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Spill The Alpha #4: Range Trading 101 & Tariffs w/ @docXBT
Recorded: April 17, 2025 Duration: 1:15:09Space Recording
Full Transcription
Thank you. Hey, hey, how's it going?
Hey, hey, how's it going? We can't hear you, Doc. Thank you. Hello, hello.
Yo, yo.
Yeah, I can hear you now.
Yeah.
Twitter space is classic.
Yeah. I was thinking for a second. If it's bugged and it's just me that can't hear you now yeah twitter space is classic yeah i was thinking first it's bugged and it's just me that i can't hear you no no we're good we're good it uh it actually was my fault it
was auto connected to the macbook instead of the uh microphone yeah yeah yeah it's uh it's actually
like yeah it's just horrible i complain every single episode we make because like even with me
i have like the
microphone setup and everything and sometimes it just automatically uses my airpods and then you
gotta go like tinker settings and stuff yep yep yep yeah i thought it was i don't know i thought
it was spaces at first but yeah i went through the microphone settings and it was on me so yeah
i'll take responsibility there oh good what's up mate How was your day? Yeah, not too bad, bro.
Thank you for inviting me on, first of all.
I know you've been doing these basses for a while.
I listened to a bunch of them back
in the day, so it's kind of an
honor to be invited on and speak with you, man.
It's my pleasure, my honor
to have you on, mate. Good to have you on.
And yeah, thanks for
doing this. Thanks for coming. I wanted to
learn more about you, and I'm sure a lot of for coming i wanted to learn more about you and
i'm sure a lot of people will be happy to hear more about you as well so it's gonna be interesting
yeah let me uh let me actually retweet real quick make sure oh yeah no worries we can give it a
couple of minutes for people to join in the market has been so boring this week it's just insane yeah i think i think we're all in the kind
of just break one way you son of a bitch right just stuck in this like four or five day value
yeah it's also just all of us have just gotten used after the last two weeks to just get used
to you know the crazy volatility and suddenly it's just gone yeah yeah i mean uh i love the initial
burst that you get from any kind of range break like we were holding above uh 90k for so long
um and then a big breakdown that we got i think it was early february i remember i can't remember
the exact date but that the v-shaped rebound that was like aided by trump that the sunday move that was phenomenal
yeah yeah yeah i missed those that was really fun that was a really fun trade yeah um but yeah we'll
chat about all of that i think you can just uh jump ahead let me just say hi to everyone first
of all to all of our listeners thanks for uh joining us for another episode i think this is uh episode number
four of uh the second season of spill the alpha um and yeah we hope you enjoyed this episode doc
again thank you so much for coming and doing this pleasure to have you on and uh for everyone who
if you don't follow doc i think uh doc oh yeah doc is currently private, but you should request to follow.
And I think Doc is a fantastic addition to any timeline.
If you don't follow him, give him a follow.
Fantastic setups, fantastic ideas about markets,
and a lot of educational content,
which we actually don't see a lot nowadays on CT.
So it's good to have that on the timeline.
So if you don't follow Doc,
make sure to give him a follow. Appreciate that, man. Yeah. I've been trying to clean up the feed a little bit. I got a little heavy with the shit posting, especially I think like December,
January, you know, when markets is just going wild, it's very hard to just be the guy with the,
the objective analysis every day and not not fall into the trap of just just
having fun on the timeline which honestly magus is in the audience and he was one of the guys that
told me early on he's like dude you're you know you're grinding on youtube and discord here and
there just like have some you know have one avenue to have a little bit of fun so i decided you know
uh twitter would be that place for me sometimes yeah 100 i mean if it's got my feed nowadays is almost only shit posting with
like the occasional once a week post related about markets and stuff like that um and i don't know
it's just for me it's hard not to i mean especially someone like you you've been around longer than i
have right so it's like it's hard to just be all business all day, every day,
you know, and not just have some fun sometimes, especially in the environment, like right now,
where we're just ranging in the same couple percent, you know, bracket for the last week.
I feel like it's, I mean, you really need to be into being an educator, right? And I'm not. So,
you know, at a certain point point because i feel like once you're
trading for a couple of years and you already start having your system set up right you already
know what you do you don't really deviate from it there's only so much you can really write long
form posts and like educational posts about i feel like yeah um so like at some point you just
like i don't know for me for, for example, I just have my
highlights on my profile where I just pinned all the important stuff I ever tweeted.
And that's it.
I don't really find anything else to write about.
I just retweet all the things every once in a while.
And that's it.
Yeah, I think the most fun that you can have teaching or educating or sharing is when you're
also learning yourself and growing yourself because you get these light bulb moments every once in a while where something clicks for
you and you just kind of want to share it with everyone and be like, look what I did. And you
know, it's like when you're a little kid and you have an A on your test and you give it to your mom,
she puts it on the fridge, you know, in the beginning, that's very exciting. But after a
few years, you're like, mom, get the shit off the fridge. Like that's very exciting but after a few years you're like mom get the shit off the fridge like that's cringe you know uh there's only so many times you can share the same setup before
you yourself get bored of it and you're just like dude you guys get it you know yeah and if you don't
i can't help you but yeah it's pretty spot on um well just before we start jumping into the
questions i want to remind everyone that on the bottom right corner, you have a chat box icon.
You can click on it at any moment and leave any questions you have to dock.
And we're going to touch on them right before we finish the episode.
And yeah, one last thing is thanks a lot to Kuma for hosting this platform.
If you haven't tried Kuma yet, make sure to check out their profile and give it a
try it's now live on bear chain you can trade with up to 50x leverage uh currently we're giving out
fifteen thousand dollars every single week in trading rewards and you can claim them daily so
there you go no need to wait for any airdrops or stuff like that just go ahead to kuma start
trading and start making extra profits on a daily
basis um and on my profile there's a referral link as well if you want to have 10 off fees
um so let's jump into the question so first of all doc i you kind of popped off like you just
appeared one day i remember on my timeline and i saw your profile um just out of nowhere with like
i think you already have like 10 000 followers or something so i don't really know a lot about I remember on my timeline and I saw your profile just out of nowhere with like,
I think you already have like 10,000 followers or something.
So I don't really know a lot about your background.
So tell us a little bit about that.
How did you get into crypto?
Yeah, I think 100%. So I think my story is probably very similar to a lot of other traders,
which is getting involved in the markets right around the COVID crash, right?
The whole world heard about COVID and markets and everything like that. And it was
very loud. Nothing else to really talk about because everything was closed. I was studying
medicine at the time. So the doc name isn't just a funny little meme for CT. Actually went to
medical school. I was studying for my boards at the time and doing my internship. So I had two rotations left and I couldn't go back to school.
So I went home to my parents' house and I couldn't go back to school because of flights, problems, visa issues, all this kind of problems that were happening.
And I had boards that I'd planned in April.
in April. So those got canceled. So because of that, you know, like studying boards,
So those got canceled.
you have to have everything at like the, you know, pinpoint perfect. And I knew that if I took
a two month break, that I'm at the study everything again, or I have to keep studying
every single day for these next two months, like I'm preparing for the exam next week.
So I just kind of took a step back. I'm like, I'm exhausted. I've been doing this for five years.
