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Spill The Alpha: Surviving & Thriving Trading Crypto w/ @TheFlowHorse
Recorded: April 3, 2025 Duration: 1:24:40Space Recording
Short Summary
Kuma has launched on BarraChain, offering innovative trading features like 50x leverage and boosted trading rewards. Kraken's acquisition of Ninja Trader marks a significant partnership in the trading industry. Market trends show a decline in major indices, while new token launches like BGT aim to incentivize trading activity.
Full Transcription
Thank you. you you you you you you you you you you you you
hey hey
hey what's up man all good man how's it going Hey, hey.
Hey, what's up, man?
All good, man.
How's it going?
Oh, well, how was my sound?
All right.
Yeah, I'm good.
Cool.
I'm just going to need a minute for a second.
I'll be right back.
I'm going to give it a couple of minutes for everyone to join Thank you. hope everyone is surviving the current tariff war hope for uh surviving and thriving man yeah surviving first thriving later
how you've been it's morning for you right now right it's uh just afternoon so it's it's 1 30.
okay nice yeah i just got back from uh i was just training so
oh that's cool a little hyped up i got like right you do uh brazilian jiu-jitsu right yeah so i do
uh some people just call it submission grappling, Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Every school has like a slight modification.
My camp is awesome and a lot of the focus is on no-gi stuff.
Some people like the gi.
Some people don't like the gi.
I don't mind.
I do both.
But yeah, I'm obsessed with it.
I mean, that's the second.
That's nice.
Yeah. That's sick. I recently got into like martial arts stuff. don't mind i do both but yeah i'm obsessed with it i mean that's the second that's nice yeah that's
like i uh i recently got into like martial arts stuff i uh i think i spoke to you last week i had
my like first full-on lesson of uh muay thai oh boy i'm going to uh jujitsu lesson this weekend
so that's gonna be it's gonna be fun uh it's crazy hard it's insanely hard like i don't think people
understand how physically hard like i've been uh you know i know you work with ronda right now
i've i've never been into like crazy long running but you know i've been going on an hour long run
and stuff like that and i thought that's hard but then like an hour and a half workout of martial arts is just insane.
Yeah, that's – I'm not a runner at all.
I fucking hate running.
I bought an Airdyne bike.
I have that in my office.
I rarely use that.
The only place you're going to get fight cardio is fighting because it's – you can run all you want.
But until you put like a fucking tiger behind you when you're running, you don't have that stress hormone response that's really responsible for everything that follows in your performance after.
So, I mean, Muay Thai is like, I did Muay Thai in my early 20s, and I'll never do it again.
One, because the striking component of certain martial arts kind of stops you from being able to practice as much as what you could do with jiu-jitsu.
Like you tap out in jiu-jitsu, you get back at it.
But taking strikes at this point in my life, I don't know.
I've had my head opened up before.
I've had my orbital bone broken, my zygomatic arch broken, and I'm done with that.
I don't think my wife would appreciate that.
Yeah.
So that's what I was thinking. I was a little bit worried about that. So I spoke to
the trainer. I was like, I'm 30 years old. Isn't that a little bit, isn't that too late? Like to
get hit in the head. He's like, oh, don't worry about people who are 60 and they're just starting
out. No, jujitsu though, like you'll be able to train that for, I mean, not some people have
issues, but you'll, you'll be able to train that much longer than anything else.
Yeah. Yeah. I figured I'm going to just try everything, you know,
a little bit of, because like the, the gym will work out and they have like both.
So yeah. So that's nice. That's awesome. Yeah. Thanks man.
If anyone listening and you've never tried, you should really a good eye opener
for what what physical strain
you can have. Yeah. And most like, I don't want to cut you off. No, go ahead. No, I was going to
say like most men especially have this kind of idea in their head of who they are and, you know,
how they handle themselves. But it's like anything else, man. Like if you don't practice it,
it's like you don't know how to play chess, you know.
You can't just wing chess.
You can't just wing trading.
It's the same with fighting.
It's like it's a science.
And unless you've done it a lot,
like you're pretty fucking hopeless.
Yeah, 100%.
Good thing to experience and to have.
For sure.
Well, I guess we can just go ahead and start with everything.
And before we start, I do want to welcome everyone.
This is season two of our Spill the Alpha.
We hope you're going to enjoy this episode.
I'm sure you will.
And thanks for joining us.
And thanks for coming, Horace.
Should I call you Horace?
You can call me Ryan. It doesn't matter.
Ryan, yeah. Yeah, so thanks for coming, Ryan. I really I call you Horst? You can call me Ryan. It doesn't matter. Ryan, yeah.
Yeah, so thanks for coming, Ryan. I really appreciate it.
For sure, man. Happy to be.
I wanted to have you on for a long time.
And yeah, before we start with the questions,
I want to remind everyone that on the bottom right corner,
you have a chat box icon.
You can just click on it at any moment, leave any questions,
and before we end the show, we'll go back to them and go over everything.
