If I Could Go Back & Tell Myself What I Know Now... Part 1 of 4

one of my folks this is going to be a four part series and right away let me get your expectations in alignment this first installment or part one is basically one of those commuter episodes going back and forth to work you can listen to it that way because it's not really anything in this one there's going to be graphic intensive and always new charts nothing like that new market maker secret concepts being revealed on some charts it's basically a hypothetical conversation with my younger self I get questioned a lot by email if I could go

back in time you know what would I like to do differently and I kind of like twisted that whole idea to come up with this perspective and if I could go back and tell myself what I know now and this is basically a hypothetical conversation with my younger self if I could go back to the start of it all knowing what I know now said everyone how many times have you looked at a circumstance in your life not just in trading but in anything the every facet of your life you wish you could go back

knowing what you know now I used to hear my grandparents say things like that and I was like what I couldn't relate with it and or to it but being 47 about to turn 48 years old there is a laundry list of things I wish I could go back and change not just in my trading journey but in all facets of my life so I shared a bunch of those personal things today on my Twitter feed if you haven't been over there you can take a look at that and see my my open discussion about

many of the frailties in my personal life coming up as a younger man into where I am today I want to talk a little bit about some of the things that I wish I could go back in time and tell my younger self now the way you can use this for yourself is take what I'm saying with a great deal of appreciation because I weathered a lot of storms financially and personally to get to what I know now and you may be a very young person and or an older person just now getting involved in

the markets you're gonna have the same growing pains that everyone else has and some of these things are going to be things you probably read in books heard other people talk about but I want to give you my personal spin on some of them and how applied to me so it's kind of like a little bit of a little history book of what I was plagued with in my first six years and the first six years of my trading development the first six years of my trading development is plagued with everything you could have possibly

done wrong and I want to kind of like use this discussion to kind of like go through some of the major hurdles that I had and again since I have children adult children now they can hopefully listen to this and mine the I guess the experience portion of it because a lot of the things that I've put on my youtube channel and I've taught over the years it's heavily technical just a lot of things that are going on in the chart and I am always accused of being long-winded and again if you're not into your

really understanding what it's most likely going to plague you if you just want to go through it yourself and have all that experience have at it and don't even listen to this video and there's no harm and you're not listening to this part you could really just say okay that's going to wait to part two but it's meant to be a resource for you to clean experience from without having to go through the suffering portion of it so if I were to go back in time and I could sit at a table and talk to

my younger self what would I tell him or me where to focus what should i as a younger person focus on in my development as a trader first thing don't seek the approval from others right away that's the number one characteristic of a successful trader now you might not agree with the things I'm going to say in this episode I'm just speaking from my own personal walk and the things that I had to endure when I first started the first people that I look to to get approval with was my family and I love my

family both my immediate and extended family but none of them shared in my excitement they gave me all the reasons why it was a poor decision it was a bad idea to get involved in it I'm gonna just lose money and just accept working for the rest of your life and it's simply not in the cards for me I just didn't want to do that so you don't want to seek approval from your family because they're not going to understand what you're trying to do they're going to give you all of the heartfelt reasons why

they're going to try to protect you from yourself when they don't really understand what it is you're trying to do or learn don't seek the approval of your friends number one your friends are only going to be interested once you start making money when they start seeing the changes in your life then and only then weird prints be on board with it your friends much like your family really don't feel comfortable with you being successful because if you tell them what you're going to do and you get to the point where you succeed at it

you act like a mirror for them and they will always look to you as a reminder of what they failed to pursue in their own life so again don't try to seek the approval of others family first and friends because it doesn't work out third don't go to work and tell your co-workers that you're going to be quitting your job soon I made all those errors okay and many many times I've shared the low income high our heavy workload job that I was doing as a young man when I'm just beginning this journey and I

just don't think that it's a good practice for anyone to go to work and tell their co-workers number one they're gonna be giving you again all the worst feedback your everyone here yeah right you'll be here with me the rest of your life you're gonna retire from here all those things okay so when you get this feedback from your co-workers you're gonna hate going to work even more because you might have liked going to work it to some degree and hanging out with the people you work with talking about sports talking about movies talking about

the opposite sex all these things that you had a common I guess agreement on or an interest in will start having a Great Divide because you're gonna look at them as a source of annoyance and they're just gonna look at you as your pipe dreaming and you're not going to get to where you're going and it's gonna be fun for them to watch you fail and you don't want to have someone constantly you poking you every day it looks like you're still here I guess I'll see you to work tomorrow those types of things is

what I had to endure so don't tell your co-workers what you're going to be doing don't tell your boss what you're gonna be doing you're gonna basically fire your boss and fire your co-workers when the time is right but you don't want to broadcast it because all its gonna do is provide them a timeline when they think you should be doing it and teach you the entire time so your family's gonna constantly give you heartfelt advice of why you shouldn't do it your friends are gonna say I'm not really interested but if you get successful