Like, I'm just going to push this off like eight months right that was my plan anyways and at
the exact same moment my friend hit me up and was like dude stocks are crashing you know i've always
wanted a portfolio right and he said this funny word and i thought it was funny at the time right
the word portfolio he's like i want to buy some stocks so long story short one thing led to another
you know the classic thing about money you're always chasing risk chasing the fastest money so when you know the first rebound was banks and airlines and
then it went to spacks and then it went to spac warrants and then the gme thing happened and then
it was crypto right so one thing led to another over the course of the year i landed in crypto
got involved the first thing I did,
I was watching Bitcoin and whatever on Robinhood. And I remember buying the Pico top in like August,
I think, 2020. And then it nuked like a week later. And I was like, what am I doing? Why am
I buying this dumb shit? I don't know anything about this. So I sold it for a loss. And then
I watched it rally from like 10k to 20k i was like
what am i doing so like i wanted to get involved in crypto i already knew that and i think
thanksgiving morning it dipped from like 20 to 17 20 to 16 and that's where i bought for the first
time um and fast forward all the way to may um obviously i don't know what i'm doing i don't
know how to call tops i don't know how to read like Like a top is coming. So I got wrecked on that.
And that's where I spent the entire summer learning about crypto.
I was like, do I actually, like I'm up still on Bitcoin.
I'm up on Ethereum.
Do I want to hold these things or do I just want to like forget about this completely?
And keep in mind, I went back to, you know, doing medicine at the same time, finishing internship, finishing boards and all this.
And then, you know, I realized I really,
I really enjoy the ideology behind Bitcoin, right? I learned a lot about economics that summer
and I wanted to stay involved and I wanted to trade better. And I felt like I had something
approved to myself because I got wrecked in May. So I did some things just a little bit better for
that double bubble part. But again, December 2021, I was complete
left side Dunning-Kruger. I was like, oh, I got it all figured out now. I know everything. I know
how markets work. Were you already trading perps then? No, I wasn't. Just spot. But I opened myself
up to buying alts and stuff like that. And December 4th, again, I i got humbled i was like i couldn't see the top coming and went from what
58 to 43 in a couple days um and that was a moment that i took very personally um emotionally like
it hurt really bad to have my ego so inflated and just get wrecked like that twice and i saw i was
following you know exo and magus and all these other guys that were calling tops at the time i
was like what am i doing wrong and and I actually made a decision for myself. And going
into 2022, I was like, I really want to do this. Like, I've had more fun the past year trading than
I ever did when I was doing medicine. And that was something that I was like debating all of 2022.
And I made a decision for myself, like middle of 2022, like, I want to do this full time.
I want to take this completely seriously.
So that was kind of like the start of the journey.
I'm sorry that I rambled so much.
I probably tell the story so many times.
But yeah, that was like the origin story of how to get in, you know, how I went from
from medicine to crypto.
And it was just for me as a competition, right?
Like I couldn't handle losing.
I couldn't handle being the dumb guy in
the room and then being the bag holder. And I really just wanted to win and I wanted to prove
to myself that I could do it. So I was just, I was just obsessed. Right. And I was like,
I couldn't get it out of my head and I have to be a trader. I have to trade. So, um, somewhere in
2022, I was just like, I got to do this full time and completely obsessed, right? 18 hours a day,
you know, the stereotypical sit in your boxes all day, don't shower for like two days, don't sleep, you know, sleep with your
phone in your hand, all of that. Falling asleep on your chair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. My phone
in my hand, like looking at, you know, trading view on my phone, wake up in the morning.
It's actually crazy. Cause I remember like, I was talking a couple of days ago too. We were just
like with all my friends and stuff sitting and chilling.
And I was telling them how crazy it was back in like 2020, 2021 when it was just all work.
All I didn't get off my chair, didn't leave my office, like everything, like just disgusting, ordering food every single day, not hitting the gym, you know.
And I'm actually so happy I'm not hitting the gym, you know, and I'm actually
so happy I'm not there anymore.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That was me throughout like the whole journey.
I've just kind of been fixing the work-life balance probably the last eight, nine months.
Nice.
That's good.
It's really important, I feel like.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So from, yeah, go ahead.
No, I was going to say there's only so long you could
do that before you just wake up one morning and you're just like what who is this piece of shit
yeah there's only so long you can do it and i feel like there's a time to do it right because
like if someone will tell me that he did that right now like in the last two three months so
tell him like you're just wasting your energy like what the fuck are you doing um but you know if we have a trending market i feel like there's a time and place for that right
yeah um so it's okay so you started you realize you're competitive and you want to you know push
yourself into it and how long did it take for you to feel like you're starting to get the hang of
things you know just starting to turn a profit and was there just a pivotal moment that just made you
realize okay not only that i want to do this for a living but i can do this for a living
yeah there was two kind of light bulb moments in 2022 one was i think summer when i finally
started to understand the market and i could you know i was a good analyst you could say not a good
trader but a good analyst i could kind of figure out which direction the market's going on a week to week basis. Couldn't trade it that well, but understood
it. Right. So that was a big light bulb moment for me. And the second moment was when I started
dialing back the amount of setups I was taking. I went from being a guy that had like, you know,
10 things, right. I was basically trading like ICT style, right. Liquidity sweeps, breakers,
order blocks, stuff like that. And I was just, okay, there style right liquidity sweeps breakers order blocks
stuff like that and and I was just okay there's a setup let me take it there's a setup let me take
it and then when I went to like the data collection mode of wait a minute this one setup has much
higher win rate if I just don't trade anything else and just trade this one setup I can probably
continue to just turn a profit over time and I did that right around the merge rally in 2022. That was the
first moment for me where I ran up an account and I was just taking that one setup. That was what I
realized. I'm like, I'm just going to take the SFP into the supply block for the 2R trade again and
again and again and again. So that was the first time that I felt like, okay, I can do this.
I have the ability to do this, but is this one setup going to take me to the promised land or do
I need to start adding more kind of arrows to the quiver? And that was when I started expanding.
I got completely outperformed by everyone on the merge rally. I remember, you know,
Awawat and Hasaka and all these guys nailing the merge rally, Pierre,
CBS. And I was like, what am I doing shorting for two R moves when ETC, Ethereum Classic is doing
30% pumps, right? And that was when I started adding the trend trading, which is what I think
a lot of people know me for is I started learning that towards the back half of that year,
implemented it well and
got very lucky that we went into a trending environment immediately q1 2023 so i would say
you know to answer your question it took it took a little bit i'd say like six months to go from
um basically no lifing um and trying to figure out the market to being a good analyst to to
finding a setup that worked for me consistently.
But I think,
I think you actually did it the right way.
Like,
like finding one thing you're really good at and just focusing on it until you almost perfect it.
And,
you know,
at least it gets you profitable and,
and then you can start,
you know,
experimenting with other things,
finding new strats and stuff like that.
I feel like that's really important yeah i think um no go ahead yeah go ahead i was just gonna say like
you know in in sports basketball tennis anything you can't get away with being a one trick pony
you can't just be like a serve bot or a big forehand you're gonna get exposed but the unique
thing in markets is you can actually just dial in one thing and do one
thing well, and just not care about the rest of the market and wait for the mark to play
on your terms and execute because no one's forcing you to do anything.
You're in complete control.
So I think the easiest path to profitability for anyone that's just starting off is to
dial dial it into, first of all, all what you enjoy like what inspires you to
wake up in the morning and look in charts doesn't matter what system you use and then number two
within the confines of that system find one thing that you see happen enough on the charts that you
can get enough reps with right and you can just work on that one thing yeah 100 and again the
benefit of having at least one thing you're good at that you
already worked on you know almost perfected it or whatever uh which will obviously still take time
and a lot of effort is i remember salsa was talking about it a lot where the first two or
three years of his trading were negative right he couldn't make it turn a profit for three years
and the only thing that held up
him like his whole portfolio was his spot strategy that was basically funding all of his perps losses
um so i feel like you know i feel like that's one of the biggest issues i see a lot of people having
which is just you know shooting too many darts at once yeah um and not really looking at their
journal you know understanding what are they doing best
and then trying to focus on that for a little bit.