And thanks to Kuma for hosting this show and giving us this platform.
If you haven't already, make sure to check it out.
It's now live on BarraChain.
You can trade with up to 50x leverage.
We just listed XRP as well with 20x leverage.
So go ahead and give them a try.
There's currently trading rewards.
They're boosted right now because it's the early days and it's 30K a week being rewarded for trading.
So a nice boost.
So make sure to check that out.
So Ryan, before we get into like the technical stuff, I want to know a little bit more about your background.
How do you actually get into crypto and just trading overall? Yeah, sure. Yeah, so I got into crypto in 2016, way more passive than I am today.
I'd come from trading traditional markets since college. So during and after, I was part of a prop firm trading single names primarily.
And then over the course of my trading, I transitioned to trading equity index futures
and crude oil. Took a bit of a break, but got back into it shortly after. It was a brief period
where I tried to start my own fund. I'd say I tried
to. I did manage a little bit of other people's money, but found that to be a pretty terrible
experience. And right at the time, had come to crypto and just really dipped my toes in. I mean,
getting exposure to what seemed like a good momentum trade opportunity.
But like I said, very passive, like not in the weeds at all. A very basic trend following
approach to this market. Because again, at the time I was trading traditional markets full time
and didn't really have the bandwidth. Did you just jump into perps straight away or did you
just chill with spot? No was listen i this market is and
this is something that is like a point worth reiterating uh this market for anyone that
has a background in traditional markets um it's a little weird right like the idea of
going on to some exchange transferring money um you know sending capital from one wallet to the next.
There's no KYC.
There's no checks and balances in place.
Like if you're trading, if you're coming from even as like a retail trader trading on traditional platforms, whether it's, you know, an FCM, a broker, all that, like you're you're giving
basically every little piece of information about you to get access to that platform,
like to clear yourself to trade on it.
So this idea of like having exposure to crypto and then jumping right on to BitMEX, that was not
something that I right off the bat had planned on doing. You know, I think most people should
still I think most people like myself at the time are far better off learning about the product to
begin with. So it took a little while to get my head around the space.
I didn't really take it that seriously initially.
It just seemed like Bitcoin was a great momentum trade.
So it took a little bit of time for me to get myself off of Coinbase
and then trading on, you know, Binance at the time,
trading on, this is back when there was only like BTC pairs,
trading on freaking Bittrex. For anyone who's been around for a long time, you remember Bittrex.
And then trading on BitMEX and doing most of my trading after that on BitMEX. But yeah,
it was just, it was a weird learning curve. It was hard to trust the market, just hard to trust
everything in place rather, to trust putting any, I would say trust putting any serious money on the line.
You know, for some people, it was second nature because they had been involved in crypto so long.
I didn't do my homework at all.
I just got exposure by buying, you know, sort of the Soros quote, you know, invest before investigating, getting exposure and figured it out after. But
yeah, after that, you know, from the end of 2016 to 2017, that was when a switch flipped and
most of my trading and since then has been primarily crypto. I'd say with, you know,
I don't want to drown on too long, but with the exception for like the last two years where I've actually gotten back into trading, a more balanced approach to both traditional markets and crypto.
And it's much more evenly distributed now.
So I still trade single names.
I still trade equity index futures.
I don't really trade crude oil that much anymore.
Commodities are a way different animal.
They actually have end users.
Supply and demand dynamics are much more significant.
But yeah, I don't want to keep going on.
It's definitely super different.
One of my family members is a full-time trader as well.
But he trades TradFi.
And I've tried to bring him on to crypto a couple of times.
Because he sometimes sends me his analysis of Bitcoin and stuff.
And he's really good. He sends me amazing setups and stuff like that and i just told him listen you should you should you know i can give you a binance account with some money in it like
you can trade and he gave it a try and he just told me like i i just don't get it i don't get
this i i don't i can't work with it i need metatrader i need you know all those things
um you know he was like talking
to me in lots and i was like what is a lot this was like three years ago and uh yeah super different
yeah when i came i was using i was coming from using cqg and trading technologies so using those
ladders for a long time and then coming to crypto and you're just trading on the exchange
and everything's really janky and it's like the software,
there's no software to really access it.
Now there's a ton of platforms available, a ton of software.
Of course, that niche is being filled, but it was like, seriously?
This is like, it felt very gimmicky at the time.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's actually really cool how the worlds are combining right now.
Like we've seen Kraken buying Ninja Trader
a couple of days ago.
So that's going to be interesting to see
what they're going to do with that.
Yeah, that's really awesome.
And it is actually interesting to see you
because you, Adam, and a couple of,
like very few people on CTAs like actually
trade Tradify and post setups and stuff like that, which is a really nice addition to the
timeline.
So you said you started trading before crypto.
You traded Tradify for how long?
What year did you start?
This was around 2000, 2007, 2008. So 2007
was when I actually got the opportunity to be over someone's shoulder. And then I started trading
very actively in 2008, 2009. And at that time, it was just, the world was falling apart. It was
like a terrible time to come out of college, to look for jobs in the space, whether in investment banking or in trading.
