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Spill The Alpha #24: Chatting Trading & Markets w/ @jonzitrades
Recorded: Oct. 2, 2025 Duration: 1:08:58Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored emerging trends in the market, including the resurgence of 2017-era tokens, the importance of strategic partnerships like Chroma, and the significance of risk management for sustainable growth in trading. With insights into fundraising initiatives and personal growth stories, the conversation highlighted the evolving landscape of cryptocurrency trading.
Full Transcription
Music Thank you. Music Thank you. I'm Thank you. Hey, hey, how's it going?
Let's do a sound check.
We can't hear you what's up man yeah for whatever reason on the my laptop it wouldn't yo what's good all good yeah spaces are still buggy as fuck like we've been doing this
for like two years now and it did it didn't get any better at any point it's still as buggy as it was on day one yeah but yeah how's it going mate how's
your day it's good i mean i'm off for um yom kippur because uh i teach so got a nice little
day off and then back to school tomorrow and then the weekend ahead can't complain hit the gym took
the dog out all as well that's
sick dude yeah yom kapoor is sick when i was a kid we used to ride the bikes around the
around world everything is empty um but yeah yeah we traded at all today or nothing much
uh i tried a short on btc around new york open took an l on that and i'm just calling it a day
for now i want to see potentially uh how we react on news tomorrow and then i think i'll position
but it's kind of interesting scenario with where we're at price action wise yeah i'm short from
like 43 50 or something like that oh on each yeah and we'll see what's gonna happen
with that hopefully you can close it in profit but i've had a i've had a hectic death i i had
this i think i had like a mini caffeine poisoning today it's kind of crazy oh my god drank four
double espresso shots and i had a pre-workout
before I went to the gym and then I realized
that I didn't eat anything today
still.
Yeah, that'll do it.
That fucked me up.
It didn't happen for me in a while.
But yeah, I took
a nap and I feel much better.
Bless here.
Yeah.
It's kind of crazy.
We have, in the last few days, we have Zcash, Litecoin, Verge,
like things from 2017 pumping hard.
So maybe it's the end of times.
I don't know about this cycle.
I mean, I've been thinking based on like previous ones, we'd top around October, but now I think it might about this cycle. I mean, I've been thinking based on previous ones,
we'd top around October, but now I think it might be later.
I think we're getting longer length cycles.
Yeah.
Well, we'll see.
We'll see how it's going to go.
I still think we have the four-year cycle
that many people think is not really a thing anymore but if
we follow that we should be topping at the end of october or somewhere in the beginning of november
so exactly that's that's gonna be interesting to watch gonna be fun fun i think it's gonna be
really i think it's gonna be a really fun quarter that's for sure. I hope so. I mean, Q3 was pretty solid.
I didn't have any issues with that.
Yeah.
But yeah, I mean, I don't know.
This Q3 was pretty boring for me.
Nothing too interesting as the beginning of the year.
But you do more macro trading, right?
Yeah.
I don't really trade low time frames.
And if I do, I just kind of...
I don't have an edge in low time frames um like it's not very certain that i'll be in profit if i trade
lower time frames so you know i still do it sometimes both to you know collect some data
and like try things out but you know just having fun and kind of like just staying interested in
the market you know what i mean gotcha yeah um well we can start
the show uh first of all i want to welcome all of our listeners to episode number 24 of spill the
alpha season two i think we've had like 80 episodes at this point which is crazy and uh today we have
johnsy with us huge thank you for coming man really appreciate it yeah thanks for having me i'm glad
to be here excited to spill the alpha.
Yeah, my pleasure.
If you guys don't know Johnsy, he is taking a part in Chroma.
I've been following Johnsy for quite a while now.
He's a great account.
A lot of information that's good.
Charts, stuff like that.
And occasionally trade ideas, I guess.
So you can give him a follow. I'm sure it'll be a good addition to your timeline.
As we know, we always bring on guests
that are worthy of follows.
So make sure to give him a follow.
I promise you, you won't regret it.
We'll discuss Chroma later as well.
We had followers on a couple of weeks ago,
which was fun.
We had him on a couple of times, actually.
So it's good to have more people from the Karma team on.
Love to hear it, yeah.
That's a good guy.
And yeah.
And before we jump into the questions and the show itself,
I want to mention Kuma again.
You can trade with up to 50x leverage.
And currently, we're giving out over $10,000 in rewards every single week.
So all you have to do is trade and get a piece of that pie.
And yeah, we'll touch more on that a little bit later we have some really really nice news um but yeah jonesy i want to talk about you first
i uh i want to know like i follow you for a couple of years now and you know i see you
posting trades and trade ideas especially on the on theoma Discord, which I'm taking a part of.
And but I don't really know much about you.
So can you tell us a little bit how did you get into trading and crypto?
Yeah, so it started for me back during COVID.
Probably was it like May 2020?
A bit after we had like that big nuke off the news of covid and everyone's sitting at
home and i was working in college just looking for another way to make money and i started looking
online i saw trading i started dabbling a bit with spot and then eventually i found out about futures
and went down that rabbit hole,
ran up a bunch of different accounts, blew up overnight a handful of times.
And then basically learned like proper risk management,
keeping that in check and basically grew my Twitter following from, was it probably 2020 to like 2022, just posting every trade I took live on Twitter.
And then from there, there Falls saw that and
he invited me to Chroma and then kind of the rest is history I started as just a member then got
talent role and then became an analyst and I've been working there for the past like three and a
half four years now yeah that's crazy how time flies have you traded at all before crypto or like mark crypto was your first markets type of
like you know steps so in high school I like dabbled with stocks as soon as I was legally able
to through like Robin Hood I think it had like just been launched so that was like my kind of
entry point but I wasn't really like, it was like pennies.
