The Stock Trading Reality Podcast

I love people who have ambition and follow through with it to the maximum potential. I’d argue that our guest, Peter from our community, takes this to an entirely different level. You’ll see what I mean when he talks about his photography passion…. Wow! I’ll just leave it at that. I bring that up to give you the overall context of Peter’s personality and approach to life. I found the discussion very interesting to see how someone with so much hardcore passion would implement that into the world of learning the markets and becoming a trader. Peter does not disappoint and we talk about a variety of topics and considerations that all traders (new or old) need to remember to factor into their trading approach. Notes: Today we interview community member Peter. His wife was given a bonus but it had to be paid out in stock. They could then decide how to diversify it. Peter didn’t want to be bothered with it so he put it on the ‘middle of the road’ risk parameter and let it grow on it’s own. Peter has a passion for photography so this led him to move to Iceland from Hungary. Since he left the company he previously worked at he was required to cash out the stock’s he had threw them. He did take an introduction to the stock market course but wasn’t very impressed so he didn't continue with this initial source. After going through many Stock Trading Reality Podcasts, Peter knew that this was the place he’d like to learn. After trying to find what timeframes worked best for him, he realized that he did not excel on shorter periods. The good thing is that he took the time to figure this out on paper instead of blowing up multiple accounts to find out. Peter is taking a very slow and methodical approach to the market since he has heard many stories about what happens when you jump in head first without the proper training first. Quotes: I thought the stock market was a playground for the rich people, that’s it. I just wanted to get a broker and I just wanted to start. But I decided to listen to podcasts about it first. I did try shorter timeframes. I killed myself with a noose. I tried to trade those and you know how it is for a beginner. If I started earlier I would have run into it full force and it would have definitely burned me. If you trade the plan it means you have a strategy. If you trade the plan it means you are patient and disciplined.

It’s been requested for quite some time, and here it is (I guess now is better than never?), my personal journey. I do my best to remember everything and start at the very beginning. At the end of the day, all I can really say is DO SOMETHING. Notes: Clay’s interest in numbers has been around since he was a child. From an early age, Clay’s family noticed his entrepreneurial talent and helped nurture that. It also helped that he is competitive and wants to win. A big moment in Clay’s life was happened he was a cart retriever at a grocery store. One time they were overwhelmed with work and one of the millionaire sons of the business offered to roll up his sleeves and help out. This opened up Clay’s eyes to the fact that you’re never too good to do the work required to grow/expand a business. If you couldn’t tell by now, Clay has been focused on making the numbers and math work in his favor. He worked multiple jobs and started his own business to bring in extra revenue while he was in college. Instead of going out and partying like most of this classmates, Clay decided to focus on the growing the business. It only took Clay one time to ‘fall in love’ with a penny stock and unfortunately take a 75% loss. However, this was a great learning experience for him and led him to investigate trading the market further. After putting out video charts on various tickers, he quickly became the most followed person on InvestorsHub. As time went on, Clay decided to see who was serious about learning technical analysis and launched the website. As time went on and the site grew he hired on a friend from his church who is now known to the community as IT-Nate. Shortly after, Chezz joined the team as well. Even after producing courses regarding the stock market and real estate, Clay’s true passion has always been the field of personal finance. That’s where the idea of www.MoneyWithClay.com came about. Quotes: The money just happens to be the scorecard of how well you are doing at this game of figuring out how the numbers work. It’s taught me that you’re never too good to do anything if something is going to help grow your business. I didn’t live the normal college experience because I chose to go down the path of working hard. I thought, the stock market? That’s for dweebs! That’s for geeks! That’s boring. I’d walk into a meeting and Don would say ‘Hey! Claytrader!’ That’s where the alias came from. Because I did something. Just do something. I don't know what your something is but just do it. You never know where it may lead. My true passion is personal finance. I think the reason is that it is something everyone and anyone can do. Make sure you have control of your life. If you don’t have control of your own life, how are you going to control trading? Links: MoneyWithClay.com

