[Applause] hello everybody this is Anthony for investors undergrounds today I have the distinct pleasure to get to sit down and chat with the one and only Lance breitstein I highly recommend everybody listening especially traders to go follow him on Twitter at the one lance B there Lance shows his dedication to giving back to the trading Community by sharing his wealth of knowledge experience and trading Concepts after graduating college from Indiana University Lance joined the trading desk at the proprietary trading firm trillian over the span of his legendary 11-year career Lance enjoyed consecutive eight figure years
in both 2020 and 2021 earning himself the rank as top Trader during those years he later went on to beat the firm's alltime p&l record and he helped build out manage and Mentor Traders at the firm's Chicago office he later started impact competition Foundation a nonprofit whose mission is to empower students to help tackle the most pressing social issues within their Community hello Lance it's a pleasure to get to speak to you today thank you for being here hey Anthony thanks for having me very happy to be here and and love what you guys are
doing thank you you so much it's a pleasure to get to talk to you absolutely so how did you get started with trading sure so really I had no background or or upbringing in it and I went to the Kelly school at Indiana University because finance and business seemed interesting to me but all of it seemed cool there were times when I thought I would do accounting or entrepreneurship or do a startup and it was this massive world of just things that seemed cool like any college student and I think it was over the summer
of my sophomore year I read some some book on on stock market investing and the the thought of compounding money and the power of compounding really really interested me and I knew that the younger you are when you start the more powerful it becomes and after that book I started reading other books and I think that was even like the early days of of when Amazon was gaining popularity and I went online and uh some of the top rated books were the market Wizard series by Dr Jack schagger and the second I read those books
it was it was Game Over uh for those that don't know it's a series of interviews with some of the best uh Traders and investors of all time and you learn how many different ways there are to skin a cat and all the different styles and and strengths and weaknesses of these Traders and once I read that I was I was hooked and the thought of of of learning are markets efficient are they perfectly efficient can they be beat how does one go about doing that and the most important question can I actually beat the
market it it just seemed like this amazing Challenge and and journey with also a very rewarding premise given the uh the money you can make on Wall Street that's great those books are absolutely legendary given your training career did you ever imagine that you would achieve as much success as you did to the point that maybe you'd end up in some form of a market Wizards book yourself so here's here's the funny thing is I think any any any kid that wants to get into the NBA everyone wants to be Michael Jordan or something and
then people probably get hit with the hard realities of life in which 99.999% will never be Michael Jordan and so I'm sure maybe I toyed with the idea of like o i could be really good one day but who knows whether I really necessarily believed it and then you end up on the job equivalent to ending up in the league and then you say holy crap like this is really really hard and I very quickly went from maybe dreams of being great to oh man this is the coolest best job on Earth I hope I
can just make it like if I can even forget shooting the lights out if I can just pay the bills and make a decent comparable living at this this is so much cooler and better than anything else I could be doing out there so uh I was I was a slow learner it took me I mean my first year I did not have a single positive month so uh you know again for one year working my butt off nobody nobody out there worked like I did and so any any you very quickly uh those those
dreams and and things talk about like taking back to reality was like okay like I just need to how can I make one grand how can I make $500 here how can I make two grand here how can I piece together a solid month I don't care about anything beyond that I just want to do this job compared to like you know seeing my my my twin brother was Investment Banking and I know what those hours are like and seeing how brutal and boring in the counting stuff can be if if you work for the
big four or the Consultants that are always traveling every weekend I'm like just just survive and and make it yeah yeah absolutely there's so much there to unpack I think a lot of traders who or even aspiring Traders you know they think that it can be so easy or they think that maybe in the first year you know that's when the first Lamborghini comes in you know maybe at the 11th month or something but it's significantly more difficult to the point that right like in the first year if you break even that's a pretty awesome
month like worth celebrating meanwhile maybe some of your your friends are actually you know green on the month yeah yep yep and I I don't think I was ever disillusioned about about the learning curve I think the the big appeal what was so great about everything was just the the ethos of of trading because if you take something like Investment Banking or or the big four uh the the formality the the the FaceTime you got to put in the bureaucracy a lot of the BS even even things like wearing a suit to her like I
