The Stock Trading Reality Podcast

While it is never planned ahead of time, once in a while throughout the course of a discussion it can turn into a coaching session. Thanks to the feedback you as listeners provide, I know many of you enjoy being a fly on the wall and observing the teaching and suggestions being made. This is exactly what happened in our conversation with longtime member Alex (same name in the chat room). He has been a member of our community for multiple years and his strong desire to succeed is what has kept him in the game this long. It's by no means been a smooth ride, and as you'll hear, is still a work in progress but he is finding a groove and Chezz and I were able to coach him a bit so he can keep the positive momentum going. I can confirm the momentum is still going strong and growing as this was recorded several weeks ago, and fast forwarding to present day, things are looking very bright! Notes: Today we reinterview community member Alex. He was one of the first 20 podcasts and has been a member for multiple years at this point. After a brief summary of where he came from, we dive into where he has gone since. Alex was a big buyer of options to start which means he had to focus on directional trading. Unfortunately, he was not able to do this successfully so he looked into option selling (which we cover in the Advanced Options Strategies Explained). He has been a big advocate of journaling and logging his trades in an effort to find how to improve his performance. Something we have noticed over the years is Alex's 'account protectionism.' He doesn't allow himself to take a meaningful amount of risk to generate a reward. Alex has an 88% success rate trading advanced options but that 12 % of losers have kept him from being profitable. Part of managing losing trades for this strategies is giving the trade more time but Alex emotionally closed half of those and never gave them a chance to recover. Quotes: I started to look at how Hooch successfully trades options and that is making a lot more sense to me now. I got frustrated when basic options would go my way and my gains would disappear. I was the only one stopped out on the trade example. After that, I went through Skill Sharpening again to learn to use price action. I have an 88% success rate but my p&l is red. 40 winners and 5 losers but those 5 are a doozy. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode017/

One of the biggest factors of failure in trading is created by the emotion/feeling of "make a trade". Sure, at first it can be nerve-racking to do your first couple of trades; however, after that the floodgates of "make a trade" come out in full force. Community member Jeff (same name in the chat room) shares with us his story thus far which expands several years of time. The one underlying theme/problem throughout Jeff's time in the markets is forcing trades and not tapping the brakes when he should be. I really appreciated his openness and candidness of sharing his mistakes, what he has learned from them and then also what he continues to struggle with. His journey is a wild ride that I want to offer some spoilers too, but I'm going to stay disciplined and keep quiet. Take some time out of your day and make sure to listen to Jeff and his story. Remember, take advantage of kind people such as Jeff who openly share their mistakes…. It's much cheaper to learn from another's mistakes than your own. Notes: Today we interview newer community member Jeff. His introduction to the market was a loan from a family member which led to a return of 10% on his first and only trade. This opened up his interest in the market. After having his first child, he also received 60,000 dollars which he used to go full-time trading. He made some great gains but he also took some huge losses and admits he's blown up multiple accounts since then. This led to him taking a break from the market. Jeff hit a home run on a marijuana penny stock and that's when he decided that he wanted to trade other instruments. He decided to invest some of his profits into his education. After stopping by the Inner Circle and seeing that penny stocks are not a focus, he joined University. He admits that he went through the courses way too fast and even though he still had some profitable trades, he was still winging it. After volunteering to be a guest on the webinars, this opened his eyes up to the fact that he needed to slow down and redo the courses. Jeff is going to attempt to paper trade or trade small until he finishes retaking the courses and is able to set up logical trade plans via the live weekly webinars that he does attend. Quotes: He gave me about 6k and saw a penny stock running so I bought 10k shares and made 600 bucks. My dad said I was a genius. They had to call down to the NYSE floor because of my order size and I made the stock move. I lost 40 grand that day. I said that this was the last time I'm going to sit there biting my nails for 3 months rolling the dice on penny stocks. I admit I went through the courses too fast but the way you explained it, it was like you were talking directly to me! You cannot read one book and learn how to trade stocks. You can't do it. Get educated.

While our guest had always known about the market, he had a bit of a twist in the sense that everything he heard about it was negative. The cherry on top was he also had a friend who was personally affected by losing all their money in the market. Our guest from the community, Greg, realized that if he were to ever get involved in the market, he would need to focus on his education first. Unfortunately, the criteria which was taught needed a very specific criteria which led to less than 10 trades an entire year. This type of long term trading did not fit with Greg's personality. After trimming the criteria, he started taking many trades and this led to 'death by 1000 cuts.' He took a small account down to practically nothing and this led him to wake up and realize for long term growth, something needs to change. Where did it all go from here? Give the interview a listen! Notes: Today we interview community member Greg. While he had always known about the market, everything he heard about it was negative. He also had a friend who was personally affected by losing all their money in the market. Greg realized that if he were to ever get involved in the market, he would need to focus on his education first. Unfortunately, the criteria which was taught needed a very specific criteria which led to less than 10 trades an entire year. This type of long term trading did not fit with Greg's personality. After trimming the criteria, he started taking many trades and this led to 'death by 1000 cuts.' He took a small account down to practically nothing and this led him to wake up and realize for long term growth, something needs to change. Greg found Clay on Youtube and decided to go through the University program. His main goal is to have more time to spend with his family and while his time is limited, he always finds a way to make time for his studies. Where as most people focus on only the results, Greg has realized that in almost everything in life, focusing on the process is much more valuable and an truly lead to long lasting success. Quotes: For a majority of my adult life I had no interest in the market. Everything I heard about the market was negative. Trading is a skill set that can be learned. You're not born a winning trader or a losing trader. Even having education, there is so much more that goes into it. I underestimated the emotional component. I'm not looking to be entertained. I really want to learn it and learn it well. I want to be able to do this. Maybe instead of a streak of green days, I can try to have a streak of days where I don't break the rules and then celebrate. Links: https://claytrader.com/videos/stock-trading-quick-tip-math-trap/

We are going international again and bringing back a former guest. The last time we spoke with Norse was, literally, years ago (wow, has the podcast really been around that long? Time flies!). To his credit, he is still around and going strong which is a great compliment of Norse's work ethic and focus. Not many can survive the markets even a couple months let alone to multiple years! While Norse's main trading vehicle is the Forex market, please don't be too narrow sighted and think that because you don't trade or have any interest in trading Forex that the discussion won't provide value... I assure you, it does! One minor spoiler that I just have to give as it shows you how serious Norse is, but he's gone out and hired someone to work for him in an area of his trading business. It's some great stuff! Notes: Today we reinterview Norse. He's always had knowledge of the market but wasn't sure how he would be able to turn a profit. After going through a demo money trading challenge, he saw someone post online about 300% gains in the marijuana stocks and funded his account to go all in. Norse took a look at how much he was spending in commissions and a friend suggested he look into forex since you only pay the spread. He uses the daily chart to spot his trade ideas and then executes on the shorter term time frames. He also only focuses on a small basket of currency pairs and commodities so he really learns their 'personality.' He has a very set criteria for not only his entries but when to add, where to set his target and how to trail his stop loss. Norse also understands that you can do everything right in terms of preparation and execution but sometimes trades just do not work out. It doesn't lead to any stress and he has no plans to change his system. Another important aspect of Norse's trading is his ability to recognize his mental state. He reduces size when he is not trading well and then as he falls back into the rhythm he goes back to normal size. He still is working on avoiding taking trades out of boredom but his persistence will always prevail in terms of improvement. Going forward, Norse is working on a 15% loss reduction in his trading. He wants to design another 'expert advisor' to identify ranging markets and trending markets because this will determine what type of trades he should be looking for. Quotes: Penny stocks actually worked out. After taking Robotic Trading, I traded pot stocks buying support and selling resistance. I went back and did a lot of testing. I like to trade reversals because that is where my biggest edge is. I have to have certain criteria. Taking a loss on a single trade doesn't bug me at all. If I have a red week or 2 red weeks in a row, the voices come out screaming. The holy grail in trading is just time, patience and perseverance. Nobody ever remembers the guy who gave up. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode020/

If you are not aware, you will be after reading the next sentence. There are quite a few people who approach and use the stock market as a "stay at home" Las Vegas. They believe trading is all about luck and is "a gamble", so that's how they conduct their trading. This of course leads to all kinds of stupidity and dumb decisions, and our guest in this episode is geared around taking advantage of these opportunities. We've talked with Chris a couple years ago on the podcast, but we're bringing him back for his update. If you've been around the community for any amount of time, I'm sure you know him better as his chat room alias "gocubsgo"… or as I refer to him as, "cubs". Even if you have no interest in trading options, there is still a ton to be learned in regards to what it takes to set up a strategy and system that you can have full confidence in due to its consistency. Chris has been doing very well and it's all thanks to the system he has built himself… which, is essentially a casino to take advantage of degenerate gamblers. Let's go! Notes: In this episode we are re-interviewing Chris. He started trading 2 years prior to this podcast and as we left off last time, Chris had just begun his journey into selling options instead of buying options. This strategy worked well for him since it is a swing traders strategy and he didn't have time to watch the market intraday. As Chris learned more about selling options, he started to narrow down his risk profile from quite conservative to much more aggressive as time as gone on. This also leads him to not fear being assigned stock as the names he trades, he is willing to take shares of the company (most likely a good dividend stock). Keeping trade sizes small to start ensures that no big losing trade can do any real damage to his account. He is also well versed in defending losing positions using various option strategies. The big emphasis he makes is repetition is key. Chris has no desire to nail tops or bottoms but he can structure his trades to give him a much higher than 50% success rate with his usage of time (in the event he is wrong initially). For newer traders, Chris recommends using the probabilities that are built into the option chain to spot high probability setups and to swing trade instead of day trade. With time you'll start to understand the nuances and what you are most comfortable with in terms of risk. Quotes: It's one thing to learn the basics but when you get comfortable it's about efficiency and small tweaks. I like finding those kinds of plays, doing them often and staying small so that you keep your account uncorrelated. The longest roll was probably a year. Fitbit didn't have an uptick since its IPO. Be reasonable about it and don't size up. UVXY accounts for 10% of my portfolio but it accounts for over 20% of my gains on the entire account. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode027/

As many of you know, I love me a good analogy, and in this episode we have several of them… the one that really stood out though was in regards to pitching in baseball and trading. Chris is our guest ('thekidcanrake' in the chat room) and he shares with us the many important lessons and realizations he has had since beginning his journey. Thanks to Chris' grandfather, he had an early introduction to the markets; unfortunately, also thanks to his grandfather, Chris witnesses some events that shifted his mindset to the better. Even with that mindset shift though, there were still some kinks that needed to be worked out. This is the part I'm extremely happy Chris was transparent about as it shows just how sneaky the voices in our mind can be in regards to tricking us. All in all, get ready for a solid discussion on the realities of the market and trading! Notes: Today we interview community member, Chris. His initial introduction to the market was through his grandfather. He would keep an eye on the market for the purpose of monitoring his portfolio. About 20 years later, Chris started to get more involved because he had money going into a 401k every month. After watching his grandpa take a large loss during the 2008-09 meltdown, Chris decided it was time to start focusing on his education so something similar would not happen to him in the future. Since Chris is a pitcher for baseball, he saw the parallels between how emotions affected him in sports and could see the same pitfalls happening with trading. Originally he would buy into the stories that various biotech companies would tell. This would lead him to buy and hold for quite a long time but he realized he wanted to make returns faster than that (shorter term time frames). After joining the community, Chris recognized very quickly that there was a lot of things he still did not know. While he rarely jumps into anything blindly, he decided to continue trading while learning with very small amounts because he felt that he needed to have skin in the game. Chris closed all his positions and is now in savings mode to achieve his goal of joining the University program here. He owns up to the mistakes he's made and is ready to learn and move forward. He's taking steps in the right direction to make this a future stream of income. Quotes: I could micromanage my 401k a little bit. Trading with your emotions, you want to stay away from that. I watched quite a few Claytrader videos before I knew who he was. The 'trade without emotion' is what I really liked. My money was all tied up so I wanted to get involved in some shorter trades. That's what led me here. You guys have a really good thing going on with the community. Lot of interesting and cool people. My biggest hurdle in trading will be to step back and slow down before making a decision.