Warning! This is Part 2 of a multi part interview, so if you want the best experience, then be sure to listen to episode 161 first. I know Part 1 left on quite the cliff hanger, but you don’t have to wait any longer. We continue down the road with Phil (chat room alias “phl1”) on his journey and venture down all kinds of nooks and crannies in the market. We do a little bit of live coaching as we talk about an actual trade that took place as we were speaking (the benefit of doing these while the markets are open). All in all, if you enjoyed Part 1 then there is no doubt in my mind you’ll enjoy this second part just as much, if not more. Let’s get to it! Notes: Phil is very process oriented. He makes a great distinction between a mistake and an error while explaining how it impacts his confidence going forward. Phil reminds us how our body reacts to fear and the unknown which essentially shuts off our logic in the moment. Clay and Phil do a live lesson on CLSD during the interview. The big thing to remember when scalping is that sometimes you need to let the trades form and give you an area of opportunity. Phil has created an in depth business plan for his trading business. While he thinks this is completely normal, he falls into a very small category of people who actually treat trading as a business, not a day at the casino. Since Phil has prepared himself by saving multiple years of living expenses, he is prepared to continue to practice every day and continue to work on increasing his trading size. He will not get himself into a position where he can sustain a catastrophic loss. Slow and steady wins the race. Quotes: I’ve been in chat rooms where I want to go long but they’re going short so I change my strategy but I was ultimately right! When I think I’m not getting anywhere in trading and I see I’ve mastered another section, reminds me that the practice pays off. I have a paragraph about why I trade, then a paragraph about who I am as a trader… If I would have realized I could have done this for a living years ago I would have approached it differently.

This is a great one that could have went on for hours. It kind of did considering it turned into a two part episode. Part 1 takes us down the rabbit hole with Phil (chatroom alias, “ph1l”). Phil is a beast with a plan and while he still has lots to learn, there is no question in my mind he is taking this all as serious as it can be taken. From writing out a personal business plan to saving up a huge hoard of cash to get him going, Phil is being realistic and sharpening his axe to the fullest. What I enjoy the most about Phil is his brutal honesty (he doesn’t really like other people – haha!), yet, he is willing to share so that other people can learn from his mistakes. It’s sort of an irony, but definitely in a good way. Let’s start the journey! Notes: Today we talk with community member Phil who goes by ph1l in the chat rooms. His father had become ill and this led to Phil getting a hold of his father’s brokerage account to manage. After probing him about his purchase decisions, he decided to rework the strategy in hope for more consistency. As he got more serious about trading, he invested over 15,000 dollars in his education but had come to realize that regardless of how many different schools he went through that he needed to stick with just one and give it a chance. Phil paid off all his debts and was able to accumulate 4 years of living expenses before ever attempting to become a full time trader. He was still in the process of figuring out where he fit in the market in regards to strategy and markets. He pulled the trigger on Claytrader University within the first 5 minutes of 2018 and went through the courses as recommended within the first month and a half. After taking some initial losses, Phil decided to reduce his trading size and take it slow just to get into the groove. He can scale up as time goes on but he is not in any hurry. Quotes: I took the account from 50 grand to 150 grand in a few years but now it’s just kind of plateaued. I went from the top of the world to losing everything. My cash flow was negative, my savings were gone… I now have 0 debt. I put away 4 years of overhead into a savings account. I knew that was the only way. I said I was going to be the first one to sign up for CTU in 2018. I was enrolled by 12:04am. This is the rest of my life. This is my new career.

