become successful strategies to minimize losses and maximize profits and the importance of finding a mentor in a trading pod. If you're serious about trading, then pay attention because this episode will help you understand the most realistic steps you need to take to become profitable. Let's learn together from a trading mentor and make sure to hit the like button and share this podcast with your trading partners. All right Lens, Welcome to the Humble Traders Podcast What's an honor to have you here in Vancouver Thank you so much for having me after uh, our wonderful prior uh Meetup in Vegas and a couple wonderful dinners out there.

So lens you are no stranger to me and a lot of the people on Twitter Um, but I bet there's there's still a lot of developing Traders and new traders who don't know who you are and what you've accomplished. So if you could tell our audience uh, who you are, what they've done in the trading scene, and uh, what are you working on right now as a Trader Sure. So I think a lot of what makes me so special is I have a very formal institutional background unlike a lot of the so-called internet furus out there that are always trying to uh, teach stuff that I think is tends to be a lot of BS I think what's so different about me is I came from the prop side and so I was working for Trillium for my whole trading career. Uh I traded 11 12 years and in a firm of over a 100.

Traders I ended up becoming the top Trader in The Firm I had multiple backtack eight figure years and I think most important for your audience is a lot of what makes me special is during my time at Trillum, I was also running their Chicago office and so I was training years upon years upon years of different classes of students that were trying to learn trading and so I've seen it all. from how do you take a beginner that is learning from Total scratch or how do you take a good Trader and help make them really Elite And a lot of that experience is how I can make these topics really approachable for the average person out there. Yeah, and and a bit. That's what makes you as a mentor.

so um, attractive to a lot of Traders because they know you've gone through the Tren trenches yourself like you're obviously not naturally born. Uh, a really good Trader I Remember from uh, one of your videos you said that you started at the bottom of the class and you eventually worked your way up up here to making over eight figures profit. Like you said. so what was the process? Like you know for you now seeing let's say a a beginner Trader Who's you know Los see money every single month like a lot of uh, new Traders tend to do and that's totally normal.

but what's a process for them and for you to Mentor them from you know, very at the bottom and going all the way to the top and becoming profitable over time. Yeah and so I think that's the other cool part is unlike some people in In in different Industries I was by no means a natural. this wasn't something about oh Lance has this natural gift or natural Talent where it's not as if I was a basketball player and I was 7'5 and oh it's just so easy Once once you're that tall or something and so I think what is also so cool is I have not forgotten the ridiculous amount of pain frustration Blood Sweat and Tears that goes into this job and so for so much of your audience I know that struggle as a beginner I remember the really long hours I remember the losing streaks and I remember how every single trade would just happen so fast in real time and you would just make the same mistake again and again and again and so I think what's really powerful is it Role Models The fact that guess what? I'm not a natural, but what I did do was figure out a really good, repeatable process for beginners to get up on that learning curve and improve and take it all step by step and I Think for a lot of people what that comes down to is building out what I would call A playbook and what that is is really systemizing exactly what your trades look like And you don't want to be trading based on emotion. You don't want to be based trading based on intuition that you really haven't built up yet.

So it's a matter of what is your strategy. Can you put the entries down on paper? Can you put down the variables that you're looking for? What does the volume need to be? What does the intraday chart need to look like? What does the daily need to look like? Um, what time of day does it need to be and it's really going deep on those variables and building out a different couple strategies and plays that you can then repeat and refine over time. MH So would you say most new? Traders When they first started, the reason they kind of fail and in the beginning is because obviously as a new Trader you don't know what is in a Playbook It takes time to build that up right. and obviously like you said, you cannot rely on intuition because because that's something that takes screen time to eventually gather as any Trader need to do y and I think a lot of what makes it so hard is I think a great analogy is kind of like dieting right? A Lot of people have lost weight on all sorts of different diets, right? You could be on a vegetarian diet, a keto diet, uh, high protein diet.

It's not that there's any right one, but you do need to stick with it and refine it and figure out what work right for you before you're actually going to see progress. And if you're changing diets or trading strategies every month or every two months, you're never going to get far enough down kind of the rabbit hole to actually see whether it it works for you and or especially in the trading world to make all those different refinements to those variables. And um, so like I'd Also say that's where a lot of mentorship ends up being. super crucial is you need to know Am I going in the right direction to at least stick with it and then once you are, a lot of that just becomes repetition and figuring things out over time.

So for the people that are just starting out, the best thing I can recommend is Um I used to use Evernote Some people use Notion and just start building these massive massive databases of what these different charts look like. So you could start building a category for breaking news. You could build a category for um, breakouts. You could build a category for capitulations where a stock really, really panics and even if you don't know what you're doing, if you start to build out a huge database of these and a lot of developing that edge from there is having a hypothesis and you might say I think that the bigger the Panic the better the play is going to be and you might not be able to tell that from three or five charts.

But once you have a 100 charts and your little capitulation database, that's when you can start to see what are the variables that matter the most. Okay, the bigger the Panic the better it tends to bounce. the more boring the ticker is, the better it tends to bounce. If there's news fresh news on the ticker, I'd assume in general it's probably going to bounce worse and so you can start to test all these variables.

but a lot of it is kind of like being a scientist and collecting all this data, having hypotheses that hopefully make logical sense and then just refining that in in the real world I Understand in the beginning you struggle. So how long did it take for you to actually realize? okay I need to build a playbook for myself that's unique to yourself and how long did it take for you to kind of build that up for you to become comfortable at? Okay, every single day I will see at least one or two hopefully uh, plays from my playbook and I can actually execute um effectively on them. Yep, so it took me a really long time to do that and so I was negative every single month for my first year and so during that time it it really was like drinking from a fire hose where it was just it was all happening so fast and there was so much information and even though I had a trainer, it was still hard to learn all these different plays at once. and so if I had to take a guess, maybe around the the year year and a half mark That's when I had a couple really simple plays that I would have started to kind of get it.

