The World's Best Scalper Reveals His Exact Trading Process

There is an algorithm in the market there's actually thousands of algorithms running in the market every single day through Goldman Sachs JP Morgan Morgan Stanley you know maral Lynch but to think that there is one algorithm overarching thing driving anything it's all just part of like the crazy I am the ICT nonsense in my opinion it's very clear he's just a documented fraud at this point Lance breitstein the number one Trader at a tier one prop firm I heard a rumor literally yesterday I heard you made over million this is true some would say it's

it's than you think would you consider yourself one of the best traders in the world do I like to think that I was one of the best at my specific skill set and Niche of of the short-term intraday trading I think I'm up there I think I had probably one of the most epic trades ever I had a 10 figure trade that was just real time nobody really trades Forex just this funded Trader idiosyncrasy which shouldn't really exist these funded Trader programs in my belief I find it extra comical when people say ooh I'm A

1.2 million funded TR I truly believe that if I was on the retail side I would not have made it I can guarantee you that what I do know about great and Elite Traders especially because I've been in a privileged seat to mentor and work with so many you always need to have like I would say that's a commonality for every exceptional Elite Trader I know that's when the progress really started for the people listening if there's two things I would emphasize it's [Music] the number one podcast in the trading space the fastest growing and

that's Bank of every single one of [Music] you welcome everyone back to the words of wisdom podcast we are back once again and still the number one trading podcast in the world and the fastest growing thanks to all of you and our incredible guests talking of which we are here in New York and I've been planning this podcast for a very long time in my mind and then the Stars aligned and here we are and we have the true honor to have the one and only Lance breitstein so happy to be here on this snowy

day in New York City and I've I love your podcast I love your work so can't wait to uh do this thing I really appreciate it Lance and I want to start out and I know I don't normally start this way but I heard a rumor literally yesterday before I came to sit down today and it was essentially how much you've made from your trading career so far and I I'll bleep it if you want there's no problem at all but I heard you made over million dollars in your career this is this is true

some would say it's it's bigger than you think and you know there are some of those grape vine grape vine rumors but uh I don't think it's always so much about the p&l and that's actually one of my lesser things I like about the trading world is it can be so focused on p&l as a scorecard when life is so much more about about than that and like who someone is is so much more than than p&l or dollars and everything else definely no I couldn't agree more and it's super super impressive especially considering the

fact that the message that you've consistently shared in terms of the the value that you provide to be able to then have such a you back it all up essentially right it's all backed up with actual You know results it's incredible and where I want to start with would you consider yourself one of the best Traders in the world oh boy already the loaded question so I think I think best is hard to Define because you could say who's made the absolute most p&l or who's done this who's done that um I know traders that

have made far more money than I could ever imagine and there's so many more traders that we've never even heard of and never will hear of so do I think I'm the best overall definitely not I know that is a fact uh you have people like Lucas the short bear that are just absolute Legends probably one of the best ever but do I like to think that I was one of the best at my specific skill set and Niche of of the short-term intraday trading I think I'm up there and uh some of the performances

I did at trillum which is one of the oldest and most established trading firms in the world really I mean their their whole story was the founding family essentially invented electronic trading in the late 90s and so to be one of the best or to be the best at that firm for the years that I was doing it was incredible and then for What I was doing you can just see that there's only so much volume going off on certain moves and you you know on certain plays you're you're the whale I do also think

that this past August which was August 5th 2024 I think I had probably one of the most epic trades ever to be essentially just live tweeted and in real time with all of my thought process and everything else when the Yen was squeezing and the Nik panicked essentially I traded overnight and I I had a 10 figure trade that was just real time uh tweeted about and so I think that was a pretty legendary moment where I was I was proud of and uh there's no way to ever know the true rankings but do I

feel accomplished and and proud of what I've done yes I love that I love that and you know it's interesting to see the difference in your mindset in being able to essentially stay humble or at least recognize that even with your great performance you're able to recognize that there are other accolades there are other accolades that may people may have higher essentially and yeah it's you know you're the best at your strengths while a lot of the time in the retail space which I'm sure we'll touch on later As well it's kind of the opposite

everything's about propping yourself up as this incredible Trader versus understanding the the general community and the other Traders out there as well but what would you say makes you one of the best Traders out there sure so I think that question gets asked quite a bit and it isn't ever just one thing what I do know about great and Elite Traders especially because I've been in a privileged seat to mentor and work with so many you always need to have Edge ideally tons of it and then when you have your best hands like your pocket

aces you bet incredibly incredibly big like I would say that's a commonality for every except Prof Elite Trader I know but then within that especially during my trillum days I was much like any top performer or top athlete I was so honed in to every single part of my craft so I was lightning fast with all my optimized hock keys my whole screen layout was optimized for for minimizing eye movement back and forth I knew every single headline every single context around every stock I had all my different baskets so every single thing I did

even routine wise and execution wise was so dialed in and I Think to be at The Cutting Edge of your craft no matter what that craft is you need to be figuring out all those little 1% improvements but at the end of the day the two things that drive it the most do you have a system with Edge and when that system has the most Edge in specific moments are you betting incredibly incredibly big I love that I love that and there's loads of those elements that you just touched on that we're going to touch

on no doubt in terms of you when it comes to Edge the RIS sizing uh and even the optimization which is interesting because I know a big part of your success as a Trader has been the speed which you've been able to operate but I've heard from you know other podcasts that you've done where that wasn't always the case and that kind of leaves me like who were you before trading like what was who was Lance before trading came we're g to take a a look back back back when I was a we we lad

so really I grew up mostly playing video games and I have a lot of Traer friends that also were big on video games and I think if there was professional gaming I don't know if I ever would have made it to trading because I love that stuff Like that's all I wanted to do and so I have a twin brother and we we weren't so in into sports like we didn't learn learn a lot of that growing up so what it was was just the two of us just you know competing competing competing trying to

beat each other Smash Brothers or Mario Kart or or name your pick and that level of competitiveness and that refinement and especially once online gaming became a thing like it was so cool to be able to compete with all the really good players in the world and work up the rankings and I would argue that for myself and many other of my friends that have gotten into trading or even you have Traders out there like like Brian Lee on Twitter who is a professional gamer you have so many similarities in that trading if you think

about it is kind of like a video game and the more you can desensitize yourself to that that number and focus on the process and Improvement and speed and refine your execution all of that leads to success so I was someone that was I think very analytical a very deep thinker and I would use that especially in a lot of these video games to think like okay where can I get better where can I Refine this and eventually I learned about trading from the market Wizard's book and then it was like oh wait a second

this sounds like a really complex video game except if you win rather than getting imaginary points you get dollars and that seemed like an interesting trade that I wanted to be a part of definitely I can only imagine and one thing I've always recognize with yourself is the way that you're able to sort of be very insightful into who you are and like where you operate and what you're good at like like you said with the deep thinking for example is that always been the case or is that something that's kind of developed for your

trading journey I think that's always been the case I don't I don't know necessarily why or where that stemmed from but I think I always found that in life the people that that do best not necessarily people that do best but those that are intentional with where they spend their time and how they spend their time those are the people that end up getting what they want if you don't do the reflection to figure out where do I want to go and how do I get there I think you end up not really true to

yourself and maximizing the Opportunity of of life definitely and what were the early days of your trading Journey like sure so me being the slow introspective thinker that led to me not being great at the the Trillium Style Trading I mean some of the Trillium Traders are some of the fastest I would argue Trillium Traders are pretty much the fastest human traders in the world and when you take a very methodical slow intentional thinker like myself then you put them in that seat it was just like oh my God I can't I can't process wait

I need to make that decision in two seconds I I'll debate it over like two hours and so I sucked there's no ifs and or buts about it I sucked for a really really really long time and every year Trillium recruits about I don't know maybe 25 people out of out of school and I was one of the slowest Learners I was towards the back of my class but while that time and and thank God Trillium generally gives their Traders a Long Leash I was thinking and I was building a process for how to get

better and I was figuring out Lance like you're a smart guy if you're so smart why do you suck so much at this and how are you going to fix it to get better and So that's what really introduced me to this world of meta learning and I think those Concepts first started to come out into into the Forefront a little bit with people like Tim Ferris that would with his 4our work week he was trying to really break down different concepts and ideas and as I started to read some of those books like Talent

is overrated and all sorts of other ones it was like okay I need to get focused reps that are as realistic as possible to the real thing and just keep on practicing practicing practicing and once I started to break down the skill of trading into its different components and then start to wrap and refine my weakest parts that's when the progress really started and then what's so cool is essentially doing that enabled me a method to learn faster and improve faster so even though I had such a slow start it's like James CLA of atomic

habits talks about it doesn't matter how slow my start was because I was refining my rate of change and so then what happened is two years of slow start and going nowhere coupled with a fast rate of change eventually means because I kept sustaining that I ended up becoming One of the best what was your mindset there going through that that period because obviously right right now knowing everything that you've achieved that's incredible but at that time you didn't know where you were going to get to you probably had an idea of what you wanted

to achieve yourself but you didn't know if it was going to happen because at that time the results weren't showing that yep and I think there's no way to not have self-doubt and I think a lot of people that enter the trading World especially especially at a top firm you have a pedigree where you were probably I mean it it attracts top athletes it attracts top poker players top chess players uh top ivy league candidates and everything else and so you get this whole class of people that generally have not failed in their whole life

then you face something like the market where you're competing with the whole world at a high level and you're like oh wow like this is this is what failure feels like I I'm I'm new to this and I always talk about the importance of having a strong why Trad inevitably even if you magically succeed early on it is a essential mathematical guarantee that At some point you will struggle you will face obstacles you will face draw Downs you will face a mistake the market will change and then that's when the job really starts anybody can

do trading when times are good and you're making money the job of a Trader is really can you refine and persevere when the job is hard and difficult and when you have that own fight with your psyche and so I struggled and I thought wow like am I going to fail at this but my why was one I loved the job and and seeing my trainer next to me trillum is a bunch of of young people making a fair amount of money if if you succeed and people are dressed in sweatpants people are dressed in

jeans and a t-shirt people are going on vacations if they want to go on vacations there's not much bureaucracy and so I saw what this job could be I saw my boss next to me making sometimes a 100 Grand plus a day and from my world where where money was always very very tight and my family struggled with some of that it was like Wow and it's like this could be your ticket no matter what it takes do do not leave anything on the table like if if you're going to fail if first of all

trillum is Going to need to just kick me out you know throw me out kicking and screaming and clawing my way out the door but then number two like it's it's I was always okay if I didn't succeed like I will find I knew I was going to be successful somewhere so if I don't make it a trading I'm going to apply that same just ferocity and desire and drive and hunger and something else and I'll still figure it out but it was one of those things where it was like I I really wanted the

job and and had that strong why of this this could be amazing so that you need that or else you're not going to survive the tough times but what was your mindset like as well then when trilli you're two years in or a year and a half in trillian comes to you and says this might not be for you like we you really need need to start showing some progress like what did that feel like was there any moments where he's like okay now I need to go look at a different career or was that

kind of a moment where it was like ultimatum time I need to make this happen you you want to know what was interesting and I think was actually kind of astute despite at the time I was probably like 23 years old or Something like that I viewed the whole career as as a trade there's reward and there's risk and then then there's probabilities of course and so I knew what the upside could be right I see what the Traders at the firm were making I know what the time investment might be and then of course

you can calculate much easier what's my opportunity cost I knew that if I wanted I could probably get a sales and trading job I could work at a a bank somewhere get get I mean back then you're probably getting paid with bonus maybe 80 to 100 Grand like I knew I could get that but I was focusing that hey if this pans out that excess income and the enjoyment of that job over being in some corporate bureaucracy that is massive so it wasn't that crazy for me to say look like I'm just G to give

it six months to a year but now the other thing that's important is with any trade you don't know where you might have biases and blind spots and so with most trades you generally want to stop on it and so nevertheless I was like Lance like look you don't want to be in this position still struggling 4 years 6 years 8 years you could struggle forever and then it's kind of like the Sun CA FY where you're like oh I'm so close so my thought was I'm going to give myself you know till year end

um and if at year end I haven't hit these kind of pred decided targets or I'm not seeing like real material growth it's it's time to accept fate that I was not meant to be a Trader what steps did you take though in those in that period of time to that made the difference do you think the crazy part is I was actually already on the right track I already had my system in place as far as like this is how I'm going to improve I'm going to do uh I'm G to watch tape of

my trading I'm going to do my daily writeups I'm going to do this I'm going to do that I'm going to speak to each person in my little trading pod to see what they traded well so I had an effective process and so and James Clear talks about this as well so essentially if you have your your pot of water you were I was adding all this heat but I just wasn't quite at the point where you could see the bubbles and so I was doing the right things at that time but I just needed

a little bit more time and I think a lot of people might find themselves in a similar spot and I think the more Important part is is what one of the guys in my group asked me which was like number one do you understand the material and are you conceptually getting what makes a good trade versus a bad trade like are you at least self-aware of what you're doing wrong and and what you should be doing that would then have Edge and I was that was fine and then a lot of it was I conceptually

understood it but it was just about getting the Reps in real time and speeding up my my processing my pattern recognition and so as I was doing the right things all I needed then was time and we were able to see the Improvement in my trading I wasn't making money yet but over time I was losing less and then you would have a glimmer of hope where it's like wow I executed this this one trade just as good as the experienced people behind me or around me and so as you start to assess your trading

if your objective it's like okay look I'm not making money but my trades are getting better I am getting closer to connecting and eventually the water boils profitable trading really boils down to two things opportunity and volatility and that is why the podcast has partnered with Market Journal because between the years 2016 and 2020 the amount of opportunity that was available as well as volatility to take advantage of was at the highest has ever been and all of that really pointed towards one man president Donald Trump during his period in office all it took was