I might be interested in so why why tell them your co-workers are going to give you every negative thing because they hate their life too they're at the same place you're at yet you're trying to escape so why would you want them to you know pump you up that that's what we do as humans we want to have our peers say yeah that's a good idea but how many times in your life have you ever had that experience I can tell you unless it was my fifth grade teacher mr. Lorber or it was my uncle

that talked to me about commodities when I was 16 years old and taught me about narrow sideways channels and one-two-three tops and bottoms and head and shoulders in all those bull flags and things at 16 years old I was looking at it and it was going in one ear and out the other okay so when you tell all your family your friends and your co-workers that's what's happening and they're not going to say you know what that's brilliant I wish I would have thought of that that's the reality that's the reaction you're expecting right it

never works out that way but yet we all do it as humans we want to have that that's a good idea response and it never comes so what does it do it causes deflation you don't want to be around these people because now you're like I wish I would have ever said anything but once you put it out there it's done and lastly strangers as a young man when I was doing my job I would finish off you know filling up the candy machines and the soda machines and coffee machines and such and I used

to do a bending around ended a long day thirty hours just helped and during my route I felt this I'm a reasonable desire to tell other people that I don't even know yeah I'm looking at a market I hope it goes up and in bah-bah-bah what what are you talking me about that for so when you tell strangers or if you meet someone in the pub okay or you're at a club or well right now it's hard to go to those places right now because of all the things that's been impacted by the illness that's

being spread around the social circles when you run into people they'll ask you hey you know so what do you do it yourself that's not the invitation to say well I'm looking to start trading commodities yeah I'm trading the foreign exchange market right away they're gonna be like what is that and that's what you wanted to ask you and then when you start talking about doing like oh yeah that's like the stock market you're not interested or they're interested anyone know how much money you made and you can't tell them did you meet any money

you're just now starting so really you're a start-up and they're not really interested in the conversation anymore so you're not going to get that feedback again what you're looking for so don't seek the approval from others you have to pursue this on your own steam your own energy and if you have any dependency on an outside source be it any one of these four groups family friends coworkers are strangers to give you that nudge that little bit of a a pat on the back that you're doing the right thing for yourself you're gonna struggle because

in trading you got to be there to make the decisions whether anyone agrees with you or not and when you make money you reap the rewards of that but when you lose it and you will you have to be able to endure that and not feel the compulsion to go to someone and say hey look you know it has lost a lot of money that's the same thing don't turn to anyone else and say I made a mistake today helped me feel better you have to endure that and if you're going to start your journey

with this mindset of seeking approval or support outside of yourself this is going to be a very hard journey for you so you have to prepare yourself to seek your own approval by your own study and your own development reward yourself when you do it right and when you do it wrong give yourself permission to be wrong and allow yourself to grow next learn risk management well and make that your initial very first thing that you want to master so you're controlling your impulses to stop telling everybody you're business ok it's your business it's not

their business it's stop giving your business to someone else next in line it's the risk you have to understand what you're getting involved in if you're gonna be trading with live funds you are losing money that's a 100 percent guarantee you are losing money there is never ever going to be a trader that starts and never has a loss my very first tree was a loss I lost 50 percent of my account overnight an orange juice option I had no idea what I was doing I was baptized thrown into water and drowned ok it was

just that short and sweet and I closed the account asked for the remaining of my account and that was the end of my Fox investments career that was the brokerage firm I used at the time and I had to go and discover how to actually look at charts and learn a little bit more about the risks so I didn't understand risks when I got into trading I thought that it should work right away because I saw the book the book said it does this so therefore what I looked at the chart our institution should have