But I had a relationship with someone whose brother had a firm and adjacent to it was a
brokerage firm. So I had a little bit of experience there. And this was like, at the time, it was like,
it was legit like what you see on, not even like Wolf of Wall Street, but if you've ever seen the
movie Boiler Room, I don't know if anyone's, yeah, that's how it was on Long Island, New York. It was like
the guys working behind the desks were like football player guidos, like chain smoking,
going to the bathroom, doing lines of cocaine. It was legit like that. It's much more buttoned
down now. Things changed a lot over the last decade or so.
But yeah, it was primarily single names. So trading single names. So trading equity single
names for anyone who's not familiar, like small cap stuff. And there is, I don't want to go too
far into it, but there's a lot of like, I feel like a lot of people in this space actually would
pick it up pretty easily. If you trade shitcoins, you're probably able to trade single names.
Like I don't want to inspire anyone to go lose money trading stocks because it is a different animal.
But I think there's a good amount of cross-pollination there.
Yeah.
Just be ready for like the most intrusive KYC process you can ever imagine to just get an account.
Yeah.
Yep.
I tried opening, this was like two years ago, I tried opening an account. Yeah. Yep. Dude, I tried opening
this is like two years ago. I tried opening an account with AMP Futures
and I have a couple of passports
and I tried verifying my account
and I gave them like half of the info
and then I sent the wrong passport
because I forgot what info I gave them.
And they just straight up blocked me.
They were like, yeah, we're not interested.
No, thank you.
Nothing. And they just told me to fuck. They were like, yeah, we're not interested. No, thank you. Nothing.
And they just told me to fuck off.
Yeah, AMP wants everything.
I trade on AMP actually.
So that's what I use for my futures, for CME futures.
And they want to know everything.
They integrate with the IRS basically.
So they're going to ask you every little detail.
Fantastic.
So you started trading actively in 2008. And how long do you feel like
it took you until you were just starting to get the hang of things, starting to turn a profit?
And was there just like a pivotal moment that made you realize, okay, I can just do this for
a living? I think the benefit of, so it took a little while. It didn't take me, I think,
as long as a lot of other people,
but I've tended to pick things up pretty quickly because I've been able to in my life and a lot
of the things I pursued, be able to have the honest conversations with myself and see that
the areas where I'm like kind of, you know, stepping on my own feet, which people do in
trading a lot, like most people that are fucking up in trading, like make no mistake, trading has
the attrition rate it does for a reason, because most people are not going to
be able to do it like hands down. It's not like, you know, go continue to take a bunch of jump
shots. Like you're going to get much better. Some people just won't get it. And that'll come at a
cost because you're trading live and you're losing money to have that experience. But it,
it took me a little while, but I had the benefit of being able to watch people that were really successful at doing it do it from just feet away.
So I think that's a really important aspect of whether you're working at a bank.
There's no real bank prop anymore.
It's more like just market making, like the larger wire houses.
But if you're at like an arcade or a small prop firm or a family office that had a prop arm, the ability
to be around people that are doing successfully. And if there's enough people that are around you,
you're going to have a few people that are absolutely crushing it. And you're seeing how
everyone is doing on a daily basis on the board. Being able to see that it was kind of all I needed.
It was like, okay, you know, that's, it's kind of how I am with everything. Like if I am,
whether it was when I was wrestling or whether doing jujitsu now, if I'm in a place where
I see someone is able to crush it, I just kind of try to be a remora on them, you know,
swim along their wake and through osmosis and through a little bit of mentoring, pick
up as much as possible.
And that's all I need to know.
Like if there are people here that are doing it, I'm going to be one of those people that
does it as well.
So having that was tremendous, which is, you know, this is why, like, it's tough being on, like, if you're just coming to markets on CT and you're trying to figure things out through Twitter, there is something to be said for, like, some of these small communities that exist.
You know, people break off into Telegram groups, people break off on the Discord, because being able to bounce ideas off other traders and hold yourself accountable to other traders there is something to that versus like trying to swim on your own
uh so being in a prop environment was like it reinforced all of that which i think was really
important so it didn't take me long because i had you know examples of success you know sort of uh
i could see further on the shoulders of giants right around me, which is not the case everywhere.
But from what I know, like most people who have had the same pipeline have had the same experience.
And so it's very weird with crypto because it seems like in crypto, there's almost like a romanticizing, you know,
theme with being a solo fish and just doing everything on your own, right?
with being a solo fish and just doing everything on your own, right?
Where I feel like just having those group chats
and working with people, sharing information,
stuff like that is just a massive benefit.
I don't think I would be where I am today without that.
Absolutely.
I mean, at the end of the day,
it is a solo game, right, at the end of the day.
Unless you're working, like legit working in a pod and, and, you know,
working with other people to play trades, it is solo,
but to be around other people that are doing, you know,
doing successfully or at least doing relatively the same thing can be very,
very useful.