Before anything else, this is Part 2 of a multi-part interview, so if you want it all to make the most sense, then be sure to listen to episode 137 first. I've really enjoyed the feedback so far from Part 1 on the discussion as there have been several opinions and viewpoints that have arisen. I'm not saying anyone is wrong or right with their opinion, but what I am saying is it proves the point exactly about how "risk" can be perceived in different ways depending on the overarching context that surrounds it. Thanks to our guest's (Carl from the chat room) candor and openness, we can still how the idea and concepts of risk continued to influence him to always be self aware and on the offense about this very important aspect of trading. If you enjoyed Part 1, then there is no doubt you'll enjoy Part 2, so let's once again get this party started! Notes: While he originally joined the program to strictly learn how to trade options, he eventually branched out and decided to learn various strategies for trading so that he wouldn't become a 'one trick pony.' Carl talks about his successes and failures trying to trade a brand new strategy but has a detailed plan about how he wants to proceed into the future. Having 1000+ trades with his volatility strategy, he executes quite effortlessly but now he is learning brand new strategies to expand. Considering he has been in charge of his income since the early age of 12, Carl is big on efficiency. He is very conscious about his usage of time since that is limited every day. Clay suggests that Carl look into Advanced Options but Chezz brings up the fact that personality plays a large role in finding where you fit in the 'trading world.' While they have the high hit rate that he is used too, they are not active enough to hold his attention. Quotes: Because I didn't understand what I was doing, I bought 2000 contracts that expired for a 12,000 dollar loss. I knew it was going up but I didn't have a great idea where the profit might be. I thought, green is green. Hard work will get you far in life. I have a reasonable amount of emotional control and not scared of working hard.

If you're a long time listener, then you know the topic of 'risk' has come up on...well... more than one occasion. This is once again the case, but with a little bit different of a twist that does an excellent job of illustrating and explain just how risk in and of itself is subjective. Chezz and I interview Carl (same name if trading room) about his journey which has been quite the journey. So much so, this is a two-part episode... there is lots to cover! From being a business owner to getting interested and then involved in the markets, there are many experiences we can all learn from so let's get to it! Notes: Today we interview one of our newer members, Carl. He has always been hands-on and has launched several businesses but didn't like the randomness of the stock market so he stayed away from it. Initially, Carl had no interest in the stock market but after investigating ways to have a 3rd income, he came around to it. He initially started using Robinhood but got annoyed with the pattern day trade rules so he left and went to Interactive Brokers and funded an account well over the 25k amount. After doing some research into UVXY and other volatility products, he strictly traded those products for quite a long time and became familiar with its daily moves and how it reacts to various market cycles. Carl took a massive drawdown both unrealized and realized but this was part of his strategy from the onset. He's done his backtesting and knows what his account can stomach in terms of volatility. Regardless of him using stop losses or not, if his entire account was to blow up in catastrophic fashion, it would not impact his livelihood. That trading account could go to 0 and his family and himself would be completely fine since he has multiple streams of income. As Carl continued to expand his trading knowledge, he kept stumbling across people who would sell options against volatility tickers he traded. After purchasing a book about options he realized he wanted a more interactive approach to learn them and joined Claytrader University. Quotes: We started our first company when I was 12 and you have to have taxable income to fund an IRA so that's what we did. I didn't even have a clue of what I didn't know. Granted, I do a lot of reading. I did the shotgun approach until it stopped working. Every position I took a loss on turned into a winner. I ended up being right. I realized that's not a sustainable approach. I bought this green book about options. The book was awfully dry and I couldn't ask any questions so I joined CTU.

I'm going to do my best not to go off on a rant as I type this up at this very moment. All I'll say is BE CAREFUL when it comes to those "guru's" using expensive lifestyles or extraordinary results as the backbone of their marketing. Please. Trust your gut and instincts on it. Thanks to our guest's willingness to share, Tom ("tvesel" in the trading room) freely talks about his initial experience with a guru who... well... was a bit shady. I'll just leave it at that. To Tom's credit however, he didn't let the experience hold him down and he got back up, dusted himself off, and kept on moving forward to create a journey for himself. He's come a long way since the start and he continues to progress, so let's talk about it! Notes: Today we interview Tom from the community. Tom, unfortunately, started his educational journey with a competitor and starts the interview about the bad experience he went through. Tom has had IRA's for a quite a long time. His mother also caught the dot-com boom and fortunately sold before the large crash. He has always monitored the pulse of the market and with more time available, Tom was looking to make a living without being location dependent. He did spend 3 months trading at an offshore broker before he eventually closed his account to go to a more reputable broker. After exploring other options, Tom decided to join University and really enjoys the content and community support he receives. Tom is a big fan of Interactive Brokers chart trading platform. It visually helps him see his risk vs reward and to ensure he sticks to his plan. Even though he paper traded for a good amount of time, he believes the real value of paper trading is to get you familiar with your platform. At some point, you will need to put real money on the line and that's when emotions will come into play. He is working on trusting himself to take an entry that he sees. He has the habit of watching it but not acting on it (which is completely normal!). Commitment takes time to develop and comes with confidence in your trading system and plans. Quotes: Clay is annoying. Repetition repetition repetition. There's so much to that. Others gloss over important info. I learned some things from Google. All these things are on the internet but I was missing an 'easy to follow course.' There are a lot of normal people. Honest and sincere. These are people who have nothing to gain by their recommendation. Paper trading is good to get a handle on your platform. Eventually, the rubber has to meet the road though. I will never ever move a stop to give it more room. I will only move it to reduce my risk.

The title of this podcast may seem a bit odd, but in all reality, the goal for all traders should be to become bored. In this episode we welcome back Tony from all the way out in Hawaii (so jealous!) so he can update us all on how his journey continues to unfold. He started out in the toilet bowl of penny stocks, and as you'll hear, progressed long enough to find himself a nice comfortable spot in futures trading. Futures can be very risky if not approached in the right way, so that's exactly why it makes sense that he is laser focused on establishing boredom as a trader. It all started for him by applying the KISS method. Enjoy the updated journey! Notes: Today we reinterview community member Tony. After trying to trade penny stocks, Tony moved to options to trade more well established names. Now he focuses solely on futures. Tony started to focus on top down analysis to help get an idea of the larger trends, which he did not do trading penny stocks and options. This also led to his desire to expand on his risk management. Working with a small account, he had to keep his risk very tight. He is a big advocate of journaling to spot not only what mistakes we continue to make but also to identify what we are doing correct and how to push that harder. Tony has taken a much simpler approach to his trading and found much more success. He gave up the idea of the 'holy grail' indicator combination and now understands what he excels at and what he needs to work on. He understands that this is a lifelong endeavor. It is not a get rich quick scheme. It's a business that you will always be grinding to get better and Tony understands and accepts that. When trading is a passion it doesn't feel much like work. Quotes: It's easy to confuse luck with skill. Because futures are more leveraged they are more dangerous. Learned some hard lessons. If you made your decision from a smaller time frame, you have to stick with your risk-reward ratio solely. I found out that trading should be boring. If you're getting too excited, you should probably step away and turn off the computer. You need to treat your trading as a business. Set hours that you keep relatively consistent. There is no holy grail pattern or indicators. It's just hours of screen time and accepting that risk before you pull the trigger. Being in denial just leads to bigger losses. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode088/

Humility is a great attribute to have as a trader, and our guest is a perfect example of this. We bring back former guest Mike ('HeyFordy' in the chat room) to discuss how his journey has continued to unfold since the last time we spoke with him. I don't want to offer many spoilers, but I will say his account has been growing and growing. Even with this being the case, Mike remains extremely self-aware of things he needs to keep working on in order to keep his eye on the prize. Being self-aware is the first step in remaining humble as a trader... if you have any amount of extended experience, you know pride truly does come before the fall, so staying humble is key and Mike is doing a fantastic job at it. Notes: Today we reinterview community member heyfordy. After joining CTU, Mike closed down his smaller accounts and consolidated into one larger brokerage. Mike went from utilizing Stocktwits and iHub daily to now completely avoiding them and scanning for his own trades. Unfortunately, he has been flagged for PDT a few times in the last couple of years which has forced him to focus on swing trading. Typical to many other trades, Mike has an issue with having a bias and will sometimes ignore a chart reversal because he thinks the fundamentals point in a particular direction. He likes to keep his trading pretty simple. There is no need to get fancy. The more people recognize a pattern or trend the more likely it will continue (the self fulfilling prophecy). He is exploring trading options but still going through the training for that. Mike has a long-term plan regarding his trading so that he will never be in a position where there is too much pressure to perform. He knows that this is a slow and monotonous process but that's how success is created. Quotes: All of them were just puppet trading penny stocks and I'd get lucky with a decent entry and bank on it. If my track record is still positive by the end of the year I will fund the account a little more. I'd like to be more patient and stick to my plan a little tighter. Even if I chase, it will usually come back to the zone I wanted. I just look for patterns or strong uptrends or downtrends. The more common it is the more people see it. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode099/

You can never get too much of the classic fool's gold syndrome. Most veteran traders have had this syndrome at some point in their journey (myself included), and most newer traders have it right now. The key is, the sooner they realize it is the sooner they can begin to improve away from it. Our guest, Roland, takes us through the beginnings of his journey where he had some success, assumed he was a diamond in the rough and had it all figured out. Of course, this was actually NOT the case and he had to get kicked in the teeth via Mr. Market before realizing he needed to change his tactics and strategy. Roland has come a long way and is now focused on being a swing trader due to his day job. The journey he's been on to get him to the point of, so far, 13% account growth on the year is one filled with nuggets of experience we all can benefit from. Notes: Today we interview community member Roland. After college, Roland ended up at a desk job and his father suggested that he look into the stock market. After doing some options trading investigation via Investopedia and Stocktwits, he opened up a paper trading account. Unfortunately, he was trading with an unrealistic size and saw a 40,000 dollar gain in just a few days so now his interest was really piqued. Roland caught a low float runner that made substantial gains. He did capture some of the moves but after that initial success, he had more confidence in himself than he should have. After that great trade, he had a string of losers that were an eye-opener. After speculating on TWTR earnings, and averaging down, Roland took a big loss but the difference is that he accepted responsibility for his mistakes instead of trying to blame others. With Roland's work schedule, he started to get interested in swing trading futures. He kept making deposits into his account and took it from 25 to 40 thousand dollars. This year from trading January to May he made 13% of his entire account value. Quotes: My dad said options were a great way to make a lot of money with a little money. Just buying calls and puts. I tried to learn on my own but everything seemed kind of jumbled and couldn't get a good grasp on things. I knew the whole 'let your winners win and cut your losers fast.' I sold everything at 6 with a stop loss but then it kept running. I didn't sell because of greed. I could not do any wrong. I was just going to keep going. I had a 40k account when I started trading futures more seriously. Just trading patterns and can make a trade plan that works for me. Links: Trading In The Zone by Mark Douglas http://amzn.to/1P1TRKP

I've talked to 100's of people on the podcast, and while I've enjoyed every single one of those discussions, this is one that will stick with me for a long time. Sure, our guest Ron got on my good side by being a fellow graduate of The Ohio State University; however, where he's been, where he's at, and where he wants to go is something that had me motivated to the max. The story about him dragging a mattress into his office was pure gold in regards to work ethic and not offering up excuses... such good stuff! It was an honor to talk with Ron and his story is one that should get people talking for sure. Notes: Today we interview community member Ron. When he was a child, one of his father's customers dealt with wheat and corn. He never forgot that interest in the market but waited until later in life to get involved. After recognizing that his job had no room for advancement, Ron got licensed to sell mutual funds so this forced him to learn more about the markets. He learned how to watch the various indexes that impacted the products that he sold to clients. Unfortunately, both Ron and his wife were diagnosed with cancer and this led him to focus full-time on taking care of her. This led to a lengthy delay in his trading but family first. Ron went looking around online for some trading education and after investigating a few different options, he settled on Clay's material. He did the research regarding what college credits cost versus all the material he would receive for Claytrader University and decided it was a great deal for the money. While he has absorbed the education taught in the courses, Ron is currently working through platform issues and trying to find comfort in both practicing and executing live orders. He has his business plan laid out for his trading and now it's just a matter of putting it into practice. Quotes: In 1946, there was a farmer who dealt with commodities. He traded wheat and corn. I was curious about that and never forgot it. We had plan B, plan C, and plan D and that has carried over into everything in my life, sometimes to my detriment. I got very interested in point and figure charts. I tracked the number of stocks every day. It took the noise out of the price action. Let this be a lesson when big life events happen. I was going through the material but some days I wasn't getting much from it. I don't need to learn everything. I need to focus on just the basic things to get started. There's value in getting your feet wet.