was I very much kind of had a chip on my shoulder I wanted to do things my way and the thought of I I thought I was look I don't think I'm Rainman I don't think I'm I'm Elon Musk or anything but I thought I was like sharp enough and more than anything I just knew that nobody was going to have more Grit or work harder than me or care more and that was in my control and I knew that like you look you know maybe maybe you really do actually need to be a genius
I had no idea but I just knew you know they will need to pry this job you know from from My Dead Body and uh and the the whole premise was like without being Rainman without being some computer science wi you can just through your own um soft skills and Grit really persevere and come from nothing to massive massive success and and coming from from kind of a a background where uh you know there money money was definitely an issue at times like the thought of like I I remember sitting on the desk next to
my trainer and you know he was he was one of the the best ever on the street and and so I specifically made some big sacrifices to train directly under him and I remember there days where you know some really big days where he'd make a couple hundred grand or then even normal days where he would just make 10 grand 15 grand 20 grand and I would I would just say like Lance like if you can if you can even just do you know a tenth of of what this guy does if you can even
just learn anything and just get the basics and just do the little layups alongside this guy you need to figure this out it was it was just uh between the lifestyle and and the the casualness and the thought that the the world is your oyster there's this huge Universe of of strategies and things and it's just for you to figure out through through time effort and thought what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced during that first year and was that typical of normal firste Trader sort of issues was there anything particular that
that you had to deal with and and overcome that some of other Traders were already you know breaking out of or does everyone just have their own sort of struggles in in trading sure so I think there's parts that everyone struggles with because of course finding Edge is is hard executing in real time there's psychology issues everyone has the same general issues you must surmount to to extract money from from the market um then everyone also applies their own personal limiting beliefs their own biases their own weaknesses their own strengths so probably most detrimental for
me this this will probably blow everyone away but I tend to be I'm I'm fairly conservative I I would say like I'm actually not some huge risk taker I'm actually um if if you were to talk about doing dumb dangerous things I'm I'm I'm pretty pretty risk adverse uh and I'm also extremely extremely reflective and thoughtful everything I do is very planned out very very thought about it's not spontaneous shoot from the hip and so for the style of day trading that Trum specializes it's very much we're not we're not competing over over hours and
days we're competing or even minutes honestly we are competing on seconds and Tents of seconds there for some of those strategies and if you're a very diligent thought out systematic person you know here I am where it's like ah yes on the Whiteboard I'm going to weigh the the pros and the cons allow me Mr Market uh these 5 10 minutes to get back to you but meanwhile the trade's already gone and uh even in the five seconds I it took me to to say that a breaking news trade boom it's gone generally you know
in seconds and so that was my big weakness but now if you were to ask me what is what was my strength it it was essentially that systemization and that diligent thinking so at some point after a lot of struggle I had the thought like wait a second Lance like this is your strength that's your weakness how can you use your strength to turn your weakness you know to overcome this weakness and that got me on the path of metal learning right so how can I how can I diligently plan out the most effective ways
to learn if I'm a slow thinker how can I train fast thinking how can I increase my processing time and so I was kind of paradoxically very deliberate and intentional and reflective on how to increase my thinking speed and some of the solutions I came up with was I started recording all my screens uh I I did a video recently with with SNB Capital about um about building this database of of videos where whatever the biggest trades were of that week I'd be recording my screens the whole week and so I would condense each week
down to maybe 15 20 minutes of a video and I would just on the weekends replay those again and again and again and retrade them and retrade them and so much of of the analogy I give to people is if you're a 16-year-old trying to drive a car uh there's you're processing so many things at once and you struggle and you have slow reactions poor reactions because it's all none of it you don't have these um Pathways built up that you can just uh like short circuit a lot of this and so now as an
adult like if you and I were to drive you know we can talk on the phone and and eat a Big Mac while driving the car on the highway and and everything else because so much is now automated in our brain the way we're processing we have so many driving hours under us and so many reps that up I know you know the jackass like speeding up to to traffic is going to try and cut in front of me you can anticipate and so so much is building those connections in your brain just through reps