I would have had enough reps in where I was starting to know like okay, when this happens this reminds me of this and a lot of it is you just build in your head all all this recollection so that when it's happening in real time, you're able to process it faster and so what would happen is sometimes off the open, especially if it was like a um, a witching day or like a quad witching. um every couple of months. sometimes tech stocks would make a little bit of a move up or down off the open and and have have a downtrend. Um, the market overall would be flat and so if I felt like a tech stock was a little overextended one way or the other, I would wait for that downtrend to break.

I would buy and put my stop at the lows and this was an example of a very simple play that I then would refine over time and it would just be again. Going back to those prior variables: how big is the move? How fast was the move? what's the overall market doing? How good is and strong is this daily chart and you then start really refine and once you do it once and it works, it's then this super powerful feedback loop where it's like okay I know I can do this I've seen this before I know the last five times I was able to make money on four of those so then the next time it comes around you're more confident you're more aware of when you need to enter, you hesitate less and um, all that over time comes together to to really start to improve with repetitions and find positive Ed Value Yeah, because so much of trading is just doing the same set of things over and over again. It may not work all the time, but as long as it works I' say more than 80% of the time or even 70% of the time then there's an edge there. Yeah, and so one thing to the point you're making is especially for new.

Traders I Think some of the easiest plays to develop tend to be some of the higher probability win rate ones because the issue is is if you're a developing Trader and a play might just have like a 10% win rate if you're losing 10 out of 11 times or nine out of 10 times or 13 out of 14 times you're not really going to stick with it and know with the data whether that might be good or not and so like what? I really really recommend are what I've come to call the Easy Money trades and figuring out what trade setup for you is the very easy free throw and for so many traders that they're always asking like like okay, I'm I'm starting to become profitable or I'm starting to lose less money. what is the fastest way for me to accelerate that progress And what I would always say to these people is the traders that can make that leap from unprofitable to consistently profitable nine out of 10 times that is coming from them, really focusing on those easy trades and sizing those up so it's not that they're not losing or doing dumb things elsewhere like that always we we all know that always happens and I think especially as as people might think experienced people or Elite Traders don't make dumb mistakes, we're human. everybody always makes dumb mistakes but the better you get the more your the things you do right and do well outweigh that. and so what happens for new people is they still make all the old mistakes but now when they see that that that simple play like for example maybe it's AMD selling off the open when the Market staying flat and I know once this breaks that downtrend I want to buy it before if I was making a 100 bucks now I might try to make $200 in that trade and that's what really separates the people that are staying negative and unable to game traction.

It's those people that ride that little feedback loop on those easy layup trades essentially to size the same for all the other trades and only take double or a little bit more size for the one or two that the trader knows that they have a higher win rate on. Yep, and so that's something I've I've really kind of taken a stand on Twitter about is is this concept that I call exponential beted sizing. And this is always somewhat controversial because there's a lot of Traders out there that believe, uh, every trade should be sized the same and stuff like that and it's like this huge debate. and so here's ultimately there can only be one truth, right? it's and the truth is, if you're able to differentiate whether One play might be better than another and the example I I tend to love these poker examples, but if you're able to tell whether you might have pocket aces or pocket kings as opposed to an average hand, of course you want to bet better on those hands, right? And so there are some Traders out there where they they're not able to differentiate whether their play or that trade might be better than any of the other options.

If so, you have no choice but to kind of assume the same bet. But if you know your variables for what makes a good trade very very well and you know oh wow, this time the stock is down 4 five% It happened super super quick. There's no news the market is is is staying flat. This was actually a really strong stock.

Before this move, you might find all these variables have a lot of predictive ability and so that play might be way better than average for you. and when that happens, that's when you want to bet more. And and once you're able to do that, the effect that has on your consistency and your profitability is enormous. Yeah, and to add on that I Think given all the variables you mentioned it would be it would be valid and be be logical that these kind of setups that work so that work so well for that particular Trader You don't see that every day, right? Probably a setup you see every couple weeks or once a month.

For those out for those potential plays, I can give you outside returns. Yep, and I think what's what's so amazing too is at least in the prop trading world, there's no question about that debate whatsoever. Every good Trader I've ever seen on their best plays, they are betting 10 times, 100 times or more. This more money on those really really special events where there's some trades where a good Trader just knows this is it.

This is the best trade of the month or even the year and they are betting huge on those and a lot of Traders If they weren't bearing that bet size, they would never even have a career like if you told me I had to bet the same on every single trade I'm not sure I would even make money, but that's that's how important it is. And so for a lot of people, especially when you're starting out, yeah, you don't, you can't have the same skew when you're beginning, but nevertheless, like if you're trying to bet the same on every trade, it's going to be way way tougher for you to start to gain gain traction because some some hands once you've studied enough patterns, you've seen enough charts, some just are better and there are just some extreme examples of that in the trading world. and I would argue that this remains true for all types of investors. Um, there's a reason why.

Warren Buffett During during 2008 when the world was falling, there was a reason why he bet as much as he did on the banks back then, and that accounted for so much outperformance uh, thereafter. and I think a lot of even if you hear the stories about uh Soros and Dr and Miller with with the British pound they knew that that okay, this is something special and even though dren Miller thought he was having a really big bet, that's when Sor said what? What are you crazy? This trade's way too good for that. You need to be betting even more and that that made their whole career really. As you probably know from my videos, my trading strategies that involve scalping, momentum and shoting they require a very fast broker platform I Have some exciting news from the broker: I personally use Center Point Securities is now finally open in Canada Once again, you can now open an account with a lowered minimum of $20,000 and get one month free of Dash To the pro: that's the broker platform you see in all my YouTube videos.