This interview made me laugh for sure. Not in a mean way, but rather in a "I can relate" type way. Did I ever go as far as our guest? No... he took things to a whole new level when it comes to going down the penny stock rabbit hole. Our guest is community member Jeff ("Crestronwizard" in the chat room) is an open book about his journey which reveals all sorts of nuggets of experience that can be used as learning points for us all... myself and Chezz included! Jeff is now a full time trader and the way he got there demonstrates an excellent talking point regarding WHEN and WHAT it takes to actually go full time in trading. From penny stock koolaid to now being a full time trader, it's been quite the journey! Notes: Today we interview Jeff a.k.a. Crestronwizard in the community. He installed and coded for some various audio systems and during a job, he met a successful day trader and started to watch over his shoulder. After his introduction to this gentleman, he started to meet other traders throughout the industry but it wasn't until quite a few years later that he got interested in utilizing charts. He didn't trade much from 2005-2007 while his trading was mixed at best. He decided to focus on his business strictly. When he came back to trading he actually traded some penny stocks and took some money out of the market (sort of). He actually 'drank the koolaid' so much that he became a distributor for this company and was selling it on his own website and Amazon. After Jeff's experience with penny stocks, he decided to learn options and while he had months of profitability, overall he ended up losing money because he wasn't consistent with his sizing. Jeff has a game plan on transitioning to full-time trading. There is a big difference between someone who takes the leap to go full time and has no savings or has taken no preparation. Jeff is on the opposite side of the coin. This has been coming together for multiple years, and his goal is multiple income streams. Quotes: When I get into some things, I get in big. I met a daytrader who turned a small sum into 50-60 million and that's what introduced me. One of the employees took 23 million dollars off the top and after they started investigating, the person in question took his own life. They had real products and I ended up becoming a distributor for this penny stock. I bought 2 pallets of this stuff. I was trading far out of the money and the other issue was 'stepping up to go big.' I went from 1, 2, 3 contracts to 20. Being able to know when something is going the wrong way and to get out. I'm not scared to do that anymore. It's your emotions versus 100 million other emotions that are in the market at the same time. It's a big chess game.

We're bringing back a former guest and hearing all about where he stands in his current trading journey. We interviewed Hamlet ("Crusader" in chat room) a little over a year ago and he's still going strong. I won't spoil the details, but all I'll say is that Hamlet (as far as I can remember) takes the top spot of all the guests we've ever had in regards to mastering his own "mental game". If you have traded in the stock market or even the cryptocurrencies market, you know that a huge part of trading is what goes on between your ears. As mentioned, Hamlet has taken the mental training to a whole new level and it was awesome to hear the passion he has to succeed. His journey has shifted a bit from where he started, but the core foundations are all still in place. Lots to learn from Hamlet's experiences! Notes: Today we re-interview Hamlet who goes by Crusader. We previously interviewed him on episode 79. Like many others, Hamlet originally thought the market was way too advanced for him but after further research, he invested in his education and realized that he could definitely trade the markets. While education is extremely instrumental for trading, there is always the personal struggle that all traders deal with. Managing our emotions is very difficult and anyone who tells you differently has not traded in the markets with their hard earned money. Similar to many other traders, Hamlet went through a rough patch. His competitiveness led to some large losses that made him recognize that he needed to step back and reevaluate the mental side of his trading. Hamlet is a big believer in multiple streams of income. He owns a business which is fully operational and his trading endeavor is his 'startup.' While he is not pulling profits out currently, he has a long term plan to achieve this. Quotes: Education is the first thing you should focus on before opening a trading account. It was just pure instinct to try to learn first. I can concentrate on a web of price instead of being exact. That's what I love the most about options. One day, 6000 dollar unrealized loss. I just kept averaging down. It was hard and painful but you have to stay mentally tough. I do strictly options. I trade futures options because they move slower. I look for opportunities there and in the equity market. I went away from my bread and butter (options). I stuck my nose where it didn't belong. It was a reality check. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode079/

We have a pretty unique situation which up until this point, I'm not sure we've encountered. I'm always up for a new experience and you better be too! Shawn is back with us again (chat room alias "Dimliwitti") to update us on what has been going on in life and in trading. I mention "life" because this plays a role in his current situation. Not a bad situation by any stretch, but he decided to "pay himself" handsomely out of his trading account which has reduced him down to a smaller account than what he is used to trading with. How has this impacted him? What are the things he has discovered about a smaller account? What is his plan of attack? We cover this and much more. Notes: Today we reinterview community member Dimliwitti who has been featured in podcasts, articles and webinars. After a review of what we talked about on his last podcast, we see how he has been doing since. Dim has found a true comfort with his brokerage and that is instrumental in preventing errors with your order entries/exits. While we don't generally recommend some of these bigger brokerages since they charge more than others, with more competitive pricing it is pretty on-par in terms of cost. He decided to reduce his account size to keep his risk in check. This led to drastic changes in his trading because he had essentially reduced his account size by almost 90%. He had to focus on some lower priced stocks to keep his risk at a comfortable level. This definitely led to adjustments in terms of his choices on what to trade. Dim uses what we call the 'fourth dimension' where he uses some fundamental analysis in his top down analysis. While he looks at it, the time frame he ultimately chooses to trade will dictate how much weight he places behind that. On longer term swing trades, this information plays a key role. On shorter day trades, the chart will dictate the overall short term trend. Considering Dim trades full time for income, he treats this like a business in many different ways. One way is a performance review. While we believe profit targets are a dangerous game, he's looking at his performance averaged over weeks and months. He uses these metrics to make sure that this business is worth his time and it has been quite fruitful so far over the past 2 years. Quotes: I had some huge losses before I got educated. But after education, things really turned around and I had some major wins. When you have a large account and subtract a zero from it, suddenly it's not a very big account. Zeros matter. The biggest frustration for me was the sizes and the limitations of it. Kudos to folks who start with next to nothing and build it up. I'm looking at price and volume. If there is volatility in there, I'm really attracted to those. The frustration creeps in and you break rules. What happens when you break rules? You suffer the consequences. I did an analysis and found that my best hours were between 9:30 and 10:30. So lately, I just kind of disappear after 11AM. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode059/ https://claytrader.com/blog/buying-panic-3300-profit-10-minutes/

It's always enjoyable to bring back previous guests who we've had on the show, and that's exactly what we do in this "live coaching" discussion. I say "live coaching" because in the free-flowing format of these interviews, we stumbled down some fantastic rabbit holes that lead into assisting our guest with some annoyances and frustrations in his trading. Our guest, who goes by "Remy" in the chat room goes into open details about how his journey has been progressing and what hurdles he realizes still exist. If you take anything away from the interview, please see how being self aware and honest with yourself can lead to getting yourself onto a path with a clear cut goal that'll provide a solution to the problem. A lack of honest with yourself goes nowhere, but being honest, as you'll witness by being a fly on the wall can open up the doors of progress. Notes: Today we reinterview Remy who made his initial appearance in episode 39. His journey started by puppet trading a biotech trader but quickly realized that his beginner's luck ran out and he gave back all his profits and then some. Remy has had to trade from his phone for a long time but he explains the pitfalls of the Robinhood brokerage and why it doesn't work with the names he trades. While he excels paper trading, when he gets behind the wheel of his live account he struggles to emulate that success. The big problem he struggles with is his emotions that are associated with a small account. Clay recommends that Remy save up for a larger account so his 'account protectionism' won't lead him to making emotional decisions. Losing 20-50 dollars when trading a volatile stock like TSLA is completely normal but when you are operating with a 500 dollar account, you are much more emotional taking those losses. Quotes: I lost 200% of my winnings by puppet trading and I realized that was not a successful route for myself. In a split second, the thing dumps and I'm sitting there typing in my stop loss and hoping my wifi works. I have been trading with emotion. I've had poor risk management but I definitely see the light at the end of the tunnel. I started out with 5 contracts but needed to really scale it down. I had a poor entry and lost 50% of my account. I've been able to read the charts and recognize patterns. I'm ecstatic about that because it's come a long way. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode039/

There is zero doubt in my mind that many people will be able to relate to this trader's journey. Thanks to the openness and honesty of chat room member "Luna" (same name in chat room), we were able to go step-by-step through a journey filled with many struggles; however, at the end resulted in a spot that many new traders fine themselves in. The this "spot" is a problem, the good news is the solution is very straight forward. Sure, hearing what Luna realized he needed to focus on is not the most attractive and sexy thing from a marketing perspective, but it's the truth and is something that EVERYONE and ANYONE can do. Notes: Luna has been a member for many years and got interested in trading in 2012. He got involved when a bank said that they would add a small amount of their own funds if he made a large enough deposit to start an account. He planned on being a buy and hold trader. He began to buy shares of companies he was familiar with/used often in everyday life. In the next few years, Luna got interested in penny stocks based on penny stock newsletters primarily. Unfortunately he usually ended up buying in the 'dump phase' of a pump and dump. Luna got hosed on one trade and blew up his account so this led him to the rebuilding phase. After learning about options he decided to focus specifically on them to trade larger names that moved less on emotion. To avoid the ticket charge at his brokerage, he ended up trading 5 contracts at a time which was much larger size than he should have used. He is currently paper trading to solidify his strategy while he saves up to build up an account. He has opened and gone through multiple 100 dollar accounts so he would like to build up a larger account so that he didn't have to go all in on every trade with a small account. He is building his account with a good old fashioned JOB. Quotes: I was completely blind to the market. I thought you had to work for a company to even buy shares of that company. I blamed myself. I was completely uneducated, throwing darts and not knowing what I was doing. I did a whole week of paper trading and then I went live. I didn't keep it realistic either. I was greedy. Trying to build the account a little higher. I've come to realize I need to start with more than 100 dollars. I am passionate and persistent to figure this thing out and not give up. I will learn how to do this. Links: https://claytrader.com/videos/trade-penny-stocks-steroids/ Books: Trade Mindfully, The Inner Voice of Trading, and Trading in the Zone

I recently got an entire new trading computer that was a custom build. The person I used to build it is the "techie on staff" - itNate as we call him. He is essentially like Batman as he usually is operating in the shadows of the site doing all the behind-the-scenes stuff..... however, today he's stepping into the light to talk about computer stuff and why/what he chose for my new computer. Our esteemed cohost Chezz is also quite tech savvy, so him and itNate has plenty to talk about as I listed and asked newbie questions. If you are thinking about getting a new trading computer or perhaps doing a bit of upgrading, this discussion will please you I'm sure. Notes: Today we interview our IT guru, Nate. We discuss the logical order for building a Computer. Step 1: Pick your processor. Nate recommends a Core i7 7700K but remember, there is always updated processors every few months. The big emphasis would be to focus on an i7 over an i3 or i5. We are big advocates of Intel over AMD based on our personal use. Step 2: Pick your motherboard. Things to focus on include making sure your socket type is compatible with your processor (CPU). You'll need to forecast how many video cards you may need and this will be based on how many monitors you plan on having. 2 video card slots is pretty standard and will cover almost everyone's needs. Nate purchased a MSI Arsenal Intel Z 270M board for Clay's most recent build. Step 3: Monitors. We have a deep discussion on how many monitors you think you will need. We are firm believers that less is more. Clay and Chezz rarely use more than 2 monitors for trading. Monitors are also the easiest thing to upgrade and add in the future so if you're budget is tight, start with 1 and expand later. Nate picked out Dell 4k 27" screens. Model # P2715Q Step 4: Video card. Nate picked a PNY Quadro K1200 which handles all of Clay's 4k monitors. While you don't need a gaming graphics card to handle trading, you just need to do some long term forecasting regarding what you will be using the computer for. Workstation video cards will be absolutely fine for trading. We also highly recommend Nvidia cards over AMD. Step 5: Memory. Your motherboard will determine what specific speeds you need for your RAM. We recommend never going below 8 gigs of RAM and 16+ will set you up for 'future proofing' the build. The new standard is DDR4 and it is also recommended if you ever upgrade in the future keep it the same brand, same model. You want complete compatibility when it comes to memory. Step 6: Storage. We recommend solid state drives (SSD) since they make programs and windows load many multiples faster. While traditional hard drives (HDD) are a good amount cheaper, they are more prone to crashes and as stated above, much slower in terms of loading programs. Step 7: Case. These typically don't matter as long as you get the size that your motherboard requires. Nate used a micro ATX motherboard so he got Clay a micro ATX case. Step 8: Power supply. PCPartPicker can help you estimate what the power draw will be based on your components so as long as you get one that sufficiently meets the needs, you will be fine. Ex. Your components use 400w of power. Buying a 500W power supply would be more than enough. Step 9: Operating System. You will want to get a 64bit operating system as that is the new standard. We are content to recommend Windows 10 since it has been out for a while and has patched any major issues. Trading platforms are mainly focused on Windows over Apple since a majority of their user base uses Windows. Additional: Uninterruptible Power Supply. This is what we call an insurance policy. If the power goes while you are actively trading and your power goes out, you're out of luck and better hope you can get on the phone to call a brokerage to close your trades. We prefer to have power supplied from this power supply (UPS) to give us 15 minutes of battery power to close our trades and not have to deal with the headache of literally being in the dark. Computer Parts: Processor: Intel Core i7 i7-7700K – http://amzn.to/2tsWuoB Motherboard: MSI Z270M MORTAR – http://amzn.to/2ttaTkT Memory: Ballistix Sport LT 16GB – http://amzn.to/2tti7Fq SSD: Samsung 960 PRO Series – http://amzn.to/2usGrUC Optical: ASUS DRW-24F1ST – http://amzn.to/2tyA7yF Video: NVIDIA Quadro K1200 – http://amzn.to/2sKzuCc Power: Corsair CX430 – http://amzn.to/2ttbovh Case: Antec VSK3000E – http://amzn.to/2tyjhzT OS: Windows 10 – http://amzn.to/2tsWKnz Links: Video: How To Build A Trade Computer https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ http://www.pcpartpicker.com/