performed the same way because that's what this guy said in the book you know this guy told me in at least three pages that the market when it does this wiggle and waggle then I should expect it to move this particular way and where does he get off telling me this and then it not being true you see where the disconnection is that was how I looked at it because I didn't want to take the responsibility of the risks and I figured well I'm an option what's the worst that could happen all of my money

could have been gone that's the worst and in one day overnight while I was sleeping woke up expecting to see I'm gonna be I'm gonna be in the profits yeah I wasn't expecting that down 50% welcome to trading Michael and it was a shock and I just completely collapsed said give me my money I'm 1 out and that money couldn't get back to me fast enough and back then they'd sent it in a check and he had to wait for the check to come in the mail it was just it was awful so the first

thing you want to be focusing on is managing risk and understanding the underlying risks that's about available to you if you trade you want to appreciate the percent over the dollar gain or loss when I first started I was interested in making a specific dollar amount I didn't understand compound interest I didn't understand the Kelly criterion optimal F none of the advanced money management theories that I adhere to now and I just looked for dollars you know if I can make 500 bucks on this move that's what I want to make and my stop-loss was

what was the maximum I could take and that's exactly what I was doing because I was afraid I could stop down so I had this unrealistic stop-loss that was just unbelievably wide or I didn't have one I was using a menthol stop which will drive you mental if you're driving in a truck 13 hours a day getting out loading can soda and junk food into candy machines and going around and fixing machines that aren't right and you're constantly wondering what the markets doing and you don't have a stoploss yeah it's already bad enough that you

have to time the market and pick the right direction but now you got to add to it that you're doing it blind with no stop-loss and anything can happen and that's what I was doing I mean literally I was like a cowboy out there riding bulls with no experience whatsoever and if I was thrown off it was always going to be the worst case it was really going to be bad every single time I took a loss it was going to be bad either I got crushed and I got out because I couldn't handle the

pain anymore or if I had stopped it was running against me taking me out and there was gonna be the maximum risk that I could absorb in that tree so you want to appreciate the percentage of what you are taking on as risk also with your gains so don't be impressed with a specific dollar amount or don't look at a sesor a dollar amount as well it doesn't hurt that bad because it's only 300 bucks but if your account is 3,000 that's 10% that's considerable you don't want to do that because you can't do too

many of those and not see your account be lower to a level where it's a little bit difficult to come back from that as a new trader so appreciate the percentage over dollar gain or loss learn to limit trade frequency I felt that since the markets were opening up tomorrow I had to be in there so I was over trading and if I got a profit and I was able to get out in intraday I would like well that was fun I want to go in there and do it again when there was 20 minutes

left in the trading session because I was trading commodities they had pit hours where it would open at this time and close at this time and I figured well it's still open anything could happen and if I'm right I mean I can make some more money before it closes had no idea what I was doing folks zero idea I was looking at these charts and they were speaking to me and it was all the wrong things it was telling me gamble and that's what I was doing I had money in the account they were hours

still left in the trading or 20 minutes in this case as an example hypothetically and I was going in here and if I could get more money before the close I said I was doing and that's what hurt me because I didn't understand the risk when you're getting close to the end of the session the end of the trading day or the end of the week you have to know that there's a large degree of risk in the fact that you're probably not going to see any really major move at that point because it's already

behind you and you want to limit the number of chains you take because the more frequency you have in your trades the more likely you're gonna lose and if you have a lot of trades you're gonna have a lot more losses and losses mount up and you don't want that to occur especially as a developing trader you really don't want that to occur at any time really but you have to learn to limit your trade frequency avoid short term trading turning it into long term trading when I first started I had no idea when what

style of trading that I was gonna really focus on I was being told I wanted to be a position trader you get it on the daily chart catch it one two three hold it for three four or five six months and I couldn't do it I just couldn't do it and when I started trading with short-term strategies and such and when I was in winters that started to move a lot for me if you trade of any length of time eventually you're gonna get lucky with something and when it starts moving in your favor really

explosively something happens inside of our brain it's like okay this was only going to be a trade for a couple hours and maybe make you know five or six handles in the SP or a hundred pips in the Forex okay or a $2.00 $0.50 move in the stock that you're trading but now because it's exploded you're like well this is now a six-month trade and you end up holding on to a winner turn the loser and you changed your strategy from it was going to be a short-term trade to now a long-term trade and that