It’s time to bring back a long time member of our community, Mark. He’s much better known via his alias of ‘AlphaThor’ within the community. He was originally on episode 96, but I wanted to sit down with him and hear how things have been going. We discuss several topics but the one that I could relate to quite well is his current strategy of depending on high win rates to tilt the risk vs. reward into his favor. This topic is one that many people don’t quite understand, so I’m confident it will be helpful to those who need to grasp the “full range” of how risk vs. reward can work. Lots to learn thanks Alpha, so let’s get to it! Notes: Today we reinterview Mark who goes by alphathor in the community. To recap, Mark started in penny stocks before discovering Clay. This led to him getting educated which ultimately led to his desire to trade options. Mark has structured his job so that he has the opportunity to trade every morning and work in the evenings. He was smart enough to lighten up on his trading as he tried to find what trading worked the best with his personality and strategy. Even though he didn’t find much success day trading to start, he changed up his entry criteria. He would wait for too much confirmation and miss the move. Now he mainly focuses on overextended moves into important support or resistance levels. This is also a high win rate strategy so while the risk versus reward isn’t what you typically think of, this modified version is typical for scalping. Quotes: I tried swing trading options. That didn’t work out too well. I’ve always had a passion for day trading options. I was struggling trying to find my way so I was just coasting and taking it easy over the summer. Since I’m trading against the trend, I would have rather got out for the quick 50 bucks than have it go against me. I’d like to start with 2 contracts then work my way to 3 and building up to 9 in the future. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode096/

Let’s go!!!! I’m sick of excuses! I swear… the more people I interview on the podcast the more crustier and grumpier I become when it comes to people playing the victim card and crying foul with all kinds of excuses. I don’t want to spoil anything, so all I’m going to say is that thanks to our guest, Rick (“mollardr1” chatroom alias), I’ve become that much more of a jerk to those who walk around with the victim card. If you are looking for some inspiration in regards to putting the axe to the grindstone to go from Point A to Point Z, I guarantee you will get that in this discussion. Let’s get to it! Notes: In today’s episode we interview community member Rick. Since Rick grew up on a farm he was familiar with commodity markets such as corn, cattle, etc. He also participated in a paper trading competition for school and while other people went all in on some penny stocks, Rick took it more serious. Starting at the age of 17, Rick had started to put in monthly contributions to mutual funds hoping for 10% growth over 5-10 years. He eventually closed those accounts out and used the proceeds to buy his family a home. This led to a trading hiatus while he rebuilt up an account. Rick went to a seminar that discussed the importance of multiple streams of income so this was his main focus. This helped him pay off his home in full and generate additional revenue every month which led him to be able to fund a trading account again. After looking at the various education sources out there, Rick decided to join Claytrader and started the formal education that is involved. He enjoys trading longer term time frames as this fits his life best. Even with a high win rate trading strategy, Rick is not prepared to go full time to trade yet. He realizes there is much more to learn and that takes time and experience. Quotes: I walk into Morgan Stanley and told them I wanted to purchase stock. He told me that I couldn’t because he wouldn’t get a commission. I went on a hiatus for 3 years because I didn’t have more money to throw into a trading account. It would be cool to quit my job but I want to know the numbers before hand… because that’s a big jump. I paper traded from July ‘17 until Nov-December. Now I’m slowly starting to build actual positions with real money.

We’re going on a journey with a member that begins back in the 80’s! I don’t mean to insult your intelligence, but that was 35 years ago! Our guest from the community, Fred (‘FredSC’ in the chatroom), takes us from the start when he used to get physical newsletters his mailbox to present day where technology has changed the game quite a bit for him. He’s traded several asset classes and discovered much over the years and he doesn’t hold back in sharing the ups and downs that we can all learn from. I always enjoy these discussions as they present a unique viewpoint from someone who has seen a whole lot more than myself. Come along for a stroll through the past 30 plus years. Notes: In today’s episode we speak with community member Fred. He ended up using multiple newsletters in the 1980s which contained various strategies. Fred actually ended up buying near the bottom of the market crash and got a great entry. He was not impressed with brokerage recommendations at the time so he continued to focus on putting money into his 401k. Eventually he opened a self directed brokerage account and decided to focus on gold miners. After hearing about the Robotic Trading course, Fred decided to join the community and start his education journey. He quickly realized that there is more to the puzzle of trading than just one course so without much hesitation, Fred joined University. Fred paper traded forex for a while but had trouble dealing with the spreads from TD Ameritrade. This led him to take a look at options. He gave himself some time off from work to also try day trading. Something Fred needs to continue to work on is his stop loss placement. This is something that takes time to develop especially if you’re going to focus on a basket of stocks you’ll be trading often. Quotes: Somehow the idea got in my head ‘now is the time to think about buying.’ I just kept plugging money into the 401k. This buddy of mine said he made 1000 dollars in a day with this Robotic Trading thing! I went home and up comes Claytrader. First I’m up then I’m down. Then it comes down and hits my stop loss. I had FOMO going on big time. Back to paper trading. You put it together, look at what happened and then you tune it or you say ‘no that worked’ and leave it alone.