An open and transparent book. That was certainly the overall theme of this Welcome Back interview. Our guest has not only been on the podcast before, but I've also hung out with him in person on two occasions so I wasn't shocked by his honesty... the guy is a quality individual without question. Stephen (chatroom alias, "PH") shares his continued quest to gain solid consistency in the market as he trades and goes through many situations most people can relate to. He still has things to work on, but he's overall in an uptrend and that is what matters. Higher highs and higher lows. He also revealed a new venture he is undertaking that is designed to help all new traders. Be sure to stay until the end as we talk more about it. Notes: Today we are speaking with Stephen a.k.a. PH. His original podcast is linked in the notes below. Stephen started off mainly investing in companies he was familiar with when he just started. While Stephen went through many different strategies starting out, he had to go through that to find what exactly he is comfortable with and excels at. Now he primarily focuses on trading gaps which has led him to a high win rate and much smaller losers than winners. Stephen has utilized the concept of R, which is initial risk. This ties directly into Risk vs Reward and the big emphasis Stephen makes is the fact that it is dynamic. While he accepts the risk on entry, if he sees a more logical location to move his stop loss and lose less, he always will! If a trade doesn't meet his determined targets vs risk, he passes on the trade. He has rules that he sticks to every trade but there is a need to have some flexibility. Considering Stephen is an entrepreneur, he launched https://www.stocktradersjourney.com/ to document his journey through education and his trading. He offers reviews of various trading education, trading signals and anything else that pertains to trading the market. He is doing this without any affiliation compensation. We truly enjoy these follow up interviews to really show the progress our community members have made. Learning to trade and trade well is not an overnight process but with hard work and dedication, any one truly can learn how to do it. Quotes: It's the evolution of the journey and trying to find the strategy that most fits our individual personalities. The R is your risk value. Every single trade I'm willing to risk 1R to make 2 or ideally 3R. I don't just set it and leave it though. You want to have rules but need to remain flexible. The market isn't a rigid thing. It's a living, breathing thing you can't control. The purpose of this website is to share with people the mistakes I've made so they can learn from them. Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode015/ https://www.stocktradersjourney.com/

In the majority of situations, the biggest struggles as a trader comes from the person looking back at you in the mirror. Of course, many people will blame external forces no matter how crazy it may appear; however, for the traders who are self-aware and honest with themselves they understand trading is a battle against ones self. Our guest from the community Eric (chat room name "Gman") does an awesome job of sharing the battle he has faced with himself. As you will hear, a strategy of listening to others is not going to lead you to profitable places in the long run, but, this is the cruel joke of the markets. If you can't depend on others, you need to depend on yourself...YET, that is where the big battle awaits. This is why trading can be so frustrating and difficult. Eric takes us down some great rabbit holes of discussion, so let's go! Notes: Today we interview Eric also known as Gman. While he doesn't hang out in the chat rooms too often, Eric really took advantage of the education offered. A friend of his tried to get him involved into the market 10 years ago but he wasn't very capitalized so he gave it up for a few years before his interest was piqued again. He drank some koolaid on a 5G LTE technology company that was trading in the triple zero's. Unfortunately he lost everything as the stock went to 0. Eric started to recognize that message boards became a place for people who made the same mistakes to comfort each other. This was what led him to realize that there is no external factors to blame for his failure or success. He realizes that he is more often than not trading against himself. It is his emotions and fear/greed that leads to losses generally. After 4 years of sticking with trades, he realizes this is a part of the journey that he had to go through. He emphasizes that he doesn't want anyone to find overnight success. People who experience that generally give it all back and then some instead of learn valuable lessons. Eric has made huge strides going from relying on other people at the message boards to give input on where to enter, how long to hold and where to exit to now being the CEO of his trading business deciding all of the above based on his risk criteria. Quotes: I opened an eTrade account with 1000 dollars. I enjoyed the market but didn't have the money or education to do it. Some guy would come on and say 'look at this patent. In 180 days it will go through so we have to wait.' That's why people like message boards. You can find like minded people who are making the same mistakes you are. I feel great but I have so much further to go. It's a never ending process of looking at yourself and improving. When I trade, I know my charts. I can pull those charts up and analyze it to comfortably plan a trade. Links: https://claytrader.com/videos/1-penny-stock-short-scam/

The brutal honesty our guest in this interview afforded us all to hear a very cautionary tale about the very real risks that exist in the world of trading. While these risks can be controlled and navigated, when a lack of understanding enters into the "new trader equation", the numbers can turn nasty in a hurry! Mark (chatroom alias "hyprsnpr") takes us through the various loops his journey has contained, including those dirty loops that many people are afraid to talk about. Because of Mark's courage and bluntness, we all as listeners (both new and old traders) are given the opportunity to learn and have reminders shoved in our face. I don't like beating around the bush, I'd much rather have it hit me between the eyes and that's exactly what you get in Mark's journey. Notes: Today we interview community member Hyprsnpr also known as Mark. He had a roommate whose Dad was successful in trading the market. They focused only on covered calls. Another pitfall was Mark was going all in on every trade he made and when bad news came out in that stock, his account essentially went to zero. After taking a 6-7 year hiatus, Mark saved up and once again set a portion of his funds aside for trading. This led him to start getting interested in investing but after a few years of going nowhere, he eventually found Clay's youtube videos and joined the community. He flew through the courses after joining the University program and started trading before actually finishing all the courses. He found immediate success, which is a double edged sword, but eventually his over confidence led to trading a size much too large which led to a large drawdown. He decided to go back to paper trading and get back on course. Mark kept his size very realistic for practice. He knows what his comfort level is regarding trade size and wanted the transition from paper trading back to live trading to be 1:1. This is a great way to practice because your gains and losses will be the same size and your comfort should grow as you prove to yourself that you know what you are doing. What is very impressive is that Mark knows what his strengths are regarding trading. He knows his setups, he knows his time frame, and he knows his risk. This solid plan forms a foundation to keep him accountable and ensure that he only takes good entries and avoids forcing trades when there is no setup presented. Quotes: I thought there was no way out of the options unless it got exercised or expired worthless. That's how little I knew. I thought it was going to go to the moon. I watched it fall to 5c but luckily it ended up turning around. I was revenge trading. I would say, 'I lost 1000 dollars yesterday. I'm going to make that back today plus 1000 more.' The reason I like options so much is the RvR standpoint. I can buy the equivalent of 100 shares for pennies on the dollar. I still struggle with the voices every trade regarding greed and fear but I've been much more disciplined. Paper trade however long you think you need to and then multiply that by three.

By far one of the hardest things to do as a trader or investor is to follow the rules. Assuming you've traded before, I'm sure you can relate to just how hard it can be when real money is on the line. Our guest, Ben, has a great story he shares with us which finds a centralized theme in following the rules vs. not following them. Ben's journey took him to the edge of almost wanting to give up on trading, but he then discovered another area of the market that re-energized his passion and drive to succeed. After adding in more tools to his toolblet, adhering to the rules and risk management systems became easier and easier. There is no question in my mind that there is at least a few things that we can all relate to in Ben's story. Notes: Ben's dad was always interested in economics and the importance of savings. This was something that was taught to Ben at a very young age. While he was deployed overseas, since the market opened up in the afternoon and some other members of his company were trading, Ben started to get involved in long term investments in names he knew. This was unfortunately timed during the market collapse of 2008. Lots of gains can be made in the sub-penny market, however, after he looked into some of the companies, Ben recognized that most of the names moved based on hype versus actual performance or products. While Ben had transitioned back to civilian life, he did start trading after taking Robotic Trading but it became quite clear to him that he didn't have a clear view of the whole trading process yet. This led him to Claytrader University to learn how to apply all the pieces of puzzle. Ben thought about giving up on trading. He was slightly jaded at these low price low volume stocks but after learning about options, this opened up his opportunities to trade larger and more stable names. A big turning point for him was waiting for a chart pattern to really leap out at him versus just making a pattern out of nothing. Adhering to his risk management principles, this gives him further hope of becoming a full time trader in the future. Right now, trading is supplemental income for him and his family. Good habits can scale which is what he is focusing on. Quotes: One of the guys was big into penny stocks. I was trying to stick with names that I knew. All well known companies. In hindsight, what are you thinking? This isn't just a bad choice… it's a very bad choice. (regarding sub-penny stocks) I was up about 20k on a 4-5 thousand dollar investment. Long story short, I broke even. I was putting a lot of pressure on myself to try to be successful without having the capital or understanding clearly what to do. I was kind of ready to give up the whole trading idea. Options can be very profitable if you are disciplined. The chart showed itself and I followed the principles which led to a very successful trade.

First a warning. This the second part of a two part interview, so before listening to this one, be sure to listen to episode 120. In Part 1 our guest, Janice Shell, sat us down for a story about one of the biggest penny stock scams in the past couple decades. It was truly a fascinating story that would make a great Hollywood movie; however, in this episode we move into more practical areas of the penny stock market. Janice and I talk about penny stock shorting, dumb excuses, and some tips that any newer trader who wants to get involved in penny stocks should understand and implement. If you are interested in trading penny stocks, then I'm not exaggerating when I say this is an interview you NEED to listen to. Buckle up for some very practical advice! Listen to Part 1 of this podcast: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode120/ Notes: Janice discusses the unfortunate myth in the penny stock world that the market makers are the evil people who short and kill penny stocks when in reality, a market maker is generally a computer that makes money on the spread of the trades. Quotes: Market makers make money on the spread. On penny stocks, the spread is huge. People are conditioned to believe MM's are evil. Investing is not a team sport. Do not get involved with teams. Penny stocks are not investment quality.

I was a bit nervous heading into this interview as I've known of and respected this person for as long as I can remember. If you're not aware, my first introduction to the stock market was via the penny stock market over 10 years ago, and I remember this person from way back then. The name Janice Shell is synonymous with penny stocks assuming you have been around them for awhile. If you are involved in penny stocks but have not heard the name, it's only a matter of time before you see someone blame her for something or use her name as a warning. She has been involved in the penny stock market for over 20 years and has seen it all. This has given her the unique advantage of being able to tell awesome stories and offer up great insights into some of the common "beliefs" that are floated around penny stocks. Even if you don't trade penny stocks, you'll get a great entertainment out of Part 1 as she tells a story about a penny stock company that is hard to believe... but it's true. Notes: Janice has been interested in the market since she was a child. Typical to many others, in her high school economics course, the class picked a stock and evaluated it over a 3 month period. In 1996, Janice started to investigate stocks she was interested in. She ran into a message board and while she intended not to post, she only made it 24 hours before posting her first response. She befriended some people on this message board and they started looking into various names and what they really do. Janice has many horror stories of pump and dumps and the resulting actions of not only the stocks but the legal ramifications that would follow. Many of these tales involve getting investor interest before diluting the stock to unbelievable levels. She has watched many of these shady companies CEO's and other high ranking officers end up in jail, some of which are still in jail to this day. The amazing thing is that even after clear evidence of a scam, there are still some people who fully believe that this 'penny stock gamble' that they originally bought into will come to fruition. Quotes: I chose the most inexpensive listed stocks. I would buy and sell support and resistance. I realized in real life this wouldn't work. The SEC finally revoked their registration years later. It took them that long. That was a penny stock with a product. He decided to sponsor a NASCAR event and encouraged people to buy stock in his company. The product was the funny car. There were still loyal stockholders. The SEC showed logs that had appalled even the most loyal of holders. It's one thing to believe a scam will come true. It's another thing to have your penny stock gamble to lead to hallucinations.