The problem is like,
it's tough to find that middle ground because a lot of times,
like people will exodus into these
groups and then the groups become very noisy and the groups become full of like sort of the same
riffraff that exists on Twitter, except it's a little bit more gated and confined. So, you know,
if you have, there's like a, there's like a sweet spot with the amount of people, right. And that everyone
is kind of in line and aligned, um, with what their goals are. Otherwise some of the communities
do kind of devolve into just bullshit, right. You've been into some communities and it's like,
they're just posting fucking gifts all day and like retarded, like childlike humor. Um,
but yeah, it is, there is something to be said for being around
other people that are you know as driven and goal-oriented when it comes to trading as you are
yeah well in your process of becoming a profitable trader and just in the first couple of years let's
say uh what do you feel were the most significant mistakes or just general challenges that you've had in your process of becoming a trader?
And how did you overcome them?
I think one of the bigger challenges is letting the market pull you in.
That was something that I had trouble with, getting pulled into trades constantly, so over-trading.
Revenge trading was a big one. There's this connection with revenge trading and the need
to be right. I think that a lot of people, they approach trading on the assumption that they have
to be right. They really don't break things down from an EV standpoint or understand that's not
the case at all, right? Risk management
plays a key role in that. And I think like the baseball analogies really help when it comes to
this because the most successful baseball players and batters are hitting like what, a third of the
time. But for me, it was getting pulled into trades and not first identifying like a few
things that were in my playbook that I could sit and kind of sit in a
perch and wait for. Getting pulled into markets is something that you have to like, I think you
have to consistently battle as a discretionary trader, because there's a lot of times when
things get really noisy. And, you know, the last couple of weeks are especially, you know,
especially a good example of that. You know, the market's up a couple thousand points, the market's down a couple thousand points, and you begin to sort of extrapolate on that as soon as if it's going to be a trend.
And you wonder if, you know, you're missing out on, you know, an opportunity to get long, get short, and you're not anywhere near or you're not anywhere near and you're not anywhere within what would be like the characteristics of a setup that you would, you know, say qualifies
under your edge or that you would be normally taking, or you're just getting pulled into the
market. So that was something for me. But that was because I think at the time, like, I was also much
younger. I think at this point, like, I'm so, it's so over the excitement that you initially get when
you're putting money on the line. And it's way
more businesslike. And, you know, you get it's kind of like the best way I could put it is
it's kind of like an addict. Like you heard the saying for like addicts and alcoholics,
you have to get like sick and tired of getting sick and tired at some point. Like if you're
just fucking up and losing money and getting dragged into trades left and right, you have
to just get tired of that because it's not going to improve on its own, right? There's this tendency to try to wing
it. You're just going to wing it and figure it out as you go and build the plane in midair. That's
just not going to happen. That was my biggest issue. And again, I think a lot of that came
down to the fact that I was much younger. And it kind of felt like, even though I was surrounded by people that told me better,
it felt like you were always possibly looking at the maker to break a trade, right? If you just
have one really great trade, and then you'll cool off after that, and then you'll behave after that,
and that's just not the case. You just have to iterate from one trade to the next under
the next under, you know, a very disciplined process. And that was tough for me.
a very disciplined process. And that was tough for me.
Yeah, I feel like this is one of the biggest issues that most people have in the space. And
I had it myself, obviously, as well. And I wrote an article about it a couple of
things like a month ago. And I feel like one of the biggest issues is that causes this is that
it feels like a job, right this it is a job when
you're full-time trading you're trying to make money and just sometimes you won't get a setup
right and you just have to sit the whole day in front of the pc and you just don't get any setups
and it's like it's a mental game because you just start telling yourself i haven't worked today i
haven't done anything but that's that's that like 90% of what you do in trading.
That's the reality. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And for certain approaches, that's more
significant than others, right? I'm a shorter term trader. So it's not like, I might go through
periods of weeks where I'm just at it hammering nonstop. And then there's a lull for a week or two. Other traders might only have if they're, you know, if they're like a lower time
preference trader, if they're a longer term systematic trader for trend follower, they might
only get a few opportunities a year. So they're taking a lot of time off and hopefully they're
taking a lot of time off. Otherwise, you know, they're not acting on, you know, they're acting
on things between their signals. But for me, it's like, I, I,
I understand what you're saying. That was a similar thought. It's the feeling that you
always have to be doing something. Um, and it's kind of like when you're at a casino,
you know, there is something to be said for like our need to be involved in something like to be
pulling a lever, to be playing a game, uh, even uh even games you know that you have no edge in and shouldn't be playing now it's completely now it's completely different like
for me i completely embrace like if my if certain uh you know criteria is not met and there's just
a few things that i require to get involved in the market if that's not met i'm super grateful
because i know that it's really important at this point in my life that I balance everything out because, you know, I have a two-year-old daughter.
I have another one on the way that arrives in October.