until I would do reps and Reps and Reps and Reps and what's crazy to me is I ended up probably being one of the fastest people on the street if you were to look at at order flow inefficiencies and and and stuff like that there was there was probably I I would I would wager there's probably nobody faster than me in the world on some of this stuff um because you know like if if if there's an order flow inefficiency and maybe a 100,000 shares were available to get and I get 70,000 thousand of them
it's like well you know no one else was out there um and it was all just through through those practices wow yeah that's really interesting because it sounds like it wasn't just all gaining more experience it sounds like there was also a lot of inward reflection and understanding yourself and like you had mentioned what your strengths are what your weaknesses are and being able to flip those either inside out or at least come to terms and make friends with maybe some of your your weaknesses to the point that maybe they'll still be there you learned
how to pretty much tame them and and use them to your to your advantage yep and and I I've worked with a lot of Traders um as as colleagues as as trainees like I've I've mentored them I've trained a lot of people and there are some people that are Naturals and they don't really need to put as much work in they don't need to be as systematic uh you know I did I did a daily report card which was just the Daily Review of my trading every single day for countless years no excuses never miss
day really um and I would have to put in the work just because a lot of things didn't click for me and there's people that don't need to do that um and and and good for them you know Lucky them but but certainly um that that systemization and and that metal learning was was kind of what it took for me and then what became my expertise in in training other Traders it's refreshing to hear that you didn't just knock it out of the park from day one way more important is how than how quick you
are out of the gate is and I talk about this with atomic cabbits it's it's and and the whole bobblehead concept it's how how long are you improving for and how long are you sustaining that's that determines where you end up it's not how quick you are out of the gate you know if you start up here but you're going like that you're getting nowhere I'd rather start down here with a really nice slope yeah for a good trajectory yeah a nice slope and a long Runway that's everything and in in some of the work
that you were doing was there anything other than U reviewing your trades like for example were you working with like a visualization or you know any visualization coaches or even just like coaches outside of you know maybe your your firm were you working with some of the more experienced Traders on your desk you know were you you know doing trading simulators as well like how extensive was that type of work like at the desk and also away from the desk sure so certainly the early years I didn't have too many outside resources besides just my
trainer um who is of course one of the best resources you could have ever asked for and so also by the nature of of so I started actually in in a satellite office in Princeton New Jersey specific specifically to trade under this Trader so as a result I was very insulated for most of my years in the beginning and so I you know I had one one other new guy with me who I'm still great friends with to this day but outside of that we didn't really have the other people to be collabing with and
if you asked me then like back then I was very much kind of like the Lone Wolf I pre you know I hated doing I was the person that hated group projects I hated teamwork everything was just like no I don't want these people dragging me down and in college when you're kind of grouped with the masses that's probably the right mindset but then what I've learned in in kind of my later years was if you can find people that match your that are kind of on your level you gain so much from collaboration when
you're paired with the right people there's no way uh you don't end up better off and you know if if if I could have been an ex Trader with the right group of people every Trader will be X Plus Y and um so now so much of what I emphasize in a lot of the work I do is how do you build powerful teams of of of Traders essentially and i' I've done that at trillum i' I've been doing that at SMB and the group of who you surround your yourself with is is is almost
everything and and likewise that's why I'm such a big fan of of of what you and Nate do for for otherwise the retail community that doesn't have this environment and so then as far as coaches um I eventually worked with a uh pretty much he's he's a performance psychologist I would say that specializes in Traders almost like like Wendy on um billions and oddly enough though to everyone's surprise we've never once discussed uh nuances of trading even though he helps a lot of Traders for me trading was never the constraint it was how can I
get how can I be a better manager how can I be a better trainer how can I be a better person in my personal life and how can I get all those ducks in a row to help me then be the best you know productive Trader I I can be so that's and I still use him to this day actually and and it's it's while he does trading topics with a lot of people for me it's always been how can I get everything else optimized which then ends up being the feedback loop for for good