One of the most common tactics the emotion of greed uses in the world of trading/investing is seduction. The greed voices begin whispering into your ear and causing you to fantasize about all sorts of big/quick money dreams... and then you're sitting in a spot regretting your actions. Our guest from the chat room community DJ shares his experience with this. As you will hear, he had a very logical longer term strategy that was working and his account was growing, but then the biotech stock voices appeared. This lead to some lessons to be learned for DJ; however, you as a listener can learn from them without having to go through them! Notes: DJ got interested in the market a few years ago while he was in school. He would see Mad Money on the television and started to track gainers and losers. DJ was wise enough to avoid forums and message boards to find his trades. Even though he had a small account, DJ focused on pharma stocks which are extremely volatile and this was reflected in his profit and loss with big swings up and down. DJ started to contribute to his trading account over a year and a half and now had over $25,000 dollars to trade with. Most of this money was going into 'safer' long term investments but he strayed from the path and put a portion into the pharma stocks which led to a huge unrealized loser which he luckily recovered from. After joining the community, DJ joined CTU and decided to focus on options. He wanted to utilize his knowledge of charts and risk with the leverage associated for options. He liked that he could use a small amount of capital to trade larger names. Since DJ works full time, he finds it is easier to swing trade but he does have aspirations to eventually day trade in the future. He likes to try to learn the personalities of stocks for maybe a month generally before he puts on any trades. He now also believes in the powers of numbers. DJ understands that is a numbers game and that he will not make money on every trade he puts on. Now he simply takes his losers and looks for the next opportunity. Quotes: "I would just jump on one of those gainers or losers if I thought it would bounce but I was totally guessing." "A lot was going into AAPL and GOOGL but I went totally crazy and put lots into CARA. That was my wake up call." "Being able to put in 500 dollars and make a few hundred percent profit was very appealing. It is good leverage." "If you look at the same ticker it tends to do the same thing over and over." "Keep those losses smaller, doesn't hurt as much and know that you went in with a good play." "Go learn something. Find some method and learn it and use it. Don't just throw your money in and wait for good news."

For those in our trading community, odds are, if you've been around long enough, you've seen the name "Stock Gambit" appear in the chat room. He has been around since nearly the start of our community. He is in "ninja mode" for the most part, in fact, as you'll hear on the interview, I wasn't even aware he was a full time trader now! It's always fascinating to hear about people's journey's from working at the 9-5 J-O-B to being their own boss and working from home. That's what we get to hear all about in this episode. We hope you enjoy! Notes: Stock Gambit has been a long time member and we're excited to interview him today. His parents were always involved in the stock market from the time he was a child but it didn't appeal to him until many years later. His father used technical charts for many years for his own trading. Gambit wanted to find some people to learn from and this led to him following traders on twitter and puppet trading him. After some further reflection, he realized that he needed to learn to spot trade opportunities for himself. This led him to get involved with Claytrader courses. While he found some success in penny stocks while the OTC market was filled with volume, that eventually fizzled out and led him to close all of his positions. He credits the Penny Stock Survival Guide for him making that decision to look elsewhere for trades. He started to trade common shares and paper traded forex. Gambit has traded almost every trading vehicle under the sun but he thinks that it is important that people realize what is out there and what works best for them. The repetitions of starting small and getting comfortable gives you the ability to scale up your strategy without spiraling out of control. Quotes: "My father gave me a book and said read it. I read it and was completely confused. It was all about technical charts." "My father would say 'I didn't care what I would trade as long as I made money.' " "I was always concerned that forex pairs would crash. Clay suggested I look at basic options since I could limit my losses." "You feel comfortable when you feel comfortable. It's the number of repetitions and staying small." "If you believe this is something you should be doing and it is right for you, you should persist." Links: https://claytrader.com/courses/penny-stock-survival-guide/

We're at it again! Our 2nd ever in person video podcast. The special little twist this time is I'm checking in with our esteemed co-host "Chezz". He was the guest on episode #1, so yeah, it's been awhile since we've gotten an update on his trading journey in the markets. We talk about an abundance of issues including how important it is to factor in "life events" with trading goals. Chezz and I talk about what I believe to be very practical tips and considerations that need to be made in order to assist yourself in improving as a trader most efficiently. If you normally listen to the podcast, be sure to check out our YouTube channel or show notes page to watch the video. Notes: Today we interview Chezz, the cohost of the podcast while we were in Columbus for a community meetup. We pick up the story from 2 years ago when he did his first podcast. To summarize, Chezz quit his job and decided to trade full time after going through the courses and paper traded for many months. He directionally traded long options but struggled with the fact that he may loser 7 out of 10 trades. While he didn't blow up his account, he mentally struggled with the success rate. Chezz would go through 6+ hours of content at a day at a minimum and it was definitely overload. You need to pace yourself as you venture into something new. You can't learn a brand new trade overnight and everyone will take a different amount of time to digest what is taught. After giving forex a try, Chezz started trading advanced options. While he was finding success, he wasn't pleased with the returns. Waiting 21 days for a trade to play out to make a few hundred dollars didn't seem like a feasible way to make a living. This led him to trade futures for faster returns. That futures account he funded was strictly to pay for bills related to his wedding. While he almost doubled that account, he took a big string of losers when the market was in consolidation and he says the best thing he ever did was stop trading a few weeks prior to the wedding. Big life events will affect your trading especially if you tie those funds to a tangible purchase you're trying to make. Your trading capital should be looked at as working capital and that's it. Chezz is back to trading advanced options since he's always found the most success with that vehicle and his confidence comes from understanding how to spot trades and how to manage trades that go wrong. Quotes: "I realized I needed something with structure and closed my SureTrader account to pour the remainder of it into my education." "I had trouble accepting I was wrong 70% of the time. Mentally I couldn't handle it." "I promise you that big events in your life will affect trading. It sits in the back of your mind and makes you do foolish things." "Foolish me, I'm either going to blow this account up or I'm going to recover. Stupidest trading I've ever done." "Recognizing that it's a numbers game helped me overcome the recency effect. It still sucks to lose money but it's the long game." Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode001/

A community staple is back to update us on how his trading has been unfolding. For those of you who have been around awhile, the name RDTrader12 should sound familiar. He's been on two previous podcasts and I've also interviewed him for the live webinars in ClayTrader University. He's a great human being and someone that continues to improve with his trading. As you'll see, his job and schedule took on some changes which altered his trading situation, but he rolled with the punches beautifully and is back in the swing of things. The coolest thing is how he determined he needed to "slow down" in order to "speed up". I realize that seems like an oxymoron, but I promise it isn't as you'll hear. Let's get to it! Notes: Today we revisit with RD and pick up from where we left off in his last episode. In summary, he was solely day trading options in 2015/2016. He recognized that he wanted to trade futures and began working toward that with paper trading. The only reason RD wanted to trade futures was because he believed futures were a better day trading vehicle. He didn't enjoy the factor of theta working against him in his option trades. RD knows that it is just one of the nuances of options and really comes down to personal preference. RD took 12 weeks to paper trade futures exclusively and he admits that he unfortunately was a victim of fool's gold. Those 3 months were very volatile and when he went live the market was the complete opposite with very little volatility and movement. He wasn't able to adapt at first. While he knew his strategy had worked, it wasn't until he hit the brakes and evaluated his live trading that he recognized that the volatility of the market as a whole had changed. After taking a hard look at his data, he realized he was overtrading and instead of taking 10+ trades a day, he now tried to find one or two great setups. It was a very big step forward in his trading to trade less and he found he was actually able to split his attention to both options and futures again since he wasn't forcing trades the entire day. Since RD's new job took him away from his desk, he decided to reduce his position size and widen out his time frame for trading. He also started to utilize trailing stops and other methods to manage his positions since he couldn't actively watch them. He also does his 'market homework' such as identifying levels and trends before the market opens so he can set his orders and go about his day. RD is also looking into utilizing advanced options to supplement his swing trading of futures. His new trading style much closer resembles swing trading instead of day trading which works well with him having a very busy work life. Quotes: "A chart is a chart. Once you learn the nuances, it's trading as usual. I shut down the options platform and paper traded futures." "Once you understand it's not this big mysterious thing, it's just another chart, I felt pretty comfortable pretty quickly." "I stepped back, got my confidence back and adjusted my strategy to not only the market conditions but my risk vs reward." "I reduced my risk as I adapted to the environment. I really like to put my stop losses under consolidation points." Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode005/

This is Part 2 of a two part interview, so for the best listening experience, be sure to go back and listen to episode 114 first. Chezz and I pick up right where we left off with tfletch and the craziness continues. With that being said, things begin to calm down too as we learn about how he is now putting everything he has learned into a sustainable and consistent trading plan. He had to learn a tough lesson when first going live with a bit of false confidence, but his self-awareness and lack of ego allowed for him to quickly realize "what" the issues was. When you know what the issue is, implementing a solution becomes much less of a challenge. Like Part 1, there are several tid-bits of great wisdom from experience dropped that everyone can learn from. Notes: After going through the courses at Claytrader University, he found that he struggled with paper trading because he wouldn't pay as much attention as he normally would if he had a live position on. By no means does he advocate people cut their practice short but he personally struggled with it for the reason above. Tim now carries many positions to keep diversified and utilizes advanced options for this portfolio. The next step in his journey includes learning to trade futures with what he has already learned so now he is extensively studying the chart to learn the in's and out's of the product. Even though Tim thrives on fast paced environments (since he works primarily at auto auctions) he found that day trading just wasn't possible to fit in his schedule just yet. In the future, possibly, but right now with how his current work schedule is, it's just not possible. If Tim could go back and give himself one piece of advice it would have been to start sooner. He recommends if you're a young guy or any age really, buckle down, work hard and accumulate money while at the same time focus on your education. Within a few years you will have quite a large knowledge base and have the largest chance at success in trading. Quotes: "I have to tell myself if I'm going to carry 30 positions and they will all be in my favor, you're nuts. There are always problem children." "I think it's as important to learn what not to do as it is to learn what to do." "I want to be totally comfortable day trading before I commit to it but I'm not there yet." "Develop a plan. Say 'this is where I want to be at this point and this is where I want to be at this point'. "

I had the pleasure of meeting our guest at our Nashville meet-and-greet and after talking to him there, I knew he needed to be a guest. I guess I'll pat myself on the back a bit and proclaim that I made a wise choice. Our guest, "tfletch" as he is well known by in the chat room, has been through quite a bit during his journey of life and the markets... how much so? Well, this interview turned into a two part episode. From his beginnings in the car industry, to his wild ride of being a future's broker, to his desire to "get serious" about trading... the man has gone through a lot. Oh yeah, I didn't even mention the part where he authored a book! New or veteran as a trader, I have no question you'll be able to gather a few nuggets of wisdom. Notes: Today we talk with T. Fletch from the community. He actually started his trading journey by trading a 'tip' he got from a coworker when he was in his early 20s. It was a penny stock and it ultimately went to zero. Quite a few years later, still in his late 20s, Tim got his hands on a stock/futures trading manual that both him and his brother read. His brother ended up opening a futures brokerage and was doing extremely well for himself but he needed help with the huge amount of clients. He offered Tim a job and he decided to leave the car dealership and work with him. After four years at the brokerage firm, Tim decided that it wasn't for him and it was starting to take a toll on his personal life. He left that industry to go back to what he knew, the car business. As both him and his wife had saved up in their retirement accounts, Tim's wife actually told him that he needed to learn how to manage them since she knew financial advisors did not have their best interests in mind. This led him to search out some books and podcasts to start the learning process. Quotes: "Years ago when we lived in California, I got introduced to penny stocks. A whole bunch of us decided to buy into one. That money is gone." "We just puppet traded. Ken Roberts had a hotline that you would call in and I started a spreadsheet of his recommendations." "In four years of being a futures broker, not one client closed an account that had made money. Not one single one." "Young people, trust me, before you know it you will be turning 60 and if you haven't saved it's your own fault. Time goes by fast." "Claytrader University was the structured program that I needed and what I was looking for. It couldn't have been better for me."