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that is using the code Riz so that's R Iz the Link's in the description below now let's get back to the episode would you say Looking Back Now would you say there could have been something you would have done better or differently or do you feel like you actually did what what was meant to happen well one one thing that I think is so funny is you have the trading world today with so many resources right we've got your podcast we've got tons of podcasts we've got the whole Twitter Community sharing trade writeups like the

quality of content even versus when I first started on Twitter maybe three years ago so many people are sharing video reviews sharing trade writeups so the amount of resources out there is actually amazing and even stuff like I'm a big proponent of the daily report card which Mike Bella Fury helped popularize and even stuff like the daily report card cataloging all my trades and databasing my trades and and charts in Evernote that didn't exist to me back then like Like like back in back in 2011 I was taking notes in just like Microsoft Word and

copy and pasting like charts and paint and stuff and so it's e to say with hindsight I should have been doing all these other things but I think a lot of it it it just takes time that's part of what the journey is right you don't know what you don't know until you start exploring and yeah I do think if I had the right process it probably took me at least a year year and a half to start systemizing the process because learning from my trainer was drinking from a fire hose right he had been

trading at least a decade by then so it was like okay Lance here are the 10 things I do at very very high speed um why are you not doing this you know this is what you need to be doing and it was like whoa like it was just too much especially at that speed when I'm a slow thinker yeah and so it took me that there was nobody saying Lance you need hey meta learning is a thing hey you got to break down this this parts of the trading process you gotta you know watch

your your your your trading tape and Evernote and do chart write ups like it just it wasn't like that back then you mentioned metal learning Sort of a couple times now and in terms of metal learning is that essentially well one learning how to learn but breaking down that learning into its own sort of procedure and steps versus just a let me watch this video or uh let me speak to this person or ask this question it's actually breaking it down into actionable you pieces that complet exactly metal learning is actually is is essentially just

the process of how do I go about learning as efficiently as possible so the last year just just for fun I've been trying to uh get better at golf okay from a very low base of I suck and I am embarrassing to play with on I mean I'm not like a total embarrassment but it's not great and so you could go to the driving range and you could hit 500 balls if you hit 500 balls with your same shitty mechanically wrong swing do you think you're going to just cement your mechanically wrong swing or will

it magically get good of course if you do the same shitty swing 500 times you're not really getting better like yes you're putting time in but if I if I if I just slice the ball every single time and don't fix my club face or whatever else like Practicing that even though you're putting time in doesn't change anything I would rather than swing at 500 balls I would rather do five proper swings where I correct the issue and so one quote that I love is is Hank Haney who is Tiger woods' swing coach he talks

about how tiger whether it was during a tournament whether it was during a game or weather on the Range he would never hit a single ball without intentionality and reviewing and processing it afterwards so now back in trading world if you're going to there's traders that sit there and they're a body in a seat right okay the Market's moving they're trying to do whatever they're thinking about lunch they're zoning out they've got Netflix on one screen they've got EDM in their ears they're doing 12 things and so if they trade for 500 days they might

really get maybe 20 or 30 true days worth of hours of focused like intentional really reflective thinking so the difference between that and someone that is spending every single minute and hour of that day right and we're human right we can't focus the whole day but if you are fighting with intention and urgency to get Better every single day the difference in progress is crazy so while most people were fooling around and like you would even see this in young people that hadn't yet established themselves um they would just be fooling around midday and like

watching shows like bullshitting and even if it was Midday again I'm not perfect like some of this is exaggeration but as best as as possible I would be typing up tickers and just drilling myself what do I think of this daily chart what do I think of this intraday um okay my big issue right now is fighting the trend type up this chart okay if I want to not fight the trend I need X Y and Z to happen Okay type A type up a different chart okay process process process if I want to be

with the trend I need a b and c to happen and constantly drilling yourself like that I was getting so many more reps than everyone else so it's not just about the time you're putting in it's the effectiveness and the intentionality of that time just to go off the back of what you've said uh just of the last two questions one was in terms of resources I I just forgot to mention is like I think in the retail space there's a a very Big misconception that I also had until very recently um which is you

know the the amount of actual verified you know Traders and and the the information that's out there that you can learn from isn't you know there not enough it's just very minuscule and it's hard to find and and maybe there's you know you have to know someone to get it but ever since making that pivot myself I've come to realize this like because one of the issues that people were trying to say to me is like you'll run out of guest so fast and I've realized like there's so many verified Traders out there right and

they're there as well they're active like you said on the ones yeah but it's just about who essentially you're giving your time to or who you're allowing your algorithm to put in front of you well so that's actually the double edge sword which I didn't really mention because I don't think things are necessarily easier these days because yes there are more amazing resources but markets do get more efficient over time and then even more dangerously if you were to immediately peruse the internet the resources that float to The surface are the marketers and the [

__ ] so the ability to distill who is legitimate and verified and offering real knowledge versus who's offering noise and [ __ ] and just wasting your time is so incredibly difficult so you can now use these resources but if you're following someone that isn't a real Trader with real Edge and you spend two years following them I'm sorry you just wasted two years so that's what makes it so so dangerous at the same time the and it's not just about trading in the world today you need the ability to really distill what is total

[ __ ] and harmful to me and what is actually real signal and useful and whether we're talking politics whether we're talking trading whether we're talking health and and stuff like that it is such an important skill set to be able to say oh wait like this is this is the scammy stuff on on this side I'm not going to learn from this and okay this is true like verified authentic legit and it might not be as noisy and flashy and and all the bells and whistles as the other side but this is what I'm

going to do to get better definitely and it kind of goes off the back of the the second Point though with the The Meta learning the whole premise of that is being very intentional with your learning and I think it's the same principle with your resources if you're being intentional with quality resources then you will end up finding you know the great traders who are providing Great Value and real value um while if you're not intentional and you kind of just accept whatever comes your way like whatever video pops up or whatever referral you get

and you kind of just don't question it beyond that um then you find out you find yourself in that position as you just mentioned but equally one thing you mentioned as well in terms of um you know you could spend two years learning from the wrong people or two years where you're not focused sorry and uh you know You' got so much things going on and I feel like so many re retail independent Traders are in that position where they say I've been trying this for six years but then if you really broke that down

of the six years maybe six months of work has been done yeah and so here's the hard part and I try and make this just so abundantly clear and so here's the thing is if your income is dependent on Your following and your influence you're selling a dream you're not selling reality and so what a lot of those people won't tell you is first of all the overwhelming majority of people will fail at this game right the other thing they don't tell you is the realities of the learning curve the learning curve I would say

at Trillium at SNB Capital at any of these top shops two years right now let's dissect that that two years if you are a top candidate if you are working at the job full-time if you are in office in an amazing environment with Professional Resources their Capital their technology an amazing trading pot of experienced traders to learn from so those things are critical in accelerating your learning curve now if you don't know the basics of Finance or markets if you don't have proper mentorship if you're doing this part-time if you're doing this with minimal Capital

if you're doing this without good technology if you don't even know where to start and you can only dedicate so much time each day well then guess what that learning curve is in two years so what people don't recognize is that for most people at home the learning curve could be Three four five six plus years and I hate to say this but like if if you're if you're a um you know if if you're working a full-time job and you're trading and studying a couple hours a a day on the side couple days a

week it's going to be a really long learning curve and there's nothing wrong with that but you need to have your eyes open y to that fact I think that makes a big difference as well like being aware of exactly what it's going to look like so you can accept that versus that same scenario you gave if you're not aware of that after a year you're going to be wondering putting the work well then it's the saddest outcome there is because you are embarking on a long journey but because you don't know the realities of

it and you haven't committed or allowed yourself the space for that if you're it's it ends up a total waste of your time right like if you're not in a position to withstand a 2-year learning curve and if you think okay I have enough savings to do this one year well guess what you're going to just blow all your savings and there have been so many people harmed by that perception of the trading world and these are good people and that's what Kind of got me to be such an advocate of some of this stuff

I would do uh Trader dinners Trader meetups and stuff and I would meet these people and I would talk to them and hear hear their story and these were all like good-hearted people of course they want the dream success they want the money the lifestyle all that stuff but then they didn't really know the reality of the learning curve so then so many people end up almost in like that addiction gambling phase where you blow your savings it damages your family it damages your friendships it damages the the trajectory and and and the savings of

these people and it's just because they're they're being just totally bullshitted by people yeah and we're going to go into a lot more uh detail when it comes to sort of more what's going on in what you could call the retail space Etc but just before we do that cuz all we've done so far is really just recap like go down memory lane as you said we'll finish up with that which is I know there was a pivotal moment in terms of that period of time when you you gave yourself to to see the progress

and there was one particular trade on Tesla where you made Roughly 5 to 10x your normal uh p&l I think you made $10,000 um you know what did that do for you that your mindset when you saw that was it a case where when you finally made that sort of trade you realized I'm I can do this now yep so I don't think there's ever necessarily some magic moment because the reality is your improvement that leads to that it's all these little levers you're pulling and all these little 1% improvements that eventually allow you to

connect on the pitch so if some rookie baseball player finally hit hit some home run they wouldn't be like oh my God that was the magic pitch that that fixed my swing it was like well no you were working on that for the the the 10,000 other pitches and what I would say though is I was struggling at the time it was the spring of I believe you know my second year at the job essentially I was interviewing elsewhere is is just a little hedge just in case and then there was this pattern in Tesla

a very classic exhaustion Gap pattern a pattern we continually see in the market even today I mean we're talking almost 15 years later smci was a beautiful exhaustion Gap this year mstr Was a beautiful exhaustion Gap so these patterns still repeat themselves and this was a pattern we kind of specialized in as a group and it was something I I saw it was something that was game planable um I had some reps on I had all my little charts prepared I was able to study and so I knew how I wanted to attack that day

and and just thank God or or whatever is out there that the pattern essentially unfolded exactly as as we drew it up and expected and so if my normal day was was one or two grand I think I ended up putting up like 11 Grand I might even still have the screenshot on on my phone all all these years later and not only did that buy me a ton of time right because wow like hey you know this this kid's finally showing something and uh but even more importantly I think my boss put up I

don't know he put up hundred something Grand which especially back then like now there's just monsters out there people people do some crazy trades like the the growth in p&l even from when I started um which I can that's a whole separate subject I I can get into but my boss made I don't know six figures 100K Plus or something and the most important takeaway was Wow what he did wasn't that different from what I did and if I can stick around at this job even if I just pay my bills and I get a

couple of these each year over time there's no reason why I can't do that so that was that moment where I was like wow I I can do this I've done this once and I'm getting better and that motivation then you just go into overdrive take a break for a minute there guys cuz I want to tell you about our sponsor trade Zella trade Zella is the number one trading tool for all Traders doesn't matter whether you're crypto Trader a Futures Trader or a Forex Trader whatever Trader you are all you do is connect your

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code links in the description below let's get back to the episode from watching a a brilliant podcast that you did with trillian um which was phenomenal and if if anyone hasn't watched that you should definitely watch that because uh it goes into so so much depth there was a moment where you had on screen um sort of the chart of your p&l and I wanted to ask you in terms of September 25 I don't if I'll just show you briefly yeah I know the chart you know but December 2015 something happened I don't know what

happened actually um it was close so now I know it's hard to read into that chart too much but what it really was was I believe the date was oh God that's how you know you're getting older but it was it was uh I think August 27th 2015 was There was just this mega flash crash in the market um I think there were just some Jitters I don't there were some economic Jitters that happened over the weekend we were weak into the close on Friday and so then I remember that I think it was a