Basically, I didn't have a lot of money.
Yeah, first real exposure was probably crypto and starting to dive into technical analysis and watching all the big like YouTubers that I'm sure most people who first in crypto around
the same time, like MM Crypto, the Moon Carl, all those big like hype guys.
And then I realized like this retail stuff is
not for me um i found out about uh like more the ta that i trade with now through a guy called
mitch ray um he streams every day pretty much on youtube um and goes over crypto stocks and
i learned a lot of what I learned from him actually so yeah it's really sick man I I feel
sorry for you that you the first people you got exposed to is Moon Carl and stuff like that
um but yeah how long did it take you to like from the moment you started back in May 20
2020 I guess um until you you you started to feel like you're
getting the hang of things, you know, started to turn a profit, starting to have an edge and feel
like you're, you know, you're looking at a chart and you understand pretty much what's going on.
Can you just repeat the question and cut out for a sec? Oh, I'm sorry about that. I'm saying,
how long did it take you to feel like you're starting to get the hang of things like,
you know, starting to turn a profit, starting to just like kind of like looking at a chart and understanding what's going on.
Gotcha.
So, I mean, like for the first cycle for me, like I wasn't in the 2017 one, but the first one when I was buying spot, like I bought PTC at like 9K, ETH at like 200.
And like I did pretty well in terms of
exiting I think I sold the majority of my stack on BTC and like the 40ks and ETH around like I think
it was 2.5 to 3 ish so like I definitely didn't catch the top but my spot bags did well um I did
pay quite a bit of tuition to the market in terms of futures trading for probably like the first two years or so.
I definitely have moments where I would catch some really nice stuff, grind accounts up.
I remember back, I think it was October, I don't know if it was 2020 or 2021, when like mana and those types of coins were going absolutely insane, like 100% in a day.
I think one of those
november 21 yeah i was i remember one night i tried shorting mana and literally lost like 70
percent of my account in a single trade and like i was that was kind of like a huge pivotal point
for me in terms of risk management i was like had grinded that account up over like a couple months from
like i think it was like 1k to like 8k and then all of a sudden it was back down to like two and
i was like geez like i need to keep this in check so i would say probably around like took me about
like two and a half three years to consistently like start booking profits and have my risk
management in check um probably could have been sooner had I started really following risk management from the
get-go, but I feel like that's most traders who start trading have to kind of go through
that on their own to learn it.
Yeah, exactly.
I feel like this whole thing of growing an account up for a couple of months and then
blowing it up in one trade over 24 hours, that's kind of like a rite rite of passage thing you know like every single person has this happen to them at least once
and um and you just learn from it exactly beautiful i think you know it's kind of interesting i feel
like um when traders start trading in a bull market like you have,
and I have as well, I started trading in 2017,
I feel like it's kind of like healthy
because it's pretty universal where most of my guests tell me
that it took them about two years or so to get the hang the hang of things and at least become break even if not profitable and i feel like when you're trading
in a bull market it's very comfortable because your spot bags are basically funding your futures
accounts that are just constantly losing money exactly um which which might not be the healthiest
thing but as long as you're actually
you know doing the right things like actually going over the data and analyzing your trades
and mistakes and stuff like that it's it's just it's like the perfect scenario because doing this
in a bear market could be much much harder i feel like with bear markets, though, like going into what we saw after kind of the self in 2022 and everything that kind of like solidified basically trading both directions for me.
Definitely during the bull market, I was like longs only primarily.
And then once I saw like, OK, like you can make money shorting, too, that allowed me to kind of adapt.
And I think even like in the current bull market
we're in there's plenty of short opportunities it's just about matter of timing it right so
i'm never really one to like marry a bias either like bull or bear but i'll trade according to
what the chart shows me and the levels i'm at yeah 100 i mean this is not i mean obviously i do think
we are in a bull market overall but i wouldn't call this a typical bull market.
Like, I wouldn't say that we've had a single really solid period of up only kind of thing.
We don't really have the typical out season that people are expecting and waiting for.
We don't really have like, you know, days upon days upon days where everything is doing like
two x's overnight um so it is really this whole i feel like the whole past couple of years
other than like a few short periods have been really traders markets yeah i agree with that
i think since like the trad fi and like institutions coming in and
the etfs and all that like the market's definitely shifted its dynamic which is why i'm kind of
potentially looking at a longer like grind up and then before we see more of a downside move to
maybe like sub 100k again um but like you said it's definitely a trader's market i don't
think it's like the best for like big position trades where you're like betting on a low and
holding for like new all-time highs you're really just looking to play it level to level for now
until we really start breaking out again but that was something that kind of disappointed me
i know you'd mentioned like we haven't really seen those alts pop yet um there's definitely been some that have been going but it's like not the ones that people
are watching like it's a lot of those new like hot coins that get listed and then like two days
later they're up like 100 200 percent um i know that alpha team and chroma has been pretty good
about spotting some of them um and i was able to capitalize on a couple in september but yeah
definitely like a bit disappointing because i know i have some scenarios on other alts that
i'm like really hoping play out uh in the coming months but we'll see yeah i mean dude we we have
zcash doing 100 a day candle and like i haven't looked at Zcash since fucking 2019. Yeah, that's crazy.
I was wondering more about your personal life.
Like you've mentioned, you have a couple of days off because of a holiday from work.
So you do have a full-time job while you're also juggling trading and teaching on Chroma.
How do you balance doing both of those,
just trading alongside your daily routine?
Because I know a lot of people who listen to the space,
and in general, a lot of people in crypto do have a job.
And many find it really hard.
And also, a lot of people also say that you should quit and stuff like that.
What's your opinion about it and how do you juggle the two?
Yeah, so this is actually something I talk a lot about with people in Chroma and just in general.