short-term gain turns into a now immediate loss it's debilitating stick to what you were trying to do when it gets to your objectives scale out and get your target and move to the sidelines don't change strategies while you're in a trade that never ever ever is a good thing and be content with enough if you had a profitable week and it's Thursday close up shop who says you have to trade on Friday what happens if you have a good Monday and Tuesday and it's way beyond your normal routine you return why would you want to

press your luck the chances are you're probably gifts on that back if not all of it and when I was younger I did that a lot in my first six years but I didn't care it didn't bother me and I didn't have any appreciation for the risk because I figured well I'm gonna be right eventually in every trade I was swinging for the fences and I wanted to make lots and lots of money but the problem with that is because I was taking on so much risk when I had a little bit of a profit

I would close because I just couldn't handle it anymore it was wearing me down like I'm expecting to make $1,000 in this trade all right I'm up to 50 I'm just I just got to get out I'm fatigued that's what the market will do to you if you have no appreciation for the risk don't undermine your trading by not tackling the first lesson in risk management you have to understand it and how you personally engage with the marketplace and how you are I guess adversely affected I guess that's the train thought I'm China communicate here

because unless you feel the pain of being in a market that's not moving in your favorite or screaming against you you're not going to fully appreciate what I'm saying here and as a younger man I saw lots of equity swings that would make anyone else nauseous and I just I didn't care I had no appreciation I had no respect for the marketplace because I figured I'm gonna get it right and eventually and I went through many accounts not one or two many like 14 individual trading accounts and I would save up money save up money

my first account was with a credit card and then the second account was with another credit card twenty six hundred dollars on a nation's bank credit card visa and you pay a lot of lot of percentage in terms of interest when you borrow cash and I just was doing everything wrong everything wrong but I was not going to be deterred moving on you want to prevent life imbalances and this is one of the things that I failed miserably yet have a pretty large family I've five children one that was brought into my marriage I brought

one into my marriage and I had three children or three sons with my present wife I didn't spend a lot of time with my kids when I was younger I was consumed at the marketplace I was consumed with making money I was consumed with building businesses I was consuming those real estate buying franchises just always money money money money money and most of my children's sporting events I missed them and it was very hard to see how much time I missed when I look back and now look at my children as adults not all of

them I have a 15 year old and a soon-to-be 13 year old it's still living with me but my older children I don't have a lot of memories because I allow the market to steal that and I chased it more the faster it ran away from me the more I would pursue it because I was telling myself that I'm doing all of this for them and that wasn't true I was doing it for me me because I hated my job I hated where I was in life and I wanted more and I wasn't satisfied where

I was and every adversity brought on a new sense of urgency that I gotta get this changed right now and days would pass and turn to weeks to months to years and I missed so much time with my wife I missed so much time with my children and the greatest lesson I can tell you right now if you're new especially if you're a young man or a woman and you're getting ready to get into this these markets are vampires they will suck every drop and the marrow in your bones if you give it to them

it does not matter how much money you think you can make or eventually make because I don't tell you something I've made a lot of money millions of real dollars millions and I would give it all back if I could go back in time and be able to spend the time with my kids and my wife that I missed I created a prison cell for myself with these markets did i willfully put myself into every single day and it wasn't enough to be in the day time worrying about all day long at work was I

being a good employee No many times I have asked my job because I had to get back to the truck where my quote track was which was my little quick machine telling me what the soybean market was doing or what live cattle was doing or what the bond market was doing I was more concerned about that and most of the time I was losing money so I wasn't a good employee at a time and when I got home in the evening time what was I concerned about family no I was concerned about the market I

was wanting to know what can I do to make more money and my family will be there when I'm done and that's a lie it's a lie you're going to give up your life if you don't pay attention to it so how do you avoid it you have to manage your family time and schedule it this is the time for your family new markets no charts no TV time looking at reports and news events that would drive the marketplace no newspapers no articles and magazines no internet no Twitter none of that stuff you manage your

family time and you schedule it and then once you have gave your family your time an ample amount of it then you gotta have to return back to the marketplace you want to keep a study and trade schedule that means what time of day are you gonna be looking at the market trade and there are specific times of the day days of the week months of the year that you want to be focusing on trading and there are other times when you don't want to be doing that and you want to be focusing on what