Monday I if I'm wrong I know people correct me and call me an idiot in the comments but uh um so I remember going into the office that morning and obviously on any big day and that's kind of like the beauty of of the trading office is like you feel it in your stomach you can feel the tension in the air like everyone is super super on edge everyone's like CU you know this is this is going to be a big day and I remember the market was just kind of just drifting lower and lower

and lower as the pre-market developed and I mean my boss had been doing it I think since like 01 or something and I I remember saying to him um hey like have you have you ever seen the market gap down this much because I couldn't recall anything in my head then he started thinking he's like he's like [ __ ] like no I've never seen D down this pig and like if if he's saying that I'm like okay this is this is the real deal then the market Opened and it was just so many things

went limit down epic panic and so at that point it was just a pure matter of like deploying buying power and that's oh my God if I had you know back then I was just a young nothing Trader if I had the buying power I have today like that would just be insane insane insane but stuff like that stuff like that will inevitably happen panics will happen and so that was like a mega Quantum Leap and then from there like that that's just Rocket Fuel because at that point I was maybe four years into the

job and if the first two years were kind of building the process years two through four were okay I'm starting to execute and click then like five plus that was when it was like okay like now I'm I'm really increasing my size and then it was like you're executing and that that feedback loop just compounds and compounds and and I would say for me to be exceptionally exceptionally good like I would say I don't think it necessarily happened until maybe year seven or eight and the craziest part too is I mean now I don't actively

trade like I did essentially I left Trillium at the end of 2021 and that was the end of My you know hyperactive like scalping trading every setup super Focus gung-ho everything and now I'll just mostly trade the big setups what's incredible is I think even this year I've still grown and learned like I still continue to learn and observe and and improve my process and it's it's pretty amazing that that it's just it's just a beautiful game where you can always learn there's always higher levels um I still get inspiration and learn from others uh

on the internet and and from the Traders I work with so I still think in trading world like I'm not that it's even my priority anymore but I do still think I'm I'm getting better and I would say for like truly Elite now I think this year I kind of I mean I was I was Elite for day trading but now even like the bigger picture swing stuff I think think I've reached it incredible no incredible and it was interesting what you mentioned there as well though in terms of that momentum because you see that

in the p&l chart not only from that moment we're capitalizing on that but then as you said like sort of going off the back of that momentum and then getting to the Sort seven eight year mark you see the the the the huge rise in terms of p&l um is absolutely you know phenomenal and one thing there you mentioned is that you're still learning to this day and I do but truly believe that there's a massive misconception in the retail space where it's like once you're a consistently profitable Trader that's it you made it now

now you can just go and trade the market make your money I wish I mean what people need to realize is no matter how good I got probably every year I would and I was very high frequency day trader so you're placing so many bets no matter how good I got most years I would still have probably one or two negative months per year where just I would make some big bet I'd mess up somewhere and one thing that I think is always true if you speak to a real Trader the job is never ever

easy it is always hard you always need to improve your game you always need to be focused you always need to be prepped if you ever let let your guard down the market punishes you so that's why it's even more comical when you when you see the the videos of oh the Jet Set lifestyle going out for Models and Bottles during The week oh then we're just gonna race around in our fast cars and oh yeah I made a quick 50 Grand today it's like it's just not it's just not not reality and I think

um I think so much of of this job especially for for the people listening if there's two things I would emphasize it's the power of environment when you put yourself in an environment that optimizes your learning and then also the power of feedback loops right if you were to go to the gym and you were to lift and you were to eat right and you were to do everything right and after three months you didn't see any progress odds are you're not going another six months and the more you can make things a positive feedback

loop the the more you can get that momentum and it all just helps itself and that's why especially if I'm working with newer Traders younger Traders you want them to build consistency first and so on the internet all you have is this this gain porn right of of oh my God this person made 100k this person made 50k this person made a million it's all just gain porn and of course what you're seeing is you're seeing some very Advanced Traders on their biggest trades what you're not seeing is that what They're doing is probably not

right for what you need to be doing and the more you can build consistency and grow gradually growing gradually is the fastest path to grow growing and changing fast is the slowest path to growth because you you take big losses you take steps back and so really working on your environment and the feedback loop is is very powerful going off the back of both though especially the environment side like how helpful was it to actually be around profitable Traders you know in that environment at Trum to actually see them handling risk as you said like

your boss doing 100K on a trade like how helpful was that being early in your trading journey to be able to see that it's real because I feel like a lot of retail Traders they don't know any other Traders it's it's indescribably important like I truly believe that if I was on the retail side I would not have made it I I can guarantee you that I would say 99% chance I wouldn't have made it and so it's beneficial in so many ways right because you see the work ethic of the people around you you're

competing with the people around you you see um the stocks that they're Trading you see the size that they're trading and all that stuff compounds and so to give you a fun example so we're in New York right now uh I love lifting and health and fitness and so I travel a fair amount you got to still go in shape yeah and so I was able to sneak my way into this uh powerlifting Olympic lifting gym in New York City it's in a little basement it's not that big and in this gym it was a

bunch of you know I'm older than them them at this point it was a bunch of people in their 20s and everything they were all serious lifters and so what you saw was the whole workout session they are talking about different tips they're watching and recording each other's lifts they're talking lifting like they're giving each other feedback they're they're talking about like different Meats different uh you know Heroes that that that they watching at at meets and stuff and most of all they were having fun now when you take that type of environment do you

know how easy it is to go work out when all your friends are there and all your friends are having a fun time do you know how much easier it is to get that extra rep out when you're competing with your buddy next to You and so those things like that matter so much and so when you're in one of the most competitive Crucible pressure cooker environments where it's a bunch of young driven people trying to succeed at this job and then you have experienced Traders at all levels ahead of you that is so powerful

because you see all these people trying trying to figure out the path and you can learn and mimic and and just compete and it's if you're out there trading on your own on your retail side you need to find ways to replicate that as much as possible one thing I've been an advocate for is finding a good trading pod meaning like if at all the professional firms every person is part of a group to improve if you're on the retail side why are you not doing that why are you not sharing your trade writeups with

others why are you not sharing your improvement ideas with others so the more you can make your environment optimized for growth and fun it will make your your process and your learning curve just so much better how important is it though to be involved in a in a trading part especially one that's going to provide value to you how important is It that you're providing value to the group as well because I feel like a lot of I don't know if it's maybe just being antisocial maybe like or just not being that way inclined in

putting themselves out there or being worried of being judged or I don't know what it is but a lot of traders in especially in the retail space when it comes to interacting with other Traders just online or in say a Discord or whatever it may be they're very reluctant to to Really provide any value or even direct but how important is that or necessary is that to actually get value from a trading pod well so here's the thing I think there's a massive selection bias in what type of people are at home trading alone and

doing this job where you have no co-workers and it's just all based on the Internet with with potentially zero human interaction those aren't the salespeople personas the people that are um super social extroverted of course there's exceptions but I'm just saying in General most people are pursuing trading because they're the more analytical deeper thinkers they're more introverted and so there's a lot of great parts of different personalities That being said um you still need to recognize that there's a lot of missed opportunity that you're not capturing if you don't put yourself out there and so

to your point there's two things why people aren't in pods one in the best pods every single person reciprocates effort and value in some way it and that was even true at at the trading firms uh at Trillium even now when I advise SMB Capital if you're a senior Trader you're providing mentorship and and experience and and insight if you're low on the totem pole it doesn't matter how new you are generally your job is to be doing more of the menial tasks helping to aggregate news helping to research helping to back test no matter

who you are it's on you to find ways to reciprocate value and give it back and then if you prove yourself and you provide that value then other people want you around want you a part of that group but guess what it takes effort and thinking so so many people are like Lance um I don't know how to find a trading pod how do I do this and well my answer is like dude guess what that's on you to figure out you know this isn't the the job of trading is hard you Need to figure

things out for yourself and so many people they'll ask me questions and I'm like dude like just Google this or figure it out on your own and it's like you're only going to figure this out if you put the effort in and like yes it does take effort yes not every attempt works and it's much like dating like it's not supposed to necessarily be easy but when you find a good one it makes it all worth it but for many Traders that's putting in effort and it's uncomfortable and you got to put yourself out there

so I know why people don't do it um and nevertheless it's like hey like if if you really are serious about your game Guess What discomfort is generally where most of the growth comes from from 100% 100% and off the back of that as you said though the value providing value to that group it's almost like that feedback loop in a sense but that was a big part of the reason why you know even two years in you were still there at trillion because of the amount of value you were providing so and that's a

great point and so one thing that I took a lot of security in is I was getting a very very small salary at Trillium but guess what I was pretty Confident Trillium would pretty much never fire me because of the value I was adding to my group just in callouts and projects and everything else I was making some of the other guys around me so much money so why would you ever fire this guy you know like yeah right and and so it's one of those things where you always want to ask yourself how can

I make myself indispensable to those around me and so many people I think especially in in the day of the the internet and everything else people want to take take take oh like you know give me answers give me this give me that and not give anything in return but but guess what in the real world that doesn't function that well and so that might be fine on on the internet to some degree but if you really want good good relationships good co-workers good friendships it all needs to be reciprocal and it's so interesting where

I find that like even on the personal side of life like the best friendships are when you have those friends that are like you know they're the friends that also help reach out also help plan things and and the more reciprocal and value add you can be to each other it just makes everything flow better Definitely and one element also of you know being at a traditional prop firm is that you get access to resources so not only the trading parts and mentorship and and you know really senior Traders but also you know risk teams

and technology and so on what what do you feel like in terms of retail Traders out there the independent retail Traders what resources are they missing like what resources do you feel like they not that they don't have access to but they're not utilizing or even looking for yeah that's a good question I mean one of the big things I've ranted about is a lot of retail tends to be totally blind to breaking news um not so much anymore but breaking news at least for me in a lot of what I do it's such a

key variable right what stocks don't mean revert stocks with breaking news so if you're a mean reversion Trader and you're trying to revert something that has fresh news on it it's not going to work and so if you're totally blind to that Nuance it's really going to ruin all your data and all of your analysis so stuff like that is a big one and I think most of all um it's almost it's almost like a diet where there's A lot of different strategies that work but in order to actually succeed with any of them you

need to have faith that that strategy works and then stick with it as prescribed for enough time and so I think the hard part with the internet and for retail is there's so much just so much noise and information out there there's a million different strategies a million different tickers so how do they know where to Center in right and it's dangerous because like we spoke about if if you're following just some some bullshitter and you don't see progress after six months guess what it's probably because it's [ __ ] but you might be following

some legit good advice and it still might take over six months so that's what makes it really hard so that's why mentorship will always come down to the most important variable like the reality is most of the technology is is is out there right there's a lot lot of good Tech on on the pro side on the retail side um there's there's uh like a lot of good tools and everything but ultimately it's it's the mentorship that's that's going to matter the most because if you if you took away the capital if you took Away

some of the tech um if you took away some of those different resources give me good mentorship and and you're going to find away yeah I really like that and uh one thing as we're talking about retail right now why you and we're talking about prop firms that prop firm term to the retail means something else right one one of my biggest pet peeves and already my my blood's boiling that's we' got the red for you but um but yeah like you know in the retail space the thing that's taken over over recent years has

been what was coined as prop firms bastardized later did I realize that actually there were real prop firms that exist and actually you could call them EV valuation firm or or funding programs or whatever they may be called I know you like to call them bucket shops so um now what are your thoughts when when you're observing I know you're quite vocal on it already but like what are your thoughts in terms of uh you know that side of the space and and you know what are the pros and cons if there are any pros

like what are your thoughts in terms of its impact on trading community so the story that I always tell is so I know a lot of traders in the real World I know a lot of trading firms in the real world so then in 2022 I go on Twitter and we're at Trill you're not really allowed social media for for anything like that it's it's very very strict and so this whole world opened up to me that I was not exposed to and when I got into that world the first thing that hit me was

what like why why is everyone just trading the SNP and the NASDAQ so much like what is up with this and like I was I was dumbfounded there are trading firms that trade the S&P and the NASDAQ but those are more like options market makers and stuff they're not doing the type of stuff that that these other people on the retail side are attempting to do and so what was also crazy is right as a manager at at Trillium running an office I had access to just crazy uh office level and even even firm level

stats if I wanted to and one thing that stuck with me so Trillium is a 100 plus Traders yes some of them are trainees and stuff but exceptionally good Traders overall one of the best shops on the street for I don't know 20 years now whatever and there was I so the one of the one of the head Traders at the time sent out an email about Trading the the S&P and so it's a little bit different when the S&P is super super in play like during covid or during the Fed so there are times

when the S&P and the NASDAQ are very much in play and we would trade them nevertheless the head Trader crunched the data and sent out some email that like hey wake up people no one's making money trading the S&P and these are exceptional Traders exceptionally profitable and so then we saw this email and we're like what there's there's no way so then I'm like I'm just curious at that point so then I crunched my data and again this was like 2019 or so so like a little before covid when it was very much in play

so there are disclaimers on this but like I crunched my data that I was like [ __ ] you know he's he's right and then there's one other guy in the office and he's like what no there's there's no way like I definitely make money then like I remember he checked his stats on it because we had just internal software to do that then he was just like awkwardly SI silent so we were all just like uh hey you know what what is your data say he's like uh yeah I was negative too and so

then when you take all these traders that In the aggregate on normal days are not making money in the S&P you go online and there's this massive ecosystem of all es and NQ S&P and and NASDAQ Traders I'm like what how is this possible and I didn't understand it initially but then I started to learn more about the the world of funded Trader programs and everything else and my very strong belief is that the S&P and the NASDAQ and and Futures and Forex first of all like nobody really trades Forex it's it's just this funded