This promotions is available until the end of this month. If you want extremely fast order executions, extensive short location and routing options, then should definitely check out Center Point with a link down below I Know nowadays you work a lot with developing Traders at SMB Um, what's your experience like mentoring Traders and you know what's your me most memorable uh moment working with these Traders Sure! So I've been doing SMB Capital now for probably about a year and a half and what's so great about doing the advisory work for them is I get to kind of take a break from being in the trenches And really help other people grow. And there's something so so special about seeing someone struggle and you can see that they're right on the cusp of breaking out and they might not yet be able to see it themselves. And it's It's so funny because Mike Bfury, who's one of the founders of of SMB the amount of times where at the end of a meeting we talk to each other and we're like oh man, they're they're getting, they're getting really close, like next next month is going to be special, it's all starting to click.

and then when that actually happens and the traitor that hasn't yet believed himself starts to make it happen, There's no better feeling than that. And because I know how much I struggled back in the day I Know what it means to these people and it's It's so much easier to be the teacher and lose sight of just how hard it is. When you're it's it's It's a matter of your career and it's a matter of your pride and your identity. You don't want to be that person that failed at trading.

and I know the struggle that these guys are feeling. and so when you see that start to click for them, that's that's really the best. And so often, uh, they just blow away all their prior learning beliefs and what they thought was a good month. if they could just have 10,000 in P&l Next thing you know, they're putting up 20,000 30,000 in P&l and that's uh, not that it doesn't come without steps back and some regression sometimes, but that's that's the best feeling.

Yeah yeah I guess a lot of developing Traders Almost Like when they're reaching that point of uh, making it, it's almost like a they're like a stock consolidating for a long time on a daily chart and eventually break out yeah and you want to know what was really funny is uh, this this one Trader came to me earlier in the year and he had missed this this huge opportunity and he was really beating himself up over it and he's like oh, Lance I don't know if I'm ever gonna see an opportunity like that again like that could have changed the trajectory of my whole career. and so he had a younger brother and so I related it back to uh and I I I won't use his name but I said okay Trader like if your younger brother just went through a bad breakup or something and his younger brother was was in high school, what would you tell your younger brother and what that traitor said is I Would have told him like don't don't worry about it, there's always going to be new opportunities and like don't don't don't worry, just just think about the long term and think about like you know I I Guarantee you it's all going to work out over over 5 10, 15 years and everything. And I think we all know with with with age and maturity that yeah those High School relationships even though the breakup feels awful and you don't it seems like the end of the world, it's really probably not going to be. And so what I told this Trader is even though this feels so bad in the moment, guess what? I've seen a lot of Traders go through this in the long run.

it's all going to work out. You just need to have a little faith in yourself, you need to really trust the process, and so a lot of what we do with the Traders is just have them forget about the P&l forget about putting so much pressure on yourself, and just think about are you doing better than you were the prior day? Not not in terms of P&l but are you making a better decision? How can you be a little bit more on top of that trade? How can you have a little bit better entry or a little bit better exit? How can you spot more of the opportunities that are working so well for you? And once you focus more on that process and that long-term thinking of the trader you could become 5 years down the road, 10 years down the road you're able to step away and be like okay I'm being a little bit silly just cuz I'm the person going through this I I need to trust Lance and recognize. Okay, there's probably going to be another great opportunity around the corner and uh, that's that's when Traders can really, uh, absolve themsel of all the pressure and just focus on performing for you. It's very special because You' gone through the same thing right? I bet it's even clearer now for you now that you get to take a step back and kind of viewing the entire progress as a mentor and not as a as an active Trader so it's probably very special for you.

y And what's so funny too with a lot of these things is we're we're all human and we all have human biases. And one of the paradoxes of biases is even if you're aware of a bias, does it mean that you're not going to fall for it? And so what always happens with with with all these Traders Just cuz it's human nature is everybody wants to focus on the home run and everybody wants to focus on how can I make as much P&l as quick as possible? But much like many things in life, sometimes the fastest way to grow and progress is the slow and steady path. but slow and steady Isn't So appealing And so what happens is a lot of these. Traders try and increase their size too much too quickly, then they end up taking a big step back and uh, it's a hard lesson to learn, but for so many people, it's like okay if you just stay on the steady progress path, focus on getting that 1% better and then just stay in it for the long run without any whammies without any blowups.

That's how real progress is made. and um, it's It's one thing to recognize that, but it's just so important to have have that internalized into your daily process. And so a lot of what we do at SNB in these monthly meetings and stuff, we actually don't care at all about someone's P&l right? it's it's not that important to us. The most important thing to us is, how did you trade versus the prior month? Did you improve upon the different things you were working on And if if not, why is that and what can you do to fix that? And if so, what's the next best thing you can improve on now.

And so one thing we always have Traders do and I think this is also important if you're retail at home is to figure out like what is what are the one or two things things you're going to be focusing on this month? If you're if you're a Trader at home and you can't tell me exactly what parts of your game you're working on and what you're trying to do to improve on them, then you're just. you're just working halfhazard, right? and it's like I Guess the best analogy is imagine trying to be getting better at golf and you go to the driving range and you just hit 100 Balls You don't even think about your shot and then you go home, right? Yeah, that's practice, but are you really getting better at an optimal rate? No way. And um, it's it's the same as Traders right? It's it's so much better. rather than hitting a 100 Balls to hit 10 balls, but to really dissect what you're working on and maybe it's really getting your back swing or whatever the the case might be as a Trader every month you need to be conscious and intentional with what you're trying to improve on.