they are and when are you going to study how much time each day are you gonna a lot for studying because if you don't have that you're just going to go in there and say well it's basically like Netflix I'm gonna sit down binge watch and see what happens well if you look at a chart long enough it's gonna start telling you you know if you put some money into me I might give you some more back and you're gonna gamble how long will a gambler sit in front of a slot machine with a pocketful

quarters before they put all the quarters in there as fast as they get the next one in and that's what these charts are they're slot machines and you're being groomed as a gambler and all the books and things that you learn from other people and it's just an enticement to constantly do that feed that beast so you have to keep a study and trade schedule and only operate on that basis off days are off days on the weekends I spent more time worrying about the marketplace when I should have been spending it with my family

so you have to absolutely hold yourself hard and fast to when you don't have any market activity and it's not trading or it's a holiday and it may impact with lower volume that's an off day and you don't look at the charts you don't consume yourself with looking at what could have happened none of that stuff you pour it into your family and that will prevent you from having a life and balance and finally want to be patient with your development I was overzealous and unrealistic about what I wanted to do once I started making

money that's what caught fire in me and I was like I want more I want more I want more and when I saw I could take a very small account 1,250 hundred dollars to fifteen thousand dollars in less than six weeks I was like this is exactly what I want to do like I want to do this I'm gonna do anything else and you don't have to rush especially if you are younger than thirty like if you're in your 20s you have so much time to get yourself where you want to be but you want

to take the time to develop yourself and learn a lot about yourself because if you're not aware of what you're gonna likely do to yourself to throw yourself off the rails it doesn't matter what you're going to learn or what you're gonna do or how much money you start with or how much time you put into it it just means that you're gonna rush to destruction so you have to give yourself a realistic timeline when I first started my plan was I wanted to retire at 40 I want to make a thousand dollars a month

and retire at 40 that was my plan and I quickly learned that that was a really low objective what was possible was a lot more than that but I wasn't prepared to see that type of equity increase when I started making a lot of money it's like a drug it makes you want to do more and more and you serve that in with you didn't care about risk because I didn't it hurt me and I would see these huge gains and then huge draw downs so while I'd have really big run-up and I'd have a

rollercoaster drop and it would just put me back in that I got to go back and spend more time in the charts and who was suffering my family my children didn't get to see life am that her father that much my wife didn't get to see me as much as her husband and I missed out on a lot and a couple photographs is not the same as being there to cheer your kid on when he's up and he hits his first home run I missed that when his basketball team wins and he made that shot

great for the last spell I missed that but hey I made money on lean hogs it doesn't measure up stop buying retail logic and tools so you just don't want to be filling your head up with all of this poor thinking okay because that's exactly what it is everything you learn in retail books and courses is diametrically opposed to how the actual markets work so stop wasting money on books and I've purchased either by electronic format or actual hard copy books over 2000 of them and I won't buy another book ever again and I wish

I would have stopped the second year that I started buying them I had in my mind I was gonna buy as many books as I could because somebody out there it's gonna have the secret and I can tell you after reading over 2000 books none of them did and there are some real classics in there and the ones that I do like I've mentioned before and I know some of you are new and you want to know what they are for money management I like everything from Ralph ins and Ryan Jones they do a lot

of optimal F and Kelly criterion it's a little bit advanced I'm not saying that everyone that first starts trading should mess with that because it's meant to run your account up pretty quick and you're not gonna be prepared for that and I wasn't either that's why I couldn't make it work right away decided learned a lot about myself and then to knit for me how many million dollars trading commodities last year it's a 1970s book from Larry Williams that books still is relevant today not every little thing in there is but majority of that book

is that was the real first inspiration for me to see how smart money operates in the marketplace and then that was my pursuit for rest of my life I was gonna crack these markets so that trading for a living buy outs and their elder market wizards one and two just for inspiration and street smarts by Linda rash and Larry Conners that's it now if you want to know what to do the opposite of John Murphy's technical analysis of financial markets book that's the retail traders Bible I always recommend that one simply because you want to

learn how to do the opposite of everything is being taught in that book and if you do that you're gonna quickly see how charts are really really fun to watch then because it's such a high degree of percentage of failing that it's more likely if you just fade those moves you'll probably see the chart work in your favor avoid looking for hot hand gurus I did this a lot on America Online I chased everybody if they had a service I was trying it out at least four well back then they would do it by the