So the last thing I want to be doing is wasting any fucking time staring at the computer, you know, waiting for something that jumped out at me, you know.
Yeah.
So how did you handle that issue?
Did it just pass with time or do you feel you just, you know,
learn to control it?
I think the most important thing is, and this is something I left out,
is that at some point your stats are going to punch you in the face.
So, you know,
you're going to have someone tap you on the shoulder and show them to you,
or you're going to be doing that on your own.
At some point, you have to be accountable to yourself.
If you're trading, if you're trying to trade on your own, you have to use one of these,
one of these really, I say they're super friendly platforms at this point because they integrate
with directly with the exchanges, but you have to be journaling or trading.
Um, you have to be able to see, okay, you know, there is something that stands out as, and is giving me feedback
and is telling me that every time I do this, every time I trade during this period, every
time that I, you know, take this setup that I am, you know, punching myself in the face,
right?
And you have to, and more importantly than getting like that immediate market feedback
on something that's like a very friendly dashboard to read,
which is like, these things are available now.
You can find them at TradeStream.
There's a couple others I can't think of.
More importantly than that is actually writing things down.
And writing, I think writing things down
is probably the thing people want to do the least.
So taking notes after your trading day, before your trading day, after your trading day, is probably the thing that seems the most boring.
But this is the job, right?
If you're going to be doing this, this is a job.
But that's probably one of the most important things.
Because if you are consistently doing the same thing for a couple days in a row and you're writing that you're doing that down, at some point, I mean, to be honest, you have to ask yourself,, like, is this honest? Do I really want to do this or not?
Am I taking this seriously or not?
Because I've seen over the last week or so that I'm able to identify the dumb shit I'm doing.
So why the fuck am I doing it still?
Excuse my language.
No, you can curse as much as you want.
You have to at some point have an honest conversation with yourself.
Right. So I was able to get that from, from other people as well, which was really helpful. Um,
because at the end of the day, like it's your job, uh, you know, or your, your mentor experience
and people aren't just going to, they're not going to continue to, you know, try to,
try to help you out when you're just being kind of an asshole. So that is probably one of the most
important things. And you could, again, like all these things are so available to traders now in a
way that didn't exist in the past. I mean, before all of the journaling software that came out,
and now it just breaks everything down so much. A lot of times I think that it kind of over
analyzes things. Like you might look at certain feedback
and think you need to act on it when really you don't
because you're forgetting that a lot of times
the market is random, right?
So you don't know if you should necessarily change something
unless it's happening, you know, multiple times.
But before all of these platforms were available,
like there was maybe Edgewonk and that was it.
And you had to do that manually.
Edgewonk maybe integrated with a few brokerage platforms, but for the most part it didn't.
You had to record all your trades, place them at the end of the day, or do that live.
If you're an intraday trader, I mean, sometimes you just batch stuff.
Batch stuff as a whole day rather than record this 60 trades taken intraday.
But yeah, journaling is probably one of the most important things to do.
Yeah, italing is probably one of the most important things to do. Yeah, it's huge. You know, a lot of people put a lot of emphasis into learning new things, improving their strategies, improving their trading in the sense of like, what should I do more?
But like, I think it's as critical, if not even more important to know what you shouldn't be doing, what you should stop doing, and just focusing on that, right?
Because there's a lot of people that I've been talking to over the years
and myself as well, that there's been just one thing that they changed
or I changed, and suddenly the trading has seen just insane amounts of change.
100%.
It's trimming the fat.
You have to trim the fat. And I think that
at this point in my life also, again, because now I'm trying to be way more balanced.
I love trading. I will never give it up. But to be honest, having a child, being at home,
I don't want to spend as much time trading.
But when you're younger, you're trying to establish this extensive playbook so that you can
take as much and extract as much from the market as possible. Whereas as you develop, you realize,
okay, if I could identify two or three things that I'm really good at, I should just double down on that. And it's like, there's sort of a scaled version of this that happens when you're,
that happens during periods when the alt market is outperforming and people are looking to sort
of like index across a ton of alts rather than identify like the strongest pairs and just go,
shares and just go more heavily into those, the same thing applies to your own trading.
you know, go more heavily into those. The same thing applies to your own trading.
So identifying the areas where you're the strongest, you're sort of quote unquote A-plus
setups and then doubling down there and then removing the excess.
Because at some point, like you have to consider like certain things are, the more spread out
you are, the less capital efficient you are, the more exposed you are to risk.
And it doesn't make sense that from an opportunity cost standpoint to just put capital where it doesn't go the furthest, right? So.
Yeah, super huge. I agree with everything you've said. And yeah, you guys should start journaling.
Like Ryan said, there's a lot of different platforms nowadays do everything for you automatically. There's just no excuses. So about your trading, how did your trading strategies evolve over time?
Are there any just specific methods or any tools that you utilize nowadays that you didn't in the
past? Not really. So where things got confusing was coming from trading traditional markets to
crypto, at least in the initial period. And it's actually not necessarily the initial period,
because like from 2016 to maybe 2018, there's not really much here in terms of software and
platforms that were somewhat close to what I was using trading traditional markets.