Like, do not allow yourself to waste a single day at this job and like that's something I really ranted a lot about at at SMB and even on on Twitter and every where else is at this job. it's a hard learning curve. You do not want to waste days of that learning curve without trading with intention. You need to know.

Okay, this month of September when we're currently recording this: I want to work on having very precise entries? Okay, so then each day you're going to judge yourself solely on the fact: did I have good entries? Did I have my alerts in? Did I have my my my limit orders to enter exactly where I want to be and that's how you're going to judge yourself. Then the end of the month you're going to say was this a success? If so, I'm going to move on to the next most important thing. If not, why not? And what can I do and like? That's how you really make intentional progress. Once again, we just have another guest Trader on the podcast who emphasizes the importance of back testing your strategies.

Remember, don't just jump into any random place that you got from Tik Tok and start clicking the buy and sell buttons right away. If you really need to treat your itchy fingers, you can just tap the like button at the bottom of this video based on your experience mentoring so many. Traders What separates the traders who are failing versus the ones who are succeeding and making a lot more progress and getting to the point of profitability way sooner than others? Yeah, that's that's a really really important question. And I think one of the cool things about the seats that I've been in is I've seen so many classes over time and I think the short answer to that is everything.

The difference between I'd say if you take a a class of maybe 15 to 20, there's usually one star, maybe one or two stars in each class. Okay, and what separates them is literally everything they do. These are the traders that are working the hardest. These are the traders that are asking the most detailed questions.

These are the traders that are doing writeups with the most detail. These are the traders that are reflecting and coming up with solutions that are so much better and more thought out than everyone else's And it's It's not just one thing, but it's when you have that level of work and your standard for yourself is that high. and in every category, you're outworking and out competing the rest of the class when that compounds over so many days, potentially a year, two years or more of the learning curve. the difference in progress that's made is ridiculous.

And to use an example from one of the SB Capital classes. there was one Trader there who from the very first day I met him. this was a Trader that was emailing me questions. This was a Traer that when I was pushing him for Solutions he was coming up with more and more detail than everyone else and I think it's like it's so it's such a perfect example.

where last week I tweeted something on Twitter asking my followers to provide some of the details for what would have made uh, Msos the weed ETF and like ACB another POT stock an interesting short and from the retail side and for the average Trader some of these Traders I were able to identify a couple details, but I want to find the trader that when posed that question he comes back to me with a two-page write up and he analyzes all the nuances of the daily chart And so so many of the people gave their three or four word answer and were like oh, did I cover everything and what I would have said is okay in this example, what happened is uh, five days ago there was fresh news but now we've been up 5 days since then. Now on that sixth day we gapped up a huge amount. the the uh the move is now a total of over 100% higher. We had the highest volume um, the rest of the sector is is overbought based on these indicators and then you failed off the open and the level of detail it would have been.

You can do pages of analysis right? And that difference when applied to every single trade you're studying, when applied to every single problem you're facing, it is enormous, compounded over time. and so it's not just one thing. it's just like how they approach everything dayto day and um and just out compete. It's almost like you know how in how in grade school there would be that one uh that one pet pets you know teachers pet of a class where like you I I just remember I was kind of like a little bit of a class clown in in in grade school and stuff where I would submit my paper and it would be like I don't know 10 15 sentences.

then like the teacher's pet would submit like an 8 to 10 page document and you're just like oh my. God They've got the cover page, they've got the supporting figures, They've got an appendix I Don't even know that people were doing that these days. And while I used to probably mock that student back in the day, that is actually the student that ends up succeeding because they're just going so far above and beyond. And um, that's the type of thing that that really differentiates themselves.

and it seems like the extra amount of work is the work that's done outside of the actual trading executions like outside of regular trading hours like the studying, reviewing charts, emailing mentors. questions like those are the stuff that really stand allow a Trader to stand out. Yeah, and it's it's so true. Where what I would what I would always say is the trading day and trading.

That's almost the equivalent of of playing the basketball game. That's not where progress is made right. No matter what your sport is, the progress is not really made. Playing the game.

The progress is all made when you're hitting the gym, when you're doing the dribbling drills, when you're watching tape of the game, when you're doing all the practices to really intentionally refine. and what you so often see is the people that aren't making progress, they're they're just there haphazardly. You know, trading all day. They're not trying to improve on anything in particular.

Then after hours. Guess what? They already in their mind did their day in. In my mentality, your your day doesn't even start until after hours, right? And if we want to talk about hours and it's not just about hours, but effective intentional review and practice. And so when I was learning my day in my head, it started at 4:15 or 4:30 p.m.

that's when it started because I was doing the review and so when most people were thinking, oh man, that was a hard day I put in all the hours I'm thinking okay I need to do an hour of writeups I need to do an hour of watching tape of my trading I need to do an hour of reading news catalysts and I would have all these tasks that I would do every single day. So what do you recommend? Traders Whether on the retail side or the institutional side, what kind of routine should they try to aim for every single day? Uh, when they're trading? Yep. So and I think that's so important because how you use your time and whether you use it effectively is is everything. because that defines the rate of improvement you're going to make each day.