Yeah, 100%.
Yeah.
So what do you feel were your most significant mistakes
or just general challenges that you've had
in your early trading days?
And how did you overcome them?
I mean, it was recognizing that I was my worst enemy when it came to executing
um that i didn't have patience to wait for entry triggers um i would do a thing repeatedly where
price would come near where i wanted to to get involved and i would front run my entries and
i'd just be like okay i'm just gonna enter with 30 you know the rest will fill eventually but i
really need to be in this position and then i would get filled and I'd go underwater and then I'd take a bigger loss than I needed to,
right? Then the actual trigger would set up. So I was basically just doing this thing where I had
a lack of patience. I would want to execute at a certain price or a certain level. Um, and I would
get in my own way. Yes, exactly. 100%. And, and it took a while for me to recognize that I was even doing that because I would run away from it. I would get upset. I would get tilted. I would get very angry and I would just run away from it. Not want to think about it and just be like, okay, new day tomorrow. Let's try it again. Make the same mistakes. I did this forever until I actually started journaling. And what journaling for me was just piece of pen and paper and write down the things that piss you off. Like, I'm doing this and I'm dumb and I'm doing this again and I'm dumb.
And it got to the point where when those moments came in the market, instead of actually focusing on the execution, my brain was thinking like, I don't want to write in my journal tonight that I'm dumb, right?
So it actually worked out in a funny way.
It was just that self-reflection of knowing where my leak in my game was. And all I have to do to avoid that is just not get in my own way. Right. If I don't get the setup, I don't get the setup. I don't get the trigger. I don't get the trigger. Right. It's OK. It'll it'll appear again, maybe tomorrow.
And that was the biggest hurdle for me.
And it actually took a while.
Like that was a brutal time.
That was in summer 2022 as well.
And yeah, I think the number one thing
that helped me get over that
was the self-reflection angle
of just writing down a piece of pen and paper.
No matter what happens, no matter how I feel,
I gotta sit down with my thoughts
at the end of the day
and write down either the mistakes
or maybe something that I figured out
on the day. And it wasn't actually long after I started doing that, that the profitability began.
It's actually tied in to the previous story I was telling very hand in hand, because I was able to
reflect that this setup's working for me and these other things aren't. And it only worked out because
I was writing it down. Yeah. And it's crazy how many people say the same exact thing and how many other
people still think that journaling isn't really going to change anything yeah I mean again like
to use a sports metaphor if you're playing a sport you have a coach right and you can't see
things you're doing yourself but the coach gets gets to watch you from third person and be like, you're doing this and they'll tell you. But with trading,
it's just you and yourself. So who's watching you? It's like no one. So how are you going to know
what you're doing? Because when you get tilted, you don't want to think about it's human psychology.
You just don't want to deal with bad feelings. So you'll run away from it, eat a tub of ice cream,
watch a movie movie whatever you're
gonna do and uh you know sitting down with your thoughts and actually thinking about the things
that make you feel bad helps you i think grow as a human being yeah 100 just being accountable for
your actions and actually you know dealing with them and not just running away from them like you
said yeah yeah really big thing so okay so once you started to just get the hang of things and everything,
how do you feel that your trading strategies evolved over time?
Are there just any specific methodologies and tools that you utilize nowadays
that you didn't in the past?
Like I know that you're really focused on trend trading and range trading.
How did that evolve in your in your experience yeah there's actually
been a lot of iterations of the way that i've traded you know on time frames on tools on systems
um like i mentioned earlier i started with the ict kind of mindset i watched his uh
mentorship in 2022 i watched a lot of trader xo streams so i was trading ranges and liquidity
um and then i recognized quickly like hey you're trading crypto man you're not looking for these I watched a lot of Trader XO streams. So I was trading ranges and liquidity.
And then I recognized quickly like, hey, you're trading crypto, man.
You're not looking for these quick reversion trades.
You're looking for these massive moves.
Do you have any ability to extract 70% of a trending move?
And I said to myself, obviously I don't, right?
The merge rally was a big moment for that.
So the best trend trader that I knew that I followed at the time was Pierre. And I was like, okay,
I'm planning. I got to go learn from Pierre. I got to learn how he's taking these trades.
And it was after FTX that I went to learn from him. Nothing was going on in the market. It was
like Litecoin, GMX, and I don't even remember. I think ApeCoin were the only three coins moving
after FTX. And I just went through like his library of trades
and I was like, okay, understand how he uses these tools.
If I stick around and I keep watching him do this,
I'm not gonna learn as fast.
I need to leave.
I need to test these things on my own
and to go back to the drawing board
and see if I can actually execute on these ideas.
So I started doing that.
And I quickly realized like I need to implement both, right?
If I implement price action plus trends, I have a better outcome. If I do one or the other, I have
not as good outcome. So it was a combining of the two that really helped me out. And that was the
system that I basically traded for a long time was price action and trends. And it wasn't until
I'd say, you know, last summer, last year, where we were stuck in that big Bitcoin range for eight, nine months, where I was like, look, the work life balance of being in trades that are, you know, average trade or average hold time of being two days or two days, 12 hours, that was my average, you know, time in trade.
It's like, I'm not getting good sleep.
I'm, you know, getting entry triggers at odd hours of the day.
It's just not going to work for me long-term. So I need to find a way to extract value from the
market in an intraday basis. So I can close trades. I can go to sleep flat at night.
So I spent all of those eight months basically last year trying to find edges, trading one-minute
charts, trading intraday. And lucky for me, I work with a guy who's really good at this stuff. So I had a bunch of education, you know, at my fingertips where I could just,
you know, look at what Magus is doing and see if any of that stuff jives with me,
if any of that stuff makes sense to me and how I can implement it into my own trading.
And I basically worked on a system for trading intraday. And that's what I do a lot of nowadays
is just trade intraday. I'm missing some trends sometimes, but that's okay i do a lot of nowadays is uh just trade intraday i'm missing some trends sometimes but that's okay like i sleep better um my trading is going well but yeah like to answer
your question simply there's been a lot of iterations of the way i trade over the years
and i think it's all towards the same goal right you're just continuing to solve for x and x is
what is the best return that i can get for the effort that i'm putting in the market every single
day um and sometimes the market is going to cater to big big trending moves and sometimes it's not
and then can you extract value in those environments um is the question you have to ask
yourself yeah 100 i also feel like um you've probably evolved um like for feel like you probably evolve. Like, for example, like you said, right now, you're more focused on the intraday moves and just, you know, like, you know, finishing your day, logging off and that's it.
But that's probably evolving as well as the market changes, right?
And evolves on its own.
Like, for example, right now, we haven't been really doing anything since Q4 24.
So it's probably good that you're able to shift your focus on more intraday stuff rather than, you know, just doing nothing until the next trending market comes.
Yeah. Yeah. 100%.
I think combining a couple of different strategies and markets has been very fruitful for me.
I think December 9th, if I can remember off the top of my head, Bitcoin lost the daily trend.
And that was what held us from, I believe, 50K through our range, through the elections, all the way up to 100K.
And I think when we lost the daily trend, that was where my mind shifted to, okay, we're probably not going to be trending for a little bit.
If we're going to continue trending, it's going to come off the weekly. The weekly was at like 80K
or something at the time. And I said, we're probably going to range. So time to shift focus
from trading trends to trading intraday. And that just comes with like experience of seeing these
things happen again. And fortunate for me, I got to see a couple of these. I saw it in Q1 when we
marked up from our Q1 2023, when we marked up from 16K to 30K again, when we went broke from, you know, 2530 to 60.