One of the more common problems have as newer traders is shiny objects. You hear about one thing in the market, so you focus on that. Then you hear about something else, and before you know it, you are off focusing on that. While there is certainly nothing wrong with having multiple tools in your trading toolbelt, you must master one tool in full at a time. Thanks to our guest's openness and transparency, "GeeSama" from the community, we get a great look into just how annoying and frustrating chasing shiny objects can be. To bring things full circle, we all get to hear the benefits of simply slowing down and putting all your brain power into a single tool. This is an interview any new or veteran trader can benefit from. Notes: In today's podcast we speak with community member GeeSama. His introduction to the market was through the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, that was passed around at his day job. It outlines a few ways to get out of the 'rat race' and he gravitated toward the stock market to achieve this. After funding an account, Gee had some nice fool's gold to start with a sizeable gain on his account. He never actually had any blowout losses because he had a max amount of money to lose per trade in terms of a stop loss. While it helped, his stops were not always in logical locations. After joining the community, Gee realized that he wanted to learn from Clay and purchased University. After he would finish each course, he would paper trade each strategy for a few weeks but recommends that people paper trade longer. While he was focusing on shorter term day trades, he eventually realized he has a much larger success rate at a longer term time frame. This is what ultimately led him to advanced options trading. Unfortunately, Gee has a bad habit of 'style hopping' and he ultimately abandoned that successful strategy to try to day trade futures. Futures actually led to his largest loss which totaled about $5,000 dollars in one day. After that he took a 6 month break to regroup and figure out how not to repeat the mistakes of that day. He went back to advanced options and finds he trades much better being the casino versus the player. He is a big believer in the probabilities. Quotes: "I didn't have any business ideas. I'm an introvert so real estate was out. The only option I had left was the stock market." "I decided to take a leap. Obviously he knows what he's talking about. I have no idea what I'm doing. I wanted some sort of structure." "That led me down a bad rabbit hole of averaging down on contracts to try to get to break-even." "I was pretty much riding the coattails every day I came in and had significant profits. I was overleveraging myself." "I'm taking a little bit out of each paycheck and funding the account so I can consistently add more positions." Links: ClayTrader Guns: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeMTq2i6G59CkanJsHMQIVg

There is a unique twist to this week's interview, and I'm a huge fan of it! Based on the feedback we've received from you as listeners, whenever we touch on the topic of personal finance, people get value from it. This is exactly what we're going to do by bringing back former guest Pendar (same name in the chat room). We do talk stock market and trading, but the main focus to is offer inspiration and show that it is 100% possible through pure hard work to take a messy situation within personal finances and get it cleaned up. Speaking for myself, I know I was motivated after talking with Pendar and got plenty of the "no excuse" mentality that I always try and focus on. Notes: Today we revisit with Pendar from episode 16. After finding initial success trading his IRA he suffered some significant drawdowns after being overconfident which led him to the path he is currently on. It was a very big eye opener for him. After giving back his gains, once he got to break even (which is always a big psychological level), he started to put on even riskier positions to get back into the green which ultimately led to that accounts demise. He took a hard look at his finances and realized that he had to get rid of his debt but that would take some big life changes. Budgeting and multiple income sources were going to be his solution. He has no desire to pay the interest rates on his debt and that is his big motivator. Pendar is big into having separated accounts for various expenses such as auto maintenance, vacation, bills, savings, etc. Keeping these separated makes it easy for him to not only budget for the future but to also make it easier to allocate his income so that no 'surprises' will clear out his checking account. He's a big believer in being prepared. He has also invested in a steam cleaner which has already returned 60% of it's value. This is just one example of his multiple sources of income. As he said, he gets paid to literally just push a button. Pendar is not going to invest in any more business models since he doesn't want his overhead to get too large. Quotes: "I was trying to beat the professionals at their own game. Instead of going 45 days out I was trading 21 days or shorter." "One of the biggest signs of maturity is saving up for something you really want to buy and paying for it in cash." "It's all about the process, not the goal. Follow the correct process every single time." "By 10pm at night I'm going to sleep and I'm up at 4am. That's 6 hours. I want to be up and working by 5am." Links: STR 16: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode016/ Mint Budgeting: https://www.mint.com/ Pendars UBER code is: https://partners.uber.com/i/7zm95 Pendars Lyft code is: https://www.lyft.com/drivers/PENDAR120983

It's been a while since we've last spoken with community member "Etan" (alias in chat room), but there is quite a bit to report from our last conversation. Our previous interview had Etan with his ax to the grindstone paper-trading and fine tuning a trading strategy; however, as you'll hear, life got in the way and knocked him off course. What I like best about all of this is Etan did not pull out the pity-party-card, he just adjusted and did what needed to be done. We once again have some interesting free flowing conversation... so by all means, please come be a fly on the wall. Notes: Today we revisit with community member Etan. He was focused on shorter term equity scalping and had paper traded for quite a long time with modest success. Unfortunately, his day job picked up very quickly so his time to trade had shrunk considerably so he decided to go back to his old style of swing trading after trying to trade futures. Etan summed it up very well about how he had a lack of 'chemistry' with futures. When you are uncomfortable trading something, no matter what it is, you will not make rational decisions. Comfort in your trading is key and comes with practice and persistence. What he really enjoys about options is that he can set and define his risk in advance. It is much less rigid and much more flexible than futures for him and this fit with his personality much better. Etan is a big believer in logging not only his trades but his thoughts/feelings on the trade as well so that he can look back when he gets in a similar situation and recognize that it's not as bad as he may think and that he has proven he is capable of managing this regardless of the outcome. Quotes: "It's funny sitting at the table and seeing everyone with their emotions and how bad they get." "I tried futures and it did not work so well. It moved differently. The risk per tick was different. There was no chemistry for me." "I've been doing Advanced Options since before I even learned charting. So I papertraded and traded those for a couple years." "It's a lot slower. It's really just looking for support levels and resistance levels. It's a lot less stressful for sure." "I just pull up the positions, check the probability of profit column to make sure I don't have to do anything. Takes me 30 minutes or less." Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode038/

When it comes to Mom's, our guest Rena ("RenaB" in the chat room), is no slouch. Not only did she introduce her son to the stock market and trading, but she has instilled in him extremely valuable principles that will last a lifetime... and that's just the surface of the interview! Rena has been in the market for several years now, and even with that, due to the massive variety of different strategies available, continues to try and narrow down the perfect fit for her own personal risk tolerance. There is some great conversations of psychology and emotions that take part in a "live coaching call". This is one of you don't' want to miss! Notes: Rena's introduction to the market was with mutual funds back in 2009. She immediately started to work on her market education because both her and her husband take these matters very seriously. While she had a solid grasp of the basics, there were some holes in her strategy. Rena is a big believer in continuing to always learn more. Her risk management included a few different methods. The overall methodology mainly pertained to her emotions. She was willing to cut trades that didn't feel right and take profits on ones that did. One day, her son came home from high school and after learning about stock trading, he expressed interest in learning along with his mother. Unfortunately, since he did not have much capital, this led them to trading penny stocks. After getting stuck in a few pump and dumps, they abandoned that idea pretty quickly. Rena used StockTwits to help find stocks that were moving for the day and that's when she ran into Clay's chart analysis videos. She liked the content and joined the community. Considering she's a big believer in continuous education, she went through a few courses before joining Claytrader University. After learning about options, she has broken her trading into thirds. She buys/sell stocks, buys options and also sells options. Rena just came off a 5 day profit streak and was very disappointed in her one red day that followed. Her disappointment is not uncommon and it leads people to think their system is 'broken' when in reality, not all trades will be profitable. If you follow your system and strategy which you know works, the probabilities of profit will work out over time. Quotes: "I wasn't going in completely blind but I know a lot more now than I did then." "My son said he wanted to learn about stock trading so we started on that journey which did not go so well." "I tried daytrading penny stocks. They pump it up in the morning for the first ten minutes then if you're not out, run for the hills." "I'm a believer in 'you never know too much' and ordered a few of your courses, then a few more courses."

This trader is no stranger to the podcast, but he's a great trader so why not talk to him again and see where he currently stands in his trading journey? For you members of the community, Dave (or "h00ch" as he is known by in the chat room) is someone who has essentially been around since the start and continues to be a pillar of the community. Although he has been trading for more than a decade, he still continues to make progress and discover new areas of the market that assist him in adding more tools to his trading toolbelt. This isn't really an interview, more-so just a laid back conversation, so sit back and enjoy! Notes: Today we speak to long time community member h00ch. Since we have already interviewed him, we decide to throw some new questions at him. To summarize his background, he worked at a bank for many years and would take some investment advice from friends. He definitely struck some fools gold and then when his job eventually downsized, he was out of a job and decided to make day trading his job. He was able to capitalize during the dot com boom by putting most of his income into stocks with websites but he did take some significant losses when the bubble burst but he still came out net positive. H00ch has expanded his trading vehicles to include futures. After paper trading them for 4 months, he did open a margin account and mainly trades futures in the evenings after the regular market session is over. Even though he is a day trader primarily, he does swing trade as well. That's the beauty of technical analysis… it applies to all timeframes. He looks for the same setups he would use on a shorter term chart as he would on a longer term chart. He has slowly ratcheted up his size over the years for his day trading but it is contingent on the market conditions. H00ch is smart enough to realize not to push it when the market is stuck in a tight range and to take advantage of trending markets instead. Quotes: "Any company that had any mention of a website would just take off during the dot com boom." "At first I wasn't interested in futures so I paper traded it. I did eventually open a margin account and trade 1 contract at a time." "I'll look at the longer term charts in the evenings. You can make all the plans in the world but a big gap can ruin that." "With my swing trading, since I trade smaller size, I am able to use wider stops. You're looking for the same patterns and setups." "My day trading size has increased slightly. It depends on the market if it is trending or in a channel." Links: The Stock Trading Reality Podcast: Episode 2 The Stock Trading Reality Podcast: Episode 75 The Stock Trading Reality Podcast: Episode 100

For you longer time listeners, you know nothing gets Chezz or myself fired up more than someone who "takes action" and offers no excuses... particularly when it comes to finding money to use to trade. Our guest from the chat room, Brandon (alias in room "bfaust25"), shares a journey filled with many ups and downs. The common theme however is due to Brandon's awesome attitude which has allowed him (and continues to allow him) to get up whenever he may get knocked down. Brandon is a shining example of just how powerful the combination of attitude + work ethic can be. My guess is after listening, you'll be ready to pick up a few part time jobs! Notes: Brandon's introduction the market was his father-in-law who suggested he put in $200 a month from his paycheck into a brokerage account so he would have a decent size account in the future to use. He decided to focus on sector ETFs. From what he had read, he knew that market crashes were a great time to get invested in the market at a discount price. He was able to capitalize on that during 2008 and 2009. Brandon did a lot of research on selling options and decided to save up for another account to try that. The problem is, he still had no tool to forecast which direction the stocks/market would go. He grasped the concept of being directionally neutral but he knew there must be a way to figure out general direction. He looked into technical analysis and that's when he found Clay and invested in his education. After he took a few courses, he rolled into Claytrader University where he discovered that there is quite a story in all charts and with that, there is many moving parts that need to be understood. After going through the courses, Brandon completely changed his tune from selling option premium to buying option premium and using charts. He unfortunately let his emotions and greed get involved after this which led to a downtrend in his account value. He struggled for a bit to grasp how to trade long options based on the underlying movement. These things all take time and take practice. This led to some frustration and disappointment so he took a step back. During this time, he learned how to properly prepare his family's budget. Brandon has now picked up a few part time jobs to continuously fund his account and while he does that he is paper trading short options combining what he learned initially with what he has now learned technically. Quotes: "I read some Warren Buffett books. I was more in an investment mindset instead of trading." "Now there is only 1 problem. I don't know what way the stock price is going to go. Those guys are cool and all but there is a disconnect." "I completely avoided risk management and didn't use it. I pretty much blew that entire account over time." "I took a huge step back. I took the Cash Flow Creation Guide and I needed to hear that. I needed the discipline." Links: Course: The Cash Flow Creation Guide