And so some of the practices that I think are essential no matter what skill level you're at. assuming you know all the basics about order entry and all that other stuff. Um, I think every single day you need to be reviewing whatever the easiest opportunity was and so what might that look like? That might mean you take the chart, you put it in your database, and then I would be doing a page or two write up for whatever those easiest plays were each week? Um, I would be studying what does that daily chart look like and trying to reverse engineer why these moves are occurring. What does the daily chart look like? What does the intraday chart look like? What is the volume during all this stuff? what does the level two box look like? And getting a huge database of those easiest opportunities and having that cataloged over time is incredible.

So that's one use of time. Another use of time is I'd be going over um, how to find these specific opportunities. So it's always such a big question that we push the Traders at SNB to ask themselves is if you're making money in a play, how can you find more of them? So so that's a question of do you have scanners and technology that can help you spot these? Are you putting limit alerts to help you? Um, not miss the entries and and the exits? Then another thing that's really important is if you're trading with a team or a pod, are you educating those around you on what your easy opportunity looks like so they can help you spot more of them? So that's another key thing. And then another essential practice is watching tape of your trading to spot all those small things you might be doing.

Are you effective with the keystrokes? Are you effective with the entries? And just get the Reps in real time you heard lens. Knowing how to find the right kind of stocks to trade is actually a very crucial skill for any successful. Traders If you guys want to learn the details on how to find those profitable stocks to trade, then you can comment stocks criteria down below and I'll send you a full tutorial. Uh I Do want to touch upon something you just mentioned which is working a trading pod? Uh I know you talked about you know as Traders We should find traders who are at are similar level and trade similar things, similar strategies.

What's the what's the benefits of working a trading? Po And how would you? How is that something you do regularly for your traders in the when you're trading at these firms? Yeah! so I Think that is a big Epiphany for most people on the retail side is on the prop side. You always have a trainer and you always have people to collaborate with. And part of what's so powerful about being on the prop side is that environment that you get right where you're just surrounded by people trading similar strategies. so you can talk about different trades you can compare.

Um, how people got into the trade, how they got out of it, what size they traded and a lot of that collaboration ends up leading to all these little micro interactions that make you so much better. So one thing I've always been posing to the retail side is if this is such a powerful best practice of the prop side, why is it that most of retail are trading on their own? Not only is trading on your own much less fun, but I'd argue you miss out on so many of these interactions? Now some people say look, Lance I don't enjoy trading with others or I end up um, feeling fomo if other people are trading other things that I'm not And what I would say is, there's many different ways to model this out right. You don't need to be on a Discord Channel trading with others every single day. Maybe the right process for you is at the end of each day you're doing a Daily Review with them.

Or maybe you're doing a pre-market call to see what they're looking at. Or maybe it's just at the end of the month you're exchanging your easiest money trades for their easiest money trades and you're studying what what each person's best OPS are. And so I think finding these pods. First of all, it makes it less lonely and more fun.

You're able to learn their best practices and their best trades and I think it really accelerates the learning you can do because of that. And it's It's so funny where like trading is just like any other skill and as both of us doing social content I think we can appreciate Mr Beast as as most people can out there. And when Mr Beast was on a Joe Rogan podcast, he discussed how he attributes so much of his success to the fact that when when he was first starting he had three or four best friends and they were all obsessed with crack the YouTube code and so they were eating, sleeping, breathing the YouTube puzzle. and if it wasn't for them all working with each other and sharing each other's insights, he would have never, ever gotten to the place he did.

And so for so many retail, Traders I I Urge them to find a practice that works for them because it allows you to see more opportunities. It allows you to learn more Styles It learns like another huge thing is just taking other people's Sol Solutions and applying that because guess what? no problem in trading is ever so new. and so when I do advisory work at ATB or with with some of the groups I Mentor What's so funny is some Trader might be struggling with sizing and then you say oh well, guess what? Uh, John Sam and Luke were also struggling with these and they just got past it. Why don't you speak to them to learn what worked so well for them and what best practices make sense to you to apply to your own? Trading It's just a really powerful way to compound your your learning process and have more fun and celebrate each other's wins, commiserate with each other's losses, and like imagine how how isolating it would be if you didn't have that and I know even for you Shay, Um, having a little trading pod was was hugely valuable to you and and and your growth.

Yeah, uh, just really quickly going over my experience: I was trading alone for the longest time. Uh, and then I was in another community. This is probably like five six years ago where there were a couple people that I think trade similarly as I do. Then we kind of formed our own little Discord and every single day and in the evenings we'll post our charts and we'll share with each other.

Nothing formal, but we will write like what we think did well and didn't and that's kind of where everything kind of started. From that's how it all begins. Can can I ask how you found those people? Um, it was a mix of I found this this person from like a community like a one, those forums and we just kind of branched off into our own little group I think social media is the best way and some of the friends I found from Twitter so that was great. Um yeah I think Twitter and and also Reddit yeah I was one of the Ogs on Reddit I'm not on there anymore but I used to be very active on on on Reddit this is before the whole Wall Street beted thing years ago you're not uh what's what's that person the uh something Kitty that the person that did the whole GameStop uh the roaring roaring kitty yeah yeah yeah no he he's the he's the yeah no I I was not a part of that I I wish I did Diamond handed wasn't wasn't wasn't my speed either so that yeah one thing that I always get from from people as I ask how can I find my own pod and so often what I do is is typical to having me as a mentor as a trainer is I don't give them the answer and instead I say you tell me that's probably my favorite response I think online or with with when whenever training anyone is they'll ask me a question and I say you tell me and because it's so important to help it's like as the saying goes, I don't I don't want to give you the answer I want to teach you how to find your own answer and how to think critically to find that and so often people ask me these questions on Twitter and if I give you the answer like it's going to help you in the short term term but that's not going to help you figure out other issues in the in the long run and it's that's where Going back to the previous question, what separates the really great stars is the stars are always figuring out their own answers and when you push them on questions like that, they're coming up with the most detailed Solutions And so I challenge the audience to really ask like and an answer doesn't need to come up in 30 seconds or minute later I Want people thinking about these things for days or weeks and really putting the the effort in the thought and like yeah, there's obvious answers like social media There's obvious answers like going to Traders for cause meetups where we first met uh in In in Vegas and but then I would also ask people to think okay like the best way I would argue is to find ways to give other people value very selflessly so that they want to help you and be a part of that A And then where the rubber really meets the road is who are the people on Twitter sharing a daily report card every single day, not just for a week, not just for a month? Who are the people that do that year after year and build up a following? Who are the people that are building scanners and sharing them with the community, Who are the people that are making watch lists or who are the people doing uh YouTube videos dissecting the top trades.