And then again last year. Right. So if these these metas keep continuing, you know, you kind of get better and better at recognizing these kind of regime shifts.
Yeah, 100 percent. How do you feel if someone is listening right now and we're talking about different systems,
different edges, and shifting between them, if someone is listening and they don't have an edge
and they don't have a system that's fully built, how would you recommend them to start on building
something like that? Yeah. The steps that I say to anyone that asks this question is number one,
you follow what you're most interested in.
It really doesn't matter.
I think there's a lot of ego that goes into traders that think that their system is better than another system.
And I simply don't think that's true.
I think that people can be profitable trading different styles and achieve the same kind of profitability regardless of how they trade.
I think you should gravitate towards what interests you initially, right? What inspires you? What looks cool, right? Whoever's
charts look the coolest that you see on CT. If that inspires you to learn, you're going to get
more value because you're going to be happy every day. You're going to be excited. You're going to
want to learn. And I think that caters better towards someone starting out, right? So that's
number one. Number two, you learn the rules of that system, right?
You learn the confines and how to get into trades
and how to set your invalidations within that system.
And then number three,
you find a couple arrows in your quiver.
I'd say like two or three setups, right?
You don't go for all 10, you go for two or three
and you continue practicing.
And the mindset should be, I simply I'm trading to practice, I'm not trading to make money, I'm
trading to get better, right? If you're a tennis player, if you're an athlete, every day is not,
you know, the NBA finals, every day is just practice, right? You're just trying to improve
your three point shot or whatever it is. And I think traders don't do that, because everything
is tied to money.
Money is the outcome. Money is the goal. Money is the tool to get into trades. Money is your P&L curve. So finding a way to separate the money from the skill set is very important for a trader early
on and just focus on building the skills. Once you get the two or three, you're going to like one
more than the other. Statistically speaking, one of those setups is going to be better for you.
And then like we said earlier in the spaces is just try to nail that one, just keep hammering that one nail again and
again and again and again. I think that's the best course to go from knowing nothing to,
you know, running up an account. It's going to look different for everyone, but I think those
are the kind of three or four steps that everyone should take initially. And, and, and to say the
edge thing, I think that's a very funny word, right? Everyone, you know, is, is like confused
in the beginning or maybe a little anxious. Oh my God, I don't have an edge. I don't have an edge.
And for the longest time I felt that same way too, until I realized, I think my edge is just simply
patience and discipline, right? Patience to wait for the setups. Like one of my biggest is one of
the best edges you can have in the markets, I feel like.
Yeah, I agree.
I think there's people out there
that have legitimate edges
where they can see things
that other people don't see, right?
They just 100% see something
that 99% of the other market doesn't see.
That's a legitimate edge.
But for everyone else
that can't find that initially,
your edge against the crowd
can be that you have the discipline to take setups that come on your
plate not not you know adapt yourself to the market versus waiting for the market to play
on your terms right or or be patient for the things that you're looking for because it will
come often enough that's something that i think everyone can, can do. That's that, you know, you can work on yourself.
Yeah. And it's kind of funny because it all comes back to just keep clicking,
right? Keep clicking, keep trying stuff out, keep collecting data,
keep getting experience. And yeah, I feel like I had Wara on,
I don't know if you, if you know Wara,
but I have had him on the episode a couple of months ago and we discussed how a lot of people are trying to like they're hesitant to try something before
they feel like it's perfect or something but it will never be right it'll never be perfect just
just go ahead test and prod just jump into water and that's that's probably the best way to yeah
to collect experience and
just you know work on on whatever you're trying to build agreed man agreed you can't uh you also
can't get good at shooting three pointers by just watching steph curry on tv right you got to get in
the gym and actually shoot those threes 100 um so i want to move from the trading aspect to more of
a like psychological aspect of trading.
How do you manage the psychology part of it?
Like just dealing with stress, huge positions, maintaining discipline during volatile periods, or just boring periods itself.
Just the challenge of trading itself.
How do you handle all of that?
I'd like to say that i'm
pretty average when it comes to the handling emotions thing i don't think it's you know a
trader should be this emotionless creature that's just stoic and and has no emotions like i feel
very happy when i do things well i feel very upset when i do things poorly um but i can be content
at the end of the day knowing that that I executed on my ideas, right?
And I can learn from them. But, you know, tilt, I think is something that everyone experiences. I
don't know how long, you know, you've traded, but I'm sure there's times on the market where you get
upset still, you know, to this day. I know I do. Yeah. So I don't know if that's ever going to
completely go away. I'd like to think maybe there's a day that I won't care. But I think,
you know, you're in markets, you're competing, you're taking other people's money, they're
taking your money. I don't think there's a way to be completely emotionless in trading. It's a
sport, right? Look at Federer, who's won 20 grand slams. He still cries when he wins slams, right?
You should be looking at him and be like, why are you happy? You've done this so many times,
but each time means something to him, right? and i think being happy when you do well in markets is a good
thing as well um i'm not sure if that answered your question or if i went on a tangent to be honest
no that's good i mean whatever it is good i like it when i guess to do that uh but just um you know
for example if you have a stressful period or like let let's say a losing streak, I want to, you know, let's talk about the negatives first.
Okay.
You know, how do you handle those challenging periods?
More on the negative side, obviously.
I think, I think for me, like if I'm a losing streak, I have a very, you know, a good story about this one.
I was talking to a guy once and actually his story helped me avoid this mistake myself is when you're in a good story about this one. I was talking to a guy once, and actually his story helped me avoid this mistake myself, is when you're on a losing streak, there's things that
I've heard people talk about is either sizing down or, you know, all these other things. But
the story that this trader told me was, he was on a losing streak, not of, you know, of his own
fruition. He wasn't making mistakes. He was just taking
setups that weren't working for him. And, but I would consider those setups to be like B tier
setups. You know, they occur very often. They're not the S tier where you want to size into it or
the, you know, the diamond in the rough. And then he got one of those, right. He got a setup that
was, you know, not going to appear every single day. He went for the trade and he took the entry.
And once his P&L recovered the prior three losses,
he started closing his trade
because he started trading his P&L.
He's overcoming the kind of losing
that he took from the prior three trades.
Obviously the trade went well, it hit his TP,
but he wasn't sized anymore for that trade, right?
It went off without him.
And I remember hearing this story, I think early in 2023. And that always resonated with me. So
whenever I go on losing streaks, I try my best not to think about the P&L. In fact,
on all the exchanges and terminals that I use, I have everything hidden. So in Silico, I have
denial mode on, I have the privacy on, I don't look at the P&L. I don't care. I just trade.
I know mentally when I'm not trading well, and I feel the urge to not want to trade because it's
painful. You lose money. You know that it's not going well. You don't want to keep doing it. It's
something you have to get over. But then at the end of the day, you recognize as a trader, you
can't have everything go your way every time. All you can do is prepare yourself the best, execute the best, and the rest is in the market's
hands, right?
It's not in your hands.
After a while, I'd say if this is continuing, and this has happened with me several times,
especially when I'm trying to learn a new system, there's a differentiating point where
you have to figure out whether the error is coming from you or it's just kind of luck of the draw of the market. And a lot of times it's going to be you, right? If you're
losing eight out of 10 trades consistently, there's probably something that you can improve on
as far as the setups that you're taking, maybe the bias that you have in the market, or maybe even
trying to apply a certain system in the wrong environment, like trading a trend,
a trending system when the market is in fact range bound, right? So these are the nuances
you can figure out. And I think, again, journaling comes really in handy in these points where
you can note these things down. I learned that myself the hard way. I was applying a lot of
trending strats when we were stuck in the 20 to 30k range in 2023. And I recognized, I think after a couple
of months, like this isn't working very well. Maybe I don't want to keep relying on the H4
trend when the market is not trending. Right. And that's something that I took in a step back from
another thing is like a bullish breaker, right? That's going to work very well in a trending
environment. That's not going to work well in a range bound environment. In a range bound
environment, we're going to probably go for liquidity or play the extremities
versus saying every single move is going to be a breaker. Every single move needs to be
a higher low. So there has to be differentiation on losing streaks of where is that loss coming
from? Is it just a bad week in the markets? Are you doing everything well? Or is there something
you can learn from this? And I think this just comes down to being cognizant.
