Millionaire Trader Revealed The TRADING STRATEGY That Got Him Rich

started a $30,000 account challenge okay where like I started an account with 30,000 and see how far I could grow it and I grew that $30,000 account into a million dollar in 55 days we're helping each other we're both making like a lot of money we're both killing it like why are we still not really happy with our I thought I wanted to be like a 1020 million year Trader cuz like that's a lot of money and like that'd be really nice you know but as I've kind of matured in my trading Journey I've started

to realize that like making a couple million dollars a year is pretty freaking good rather than devoting my entire life to trading to become that 10 20 $30 million Trader when I don't really even need that type of money I'd rather just trade for an hour a day make my million dollar and enjoy my life but yeah I think the problem that a lot of Traders have Shay is that they are using the same size on everything they're using 10,000 shares on their B setup their C setup they're a setup every single setup they're using

the same size and they're like I'm losing money on these setups and I can't seem to find consistency I can't make money as you guys may have learned from so many of my personal stories here on the YouTube channel that trading has truly changed my life as well as the lives of many other Trader friends I have today I want to share with you the story of Alex tamise Alex is a multi-millionaire day trader who used to work as a Starbucks barista I'm honored today to have Alex join on this conversation and you are going

to learn how to trade small cap stocks how to develop a trading strategy that works for you how to master position sizing and scaling in how to manage your risk and how to maximize your profits in all market conditions The Humble Traders podcast is a no BS podcast for people who want to take trading seriously and make this a true career all I'm asking for is a gentle tap on the like button and make sure to share this podcast with your trading partners welcome Alex to the humble Traders podcast thanks for having me good to

be here I've been looking forward to finally sit down with you and talk to you for a long time um because I've been following you on Twitter and I'm sure a lot of our audience have been following you for a while too I think I started following your journey since 2015 2016 um so it's been uh I'm really amazed and impressed by how far you've come since then uh could you share with the audience a little bit about you your trading background how long you've been trading um and what got you started in the first

place yeah so I'm actually coming up with my 10year anniversary trading uh it's crazy to think that's almost been a decade yeah so probably in about four to 5 months I'm going to hit the 10 year mark so we'll throw a big party to celebrate okay um but aside from that I started trading when I was 19 years old I was a barista making Starbucks at coffee and I was think I think back then I was making about $150 a week before taxes and after taxes was like $120 yeah I had a girlfriend at the

time and I would probably use and gas was expensive back then too so I'd probably take around $60 put it into my gas tank maybe like $40 take her out like the movies like out to dinner like once a week and I probably had like 20 bucks left at the end of the week so I was doing this for pretty solid amount of time but it was the thing that really got me into trading was my girlfriend broke up with me for like a rich guy and my thought process was I want to get back

at her by getting so rich that like she regrets and in America there's two ways to get rich real estate and stock market real estate has such a big barrier to entry you need a lot of money to get into real estate whereas stock market these days you could open up an account with like 500 bucks so I was like perfect you know I have 500 bucks I could save it up I can do whatever and now that I don't have to take it out to the movies or spend money on gas I have you

know I'll make $500 a month right so I'll work for a month I'll take that money and I'll open up an account so okay I thought that it was as easy as just like buying buying breakouts because as you know everyone's like oh just buy the breakout and it's a very simple strategy simple pattern and you could just make money I was like perfect I saw so many advertisements so many YouTube videos I was like Perfect all I have to do is buy the breakout and I'll be rich and every single time I bought the

breakout I had a magical talent that stocks would just crash every single time I bought a stock it would crash every single time 100% of the time like what the hell is going on here right so I just kept losing money and losing money and refunding my account $500 at a time $500 at a time while making coffee while like it it just it was just like a really I was like stuck I was really stuck in a place of just like consistently losing money and then I discovered what Short Selling was which was you

can make money when stocks go down and I actually remember my first short trade ever I shorted 2,000 shares of a stock uh with the ticker symbol vgg okay and doesn't even trade anymore and within 10 minutes the stock went down 50 I made $11,000 and and I was hooked forever I was like I'm going to be rich forever like that's it if I have this Talent of just buying stocks and they crash if I just hit the short button and I'm I'll just make money so my first year I ended up losing money my

second year that I found out about shorting I started becoming a break even Trader and then by my third year I started to like slowly consistently make like f like 50 to $100 and then after year four start to really explode and now you know 2020 2021 all that stuff happened and just went exponentials from there oh so you you kind of found out and you were able to start Short Selling relatively early on right cuz I know I think nowadays it takes a lot more Capital to start shorting with those Brokers yes how I

know you started with lawning so were you in a lot of these um like chat rooms and like that give you alerts and stuff with a breakout that's a really known like chat I start off by being one of those alert people I bought the alerts cuz I thought it's really simple like all right we have a millionaire here he's going to give me his signals and I'm just going to be rich I'm going to buy the breakout and I'll start calculating all right month one I'm going to make a th000 month two I'm going

to make 2,000 and I was like by month 12 I'm be rich like that's it it's over like I got it like I'm done like whatever you have like a roadm plan I had a I was like every month I want to double my account every single month until like and then I was like [ __ ] but I have 25 I'm going have $10 million I was like I was like that's it right simple and that's how we start right that's how we start so yeah I mean I started with alerts until I found

out that alerts didn't really work and I pretty much lost money until the point where I like again I was a little bit stuck in my trading I really wasn't finding consistency I was really just struggling and then once I discovered shorting finding that little niche back then was very different than it is now I feel like the the market is a little bit saturated with short sellers now because of all the AMC Bed Bath and Beyond all these crazy stocks that almost things are becoming a little bit more crowded than they used to be

so what I used to look for back in the day was do you know on these charts like if you look at the daily chart you have a stock that Wicks up and then Wicks down and one Wicks up and Wicks down so I was only waiting for those stocks on the daily chart that would just Wick up and Wick down and only short those stocks but it took me like 3 years to say you know what like that's what I should be waiting for because when I started I would just short everything and that

was not consistent that's not a strategy that's not a pattern so I started after couple years I started to find what really worked it's just waiting for that setup of looking on the daily chart it Wicks down and that's it every single day one it Wicks down and I just started repeating that and repeating that repeating that and that led to being a strategy right and what kind of stocks were you focused on during all these three years when you longing first and then Short Selling and finding success what kind of stocks specifically so when

I first started I was looking for those one one penny stocks like the penny penny stocks you know one cent two cent 3 Cent and I like go to sleep at night and i' be like if it's at a dollar I'm going to make $500,000 you know I did the whole thing right I was just like I was like everyone else right I was like everyone else so I started off with the penny stocks cuz I thought that they had the most room to go up until I discovered that they could actually go lower than

a penny they could go like 001 you know what I'm saying or like however many decimals down that it is it's pretty funny yeah and then uh small cap stocks I really discovered that like you could short stocks like above like a dollar so my sweet spot was like stocks between a dollar and $5 in like the small cap World okay because the large cap world has stocks that are like a dollar to $5 but the float is so large that they don't really move like you know like like a right a or like a

jet blue JetBlue is like $4 a share but like they don't move because like the float is so large so I was looking at lower float lower priced small cap stocks because it gave me the most volatility and the most room to make money and you were able to trade that using relatively little account size right like like the 2,000 I don't know how much you were trading with it's actually exactly 2,000 so it got to the point where like I was like okay like shorting is it I found out what I'm going to do

and I ended up uh selling the rims on my car for $2,000 to fund my trading account the rims on your car cost $2,000 yeah so each Rim was like $500 at the time at the time so I had 500 500 500 500 sold the rims off my car I'm sure I could I could send you a picture and you could like pop it up on the screen but um yeah I ended up selling the on my car as like my final day trading account with 2,000 I was like you know what if I lose