It’s always good to have a variety of journeys and experiences as it brings a true all around view of the markets. Thanks to our guest this episode, Dan, we certainly hear about a strategy that is unique. While we’ve had past members discuss such strategies, it is view and far between. I do not personally use Dan’s approach or anything of that nature, but that doesn’t mean Dan is wrong. It doesn’t mean I am right. It just means that there are many pathways up the profit mountain within the world of the financial markets. As long as it works and there is a sense of personal risk comfort, that’s the key. With that being said, let’s get out the blender and blend together some fundamental and technical analysis into one. Notes: Today we interview community member Dan. He utilizes a more fundamental approaches to trading. One way to define his style would be contrarian value investing. After doing research on a company and monitoring it for at least a month, only then will Dan look to purchase a stock. His general timeframe for a trade is up to 2 years. Dan uses the volatility of a stock to help determine potential targets. Since he is buying things that are possibly 50% off their highs, it’s not out of the question to target 40-60% returns on them. He has always taken the Option Trading Simplified course to help expand his trading. He mainly goes long stock but he has no problem utilizing options to synthetically short if his thesis agrees that a move down is probable. Dan enjoys utilizing the advice of veteran traders because he believes they have more intuition about overall market direction since they have been involved for so many years. Quotes: I think the first chapter for wealth creation should start with ‘how to save.’ Let's say you want to buy 1000 shares. Start with 100. Watch for another month then buy another 100. I bought Robotic Trading years ago and go through that 3 or 4 times a year to stay fresh with technical analysis. I have 11 tickers I’m trading. Six of them are down so I’m a loser … but I’m up $818 dollars. You have to be a good loser.

Even if you don’t trade Forex, realize there is still plenty of great stuff in this discussion from a general trading experience perspective. Our guest today, “MJ” as he goes by him the community, has been through much on his forex trading journey and he is still going strong! One of my favorite parts (and a great example/reminder for us all) of the interview was how the voices in his head tricked him into practicing in a very irrational way. Sure, maybe you or I would never do something like that, but it brings up the valid thought of, “maybe I’m doing this somewhere else in my approach to the markets?” This of course is just a sampling of one of the many rabbit holes we venture down, and I assure you there are plenty of other valuable conversations too. Give it a listen, you’ll be glad you did. Notes: Today we interview community member MJ. His grandfather traded in the market and offered to teach him. Unfortunately this did not work out too well for him but he attributes that failure due to being unfamiliar with the emotions attached when money is on the line. While analyzing the strategy in depth, MJ realized this did not work best for him. He went back to paper trading but was doing it in an unrealistic way that utilized hindsight and cherry picking why he would pass on losers and take winners. After discussing with his wife, MJ joined the University program and got through many courses multiple times. He also decided to move from futures trading to forex trading. After trading on a very short tick chart for futures, he is really enjoying trading the 4 hour chart for forex. This also works well considering he has a full time job. He monitors 20 major pairs but does not trade them all. MJ has found that the spreads are more favorable throughout the US session and generally avoids the European and Asian market hours. Quotes: My grandfather actually traded. He mentioned how effective his system was and it could replace my income so that’s where it started. I paper traded and paper traded and paper traded however I was lying to myself because I’d start at the far right edge and work backwards. If I can’t afford to put this money in the trash can and set it on fire then I can’t afford to trade with it. I keep my risk so small that if I lose the trade it makes no difference. Having money on the line makes me focus. Often I look back and realize I did not screw up my analysis. I was just wrong. When you take a loss it’s the cost of doing business.