Trader uh idiosyncrasy which shouldn't really exist and what's so and I'm not saying there's never Edge but just that it's infinitely more efficient than stocks and some of this other stuff and so I see this whole ecosystem like I would say the funded Trader ecosystem is way bigger than even the stock side like I've I've I've sought out some of the data on like Apex and and TOP Step the amount of participants they have mindboggling the payouts that Apex claims mindboggling and so I couldn't figure it out then I started to do my digging uh

you know I'm associated with with the lending firm where where they had a funded Trader program look looking for funding so I started to Just learn about this and I be I I came to two conclusions so on this social influencer space all the people love Forex and Futures because there's no PDT account minimum so all of a sudden if you need $30,000 or $25,000 the universe of people that you can Market to it shrinks by about 99% you can only Market to the 1% with $30,000 or 25,000 in in in cash to to meet

PDT and so that was a big one all of a sudden if you do the Futures in Forex you can suck in 100x as many sheep right and so that was number one the number two thing is these funded Trader programs in my belief unlike true prop firms so and why do I say unlike that so a prop firm that was traditionally known like like I worked M they they make a cut of of your P they only win if I win if their Traders don't make money they are out of business full stop they're

gone right and that's important because their incentive then is to give me every single tool to succeed and make as much money as possible now with these programs they're more like the casino they want you to reup and reup and reup because they make money off off your slot machine roles right and so they are not incentiv incentivized To have you win so what they do is they create all these rules you must trade x amount you must trade in this style you can't withdraw except for this time because they know that the more you're

trading and the more time left on that clock over the long run you're all going to lose and have to reup and the other big thing with that is guess what because these are casinos you want to know what casinos do to get people in they Market mhm and so all of a sudden you want to know what you get every single influencer with an affiliate program and all of a sudden the way these influencers can make money and monetize their following is by feeding them to the casino and so everything is incentivized to get

as many people into this casino nobody cares whether those people going to the casino make money in fact it's it's rigged against you and so that is in my view why that whole ecosystem exists do you do you see anywhere where there is a pro to the trader in terms of using these firms or you think like Traders should completely not so it's it's funny too because people some people are so brainwashed by these things where when I talk about how Ludicrous the rules are they say no no no no no Lance you don't get

it that's the our benefit it helps us grow our trading it helps us like learn discipline and it's like what like in no in no way does that help help you right if if if if I'm trying to teach you to to box and I tie one arm or both your arms behind your head and I'm like oh I'm teaching you how to Bob and weave is I just punch you in the mouth plent times would you be like oh yeah he's just trying to teach me how to Bob and weave I'd be like uh

no he's just beating the [ __ ] out of you and abusing you and so it's like most people it's set up for them to fail and all those people that fail those are the ones that subsidized probably like .1 % of the clients and I mean that quite literally like the general success rate for most Traders is I don't know probably couple percent on retail side then when you add those restrictions and you have them trading something that's way more efficient it's got to be 0.1% and I would bet you by the de definition

of people reuping and redoing those accounts I would bet you it's something like one in every 100,000 Sims or whatever it's called are actually Succeeding and so there is a subset of people that can succeed like if you're able to beat the game with your with your hands tied behind your back like that's amazing those people that are winning and Cashing Out incredible there they do exist it takes a lot of skill I have friends that that do the funded Trader programs and make money from them props to them one other thing I want to

point out though especially with the social media side right people will be posting their their funded Trader payouts and everything so first of all I find it extra comical when people say like I even saw a Twitter ad the other day o I'm a 1.2 million funded Trader dude that's a meaningless number like you're you're getting first of all it's a demo account second of all you might have only 5K worth of risk on that account you could say it's a hundred million account but if you only have 5K risk it's a 5k account so

that's comical but then the other thing right that I think people don't realize they see all these payouts being published you don't see the denominator yeah how many attempts were these people taking and so I know your podcast very well right like you all Have a ton of of these Traders on there and I'm sure some of them are legitimate and I'm sure a lot of them also [ __ ] and manipulate the game I could imagine and like I don't doubt that people are like probably do some people Photoshop [ __ ] like I'm

sure but I think a lot of the people are getting those payouts but what you're not seeing is like oh wow they were running you know like a [ __ ] ton of accounts yeah and so it's like are these people actually having real Edge or are you just seeing the super manipulated side because guess what those same people at their payouts you will find an affiliate Link in their page every single time so what's what's really the product here you know or is it you just paying for a demo account and being fleeced yeah

definitely I think like completely valid points and you know off the back of what you said there there has been a wide range of of traders who use these funded accounts who've been on the podcast and you know I've seen all sorts of different methodologies from very few who actually have Edge like actual Edge like they could take to an actual Live account and trade but there are some right but then there are those who Are vocal about it as well so Props to them but they say that I'm just playing the model I I

know I get this much risk and I know if I do you know high risk over time I'm going to have this reward and so they they're vocal about it but they say they're just playing the model of the casino like you said Y which is also a little bit funky too right but essentially that's getting subsidized by the people that are just gambling well as you said about rules they they you know the prop firms have now changed things to a degree because now y as people have been vocal about it not meant to

win yeah yeah there are traders that will succeed and make money they're asked or paid off to leave I know that as a fact yeah now that happened to I don't know if you know who Trader Kane is he holds the biggest payout from Apex yeah I've seen uh I've seen some of his posts I don't I don't know him but that's what that's what they essentially happened is they paid him out but he's not allowed to trade with them but I don't get it why would why would they pay him out and and kick

him off the platform M right what do you mean he's making money he's a good Trader isn't that what they want Don't they want you to win don't they want you to succeed you want to know what that sounds like what happens if I go to the casino and I win too much I get the to on my shoulder get the [ __ ] out and guess what if that was a true prop for him if they truly wanted you to win why are they doing that and he's not alone I have heard that story

many times and one thing you might you probably don't know of and I only learned this more recently um like a couple months ago is that some it was more on the cfd side I'm not sure about the future side but the cfd side there are some firms that they will give you they know you're an influencer uh and as you said they don't want to be paying out large amounts so they'll do a deal for you with they'll give you the funded account so you don't have to do any of the challenges and uh

you can trade it and you're guarant you're c a 2% profit and so they'll pay you the 2% and you can use it as marketing to get your sales and your commissions and your course sales wow when I learned that I was really cuz I already knew the model and W that's crazy so they're even they're even manipulating it ring rigging it even for the Marketing and I was uh I was really disappointed cuz I already knew like okay the space cuz I was involved I I had a I had like a partnership in a

prop firm a year ago wow and that collapsed um because there was three of us and we essentially were influenced I had the podcast they had more social influenc and then we had someone who was running the back end and they had ran like four or five of the top 10 cfd firms so we thought it's in safe hands blah blah blah regardless of what happened they came to a point where um in the cfd space one of the tech providers one of the main platform providers left so then this this one month where everything

shifted from sales to payouts shifted entirely but because of the the management not managing it correctly it just completely lopsided went bankrupt and it's just that was a huge lesson to me of like okay things may sound great and when things are going great but if things aren't done in the correct Manner and and regardless of the yeah it was well a lot of them have been closed and people you always see these rule updates right the rules are being updated just to make sure because I'm sure they Have these crazy stat models that are

saying these are the rules so that x amount is always losing so that we can cover those that that that beat it and um and so one thing that I think is important is a lot of people will say but Lance what's the alternative yeah and I don't I don't that to me makes my head explode like I I lose my mind when people ask me that cuz it's like Lance I'm trying to get rich what's the alternative to going to the casino it's like what dude what what do you mean the casino isn't how

you get rich like it's negative expected value that's how you lose your money the alternative is to not go to the casino and to do something that's going to make you money over the long run like literally if you need to compared to going to the casino get a different job or learn trading the right way and what you're paying for these accounts over time just like like look if you don't have an enough money to fund an account yet just save up you shouldn't be trading anyways you shouldn't be risking Capital you can trade

a demo account for free build your chops save up build a war chest that's not the answer people want like people want to hear like oo money Now whenn now so people don't want to listen but that's on them at this point but I think it's part of anyone with the platform to at least be honest and transparent and like some of the ethics of what people are doing out there like and good on good on you for this this this whole conversation like I don't know like I I know why everyone just cares about

hey I want to I want to make my nut take care of me and my own yeah but it's like is is that really sufficient for how we should operate in our life right like should we really make money at at the harm of of other people and through deceit and and poor ethics like if that's your metric like so be it but you're not someone I want to associate or be friends with like there's so much more to life then there's a lot of ways to make money um look maybe it might not be

as much but in the long run like I I do think all those things catch up with you and if if you're not the person you you want to be it just it's shortlived yeah like your career you poison yourself you poison your mind definitely definitely and I think the the final point on sort of the the prop firm side well evaluation firm side we're learning We're learning but um the world is changing yes but I think as you mentioned like people are just assuming that's the only route that's a dangerous mindset to have and

I'm not sure where it stems from I think well it stems from you know all the content they're consuming really just revolves around it to a degree for sure uh they might not know any better but I do think as we said like people do use it but the thing missing which is a great pivot I guess which is Edge like they don't actually have Edge they're just going to this thing and think and it kind of comes back to the mentorship everything that we've talked about so far they don't they're lacking all of that

they don't even finan uh Financial stability they don't even have that like I remember with ours we were quite good at being realistic and saying like you need to have Edge make sure you have a good Financial cushion Etc but yet there would still be people even if you're saying it still be people who will purchase challenges and deposit money whoever it may be when they can't afford to lose any of that Capital that's bad and I think it's really trying to as you said like As a collective Community trying to educate more and more

and more as much as possible to say these are some principles regardless of whether it's a you know personal Live account or whether it is one of these evaluation firms you need to have these things in place first before you even go there because in my opinion like you should only be going to an evaluation firm if you know you're going to pass it yeah you know like you shouldn't be going there thinking I hope I pass this one yeah or else it's it's just money that's going to be gone and I think the thing

that's important is and I'll even preface this by saying anytime I'm speaking or anyone is speaking we can only speak from our own viewpoints and experiences so I recognize that there's a lot of different ways to make money in trading there are people that beat these funded Trader programs there are people that make a whole career out of Futures a whole career out of Forex so everything I say is for me and what I will say is there's times that like you can do well in in trading this stuff in fact some of my best

trades in 2024 were actually in in Futures and so it's not that you can't do This stuff but at the end of the day you always need Edge and it's a question of what is going to offer you the most Edge how do you learn that and how do you learn that without restrictions and rules that are going to try and limit that this is a perfect pivot to be fair because I've heard you talk about in terms of finding the most Edge for you has always been in the shorter time frames like scalping why

is that why is it the shorter time frame for you or why do you feel like you found that that has been where the most Edge is found sure so I think I think short-term trading offers the most Edge but it comes at a trade-off and that trade-off is scalability so there are some incredibly talented short-term Traders there are people that are making 100% plus 200% Plus on small accounts year after year after year for take Warren Buffett at the extreme long-termism and extreme scalability the whole other side of the spectrum biggest account ever longest

time frame ever at this point he's struggling just to be the S&P 500 right um but he's able to deploy just hundreds of billions of dollars so it's it's that tradeoff so my view is that for those levels Of capital things are actually quite efficient you know you can't just find 50 cents lying on the ground for free now when you go to the smaller side of things whether it's based on being quick to news whether it's based on technical patterns whether it's based on order flow or just different marketing efficiencies there's a lot of

of opportunities and if you were to take something like crypto what has more eyes on it um apple or like like some random you know cryptocurrency shitcoin yeah and so also in order to make money betting directionally you need ranges so the more range something has generally the better and that's also part of the flaw with stuff like Forex and some of the Futures is the S&P and the NASDAQ and pretty much all of Forex generally don't have big ranges then when you take something like in stock world and you have uh a beautiful break

out in Tesla that recently happened at 360 bucks or you take something uh like the quantum Computing names that have been exploding you have stocks that might be moving 10 15 20% a day so you can find much better just just skew and Edge overall and now what people forget is it's not Just risk reward but it's also probabilities and my belief is that the the more price Discovery and the more emotions and the more psychology and the more stuff is moving in general that's where you're going to find the most Ed not it's it's

not that's necessary but not sufficient to make money of course you still need the system to captured in the rules and and the pattern recognition to find out where and that's all derived of not only your own trading but also you've you know worked with 200 to 250 plus Traders at this point and you've seen the same sort of correlation in terms of short-term trading being more prevalent more more Edge being found for them as you said it's like the scalability aspect to it too but also an element of of course short-term trading is the

speed and as we talked about very early on speed wasn't your best thing like that was something you had to develop and I think as part of that process if I'm not mistaken was that you would record your your trading sessions and then actually review them you know meticulously and actually slow down the price action slow down the speed essentially of your recording so you could watch the price And really dissect without the p&l without the the pressures of live you know it actually being live and really dissecting what's going on is that a process

that you took to essentially program and and improve your speed and your ability to to react in in real time eventually 100% now let's think back to the metal learning stuff we were talking about to get good at anything you want to get as many focused intentional reps with immediate feedback as possible and now think about golf if I were to play a g of golf on a course which of course is essential that's the end goal you of course want to be shooting well on a golf course but guess what if you average I

don't know five Strokes well for me it might be let's say I average 10 Strokes a whole so I'm getting 180 swings over like I don't know call it four five hours of play right and I'm only getting 18 shots off the te so with my driver it might only be like 10 shots or something and so I only get 10 Reps for that if my driver is the weakest part of my game if I play Four round a golf I only get 40 shots and they're not back to back the way more effective way

to improve on that aspect of my Game is of course to go to the driving range and especially the best is if I can go to a driving range with the cameras that show me my swing and action so that I can break it down or you set up a camera with your tripod even if you go to some of these top lifting gyms like okay look there's the influencers with their camera so they can show off their butt and everything but if you're a serious lifter you also have your tripod and your phone because

you're recording to see exactly your your rist position your Technique how everything's stacking up and trading's no different right and so what we want to do is we want to find what's the weakest part of our game that's going to lead to the most Improvement and I want to really dissect that okay like watching this this chart develop what was I thinking how can I reprogram that thought process so one thing I used to always struggle with was fighting the trend I have a very popular concept now called the right side of the V did