this I'm going to quit trading forever really and that's kind of that account that started to get me to start to grow because now I had skin in the game now I was like all right like if I lose this like I can't really drive my car anymore like I can't really do anything like I'm I'm screwed so it was pretty much a $2,000 account that I ended up growing and if you know like most of your view viewers know that PDT is 25,000 yes so I had to grow that like 25,000 to open up

an over the PDT account to find finally start to you know day trade consistently so were you with while you were under the PDT rule were you really like how did you manage your trade so you can trade like three times a week right how did you so it's different back then uh they had a broker called sh Trader which was a over over off theore broker I heard about that yeah so they got shut down so I was using them for a while until they got shut down and luckily for me by the time

they got shut down I was able to grow that account to 25,000 and move that fun that broker is noer in exist they a of shady I don't I'm just Lu that I got my money out I did everything right but and they were allowing like crazy leverage at the time I think it was like six or eight times leverage so with like a $2,000 account you could have like $166,000 in buying power you know it's a lot of money were you using a lot of that margin power when you shorting I was using a

lot of margin when I started cuz I didn't know better I didn't know like the power of margin like now I've realized that margin should be used to like be in like multiple different stocks rather than concentrating it in one stock because if you concentrate it in one stock and the stock goes up 10% you blew up your entire account ex ble up your entire account so I got to the point where like I start to you know really get consistency after I started to grow that over the PDT and come to like a United

States broker cuz that United States broker had more borrows available they had you know ecn rebates they had all these different perks and different benefits that an offshore broker doesn't need to provide you you yeah and they're registered so you're protected and they're registered I think they have I think most United States Brokers have like at least 250,000 in FDIC insurance and 500,000 in like [ __ ] insurance or something like that so just that comfort and the accessibility of all the perks that they gave was just like it just really helped so you grew

your account to over 25k essentially with only short selling yes oh okay and what kind of were you in you know did you have a mentor or were you in the community or programs at a time that helped you get there yeah I tried a bunch of different communities I tried like a bunch of different things and they were all kind of like really the same I feel like I don't know like it was all like you know focus on this focus on that but it was all like kind of vague you never really understood

like what was really going on yeah and I actually remember one of my biggest trades I think I was 21 years old at the time so I'm now about 3 years into my trading or two and a half years three years into my trading and I remember my biggest trade ever at the time was cltx or CT CL something something like it doesn't again doesn't even trade anymore don't trade anymore yeah so if I remember correctly I made $60,000 on that trade and I was like 21 22 years old and that was like the biggest

trade of the time for me and back then the community that I was in had like these Las Vegas conferences so the head mentor of that Community was like listen like you should come to this conference you should get to like meet people and do this and that yeah so I told my dad and I was like Dad like you know I made all this money I made $67,000 in one day trading like I want to go to this conference in Las Vegas he's like oh like stock trading is like a scam like you're going

to lose all your money like don't even bother like don't do it cuz in 2008 my dad lost a lot of money in the the crisis that happened so he had money he was not a day trader he was like one of those like investors you put money Netflix you put money whatever and he lost a lot of money in 2008 so he was like oh stock market is a scam you're going to lose all your money you're going to lose all your money don't go you're not going to meet these people it's horrible don't

go don't go don't go I was like listen dad like I really like I think I could do this I really think I could do this he's like all right if you're so convinced that you could do this I'll come with you to Las Vegas and let me meet these people right let me come and let me meet these people right so me and my dad went to Las Vegas to this trading conference and when we were there there was a guy that was presenting he's a crazy Asian man right he's a crazy I know

who you're talking's a crazy Asian man right and he's showing he's showing his p&l calendar making $500,000 in a month you know $100,000 a week like all this stuff and my dad was like this guy like seems like really really smart he's like he seems like this is the guy that like really knows what he's talking about okay whatever when the conference ended I approached him B at the time yes and I was like thank you like so much like you've helped me so much like I really appreciate like all that you do on Twitter

like I hope that like we could stay in touch whatever he's like yeah yeah yeah like cool kid like cool like you're fine like this and that whatever so he's just kept in touch a little bit on Twitter started talking a little bit more a little bit more and then we just became friends like organically became friends organically and he was really really good at technical analysis and I was really really good at fundamental analysis so his strength was my weakness my strength was his weakness so we kind of molded that together he would help

me with technicals I would help him with fundamentals and we kind of like merged together we became like trading buddies we became trading partners and then at the time he was going through like a divorce he was like really upset so like we kind of became a little bit closer just like and then it got to the point where we were like wait a second we're helping each we're both a lot of money we're both killing it like why are we still not really happy with our like like why are we still not happy cuz

we have all this money we like killing it together we're doing so well together and we just really didn't feel like a lot of fulfillment we didn't both of you God cuz he was going through a divorce and I was like really lonely like I wasn't didn't really have much friends how old were you at the time early 20s early 20s I don't know maybe 23 maybe 24 and this is way after this is when you become profitable you're making big money and you still don't feel happy I still don't feel happy at this point

at this point I was a high sixf figure Trader and that to me at early 20s was a lot of money it is still a lot of money a lot money yeah so I was making all this money and like I was talking to B and like he's going through his divorce I'm kind of lonely I'm like single I don't really have too many friends I'm like what the [ __ ] like what's the point of this like I have all this money like I don't know like why am I not happy and then at

that time was more scammers were coming up with like screen shares with like alerts with all this stuff and we're like wait a second like why don't we just like help other people the same way that ba helped me so ba was like my mentor that got me to that next level so why don't we create something that's legit that doesn't really scam people that doesn't have really alerts and teaches people how to trade properly and that's how we created mic and that's how we started to find fulfillment in our lives by like helping other

people find their consistency and that was like that missing hole that was finally just like put together after all that time and the big thing is like when you start like a community or when you start to educate people you need to make sure that you have a strategy that works yes so for us it's actually really funny is me and ba would make money every single morning and I would stop trading I would stop trading so that I could like just relax a little bit whereas ba would trade all day long he would trade

all day long because he loves training he loves trading more than anything so he would trade all day long and I cut off my trading and I would start to realize that after 10:30 B would start to slowly bleed out his money because instead of trading he started to gamble he start to gamble cuz he's bored he's bored exactly he's bored and it's like at the casino like the longer you stay at the blackjack table you're not going to make more money the casino is going to make the money back they're going to make the

money back so by realizing that and recognizing that we created the zombie role which is like stopping to trade after 10:30 so these rules that ba and I have learned through our own personal trading that usit is now what we've passed along as well and I try to say that like as a leader I have to lead by examples I stick to the rules I stick to the process that we teach and it leads to like millions of dollars I do want to touch upon something you said earlier um even though B started out being

your Mentor teaching you he is good at technicals you're good at fundamentals yes so in a way it's not just him giving you giving and you just taking so it's a it's a symbiotic relationship correct you're providing him value he's also doing the same so in this way this is like a true mentorship but it's not one-sided correct yeah and that's how you guys were able to kind of know become friends personal friends and now business partners exactly if you Le off someone after a certain point they be like why do I need this person

but if you provide value if you do like I don't know there was like when we started mic one of our uh co-founders TSH was like I'll work for you for free I'll work for you for free for however long it takes and then now like after amount of time like he has a higher position so it's just if you're able to provide value to people whether it be through helping them with something that they're struggling with or by working for free at the end of the day it's so much value that is provided that

it ends up benefiting you in the long term yeah that's very true especially I find it very true especially in trading industry most Traders don't make it and then most Traders struggle and that's fine and they do want to go out and reach out for help but most people just want to take they just ask you questions like oh what's a float what's the market cap like Google this yourself yeah or look at one of your videos right think about how many videos you have on like level two on FL and whatever and they're like