I think the mindset of like you have to like make it in trading.
It has to be like your end all be all is maybe great for some people.
And I know there's a bunch of traders who do that.
And I all for it, if you can, I realized back in, I think it was like 2023 into like early 2024,
that that wasn't going to be the case for me. I'd always kind of envisioned potentially doing that.
But with how things were going for me, and like the pressure I put on myself with trying to make trading be the end all for like my financial outcome.
I realized that just wasn't conducive to like my trading and it was actually like net negative for me. and have like a financial stability with my job, then I can spend the free time trading
and making supplemental income,
which kind of sets me up for success later on in life
with having additional funds for whatever it be,
a car or a house or long-term savings.
But in terms of my job,
my day job's a middle school math teacher.
I've been teaching for, this is my sixth year.
I love it.
That's kind of like why I joined Chroma and wanted to kind of educate people there on
how to trade.
So with that, in terms of finding time to trade, I typically get to work like super
early, like 6 a.m.
I do all my lesson prep.
I get that done for the day.
And then any of my free prep time when I'm not actually teaching in the classroom, I get that done for the day. And then any of my free prep time, when I'm not actually teaching
in the classroom, I'm usually on Discord and Chroma, chatting with members, answering questions
or looking for trade setups. So I typically just execute during the New York session,
when I have the time. And then later in the evening, sometimes during Asia and stuff, I'll
look for potential scenarios for the next day and kind of get that ready to go.
So when I show up to the desk on the following morning, I'm set and ready.
So it's just a big, big juggling act of like filling pockets of free time in my day with either activity and chroma and or looking for my own trade setups.
Yeah. Do you see yourself sometime moving to doing this full time um i've thought
about it i mean for me it's tough right now i think when i forced it back in like 2023 2024
i was really trying i had a bunch of different like prop accounts where i was funded and i was
making some good money with that and there was like one or two that I blew. And then I would try to like, when the challenge is fast, and I would blow those and it just like
became almost too much pressure for me where it was like, Oh, if I'm trying to like force it and
make it then I'm like, overdoing my trading in a way versus like, when I'm just working and
focusing on the trades on the side. I find that a lot like when I'm just working and focusing on the trades
on the side.
I find that a lot of times I'm not always like jumping into a trade.
Like for example, today, like I took that short.
It didn't play out.
I'm chilling.
Like, we'll see what the PA does.
We'll look again tomorrow.
But in the past, I might've been continuing to trade, forcing stuff, taking losses.
So I think in the grand scheme of things, like in the coming
years, if I continue to make enough where then I feel like financially stable to the point where I
could do it and not feel the pressure, then I would consider it. But for now, I'm also very
happy with what I do in my day to day. Like I love teaching. It kind of fills uh meaning and purpose behind my life in terms of
being able to help others and not saying I can't do that by educating people with trading but
doing it in a real life capacity with kids and seeing their growth is very meaningful to my life
yeah that's awesome what do you teach uh middle school, so like fifth and sixth grade math. So a lot of volume, fractions, geometry.
A lot of concepts that I understand well and can explain well to kids.
But if you ask me to teach a trigonometry or calculus course, it might be a bit trickier.
Yeah, dude.
I used to love math when I was in college.
I really liked math but
But dude for some reason in high school, I was shit at
But yeah, I went to study engineering and then I dropped out after like two semesters, but like the first two went well
Well, at least yeah, had it going for you somewhat
Yeah, what ages do you teach?
5th and 6th so I think that's
like 10 to 12
usually
that's hard
some behavioral
stuff here and there
like this peak teenagers kind of thing
yeah
I love it, the kids are good
the class size I work with at my current school is very nice.
It's like 16 kids per class.
So it's very personable.
I'm able to meet their needs and support them.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, talking about education, you are taking a part in Chroma.
You're one of the teachers, I guess we could call it there.
And we did have followollison previously, but
maybe you can tell us a little bit more about Chroma
while we're on topic.
I guess it kind of like, correct me
if I'm wrong, but I'm guessing it really disconnected
well with the fact that
you're teaching in real life
and also you can do the same thing with something
else that you're good at and
have it like a side project
that you're putting effort into and stuff like it like a side project that you're putting efforts
into and stuff like that exactly yeah and i think that was like the thing that resonated with me
back when chroma first started um i saw false kind of advertising it as this like educational
trading community not necessarily like a signals group which i had been in in other discords
previously and it kind of interested me and I joined and I started learning
from other traders and sharing my stuff and false interest in that. And then I just kind of expanded
with that. And now we do some of the stuff we do in Chroma are weekly mentorship calls. So different
members of the team will meet one-on-one with people to talk through their trading problems and help them with technical analysis skills. We'll also do different streams or charting classes.
One of my favorites is I started back probably like three years ago. Every Sunday, we post a
list of tickers the day before on Saturday and what timeframes. So members will submit a handful
and then their homework is to
like show up with them marked up. And then we go through them in voice chat together,
sharing out our perspectives. They get feedback from the team and then they can see kind of how
they stack up against other analysis analysts for what they're looking at in their analysis.
But yeah, it's a really good overall trading community.
We have tons of educational material.
We're actually revamping the education section
to include more videos
and streamline kind of entry points
depending on where traders are
in terms of their learning level.
So yeah, it's a lot of work,
but it is also very rewarding because i'm now getting
to take my skills of trading and teach other people in a similar context to what i do with
when i teach students math yeah that's really awesome dude and yeah chroma is really great i've
uh taken a part in it a couple a couple of times in a couple of live streams and stuff like that
and just the whole team is just a bunch of chads so if anyone
interested in uh learning about chroma you can check it out i think in john z's yeah in john z's
uh bio yes um i was wondering it's actually interesting that you mentioned that you you know
you let your students uh you know share their own charts and you go over them. I think it gives you a lot of insight about like different market views
and like different ways that people can analyze stuff.