trading and good performance I definitely want to talk about quite a few of those topics as as our interview goes on particularly you know the trading Community providing education for the Trad Community which you do an extremely well um job of and I think it's it ought to be applauded I mean the amount of content that you you provide on your your Twitter account Alone um is extremely helpful for not just the retail Traders but I'm sure prop Traders and all sorts of you know excellent Elite Traders are also reading that and and taking notes
as well so than you thank you for that one question I had as you started to turn the corner from you know um having struggles with trading in the early years to the the more success that you had um how are you approaching your Milestones were you more of like the okay let you know let's go out and celebrate or were you just nose to the grind you know order a pizza in on a Friday night and just review tape you know how do you feel about you know celebrating the successes and you know versus
still having a ways to go what's your Phil ophy on that sure so so for me especially in those early years I was just so one track minded I just knew this is the opportunity of a lifetime forget having fun forget partying forget the social life I can make up for that later right now all I need to do is make it at this job and reach the highest level I can uh because especially at the intraday level day day trading doesn't last forever um you know the the markets are always getting more efficient in
general in the 2020 2021 was kind of kind of an outlier but in general efficiencies in increase uh as you get older your responsibilities your other obligations your desire for balance increases so so I knew and and my trainer always said like make hay while the sun is shining and 22 23 24 25 I I didn't care uh about those years I just knew Lance you can set yourself up for the rest of your life uh and to never have to struggle and worry about money every day it's like do do whatever do whatever it's
GNA take and so Lance back then is a very different person from from who I am now and I think I've learned a lot matured a lot but um I think the world's also progressed in terms of balance and performance uh and productivity and so back then there was no big celebration which I now know is probably somewhat of a mistake um because I think you do need the reward aspect to stay motivated you do need balance to stay uh charged and everything so I probably should have not burnt the candle as much as as
I did uh but then yeah on a on a good day especially especially when I was in Princeton you know it might have been like oh wow I can Finly afford like a $20 uh dinner or something you know it's like I I always joke that when I started the uh the Trillium salary was was 26k so I was I was essentially uh between rent student loan payments and everything else I was just hunting sewer rats for uh for lunch good to know that's that's extremely helpful to hear and another question I had was about
your your trainer you know when you were first starting out and you weren't putting up big numbers necessarily you know how what was that relationship like and for newer traders who might you know be might have a mentor or a trainer or be in a community where there's guys that are just guys and girls who are just knocking it out of the park how can these new Traders maintain some sort of equity in that relationship and and keep you know keep in contact and and make sure that they're still valuable and and welcome in that
space yeah so I think that a question of a doubt uh my trainer was definitely increasingly frustrated with my performance uh he would because essentially look you've got this amazing trainer that you've got some of the best resources uh come on man like why why aren't you getting it why aren't you getting it um some was maybe productive and a kick in the butt some maybe less productive but I think the biggest thing for people that were in my position is is no matter how much I sucked or how slow I was at the time
um two big things I cons I conceptually understood the topics but it was I just knew I was just slow to connect in real time but then the bigger thing I was always adding so much value to my group and so people on on Twitter and everywhere always ask about mentorship mentorship mentorship uh how do you find a good Mentor and I'm like look find someone you don't need to and everyone's asking me for mentorship and it's like dude you don't you don't need me to Mentor you I I don't have the capacity find someone
One Step Above you or even on your level two steps above you find find someone super close that was in your shoes most recently but is kind of like a step or two down the path further and start figuring out how you can add value to them and people will want me to figure out oh but how do I do that L that's that's part of that's part of the challenge to you you know it's your job to figure out what can I do to assist this person so for my group um I would do
studies and analyze trades that nobody asked me to right uh when when the when the bond auction goes off what happens Based on data points when a wasi agricultural number comes out what happens on a KN gas number what happens on all these different data types what happens what do IPOs tend to do that open up above their pricing what happens to IPOs that open up below their pricing you know I would do all these analyses and all these studies to help refine our group's Edge um I would have really really awesome call outs because