But as far as the emotional side of it, I don't have any kind of quote unquote alpha
there because I feel the same, you know, tilt that I think everyone else does when I'm on
a losing streak.
I just try my best to ask myself, like, is this coming from me?
And if it is, there's something that I can learn.
And if it's not, you know, get over it, right?
You know, lick your wounds, get over it.
Keep clicking.
Yeah, I feel like having a journal is really helpful in managing those stuff
because it puts it on paper.
And you don't have to just, you know, imagine and ask yourself different questions
and, you know, assume some kind of an answer.
But you can just look at cold, data and and know exactly what's going
on right yeah exactly yeah there you go guys got a journal i mean i i think like you you know
there's few people on ct that that talk about journaling a lot i know you do um but i think
it's gotten to the point where you know the same kind of education thing where it's just like all
right people aren't gonna listen like screw it why am i going to keep telling them do it it's fine don't do it yeah yeah i mean honestly it's
one of those things where again i i kind of feel like you actually posted about it today where you
said uh something like uh one of the reasons you don't really post setups that often anymore is
because you feel like you've you've wrote like you've written everything you you wanted to right like yeah people can go over your profile and see literally every single thing
that they need um and and the same goes with me and there's only like at some point you just
realize you're like not to offend anyone in the audience but at some point you feel like
sometimes you're talking to just to the to the wall right um and uh and yeah but yeah
that's just how it is it is i mean it's i mean why is trading so desirable and lucrative you can make
a lot of money very quickly if you get good but getting good isn't guaranteed right it's anything
that's lucrative in life whether it's medicine or being a lawyer being an athlete or being a movie
star it's it's rare right it takes a, being an athlete or being a movie star, it's rare,
right? It takes a lot of effort, work, and also luck, right? Right circumstances. So,
you know, there's things that are in your control that you need to control. And if there's people out there like Delta that are sharing things that, you know, highlights tab, like you mentioned,
go through his highlights tab and then click through all those things and read all that stuff.
Yeah, there you go. Well, so what tips would you give the younger self
coming into trading or just anyone listening to the space who is starting to trade and
don't really have that much experience? Number one tip I'd give myself, and I think I do share
this with some students, is try your best to separate trading from money. However you can do that.
I think it's like, I think I said it earlier too.
It's the only place in life where the tool is the exact same as the outcome
that you're looking for, right? If you're playing basketball,
the tools of basketball, right?
You're not constantly thinking about the NBA contract every single day.
Yeah. You're thinking about winning. You want to beat the people in front of you, you want to score the
basket, you want to be on a good college team, good NBA team, you want to eventually play there,
right? But you're not thinking every single day about the money. But in trading, everything's
tied to that, right? Your entry is money, your stop loss is money, your TP is money, your P&L
curve is money, it translates to real life.
And I think it creates a lot of stress for a lot of people.
For some people, they go one direction where they risk a lot very early and they lose a lot.
And the other direction people go is they get very hesitant to even bet anything because they're so scared of losing because they're thinking about it as money. Um, so one thing I didn't do well, which I wish I could do if I went back was have a bigger kind of nest egg.
Um, I have a little bit more money in the bank before I went full time.
So it wasn't as stressful day to day.
So I could bet a little bit bigger.
So my sizing could be a little bit bigger and I wasn't worried about every single day.
Oh my God, if I lose money, I'm going to be out of chips and I'll have to have to go back to this and I have to give this up and all this kind of stuff. So number one, make sure you have enough money in the bank
so that you can trade freely. If you're literally coming into this and you don't have money and
you're like, I'm going to trade for a living and I'm going to make this everything. There's so much
stress, I think that comes with every single trade. And number two, if you are in a comfortable
position where you have some stuff in the bank or you have a job, hopefully still like you have income coming in, try to focus on the craft and
think of this as a sport or anything else in life where you're saying, okay, I don't care about being
profitable immediately. I just want to learn and I just want to get better. And my only progress is
against my former self. You know, this, these are the trades I was taking and setups I was taking
Q1. Can I do better in Q2? and setups I was taking Q1. Can I do better
in Q2? Can I do better in Q3? Can I do better in Q4? And that was one of the things that I had in
my mindset is like 2023 for me, it was the practice year. I remember tweeting this like 50 times that
year. You'd probably go in the search bar and type in doc XBT practice year. Kept saying that to
myself is like 2023 is my practice year. I can make all the mistakes I want this year because 2024 is the prove it year. That's like the Superbowl. That's what
I'm preparing for. So anything that happens between now and then is all in the name of like
gathering data, learning, getting better. Um, so, you know, anyone out there that's just starting
out, I think put your goals a little bit further down the line. Don't worry about today and try
to separate the money from, from trading as much as you can.
Yeah, I feel like a lot of people forget that the money in trading
is a side product of good trades, right?
Yeah.
And like I said, disconnecting the money aspect of the work you do
is probably one of the best things you can do.
That's why those tools exist in terminals.
Just because the money is not supposed to be what you're focused on.
It is important, right?
Like doing some accounting and like following stats and stuff like that.
But again, it's just important for the sake of it being a part of the data
and not, you know, your whole focus.
Yeah, agreed, man.
Yeah.
And it's like, it's also one of the things where,
like you said, having the money on the side
or even having some income is,
I feel like that's so good
because then you're trading when there's setups,
you know, you don't have the stress of like, I have to take trades, I have to make money or, you know, rent is due, how am I going to pay rent?
Yeah.
And you can just be patient and just go with it.
Yeah, I think that was because of the stress that I
was carrying on my shoulders every day of like, you know, uh, if this takes X amount of time,
if this takes longer, if I fumble, if I, if I bet too much and I lose, like I'm always thinking
about the remaining chips. Right. And I don't think that's, that's helpful. That's, that's
detrimental if anything. Right. So, um, you know know if you're going full-time make sure you
have enough money if you're not going full-time right keep your job or whatever right i think i
think having a job is is is very nice yeah i feel like one of the things i tell to almost all people
who like a lot of people dm is sometimes like when should I cash out? I have this and that much money, whatever.
When should I quit my job?
And one thing I tell all of them is like, make sure you have in your bank at least like two years of expenses.
And then, yeah, quit, do whatever you want.
Especially if you're in your 20s and you have no liabilities, no kids, no nothing.
Yeah, go ball.
You know, worst case scenario, you don't work for two years and this doesn, no nothing. Yeah. Go ball. You know, worst case scenario,
you don't work for two years and this doesn't work out. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely good rule.
100%. I mean, you, you were a student for, you know, it's like a lot of people go,
you know, you didn't, you studied medicine, which is like, what's eight years, right?
Yeah. It was a while. Yeah. If you do undergrad four years,
four years med school, three years residency, two years fellowship, if you want to just keep going and specializing.
Yeah. That's, that's mental. Yeah. And, uh, and yeah.