And, you know, from your experience of just, you know,
either from being just on CT or mentoring traders through Chroma
or even individually, what are the most common reoccurring issues
that many traders have and how do you
usually suggest they solve them?
Yeah.
So I think the big ones that I see are typically around risk management.
Traders risking like 5% or more on trades doing what's the other the other big one I would say is not journaling, which sounds kind of silly.
But the amount of data you get from journaling your trades and looking it back over for even like a month or two months.
Right. You record when you took the trade, what session, what ticker, what direction.
Right. You notice like for a month that, or even like a week in a month that
like all your shorts are getting stopped out. Maybe that should indicate you should change your
bias. Or if you're using certain confluences for setups, then you're seeing like certain things
are profitable. Use that as more of your system day to day. So I think like a lot of traders kind
of overlook that step because it requires that additional bit of work outside of just taking the trades.
But I've found for myself and for any of the people I've kind of mentored who've gone in and started doing the journaling, it's led to them kind of seeing their mistakes and being able to correct it and learn from it, which is ultimately the goal that we want for all the traders in Chroma.
want for all the traders in chroma yeah it's really awesome what would you say were your
biggest challenges and mistakes that you've had in your early days yeah so like i mentioned earlier
um i think the big deciding or big like pivotal moment for me was when i kind of blew up my
account overnight and there was like other times where I did it with smaller amounts.
But really seeing that big drawdown, realize like, okay, if I do not have my risk in check,
I'm literally just going to keep repeating the same problem over and over.
So that was something I had to shift.
And then through kind of using journals and recording my trades I could kind of see what's
working and what isn't um I feel like lately more so um the issue I sometimes have is the
incorrect bias which is obviously like 50% of like trading right you need the correct bias then you
need the right execution um but I think for me, yeah, risk management and then
I guess psychology somewhat, right? So like if I went on like a losing streak, maybe I
get a little flustered. I might like try to make it all back, which again, kind of aligns with
risk management. Um, but nowadays, like I don't really do that.
I have like a pretty solid system in terms of like, I only take two losses per day, max.
If I'm not feeling like in groove with the market, I'll typically sit out and wait until
I see something that kind of aligns with what I'm looking for.
for I think patience is a big thing it's a lot easier to sit on the side and not lose money or
I think patience is a big thing.
make money than it is to try to force trade and just lose money right no trade is sometimes the
best trade yeah 100% I feel like people really struggle including us you know at times looking at the charts even if it's like pumping like crazy
or dumping whatever it might be um and just telling yourself honestly i have no idea what's
next and just closing the chart it's really hard especially like you know if it's uh you know if
it's pumping and you see it all over the timeline and people are like flexing profits and stuff like that you know your ego just wakes up and you're like i need to be a part of this um but you know i feel like every trader
needs to get to a point where you learn to just tell yourself you know i have no idea like literally
i don't know and just doing something else um which is which is tough it's tough i always i
speak very often about uh you know fomo
jealousy and stuff like that on you know on some of my like mental state posts and stuff like that
because at the end of the day this is what ct is it's a cesspool of people
like sing and shit posting all day you're not wrong and you know you open this this is the only thing
you're seeing in front of you all day long you have no hobbies you have nothing else to do
um and and it's just gonna swallow you um so yeah that's that's partly also why i kind of like
like my day job and stuff is because i don't feel like I'm constantly on like X looking at posts.
I'm not always patching every single thing that's going on in the server.
But I also feel like then I'm kind of reducing a lot of the noise and able to kind of just hop in, execute when I need to, and then get out.
I'm not kind of over analyzing and getting caught in a rut.
Yeah, it's a really good thing.
I feel like every...
The thing is that I feel like that with trading,
patience is one of the most important skills you can have, right?
You need to just...
I mean, at the end of the day,
you're trying to take setups where people are at a weak spot.
You're trying to take advantage of some inefficiency in the markets.
And the markets are most of the time being efficient.
They are at some kind of balance.
And the amount of times you'll catch a market out of balance
is not really as often as you would want it to be.
You really need to, like you said,
you really need to just keep yourself busy with other
things and um and you know longevity wise it's gonna do so much good to you and which is one
of the most important things especially in crypto so yeah maybe maybe do get a job, guys.
Yeah, it doesn't help or hurt to pay the bills by one means or another.
100%. And like you mentioned earlier as well, it takes off this whole pressure of like, I need to make this and that much money this month to pay the bills, pay rent, pay the car loans, whatever that is.
Exactly.
Yeah, really big um i was wondering how have your trading strategies evolved over time are they similar to what you've been doing
earlier in you know back in 2020 2021 or did your style evolve over time and you're using tools and
you know methodologies strategies that you didn't in the
best yeah so definitely some of the stuff i use is still relevant um a lot of it shifted um as i
mentioned before most of what i learned initially was from the guy mitch ray um so the stuff i
learned from him was like ice lines which is basically basically like high timeframe support resistance levels using historical daily highs, lows, candle closures. Um, I started also with like MACD and RSI
divergences, your typical retail-esque patterns, cup and handles, um, head and shoulders,
all the type of, the triangle pendants, all that good stuff. And then I kind of shifted a bit away from that once like
the big ICT craze hit. And I started learning about fair value gaps and imbalances and equal
highs and lows and liquidity. And nowadays, like, my system's comprised of a couple main things.
The big one that's more used on the, like whenever I trade is always a
quarterly levels. Um, if you're not familiar with that, uh, trader day, uh, did a interesting video
on YouTube called, um, I think it's like introduction to quarterly theory, something
you shouldn't know. Um, he basically like broke apart ICTs, um's method of trading and showed how you can take any fragment of time.