even though I wasn't able to execute yet I wasn't skilled enough uh I was still making the group tremendous amounts of money so if you want to talk about a 26 Grand salary I was probably I was probably making my my group hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars so it's like yeah eventually like at no point did I really think I wouldn't be fired because it would just it would be a laughable economic decision to fire me you're just shooting your own p&l in the foot for for no reason right and the bigger question
was well I myself need to pull the rip cord because my opportunity cost at say a sales and trading firm or like a different trading firm where you're not quite intraday frenetic trading uh you know the opport cost at that point was probably 100K a year which when you have negative negative net wealth is is a lot right that's extremely powerful too because I think it highlights the importance of focusing on more than just you know p&l and also it kind of gives Credence to the idea that like everyone faces their own Journey as a
Trader and the there's no clear path everyone's going to have a very unique set of circumstances is that they're going to have to navigate in a very personal way and so trying to just take what worked for Lance or some other you know Elite Trader and try to mold oneself to that it seems like that's actually potentially more harmful than anything else because you could just be setting yourself extra issues to deal with is that kind of accurate to say yeah yeah for sure and I think like like really every everybody out there should be
asking how can I add how can I add the most value to whatever Community you're a part of so let's say you value your job or you want to be a really great employee you want to say how can I what is the value I provide how can I maximize that value and the same for like for like not that you want to get like too Finance crazy analytical with everything but like how can I be the best friend I can be how can I be the best partner how can I be the best Community
member and so with with some of the trading stuff like or even with the mentorship like you want to like you want to figure out like what is your Edge and what is your strength like one one other thing that I think like people might scoff at as as being not a legit uh Edge or value ad but I'm a huge Optimist right I'm generally a very happy guy like people want to be around happy people right like in if if if you know especially on the desk like I was always joking around always having
having having fun when you're when you know unlike 2020 2021 trading is boring 95% of the time you want someone that's fun to shoot the with that's gonna have positive attitude that's G to keep you going like you don't want to be like there's nothing more I hate than just negative people and complainers because like it it just creates that huge feedback loop where like once one person starts complaining everybody starts complaining and you just focus on all the bad and it's like most most people like you know life life life is pretty good like
if you want it to be good life is good and um but like your outlook your optimism that's a way to add value um you're like I mean think about with with both Bella fiori and and Nate they're just amazing connectors of people right like what I've seen from from Nate over the the last couple years is he's always thinking like how how can I help this person right like like okay Lance how can I help your nonprofit how can I introduce you to this person even even for dumb stuff like getting me on on
flight boards uh on the lake he like oh i' I've got this guy like any questions just reach out to him oh like if I can help you with this that that like he's just like always with with with Bella and Nate their minds are just always going with like how can I how can I make the most of this time how can I make the most of my network how can I add the most value to help these people just because they're kind and they care and um stuff like that like that's maybe been
my biggest lesson of the last couple years is like that that stuff is is it matters so much in life and like that long-term trajectory of who you're surrounded with yeah I I think that makes a lot of sense too and it it also says something about you and the your your mindset and you know just optimism being able to provide a lot more than just p&l especially you know during a pandemic in finance where the markets first took a dip you know if you're able to find a way to smile and make people happy
in that time like you're probably really helpful and good for a firm and the culture for a firm in the long run you know especially when times are a lot easier to deal with yeah like I mean trading stressful enough like Co was stressful enough and you need like or or even not just optimism but like also just someone that's going to push you to be your best someone that's going to push you to achieve and like yeah like I I would be I would definitely I was definitely extremely strict um because I felt like
that's what the job required but like I think most people um need to really really be pushed um to to achieve their their maximum and like one one and I don't know if if this is just justifying my own actions but like I would equate it to you know the majority of people call it in the middle military you need the boot camp and the you know boom this is a regiment you got to do this you got to do this must do it yeah you know raah raah and then there's the very like subset
of people the one in a 100 where they're just extremely self-motivated and they're like hey I can be the Navy SEAL just out of like in the in the Navy Seals and stuff like if you listen to Joo or or goggin or any of those people like they don't really do much of the yelling or pushing because it's just expected right and they know that these people are that way but if most people aren't like you need someone there pushing you to know uh just how good you can be right and and to to extract