hey can you teach me just like go to YouTube WR I'm a Trader and right float yeah you know I know so that's the frustrating part a little bit um but but lazy people like that will in my opinion never find success because they're not willing to put in that work right this is hard trading is hard if you want to make more money than a doctor a lawyer an engineer combined it's it's a little bit difficult it's going to take you some time and if you're just that type of person that's like hey uh

can you tell me what level two is when they don't really even do the work themselves to look into it it's almost like they are Their Own Worst Enemy they're Their Own Worst Enemy yeah it's very true and unfortunately those are the people part of the 90% the people who correct don't make it correct yeah I'm sure our audience are really curious about what your daily routine like as a a Trader can you share what the steps are with them sure I'll share beginning to end so okay first things first is when I was starting

my trading I would wake up at 4:00 a.m. I wake up at 4:00 a.m. every single day so that I know what stocks are moving what news is moving and it gives me enough time to like read the fundamentals and read the chart now as I've kind of matured on my trading and I wake up around like 6:00 a.m. wake up at 6:00 a.m. and the first thing I do no matter what every single day is I have to check my phone I check my phone the first thing I do to see like if there's

any stocks on my watch from the previous day that are moving after I check my phone I have to drink espresso I have to I'm like a zombie in the morning I I cannot function without coffee in the morning so I have my espresso I get right up to my office so as soon as I get to my office open up my trading platform and the first thing I do is I look at the top percentage gainers of the day okay so I look at which stocks are gapping up the most on the day after

I look at the stocks are gapping up the most what I do is I read the news on each stock sometimes a stock has news sometimes a stock doesn't have news okay if a stock doesn't have news it's a pretty big Edge because most of the time it doesn't have a catalyst to keep it up so if a stock does have news I'll look at the news and I'll read it and see what it sounds like often times a lot of people don't realize that companies PR the same thing so I try to cross reference

to see if this company has ever PR the same thing recyle the headlines and based on that that's a different level of an edge right okay so first things we look at what stocks gapped up then we look at the news then what I do is I look at the fundamentals of the stock so these days there's a bunch of different tools out there to like use to help with fundamentals I use dilution tracker because they're pretty simple uh look at you know if they have any outstanding warrants if they have like an ATM if

they have a shelf so I try to get as much information on a stock as I can before I even look at the chart so after I get that information from the fundamentals and I say all right this stock is gapping up this stock has a news Catalyst this stock has you know something in the fundamentals or the filings that kind of looks a little bit sketchy then I look at the chart and like we mentioned earlier is the chart one of those daily charts where it Wicks up and Wicks down or is it one

of those charts that's like you know looks like a breakout is about to happen is it like gapping like how is it gapping up is it gapping up into previous resistance is it gapping up into blue skies or is it one of those Wick up and Wick down so depending on that that's going to be something that I try to narrow down as well if it's one of those stocks that's gapping up into all-time highs I don't want to short it I don't want to short it cuz there's no previous resistance but if it's a

stock that Wicks up and Wicks down day one good if it's a stock that's coming into previous resistance good then after that I pretty much uh plot out my uh entries and exits based on support and resistance I keep it really simple so these days a lot of stocks are moving pre-market and by the time you wake up pre-market the chart is already kind of formed a little bit so I like to use those pre-market levels as my uh potential resistance and support so I'll just draw my resistance or Draw my support to be able

to visualize it on the chart now these days there's different pump Pumpers different discords different this different that that are moving stocks as well so I have friends and other people in like all these other discords that let me know pumping different stocks so pretty much find what stocks are gapping up the most read the news read the filings look at the daily chart draw my support and resistance what I've realized in the world of shorting is every single day there's usually a hot stock moving there's a stock with tremendous volume there's a stock that

has all the attention there's a stock that all the Traders in the chat rooms and all people on Twitter are talking about that stock I call the hot chick of the day and I call it the hot chick of the day because it's okay I call it the hot chick of the day because if you go to a bar and the hot girl is there all the guys are going to give her attention right all the girls are going to give her attention and she's not going to say yes to any of those guys she's

going to dodge and dive and Duck and thing but she has a friend she's just getting the free drinks she's getting the free drink but she has her friend that like may not be like as good-looking but like she like if a guy talks to her she's going to talk and engage and have fun or whatever so instead of finding the hot stock of the day the hot chick of the day to trade that everyone's going to lose money on I look for her friend right I look for the side stock the stock that may

not have as much volume that already came down pre-market right the chart is already formed premarket and I'm basically waiting for that stock to have a bounce into pre-market resistance rather than to short rather than looking for that hot stock that keeps making higher lows and higher lows and higher lows and higher lows and ends up parabolic right so a lot of short sellers they have this fallacy that the higher the percentage Gap is on the stock the more I want to short it whereas sometimes it could just keep going and going and going because

has all the attention yeah so for me I focus on the stock that already has made a a topping action premarket it's already topped out pre-market and I want to short that bounce into previous resistance that's my bread and butter go-to setup every single day the problem is that most short sellers they go for that hot stock that kind of goes to resistance and then consolidates and shoots up shs up because it has all the volume all the all Theos all the so as a short seller I do not want to the hot stock of

the day I want to focus on the side stock that not as much people are watching that doesn't have as much attention because those stocks to me have the most Edge and the most capacity because there's less competition whereas the hot sock at day it's short crowded there's way too much competition that's what's been helping me these days so you're basically risking in this case in this particular strategy are you risking around that pre-market highs so I've realized as a short seller that your ultimate stop no matter what always has to be mandatory pre-market High

because if it breaks premarket high of the day it has the ability to keep going so as a short seller no matter what the rule no matter what is if it breaks premarket High you have to stop out you have to stop out don't wait for it to see if it's going to reject don't wait don't do anything get the hell out if it's going against you but what's really good is on these side stocks is the pre-market high after it's kind of made its initial move and come down the pre-market high is so so

far away that like you have plenty of room to make money whereas the hot stock of the day it could just really relatively quickly break that and just halt up yeah right I've been caught in so many scenarios where the hot stock of the day that was gapping up 85% 150% goes higher and higher and higher whereas a stock that gapped up 40% ended up closing red because no one focused on it they're like oh like this stock is not going to do anything like whatever I'm not going to touch it I'd rather focus on

this stock cuz I can make more money on it but that's not how it works so I like to focus on the stocks are forgotten theide stocks that people aren't really paying attention to I also realized that since Short Selling became more and more popular like you said earlier any stocks that's trading around 80% 90% 100% that's able to hold around there they tend to go higher yes because that attracts all the short sellers you were talking about and they they get squeezed and it goes higher and the alos are very like they the alos

just got way smarter I think ever since 2020 the pandemic I think they got so smart because in my opinion when the entire stock market was crashing in like 2022 is like 2021 2022 a lot of the hedge funds couldn't make money they couldn't make money cuz everything was going down yeah so I think that they programmed their alos to start focusing on small cap stocks to like start making up that difference in p&l that they were doing because now there's so much algorithmic trading in small caps you can see it non-stop the the volume

on these small cap stocks is absolutely ridiculous sometimes and I think it's all algorithmic trading just getting smarter and smarter and smarter if that's the case do you think it has gotten a little bit tougher to trade small cap stocks in because it didn't used to be like that when the the bigger funds or like elos were involved so how has it changed to modern day now I think every year trading gets more difficult I think every year that you wait it gets more difficult because like you think about I mean when we first started

trading most of the time like I remember seeing people that would just short a stock at Market open and then cover it at Market Clos and it would just go straight down it doesn't exist anymore or like during the pandemic you would just buy any stock and it would just go straight up that doesn't exist anymore so I think the market has a way of just getting harder and harder and harder and cycling out more people and more people and more people but interesting to your point is I think that now because most people are