And so people come and try building a career in trading and, uh, yeah,
it'll take you a couple of like, I think the average of, if I take all of, uh, I don't know if you can hear my dog snoring. It's not me, it's my dog. But I think the average guest I've had told me that it took them anywhere between a year and a half and two and a half years until they started, you know, being profitable, you know, being confident and everything. And that's why this is the number i i tell most people
like two years set aside yeah if you take the my first entry into markets which was covid uh until
the first account that i felt confident is 2022 so yeah that was about two years too
yeah there you go it's a good number to follow um so you're really big in in the educational space i mean you're like i said
earlier one of the few profiles that are still actively posting um you know different educational
material a little bit less shit posting and uh you're taking part in in the paragon group with
magus who's in the crowd uh shout out to magus and with charlie as well, both of whom we've had on the show before.
So if any of our listeners missed out on those episodes, go check out the old account,
IDEX, and listen to those recordings.
And what made you pursue this educational arc, focus on educating people and being more
on that side of things um i i it wasn't
something that was planned to be honest so um my process for learning has always been to kind of
teach at the same time to understand if i know stuff um so initially when i started trading i
had my discord which is just a link in the bio, open anyone, come hang
out in Discord, right? I was a nobody on CT, but if I ever made a connection with anyone on CT,
come to the Discord, we'll hang out, we'll chat every day, right? And my process was in the Discord,
sharing all my ideas all day, all, you know, everything in the market, any idea that came
to my head, hey, this is FOMC, this could play out this way, right? So it's kind of like documenting
at the same time, this full accountability for every idea out there that translated to CT,
right? I started sharing everything on CT. And then eventually I said, okay, I'm just going to
stream, right? Just for no reason at all. I'm just going to open up a stream. The first stream I ever
did, I don't know if it's still on YouTube, it's three viewers and I streamed for five hours.
And I went through the entire Binance perp list. I put it on
my trading view and I went through every single chart and I'm like, I'm going to make an idea for
every single coin on here from high timeframe all the way down to the four hour. And I did that for
like five hours. And the point was not to have viewers or anything. The point was I'm going to
hear my own ideas out loud and recognize
whether those ideas are even good or not. Right. And I can come back to this and view this. Okay.
This was my idea. So it was a way of documenting. And I just kept doing that. And I just kept
streaming and then it just became a thing. Right. And, and I think it's just, you know, the reason
I did it, like I said, I think XO said it the best is to teach is to learn twice. So one, it was an
accountability thing. And number two, it was like,
I could hear my own ideas out loud. And sometimes I could literally hear myself being like, this is
a dumb idea. Do I actually believe this? And the other times I could be like, you know, someone in
the audience may ask me a question and be like, what do you think of this coin? I'd be like,
that wasn't even on my radar. And that looks fantastic. Right? So it's kind of like this
beautiful symbiotic relationship where I would get trades from people that would just give them to me hey doc look at this chart it wasn't on my
watch list okay that looks good let's trade this you know let's let's set an alert here um and i
think through that process like i mentioned you know i was i was on my own journey of learning
things i i went to paragon as a student i joined in i think march of 2023 i hit up magus and i was
like excited i was like bro i dm'd him and i was like hey uh can up Magus and I was like excited. I was like, bro,
I DMed him and I was like, hey, can I join now? And he's like, I think new people come in on the first of the month. I don't think you should join like mid-February. I was like, all right,
I'm coming in. I'm coming into March. I went through all of his education, watched all his
videos, turned in for all of his live streams, started implementing that stuff on top of the
ICT, on top of the range trading. And then I started adding footprints,
TPOs and all this stuff. I was like, it's too much, right? I can't find a clear path through
all of this. But I stuck around in Paragon because I was like, I don't ever want to be
the smartest guy in the room, right? And I started noticing that a little bit in my own discord where
like my ideas were more right than anyone else's. That's not an ego thing. I'm just trying to put
that out there. That was just a thing that I noticed happening. And I was like, I want to be around
guys that are smarter than me. And one of the first streams Magus did, I asked him, I'll never
forget, I asked him a question about like a sweep. And it was like March of 2023, it was on Bitcoin.
And he specifically said, and I hope he doesn't mind, I think it's like common alpha now, but he's
like, in strength, liquidity doesn't get swept.
It's going to get front run. People are going to be demanding to buy at the same locations. Right.
And I never thought about it that way. And that was a moment where I was like, I need to stick around. Right. I need to keep learning. These are things that I never think about. Right. I'm just
looking at charts all the time, black and white binary. And fast forward, you know, six, eight
months, he, you know, I hit him up for a podcast.
I was like, Hey, you want to chat for a couple hours?
He said, yes, we chatted for a while.
And he just asked me, he's like, look, you know, you're doing well in this stuff.
I think you can teach well.
Like if you ever wanted to, I want you to, you know, join Paragon as an analyst, as an
educator.
And, uh, you know, I thought about it and he hit me up a month later and he asked me
again.
And I was just like, have you had any thoughts?
And I was like, Oh, you're, you're, you're serious. Like, asked me again and I was like, have you had any thoughts? And I was like, oh, you're serious.
This is the thing.
I was like, okay, let's do it.
I never wanted to.
I never envisioned myself to be like that guy, but it's an honor to be recognized by
someone that I look up to, that I've learned a lot from.
And if he's asking me to join the team, how am I going to say no to that?
So that's pretty much how that came to be and how i joined uh paragon as an educator right it's been a it's
been it's been really fun we've been together now for a year i think or maybe a little bit longer
i don't know a year yeah well that's sick i mean happy a lot about uh yeah go ahead no i was gonna
say happy one year anniversary magus happy one year anniversary, Magus.
Happy one year anniversary.
But it's definitely really good. I feel like what you said, Exo mentioned of teaching is learning twice.
It's like one of the best ways to make sure you know something well
is to teach someone else that same thing right
um i feel like just me for example trying to um you know we all had those periods of like oh i
want to write this like big post and like get some attention on my account and get a couple of
followers or whatnot so you're really trying to write an educational post and that kind of makes you you
know pushes you to be better as well because like you got to learn those things and you got to make
sure that you you know you're actually giving out good content and i feel like that my i had a period
where like my i really wanted to have like you, I want to have like a thousand followers.
And that that was actually funnily enough. That was one of the things that also pushed me to like learn more about markets, even if I knew that those things are not going to be used by me because my system was a little bit more laid back or whatever.
You know, still pushed me to to get better.
Yeah. And you also have to be on your game, right? If you,
if you're streaming to a hundred people or 200 people, right.
And they're asking you questions and they're,
they're looking for your analysis.
They're going to come back next week and they're going to know whether you
were right or wrong. Right.
So it's not like this lazy thing you can do.
And it honestly helps you prepare for the week. Right.
I stream on Mondays. I got to be prepared for my stream.
I got to, you know,
have my outlook
ready and everything like that the plans for the week ahead and all this kind of stuff and
come back the next week and and move on from that be like okay this is what we talked about last
week you know where did it go right where are we now did this play out this was the backup plan
okay we executed on the backup plan right and it's just this continuous thought process um week in and week out right yeah 100 i mean it's i even i was thinking about starting to stream but i've been saying this do
it for years now so i don't know do it do it do it definitely do it yeah yeah maybe i mean for me
the only thing is i'm using a macbook you you said you have a macbook as well yeah and uh it's
like connected to my apple account and like, sometimes I get like, you know,
FaceTime or like iMessage and stuff like that.
I'm like so afraid of just doxing myself by mistake.
So you can, you can, I stream through OBS and it only has certain applications.
So no matter what happens on your screen, nothing's going to show up.
It is just locked to trading view, right?