So when I was trading initially, it was like very basic level two tape, Dom, newsfeed.
And that's it. You know, a chart, obviously, as well.
But coming to crypto, you didn't have that.
So it was like trading on, you know, right off the exchange, didn't have that so it was like trading on you know right off the exchange
uh didn't have access to the same order flow data obviously markets are much more fragmented here so
in the beginning i wasn't necessarily sure how useful that would be you just kind of have to
first identify like who is driving the market and what markets rather in this market were
responsible for price discovery uh and at the time that was bitmex um obviously you know binance was around but if you're trading perps like you could trade
on bitmex at the time and just basically off the order book and following large traders there was
edge there um i remember like up to 2020 bitmex i think was like the biggest. Yeah. And it was like relative to now, if you saw someone building
like a $2 million to $5 million position, it was like, wow, OK, something's going on here.
Things stood out much more and were much easier to act on than they are now. The market structure
has completely changed. So I think my trading,, my, my trading, what I've, what I learned outside of this market
has translated to this market, but it's just been more of a process of, of figuring out price
discovery here because there are different. Oh, I think we lost you. Cut out for a second.
Yeah.
There's a lot of fragmentation here.
So if anything, it's more homework, at least initially, to identify where most of the flow is coming from and who is driving the market.
But other than that, it wasn't a big leap.
Again, in the beginning, when I first got involved, I was trading basic momentum crossovers here, but I was positioned trading BTC.
I was just buying to get exposure, and I wasn't nearly as active.
Yeah, well, you really often talk about order flow in particular.
I know that order flow is a part of technical analysis, but they can be separated into two almost different categories
you could say um do you think that order flow um is something that all traders should be looking
into or do you think that just simple setups simple ta sr flips and you know stuff like that
are enough for for trading crypto oh no i mean i think simple TA stuff worked a lot more in the past.
And that was one of the most compelling reasons to trade this market. I think I realized very
quickly how stupid it was to trade it. And the reason was it traded a lot like pink sheets and
it traded a lot like pink sheets and uh penny stocks um but it was 24 hours which was nice
because it was like no overnight risk really you know waking up to realize some kind of news came
out where the company was bullshit the entire time and it gapped down to zero um but ta
in general was you could act on that alone because this was such a retail driven market that it was very
self-fulfilling. Most of the people acting on the same things, the same feedback, which made
a lot of the more basic shit work. As silly as that sounds, I think over time that has changed
a lot. And TA has become useful for what it was useful for to begin with outside
of here, which is like being able to define your risk, being able to identify areas where
you want to do business, where people might want to do business as well, or where they
could possibly be exploited.
I don't think that, you know, TA, I think is kind of meme-y in many cases.
Support and resistance, that'll obviously,
horizontal support and resistance, obviously always be very useful, probably more than anything else.
But, you know, when you say TA, it's like, that could go, you could go down the rabbit hole with
a lot of garbage, right? Like people busting out GAN fans and pretty much every indicator you have
on TradingView that has no use, really, realistically.
But order flow is, I mean, order flow is literally everything.
Price is ultimately a function of supply and demand.
So what really matters is who is supplying, who is demanding, why they're doing it, when they're doing it,
and not for nothing, more importantly, if they have a choice.
So are they forced flows?
Are they discretionary flows?
Are they informed flows?
Order flow and positioning is what drives markets.
So at the end of the day, being able to access that and gather some kind of feedback from that allows you to have the most raw view at what makes it all happen, right?
So I think that, yeah, it pays for everyone to dig into that.
I mean, it's related to, I tell everyone,
like if you're going to start trading,
one, you just have to get involved.
Like you just have to go lift an offer, hit a bid,
get a basic understanding of how order books work,
get an understanding, and this sounds very overly simplistic,
but it's not something, it's like something you take for granted.
Get an understanding of how price moves to begin with.
Like what affects the movement of price, right?
This is like, it's so important to have an understanding of what moves your market, right?
Start by watching price action.
How does it open around, you know, how does it trade around the open?
How does it trade around the close? Who is trading it, right? Who's talking your market? What's the average daily range? What's the average volatility? What are the norms for your market? How does liquidity vary by time of day? What are the average gaps around opens and closes?
Average gaps after news comes out.
All these things can be related to order flow and market microstructure.
So having an understanding of order flow, and I'd say you have to add order flow, market
structure, and microstructure.
You have to start there, and I think you have to work from there.
That's literally everything.
If not everything, that's mostly everything.
Yeah, it's also super interesting.
I wouldn't say I use order flow so much in my trading just because I'm still – I wouldn't say I'm even proficient enough in just understanding everything properly.
understanding everything properly.
But just when I was studying auction market theory
and just understanding the basics of stuff,
it was just exciting to me
because you just understand so much about how markets move,
why are they moving,
what is happening behind those Japanese candles
that you're watching.