Uh, there's one guy. Eigor Apple Boom that did an amazing AMC AP right up dissecting all the events, dissecting the trading opportunities and that's a great way to differentiate yourself. And once you start giving value to others, then it's very easy because you start attracting other people that want to to learn and share and be a part of that. And so so many people say oh it's it's hard to find a pod and I tried but it it didn't work and what I would say is guess what, It's not supposed to be easy.

It's nothing, nothing worthwhile in life is ever easy and especially trading right If if you're getting, if you're getting frustrated and disheartened because you put in 30 minutes or two hours or 5 hours or 10 hours to find a good pod that's going to give you benefits into perpetuity forever and it didn't work so you're just giving up. Well guess what trading is going to is is no easier and it's not going to work out I'm sorry and like I don't want to be the bad person that says that. but guess what, it's hard and if you're going to give up easy, this is not the right job. I Am sorry to say that, but this is for the people that will persevere that will give Blood Sweat and Tears to succeed at this job because there's nothing more they want.

They want. it more than, uh, comfort and convenience and emotional feel goodness. They're willing to go through that pain. Um, because this is a psychologically difficult job.

The losing streaks, uh, the setbacks no matter how good you get. Even when I was at the top of my game, it still wasn't easy. Not a single day of my career has ever been easy. And so if guess what? you tried for a week and the Pod didn't magically assemble and people didn't come running from all over the world to give you all all their value and their secrets, well guess what? That's not how life works.

Yeah, I Couldn't agree more because I think especially in trading. So many people want to take, but not a lot of people want to give. But in especially in this industry to make it, you get more when you give. So I think whether it's on YouTube on tweet on the the really detailed write up you do I think that's your way I'm sure that's your way of giving back to a trading community.

and yes, you get a lot of people who reply you who ask you questions and asking you to give more. But I think you probably enjoy talking to the traders who provide some Value First Well and that's I wouldn't even say that's a trading thing I'd say that's become one of my main life philosophies is is what I've learned is just overall in life the best things happen when you truly give value without looking for anything in return and in my view Society functions best When people's doing what's best for everyone around them which also in turn ends up benefiting yourself and whether it's people like Mike Bella furri or um, a lot of the people that attend Traders for a cause it's all people that are looking to network and to give selflessly and I think like what makes a good networker is they're not thinking about themsel they're thinking about how can I meet this this other person and help this other person um achieve what they want and so many people say oh but I I I tried I tried giving selflessly and it didn't work and it sucked and I got nothing in return. So I gave up and that's when I say well guess what, you weren't really giving selflessly you were, you were doing it with your own motives and it's it doesn't happen all at once and I think most of the rewards in life they really come from having a long-term View and and doing what what really just adds value to to the world around you and now like people so many people will say hey Lance how can I join your trading pod and what I'll say is during my training pod what what value have have you given you know and it's uh, it's it's hard for people to recognize that. but I think it.

it all ends up better when you're trying to help others and you end up getting more in return than than what you give. and I believe in that trading wise I believe in that with my nonprofit and I believe in that just as a life philosophy. and I think in the end, it also just helps you be happy and H and just happy with yourself and who you are. Yeah, and I think um, a lot of people talk about even just finding the right balance with all this stuff.

and and and Lance you're talking about working hard and going all in. but like, when when is that too much versus when is that, um, leaving room for family? When is that leaving room for uh, sleep that I like to talk and preach about and it's a very fine line right between overwork and burning yourself out. And and we were over lunch talking about how easy it was to burn out over 2020 and 2021 and that's that's where I think so much comes down to. how can you make your daily routine fun? and I think part of things being fun for a lot of people is is trading with others.

um doing different contests or different collaborations or um, recording content. That that is is fun to record and and make fun. Doing these interviews is is fun for me. So it's why I do it.

and I know I can sustain this and I think like it's it's finding that balance where you're going to be healthy, happy, well slept and recognizing that when you do all those things, you're going to be more productive and more effective. And like yes, 22y old Lance probably worked way too many hours and in retrospect I could have been more balanced than everything else. but I think sometimes it's like you need to only through through age and experience do you learn that like oh wait, you know that wasn't so effective I really can find more balance and and life is just the big refining process. Mhm yeah and always pushing isn't always sustainable either in trading and in general.

Yeah, yeah and it's I think it's just a matter of doing doing the best you can with the constraints and people will say hey, Lance how am I supposed to get good sleep with with kids or how am I supposed to um, put all that time and if I have to support a family or if I'm trading part-time and the answer is always do the best you can with the constraints you have and I'm not saying you're going to get perfect sleep if if you have kids I'm just saying do the best you can for you and your situation. And what I would also say is what people uh, don't believe is that there's always someone out there in your situation that's making it work. So maybe you're you've got a full-time job and you're trying to learn parttime. Maybe you've got two young kids and not the best sleep? There's somebody out there that's found some solution to make it happen and it's so important to recognize if someone else can do it, so can you.