in the short selling world the stock squeezes that we're getting are a lot more ridiculous they're a lot crazier they're a lot more uh insane so that actually gives veteran short sellers more of an edge because the Newbie short sellers are driving these stock prices up whereas theet are waiting and getting even better entries so I think that if you are a veteran someone that's been doing it for a longer time I think you have even more of an edge because there's a lot of dumb short sellers driving up these stocks higher for more veteran

traders to take advantage of it yeah okay I never thought of it like that yeah okay there was a another Trader I traded with uh for a while he's a really good short seller whenever he shorts he's saying yeah wait for on the chart to see at least two blowups from other people like other uh short squeeze charts that you can tell on the when the stock like squeezes up and comes back down wait for at least two times then third time you short it yeah so that's his strategy he waits for the premature short

sellers to get squeezed out then he shorts when the stock actually is going to break down and there's no more shorts to have to cover yeah there's there's so many different ways to make money in the market there's so many you could skin a cat in different ways like for me what I realized on day one avoid those hot stocks and focus on the side stocks and day two then you could attack that hot stock because on day two that hot stock NOW becomes a side stock because now there's a new stock moving that day

so for me day one short selling I focus on stocks that have already topped out pre-market and are bouncing to resistance I avoid the hot hot stock and on day two the hot stock NOW becomes a side stock because there's a new stock moving and that's when I could capitalize on that day one stock because everyone blew up on day one on that stock so they don't want to touch it anymore they don't want to touch it anymore whereas for me that didn't touch it that ignored it now I have a pretty big Edge to

short it on your Twitter uh you share a lot of your charts yes and I noticed that you're really good at scaling into your trades yes can you kind of talk about how you position size your trades how do you decide when to add and uh how do you try to maximize the best out of this one short trade great so this's a really good question so I think a big problem that people have is they think that you have to size up on every single trade I think that's false I think you cannot size

up on every single trade and the example I give is this and is I actually really like this so okay let's say we're going to make a bet and we're going to make a bet that ba is going to get drunk so you win the bet if he gets drunk okay I'm going to give you two scenarios let's say me and ba we go to Disney World and there's like a couple beers that he gets or whatever you know hangs out there's probably like a 50% chance that like he'll get drunk at Disney World let's

say okay now let's say B's at the club he's got a ball of Hennessy there's a couple cute girls with short skirts and they're all over over him I would say there's a 99% chance that he's going to get drunk so wouldn't you always bet on those 99% of him going to the club would don't you use max size on bow at the club rather than using Max size at the Disney World example one has a 50% chance of winning one has a 99% chance of winning so I think sizing is based on the setup

and the opportunity so now that you understand that example I'm going to tell you how to get it even further so let's say on a stock that I would rate I think each setup should be have like a rating right so for me my A+ setup is a first red day that's one of those setups that I'll bulldoze in size that's about at the club setup where I know that's going to be 9% win rate so on a setup like that I am using exponential amounts of size let's say my normal size is 10,000 shares

I'm using 100,000 shares because I have such a high win rate on that setup because of that the odds are in my favor whereas something that has like I don't know like a b setup or a c setup I'm only using like 10 or 20,000 shares because that probability is not as high so number one is you have to grade your setups if you know what grade your setup is then you could size up depending on that setup so depending on what that setup is you have your specific sizing so if someone doesn't know how

to grade their setups they're not ready for size that's number one number one now let's say you did grade your setup you know what you're going to use you're going to do whatever it is so for me if it's a b setup I think the simplest thing for short sellers is just to wait for it to be under vwap because if it's under vwap there's resistance at top there's a lot of Supply into the so that kind of gives you an example so my rule of thumb is I only want to use 30% of my

size above vwap so if my Max size is 10,000 shares I want to use 3,000 shares above vwap and if I see like a death candle or break under view app then I'll get to my 10,000 shares okay whereas if it's a first red day setup that I'm going to use 100,000 shares my signal for the first red day setup is when the stock goes red short it so I'll often times even go my full size as soon as the stock goes red because that's when the signal is that profit taking is going to occur

that things are going to change so sizing is based on the setup and how to size in on the stock is again almost relatively based on the setup but I think the simplest simplest thing that you could do is 30% of your size above vwap 100% of your size under vwap and make sure that you are sizing exponentially based on the setup a c setup should use 10,000 shares a b setup should use 25,000 shares an a set should use 100,000 shares now that's not for you to use 100,000 shares on every step that's for

you to understand the scaling the the the variation of size you know 10,000 25,000 100,000 notice the A+ setup has almost 10 times as much size as a c setup yeah and that's how you could exponentially make more money sizing based on the setup so focus on grading your setup and then sizing exponentially based on the setup in front of you wait for that bow at the club setup and go all in and if it's a bow at Disney World don't bet us heavy that makes a lot of sense and also in that case then

you do have to accept the fact that for that's say your A+ setup most of the time it works out but when it doesn't the loss is also exponentially higher than the RIS correct yeah that's the risk people have to accept correct if you know that something is going to work nine out of 10 times are you just going to shy away from it every single time you can't it's just odds nothing is 100% even if you play Blackjack and you have a 20 the dealer can still get a 21 and they can still win

they win so that doesn't mean that you just don't do it you have to take it you have to take that uh that setup because you don't know how often it's going to come there might be a time where I mean I remember during the pandemic there was like a first red day setup every month whereas when the pandemic ended it was every quarter so it changes it changes and you can't just be you can't shy away so a lot of people are fearful of losing money in the markets whereas I think my talent is

that I'm not really fearful I'm just like I want to maximize I want to Max I hate missed opportunity I hate it I hate it more than anything so what really upsets me is if a first red day setup comes on and I don't size up big enough I don't get big enough that's what really pisses me off but oh interesting but yeah I think the problem that a lot of Traders have Shay is that they are using the same size on everything yeah they're using 10,000 shares on their B setup their C setup their

a setup every single setup they're using the same size and they're like I'm losing money on these setups and I can't seem to find consistency I can't make money I just make money and I lose money I make money I lose money it's cuz you're using the same size on every single stock that's not how it works you have to size of exponentially based on the higher probability that certain stocks and certain patterns certain opportunities give you thank you for sharing your scaling in and entry strategy what would you do for take profit and exiting

yeah so what I've realized that like a lot of people like once they enter a stock on the short side they set like these arbitrary price targets right so like let's say they short stock at $5 they're like I know I'm just going to cover at $3 I'm going to wait there's an offering that's going to hit and I'm going to cover at $1 right okay and what I found out is that like the market doesn't care about your stupid price targets like you could say whatever price Target you want in your head it doesn't

mean the stock is going to get there I think the simplest way the way that I use is I always cover based on where is support on the chart so if support is at $4.50 I want to take a little piece off at support the next support is 425 I want to take a little piece off at 425 rather than setting these Targets in your head of like an offering is going to hit or bad news is going to hit or it's going to do this it's going to do I'm going to cover at $2

because a piece of what ends up happening is like if you never take profits off the table stock is going to reverse stock is going to reverse so I think keep it very simple is draw your support lines on the chart and always cover at support and always short at resistance what I think a lot of people do that's like pretty screwed up is they buy resistance and they sell at support right they buy resistance and they sell at support whereas you should always be selling a resistance and buying as support there was one Trader

that I knew and all he would do is just short at resistance and buy at support short at resistance buy at support all day long and then there was like another Trader that would just keep uh buying at resistance cuz he kept trying to buy the breakout so it doesn't work okay so if you just keep as simple as shorting resistance and covering I know it sounds really simple but think about it next time you're trading is are you shorting or selling at resistance are you buying or covering at support or are you panic selling

at support and panic buying at resistance so I always use a chart chart is the simplest way to determine things so always use support as your exits if you're shorting and if you're like longing always use resistance as your sell if you keep it that simple and don't set like price Targets in your head like for example you buy a stock at five you're like it's going to go to 15 I'm going to retire Market doesn't care about your arbitrary price Target but sell it at resistance or you short a stock at five it's going