This story is crazy. It’s hard to believe the truth of it, but given the market he used to generate the gains, the volatility was certainly available to grow money at quick rates. I do want to throw out this disclaimer though… while I find this interview extremely inspirational and motivating, all of that is derived from something outside the money. Let’s face it, these results are not typical and should not be the reason you venture into all of this. Of course, you should want to make money, but if you are only going to be happy with the amounts you’ll hear.. the odds are HIGHLY likely you’ll be disappointed. What I found most interesting and motivating with out guest, “Zentaro”, is how after an unfortunate career experience, he was left in a rough spot. He could have used it as a crutch and excuse but he didn’t. He put the axe to the grindstone and took matters into his own hands. I don’t want to say anything else at risk of spoiling, so let’s go! Notes: Today we interview community member Zentaro from the Netherlands. He tells us about his time as a policeman before he was honorably discharged. This led him to try to find another form of income. A friend had suggested he start trading CFDs. After a week of trading on demo, he was profitable and thought all he needed to do was fund an account and he’d be rich. In the first week of trading on a funded account, Zentaro made 50% of his entire account value and thought he figured it all out. Unfortunately that is not how it would work out. After losing a few thousand Euros, it was suggested that he start to trade cryptocurrencies. This was around the time of the US elections and speculated on TrumpCoin and PutinCoin. These trades eventually went to zero. Cryptocurrency was something that made more sense to him though. He continued to have an interest and ultimately turned 12,000 Euros into over 800k. Now he risks less than 5% per bitcoin on trades while still trailing his winners. Zentaro has been diversifying his income by purchasing rental properties and owns a drone business where he is the official Dutch distributor. He has also started to utilize the Grow Rich course by focusing on dividend stocks to help set up his retirement accounts for the future. Quotes: They said I couldn’t operate in society. They gave me a little welfare support and that was it for me. I was only 35 years old. In this chat room you were just a robot and pushing the button. A puppet. If you do your homework correctly, you’ve got some real coins that will go up over time. I’m looking for second homes to buy to put up for rent. I also started the Grow Rich course. I’m accumulating dividend paying stocks. For me it’s only charts. I use price and volume as leading indicators.

I have conflicting feelings with this discussion. My greedy side absolutely loves to know this happened as it provides such a great learning opportunity for others; however, I truly do feel bad and annoyed that this actually happened to such a nice guy. Community member Ben, “close2pga” (chat room alias), walks us through his journey and how at the start he was mislead into thinking someone could shove their personal strategy down his throat in order to teach him how to trade. This is one of those marketing ploys that drives me nuts. First, it’s simply false and misleading and second, it gives the rest of us (myself included) a bad name as being scum bags. I digress though. Ben’s willpower and determination to bounce back from this initial hiccup I found very inspiring and I’m sure you will too. Ben is a business owner himself, so he offers up some solid perspectives on market dynamics and trading that will I believe offer great value. Let’s get to it! Notes: Today we interview Ben who goes by close2pga in the community. Ben is an avid golfer who gets out almost 2 times a week and also owns a driving range. Since he leases the land his business sits on, there came a time when he thought that lease would not be able to renewed which led him to look into other sources of income. Ben started looking into various online education for trading and while some of it was good, it pushed him into trading one single way. This is absolutely not a one-size-fits-all job. He had about 6 months to learn how to trade and that pressure did not help him with his learning. After finding Clay, Ben decided to go through the University program and has now put those other two education sources aside. He has noticed what triggers bad habits such as chasing price or not honoring his stop loss and has found remedies for those issues. Since Ben no longer has the pressure of time since he has no issues with his lease, he is now utilizing his patience and persistence to get through the educational content. Not only does he not have the pressure to succeed in a new line of business in 6 months, he is now set up for success by having the guaranteed trade (his JOB) to keep him even keeled as he proceeds through the program. Quotes: It looked like I was going to be forced out of my business. I knew I would have a hard time getting a regular job after working for myself. I really put in my head that I needed to make another living in less than 6 months. It was not good to put that pressure on myself. I noticed that my scanner pulled up momentum stocks that I might just jump into it. How can I stop this? Get rid of the scanner. It’s not the money per say. The freedom to have time during the day is what I’d like.