week now everything's by month and everything was at the time a newsletter or a phone number you had to call and pay a couple of dollars a minute or whatever and they would tell you what they were trading and I never made money with that stuff even Larry Williams not to be disrespectful towards him but I at one time was paying for his hotline and you would just call him up and he would have a recording and it was basically what he was gonna do with the bond market and what the SMP market and I

did those trades and I lost money again I'm not saying that he's not a profitable trader I'm not saying he's not a good trader I'm not saying it's not a good teacher I'm just saying my personal experience doing that I lost money on every single trade so avoid looking for hockey and gurus this is the reason why I don't hold people's hands I don't say is what we're going to do I hear sell here stop yeah I don't do that because all that does is create codependence and you don't want to be a codependent traitor

you want to be an independent thinking traitor become your own signal generator the big thing is always as a new trader you want to find someone that's good you don't want to find a mentor you want to find someone that's gonna tell you what they're doing in making money so you can copy them and I fell victim to that too I didn't want to trust my own analysis I got lazy and thinking well I really just wanna make a lot of money so if I can find someone really good I'll just copy them and everything

they do I'm gonna take the trades since they're successful even if I take a couple losses here and there I'm just gonna stick with it so what am I really saying there I'm saying that I'm gonna use them as my system and I'm accepting losses I know they're probably gonna come but I'm holding out that they're gonna have more wins than losses now doesn't that make sense if you apply it to your own strategy but when you as a new trader start you don't want to accept losses that's not acceptable but when you justify your

suspending when you buy other people's signals it's somehow brought into the reasoning part of the decision-making that it's something that's acceptable losing trades it's acceptable until you take that first loss and then you're not subscribing anymore you go back to looking for another hot hand guru be willing to lose and lose a lot early on it's part of it you don't know what you're doing in no book no course even me if i sat with you every single day for a month you would still take losses you would lose it's unavoidable but early on when

you are developing you're gonna be wrong a lot and this is reasonable I tell people do not trade with my funds until you know exactly what you're doing and you understand yourself and that maybe longer than six months it may be longer than a year for somebody it might be two three four years like degree and some of you aren't prepared for that and there's no shame in you saying you know what this ain't for me that's good that means you're not going to lose money that means you're not gonna have imbalances in your life

that means that you're not going to hurt yourself both financially and psychologically because I did that I caused fiscal problems with an eating disorder I developed agoraphobia which was a fear of being around other people because I didn't want them to find out how bad I was losing and I wish I could go back in time and tell myself losing is normal it's acceptable it's part of the business transactions in this industry you're going to have losses control them over time you're going to make more money than you lose I didn't think that way when

I first started I was trying to avoid losing altogether and then every single loss was a paramount event like it was huge it was elevated to some grandiose painful just terrible thing that I had to been enduring when it's just when I did it wrong simple you made a mistake Michael and you're gonna make lots of them 27 years from now you're gonna have so many losing trades you're gonna look back so you know what it didn't kill me so be willing to lose a lot and early on in your development that's why you want

to do it on paper that's why you want to do it on demo because you need to see what it feels like to be wrong a lot and not have the money taken from you and then correct those problems before you put real money at work stay away from social media drains well in this age we have a lot of social media but back when I first started November 5th 1992 social media was just start not with message boards or bulletin boards they call them so it's kind of like Twitter or you know not so

much Instagram but I see like Twitter he just people would just communicate with open emails basically as the format was whatever you would look at and see that would be sent by the way of an email it would just be a open source where people could see what everybody was doing a message sport basically and I would get my feelings hurt back then because someone would say that's a stupid idea what you're doing and then when I was doing it right everybody was like man you are a rock star I'm taking that trade and I

was like yeah I don't know I'm making money now because he or she thinks it's a good trait that's stupid that was dumb I let other people back then influence my decisions or change the level of expectation I had on the trade because if they said yeah that's a good idea I think it's gonna go to 11:50 when I was looking at like 1080 I don't think of myself yeah they're probably right and now it changed my trade to what they're saying because man I don't want them to be right and me miss out on

that extra profit you see what that trap tested it took my trade away from me and now I took their trade who's in control there it wasn't me I'd let go on the wheel don't join trading clubs okay that means circles where everyone has the hive mentality because you need to discover who you are as a trader and it's very I guess wasteful for your time and it stunts your growth if you start going into a group that has well this is the only way of trading and this is all we do around here because