to have an offering go to One Market doesn't care cover at support keep it simple so in that case does it matter to you what your true risk word is cuz sometimes the support or like I think it's a good idea to take profit as support when you're short but I'd say it's only one to one would you still take it I mean I would take it I I would the way that I think about things is not really in the risk to reward type of ratio I think about it in the grade of the

setup and the probability ratio so I think about it in terms of how what is the percentage probability that this setup is going to work and what is that grade on that setup that's kind of more so how I determine it rather than using the risk reward because I think it could be too like I I don't know just like never worked for my trading I know a lot of people that use it and it helps them a lot but for me it just it just doesn't work it's too complicated for me I'd rather just

keep it really simple so you don't do I know there are people who like crunch spreadsheets they like track numbers you don't do that too much more okay so you are does that mean you are more of a discretionary Trader and that works for you it's cuz for me like when I started trading I wanted to do I I like to be efficient right like less is more so like trading is also based on your personality like like ba is like I think of him as like an octopus he's like he's he likes to have

his tentacles all over the place right he's like a little bit erratic so he has he has each of his eight tentacles and eight different stocks at the same time whereas for me I'm more um conservative and I'm more efficient so rather than bow using you know 10% size on 10 different stocks I use 100% size on one stock because if I'm able to focus on one stock all my attention is on one stock whereas if B's trading you know five stocks he has 20% attention here 20% attention there 20% attention there 20% attention there

20% attention you don't have enough attention on all the stocks so you may miss certain things but that's his personality his personality he likes to be in everything whereas my personality is less is more so I like to focus all my attention on one stock and spreadsheets and number crunching is too complicated for me so I'd rather just keep it simple keep it really simple is what works for me because I know a lot of Traders are like okay I do data I do this I do that and it's good to help you determine what

is your a setup your B setup your C setup but after you know what setups you are the most profitable on after you know the probability of those setups it's just a matter of waiting for those setups to come so you can repeat it it doesn't I if I keep crunching numbers right now I know that the first red day is my best setup I know that shorting into resistance is a 80 90% win rate I know all these things so I don't need to do it at this level I see but when I first

started I did a little bit just to determine what works now but for now as I'm you know 10 years into my trading yeah I don't need to Crunch any more numbers I already know what works you know obviously you yeah you're more seasoned now and you're experienced I think I think for newer Traders they do need to do a little bit more of those journaling work to get to where you are to understand and these days they have like Trader viw all you have to do is upload your trades when I first started I

uploaded my trades I found out my win rate I found out which stocks I make the most money on I found out everything and all you really need to do is just get a data set of just like I don't know maybe like a year or two years of trading input it all in there and then you'll have all the answers and really realistically you don't have to do it again cuz you know what you have to work on you know what you have to work on like I found out that I lost the most

money after 10:30 a.m. I lost the most money going long on stocks and I lost the most money on stocks over $20 a share so by eliminating stocks over $20 a share by eliminating trading after 10:30 I was able to increase p&l it seems like you really understand the way you trade like you it seems like to master trading you have to understand yourself yeah yeah you have to understand your personality uh what you like what you don't like and where you tend to mess up oh yeah I mean I know my biggest problem as

a Traders I get too greedy I get too greedy and I oversize sometimes right I oversize so my biggest problem in my trading is I get too excited I get too excited if I see an A+ opportunity yeah if I see a bow at the club or a first red day setup that I get in too big too early so that's my biggest problem right now my trading is I get too oversized yeah I get too oversized so that's something that I'm working on now and like we mentioned a little bit earlier I've been sizing

down to help combat that as well well you know but you have to trading is a matter of finding your strengths and weaknesses as a person and as a Trader so my strength as a Trader I would say is discipline stock selection and my ability to like push hard when the opportunities there my weakness is that I get too greedy I have too much fomo and I get in too big we just heard some very powerful insights on Trader Psychology from Alex now my question is for you what kind of trading mistakes have you been

doing that's holding you back from becoming profitable and how are you going to address them from now on let me know in the comment section below so do you mind sharing your what what some of your biggest wins and your biggest loss sure so let's start with the biggest loss sure so my biggest loss was actually a few months ago I lost $450,000 on top oh and the reason why I lost on that I used way too much size was that like a one of those Chinese stocks that's super low float so let me tell

you what happen I missed you know all these Chinese IPO scams they all went to I missed every single one of them like HKD single one of them I did not touch I missed it I was like this is the one that I'm going to nail I'm going to bulldoze in size I'm going to go big I'm going to make a million dollars on this trade because I saw so many other Traders making so much money on these Chinese scams I was like this is the one for me this is the one so I over

size on the front side I used way too much size way too much size and I ended up stopping out for a massive $450,000 loss and I stopped out around like [ __ ] I don't know I think I stopped out around like 20 or 25 and it wow you stopped out already too 200 I would have lost $10 million oh jeez I lost $1 million if I was stubborn so that was my biggest loss and that came from oversizing yeah so that was 100% oversizing that was the worst loss I've had because again I

was emotional because I missed all the other Chinese scams I had fomo I was like this is is the one that's going to make me so much money and I was oversizing so the three cardinal sins of my trading all my biggest weaknesses came together in one stock all my biggest weaknesses came together in one stock and I got destroyed $450,000 so that was also right off the bad of me having some of my best consistency ever so I was a little bit overconfident because of how consistent I was because this year uh I started

a I don't know if you saw but I start started a $30,000 account challenge where like I started an account with 30,000 and see how far I could grow it and I grew that $30,000 account into a million dollar in 55 days it was the craziest thing ever was the best thing ever so like when I made 30,000 to a million in 55 days I was so confident I was like I got so much money in my account cuz like I I like to do a challenge at the end the beginning of the year just

like make it a little bit more fun so that was my Challenge and what I used to do is every time that I got my account from 30,000 to 50,000 I would wire out 15,000 as a paycheck I wire out a paycheck this time I didn't do it okay I didn't do it so my account was just 100,200 500 a million dollar so I had a million dollar account just chilling there and I broke my rule of not wiring out so I had all this money in my trading account I had all this buying power

and I just pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed and it ended up eating me in the face because I was too overconfident from all of my past wins this year I had too much ego too much greed and everything and that's prob really valuable lesson is number one I never want to have so much money in my trading account that I could lose and number two is I really have to control my oversizing and I have to make sure that I size up on the backs side and not just because I have fomo that

this is going to be the one so that was my biggest loss and that happened this year my biggest win ever was I would say so in terms of in a single day it would probably be AMC I made most money shorting AMC I if I remember correctly I was short Shing it around $70 oh wow and I ended up covering around $30 in the same day that was the day that had the big ATM offering so that was also a first red day setup for me oh okay so that was about I made about