So all they can see on stream to trading view right so all they
can see on stream is trade if it doesn't matter what happens it doesn't matter if you like tab
out or anything like that the screen will just go like black all right so you don't have to worry
about that yeah that's interesting yeah we'll see i think i'm gonna start like i'm gonna start slow
i'm gonna get like a game capture card and i'll stream some like switch games or stuff and we'll
see where we go from there hey that works man dual
streamer i think uh i think one of my friends has been pushing me for a long time he's like you
should just trade live and while you're waiting just play video games get an alert and then switch
back to training view marusha he's so autistic i remember we had a live stream together and he had
like three monitors.
One of them was charts.
One of them was like the Discord call with me.
And then on the third one, he's just like playing video games.
And he's like streaming the whole thing at once.
But yeah, I feel like it's probably pretty fun.
When you get to the point where you just want to chat with people and have fun.
Yeah.
It's probably really cool.
So before we wrap things up, first of all,
I want to remind to all of our listeners,
if you have any questions, on the bottom right corner,
you have a chat box icon.
You can click on it and leave any questions you have to dock,
and we'll touch them in a couple of minutes.
But yeah, before we end everything,
what are your thoughts about the current market
and just Trump and all the
tariffs and you know just the state of things yeah so uh we had a funny interaction on ct like
yesterday before where i was like i'll be macro larping uh so i'm not gonna do that right um
just a quick i'll try to do this fast in 2022 i thought it was super important i was like i can't
make it as a trader without understanding fomc and rates and CPI and and all these things I have to listen to
Jerome every week I hated that so much yeah it was so horrible every fucking week we had some
number that nobody understands what it means yeah they're all just stuck to our screens watching it
100% man I I really thought that that was at the time I was like that's integral man you have to
learn this this is so so core to tricking right um and and it was just again just I recognized that
after a while it wasn't immediate but after a while I was like I have no edge in figuring this
out right we have a good print markets go down we have a bad print markets go up right it's like
this is nonsense I'm not I'm not gonna pay like, this is nonsense. I'm not going to pay attention to
this anymore. And I've made a conscious effort to ignore macro as much as possible. The most I will
do is watch the SPX chart for confluence. Is the market strong? Is the market weak? That's all I
need to know. That can help me make plans for Bitcoin. I do not care simply about macro.
I don't care what Trump's saying.
I don't listen to Powell.
I don't care about the prints.
I don't care if they're good.
I don't care if they're bad.
Because I know through data collection that that's not helping me.
So if it's not helping me, why do I need to infiltrate my brain with all that extra information?
But I have found one edge with using macro.
And that's a little bit of, you know, I've talked to us on timeline 100 times, which
is news absorption, which is if the market is pounding one narrative, how much is price
reacting to it every time?
Is there are they are we continuing to show strength based on that?
Are we waning strength?
Right.
I think this is a big edge for me last year catching the bottom in the summer, which was
first we had the, you know, the wars.
Then we had Germany selling,
then we had Mt. Gox distributions, then we had Silk Road, then we had Japan Yen,
then we had wars again. And I'm saying, how much is this impacting Bitcoin? And over a while,
you start seeing, okay, momentum's waning, alts are not selling off anymore, alts are rounding off. There's accumulation ranges forming. Bitcoin's going sideways.
Bitcoin's reclaiming.
We're putting in bullish market structure.
We're setting a higher low.
That is the edge I think you can derive from macro news, tariffs, all this stuff at the time being.
And I'm looking for the exact same thing right now.
I'm saying, is the market reacting the exact same way to the headlines again and again and again?
So if we get a headline with Trump tariffs, a hundred percent,
and I'm just looking at the reaction. Okay. Bad reaction. Right. Okay. Now he's tariffing 3000%. Is it the same reaction or is it worse? Is it better? Right. And I think that's the only
thing that I pay attention to. And I think it's very valuable, but everything in between to me
is just noise. And, you know, that's where I'll leave it. Yeah, 100%. I mean, that's one of the best things about news, which, you know, it's a base fact, but a lot of people tend to miss it because, you know, when the news come out, adrenaline flows through you, start building a narrative in your mind.
But one of the biggest things to do with news is just look, is the bearish news pushing price down?
Is the bullish news pushing price up?
And when it doesn't, it has a lot of weight to it.
Yes, 100%.
I think you can look at this, like you said,
bullishly as well, right?
We're like, you know, sell the news events
where we're looking forward to an event,
the event happens,
and then you have half the participants going,
okay, the event happened,
but now comes the follow through, right?
Now comes the big move. It got pushed. Now, now everything comes, right? And it's the exact same way with bearish news. It's like, okay, he announced the tariffs, right?
Now the tariffs are coming. Now they're coming. But the market's kind of already kind of started digesting this information. They've already started positioning for that.
So now are the bears going to be control? Is there going to be momentum? Is there going momentum loss who's in control are they are they showing though the aggression um in tandem with the news
or not right i think that can be an edge um as far as like looking at the high time frames and stuff
yeah 100 um well i have one last question for you um and this is a question we give to all
of our guests so i'm really interested in uh in hearing what you have to say about that uh what do you believe making
it is and do you feel like you've made it oh good question um i don't think that's a one size fit
fits all answer right making it you know it all depends on what your goals are, I guess,
in life. I think in one aspect, I've made it, which is I have, you know, a beautiful girlfriend
that I've been with for 15 years in November, stuck with me through everything. I've got enough
money to have a house and then take care of bills. I can plan for a future and kids and stuff like
that. So to me, that is
kind of making it. Have I made it in the grand scheme of things? Am I this triple, you know,
10 digit trader? No, right. So like goals and goalposts can keep shifting. But making it is
going to be, you know, different to everyone. What are your life goals? What makes you happy?
And are you are you chasing something for the What makes you happy? And are you chasing something
for the sake of chasing it? Or are you chasing something because you know that that'll make you
happier? For me, all I wanted to do with markets was prove to myself that I can do this and the
market can't beat me. I wanted that. I wanted that really badly. I lost sleep over it. That
was very important to me. And once that started showing, I had an imposter syndrome for a long time. Oh, I'm getting lucky.
It's just the market. It's just this. But then you repeat that performance time and time again
and time and time again. And then you start getting comfortable of like, okay, it's me.
It's not the market every time. Yes, the market is helping me in certain circumstances, but
I had to click the buttons at the end of the day, right? I had to click the exit when I wanted to take profits. I had to put the money in the bank.
I'm making those decisions. So as far as markets go, I'm in a place where I'm happy, but I'm not,
what do you say, satisfied, right? I have bigger dreams. I have bigger goals.
I want to do more. I want to trade bigger sizes. I want to be one of the, you know, the
goats on CT, whether that matters or not to anyone else. It doesn't, you know, it's just something in
my mind that I want, right? I don't care for the recognition or clout anymore, which I once did.
I'll admit that I once wanted that, but now it's just for me. But everything else in life, I'm more
happy than I have been in, I'd'd say my whole life at this current moment
so i can't complain man yeah well job's not finished job's not finished 100 man i think
there's a beautiful quote that me maggots and all these people keep saying we're butchering it but
it's like how do you get up to run a mile at five in the morning if you sleep in silk sheets right
and i think it's very valuable lesson to have of like once you think that you've made it you've done everything is when you become
complacent so yeah be happy but always have like bigger goals because otherwise you're just going
to decay into nothing right yeah one million percent i've had this period um last year for me
was was a period where I became really complacent.
I was missing on setups.
I was just not focused at all on trading.
And it showed at the end, like this first couple of months of the year
when I was doing my taxes, I've seen like, okay, I had a nice year.
I made money.
But considering everything that's been going on
in markets i was like how is this number not like twice as as bigger as it is um and i've realized
that i i became a little bit complacent and uh thankfully i'm out of that loop but uh it's
really easy it's really easy to get into that it It's really hard to stay disciplined and hungry.