So like a week, a month, a day, or even like micro sessions inside the days and split them into quarters where you have like your accumulation, manipulation, distribution profiles.
And then you have certain levels that get respected typically during those
sessions depending on the time frame um so a lot of different true opens based on that um i would
watch the video if this all sounds like jargon but um that's kind of my bread and butter is using
a lot of those quarterly levels quarterly theory um by trader day d-a-y-e um so that's like kind of my bread and butter i still
use ice lines a lot i don't really use much other indicators besides um i have like a special ema
indicator with like your typical multi-band one the 20 50 100 200 and then my secret sauce is I use the 2000 EMA, which sounds insane, but the hit rate on it is pretty good.
Especially like you can use on low timeframe, you can use it on high timeframe, but some of like the macro lows that we've seen, if you go back on like H1 or H4, we're just on likeluence with using that. And then the other key component for my system
is harmonics, which is basically Fibonacci ratios
to look at different M and W-shaped patterns
that create higher probabilities of reversals
at their pattern completion zones or the end of the harmonic.
All right, that's sick.
Dude, I haven't used F fibonacci in so long this used to be like my
bread and butter yeah they're pretty good even just like your basic ote like golden pocket stuff's
pretty reliable yeah 100 i feel like you know any trader should try all those things it's it's
really awesome.
And you'll just find what fits you best.
Well, that's what I also think.
When you first start trading, I definitely think try a little bit of everything and see what sticks and works for you.
I know people who use Elliott Wave who are extremely profitable.
I know people who use even the basic retail stuff who do great.
You're just basic trendline breaks and retests. But finding a system that works for you is the key thing and again you get that through journaling and having the data to look back on you know dude nowadays i use mostly i'll use a
lot of ict concepts and it's so funny because the guy is a total LARP you know oh yeah like he lost every trading competition
has been in he just cannot make have like a profitable trading account but his trading
concepts are so fucking good it's insane yeah it's it's funny how it works like that sometimes
which which which by the way I think it really shows that like most of trading is just the mental
side of things really just you know managing your position sizing managing your you know your limits
your your your temper things like that um more than the strategy itself yeah i would agree. I think also that you definitely need to kind of see how your analysis compares to others. Because one thing I've noticed during charting class is like, I might mark up a chart using like harmonics and a fair value gap and someone does stuff with like Elliot waves, but we get to the same sort of conclusion, which I always find is super interesting, right? We're using different tools,
but we're getting the same analysis.
And I think there's a lot of confluence there
with using that to your benefit.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
It really is because again,
like I'll sometimes speak to friends
who are trading low timeframes
and use really like footprints and stuff like that
as most low time frame traders like
micro time frame traders do um i don't i usually just you know use basic the most basic ta ever
and um and a lot of discretion as well um and we'll both have the same execution trades
and it's always like i said it's really fascinating for sure yeah
so yeah just just just do whatever you want find your thing we'll probably end up in the same
trades exactly um talking about the psychological thing uh the psychological aspect of trading
i was wondering how do you handle it um you know just dealing with the stress dealing with a losing streak dealing with
like huge wins huge losses or just challenging periods boring periods just everything that
goes under the psychological umbrella um how do you handle it and do you feel like maybe you
being so busy with having a full-time job is almost like an edge in that sense yeah um
to answer the most recent point yeah i
definitely think it's an edge i think that by not always being glued to the chart and trying to like
micromanage positions i think just letting them kind of like breathe and play out oftentimes is
net ev for me um in terms of just psychology as a whole, I think I developed a system where from learning
from experiences, how I react emotionally, depending on certain trade results has kind of
shifted how I will take trades. So like I mentioned, I only take like two losses per day.
Because I've noticed in the past if i
keep trading then i'm typically typically gonna like do something stupid i'll over risk i'll
take trades that i shouldn't be taking just because i'm trying to make money um and i think
that all that point of like you shouldn't be trading to make money yes that is the net result
that you're getting but you should be taking trades because
the technical reasoning behind it whether whatever system you're using aligns with what you're
looking for all right if you're just looking to make money off of it there's other things that
you can like do with your time i know it sounds that's a really good kind of convoluted but just
aim to have good trades and money money's just a side product in this game exactly like you you want to be you don't necessarily need to always be right um but you
need to be able to manage the risk and everything um but additionally i think the psychology
component is kind of like overlooked by a lot of people.
I think that's kind of where most people do blow up is because they're not like thinking
about that.
They're not managing their own expectations and executing around that.
I have a saying that me and my buddy always say in terms of markets, anything can happen,
nothing matters, right?
So like I have this bias
that i think btc is going to go back to 105k before we go to new all-time highs but for all i know we
could pump to an all-time high tomorrow right so i just kind of like uh adjust accordingly i don't
necessarily have too strong of an opinion one way or another. I don't necessarily marry a bias.
And I think the last other point in terms of psychology, like if I have a really nice winning trade for a day, like I'm done for the day. Like I close that chart out, I'm chilling because the
second I go back and take another trade and if it doesn't become a winner, now I'm trying to make
back the money I just lost, right? Because I've been up more, but now I'm trying to make back the money i just lost right because i've been up more
but now i'm down that and it's like oh well now i want to make it back so i think that's also a key
thing right if you catch a win hop out there's always another day ahead yeah how do you do that
um we've had the last couple of days a lot of memes about plasma and about other tokens that have been down
we have a lot of altcoins that are down bad that have been at least in the last couple of days
plasma is still down bad i'm underwater i just can't wait for it to pump to a dollar so i can
be breakeven how do you avoid marrying a bias and, you know,
just being able to switch the moment,
something that you don't like, you know,
seeing happens in the market.
I feel like this is a very big and common issue
that traders have where, you know,
just accepting a loss, taking the L, closing the trade.