7 a plus plus that was a plus plus I made about $700,000 that day biggest trade ever but my biggest ticker overall is probably Bed Bath and Beyond oh prob I probably made probably over a million dollars like in terms of like different times adding up I think just this year I made 700 Grand on it like over multiple multiple times I love those meme stocks my the me I actually went back through my trading and the meme stock is where I made all my money I made a lot of money on Meme stocks on

the short side on the short like the most my biggest winners have been the meme stocks so AMC is probably like 700,000 in a day and probably like overall probably like 850,000 in terms of like adding other trades B Bath and Beyond is close to a million and I was say GameStop is like probably half a million so probably just on those three tickers about 2 and a half million so but those tickers are no longer in the small cap realm so you do kind of go outside of those they started off as like the

small caps and kind of evolv due to short squeeze into those different Realms yeah those um meme stocks right they were both in 2020 and 2021 um and then a little bit earlier this year as well and during those years you're able to push size I think all all most of the Traders I know had the best years in those times those years how how do you adapt and how do you feel about the current market cuz obviously volume has since then dropped off quite a bit right we don't get those multi-day Runners with really

high volumes anymore yeah how do you adapt when volume dries out how do you adapt and stay Nimble when it's not in your Market Ideal Market condition yeah I mean so I know you say that a lot of people made a lot of money during the pandemic and my biggest regret in my trading is I didn't get bigger that's my biggest regret is I didn't get bigger cuz back then you know I would be making $20,000 in a day and I'd be like that's it I'm good I'm going to go walk walk away enjoy my

day but I could easily pushed for 50,000 60,000 I could have made millions and millions and millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars during that time but I ended up not realizing how big of an opportunity was I was making really good money but I didn't really realize until after how how abundant that opportunity was so I actually uh am making it my goal to so that when that next type of euphoric Market happens may happen in 5 years may happen in 10 years I don't know when it's going to happen but when

it happens I'm going to push like crazy because that is the time to make money so actually my biggest regret is not making more money during that time because of how easy it was cuz I didn't know I didn't know how easy it was I don't think anyone have seen a market like that yeah the only comparable thing is 2000 and we weren't trading in the year 2000 B has seen that has seen it has seen it right B has seen it so like if we think about it logically maybe the next time it's going

to come is 10 or 20 years I don't know if I'm going to be able to still be trading or what's going to be going on around that time but I know that my biggest regret is not going in bigger when that happen now as you know the market has changed since then everything has been totally different and in my opinion the market has kind of equalized and by that I mean all those people that made crazy money in 2021 or uh in 2020 or 2021 probably lost it all in 20122 guaranteed they lost 90%

of those Traders lost all their money because what they were doing is Now not working they did not know what risk management was they did not know what hard stops were so they ended up losing their money so in these current market environments I think the best that you could do is just size down and be a little bit more patient for higher probability setups because a lot of people are looking for the same type of short squeezes that were happening during the pandemic but we technically can't get those short squeez because there's not as

much Market participants anymore a lot of those Market participants got flushed out and they blew up and there's no stimulus money coming into the market anymore so I think that a lot of that dumb money that came in has been gone so I think it's actually a little bit more difficult now cuz the only people that are left are smart Traders and the AL it's very hard to compete against smart tros we want more more people that are on stimulus checks more people that are gambling right so the Market's definitely gotten harder that doesn't mean

that you can't make money it's just a little bit tougher to make money because there's not as much opportunities whereas during the pandemic we had three four five six stocks moving every single day now we have one stock moving or two stocks moving so there's more competition from smarter people that makes it harder yeah let me ask you a follow-up question in that case do you think trading is a zero sum game in what way because like you said right for experienced traders to make a lot of money there has to be an influx of

dumb money so when they no longer exist it's harder to make money because in some ways you need those dumb money to be very you know careless with their trades for a lot of big traders to make money like the meme stocks you know all that hype right so do you think that makes trading day trading stocks a a zero some game like someone has to lose for you to make money yes that's that that's the way the market is designed the market is designed that someone always wins and someone always loses yeah there's a

guy that's always buying Tesla at 400 and a guy that's selling Tesla at 400 there's a guy that's buying Tesla at 100 and selling it at 100 right so if you think about it logically like when the entire Market crashed and like I use Tesla as an example cuz like it's a stock that a lot of people are relatively familiar with Tesla went from like I don't know like $300 to $120 right so someone had to sell Tesla at $120 for someone else to buy at $120 so whoever sold it at $10 now as we're

recording this I think it's at like 250 or whatever the stock price is at so that guy's like God damn like I sold it too soon whereas the guy that bought it is like I'm a genius so someone always has to lose for another person to win and I also think that trading becomes a lot easier if there's more dumb money involved so yeah for sure when all those newbies and all those people came in I mean like I don't know if you've ever played video games while like in Call of Duty there's like a

saying called like the Christmas noobs because all the parents get their kids Call of Duty for Christmas okay and all those kids are brand new uh they're brand new uh players and they're very easy to kill in the game they're called Christmas noobs so like every time Christmas comes along you could kill a lot of these people in Call of Duty and level up and do all the stuff the same thing in trading is like the stimulus noobs they come into the market and you clean up right so it doesn't mean that it's impossible to

make money trading it just means that when they that influx of dumb money is a lot easier to make money trading that makes sense it's also a little bit sad to it's sad but like that was us when we first start think about our first year someone else was like profiting off us our first year because we know we were buying the breakout whereas this other guy was shorting the breakout right so it's it's linear it's linear I think in some ways every new Trader has to go through that cycle of okay I'm really dumb

in my first year I'm losing money I'm getting taken advantage of but you can if you can like hold your ground and be able to survive through that first year of you learning the ropes eventually you're going to be come be able to come my head on the other side it takes time I mean if I look at it if I look at it now I don't know what the hell I was thinking still trading for 3 years when I wasn't making money but I was passion you pushed through it I was passionate I really

liked it I trading became like my entire life I would consume trading videos on YouTube I be watching The Wall Street movies like I was really interested in that world so that passion helped me be able to like push through the um the adversity that trading provides and if you're not totally in love with trading it'll be really hard to push through those tough times one thing I realized recently is that oh if I can trade I can do almost anything like this not a lot of things that's as difficult as trading in my opinion

besides parenting but those are that's what a lot of the the the fathers who are trading tell me but I have yet to find out I'm not ready for that anytime soon not anytime soon so for now the biggest difficulty is just trading yeah you mention that nowadays even though you're technically full-time trading you only trading for like an hour a day yeah right so in a way you are part-time trading just like when you first started yes right so what was your schedule like when you first started to be able to trade part-time while

handling your Starbucks job yeah so I I was very lucky that I was working the night shift at Starbucks so I was able to trade in the morning during you know Market hours of 9:30 10:30 whatever and then I would go to my job at 4:00 and I'd be there all night so to me I had the benefit of working like the night shift whereas a lot of other people depending on their time zone a lot of them like for example like in California the Market opens up at 6:30 in the morning so a lot

of people could trade from 6:30 till like I don't know 7:30 8:30 in the morning then go to their day job at 9: so I think the time zone really matters but also like I know like we have members in mic we have one guy who's like a truck driver so as he's like driving his truck he's trading my God we have like another guy we have another guy who is a doctor so like in between like his patients he's like going in and like trading too or we have another guy who um is like

in the corporate world so he like runs to the bathroom it's like trade on his phone or like something like that so I think that if you want to make it work you can make it work and you should use the time zone and the timing to your advantage if you can and what kind of tips do you have for those part-time traders who are you know making those resources work and trying to grind it through that first year do you have any tips with them yeah I mean I think the main thing is that

like there's certain time periods in the market dat where there's more advant like more advantages to trade like I think the market open is the most advantageous that's where I make most of my money is the market open whereas the middle of the day the lull is like choppy anyway so it's better that you don't trade during the chop so if my advice would be if you have a part-time job whatever you're doing just try to see if you could cut off enough time to like trade the first hour of the day if you have

enough time to trade from like I would say at minimum minimum 9:00 a.m. to like 10:30 a.m. or 11: a.m. maybe 2 hours like if you have that window whatever you could do to get that window that should be enough time to capitalize on the most amount of money you can make because the market open is the biggest Advantage is the biggest Edge always the middle of the day is always chop and the end of the day is kind of like random to into Power Hour and all that stuff so I would say the first

hour is the most important hour so whatever you got to do either it's wake up early change your hours or go to the bathroom while you're trading just make sure you have enough time for that hour because problem is that like people are all right I'm only available to trade from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. well if you're only available 2:00 to 3 p.m. that's the worst possible time to make money it's the worst you can't make money it is it's tough so be resourceful right move your schedule if needed and if you're on the west