It’s always enjoyable to catch up with past guests and hear about their journey as it continues to unfold. That’s exactly what Chezz and I do in this episode with longtime community member “Mr. Bee”. If you’ve spent any amount of time in the chatroom, I’m sure you’ve seen Mr. Bee at work. He’s come a long way since our last conversation with him as he learns and masters more areas of the market. The one aspect of our talk that I found intriguing and personally beneficial was how he approached increasing his personal risk tolerance within various strategies. Risk tolerance is critical component of trading success and it was awesome to hear Mr. Bee’s perspective and experience with it. I hope you enjoy this discussion as much as I did. Let’s go! Notes: Today we reinterview community member Mr. Bee. After picking up where we left off in his last episode, Bee had continued to focus on trading advanced options. The important thing to remember is that he stuck to the strategy in both good times and bad instead of jumping around to different strategies. A big turning point for him was developing the courage to trade ‘naked’ positions (all of which are explained in the course). Considering there are many mechanics to keep in mind when utilizing trading this way, Bee has always continued to try to learn more each and every month to get a better understanding. Mr. Bee has leveraged speaking to other community members heavily in the past 4 years since he started trading. The ability to bounce ideas off of other members with no agenda can provide some real insight as to potential problems in a trade idea. More eyes is generally better than less. As he continues trading into 2018, he fully accepts that he is a swing trader and wants to continue applying what he was taught even more often if the opportunities present themselves. Quotes: I really have a genuine interest in trading and options really opened that door up to me. There were days that my PnL didn’t make sense. It takes you down the rabbit hole in regards of what you can learn about trading. I butcher the order while changing it. I’m going long and this thing just starts bleeding to death. I took the loss. Had to do it. You can make enough money trading options using very little money. That’s what led me here. I’ve found a comfortable balance. I’m going to do a lot more charting in the evening since swing trading is my strategy. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode071/

Having confidence in something is a good thing in most areas of life, including the financial markets. This is where the catch-22 comes into play within the markets. Confidence vs. too much confidence (“Koolaid”) can be a very big problem for both traders and investors. Our fellow member from the community, Tony, walks us through some of the major hazards that koolaid can and will introduce into your portfolio. I give him a whole lot of credit for being open and honest about just how bad the koolaid affected him, but as you’ll see, by admitting his blindness and mistakes, he has now been able to put himself on the proper path to success. Looking to learn from some real life cautionary tales? Look no further. Tony shares plenty with us! Notes: Today we interview community member Tony. He decided that he wanted to have more control over his 401k so started to look into different stocks to determine if he wanted to be invested with them or not. Unfortunately, he had lost most of that account and took 8 years off from the market. He assumed that it just wasn’t for him. Tony’s uncle got interested in the marijuana stock boom and started to tell him about all the opportunities that were out there. Even after two bouts of failure, Tony still did not give up the dream of being involved in the market. He knows that it is possible to have his money make money for him whether it’s from an active standpoint or a more passive swing trading standpoint. This led him to decide to invest in his education. He forced himself to stick with paper trading until he finished a predefined amount of courses. Tony realized that there is no point in jumping back in the market if he did not practice the material he was taught. After two months on paper, Tony is back to live trading now. Since Tony still works a full time job, he has focused strictly on swing trading which he can set up in advance the night before. This is a drastic difference than the trading style he tried before where he would just stare at a chart for hours on end hoping for a move. Now he does his homework the night before and executes the next morning. Quotes: I pretty much lost all that 401k money. There was no plan. There was no strategy. That was it. That was it for a while. People were posting that it’s a real company so here I am jumping back in the bathtub of Kool-Aid watching all my money go away. I realized I have to learn how to do this or there is no point. I don’t want to lose my money again. I have a plan and I’m going to stick with the plan. If I don’t stick with the plan, I’m going to do the same thing trading stocks. So now because of Robotic Trading, I’m able to take that emotion out of it and not just staring at it waiting for a move.