So moving away from the men? Tor Lens Now back to the Trader Lens. Uh, could you share with the audience? what's probably your favorite strategy? That that's worked for you in the past when you were trading consistently? Sure. I Think probably what I'm most known for uh due to chat with Traders and and Aaron Ffield is is some of the capitulations and the panics. and uh I think part of what makes those so fun is just the adrenaline and the speed.

Uh, it's it's scary and and heart pounding sometimes. and I think that's also what kind of makes it great in a way. So breaking down that capitulation play uh, what? what should you look for on the daily chart so audience can kind of look at it? What do you look for on the daily chart and what do you look for intraday for your entries and your um, executions and exit? Yep, Yep, and so I think for a lot of this you can almost separated into two buckets I Want to find the stocks that were really really really steady strong or or even ex exorbitantly strong that are then panicking. or I want to find the stocks that are really, really weak and then are panicking and having their last flush out.

And so one thing intellectually that's really, really important for Traders to recognize is the stocks that you trade are so so so important. If you gave me a random list of tickers from the whole universe of stocks, I would never, ever be able to make money I Don't think any Trader would be able to make money. You're only able to find Edge in very specific tickers in very specific situations. Some of those tickers with Edge or what we call Inplay stocks that might be be because of a fresh news Catalyst That might be because of they're a new ticker iping.

It might be because of a technical pattern, it might be because of, um, different order flows due to imbalances and quad witching or something. And so we're really only trying to touch and trade tickers that are doing something exceptional. And so with these capitulation trades I want to find like the top 5% of the strongest stocks that then out of nowhere tend to Panic or I want to find like the bottom 5% of the weakest stocks that are left for dead and no one wants to own anymore and they're just being uh thrown out as as Unown uh and like one of the analogies I would I would give is last last year I think it was um yeah, mid maybe like spring 22 Uh Chinese stocks were getting wrecked Alibaba was getting wrecked. Uh, Pendot was getting wrecked and I think it was the JP Morgan analyst that essentially created the Bottom by coming out with the research report saying that Chinese stocks are uninvestable and the second you start to hear that rhetoric.

So these were companies that I think Alibaba touched 300 something at at the highs less than a year earlier and now it was being puked out at around $80 a share and under a year and that is a mega mega cap company. and so what happens is that pendulum of of say bullishness to bearishness. It was going so far bearish like again for an analyst to come out and say these stocks are uninvestable. It's literally your job as an analyst to figure out what the value is and advise people on investing them, not just say throw them all out.

That's garbage. So that just speaks to how crazy bad that sentiment is at the time. And so if you read between the lines of what I just said there's we can start to sus out some of those variables, right? So first of all, there's sentiment and I would say sentiment on those stocks was approaching -10 Then I also touched on the scale of the move right? So these were super strong and popular and Alibaba was at 300 or something. Now that was cut to I Think it.

I think it was around 880 bucks when this happened. So that's a massive move in a couple of months. and then if you were to take that specific move over the prior days, I think the stock went from like 100 to 70 bucks or so in a matter of like a couple days or a week. So these are all really important variables to justify just how quick and extreme that move was.

Now another variable that I like to consider in these capitulations is volume. The volume on this was enormous and so what's happening with volume is you get all these people that might have been long these shares since 300 bucks, 200, 150 and they're finally throwing in the towel and you get this massive share turnover. So the average price, all the people that were ever going to sell, they're puking and it's people now buying it at a way lower average price, and all the people that were going to hold on forever. they're still holding.

So now you have new people in this vacuum C where everybody that was ever going to sell just panicked and sold and you've got new money in and that average price of the holder goes way way down. and that's so often that Dynamic that creates a bottom. And guess what, when you're at Peak bearishness and the stocks are uninvestable, there's only so much further you can go, right? Essentially, everything bad is being discounted and so that's the concept. But then the question is, how do you actually trade that and execute And and so what a lot of people will notice is some of my systems when you have Inplay Tickers can be very, very simple.

so if you're doing a swing trade in an Inplay play ticker, if something's selling off day by day by day, what I'll look for is a break of that Trend How do I Define that break of trend? It might be as something as just getting above prior day highs. and because all of a sudden if you're going down, down, down down down you have that first up bar. a lot of people are going to start to pile that on. and right when they do their end ofday scans and they look over charts, people are going to say oh my God like Alibaba has been down 5 days in a row.

We just had a huge puke out. enormous volume. Now we close strong and a lot of that is what creates that new feedback loop where it's people now saying hey, maybe we we put a turn in and you're buying before all the confirmation and everything else and so a lot of what I do is that concept on different time frames. So even if this was intraday, if some stock pukes out intraday I'm going to be looking for that break of Prior bar highs then I do a very simple stop which is just a trailing stop of break of Prior bar lows.

Yeah, so that means uh, as the stock breaks out higher, you're moving your stops out up, uh up along the way. always in the money. Yep, and so okay. And this is a day trade.

Yep, and it can be on any time frame really and so often. What happens is when you have an inlay ticker, you tend to get stock that really really just melt lower in a trend so that will really kind of waterfall over. and when something's trading down very cleanly, if it's a really clean down move, the cleanest down moves once they reverse tend to have the cleanest up moves. Yeah, and that's not a hindsight bias thing, right? You can see in real time how cleanly something is selling off.

It's way different if something is zigzagging all over the place. but it's just this smooth waterfall. and so finding those smooth waterfalls that really really Panic those are the ones that are going to be way more likely to have a clean bounce. And that's where if you're sticking to those tickers that are trading very cleanly, the probability of you being able to catch a bounce with a simple trailing stop like that is way way way higher.