I I intellectually recognized that was my issue but then how did I fix it I had all this tape that I would record of all these moments and I would rewatch the tape and I could just feel my Thought process like oh I I should be buying I should and it's like no you got to recode and say no it's I'm on I'm on the front side I'm on the front side wait for the turn wait for the turn wait for the turn boom there it is and then I would even you want to make

it as simulated as real time as possible so I will even do the keystrokes and reprogram myself so then when I am on the course trading in real time then it's like okay this stock is starting to come off I'm GNA wait for the turn I'm GNA wait for the back side this is still front side wait wait wait and you get another rep and you execute and that only comes from getting so much more practice that might otherwise like if you only see a good opportunity like that once a week or once a month

it might take you a whole year to get reps when I can now do that in like one week I find it so fascinating because it's not well it's not something I've actively heard of until I started watching your content and and some of S&B as well talking about the the processes of of doing that too um but you can really as you already talked about in terms of like lifters or even Golf but even like boxing you hear it a lot you're reviewing tapes or I remember I think an analogy you had used previously

was in basketb same thing like reviewing you know games and trying to meticulously review yourself and what I love there in terms of it's essentially I don't know if it would be the right term but like the anchoring process like you essentially when you were watching uh back the and then doing the keystroke essentially even though it's not real at that time it's just anchoring the thought process the process it just trains all the muscle memory and everything so then when it does happen live it's triggering something already back to that moment especially when when

I was at Trillium I think for some of what I was doing again on some of these moves you can you can see the volume that goes off and for for a lot of this stuff I was without a doubt one of the fastest in the world and I didn't start that way I started one of the slowest in the world so how did I get there I got there by again like you said watching this stuff in half speed so in half speed it's almost like it's almost like if you're learning an instrument like

if you're Learning to play guitar you know your teacher walks you through everything you're you're you're doing everything in super intentional slow motion and so that's exactly what I would do I would see it appear on my filter I would connect all the dots I would process the daily the intraday then I would execute in half speed then I'd speed it up then I'd speed it up then I would be watching it in 2x or 3x speed so then it's much like uh in baseball when the person's swinging the bat with the weight on it

all of a sudden you take the weight off and your bat speeds so much faster right and so if I'm training myself at 2x speed and you get all those reps in well guess what nobody else was doing that I'm sure some people are doing that now as I've you know talked about this stuff but nobody was doing that and then when you have someone as hungry and driven as I was doing that so many hours every single Sunday every single day I was just working working working so the amount of reps I was getting

it's not that I was naturally faster naturally better I wasn't good at any of this but nobody had more reps than me I feel like a misconception in the retail space Off the back of that is that I'll learn as I do so as you mentioned like if you just did that you know the amount of reps you would you'd probably get only get a very small handful of reps in a year in comparison to the blown out the water in proportion of the Reps you've done by doing that process Y and I feel like

that misconception is that oh I learn as I trade I can only learn when I'm trading and therefore they just find themselves just constantly in that boom and bus cycle exactly and think about it this year was active but a lot of years super slow so you might get some of these some of these years where you could sit around all day for eight hours I guess you how you know I know the Market's not eight hours but whatever um and you might get zero reps and like we spoke at the very beginning of the

podcast imagine the difference in intentionality and effectiveness of someone that sits around getting zero Reps for someone that took that slow period and is just doing chart writeups and watching tape and getting you could get a 100 reps that day right and so that compounded over the course of years it's a difference between Huge success and huge failure definitely and in terms of edge when when people hear about Edge in the more retail space I think they just quickly and automatically just associate it to strategy and that's it purely just strategy or here's my top

down analysis and my technicals maybe some fundamentals if they use that which a lot of retail Traders don't like what would you say the true meaning of trading Edge is sure so I think in its most simplest form Edge is simply positive expectancy then it's a question of what can give someone that positive expectancy and it could be your strategy it could actually be a lot of things so maybe you have speed versus everyone else like if you're a uh an algorithm or a high frequency trading firm your EDG is your speed um maybe you

have an edge in resources maybe I have all the news sources imaginable maybe my Edge is in my information processing hey I'm not the fastest to this news but that biotech trial data I can understand this trial data better than anyone else that was never me but that's someone out there and um or maybe it's also psychology hey like this is um when everyone is Max scared Max Panic I'm Good at recognizing that feeling in my stomach recogniz in that fear and recognizing that equals opportunity um maybe your uh Edge also comes from just having

a good good broker with with short locates or access a big big Trend this year was access to overnight trading um being being able to trade uh the overnight session being able to trade Futures being able to trade options like smci this year on that exhaustion Gap in in in February had an amazing opportunity in options but you need to be able to have access to that that's that can be part of your Edge so all of these things together along with with your psychology your work ethic your pattern recognition that's what really comes together

to give you positive expectancy in terms of positive expectancy how would you define that for the audience we'll have a definition on screen hopefully but like what how would you define that for the audience if they don't understand what that mean sure so positive expectancy simply means if you do that thing over the long run will it make you money so if we were to flip a coin and bet 50 cents I I get it on on heads 50 cents I pay it on tails the expectancy of that over the Long run is is zero

right it's 5050 coin flip and whatever I make I'm going to give away over the long run so there's no positive expectancy there and so meanwhile if I were a really good poker player and let's say I played 10,000 hands and on the average hand I made 50 bucks my expectancy would be positive and it would be 50 bucks per hand so the way every Trader should be thinking is at the essence we all need Edge without Edge you have no matter how good your psychology or risk management is you will not make a single

dollar over the long run you need positive expectancy so as Traders we then want to be collecting data and able to quantify that how much do I make in this strategy and that strategy and that strategy and that allows you to then refine and figure out what you should be trading and what you shouldn't and a lot of Traders they don't properly collect their data and do this analysis so especially if you're one of the less systematic Traders you might be doing five strategies four of them might be making decent money and maybe one of

those four is making amazing money but then you have one strategy that you're losing money in but because the human mind Is just prone to error and and and bias and everything you don't recognize that you're just draining p&l in this fifth strategy and if you just cut it out you'd be making more but a lot of that we don't know if we don't CR the data and do the analysis it's that saying isn't it um you don't know what you don't measure yeah right yeah one of my favorite analogies that I always tell is

um in IPOs we would trade a lot of those and the best IPOs were always the super super hot ones uh the the alib Babas the reddits the RM IPOs stuff like that and so I had these trainees where they were trading every IPO even like the slow shitty ones even the [ __ ] liquid ones and So eventually I was like Hey like why why are you trading these shitty IPOs and he looked at me and he's like oh I make money in IPOs and that factually was correct he does make money in IPOs

but I knew the Nuance that he was missing and so I said okay crunch your data and tell me what you find he crunches his data and he's like look I told you I make money in IPOs and I'm like yeah but what do you notice and you know I'm I'm going to butcher these stats I obviously don't remember the the specifics but It was something to the effect of if he traded 10 IPOs he traded two hot ones and eight just garbage ones yeah he made a lot of money in the two hot ones

then lost in the eight garbage ones and all he had to do to make his strategy infinitely more effective is dude stop trading the garbage ones you know but a lot of people don't know that until you actually go through the data but then the process of say for that example removing those eight garbage ones would it be a case of just reviewing and meticulously going through what those looked like what were the precursors of those on so that when they present themselves in the future he can then look to exactly and so then that's

part of doing the Deep work is you can ask yourself what defines the hot IPO okay you know it must have um a name brand name it must have at least this much float it must have at least this much you know excitement however you want to call it um and that's when you start to systemize and refine your strategies I love that and in terms of ticker selection as well or even Market selection how important is that in terms of edge I mean I would argue it's everything it's Everything it's it's if you don't

trade the right stocks you don't stand a chance and so if you were to pick what five stocks I need to trade each day I will not make a single dime so it is it is an absolutely necessary precursor to making money and one analogy I talk about is the broken slot machine and it's one of those things where if you put me in a casino and I just start playing different you know there's a thousand plus tickers a thousand plus slot machines if I just play anyone I'm going to lose over the long run

what I need to do is find the the game that's broken that doesn't mean I'll necessarily win but I at least have the chance and the expected value to win and so those tend to be the stocks that are moving on news catalysts that are making large emotional um big price Discovery moves like based on Extreme technicals um and that is kind of what I need to do and so even when I talk about like Futures and Forex a lot of times I view those markets as fairly efficient and at least for me not not

a ton of edge but there will be times when those markets are also doing something amazing you know like moves in the Yen moves in the Nik um or Uh all sorts of times we get catalysts and that's when I'll be involved in that and that's when I personally view that those have the most Edge but if I trade that stuff when it's not in play as as we like to call it I'm not going to make a single di I'm going to lose it in play can be like you volatility or a particular news

Catal volume news Catalyst good good charts just doing something special not really just range bound and and and no nothing's going to have that 247 correct and I think that's a misconception people might have I've heard you say before actually which I thought was it made complete sense when you're taking all of this context into it as well where you like I don't understand the traders who just say I'm just a Futures Trader or I'm just NQ Trader you know y um because of that that concept of like okay cool but then there's so much

being left on the table because I I I know Traders like that I do know traders who only trade one pair and they they do it well but I understand the concept of like if you if you go through a period of let's say of two three weeks on that particular paway there's nothing's happening and it can really start to Have a KnockOn effect onto your psychology or your doubt or whatever it may be hopefully not but in that two to three weeks there was probably plenty of unities that were in play yep and a

lot of what I try to do is I try to teach optimal and look we'll never achieve optimal but it's so important to know what is optimal at least from an objective mathematical sense and so in general we want to be moving to whatever offers the most expected value so that might be Bitcoin post Trump election that might be Tesla post Trump election so if you're in a market that isn't really moving well guess what you're leaving some huge opportunities there and so it's so important to always think to yourself like and even even online

right there's some amazing real Traders out there and they all posted their end of year reviews and everything some I highlighted on my Twitter account the best Traders out there move to wherever the big opportunities were and we're talking smci we're talking mstr we're talking Bitcoin we're talking uh the Nik we're talking um all these different products all these different strategies some were mean reversions some were breakouts and so yes you Need to stick to your own strengths but ideally if you're going to stick to your own strengths can you apply it to the best

product or ticker possible one thing I would love to ask you as well is something that you mentioned in terms of Negative Edge so obviously we've talked about Edge in general but what would you class as Negative Edge so essentially just negative expected value so that's going to be when over the long run if you play that game you're going to lose and so I would argue that for most people not everyone but most people will struggle in stuff like the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ and the Forex pairs on a normal average day um

so at least for me definitely for me I would have Negative Edge doing that and so I think people need to be so aware of when they do have Edge and when they don't because most traders that I know and at least most I've seen even in the professional world and otherwise they have the most Edge in times of the most volatility and volume and craziness so that's when most Traders want to turn on the risk and really really push but then in periods when things are are calm and range bound and there Isn't much