So yeah, that's a good one.
Yeah, I think I'm going through that right now. And I'm trying to remind myself that
there's other people out there that are hungrier than me, that are working harder than me.
They're in their 18 hours a day in their box. There's not showering mode right now,
right? While I'm just kind of relaxing and enjoying the fruits of the labor, right? I just
have that in the back of my mind that other people are outworking you. There's
not come a day where they're going to be better than you if you don't keep putting in the work,
right? It's not, trading isn't this thing where you just, you achieve it and you're great forever,
right? You got to keep earning it every day. You can make it to the NBA and then you could just
fall off, right? If that was your only goal of like making it to the NBA and then you're never
going to get signed again. I think trading is the same way you got to keep proving it i think it's a natural
process as well but because like you know once you're doing this for a couple of years you will
have a period where you're just like okay i want to take a breather um i don't want to sit and watch
charts all day every single day um so so i think it's it's fine to go through those
periods right it's just a question of do you get out of it and snap out of it or or do you just
stay in that which which means under performance which means missing out on things
um and and for some people that's that's fine but uh we're not we're built different yeah man there you go yeah i think uh
yeah i had a mindset in in this year like i'm gonna take six months off i kept saying that i
was saying that to the to the homies and in paragon and stuff too but then when we got to
this moment it's like i'm i'm not there right i can't i can't bring myself to take six months off
because i know mentally like i'm gonna be rusty old, bad habits are going to come back. You know, all these other people
are going to improve. They're going to be in tune. I may miss the pivot points. You just can't afford,
I can't afford to do that. Um, so I'm trying my best to stay involved, even though mentally I have
dealt with a little bit of burnout myself, but, uh, just got to keep remembering, like, this isn't,
this isn't guaranteed. You know, this isn't a salary that you're just going to be making for showing up to your nine to five.
Yeah, I've got to stay sharp.
Yeah.
Well, I'm done with my questions.
So let's see.
Well, the only question we have from the crowd is Delta is a woman, right?
So I am a woman.
I'm just using a voice changer.
That tripped me up the first time I followed you two.
I'm not going to lie.
That was like three years ago or something.
The first time I followed you, I was like, oh, we got some female traders.
Oh, we got a woman trader?
Yeah, let's go.
Click, follow. how i followed it was like oh we got some female traders a woman trader let's go click follow
when i i i actually had a couple of test live streams and then i did a couple of spaces
uh the first spaces i've done and i you know i never larked as a woman i always you know speak
in like a male uh tongue you know and i was you know you know, see people ask me, I said, yeah,
I'm not, I'm not, you know, I'm not a girl.
And I started doing spaces and literally almost every single space people are like,
holy shit, are you not a woman?
Yeah, I think, I think we got that on when you were on Magus's stream, like last month
too, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
There was, there were also a couple of people asking about it shocked that i'm not a woman yeah um i don't
even remember why i i think i think when i joined ct which was like late 2019 early 2020 um everyone
had any like anime uh profile pictures you know and it's mostly like you know women and stuff like that
and i found so i just googled cute anime character literally just like that yeah with red hair and
that's that's like the first thing i found and then i paid an artist to like kind of change it
up a little bit and edit it that was before AI when you still had to know stuff.
And,
and yeah,
I've,
I've stuck with it since then,
but I'm actually thinking of,
of doing like a rebrand.
But,
but yeah,
we'll see.
I was like,
you know,
like,
you know,
semi-doxing and just like putting a picture of me and stuff like that.
But I don't know if I'm ready for it yet. Yeah. the the error around cryptos changed a lot it used to be like never
docs and i've seen like people just not care anymore you know oh yeah yeah oh yeah it's really
different like even i would be in 2020. yeah i was gonna say i would be i would be doxed if it wasn't
for the kind of stigma around it because like day one when i came in everyone was having these you know anime profile pictures too so i was like okay i'll do
the same thing and i got stuck with this i forgot to take the santa hat off and now it's just the
personality yeah dude like first two weeks of me on ct i had like a fully doxxed profile like my name and like you know like almost my full name and uh
like my my real face and stuff like that um but yeah i just don't want to change my profile picture
because it's just i don't know people got used to see this and associate it with me and i changed it
once actually to something similar like a blurred picture of me
and instantly like six people were tagging me like yo dude what the fuck is this shit like change it
back people hate change you know honestly no one reads names on ct we just like quickly girl
scroll past these are the profile picture and they know who it is 100 it's all visual we're
just like the zoomers that are on tiktok i swear
to god because like i remember who i think it was it was marusha i think who changed this profile
picture or someone else i don't remember i think i think it was marusha he changed his profile
picture and i just i he he was gone from like timeline just gone and i was like dude oh now
i realize you fucking changed your profile picture i don't even see you anymore yeah that's happened a few times i i've changed mine a couple times
and no one's really liked it yeah dude even if you just remove the santa head that's probably
gonna trigger a couple of people yeah 100 i don't think i can on this one because this one's like
made with it on right but the the old one for sure do you do you remember my old one the the the old guy with the bald head maybe not
it's been a while now so yeah that was the original profile picture from uh way way back
when i first made the account you know i remember you like this with like the blue background and
everything yeah guys uh spoiler alert i don't have blue hair in real life i don't wear a santa hat
do you have a beard yeah i do all right there you go there you go all right well um that's
pretty much it from from my side do you is there anything else you want to add up
no man i think you you asked fantastic questions.
A good conversation.
I appreciate you having me on for sure.
Thanks for coming, man.
It was my pleasure.
So for all of our listeners,
if you want to catch more from Doc,
make sure to give him a follow.
It's a fantastic addition to your timeline.
And if you want to hear more
and actually learn directly from doc and magus and
charlie um you can probably uh through his bio click on the paragon group and check that out
or just check his youtube channel right there's uh everything is is up there um and yeah join
his uh live stream mondays at uh 4 p.m hey i appreciate it i appreciate it
thank you catch up with doc if you have any issues um any health issues you can also dm him and ask
not anymore no no no no no you go to you go to my friend sam for that now
there you go all right well guys thanks a lot for coming to all of our listeners. We hope you enjoyed this as much as I have.
Thanks, Doc.
It was really fun to speak to you.
Yeah.
As always, we will have notes available from this episode on Monday that will be posted on my profile.
So make sure to follow me to check that out.
And there will be a recording.
If you joined in the middle, missed the beginning, whatever, you can check the Kuma account once this episode will be done and there will be a recording.
So you can check that out.
Or if you're lazy, just wait for the notes on my profile on Monday.
And yeah, that's pretty much it.
If you haven't already, click on my profile, click on the link in my bio to check Kuma out.
You will get 10% off of trading fees and you can trade on Barachain.
We're now live, 50x leverage, giving out 15k every single week, $50,000.
15, not 50, in rewards that you can claim every single day.
And make sure to follow the Kuma account for the events that we have lined up
we have twice a month spill the alpha episodes where we bring guests traders interview them
talk a little bit about their trading and how they can help you through their experience get better
we have once a month the alpha round where we bring up a bunch of traders and talk about the
current events current markets and stuff like that and once a month we have the bears are building
which is a bear chain focused episode where we talk to founders talk about bear chain and all
the juicy yields going on there so yeah make sure to check that out. Guys, again, thanks for coming. Doc, thanks for coming. And to Kuma and to Manuel, my producer that's behind the screen, making sure
everything's running. Thanks a lot to everyone. See you guys next week on Spill the Alpha.
Appreciate you. Later, man.
Bye-bye. See you, Doc.