We have a rare case of someone who experienced fool’s gold… but… in a contradictory way, realized and admitted to themselves that their success was actually NOT “skill”, but rather “luck”. Upon this discovery and self admission, where did their journey go from here? Our guest from the community, Angelo, tells us all about the decisions he has made along with the rationale behind them. What I really enjoyed and learned from was you always need to keep your ego in check. Even though Angelo has a college degree in finance, he was still able to see through many potential pitfalls that others commonly fall into. Lots to learn, so let’s go! Notes: Today we interview community member Angelo. While he has a degree in finance, his interest only spanned as far as his mutual funds and 401k. After Robinhood launched, he was intrigued by the no fees which led him to become a much more active investor/trader. A majority of Angelo’s friends were just looking for low priced stocks that they could load up on and hope they went higher. Angelo also falls in the category of finding fools gold to start. The difference is that he recognized that he had been lucky and wasn’t a prodigy. He realized that he didn’t want to continue down the path of inconsistent trading so he decided to invest in his education AND he closed his account so that he would strictly focus on the education first. The pattern day trade rule really hindered Angelo’s short term trading. He once again closed his trading accounts because his situation was suboptimal. He realized that the market will be there in the future so he decided to focus strictly on the courses and paper trade alerts from the community. Angelo still has a few courses to get through but will be considering implementing advanced option strategies so that he can still trade while having a full time job. It is crucial to understand where you are at in your journey and he is not rushing anything. Taking the logical route through training and practice leads to consistent results. Quotes: One of those degrees was in finance. It was mostly looking at my target funds and 401k’s but that changed at the beginning of this year. I was up 2 grand and had no idea why or what happened but I remember feeling pretty good. In the back of my head I knew it was luck. My friend’s thought I was crazy for spending that much money on education. Eight months later, it’s been worth every penny. The big issue I was running into was the PDT rule. It’s the worst thing in the world. It messes with your psychology. I know what I’m willing to risk on each trade so that makes it easier to find what fits your plan versus going wild wild west and wondering.

You are busy? You don’t have the time to make it happen? Nah. I’m going to go ahead and say you’re either lazy or simply don’t want “it” bad enough. What is “it”? You tell me. Maybe you want to learn to trade. Maybe you want to improve in another area of life. After listening to this interview though, you’ll understand why I have very little pity for the “I’m too busy / not enough time” statements people throw around. Our guest, Diego (same name in chat room) gives us a rundown of his current journey and you’ll see this guy is not messing around. I also had the pleasure and honor of meeting Diego at our Fort Lauderdale meet-and-greet and I will attest to the fact he’s a Grade A person. If you’re in search of some real life inspiration based in reality, and not theory, then look no further. Let’s get to it! Notes: Today we interview community member Diego. He had contributed to a TSP account which is available for military members until the time his service ended. After taking some looks at the account daily, he became interested in the daily ebbs and flows of the account. This led him to move his account into various mutual funds which ultimately led him to swing trading. This was all prior to any training. A majority of his buying and selling was based on recommendations from various media sources. Diego started to focus strictly on natural gas and would trade UGAZ and DGAZ (two gas ETF’s that move inversely). After not finding much success trading those based on fundamentals, Diego looked into options. After having some missed trades, Diego stumbled on to the Inner Circle and expected to get buy and sell alerts from Clay. However, as he soon found out, there are only technical alerts being given since every member has their own risk tolerance. This led to him joining the University program. Diego continued to focus on his interest on options and now exclusively trades advanced option spreads. This works great with his busy schedule. He has also learned that he does not need to be in a trade every day. It’s much more lucrative to trade good setups and pass on the mediocre ones. Quotes: I was on the kool-aid for The Street and buying based on what they were saying. My expectation was to get rich now. I want to hit it big and quit my job and live on the beach. It’s harder than you expect. I read about options. I bought cheap options on CHK to cap my risk. Something happened so 120 dollars became 700. Let the past be the past. Move forward and focus on the present. The next four months, I studied CTU. I plan the trade the night before then put in my orders at the open. I look again by about 2:00 if I didn’t get a fill in the morning.