going on that's when you got to really pair back and so even even a Trader like myself if I'm trading during a slow time or if I'm trading when there aren't these really good opportunities I'll lose money and most most Traders will like I'm sure there's some Trader out there that's just can really do fine in those range found times like I don't I don't discount that but for most people including myself part of the job is you got to make money and you got to know when to just be pedal to the metal wow

we're getting pocket pairs I'm getting Aces kings queens and really really bet then you also got to know like okay I'm getting 27 I'm getting 38 I'm getting 102 or something and just say I'm not playing this at all right now yeah what would you say in terms of building out an edge so actually identifying it and then being able to size into it Trade It effectively Trade It live even what does that process look like yep so there's a few methods to find Edge uh some of those are back testing uh you can just

essentially look at a hypothesis a hypothesis and test that data in the past you can forward test meaning how do I think uh this is Going to plan out a pan out and then essentially execute that in the future and collect data or then what I think is one of the most effective strategies is to reverse engineer something and if if I had no Edge where would I start I would observe the market and try to find what stocks are making the craziest moves and I would just simply database them all whether an evernot whether

on notion I would just collect every chart of something doing really big moves on really high volume so in the last quarter or so maybe I would be looking at the Tesla chart maybe I would be looking at the quantum names maybe I would be looking at paler um and I'd really just just take those charts and then I'd try and find patterns and principles like okay like what happens when this broke to highs uh was this what what made this a better setup or a worse setup what led to the really clean moves oh

like okay this this led to a really clean move because we broke to highs on a news Catalyst and you start to find stuff that like the longer the consolidation you have when you break to highs the better the probability a good move if you have high volume when you break To highs the better the probability of a good move if you have a news catalyst so you can start to stack on all these little variables and then build kind of a blueprint and you can say like okay I want to find stocks that have

made an initial Big Move we consolidate I don't know at least an equal amount we then break to highs on high volume and a news Catalyst and you can start testing that and you'll find that like with enough variables you start to find okay this this leads to doing the necessary work but just as off the back of that because let's say the average retail Trader let's say they're going to a mentor right who's teaching them an edge whether it's legitimate or not but regardless or even if someone's going to a prop firm and they're

being taught edges from senior Traders for example is it still necessary for someone who's being taught something whether it's watching videos or whatever it may be and they understand it but is it necessary for you to still go through that process you just mentioned where you're going onto those those charts and you're identifying these key markers you're identifying these setups really soaking in you know what the Reality of that looks like what the data is saying in terms of its performance over X sample size so that when it comes to you actually trading it you

truly actually understand that Edge versus just he told me that's that that this is what the edge is let me go trade that but you don't actually understand what the average losing streak looks like the winning streak looks like what the most Optimum uh side of that edge looks like versus the the suboptimum so I think if you have proper mentorship you can you can actually get away without it like if if someone's giving you a strategy and says when a b and c happens dox MH if that person has done the work and you're

following it you can get away with it okay that being said if you really want to understand stuff or develop or expand from there you need to do the hard work you need to get into the data and if you look at so many of the best traders that have developed incredible skill sets end Edge uh you know there's there's someone from Sweden Christian quam Magi really talented Trader incredible incredible guy how did he find his strategy so he did actually kind of mimic and clone off of this this guy Preep and but what he

also did is he went through hundreds and thousands of charts based on that concept and he marked them all up if you take my trainer my trainer has notebooks upon notebooks upon notebooks of charts and he all just marked them up and even if you take Greg shaba who's another you know legendary amazing Trader that's been around for a while and this was before even computer charting by hand he was just taking all these charts reverse engineering and taking notes and even for me my Evernote is thousands of charts that I've all mocked up and

that's the only way to really really truly know this stuff and innovate and expand and refine definitely and in terms of trading psychology because I know you've you very much have said that you know you can have the psy best psychology in the world if you don't have Edge you're still not going to make any money and I I can agree more and it was actually yourself and and a couple of others who were really sharing that message over recent years that it really hit home because in the retail space it's all just promoted a

psychology is the biggest problem psychology is going to be the biggest problem and I've really started trying to Pivot the message through the podcast of it actually yes psychology is a real thing um you know handling size for example or handling a loss for example there might be some Psy ological things that prop up but regardless of that you won't be you won't really get to that position anyway unless unless you have edge and a lot of people I think well not a lot I know a lot of people in the retail space have no

Edge and they're trading and then they're blaming their performance on psychology you know I Revenge Trad I could not agree more with any of that and so again this is where I have my healthy dose of skepticism why why is there so much psychology stuff from the influencers and the content because psychology can't really be disproven right like of course you need risk management of course you don't want to be on tilt of course you don't want to overtrade like nobody can argue with with any of that and so it's it's you even see these

trading coaches it's like how how many Twitter profiles is it oh I'm I've got 25k followers and I'm a trading coach and I go on their little webites and I Try and see their background and it's like what like you have you have no real background in in trading or psychology like what what are we doing here like and I don't I don't mean to presume that you need to have um some traditional education I don't think you need a PhD or anything but like you can't just you know pull your knowledge out of a

Cracker Jack box right and like the thing the thing that always cracked me up right and uh there's there's this account Leah the trader that I got in one of my classic Twitter beefs in and thanks to the wonderful internet sleuths out there so she she was a like BDSM like sex therapist and everything and you can literally follow this on her timeline on her Instagram with 50,000 followers she picks up trading in April of 2020 like U he this is fun 6 months later by the by the end of the year she is selling

a trading course and then what happens right is you get a platform you get this feedback loop of credibility oh I was on this podcast or oh I did that then it's like oh of course this person's credible when it's like what this this person's never published a trading profit in their life this person wasn't A trading psychologist this person doesn't know the issues of Traders this person isn't familiar with markets they opened up a Robin Hood account of April of 2020 and we're reling people on courses 6 months later and they have a 50,000

plus person following so it's like anytime I see that it's like oh wait the reason why there's so many like psychology influencers out there trading psychology is because the barrier to entry to speak on that is zero yeah right and there's no way to prove or disprove it because of course you know this stuff so it's like like you said it's not that it isn't important of of course it is right but I would argue that like if think about the poker player analogy if I don't know what hands to play and I don't know

what strategies to actually win the hand my psychology doesn't matter my bankroll management doesn't matter because I don't even know what hands to play so that always needs to come first then the more developed you get I do think it becomes more of a more of a factor for risk you know risk management of course but then also psychology at the elite level and it's like op optimization at that point Really it's like trying to remove barriers of towards further success correct yeah finding building your strs it's the same thing like you see all this

lifestyle content out on the internet and I think it's great to consume it it gives all the dopamine and everything else it's catchy it's it's it's fun but I think ultimately if you're if you're a Trader trying to improve your game the lifestyle content that might give you like I think I think the argument is oh it's motivating and inspiring yeah short-term motivation and short-term inspiration isn't what leads to success M the way to success is by sustaining work ethic and improvements day after day after day after day and if you're just consuming that stuff

rather than doing the hard work it's not helping one thing I have heard you say actually in terms of psychology is that early on psychology is important in terms of that positive feedback loop yeah that's really the extent of it is making sure you're keeping that positive feedback loop early on yeah and obiously as we talked about optimizing later one thing you did say which I thought was fascinating because it's so true when I've been Speaking to these veteran Traders is psychology hasn't changed in hundreds of years there's always been Panic always been fear always

been greed none of that has you know changed that has always been the case and I find it just is it's enlightening because I feel like a lot of Traders think and I think you know generally in society we think the same way as well it's like what's happening now is the biggest problem ever that's ever taken place when in reality 10 years ago there was or 20 years ago and 50 years ago it's always been the same mentality that's kind of been shared by the masses it's like this is the problem now when in

reality is just it's resurfaced in a different way or it's just you know our perception of now and and sort of uh people's time Horizons of what they're looking at um so I really enjoyed that sort of thought process is isn't it kind of funny how for how advanced we are with technology like we're like we're at the Advent of AI we're we're able to send people to the Moon we're talking about who could we colonize Mars and stuff yet if you think about it the most fundamental thing that has not changed for millions of

years is our Psy Ology right like we still question uh you know what's the meaning of life or like you know love breakups like oh man I like I've got I'm aging I've got great hairs coming in like psychology and and greed and and fear all that stuff hasn't really changed one bit right like even if you take music today music and and literature and poems they're still on the same subjects and the same human emotions that have been for just hundreds and hundreds and thousands of years right and the beauty of of trading is

if you think about it a stock chart is at its Essence it's it's just the almost art and the the visual representation of transactions and what's so funny is you can be aware of these biases and all these flaws of psychology and you still feel it anyways like if I see if I'm not invested in Tesla or if I'm not invested in Tech or I'm not invested in whatever and you see it going up up up up up you still feel that oh my God I can't believe I'm missing this even when you're aware of

it when the stock market panics even for me how many how many panics have I traded like it's it's got to be some crazy number because I'm involved in the individual stocks and Everything else when when you're in a stock that's panicking no matter what you still feel it in your stomach there's just something so human about all this stuff and greed and fear still have not changed just because there's algorithms and vwap and this and that that hasn't changed the fact that like on you know August 2015 when the market was gapping down everyone

was like holy [ __ ] I'm so scared panic panic panic and even today like even if you took this past August you know it's funny both are August I guess nine years later there was still a massive Panic as people were scared waren Buffett sold apple and waren Buffett sold Bank of America and uh nvidia's AI might not be as good and the Yen squeezing Panic whatever we're still getting that despite technology and and Science and trading having Advanced so much so much yeah and so many people are skeptical of O Edge erosion this

strategy won't last where it's it's odd because over the course of my career almost almost 15 years at this point it's like wait scarily so much has stayed the same and any stuff that's been eroded there's been more than enough New Opportunities that's compensated for If would say markets to degree are L efficient they're more efficient in some regards like order flow and the time to incorporate news but at the same time especially this past year and in 2020 2021 the ranges and price Discovery and moves we're seeing are unbelievable right like there were so

many years where you won't get stuff like uh the semi move and the AI move and the quantum Computing move all in the short space of time yeah we're seeing crazy crazy moves so I'd argue that like yes some areas got more efficient but there's still incredible amounts of the pie out there one thing you mentioned in terms I don't know if it's really related to psychology in a sense but you've said before like there's no they as in there's no algorithm trying to Target Traders I don't know if you know but in the retail

space is this huge well at least with the podcast audience to a degree this's this huge debate constantly of uh there's this algorithm that runs the market um and I've had a few like I've had uh you know like naso from the New York Stock Exchange he's talked about an algorithm I've had um you people in the past as well talk about algorithms or or say there is No algorithm like what are your thoughts like as you've already said there is no they for example trying to Target you but like when you hear these things

or observe these things in the space like how does that make you feel what are your thoughts when you see it like do you think it's just something that's really holding back Traders from actually potentially being an actual Trader I will say it makes me die inside a little bit you know like I think a lot of times the internet can be pretty toxic these days like if you go on Instagram you know reals can be just like a Cess poool of like brainless damaging content of like the sex appeal and the this the that

all this crap then if you go on Tik Tok it's it's the dances the everything else on Twitter there's the divisiveness and a lot of that it tends to depress me in in a sense because you see the world kind of just get sucked into this the lore of stuff that kind of isn't good long term um you see people still arguing on the internet look whether you're you're Pro vaccine or antivaccine like so many people are still dying on that hill and like being miserable over this stuff whether you're Prot Trump anti-trump people are

like so divisive and dying on on Hills that just aren't productive at at a certain point right and so when I hear about stuff like I kind of group a lot of that in the like one I think it's just total [ __ ] but then two like it's so vague and so bullshitty where it's like there's no even essence of it to disprove like there there is an algorithm in the market there's actually probably thousands of algorithms running in the market every single day right there's people that are executing a zillion algorithms through Goldman