We've decided to push the bounds of the podcast a bit and try something new... a VIDEO interview. I would not call it flawless, but the early feedback for those that attended it live was still positive. As weird as it may sounds, I've become good enough friends with a member from our community, Nate Wilson, to have invited to my house where we recorded this episode. He has been on two previous podcasts, but Chezz and I wanted to touch base with him and hear about how his trading has been unfolding. In fact, he literally traded my account the morning we recorded this, so we talked about that a bit in the interview. I'd highly recommend "watching" this one instead of "listening" to it, but do what you gotta do. Notes: In this live episode we have guest Nate Wilson with us and we compile some questions from the community to ask him. Many of our members trade options and wondered why Nate does not. He prefers the simplicity of day trading equities and considering no two traders trade the same, it is all about finding where your comfort level is. He has no need to branch out considering his success with his current strategy. We discuss the detriment of counting how many days you've made profits and how it should be avoided. Every day is a clean sheet and needs to be treated that way otherwise you will be making irrational decisions based on previous days performance. Nate discusses how he turned the corner and became more consistent. He reduced his position size and this helped him logically manage trades instead of just going all in at one shot. Smaller risk helps you stay focused on managing trades correctly since you are more comfortable. After watching Wolf of Wallstreet, Nate utilized his background in fundamental analysis to invest in marijuana stocks. This led him down the path of message boards and he started to buy into the hype. This is when he found Clay's chart analysis videos. Nate is always looking to improve mainly with his entries. Picking quality entry points is not always the easiest and we are always trying to make sure we don't force an entry at a non-ideal location. Quotes: "I looked at options for a little while and realized I didn't like it. I prefer the fast in and out day trading of equities." "If I revenge trade, I will literally get up from the computer and go talk with a coworker to get away from forcing trades." "If you can't manage your personal finances, don't bother trying to trade. It's a business." "I totally got suckered in. I had no idea what was going on but they would say 'BOOM! News is coming out!' " "I always want to constantly improve on picking a quality entry instead of forcing an entry. It's a struggle." Links: Video: 64 Trading Days - 2 Losing Days Blog: How I Ruined My Month

I learned a new phrase in this interview, greedy goblin. Yes, without question that sounds pretty rough, but as you hear our guest from the community, Caemeron, explain, it is actually a characteristic that all of us as traders should have. Having a passion and enjoying the challenge of seeing numbers add up, like a game, is an attribute that can be very beneficial. There is certainly some gray area in this regard, but with the right approach and mental mindset, the waters can be navigated in a profitable way. Notes: Cameron's introduction to the market was from his teenage years where he would read about the big moves that biotech companies were making. He knew that if he could acquire the knowledge to trade those, he could significantly increase his earnings. At 18 years old, he moved out of his parents house and moved into a pretty run down trailer in the woods. Cameron worked at a gas station to help pay for the rest of nursing school. When he finished school, he was able to get a job at a hospital and stayed in the low cost trailer to save money. After a discussion with his father, he realized that his idea of putting all his money in dividend paying stocks would not make the gains he desired. While working in the nursing field, he noticed very quickly he did not enjoy it so he decided to leverage his old contacts to find a different profession. When he did open his trading account, he put his money into household names that he was familiar with. His thesis was invest 80% and swing trade the other 20%. He had no knowledge of chart usage at this time. After losing quite a bit of money trying to trade penny stocks, Cameron invested in his education and took RvR Trading because he recognized that if he could control the downside, the upside would take care of the rest. Cameron is now paper trading with his new found knowledge and recognizes that practice makes perfect. Quotes: "My friends call me a goblin because I love making money. I think it's really fun and very challenging." "I'd love to have enough money in the dividend paying stocks where it's like I'm getting paid to hold these stocks." "I opened up an account and got 3 free trades. My dad told me to stick to things I know. I bought AT&T and MSFT since I used them." "I'm collecting aluminum cans, working at the gas station, mowing lawns, I'm doing everything I can to get money." "He told me, if you can get through those guys, you can get through the FDA. That was a horrible investment thesis." Links: Course: Risk vs Reward Trading Video: How and Where I Learned To Trade

While some may call the over-arching theme of this interview "common sense", the problem with that is common sense isn't very common anymore. Our guest from the community, Jody, approached the market in a very strategic, yet simple way. Again, some may say "duh!", but it is also one of those things that in many cases hides in plain sight. Bottom line, when you are unsure of something, go find something that you feel safe in and don't push the envelope. Jody has done, and continues to illustrate a great job of doing exactly that. Notes: Jody's introduction to the market was similar to many, a 401k that a job provided matching for. This was back in 1999. It wasn't until 2008 that he took a more active approach. After speaking with some fellow co workers, he had the idea to take his entire portfolio and reinvest it into the company he worked at since the shares were down 75% due to the market crash. After doubling his money in about a month, he decided to take profits and put it back into other funds. He got a love letter from the brokerage saying that he is not suppose to be actively trading these accounts since they are managed. As time goes on, Jody went back to school and changed jobs a few times. In the transition between companies, some of his funds went into an eTrade account. He makes an important decision in the sense that he recognized he didn't know what he was doing so rather than gamble with that account he moved it back into his new companies managed funds. He finds Clay online and checks out all the free training material available. At the same time he notices a co worker who is trading at work with Robinhood. Jody now was interested in lower priced penny stocks so that he could theoretically turn a larger profit based on a larger move these stocks sometimes make. He still had an uneasy feeling and went back into cash. After watching the video regarding penny stocks versus options, Jody decided to learn how to trade options. He went through a few courses and is now working on honing his trading methodology. Quotes: "My 401k wasn't really growing much. Then 2008 hit. Our company went from 30 dollars a share to as low as 7 or 8." "I didn't know what I was doing. It was kind of scary to have money in a brokerage so I rolled everything back into my 401k." "In programming, you can see what's breaking during debugging. In trading, when you lose money, you have no idea. You're just losing." "I made 300 dollars from CIE. I pulled that money and bought RvR Trading. My account is trending up now." Links: Video: Work Smarter Not Harder Video: Trade Penny Stocks On Steroids

There is a common theme among our community that follows the mind-set that "there are no excuses". I'm happy to report that we, once again, have another data point that proves this mindset is not unrealistic or impossible to put into action in real life. Our guest, Mike, was on a very... very... nice path, but then some "life evens" happened that set him back a bit. Speaking for myself, I was inspired by Mike's story and how he never threw a pity party for himself, but adapted the attitude of "get-er-done" and started chipping away. There is little question in my mind on whether or not you'll find any motivation in this interview... I'm confident you will! Notes: Mike's introduction to the market was in highschool when he would follow the quotes in the newspaper. During college, Mike always had a huge interest in historical figures especially in the realm of finance. While he maintained an interest in the market, he actually passed up a job to work for a very large broker. Knowing one of the higher ups there, he saw how awful he was to his employees and decided that wasn't an environment he wanted to be subjected to. Once Mike had some capital to put into the market, he went the way of value investing. These were all very long, multi month-year holds. He did quite well investing this way and admits he may have stumbled into some fool's gold but an unfortunate divorce wiped away his worth and actually left him in quite a bit of debt. After working hard for many years, Mike has cleared all the debt and problems in his life and has now been working toward rebuilding his trading account. He has been focusing on options so he can trade larger names with much less capital outlay (utilizing technical analysis). He will continue to focus on names and industries that he knows well blending in his older investment style criteria. Quotes: "If Vanderbilt had enemies he wanted to do away with, he would manipulate his stocks to drive his competition bankrupt." "I got interested in value investing. I'm the kind of person that does a ton of research on anything I'm interested in." "I only invested in businesses that I understand. I really didn't understand technology so I didn't own any of them." "Investing is like watching paint dry. I thought trading would be a good way to accumulate funds for investing." "I'll give you two words to sum up successful trading. Impulse control."

For you long time listeners of the show, Shawn is well known "as that lady who took $250 and turned it into over $10,000". If you are a member of the private chat room community, then I'm sure you've seen Shawn or perhaps even interacted with her. Well, she's back for another interview so that Chezz and I can check in with her and see how things have been going. What I loved is that despite her continued success trading, she has a few "other things" going on in her grand plan that make trading a bit more mentally easy. On top of that, she is a master at staying in tune with her emotions which is vital for us as traders. All sorts of good stuff and we're excited to bring it to you! Notes: In this week's episode, we revisit with Shawn who we interviewed this previous year. After a brief recap of her journey up to this point, we dive into her more recent trading endeavors. She stresses the importance of practice and how it was instrumental in helping her turn her trading around. After going through how she grew her watchlist from 2 tickers to a handful, Shawn tells us the process she used to learn how to spot what tickers work better for her with options or straight up stock. When she started trading, Shawn focused on small monetary goals that would lead her to earn more than the bank could offer. Since then, she has learned how to let her runners run to their logical conclusion and extract more profit out of trades that go in her favor. Shawn believes it is crucial to be in tune with yourself if you are trading the market. She recommends writing down the emotions you are feeling whether good or bad and taking a hard look at how to resolve them or make sure they don't interfere with trading. Members of the community chime in some questions for Shawn. This includes what time frames she uses, and some various ways she chooses her trades which includes the importance of liquidity. Quotes: "You get a million dollars on paper money and I thought 'alright, I'm going to trade.' I thought this would be simple." "SPY and AAPL were the two that I got the feel for. I didn't really pay attention to other names." "If you're not on your game, don't press that buy button. That's bad practice." "It's 3 things to me. Being in tune with yourself, risk versus rewards and stops. If you're wrong, get out." "You gave me the tools, I put the work in. I was very excited to personally thank you." Links: https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode057/ https://claytrader.com/podcast/episode058/

One of the coolest things about hosting the podcast is hearing the career fields people are in. I'm not sure we've ever had one as interesting as our guest, Justin, (alias in chat room "JustinT") who works alongside traders where he tells them what to buy/sell. Because of this interesting career field, Justin has quite the unique path in regards to learning the markets and how to trade them. It is intriguing to see where he has been, where he is now, and where he is headed. Justin offers no excuses and is in full blown "ax-to-the-grindstone" mode. Notes: When Justin was in college, it was the middle of the dot.com boom and he perceived this as an opportunity. Considering he was into technology, he was there for the beginning of the online brokerage industry. After coming into some money, Justin opened his first brokerage account. Initially, Justin lost some money right from the get go and decided to put his money into IRA's and let them grow for 15 years. After going through a few different jobs during the 08-09 recession, Justin got a job in the natural gas industry as a scheduler and works with traders daily. After scouring StockTwits and trying to find good traders to learn from, Justin ultimately went on to find trading specific podcasts which led him here. After 20 episodes, he decided that he would investigate Claytrader further to see if it would be worth it for him to invest in his education. Justin has always been very open with his wife about his endeavors in trading and they jointly agreed that it would be beneficial for him to invest in his education since he is serious about using trading as a form of supplemental income. Not only does he have a paper trading plan and a time frame, he has a plan on how he will proceed further with live trading. He treats this as a business and that is how you get ahead. Quotes: "There were IPOs all the time and I heard about how they would skyrocket after they hit the market." "I'm the logistics guy and the traders are the traders but I get to tell them how much they can sell everyday." "I knew it was possible but I was missing something. I tried to piggyback on some traders from StockTwits." "I'll start out small and trade equities for a while. Just to utilize the technical analysis I've been taught." "Be patient. Relax. The market will always be there. I'm just going to keep practicing because it pays off."

This episode holds a special place in my heart as our guest, Louis, from the chatroom was quite the customer service challenge. He was about as hard headed as it got when it came to him actually deciding to come aboard, but I'm glad he did. He's one of those traders who even after making a boatload of money, was still aware enough to know that he need to tap the brakes a bit. He started off guns-a-blazin' and rolling in the dough, but where did that lead him? Well come along for an enjoyable discussion about the bumpy road we call trading. Notes: Louis's introduction to the market started as a child. He would farm crawfish and he wanted to know why the prices would change all the time. He was witnessing supply and demand at it's truest form. While Louis was stationed in Iraq, he saw someone on base looking at charts and struck up a conversation with him. Since Louis was always outside of the base, he was unable to really trade similar to this guy but he decided that once he got back stateside he would start to learn how to trade in the market. He joined a buy and sell alert service and his first and only trade was to go long gold (as a hedge against the 'end of the world'). He put his whole account into this trade and then left it for 6 months. This resulted in him just about doubling his 100k account. Louis heeded the advice of a co worker who warned him that he could just as easily lose all that money he recently made. This led him to start investigating how to further his education. After utilizing as much free education as he could find, he realized that it wasn't the whole picture so he eventually joined Claytrader University. Recognizing that he shouldn't risk all the profits he came into, he stopped trading and spent time going through the training. He was also paper trading while going through the courses. This has led Louis to become a completely methodical trader who has a process for spotting entries, managing risk and determining logical places to take profits. Quotes: "The price always changed. That's what really got me interested in the market. I wanted to know why they changed." "Well I just forgot about it. I treated it like the Fidelity account. Six months later that trade made me 90,000 dollars." "I'm cheap by nature so I didn't want to splurge on the courses. I got to the point where the free stuff stopped working." "I only put 4 grand in there and wanted to see what I could do with a small account. I saved that money from shoeing horses." "I experienced a big gap down and my stop loss got hit. My co workers are still hanging on to it and hoping it recovers."