Yeah.
So for me, I feel like it's two part.
One being that most of my trades are lower timeframe scalps. So I'm trading anywhere from like M1 to M15 for a majority of them. So those typically like, I just let rides either my target or invalidation aka my stop loss. I think if you're trading without a stop loss, you're silly, right? You're just potentially risking a major loss um but when it
comes to thinking about like your higher time frame stuff uh i typically have trouble areas so
if i'm in like a position and it pumps from entry like a long and it pumps from entry
and we approach like a imbalance or equal highs or something and it takes the liquidity,
I'll typically monitor the reaction.
And if it looks like it's going to start reversing, I'll go break even.
Because at that point, like if we're not able to flip that level into support, right,
the likely outcome is that we would come back down and potentially go lower and take me out.
So I'd rather reduce my risk, get out, break even, pay just like the fees and then move on to the next one.
Yeah, that's really good.
I was wondering, what advice would you give your younger self getting into trading?
And, you know, someone that might be listening to this show right now who's taking his first you know month or two in trading
um what advice would you give them or younger you yeah um that's a great one i think for me
would be like the first one would be one risk management like make sure you have that under
lock before you're really trading any sort of major funds um the second one being i would
definitely start with a smaller account.
Obviously, it should be something that will be like enough that you're content with making profit
on it. Obviously, like a couple pennies isn't really going to do much for you. But also enough
that if you take a loss, you'll feel a bit of the weight of it. Because I think like paper trading
in concept is a nice idea but when you
don't have any sort of risk you kind of have this skewed view of like outcomes and expectations
around trading um versus when you actually have money on the line you will typically
react differently so i think trading with enough that you can feel those emotions and
trading with enough that you can feel those emotions and respond accordingly.
But also if you pay the market tuition, right.
And blow the account or lose the money,
you're not going to be like absolutely bankrupt.
Right. So it's a little bit of.
Yeah, go ahead. Sorry.
I don't know. You're good.
I was just saying it's a little bit of like making sure you're risking enough that you feel it, but not enough where you're going to be wiped out if you lose the account.
So, yeah, 100 percent paper trading, like you said, it has benefits, definitely.
But nothing replicates the emotions you feel when your trade is underwater and it's really close to your invalidation.
But it's kind of starting to bounce and you're feeling that hope and then it's break even and you're thinking, should I close it?
Should I keep it open? Those things, you just have to feel them if you want to, if you want to,
you know, make sure you're ready for a bigger account. Now, you did mention risk management
as the first point that you would, you know, advise to others.
If someone is listening and he doesn't really have this framework of risk management, how would you advise?
Like, where do they start to build one?
Yeah.
So I think obviously there's a plethora of resources, especially in this day and age, that you can find online for free.
of resources, especially in this day and age, that you can find online for free. I'm pretty
sure Creed has a video that's quite a bit old, but a good video about risk management,
R2R, and profitability regarding trading. So I would definitely utilize whatever resources
you have access to. But in terms of just like my general approach with risk management,
typically on like a personal account on a centralized exchange,
I'll keep risk at like 1% or less.
Every now and then, if I feel really confident in a trade,
I'll bump it up to like two or three.
But for the most part, a majority of my trades are 1% or less
of like the total account balance because historically speaking, you're bound to go on a losing streak at some point.
I started September minus 10R, so I had 10 losses technically.
Before then, I ended up being, I think it was 53R in profit by the end of the month.
up being i think it was 53r in profit by the end of the month um so it's a bit about finding like
your happy medium with risk to reward and then adjusting accordingly with like your win rate and
your risk tolerance but i always feel like one percent's a good amount because then hypothetically
speaking if you had like a thousand dollar account you're risking ten dollars per trade you have a hundred trades before the account's gone so it gives you a solid buffer and you can obviously like raise and lower the risk as
you're growing or losing money on the account so it's always going to be at that one percent
um meaning like you should never technically lose the account as long as you're
making some sort of gains and upside movement.
Yeah.
There's probably people listening to this right now saying that,
you know, and I know this is like the classic Forex textbook,
you know, risk management strategies and stuff like that,
which is also very often you see it in crypto.
But a lot of people think this is like,
oh, dude, risking only 1% trade. That's
like nothing. I risk like 25% for trade. And I'm sure that you're heard this from some of your
students in the past. What is your reply to something like that? Well, my reply is typically
I follow up with a question of how many accounts have you blown up doing that? The answer is more often, usually a couple.
So I think that's like a huge thing.
And somewhere on my Twitter or X, whatever,
way back when I first started on X,
I was sharing trades basically and logged everything
for over 500 trades.
And I was able to using 1% risk.
I think it was the course of like a year, maybe a little more.
I was able to grow like a 1K account up to 8K, right?
Sharing everything publicly.
If it was a loss, I posted and updated after.
updated after. If it was a win, I updated after I closed or whenever I closed positions, I updated.
If it was a win, I updated after I closed or whenever I closed positions, I updated.
So I know it definitely takes time, but if you're in this for quick money, you're in the wrong
industry, right? Trading is not a sprint. It is a marathon. You need to make sure you're always in
the game because the second you don't have funds or you blow an account, right? You're out of the
game and then you can't capitalize
on it. So it's always making sure that you're not blowing yourself up, over-risking, right? And I
know that might mean you're not making those crazy profits that everyone else is, but if you're
profitable and you're consistent, eventually you will grow the account to a level where you're going to be making those amounts at your desired risk tolerance.
Amen to that.
Yeah, I think having a long term horizon in crypto is super critical.
Because like you've said, it's a marathon.
There is no point of rushing here.