Sachs JP Morgan Morgan Stanley you know maril Lynch like all the banks all the all the hedge funds guess what Citadel has probably dozens of algorithms Jane Street Capital dozens Renaissance rentech like there's like a zillion firms that are all running their algorithms but to think that there is one algorithm overarching thing driving anything it's all just part of like the crazy I am the ICT nonsense which again we're talking I actually didn't know this well first of all in my opinion it's very clear he's just a documented fraud at this point but then someone

pointed out to me Recently that and he supposedly I've not verified this myself but supposedly he has said that he was kidnapped oh yeah you want to know the story so yeah he said that he was kidnapped by it was two names like Parsons and Parsons or something like this uh kidnapped taken to like this underground you know facility and then you know had to secretly code an algorithm that would be used on the financial markets and then you know his emblem thing that's apparently like what was the key code or something to get into

this yeah so I didn't know any of this do you believe that no no not at all do you do you think there is even a 1% chance that is true no do you think there is a police record anywhere of that like then you're talking about a guy with 500,000 plus followers and like you even like the the munchkin stuff like it's so it's so [ __ ] weird and creepy and like when people believe it it does depress me honestly um not to dunk on any of that because like look that dude's gonna

do his thing whatever like but it's it's depressing in the sense that you see people fall for it yeah and I would say for all the furus and stuff like even even when you find The accounts of like oh God someone showed me a funny one recently oh my God it was something like like p pb investing or it's it's some 17-year-old M and it's it's like this 17-year-old just doing you know the ridiculous furu stuff and 50,000 plus followers and it it does make me sad in the sense like just just seeing how how

just gullible the masses can be and yeah it's it it's sad to me I don't blame you because especially when you think about the accolades not only that you've achieved but more so even the environments that you've traded with and then the people other traders that you actually know and no doubt know their Journeys and so on it's like the polar opposite of of the reality of trading it's even like do you do you know the liver King has that yes the guy yeah yeah yeah you know you have someone that's that's clearly on steroids

with a massive massive following I think it's probably what like million plus yeah and one he's just totally lying about everything and two he's being a proponent of things that are are one not true but probably also harmful and dangerous yeah and I don't fault the guy for monetizing and and becoming famous And all that stuff so like look like do I view it as ethical um no like I I don't think you know in kind of the Buddhist mindset that I have I don't view that as an ethical living but even worse the sad

part is the million people that think like oh my God this guy isn't just on truckloads of steroids and this is actually healthy and I should be eating you know like this craziness which is just so nutritionally devoid from like you know all all the fibers and other micronutrients and so it's yeah it's you know it's tough to really see where where the world goes on some of this and the misinformation and it's and AI is going to make it worse so uh that's that's the part that scares me with a lot of the the

furu stuff and the lifestyle stuff and I also know like there's a lot of good people out there that I I don't mean this in like in a in a dunk or like a derogatory way I truly don't but like not not everyone is super cognitively intelligent like a lot of people didn't go to school a lot of people don't have any nutritional background or or any background on finance or stocks and so when you don't have a lot of the background knowledge or the information Or just like you don't have a good [ __

] filter for some of the stuff it's I think we can quickly say oh these people are so dumb they're idiots oh if people are falling for these scammers like you know they deserve to be scammed that's not really true you know like I I feel empathy and and sadness for people that that don't have the awareness like you know there's even even if you take like the elderly right like there's a lot of elderly that fall for the telephone scams you should be like oh man they're dumb it's like no that's someone's parent you

know that's someone that's just being taken advantage of um they don't know what they don't know exctly someone else knows they don't know it yeah and it's coming out of trust and this feedback loop of credibility and and that's very dangerous in in the world it is it really is and I think uh hopefully though like I know that as you mentioned you what was it 21 you said 2021 2022 you joined Twitter yep started doing more like sort of content or at least providing value to the to the industry Etc so I think seeing

more of that is helping to make changes and I think interestingly enough you Know how we and we won't go into the topic but like into the evaluation firms I think the mess that's been there the last two years has actually pushed traders to seek out you know more legitimate Traders and legitimate ways of getting funding and growing their their accounts and so on and so many people will say like like look people will always scam right I and I get why people do it it's I wouldn't do it but I get why people do

it but the best thing you can do to prevent it assuming there's no regulation which there there really isn't right now the the best you can do is to educate and and that's okay and so some people might say Lance you're wasting your time Lance why are you doing this but there are people that are learning and becoming more aware and that has changed since when I started on the platform and I won't say who there there is one very popular furu that used to be very active on Twitter and he now only is on

Instagram as far as his posting and I know someone that knows him and I know exactly why he's only on Instagram and that's because the people on Twitter have wisened up and when he posts on Twitter they say hey man you know You haven't verified any of this like this is [ __ ] and so because people are more self-aware and the environment has changed he's had to move and that's fine because that that'll spread and like um it's it's good to see that and like things can be taken too far where I think like

there's always this moving goalpost of oh how do I know trillum didn't lie about your background oh wait by the way oh for for the record everyone uh and you can confirm this words out of your mouth I verified all my trading you've seen my brokerage account you've seen my uh K when we sat down show me yeah I can't tell you but it was incredible and so you know people will always say oh wait you know I probably just paid you to say that oh wait I bried the kinfo people or cheated that and

even if I post any document it's always like the oh you can just photo shop it so yeah I get that there's like some level of moving goalpost but it's good to just always have a healthy not an unhealthy dose but just just a healthy dose of hey you know just just just prove it to me yeah no I think so as well and I think uh like I said we're starting to see a shift I believe and I I think it Will hopefully continue but one thing I did want to touch on which I

think is very important I've been doing it over and again it was actually off the back of listening to yourself and and some a few key other traders that I know performed very very well and the key theme to me stands out is like Dynamic risk sizing because in the tra in the more retail space if you if you were to turn around and say hey I risk 5% of my Capital everyone's going to call you a gambler especially in the Forex space and that side of things they're going to say you're a gambler that's

gambling then you you can't be profitable doing that but then yeah I see all these professional Traders and and really successful Traders talk about Dynamic risk sizing and learning how to you know on your A+ setup put in as much risk as possible um you know that within within reason of course you know where did that stem from was that something that you learn early on in your career or was it something that you developed over time so my trainer always did a good job modeling a lot of these things then I think me with

my analytical side it was always up to me to kind of use first principles and think What's the actual concept and reality behind this like what's the principles driving this and so it's so important if if someone does anything to succeed Ed it's you need to think just just on your own and independently and so if people say oh risking 5% of an account is crazy you should never do that you need to independently assess that and so what are what are the variables involved in this question okay like if I were to tell you

you have a 100% chance of winning is it crazy to risk 5% of your account no it would be crazy not to risk 5 % or more of your account and so then all of a sudden we touched on something so the win rate matters but also like okay like let's say it's a 90% win rate but if you lost you you you die God forbid like there's no amount of of my account I would I would ever risk for that right so now we just touched on another variable the risk reward of that decision

also matters those two variables it's actually the expected value So based on the expected value of our trades that determine how much we're going to bet right so if something is a negative expected value bet no matter what you should always bet zero And the model I'll give for this is going back to Poker because it's always a good simplification I don't want to bet the same on 108 as I bet on Aces that doesn't mean I necessarily want to go all in with Aces right like and like keep in mind with all these things

it's going to depend your own tolerances how risk tolerant are you someone if you have 50 Grand in the bank and that's all you have your ability to bet 50 grand should be very very hesitant right if you're if you're 21 and you have $500 in the bank and you're super young and you don't have a family you should be probably on average more risk tolerant if I'm I don't know 80 years old my desire to bet any large portion is is going to be be low right because what's what's it going to do for

me but I don't want to impair my life so there's going to be all these variables like how good is the trade what are my odds what's the expected value what are my risk tolerances and that determines what's right for you so what's right for me or anyone else on the internet is not going to align with you because the 22-year-old should not be betting the same amount of their wealth as the 45-year-old with Two kids that's struggling to pay a mortgage and whatever else yeah can can we talk about the Easy Money trades Y

how what would you define as an Easy Money Trade so an Easy Money Trade is what I call the free throws or or the layups of of trading they might not be the sexy home run that you post on your Twitter to get all the likes but it's the trade that's just a very reliable single that helps you build that feedback loop so it might be I think for many Traders especially at SMB we found a lot of them finding consistency with scalping and very short-term trades um you know okay maybe you've got a nice

resistance level Something breaks above you're going to be as quick as possible to buy exactly at the resistance maybe scalp it out 5 cents 8 cents 20 cents higher um so and it's really the trades that allow you to just hit consistent singles and so the analogy I give to people is this because they they see me only swinging on a lot of the home runs when that's because of my lifestyle and my situation and the analogy I give is let's bring it back to Poker to make the most amount of money in poker the

optimal strategy is not to just bet Aces right because if you only play Aces you're missing out on kings queens Jacks tens all these other good hands of course you might want to bet most on them but what you find though is if you play a lot of the singles and the doubles and the triples and you make money on the 10 the Jacks the Queens then when you finally get the aces not only can you bet more on those because you have more cushion but you also have lower variance in your trading so even

if I get one Pair of Aces a month I can lose on that hand and still be positive from all my other trading and so that's the type of thing that I I use to help people understand like you always want to be playing most hands with positive expected value then that helps you build consistency so the Easy Money trades are kind of like those easy little layups for you that helps you build that consistency and everything one thing you've said is that Master the easy trades and in the meantime Master the ace trades so

gradual so like first Master the easy trades and then once you've done that then move on to mastering your Ace trades and then another element being that learn to size up more on your Easy trades so that you have the buffer to do that more you know much more elevated size for that Ace tra yep correct and so why is that why why do I recommend all that so almost by definition aces are rare it's the best hand you don't get that five times a day we can only dream right so if you were to

only study Aces a lot of the month you're just going to be sitting there doing nothing that's not that effective right so absolutely when there is a really amazing play you want to study that document that detail that but all that other time in between you want to study the really replicable easy free throws so that you can build your little Playbook of all these little different strategies and then throughout the month you know you can hit your singles hit your singles hit your singles and then also because you get so many more of those

singles the easiest way to start to grow is by sizing those up if normally you bet one grand on a single you start to bet 1100 1 12200 1300 1500 and all of those singles betting more on them then gives you more cushion to bet more on the aces that's I think that's so important and hopefully people can really take that on Board because I think it really makes a difference between being able to make a career out of trading I think yes you can make money from probably having a static risk but you need

large Capital already to probably try and make that transition to full-time trading versus if you learn this element and again it's not like you're saying just Do Dynamic risk you're saying go through this process that we've kind of guided this podcast hopefully in a way where we went through your history and where you sort of developed this the mindset developed the the processes that you use and also learn how you still are learning to this day but equally then going through the process of edge going through time frames and Styles um you know the the

environment and how important that is then onto obviously the risk sizing once you've gone through all that process um but the good Traders can miss something but immediately change this is something you've said before like good Traders can miss something but can change quite quickly you know within you know one or two times of making this mistake versus a lot of Traders unfortunately will make seven Eight 10 times they'll make that same mistake over and over again why do you think that is is that something that Traders can naturally have or is it something that

can be leared to develop and and sort of reduce down those number of mistakes the Traders willing to face you know I don't know um I don't know I think it's one of those questions of of nature versus nurture again and maybe it's some some mix of both and so that was actually one of the most important traits I would look for when I was recruiting new hires and I think it tends to be common with athletes for example where they've spent their whole youth with a coach you know giving them feedback saying hey you

messed this up you can do this better this is what you need to do and and ultimately I think it's like if I had to pick one skill as far as hiring someone it's the ability to effectively incorporate feedback and what I found is those that did the best at trading they were the people that they they weren't a natural or anything I don't think anyone's necessarily like a total natural at this stuff but when given feedback they were able to learn from their mistake and Incorporate it faster whereas the people that just ended up

standing no chance and were the quickest to go were the people that no matter how simple the feedback was they continually made the same mistake day after day after day after day and don't get me wrong like especially if something is a habit or it's your default way of thinking and and your default mental programming it's super hard to change this stuff um but that's again where you try you want to slow it down take it slow break it down into the steps and really work on that but I think that level of Consciousness and

awareness and it's also part of what I like to call again just just trading with that sense of urgency that is what what really leads to growth the people that are hungry to make that Improvement today not tomorrow not next week next month like if I if I slice because of this issue and I need to fix this elbow or whatever I want to fix that this next shot of and Swinging the club yeah what are your thoughts in terms of your one thing we mentioned about ticket selection being part of edge earlier but I

know one thing you talked about in that same trillion podcast it was In terms of your p pnl coming from such a small number of Trades like the bulk of your p&l coming from a small number of Trades like a percentile of Trades while also the same when it came to the tickers it was a smaller number of tickers made up for the bulk of the the p&l what is that correlation yeah so I think what you'll find and why that exists is again I hate to be the broken record but it goes back to