the most of your potential and and that's also a value like someone that pushes and it's it's something again Mike is great at and what makes him such a good coach for his for his firm is like uh he tries to extract the best out of people um and that's that's like a you know that's it's very in tangible but that is a Priceless um that's a Priceless trait and if you look at Nate right who who grinds harder the Nate with with with his scan like I've never seen anybody work like that I you
know I I was spent after you know 10 11 years and like seeing it's like but guess what Nate is setting that example for everybody in the room right he's setting that example to the whole community and so for me when I was managing right I would some guys would slack off because I wasn't push push pushing and I remember I had this talk with one of my trainees and and he he was super super hot out of the gate but then that early success Led Led to you know kind of just the the slacking
off on some of his habits I'm like dude you need to be working you know these hours you know this is mandatory if you're not doing it you know you're you're going to be out of here and he's he's like how long do I need to work these hours and I'm like I'm like dude what what time do you do you see me get in he's like before then and I'm like what time do you see me leave he's like after then I'm like look this isn't you know this isn't a mandate this is just
what's required by the job and I would always it was my job to lead by that example um it was my job to be in there every Sunday it was my job to show people that like to reach this level it's not because I'm gifted it's because I'm putting that work in day in day out when it's slow when it's active on good days on bad days and and most people don't have the the grit discipline systems in place to sustain that for for many years but if you do that for many years literally you
can accomplish anything the amount of time that it takes even to become just like a flat on a a given day or a a month seems like it takes a lot of work and so I can only imagine you know as an elite Trader the amount of work that you have to put in how like wired you have to be into sort of the pulse of the market it seems like the more I hear you speak it seems like yeah it makes a lot of sense that you would have to put in that much time
to be that good at what you do and especially hearing you talk about Nate like I can absolutely attest in all my years having been around Nate and and part you know part of the investors underground Community like Nate is just always just always on it he's issuing a scan he's tweeting let people know you know just not even that he's long or short just ideas for the market you know talking in in the room making videos for the community he he does a lot he's he's always working and it's actually really great that Nate
and Mike who who I know and and have met on several occasions Mike is great the fact that those two get to work together on something like Traders For A Cause is just really really awesome to see those two connect on something is is really great yeah and what's unique and I think again it goes back to like so much I've learned from like Atomic habits and just life like everything is your environment right and not just environment but surrounding yourself with the right people and again it's not we're not just talking trading right like
if your if if your five best friends don't go to the gym don't do anything active they just go out drinking every night they don't have Ambitions they're not pushing each other guess what odds are you know they're just eating and drink drinking sitting on their butts say they're overweight out of shape guess what odds are you're going to be too these statistics on uh if if one of your close friends smokes uh cigarettes or whatever the probability that you will also become or be a smoker is staggeringly high and obviously smoking is probably one
of the dumbest things you can do and but the the opposite is also true where it's like if you take the time to surround yourself with people that are fit pushing themselves learning Ambitions um ethical kind people and like both both Mike and and Nate they give back which which was also unique that's also why we all click so well because I also was a fan of of of giving back to the community giving back Thea charity um gratitude like you know going back to those traits that you want on your desk you want gratitude
um you want grit you want gratitude you want uh people that will help push you right like you know the dream the dream trainee is not just someone that succeeds but someone that helps you be better as as a trainer they motivate and inspire you like the more you can work with top guys and top people and that's the beauty of what I do now with with all my little baskets and and and and and areas of of the work I do it's incredible because I'm solely surrounded with people that I love working with right
and it's people that push me to be better people that I learn from and you just can't put a price on on that like the effect that'll have over 5 10 20 30 years like how much of a better person do you become when you're when you're with these people it sounds like you are reaching out and and still fostering relationships and and is that accurate yeah yeah for sure and and ideally I'm just trying to also relay a lot of the the ethos that would have been like look if I was managing an office