what you're trying to do is be part of that click okay you're trying to take on the hive mentality and it may not be suited for you but if you waste more time and unfortunately money you don't want to discover that you've been wasting your time and money okay so you want to be solo trading is a solo sport it's not a team sport no matter how good your guru or mentor is if you're doing everything they say you aren't in control you're growing codependent don't subscribe to alerts and gets back to signals you want

to be the source or generation of the trade ideas that way when you're wrong you're forced to assume the responsibility you can't say well I just listened to that person they were wrong they suck oh well what do you do about it well I'm gonna find somebody else that's not responsible that's gambling you're going to another slot machine at another casino that's all that is versus I want to learn how to play cards and manage my risk not bet too big and just be steady Eddie at the table you want to be the generating source

of the signals don't subscribe to someone else because you have no idea what got them into the trade you don't know what influences are being imposed on them maybe they had a bad day maybe they had just recently had a spat with their spouse and they feel like they have to feel good empowered I mean I'm gonna go through and just tell everybody to buy SP tomorrow at the open and if I'm right I'll feel good I'll feel better about this whole thing cuz they're human too do you want to be subscribing to someone that's

like that you don't know if that's what's going on they're not gonna come out and say yeah it's trade worked out but let me tell you what really was going on my wife told me I was a bum I spent too much time from these charts and I ain't spent any time with the kids and I ain't walked a dog in six months but I knew if I got this right I'd feel stronger about myself that never happens folks that never happens never subscribe to other people's alerts don't count other people's money that's what's popular

right now everyone wants to know how much money someone else has Instagram what cars do they drive what houses do they live in where are they having their vacation what did he wear what kind of shoes they have on did he wear socks what kind of underwear do they have what jewelry do they have come on all that stuff is a waste it's a waste it's a waste of your time it's a waste of money and you don't need all those things if you're trading to do that you're never gonna get there and I repeat

that if you are trading to live like that you're never gonna get there because you're looking at money and you're not looking at the process that's involved that would eventually lead to profitability so you're chasing that carrot that little piece of candy that's dangled in front of a child you may be a stranger but if you dangle that candy in front of a child what's the child gonna do reach out for that candy and that's what all these people do they dangle all this lavish toys and lifestyle materialism all of that is fluff I've never

done those types of things and it's important to understand that the reason why I don't do it it's not because I lack of it because I have all those things but it doesn't do anything to make you a better trader it doesn't make you a better student and will not in any capacity motivate you and then that translates into a greater skill set that's derived because you saw that it doesn't work like that but how many people fall victim to that everyone everyone the first of course I bought from Ken Robertson that's all he talked

about you wanna go on vacations you want to have enough money to quit your job you want to buy a yacht you want to live in a mansion that's what was sold to me and I bought that course and in my one trade the very first rate I lost 50% of what I put in well I can tell you that was never said in the book that didn't get talked about at all it just said well you can take some losses but you don't want your losses to be too big okay but what happens if

it is because options are a little bit different animal and I found out the hard way don't be enticed by other people's money don't count other people's money don't ask them what they make because you can't spend their money that's why I don't talk about what I'm making that's why I don't talk about what I have and that's why I don't show you what I own because you can't drive my cars you're not gonna spend a night at my house you're not gonna eat dinner all my dishes and you're not gonna be on my vacations

so what difference does it make it's not going to make me feel better about myself for doing it in fact I'll feel like a slimeball like I did when I was younger because I did that stuff to get people interested in me and it's not necessary don't feel insignificant by contrast when you see other people succeeding or supposedly succeeding don't measure yourself against that because if you do what you're saying is I'm only successful if I get to where they're at I did that and when I stopped and said you know what I'm gonna look

at a goal that's above everyone I've seen out there I didn't I didn't believe anyone else was more successful than Larry Williams and he took ten thousand dollars of 1.2 million dollars in one year actually was over two million dollars that same year in 1987 but the crash her and had to trade it back and got it to one point two before the close of the Robbins World Cup that particularly er and you can see he still has the highest percentage gain in net contests so I said I'm gonna make more than that because that's

what that was my measuring stick and I wanted to do better than that and I always lived my life with that in mind I didn't want to say well am I good as at the time Jake Bernstein which he got himself in a lot of trouble and it's questionable of how much money he actually made as a trader point is I fell victim to that in the beginning and you don't want to do that don't measure yourself against someone else don't measure yourself against me don't measure yourself against somebody else you see on social media