Poker occasionally in very select rare instances you get some incredible incredible opportunities with amazing Edge the equ of the pocket aces so what you'll see in the trading world and at really I'd imagine every trading firm there is is I mean that's not true high frequency trading firms are probably different structure but like most directional trading firms you're probably going to get like 90% of your p&l from 10% of the opportunities because really really good Traders recognize that the expected value of these these plays is not all the same and when there's those couple amazing

plays and I I mean this is something SB Capital does amazing amazingly well when the pocket aces comes up they give their Traders a ton of risk and Their Traders bet huge and so that makes up for so many issues so many issues and again it all goes back to the poker analogy that's exactly what you should be doing now think about this if you were to bet equally on every poker hand no matter how good you are if you bet equally on every poker hand you're going to lose because guess what you only get

pocket aces and really good cards very rarely the other 90% of cards you're going to lose with right and so if you were to bet equally on each hand it's not going to work the only way it's going to work is if when you do have a good hand you make so much more to compensate for all all the other crap and so really good Traders not in the beginner stages but I think as you and actually let me pause a lot of why trading is also so hard to learn from the Internet is there

aren't these uh disclaim oh this advice is for beginners this is for intermediate this is for advanced and so I try to disclaim my stuff this exponential and skewed bet sizing this generally matters the most at the elite levels so if you're a beginner you just want to be consistent safe small prudent but as you progress and Advance that's when your bet Sizing wants to get more and more skewed as you have more experience uh more skill set identifying these things more cushion and so then someone like myself at the very least levels that's where

you have the cushion and the experience where generally I'm I'm only playing the Aces and I'm I'm going really big in terms of uh intuition how much does that play into your trading or or trading as a whole because you you hear about it a lot in terms of especially in the retail space um is it a real thing is it something that Traders you know will feel a certain kind of way towards a particular setup or is that something that shouldn't be involved in trading I think intuition is absolutely real um but the question

is do you have good intuition or bad intuition is true and I don't think this is something you're born with I think naturally as humans assuming and like I do think you could be um I I do think most people not not everyone like I do think there are people that just neurologically are so different from the Norms where they don't feel these things the same way like almost like the Michael bur in in in The Big Short right and like If you don't have a trained intuition you're going to see something go up and

you're going to say oh I'm scared to buy I'm scared to buy then it starts really working and you buy it and I did that every single time as a trainee and you see every trainee do it every trainee does the same thing where you're you're scared and it's uncertain scared it's going up it's going up oh it's definitely good then you buy then it goes down and so in untrained intuition I think you generally do the opposite and that's why most people lose in the market that's why most amateurs lose and that's why the

more you trade for most amateurs the more you lose because the market prays on the untrained psychology and emotions when you're scared and you hit out and when you're at max pain and you panic that's almost always the bottom and what happens is as you gain experience you retrain you retrain yourself and you reprogram all those emotions and those psychologies so then when you feel that pit in your stomach because the stock is panicking you're like oh wow this is this is good and so you train your intuition into something good and so I also

think the brain is an incredibly Powerful pattern recognition machine we know that as a fact right that's how we survived like we were identifying okay which mushroom you know for the last thousand years oh this mushroom's going to make me high as a kite this mushroom's gonna [ __ ] kill me and this one's gonna taste delicious grilled over a fire you know like that's what we had to do for all these years and so we're okay like hm it's it's awkwardly too quiet you know like all of that is from our Keen sense of

trying to survive and so what's amazing is if you try and program these strategies these nuances that your eye just picks up like that there's so many nuances it's so complex like I can't program any of this stuff but the eye is able to perceive a lot of it with experience and so I think whether you're consciously doing it or not if you've been trading 10,000 20,000 30,000 hours you build this intuition and that intuition becomes a good intuition because okay some stock capitulated higher you shorted the turn and now it's still just hanging up

here and you're just like what the hell like why why is this not going down this doesn't feel so good how are how are we still up Here and that thought process that's your mind knowing that all these little nuances that should be happening aren't happening and that Spider Sense saying uhoh something's not right that is intuition and that's signal when it's trained and then you say man I gotta bail on this thing a lot of people that aren't attuned to that intuition it's going to be gone no I think uh hopefully Traders can really

take that on board because I think a lot of people have a big misconception when it comes to intuition I think it's just like whatever they think I need to start an untrained intuition is bad a trained one is good that's it that's it and it kind of really is a key theme throughout the podcast in terms of being intentional and actually going deeper than just you know what the your your natural mind would just say to you you need to go beyond that so even when it comes to the learning you know meta learning

actually going into much more intentional steps of your learning uh even with the risk side even with uh you know the psychology that we did talk about all of it is much deeper than the surface and I think that's the huge Difference between Traders such as yourself and and Traders within you know traditional prop firms and and the traders that you know of um versus the the more retail independent space is that they the the level of detail and and the work that goes into uh developing themselves as Traders is much more minimal and and

sometimes it's you know understandably so in terms of like you know the the jobs that they're working and and time restraints and and family restraints and so on uh so it's understandable in terms of the amount of time they put in but when they are putting time in they're not going to the level they need to I mean take take you know the Kobe Bryants or even you know LeBron Steph Curry whoever do you think do you think LeBron knows his percentage chance from every single place on the court depending on how many people are

guarding him he knows every single percentage of every single shot he's going to take he knows who the people are the worst Defenders on him and the best he knows who he's the best defender on and where they have the worst percent chances he knows um you know the sleep he needs to get to perform all he knows when he needs To do more stretching he knows when he needs to work on a certain aspect of his game and to be a really good Trader to even have a career at this it's the equivalent of

being in the league at any sport like you need to be exceptionally good just to be in the game and people don't realize that and if you're not willing to do what it takes to reach that level again it's a long it's a long process to make it don't even embark on that trip if you're not ready to put it in definitely yeah definitely and there's two things I've got two quotes that we'll finish on but before we get there of course we need to talk about Traders for a cause and we need to talk

about uh Magnus Opus magnumopus yeah yeah um to give us a breakdown of the name because why did you pick a Latin name yeah so magnum opus is Latin for one's most significant piece of work and and so especially for me I mean minus this year which ended up so active I really want to start to wind down my trading start to pursue other habits and I really wanted to take all of my knowledge and make sure it lives on and this was going to kind of Be My Legacy project for the trading world and

kind of My gift to give back to the community and and also to raise money for charity and everything else and it seemed like an appropriate name for just making the most comprehensive trading course available and also making a version of it that's just going to be 100% free so that hopefully 10,000 plus 100,000 plus people can learn how to think about trading right yes I share my methods but most of all I'm explaining the concepts like we started to do on this podcast I'm helping people think critically helping people think about price action and

trading and how to actually develop who they are as as a Trader I love that I absolutely love that I love the name I I don't know why anything to do with Latin is just like intriguing you know but I know you put in so much time and effort into it because I think it's if I'm not mistaken like a year plus project of you recording and and uh you know adding elements to it and building it out and it just shows that it's not something that you just let me just do this people cannot

even imagine what is in store for them and what went into this I am I am so confident nothing like this will ever be created because I know nobody in Their right mind would ever spend the money or the time on this and it was trading is difficult this was also so mentally difficult because I'm putting like I just remember being two or three months in and you're just like wow like I've spent so many hours and I've got to be like 5% done or something and it's it's just a work of of passion and

and pride to create something just like beautiful and incredible and so we'll see what people think i' I've definitely shown some people some sneak peek the amount of just time effort and and dedication that's gone into it that's what we like to hear that's what we like to hear and I'm excited for that I think it's later this month I believe yeah January 21st there we go I love that and uh Traders For A Cause right um essentially you retired from from Trading so you retired from uh prop from Trading still traded this year phenomenal

trading year um which was interesting there was another question that we'll come back to but Traders for course tell us about that y so for me I'm of the general philosophy that when you give back to others it helps you be happier and so some people think o charity all that is is Selfless but I think especially when you get lost in trading world with all the pnls the comparison game you're so focused on your screen you forget about the world out there and I think most of us are happiest when we're interacting with others

when we're helping others and we have community and I do a lot of nonprofit work and that's actually why love trading is to run a nonprofit called the impact competition and while dealing with the charity work I do you see populations that don't have homes you see populations that are going hungry you see populations that are dealing with uh gun violence uh drug issues uh recently last year I worked with a nonprofit that helps young adults with Down Syndrome transition to the real world and you know some of this stuff it it it makes me

emotional because because you don't how how many times in your life have you thought about what it would be like to have Down syndrome and your career opportunities because if you spent a little bit of of research you would find that your your career opportunity is pretty much like whereas we're able to be like oo I want to be a doctor I want to be a Trader I want to be a Podcaster your career opportunity is up I'm GNA be a greeter at Walmart and not that there's anything wrong with that but that is your

future for the for the next however many years God willing you will be a greeter um at at some of at at some supermarket and and that's about all all the attention and and capacity and responsibility someone will trust you with and you go from this structured life in high school with resources and then it's like oh T he congrats you're you're you're an adult now have have fun figuring out like life is hard enough I think even for any normal person then it's like oh wow like you know everyone's going to college and and

you're just starting a job that you're going to be doing for a long time yeah and um and you see what those experiences are like and what people struggle with and then all of a sudden you say like hey like you know life life is good I'm I'm fortunate and I want to help others and so then Traders For A Cause I was introduced to thanks to Mike bellur of S&B capital and it's an organization that educates Traders provides networking opportunities and then all proceeds from the events go back to Charity and so that's something

they do a big Keystone event generally in Vegas each year so I've been proud to speak at that event for many years I've made many friends from that event um I've sponsored and and donated for it and then most of all been on the board to promote their cause and help other Traders uh make new Trader Friends Network learn and and ultimately realize the power of giving back absolutely love that and we definitely need more of that I you won't be able to tell but earlier this year I ran a marathon oh nice in two

months of training that's more impressive yeah well it took me 6 hours it wasn't as impressive in terms of performance you're not supposed to we'll edit that part out yeah yeah we'll beep it but but um but yeah for the exact same reason I've always had a passion for you trying to help that that was the whole nature of the podcast trying to help people um but especially in our space our space is all about money right and that's why I never understand a lot of the uh the furus because at least if you're going

to do a f at least try and give back in Char in some sort of charitable way And promote that as well so that other people do the same um yeah so that's what I started doing when I when I did the the marathon I was like going on my story saying all of you guys whove come on my podcast and said you made $100,000 this year I know you have money so you need to donate so we donate it quite quickly one funny thing I found well it's not funny at all actually but um

most most Traders because money is their scorecard and p&l is their scorecard you end up with people that are extremely extremely rich but if that's your identity and that's your totem pole of the world and hey I'm better than because of yeah this then all of a sudden you you don't give back you stash acorns and that's how you view success and and the world around you when like money is an easy objective you know people can estimate this or that and reverse engineer oh me like it's but it the more important thing is like

at least to me is like one am I happy like I don't care about the money I don't care about anyone's money like the more important metric is hey is that person happy am I happy but then more important too is like you know are they happy and are they doing Doing good so others can be happy and there's no there's no look that's also the issue with social media I can post look if you want to see me on a yacht posting a yacht and me looking oh look how like but that's that's it's

all just [ __ ] it's people's highlight re yeah you know and like none of that really does anyone any good when the more important thing is like are you deep down happy and if so who cares what's on the internet and two then are are you just helping other people that's it and I'll finish with this quote here uh which unfortunately doesn't relate to what we were just talking about but um it's a quote from the point is this is what he said the point is and it's in regards to Ed the quote is

from UL Lance and it says I love money I hope this dumb damn world Burns Like H yeah that was a couple beers I tricked you by setting up the the charitable talk first but you said essentially in regards to Edge erosion and keeping it Edge secretive is the point is you can be secretive and overly worry about Edge erosion but it comes at a cost and limits your potential of finding the bigger pots of gold could we just quick very quickly Expand on that just ever so slightly yep so we spoke about trading pots

before and I think so many people are afraid to give or share or link up with others because they don't want people learning their strategies learning their Edge or taking a piece of their pie so they think I make I make X dollar a year I make $1 a year if I start sharing with other people if I start sharing on Twitter or with my trading pod or whatever else they're going to start taking my Edge and then I'm only going to make 90 cents or 80 cents a year and first of all I'm skeptical

of that to begin with like I think a lot of things we do have more than enough liquidity unless you're truly maximizing every single share that there is like okay fine but if there's excess liquidity you're not really harming yourself but I get that mindset that's fine like if that's really how you think I understand the rationale there but I do think those people that think that way they're only weighing that side of the Ledger they're not weighing the other part what am I able to gain from working with a bunch of other good amazing

people like so often and we see this at SB Capital all the time what you get is When A and B work together that's great but sometimes all of a sudden a b and c work together and the summation of the parts is so much more amazing than they could have ever imagined so yes if maybe I work with with three other people my $1 might become 80 sense that's true but you're not making any adjustment for what you're going to gain and learn if I'm working with the senior Trader that helps me push my

size then I learn some new strategy or maybe if I'm just able to spot more of my own opportunities like maybe they learn my strategy but now as a result yes I make 20% less but I see 50% more of these opportunities you're making more money and so so often people only weigh the oh no people might infringe on my liquidity that I'm somehow god-given and it's mine then they don't factor in the other side which is hey how am I going to grow learn be motivated and improve and just be able to sustain and

Thrive at this job more which I think is so often more than offsets if you find the right people 100% and it kind of relays on something else that you said previously which is um you know too too often Traders will Focus on the worst case scenario the Doom versus if they just focus on what would actually help them Elevate then they would end up actually in the end performing better it's very similar analogy but Lance I I know we could keep going I know we are going to keep going you know because we're heading

over to the SNB uh Capital offices for an amazing Roundtable which I'm very much looking forward to as well but links for Lance will be in the description below so make sure you check out every single one of those drop a comment of your biggest takeaway from this episode I know there was so much that we covered so make sure you've taken notes and go over it again um but hit subscribe other episodes are on screen and until next time take care