and you were in it what would this look like and yeah you get the information then I always laugh because there's these people on Twitter that are like how would how would you make this daily report card apply to Forex and it's like dude like you tell me you know like you put the work in I like okay like how do I find a mentor how do I add value to them it's like you tell me and uh you know a good one was uh someone asked me about the Ballinger bands and and I'm like
look this is this is you know what what they're said to they send a screenshot of their software what do I need to you know put in on this it's like bro like what do what do you want me to do for you like like because I hate I hate helplessness right like like you don't want the trainee that is going to be like how do I restart my computer how do I do this it's like bro like you've got Google you've got a brain like figure try your best to figure it out like you
should only come to someone once you've tried your best to figure it out like struggle a little bit like people are so afraid of struggling like you can't you can't be afraid of discomfort you can't be afraid of struggle you need to embrace it fail a couple times like people are you you know it's you just can't be afraid of of of failure you can't be afraid of banging your head against the wall like yeah I don't know try something like I'm a huge tinkerer if something's not working Tinker adjust reflect did it work did
it like what other change and then just iterate and so many people like you know like you know click click your screen and see what happens change this DRC and see what happens reach out to a mentor and if they if they ignore you and don't reply guess what figure out what you could have done better scour the internet what makes it good cold email and stuff um and it's it's so self- selective right because like the people that do that you're setting yourself up for success and like it's funny just with the interview process
so many times it's like by definition of you not doing X Y or Z like I actually have my answer already you know and uh that's that's that's always interesting too yeah no I think that's extremely helpful because there are a lot of people that I see on Twitter and elsewhere that are asking for the answers rather than positing the results of their research and then asking maybe a mentor if they could an you know analyze the work that they had already done it it seems like it's more you know it a person could achieve
their goals a lot faster probably and maybe make a lot more trading friends and maybe meet a mentor if they're putting the work in themselves and maybe asking for thoughts rather than trying to just use an experienced Elite Trader has a personified Google and that's yeah and that's the funny part because the Paradox too is you get the right answer faster and better in the short term but you're you're you're hamstringing yourself in the long term right because you aren't teaching yourself to fish you aren't right there was when I was struggling my my my
trainer was giving me the strategies and I was observing I was learning but like there was nobody out there that was going to figure it out for me there was nobody out there that was going to be able to know what's going on in my head and figure out my specific issues the only way I was able to do that was like I struggled I struggled and I reflected and I thought and I put the time in to figure out like what is not working here there was in so many things with whe with like
with life friends relationships work whatever it's like you there is no Google for like Hey Google uh you know what what job should I take or like what should I do to find fulfillment there's nobody that can answer that right let alone Google and um yeah the people I think that end up going the furthest or the people that that make sure they're just it's it's like this weird thing where you do better with working with others but in order to be working well with others at a high level you need to be self-sufficient as
well yeah no I think that's extremely extremely powerful and I'll I'll I'll just insert the caveat that I'm pretty sure we would both make which is like there are a time and place for questions like questions are important like I don't want anyone to think that we're like bashing questions for the sake of asking questions like you know there yeah it's it's struggle first you know bend your head against the wall you know just make an attempt and and and then uh yeah yeah try just don't be um you know dependent on on others until
you need to be yeah yeah and there I I think being an optimist myself like there is a lot of like hope that people can actually achieve a lot on their own with they might think that they know the answer to something but that they could definitely do the work and they probably figure out that they'll get themselves like to an answer that they're relatively comfortable with if they just do the work and do it and it's such a powerful thing also to throw it back on people and say what is your answer to this
right because you force them to think and so often like they might bring up something that you weren't even thinking of yourself or they might come up with some you want to know what I love about some of like the highlevel kind of like Elite group work is one person will have and you can see this in all these with in all these like team meetings and team reviews and and other meetings I'm a part of where one person will have an idea and you'll be like oh like that's a great idea and then someone