Instagram all that these people 99% of time are fake they are driving cars they don't own and they're in homes that they don't sleep in and the clothes that they have many times they're taking them back the next day you know what's that the and watches they're all basically fake all that stuff is it'll or to make you think they're successful if they're successful they'll prove it by showing you they know what's gonna happen in the marketplace but strangely enough that's the thing they don't ever do and that's what I focus on I've made a

reputation on telling you what I believe is the best in terms of market analysis concepts in 1996 I penned what everybody else is out there now touting as market-maker concepts in one capacity or another it's a watered down version of what I've put in lecture notes in 1996 when I started using in 1995 and proved with real money I started teaching one-on-one sessions and they have made their way through the internet over time and now we see even more of it people have worked books about it they've made courses about it and even included some

of the things that actually occurred in my personal life some of their narratives and it's all a lie they didn't have those experiences but I did and I'm the only one that can proved it makes this stuff work don't feel insignificant by contrast because the majority of the people you see out there they're fakes they're frauds and they aren't what they claim to be Matt your style to your personality this is something I picked up from Larry Williams who made a lot of sense in I avoided doing it for a long time I wish I

would've done it sooner but if you're a scalper okay you're gonna do very well if you make quick decisions and that's as simple as that if you hem and haw about trying to make a decision and you want to be a scalper a day trader it's going to be a problem and if you short-term trade typically you're the type of person that can take a trade and sleep while you're in it that that is a real good general rule of thumb if you can sleep while you're in a trade then you're probably a good short-term

trader don't force yourself into any mode there's gurus there's mentors there's people out there to educate and unfortunately they try to take everyone and press them into this mode this cookie cutter approach and it doesn't work avoid doing that don't try to copy someone their style their image their forte their approach their vocabulary you see where I'm going with this don't you so many people out there on YouTube now sound a lot like ICT don't try to copy someone be original make your own unique model don't change trading approaches stick to one approach one method

master it and then see how you work with it that means you're gonna have to spend some time with it most people don't want to do that avoid system hopping okay in the trap is if you take a trade and it loses okay that's reasonable but if you take another trade you lose that's it I'm throwing this away this is stupid just this method doesn't work I did that a lot and I went through all kinds of trading systems and that's the reason why I went through all kinds of trading accounts because I wasn't consistent

with anything except for system hopping that was my only consistency the baseline of my consistency was all around me not being consistent with one trading approach many traders fail with that every model loses you're gonna have to accept that I mentioned it earlier with a risk you can't avoid it it's part of the business treat it like a normal transaction when you go to work if you get sick you miss a day's work that's a loss did you lose your job No did you lose your house no did you have a little money that week

yeah that's life well that's how trading works losses are inevitable you're going to have them find your unique model and grow from it don't tweak it too much once it's profitable stick with it and then what you'll find is by using a more advanced money management approach if you have a method that gives you a delivered result that's measurable and it's consistent enough that it does it more times than it doesn't if you add impeccable risk management and money management to that you will become wealthy and the story there's no ifs ands or buts that's

the way it is but you cannot get to that point until you go through all these other steps that are very very boring admittedly but they're all part of the process settle on one trade set up initially determine your asset class pick one market asset class as the commodity it's an index future it's a Forex pair it's a cryptocurrency it's a stock whatever it is stick to that one asset class and inside that one asset class pick one market outline when you want to buy that means what's the criteria that you feel comfortable with when

it's a buy and then outline that and make it as detailed as possible put it on paper and the same thing with you when you want to go short what's the characteristics and circumstances that would drive you to believing it's a short and with that you want to build mini study journal cases notice I said not live trades with real money you want to have a study journal that has a plethora of examples of where this worked in the past and when it didn't and study them and it it great links it's that way you

get familiar with what it looks like by recognition and then when you see live price action you'll recognize as it forms now with all those things you have something to start with and now you can plan your beginning in part two I promise I won't be so long-winded in boring we're going to give some insights on how you can go into the marketplace and study a very particular thing and what that is is the optimal trade entry until talk to you then I wish good luck and good trading