And so what I think surprises a lot of people is when I post my my monthly top Ops on on Twitter each month. So many of these plays by nature of them being an Inplay ticker with a fresh news Catalyst or making a really huge move so often they respect that very simple rule of using prior bar lows or prior bar highs because these are stocks that are very cleanly trending. Oh, and that's where you get the vshape exactly exact shape, down and vshape Recovery Yeah, and so a lot of what I became famous on Twitter for is talking about buying on the right hand side of the V and what that means is I don't want to fight that Trend as it's going lower. but once you get that prior that break of the prior bar highs and then you've got a turn and you're on the right side of the V meaning we're now bouncing.

That key difference is you're now going with that counter Trend and like it sounds so cliche. but the simple saying the trend is your friend is so so so so true. So when a stock is selling off and waterfalling I don't want to fight that Trend But the second I can identify a bounce based on some of those rules for for finding a turn, I'm officially with that counter Trend and when you're with that counter Trend your probability goes up, you have a stop and then so often trends go way further than you think and that just means your award is is is better which is always way better than than fighting the trend which is the opposite of all those. So theoretically speaking, if you had to restart your trading all over again, with that, say a $30,000 account, what kind of strategies would you focus on? would you still trade? Um, the one we just talked about? So I think this is such an important question that I'm actually going to give instructions for extra hard mode.

which is let's say I had no knowledge whatsoever. Like let's say, you don't have the resources of a trading Mentor you don't have a firm, you don't have a pod. I Think of course you're really stacking the odds against you if you don't but just just for for the game, let's save it. So if I had no idea where to start, what I would do is I would try to find the craziest moves each day.

What stocks made the biggest up move? What stock made the biggest down move? Where did the really big news occur that day? Or were there any big IPOs take like the recent arm IPO and I would start databasing all of those charts that had the biggest moves, What stocks did the biggest volume versus their average daily volume and just start to create a database and categorize them. Okay, this is my my Evernote database for IPOs This is my Evernote database for stocks that had breaking news and did some huge move. This is my database for um stocks that panicked um or these are even breakouts and get enough charts over time. Months and months of data.

and then I try to find the patterns in those and what you're going to do is once you have those categories. if you have 100 hot IPO charts, you can start to say these are the themes. Okay, like if if the stock holds the pricing, maybe they tend to go up if they break the pricing, maybe they tend to go down. if a stock has super clear resistance and then it breaks it later in the day it can make a really clean move.

I Think one thing for those, it had been so long since we had a hot IPO Like this arm? Yeah! and I think a lot of Traders forgot that a lot of hot IPOs Kind of settle down in the middle of the day day, but they can really ramp up at around 2: p.m. break out and just go on a run. And it's been so long since we've seen that that a lot of people weren't on top of their game. But that's exactly what the Arm IPO did.

And I think when you start to build these databases, you see these patterns and you see like okay this news headline came out and therefore a simple rule like if good news you know or if the stock goes up I can be long and have my stop at the unaffected price. So if if I'm long the news and it starts to go down, I get out and you can start to build very very simple rules like that and so you can have your rules for trading. IPOs You can have your rules for trading breaking news, You can have your rules for trading. Uh, capitulations and you start to refine them based on all these hypotheses, right? And so I can say what happens if my stop is in a capitulation I'm going to hold the trade for 5 minutes.

Totally random, but what if I just guess 5 minutes and what you do is you start to go back and crunch the data. If I now have 100 capitulation charts. What does happen if I buy on the first up bar and then hold for five minutes. Okay, um, maybe the data turns out this output.

but now I'm going to say what happens on the biggest most capitulary moves where it's three standard deviations and three average daily ranges and huge volume capitulation. What does that do to the data set and you essentially start to this little data scientist with all these hypotheses and so I would do a lot of reverse engineering that way and find out like what are The Logical patterns that make sense I would then start to pull on different variables. How does time of day matter? How does volume matter? How does whether there's a news Catalyst matter and then I would just keep on refining, refining, refining. Um, but yeah I think the other thing I would advise is finding what trades are the easiest for you I tend to think some of the easiest trades are the slower ones.

It gives you more time to think. It gives you more time to game plan. Um, there's some. There's some breaking news where you know it's coming right? You might know about the AMC AP Court decision.

You might know about the Grayscale ET Uh Bitcoin ETF decision. And so then you might start specializing in what's the stuff. The headlines that I know is coming that I can really game plan and those are slow I can uh, you know game plan for them so that's going to be really powerful in the beginning much like I told you about like the the little reversal trades. Okay I know I want to look for little Tech tickers that are weak especially on quad.

witching. So then I can start to really focus on these little areas and repeat, repeat, repeat, and get data. So once they have all these data set, do you still recommend these new traders to? how should they approach risk management we talked about earlier that you recommend traders to have to use know a little bit more risk risk on for onew two strategies they're good at. but what if they're just starting out they don't have that you know A+ Playbook Yet how should they risk in the very beginning to get to that point? Yep, and so I would also say big picture You're touching on an important topic which is one of the pitfalls of information out of context is right.

What might be true for one Trader at a certain part of their career and their development is totally different for another. Trader at a different stage of their career, right? And so if you're a new developing Trader What I would say is you might not need to be trading any sides whatsoever. The best place for you might be in a virtual account. and if you don't know the basics and if you don't have data yet, that proves that you of edge, you probably don't need to be trading any money at all.

Or you can just trade one share. and you want to know what happens to most people when I tell them hey, there's nothing wrong with tra