is like oh wait like based on that idea like the next logical jump you go from A to B then someone someone else thinks back and you're like wait a second like based on my experience like oh man like this point B actually brings us to C and all of a sudden you're like holy crap like I can't believe we just made it to C and if you took those individuals if those individuals were on their own nobody would have ever made it to point C and uh you know I help with uh my my
friends are doing kind of this this small business lending startup and we were we were on this call and there was just like a business operations problem and it was exact that where one guy said something some guy said something else and then I'm like holy crap like this is the missing puzzle piece and like we we ended up at this end place where like you can't do that unless you have a group and unless you have a group where each member is thinking and contributing no that's extremely powerful that's extremely helpful um one topic
that I wanted to touch on as well sort of on this you know bre in the breath of like Trader development and and questions that Traders typically ask um you've seen and worked with and mentored and coached a lot of Traders and so I'm curious you know what are some of the most common you know issues and questions that you see from Traders and how hard is it or how long does it take you know for someone to to fix some of those those issues or or get through some of you know the those questions
that that people have which lead into larger issues Y and and so man I would say I've seen people struggle with with everything under the sun um everyone comes in with their own personalities their own experiences uh their own Tendencies there's people that are extremely risk adverse then there's people that are just gung-ho shocking appr trade everything and and burn through a bunch of money and it's it's kind of funny because I think when you start with a raw fresh Trader you just it tells so much about that person um you know who's the person
that's like willing to immediately just jump in and get trading for me it's like oh let me read the manual first I'll just read the trading manual then I'll maybe I'll place it like because that's just my personality and then you find the people that like the thought of risking $5 all they can think about is a a $5 bill or a $20 bill or a $100 bill and and for whatever reason uh I think something that helped me was like not not that I had money at the time but like for me money the
p&l was always just it was just the number on the screen I never thought of it as as money I'm like you would you would get these get these guys and they just couldn't detach from from oh my God like if I lose 200 bucks that's 200 bucks out of my pocket and and you can never have you can never achieve as much if you're always tied to that you know it's a chain weighing you down not that you can't be successful but you can't jump as high until you say like I'm free from this
need I don't need this money um and then you have people that overtrade and almost like some of the gamblers where they just need the action and they need to be proven right and and there will be people where you're GNA like probably one of the first um indic is this person going to make it is when you give them a Playbook and you say in order the first step to learn anything is this is our Playbook everything else is not going to work just just just trust me everything else you do like o stocks
going up I think this is this is a buy that's a sell everything you do is gonna fail it's not going to work but in these couple situations these very Niche situations where nuances A B C D and E are true you're you're going to have a little bit of edge there and when a c and d are true the way to capture it is you buy here your stop is that and that's the trade and so so quickly you see the people that are able to say like okay I trust Lance I'm going to
explicitly follow that instruction I understand that if I don't do what Lance says I'm going to lose money and if I do do it maybe it's G to make sense and so many people then when you're released like okay you know stock of Universe of stocks go go do what I just told you there's the people that do the trades anyways and you say hey why were you doing that that didn't fit ABC and d right like you know C is this what it doesn't fit C and they're like yeah but you know I kind
of thought I kind of thought it was going to go up because uh you know the market uh felt like it was ready to pop and you're like yeah but how'd that work out for you then after like 10 reps and they're losing money losing money you say hey man like we've got all these data points like what you're doing isn't working like want to just kind of like just listen to what I'm trying to teach you and and so many people can't can't do it um it's and I don't know if it's like an
ego thing or the need uh to to be right and smart but that's that's really common for a lot of Traders where like and even if the elite level a lot of people have these ideas or or thesis in their head or these views and that's not where I've seen anybody ever make money the the place where people make money is you have these ideas but the the technical pattern and the chart and everything is confirming it like it's fine to have a bias if stocks are down 30% in three days I'm not going to
be thinking o this might be a good short of course you're going to be long biased right but until that setup reveals itself until ABC and D show itself and fits your playbook uh to confirm your your long thesis that's where the money is made right when when thesis meets set up and and meets price action that's where people do well if you liked this video don't forget to hit the like subscribe and notification Bell thanks for watching