And it was really eye-opening.
And I feel like even just studying those basic things,
just to get a grasp of what's happening behind everything you see is super interesting.
For sure.
Like one example is, you know, you said it, the Japanese candlestick,
which is four data points, right?
It's an open, a close, a high and a low.
Let's like take a, I don't even know like the candlestick, which is four data points, right? It's an open, a close, a high and a low. Let's like take a, I don't even know like the candlestick names. It's like super embarrassing for this.
You know, there's a bunch of different names for candlesticks. The one where it's got the tall
wick and it's got a small body at the bottom, let's say the hammer, the hammer, hanging man,
whatever it is. You could look at that in isolation and you don't really know anything about it or how
actionable it might be. Whereas if you look at it, if you're looking at a volume profile with that,
if you're looking at a footprint chart with that, you know, at the top of that wick, was there a lot
of activity that came into the market? Did buyers, you know, get absolutely caught off sides at the
high or was it exhaustive and there was no real involvement at all? There's not a whole lot you
could just take from looking at the candlestick.
So the saying is like price action is the king, order flow is the crown or whatever.
It might be the opposite.
But yeah, it's super insightful.
And auction market theory is just a good lens to look at the market through, right?
The market is looking to find balance you know at any given point the market
is only in a few sets of conditions so if you can organize and this is why i you know i've always
used basically every trader i've ever been alongside has always had a profile out um a lot
of the older guys they love tpo charts but it's super valuable because right away you get an idea
whether it's on the session or whatever periodicity the session it could be the week could be a month
however it's organized you get an idea of how it is organized right you get an
idea of if things are balanced right or if it's been really imbalanced like you
get context right away that visual feedback versus you know trying to make
sense of it looking at a candlestick chart.
And having that feedback is super important.
It just speeds up your decision-making process.
Yeah, 100%. So moving from the technical side of things, I want to talk a bit about the psychological aspect of trading.
How do you manage the psychological side of trading, like just dealing with the stress of the fast paced of Bitcoin and
everything that's going on, especially now with tariffs and stuff like that, and just maintaining
the discipline during super volatile or challenging periods? It just gets easier with time, honestly,
and you have to have things outside of the market that take your attention away. So for me, it's, you know, always tried to live a very balanced life, because there's
been periods where I've, you know, when you're trading intraday, you're really close to the
feedback loop. You're close to the feedback from the market. You know, it's sort of like, you know,
touch the stove, it's hot, you know, right away. So I know early on, I would find out right away when I would get overwhelmed, when I
would get really stressed and you can't operate under those conditions.
So for me, you know, having some kind of outlet is, you know, having multiple outlets and
that's as silly as making sure I get to the gym, making sure I'm eating well, making sure
I'm taking breaks away from the computer.
That's all really important.
But then it's also having
your system and having your playbook set up so that you know, okay, is my trading,
let's say, for example, your trading is going poorly. Is it due to variance? Is it due to
what you would normally expect over a longer period of time, over a larger sample size?
Or is it voluntary are you doing
something wrong to you know screw yourself over so being able to lean on this is why again journaling
is important it's boring but it's a job at the end of the day being able to lean on that data
is important because you'll be able to say right away whether or not you, you should really care to begin with. Or are you just, you know, are you getting
whipped around in a, I'd say it's a normal way, but a normal way, right? To be expected.
You know, if you take four losses in a row, but you know that that streak is, you know, permissible,
well, why stress it? So being able to lean on that data is really important.
important. Having a balance, like you can't say this enough, I kind of hate all this hokey stuff.
Having a balance, like you can't say this enough, I kind of hate all this hokey stuff.
So you'll never hear me like bring this topic up myself. Just to be just to be clear, you know,
you asked, but I feel like there's a lot of times when people focus too much on the hokey, like,
oh, mindset. And, you know, you got to be able to be balanced that it is all really important.
But the end of the day, you do have to have an edge too, right? Let's be honest. So if you have an edge and you could lean on that, then you really shouldn't get too upset
unless you start to really deviate from your own norms, right? Unless things are just not
working anymore and you could rely on the data to say, okay, clearly I'm beyond my, let's say,
worst streak. It might be time to actually change things. But yeah, another, you know, clearly I'm beyond my, let's say worst streak. Um, it might be time to actually
change things, but yeah. Uh, another thing is like a lot of people will say, um, a lot of people will
say that you should take time off if you're, you know, if you're getting your ass kicked by the
market, if you're off, uh, if you're off. I don't know.
I don't know if I really agree.
I think it depends on what kind of trader you are.
If you're an intraday trader, a shorter term trader,
I think the better thing to do is to just reduce your risk,
even if it's much lower, like meaningfully lower
to where you're not going to materially make any kind of money,
but still taking risk and still trading, meaningfully lower to where you're not going to materially make any kind of money, but
reduce it, but still taking risk so that you can, and still trading so that you can still
stay in some kind of connection with the market.
So if you're a shorter term trader, having that feel for the overall, let's say, cadence
rhythm of the market is really important.