Every single Monday for 100 weeks straight, we've put out a brand new episode... I would be a total liar if I said I thought that would happen when Chezz and I first began our podcast journey. Sure, I planned it would have success, but literally 100 weeks straight of new episodes? No way! With that being said, thank you to YOU, our listeners, for providing enough interest to keep the show going. In this special episode we bring back a couple of guests who are well known among the community and absolutely killing it with their trading. We all just sit back, shoot the breeze, and let the conversation take us down rabbit holes and whatever topics we want. Thanks again to all you listeners and we look forward to another 100 episodes! Notes: In this special episode we have two staple community members on with us, Shawn and h00ch. This podcast will be much more off the cuff than our usual structure since we have interviews with both the guests already. A common problem we encounter here is that people want to quickly double their money. During the discussion, it becomes very clear that there is no 'one size fits all' and while some people fall into quick riches, that fools gold is generally quickly lost. Learning to trade is a journey and becoming consistent is part of that journey. We have a good discussion regarding penny stocks versus options. Both Shawn and h00ch have transitioned from penny stocks to options for the various benefits that are discussed. It makes a strong case on why you may want to consider trading options instead of penny stocks. Going back down memory lane, we each list our favorite moments from the past 99 episodes. We get quite a diverse set of answers from everyone and we look forward to 100 more podcasts! Quotes: "This is not a 'get rich quick scheme.' You have to be smart. There are bigger dogs out there not afraid to take your money." "You press the buy and sell button. Nobody else is pushing that button for you. You are completely responsible for what happens." "If you want that kind of fun you're better off going to Niagara Falls to hit the casino." "They think penny stocks are their only hope for a small account. Don't think it's either penny stocks or bigger stocks." "I originally got a part time job to take the pressure off myself so that my needs would be met in order for me to not force a trade."

If you're newer to the markets and your plan of action is "learning as I go", then all I ask is that you please listen to our guest, Mike ('HeyFordy' alias in chat room), who took the same path. What I like about Mike is that he's from the Northeast, so he's got that accent and has no problem being blunt and telling you like it is. He doesn't hold back any punches and speaks his mind, for better or worse. Mike is an amateur boxer, so his views on mindset and psychology are fascinating. Whether you are new or an experienced trader, I'm willing to bet there will be at least something that stands out to you and assists you in your personal trading. Notes: Mike's introduction to the market was his buddy who was trading with his free Robinhood account. He funded his account and just dove straight into it. Mike was just puppet trading his friend who gave him some 'picks.' Unfortunately, Mike ended up becoming a bag holder and maintained his losing position for a few months. He went on a search for a good group of traders that he could follow. Mike grew his small account by the thousands with sheer blind luck but eventually that luck ran out. After getting stuck in a trade that he was unable to sell, he started to wise up and realize that he needed to learn how to spot his own entries and determine his exits. Mike went on to search for as much free information as he could find but struggled with it since it had absolutely no structure. After this he went on to try some subscription services that offered hot picks. He quickly found out that this didn't work either. He joined the Claytrader community shortly after this and eventually went on to take the first course, Robotic Trading. Mike said that this was a big eye opener and he know wanted to learn even more. He now started to understand WHY he should be buying and WHY he should be selling. This led him to take a few other courses since he recognized that education for the market is a continuous process. Mike is now truly enjoying the freedom that comes with education in the form of not needing anyone to give him 'hot picks' or steer him into various tickers. He has developed his own strategy, applies solid risk management and executes trades that he has personally planned. This is the true path to long term consistent success. Quotes: "I downloaded it, funded the account and dove in. I didn't have any education or anything. I wanted to do the 'learn as you go.' " "I grew a small account by the thousands very quickly just off of luck. I thought I had everything figured out." "His DVD was like panhandling for gold. You had to go through a ton of dirt just to get a small speck of gold. It was ridiculous." "Robotic Trading was eye opening. A lot of the uncertainty went out the window and I started seeing things in a logical way." "I like swing trading a lot better. I like to manage them over a bit of an extended time."

The financial services industry. One that has more than likely touched all of us in one way or another. For many people, the "touch" comes from the fact they sit down with a "financial adviser" for advise them on how to grow their money. But is their advice really in your best interest? We talk with chat room member, Danny, who has experience in this industry... and yeah, I'll just say he holds nothing back from how it all 'actually' works. We definitely talk trading too (and his journey is just as interesting as what he shares about financial advisers), but I think this interview will be a big warning to many. Notes: Danny is actually a financial planner by trade so it is safe to assume he has had an interest in the market for quite a long time. After working his way through the ranks of the bank, he eventually came to the realization that he could achieve better returns than many of these mutual funds or other products from the bank that all came with attached fees. Danny had befriended someone while traveling who apparently followed someone elses stock picks and was using his profits to travel the world. Instead of following in his friend's footsteps, he decided he wanted to learn how to trade himself so that he could be fully self reliant. Danny also knew that he would need to invest in his education if he wanted to really learn. After going through training elsewhere, Danny did not like how the teachers pushed one strategy on the students. He knew that there had to be multiple ways to view and trade the market. However, Danny now knew just enough of the basics to be dangerous so he jumped in headfirst with his 14k account. After some fast losses, that is when he found Claytrader. Danny learned how to read charts and manage risk and then took his training into the Forex market. He liked that he could trade at different hours of the day and that the market is 24 hours, so it has no closing and opening gaps. He is now paper trading and solidifying his strategy and risk management. He plans on practicing for a full year before re-entering the market with his hard earned money. Quotes: "When you work in the bank, you understand how much advisors do not know anything about the market." "I didn't want to be a follower. I'm the kind of guy that when I do something, I want to know everything about it." "I got the basics. I know how to trade. I said, 'lets go!' I didn't know anything about risk vs. reward." "I'm into forex because it's a 24 hour market. I can get home from work and still trade. I know there will be no gaps."

Talk about a crazy start to your journey. You get a mentor and then all of a sudden he's in JAIL! Uh... yikes! Talk about a great way to become jaded towards the trading markets - and understandably so! This is exactly what happened to our fellow member from the community, Chris, as he began his journey over 18 years ago. With such an "odd" event kicking off his journey, how did he deal with it and what path did he end up on? He's been through a lot, and with that comes lots of experiencetial wisdom which he shares with us. There is something, no matter how long you've been trading, that everyone can take away from Chris' journey. Notes: Chris had a buddy who was trading stock options and this piqued his interest. This was back in 1999 and interestingly enough, the person he was studying under ended up going to prison for his shady business practices and tax avoidance. Chris still applied what was taught and was now trading directional options. Chris would focus on tech companies that he knew of. Unfortunately, he dwindled his account down to zero and had to figure out where to go from here. He recognized that options have the power to change your life with powerful gains but at the same time, the magnitude of profits can also translate into losses. After hearing about penny stocks, Chris got into the pot stock boom. To his own misfortune, he entered right at the end of the boom and got caught in the overall collapse of the sector. After running into liquidity issues as the market dried up, he decided to get back into stocks and stock options. Chris saw some of Clay's free material and decided to join the community. With his current job though, he was unable to login during the day as the site was blocked. After about 6 months, he noticed that he really enjoyed Clay's teaching style and decided to join Claytrader University. After going through the foundational material, Chris now focuses on a basket of stocks that have high option liquidity. He equates his trading to becoming a sniper and spotting good opportunities to enter versus his old methodology where he would just jump into a trade haphazardly. Quotes: "I put a couple grand in and had some success and thought I was pretty smart. We all know it was more luck than anything." "I felt options were too complicated for me. I jumped into penny stocks during the marijuana stock boom." "Penny stocks are great but you have to be in there when they are hot and heavy. You have to get in and out quickly." "People don't want to put the time into education and research. They just want people to pick trades for them." "You can take all the training that's available but you have to be able to implement it and treat it like a business, not a casino."

Yup. It has happened yet again. The bright and shiny world of penny stocks and their apparent ability to grow small accounts punched another trader in the face. While the punch to the face knocked down our guest, AlphaThor (his alias in the chat room), it didn't knock him out. Being the mentally tough guy he is, he has gotten up from the mat and found a new way. In the markets, there is no shame in getting punched in the face, the key things that matter come from HOW you react to the punch. Notes: Alpha's introduction to the market was a Tony Robbins book that focused on the sooner you invest, the easier it will be to retire and grow your wealth. He decided to open up an IRA account to start preparing for his retirement and decided to invest in some IPO stock that Carl Icahn was involved in. After seeing people talking about multiple 100% gainers in the penny stock world, Alpha decided to abandon his original plan and went on to trade penny stocks. He joined a few chat rooms and was unfortunately a victim of the all too common pump and dump occurrences. When his chat room subscription ran out, Alpha found lots of Clay's free videos on Youtube and found a lot of great information from it. This led him to join the community especially considering it was a fraction of the cost compared to the other chat rooms he frequented in the past. Alpha noticed that many people in the community were trading options with a good amount of success. He decided to invest in his education and joined Claytrader University so that he could learn about technical analysis, risk management, and ultimately options. Options appealed to him and the ability to use a smaller amount of capital while also having more opportunities than what was available in the penny stock market. As he continues practicing and finding what works best for him, we're sure that he will start to find his niche in the market and continue to grow his accounts. We're very passionate about financial independence and have no doubt that he will be able to achieve that with his continued hard work. Quotes: "I had no knowledge about the stock market. I was just happy with that profit and decided to exit there." "I'd figure out sooner than later that I bought the top and ended up selling into consolidation." "I just felt I was learning more from your free content on Youtube than anywhere else so I joined the Inner Circle." "I came to the realization that options can move just as fast as penny stocks." "That's why they call it a journey. I didn't expect to be a consistent trader in less than a year." Links: Blog: Best Online Stock Broker Video: Avoid The Pattern Day Trader Rule

For someone like myself who got started in trading after the introduction of the internet and computers, it's hard to imagine what it "used to be like" before technology really came to age. We get a great taste of that in our interview with Mike (chat room alias "TraderMike"). His journey first began back in the 1990's and over 20 years later, he's still here and improving. Mike trades full time; however, he has one of the more creative ways in which he accomplished this goal. Mike is a great asset to the community and someone who is very active in the chat room, so now you get to hear this story! Notes: Trader Mike started getting interested in the market in the '90s and recognized very early that he wanted to be in full control of his investments. He didn't want to pay someone else a fee to pick stocks or funds for him. Mike utilized fundamental analysis to start his trading journey and focused primarily on what other analysts were saying. When he would find that 11/15 would agree that something was a buy, he would enter a trade. However, his exit criteria was pretty wishy washy and was much closer to throwing darts or exiting based on his feelings. After two decades, Mike delved down the path of trying to expand his education and was using more internet based newsletters for his trading. His timeframe for trades at this point was 3-6 months. While his portfolio was still trending up, he definitely got into some hot water with large losers and felt paralyzed which led him to hold. He decided that he wanted a career change and decided to dive into trading full time. Mike realized relatively quickly that now that he was trading for income, his longer term trades would not pay the bills or result in daily/weekly income. This is when he decided to investigate further into technical analysis and ultimately Claytrader University. Mike made an agreement with his wife to give him 1 year to see if his trading would work out. If not, he would go back to work. He had capital set aside for this journey so that absolutely nothing would change in their daily living. By no means did he use his family's nest egg to attempt this new career. Quotes: "I learned young that I needed to take care of my money and self invest it so I would have something to retire on." "I was subscribing to what other people were recommending. I was using Google more to understand how stocks move." "In the past I didn't care if something went down for weeks but trading for income I realized I didn't have the tools to make decisions." "I wanted to understand and learn this so I could manage my own trade plans for the future and forever." "I'll watch the 2, 5, 15, and 1 hour charts to develop my trade plans." "I like to watch the first 15 minutes evolve and then establish my trade plans based on my comfort level of what I see." Links: Course: The Trading Freedom Pathway