coast just wake up earli wake up earlier yeah wake up earlier I think um the night shift idea it's a really good idea it helps every little bit helps every little bit helps so I do want to take a step back and kind of talk about something you mentioned earlier where you said you made so much money you were a six figure Trader at the time and you were still not happy yeah and I also remember earlier in our conversation you said you got into trading because you want to become so rich that your ex-girlfriend

would be you know like regret breaking up with you correct so I think it is a little interesting that you did achieve that but that didn't bring you fulfillment right do you find that that's because of your age cuz obviously you're still really young and back then you were even younger you made so much money at such a young age did you have like an existential crisis yeah and I mean I'm still struggling with that today right cuz it only gets you only make more money and that that feeling only gets a little bit more

exponential right so for me I think what I what I didn't realize at the time which I realize now is that money is a tool to help you find and help you do do what makes you happy right A lot of people think that money buys happiness and in a certain way it kind of does right in a certain way it kind of does but if your focus is just making money and making money and making money you'll never be able to make enough money because there's always going to be someone that has more money

always always no matter what right you you have a Rolex you want to buy an AP you have a Ford you want to buy a Ferrari you buy a Ferrari someone has a Bugatti you buy a Bugatti someone has a plane and then someone has a bigger plane and that guy has a boat and then some guy has a bigger boat and then they have five hous and six house it never ends there's always going to be someone that has more money right no matter what so if you're chasing the money eventually after a certain

point you're going to become really sad because you're never going to get to the point of making so much money that like someone else is going to have uh less than you the only way is if you become like an Elon Musk which 99.99999% of people are not going to become that even Elon doesn't do it for the money right he just money is the byproduct so in my opinion money should be a tool to get you to what makes you happy what makes me happy is I love cars so money is a tool to

get me more cars because that that's what makes me happy it's not just because I want to have the fastest car it's because for me after a tough day of trading getting in a really nice car and driving around kind of humbles me back down and says wait a second like everything is fine like you're doing great you're able to earn this or whatever or like a watch like I buy watches as memories for certain occasions or certain things that happen in my life just as like a memory so I like that I like TR

so you have to find what you really like in life like my little brother loves cooking right he loves cooking loves food so like going out to eat with him is like something that brings me happiness so money is a tool to help you do things that make you happy but if you're looking for M if you're looking for happiness solely through money you will end up being upset because people always have more money than you so use money as something to make you happy it's like what makes you happy like what do you what

do you like sh like what brings you happiness is it travel is it like going out to eat like what brings you happiness and whatever that is use money to be able to get to that point of Happiness rather than letting happiness come to money let that thing that makes you happy be that you know yeah it's very interesting the I think when all the Traders started out obviously most people who start trading you know we we want to make more money and that's the goal but once most of the those traders who make it

there they no longer think money is the only thing that matters like you just said like at the end of the day it's digits on your screen correct right it's not it's very hard to appreciate just a digits because it's not tangible it's on your screen and you literally just click a few buttons literally and that's it lit right so it it's hard to kind of understand the true value of it and you don't appreciate it as much anymore I would say when you start trading uh and this is just everyone's really different but I

would say when you start trading when you go from like 0 to 100,000 you're like all right like I got it like I'm it's starting to make sense like I'm a Trader and then you go from making 100,000 to a million yeah and then you're like okay like now I'm rich like now I have a lot of money like now it's time to like get to the next level after you go from 1 million to like 2 million to like 5 million then you start to say like this is a lot of this is a

lot of money like I don't know what the hell to do it and then you get to 10 million and when you get to 10 million you're like wait a second this is like this is like too much money right yeah you don't nobody really needs that much it's too much and then the problem is to like level up over 10 million it requires you to like make trading your entire life right it requires you to do the Daily Review The Daily report card to not go out to not drink to not do anything to

get to that level and for me I thought that I wanted to be like a I thought I wanted to be like a 1020 million year Trader cuz like [ __ ] it's a lot of money and like that'd be really nice you know but as I've kind of matured in my trading Journey I've started to realize that like making a couple million dollars a year is pretty freaking good like especially for like trading an hour day like most of the time I trade from like 9:30 to 10:30 and reality is if you make $4,000

a day you make a million dollar a year you know there's been plenty of days I make more than that and to me like I got to that point where I was making like one two $3 million a year and I was like all right like now I want to get to 10 20 million a year and then I thought to myself like is it really worth sacrificing all going out to eat having fun with my girl doing all this stuff to get to making more money and I kind of realized I guess I would

say like this year after almost 9 years of trading that I'd rather make less money less money is relative right I'd rather instead of trying to make 10 million I'd rather make 2 3 million I'd rather make less money yeah I would rather trade for less time use less size and focus on again finding things that make me happy so rather than devoting my entire life to trading to become that 10 20 $30 million Trader when I don't really even need that type of money I'd rather just trade for an hour a day make my

million dollars and enjoy my life yeah so actually this year we actually talked about it on our podcast is I've actually scaled down my size I've scaled down my size dramatically I'm not trading as aggressively As I Am anymore because I don't want to feel stressed anymore in my trading I don't want to feel like I have to devote my entire life to trading and now I kind of treat trading as like my part-time job I wake up in the morning I trade for a couple hours and then I call it a day that's a

very good question to ask cuz for you the answer is no you don't want to give up your life to to to make trading your entire life yes for some people they may want to do that and I think that's fine but they I think they do have to at least understand the consequences of that eventually you won't have the time energy and the mind space to enjoy correct the profits you made correct yeah so for me I for me I I yes I I got drawn into trading from the Lamborghini ads sure yeah but

for me I also realized something similar to you pretty soon that I don't need to make a lot of money to be happy correct for me what it means to be rich is when I go to Chipotle you know you have to add like $2 for guacamole extra chicken extra meat yeah I used to have to think about that when I was working my regular 9 to7 and nowadays okay like when I know I can just add whatever I want I same as like Ramen you add extra like pork it'll be at $8 yeah that's

Freedom that's that's what that's all I need that's what B says too he's like the moment I realized I was rich is when I could go to a restaurant and not look at the price tag that and order whatever I want and that's really powerful cuz like if you think about it like think about logic and I've done the calculations in my head so many times I've done it so many times like all right how many nice watches do you really need maybe two or three how many nice cars you going need maybe two or

three you need maybe one nice house and you need maybe three four vacations a year all that is not that much money if you really really think about it if you really think about it's not that much money and then after you have that do you really need a plane not really do you really need a boat not really you can rent one you can rent it rent it that's more than you know it's it's it's a lot cheaper you buy a plane for a couple million dollars you have to pay $500,000 to maintain it

every year or you could Charter it for 10 grand you know it's it's it's just it's if you really think about it a lot of people are like I want the Ferrari I want the Lamborghini I want the Bugatti I want this and then if you get to the point of having it and then you get it then what yeah then what I think there's like a saying like uh I don't know what the exact uh reference is but like once you climb Mount Everest and you do what you did now what's left and that

kind of brings you sadness right that kind of brings you sadness so if you're just keep focusing on that next material thing and I I don't I don't uh joke I love having material things just as like memories and trophies for My Success yeah cuz it reminds me of how much hard work I put in but after a certain point you run out of [ __ ] to buy you run out of [ __ ] to buy and then after you run out of [ __ ] to buy then what are you going to really

do you're going to buy another car that already it doesn't really make sense so like what I try to do is like like we just spoke about before we started like I went to Paris I went to Monaco I was traveling I'm trying to I'm trying to really enjoy my life because I've spent almost 10 years just working my ass off and getting to this point and I've realized that if I want to get to that next level trading I have to sacrifice a lot and I'm not ready for it I'm not ready for that