It's not going to get you anywhere and
in such a volatile especially in such a volatile market um you really don't like you just wait
and you'll have those amazing setups you will make it no reason to like gamble it all away
it's uh you're not playing poker you don't need to all in exactly yeah because the downside is
then you're just like you you don't have any
funds you don't have any money versus the guy who might be making like small incremental gains
in like three to four years all of a sudden those small gains are sizable gains where now they're
able to do stuff with that money so yeah and again it's kind of like a combination of the fact that, you know, in crypto, it's very, by default, pushing you to very high leverage and very high risk taking.
You know, obviously, because platforms are trying to make as much on fees as they can and stuff like that.
But also because, like, a lot of people call themselves traitors,
but they're not really traitors.
They have charts in front of them.
They use some leverage, but they're just gambling pretty much.
I don't know who needs to hear it,
but if you're taking a trade on 10, 20x,
you're most likely gambling.
I think an interesting point of leverage um
and i'm sure i don't know fos mentioned this when he was on but leverage is simply just a tool
for you to maximize like the amount that you're able to trade with while silk like you can use
100x but then risk a smaller notional size right
you don't need to have mitigating third-party risks and stuff exactly yeah that's not how
people use it nowadays correct which is half the issue yeah um but yeah it is it is just how it is
um trading on high leverage is you know it can be fun sometimes I'll put you know sometimes I'll
throw a hundred bucks into an account and I'll just gamble it away but even even with me who
you know I I'm I'm reg like I'm regularly profitable I would say that I'm doing well
for myself in trading I I don't think I can turn a100 on like 100x to anything more than a zero.
But yeah, it is what it is.
I have one last question for you before we move on to any other remarks that you might want to add.
This is a question we ask all of our guests and really interested in hearing what's your take on it.
What do you believe making it is and do you feel like you've made it oh that's a good question um so obviously everyone's view of making it's going to be different everyone has different
like hopes desires dreams um if you asked me this question when i first got into crypto, I'd be like, oh, I'm fully like I'm not working. I'm just trading full time. I'm able to do whatever I want with my time.
for myself and my fiance and our dog and chinchillas and family and whatnot, and just
be able to support ourselves and set ourselves up for success in the future.
Start saving for a house, start saving for other big expenditures.
But I think I've kind of reached, I think there's always going to be opportunities to grow and learn and
adapt to the market. And I don't think that's ever going to stop right the second you stop doing that
the second you start like losing it in terms of like your edge and being able to adapt. But for
me, I feel like I've made it in terms of having that revelation and how I view my experience with trading and what I want to get out of it.
Obviously, I have financial goals that I am looking to aim for and hit in the coming years.
But I am very happy with where I am in life.
I have loving family, friends.
I have a lot of hobbies outside of
trading. I'm a big gamer. I do trading card games. I do other sports and go to the gym,
right? And I think having that other aspects of your life besides trading be pivotal points in
your life is really the key thing, right? Because trading, you could be a
grade A trader, but if all you're doing is sitting behind a chart all day and trading and doing
nothing else, like what, what are you going to look back on in like 10 to 20 years, if that's
all you did, right? You want to be able to live and have these other life experiences. So I think
for me, like, I've made it in the sense that i've come to that realization of what i actually want
to get out of trading in my life but i will always have goals that i'll be striving for in the future
yeah amen to that um i feel like it's really it's a common thing in in a lot of people who are
involved in markets and many people that are involved in markets, especially in crypto, both because a lot of people don't want to off ramp and deal with banks and
stuff like that.
That's the first thing because they don't want to do taxes as we've seen
with the thread guy in the last couple of days.
But also just,
you know,
a lot of people at the end of the day for us,
money is like the tool we use to make more money.
Right.
And a lot of people are, well, I've experienced it myself.
Maybe a lot of people are experiencing it as well.
I don't know.
But I remember that for me, cashing out was a little hard because I was like, oh, dude, I want my balance to drop so hard.
And, you know, me reducing my trading size, which is a tough ceiling to break but uh but you
should and eventually you do but i think the opposite side of that is also like it's not your
money until you've taken the profit and put it in the bank right because it's not real until it's
in your bank 100 exactly it's you know i i really feel i think i tweeted about it like a
year ago where i told uh i said like every that i think every trader in crypto needs to withdraw
a large sum of money to his bank not even permanently just like deposit it to your bank
and then put it back into the exchange it doesn't matter but just do it to feel once in your life like
once you see it in a bank account and you know that you can just you know go to the bank and
withdraw it and everything you make it real for a moment right not stable coins not crypto not
eith whatever um it's just it becomes real and i feel like a lot of people once they experience
that it's almost like addicting to to have real money at your disposal instead of just crypto that, you know, that can cause you some problems.
Yeah, I'm going to be honest with that point.
Like typically if I hit like a really banger trade, I'll take out like 20, 30 percent of the profit, just withdraw it straight to the bank.
Boom, paid for groceries for the week, paid for a nice shopping expenditure.
And then you pay the taxes at the end of the year,
you're going to pay taxes anyway,
like if you're working a job.
It's no different.
But yeah, I think that is a huge thing
and something a lot of people should, like you said, do.
Yeah, 100%.
I do this every quarter, basically.