sacrifice and I've met so many traders that I've met at least two traders that have made over $50 million or maybe even more call I've actually met three Traders now I'm thinking about that made over $50 million in their trading career one of them is retired doesn't want to trade anymore he's sick of distress he doesn't want to do anything another guy wants to get to a billion dollars and that's his thing let him do that he's on that track okay and then another Trader just wants to see how good he could get he his

his number one focus is how hard could he push to see how big he could get so these are three different types of people I don't really care about a billion I don't really care about seeing how good I could get I'm more in the mindset of this guy that's like you know what I've made my money trading yeah it's very stressful if you want to swing big size and make millions of dollars and I'm kind of in that you know pulling back phase of being like you know what pretty much in my sleep there's

certain trades that you know that in your sleep you can make $1,000 I know for a fact there's certain trades I can make $1,000 with my eyes closed with my hands tied behind my back but the problem is as Traders It's never enough It's never enough It's never enough so rather than trying to say you know what I'm going to make 20,000 30,000 40,000 a day let me go back to those trades where I can make a $1,000 a day with my hands tied behind my back make4 million million whatever that number is and just

enjoy my life enjoy it it's very interesting because I also went to the conference in Vegas last year and there were there's many a lot of really good Traders attending but what surprised me the most was that everyone who I later found out they a their age they all a lot younger than they actually look cuz trading is very stressful like I I I I I I'm actually like you don't see my white hairs yeah I know I see my white hairs on my beard like it stresses you it's hard so I think that's also

something that our viewers and I know I I've been thinking a lot about like how hard do I want to push this do I want to look 40 where I'm only 30 do I want to look 50 while I'm only 40 like say those are serious questions like everyone has a lot of wrinkles and like white hair and it's a stressful job yeah it's a stressful job but it just depends on what tier of Trader that you want to be like I thought I wanted to be that $10 million Trader until I realized how much

work it really is whereas now I'm at the point where I can make consistently seven figures relatively simple because I've been doing it for so long right because I've been doing it for so long so rather than trying to push and push and push I'm now stepping back and stepping back and stepping back and focusing more on happiness through less stress rather than happiness of trying to get that next big six figure win which as you know it's like it doesn't really after a certain amount of time like the wins never feel as good as

the losses feel bad so I keep chasing these wins that are supposed to make me feel good which don't make me feel like anything and then the losses that end up happening just by BR byproduct or trading end up making me feel like really sh like I don't know I remember like recently there was a stock movie you know AI the ticker AI so I short that and I had an awesome day I made $100,000 I made $100,000 in one day and I was like whatever and then like the next day or like two days

later I lost like 10 grand on like some other thing and I was like really pissed I was like this is so stupid how can I be this stupid that I am literally I don't give a about 100,000 10,000 pisses me off so you get to that point where like the losses are always going to feel worse than the wins feel good definitely yeah do you have family or friends who trade as well who can kind of relate to you in real life no family I have friends that uh are trading through like Twitter that

I met like throughout the years but now my roommates have seen how much money I make trading so I'm actually teaching them how to trade so I'm teaching my so one of my roommates is has been paper trading for 6 months and is now live trading for a year and now he's like consistently making like 20 or $30 a day which is really good he's Max size is like 500 shares okay he's using 100 shares a day so with 100 shares he's making like 20 30 bucks pretty good yeah pretty good my other roommate is

is now paper trading for 4 months and he's ready to go live trading so he's going to start live trading soon so one uh roommate is live trading slowly making money but the best part is this has been trading for a year and he's been paper trading for four months okay so already in a year my roommate is now finding a little bit consistency whereas it took me over three years over three years so the learning curve has been significantly dropped down because all the mistakes that I made of like not having a Max size

not having a Max loss not doing this not doing that they've learned from day one and those lessons took me years to learn do you have any uh messages or advice you want to give to our viewers watching this any final thoughts I have a lot of advice cuz I made every single mistake that you could possibly imagine so number one is make sure to set a Max loss with your broker autol liquidation and the way that you set that is let's say you're making $100 a day trading yeah your max loss Auto Liquidation at

the broker level should be no more than 2 days worth of trading so it should be if you make $100 a day your max loss should be2 200 that way you never lose more than 2 days worth of work yeah whereas other people they set their Max loss at like a th all of a sudden they lost two weeks worth of work it doesn't make sense so number one is set your max loss Auto Liquidation at two days of your normal day number two is set your max size so set a Max position size on

your account the best way to do it is like I mean everyone has different equations but like usually like a fifth of your Equity so like whatever Equity is divided by five that should be your max size Max size Max size M uh number three is use hard stops hard Market stops when I first started trading I didn't know what stops were I no one taught me I had to figure it out on myself I would manually do it and every single time I'd be a deer in headlights I'd freeze I'd be like yeah I'm

going to stop out at $5 all right you don't follow it now it's like 510 [ __ ] and it's like 520 okay like if it goes back down to 510 and then all of a sudden it holds up to six and I'm dead yeah right so use hard Market stops if you use a limit stop you're not going to get executed um aside from that is you have there's like a lot of communities and like a lot of chat rooms out there and a lot of them are like frauds and like con con artists

so like make sure you find a community that not only the head Traders profitable but the students are also profitable too because the head Trader can make money all day long but can you teach other people how to make money that's a question yeah also make sure that like I mean I have my broker statements on my website like the IRS broker statements so that I want to prove to people that like it's legit so make sure that people like you see the broker statements from people as well and then on top of that is

like once you also have money trading make sure you diversify it make sure you put it into other places because like I said with the example on top I had the million dollars in my account and I was prone to losing it had I just stuck to my rule of wiring out $155,000 I would have built my bank roll a little bit more this year that would have been like all right like whatever like I'm not going to risk that much money on that stock so for me the way that I diversify like I buy

watches cars I'm in a couple like Venture Capital funds I do real estate I treasury bills I buy like long-term stocks like apple Tesla stuff like that but I diversify my money outside of the market so that God forbid if I'm having a bad month trading the treasury bills will make up for it the the investment in stocks will make up for it the Venture Capital will make up for it like different Avenues so that a lot of people I think what they do is that once they make money trading they just keep their trading

accounts big and big and big but too much risk there too much risk so I think once you make money trading give yourself a paycheck and diversify and the rule that I did is $30,000 count uh $35,000 count if it goes to 50,000 wire out 15,000 take that 15,000 10,000 of it invest it however you want 5,000 keep it in the bank oh so whatever whatever you want to invest I don't know if you want to buy like it could be anything I mean even like even handbags are growing going up value you have watches

you have bags you have Venture you have real estate you have stocks you have uh treasuries you have crypto you have everything that you could put your money in to kind of get you there just like put it outside the market put it in different places so that on a rainy day you'll be able to make sure that you have a nest egg prepared for yourself just in case God forbid something happens because if you have all of your eggs in your trading basket too much risk yeah I I've come to realize that as a

Trader we are the number one threat to our trading account cuz what humans after we dumb so imagine you had all of your net worth in your trading account and one HKD one top one Whatever came around all that 10 years of work you put is gone in one day so make I I have my accounts to the point where like again these days I'm keeping my account at like 45 50,000 because you really don't need much more to trade small caps you really don't need much more and now I'm going back to the basics

of just wiring out and wiring out and wiring because that's what got me to be profitable yeah pulling out that money and having that security in my bank account allowed me to not feel like I had to trade every day to make money you know thank you for sharing so much with our audience today where can people find you if they want to follow you yeah so the best thing is we have a YouTube channel it's uh youtube.com/ investing club we have free trading videos I have some live trading videos on there aside from that

our website myinvestingclub oncom and that's pretty much it you can find me pretty much on those two places that's the easiest accessible and yeah this is awesome thank you so much Alex for being on the podcast thanks for having me you're awesome if you have any questions for Alex you can leave them in the comment section below and if you want to check out even more conversations with other Pro Traders check out this playlist over [Music] here