I try to do this every quarter basically um i i try to do it every quarter um and yeah it's really nice i feel like it makes it feel like a real job when you're kind of like taking
salaries or dividends whatever you want to call it um and yeah one last thing johnsy is 10 million
enough to retire hell yeah i mean for me like my lifestyle dude i
like i don't i'm not a fancy car guy i'm not a fancy watch guy i have an apple watch i drive a
honda like i'm i'm not i'm not super frugal like i like spending money on like nice meals and or
like like i'm at the grocery store i'll buy the name brand stuff like i i think
you should do what makes you happy but i think having like a materialistic view on life is not
gonna make you any happier than the hobbies or interests that you like put money into and for
some people that might be big cars and fancy stuff but just not my style yeah i think
this meme is so dumb because like dude seriously if you can't retire with 10 million you're never
gonna fucking retire like legit 10 million is so much fucking money it's insane i spend like
on on an unusual month without a vacation or something i can't even imagine
myself spending more than like five grand yeah and i leave i live nice i eat out like every second
night um but yeah anyways maybe it's because i don't have kids and stuff like that yet um
but yeah that's pretty much it from me johnsy uh is there anything else you want to add
um not really i mean like i'll share one uh kind of chart that i'm interested in outside of crypto
that i think could be a good bet as a uh kind of play for the rest of this cycle um is there a way to share charts in or messages in this
um did you post it um on twitter i think i've posted it before let me quick see if so dm you
it and then um but then you know i can pin it the one i'm looking for or looking at is riot i'm sure you've heard of it before
it's a stock yeah um so it's a crypto mining stock that i just sent you it uh from the previous
from august yep yeah yeah so okay in the previous cycles right we had the 2017 into 2018 cycle, we peaked at around $48-ish.
Then the 2021, the first high around $60,000-ish, we peaked at around $80.
Then the second time we made the actual all-time high was lower.
We've been consolidating sideways for like two
and a half years and there is a big monthly imbalance up at a hundred dollars right so my
whole thing is like inflation right price go up things more expensive i bought some at what was
it 14 10 um i shared it as a trade setup in Chroma. I'm looking for $101 right before the monthly
for value gap for 16R, which would be a 616% gain on a stock. We're currently at $19.58. So it's up
about 50 or 40%. But I really think when things really start to heat up and we eventually see like
some crazy runs in crypto, this thing's just going to melt up.
Um, will we go to the 101 monthly for value gap target that I have?
Maybe, um, my whole thought is that like, we've just continuously made higher highs,
um, each cycle.
So I think there's a good chance.
Um, I posted it with a boomerang emoji.
I think it's just going to kind of like with a boomerang emoji. I think it's
just going to kind of like whip up and make a new higher high. So that's something that I'm looking
at. It's also crossing a key ice line that I have at 19.20. So if we see a weekly close above this
level, I think like the next couple of weeks, you could easily see it melt up to 40. And then from
there and really start to go crazy. So it's an alpha there um i think like as long as the crypto market's still looking good that's
kind of my big stock play i have another one but i'll keep that private because it's a chroma
setup but yeah join chroma if you want more alpha yeah right crazy how this year stocks have been doing way better than crypto, especially like crypto related stocks.
Yeah, there's been a lot of ones that just go absolutely ballistic.
I know Nvidia is at all time high today.
And then there's been, I think there was one called Open.
I forget what it does.
It's a, hold on,'s the little blurb about it
buying selling and trading of residential properties online so imagine like carvana
for houses um i don't know if you have seen the carvana chart from basically covid till what carvana is so carvana is a company that uh sells cars basically
you can like buy and sell cars they basically like come pick it up and then they have like
kind of like warehouses and then bring your trailer thing yeah they'll like bring it right
to your door and you just sign for it that sort of thing thing. But we bottomed out in end of 2022, early 2023,
around $3, what's the low?
About like $4, and it's up at $400 right now
in about two and a half years.
And Riot is nice.
Well, yeah, Riot would be nice.
It's slightly different context,
but I think if you're looking for a similar sort of
bet in terms of that
type of consumer product
but with houses open would
be another one I'd keep an eye on
alright there you go
there's your piece of
actionable alpha
well that's
brilliant thanks for sharing me
I don't have any Riot
I might buy some Riot
and if there's no if it doesn't go well
just DM Johnsy for
refund yeah
not financial advice
DYOR
yeah exactly
well that's pretty much it from us, guys.
Thank you so, so much for coming and listening to both of us blab and talk around.
John Z, thank you so much for coming, mate.
This was a pleasure to have you on.
Thanks to you so much for having me, Delta.
I appreciate it.
And hope all you who are listening got a bit of alpha out of it.
At the end of the day just have fun
don't take it too seriously but
keep risk and check
100%
make sure guys to give John Z a follow if you want to hear
more from him if you want to see more charts
and more trade ideas and if you
want to see and hear even
more from him you can check out
Chroma Trading and
also get some information from flawless
and all the other analysts on there uh maybe someday we'll have like a chroma episode and
just bring all of you guys on that can be fun um and yeah that's pretty much it guys thank you
so so much for coming uh there will be updates for future episodes on my profile and on the kuma profile
uh and regarding this episode a recording will be live once we finish this episode and there
will be notes on my profile on monday around us open shout out to manuel our back-end producer
taking notes as uh as we chat on around here um and yeah, that's pretty much it.
Last but not least, huge shout out to Kuma
for making these episodes happen.
You can trade up with up to 50X leverage.
We're currently giving out over $10,000 in trading rewards
every single week, and all you need to do is trade.
And while you're trading, you're also going to gather
raffle tickets for our weekly raffle of $1,200 in rewards.
The more trading volume you do, not only you get a bigger piece of those $10,000, but the more raffle tickets you'll have.
We also had last month more than 25 listings of new pairs to trade.
And you can join the Kuma Discord and let us know what markets you want to see next, because we will be adding more markets to trade.
And last but not least, vaults and the points program are on their way very, very soon.
And I think it'll be really, really awesome.
We've been working really hard to bring you those vaults that everyone wanted,
and most importantly, a points program, juicy one as well.
Make sure to check out the kuma pinned post for
more information on that how to farm it and etc we will be releasing all of that uh in pieces
really really soon and um yeah that's pretty much it johnsy again thank you so much for coming mate
we'll chat around maybe make another episode happen someday awesome thank you again all right see you guys have a great
weekend and um yeah see you guys next week bye bye