So I don't really, there's very few times where I'll just like, things are going
wrong and I'll just take a break break. Like where I'm like, okay, I'm not trading for XYZ amount of
time. And I mean, it hasn't happened in a really long time, thankfully, knock on wood. But there
are plenty of times where I'm like, just banging my head against the wall and I'll size down. And
I have a rule for how I size down and how I size back up um but i'll size down and i'll
still trade um just to remain again with a sort of a hand on the market to keep the feel right
yeah yeah fully agree i think taking time off is is rarely needed right it i think it's okay if
like you kind of lost control you started like not just not just a bad day, but a really bad day where everything is fucked up.
Maybe taking a day or two off just to analyze what happened and get control of everything.
That kind of makes sense.
But just taking a losing streak, it's going to happen.
You just can't avoid it.
It's a part of business, right?
Yeah. So sizing down is definitely just the best thing you can do, I think, in that kind of scenario.
Yeah. What I will say is that as a caveat that there is a there is a line in the sand that has to be drawn.
Right. Like psychologically, I don't know what the study was, but if you lose, and hopefully you're never at this point, right? At least earlier trading career, it's happened. If you lose 50% of your account,
you better take some time off because there's something about getting over the halfway point
of your capital where people kind of say, fuck it. And this is way more prevalent at actually
casinos where someone loses half of their money and they're just like, I already lost half of it, fuck it.
And you'll see, I've seen other people do this, other traders do this.
There's sort of this spiral that happens.
At that point, zero happens pretty quickly.
Because you've already felt like you've lost so much, the comeback seems relatively insurmountable.
And the decision process after that is just terrible.
So there has to be, you know, we're not talking like if you lose a couple of trades and it's, you know, again, it's within norms.
There's no real reason to take off.
If you're chunking your account, yeah, you might want to take a fucking breather or do whatever you need to do to get away from the desk.
want to take a fucking breather or do whatever you need to do to uh get away from the desk
it really all comes back to what you said earlier um about this being a business right treating this
like a business and i think this is why it's so important to have uh you know the the the journal
of your trades themselves like the technical journal uh the emotional journal which is something
that i personally put more emphasis on which is is like just a journal in the morning when I wake up, a journal in the evening after the session is done.
You just really have to take this seriously. And a part of that is just following all of these
data points almost and understanding when are you losing control? What's happening? Is your edge gone? Are you just mentally exhausted or something?
And just taking it really, really seriously.
Because I feel like a lot of people don't.
A lot of people just think, oh, I'm having fun and trading crypto coins and stuff like that.
But maybe in 2014, 15, I don't think today.
maybe in 2014, 15.
I don't think today.
Yeah.
Yeah, you have to journal
and writing things down.
It is a business,
and that's what you have at businesses, right?
There's accountability, there's recording,
there's accounting, and this is all,
this is not because it's not random.
It works.
Yeah, 100%.
So looking at yourself, what advice would you give the younger self or just someone else listening to the space right now who's in the beginning of their trading journey, like first year or something like that?
What advice would you give them entering into this job or just trading world?
into this job or just trading world? Let's see. I mean, one, whatever market you go into,
you have to obsess over whatever instrument it is you're trading. Like, I think that you should
go in initially, maybe one to three things you monitor. Anything more than that, like,
trading is difficult enough as a discretionary trader, like trying to synthesize and process multiple markets,
especially if like, God forbid, you're trading like crypto commodities and then stocks. Those
are all way different, completely different animals, commodities especially. I see a lot
of people trade like multiple commodities as if it's all kind of one trade. And there's so many
different things that affect the commodity market on an individual
basis.
You can't even get into it.
But I would say you have to have a couple things that you obsess over, right?
So you build an extremely deep knowledge of how it trades, everything that affects it,
right?
Again, the first thing I would say to anybody is market microstructure is probably one of
the most important things you should understand.
So why do the market moves?
So do you understand why the market moves?
Do you understand how limit orders affect price?
Do you understand how market orders, rather limit orders, interacting affect price?
How the order book changing affects price?
What actually moves price from point A to point B?
So that's really important.
So it boils down to, when I started, it was like studying level two in the tape. It's way more difficult now. But focusing on, I guess, right away, I would say, mark off, you know, you hear about, let's say you come into trading, you hear people talk about how support and resistance is really important. You know, these levels are really important. Okay, so mark those levels off, put an alert at them, step away, come back when your alert goes off and then look at the tape and look at the book right around that level and see how
price behaves. I'd say that I'd say one of the things that you could do that's really easy to
do in this market because data is really cheap, like insanely cheap relative to traditional
markets where you have to fork over thousands of dollars for historical data,
is go study all of the major events. We have had a lot of major market moving events.
There's a lot of homework out there. So go study FTX, go study Luna, go study COVID,
go study every single rate decision, look at non-farm payrolls. Literally, the tariff is another example. Go back, look at how the market reacted, break it down, try to, you know,
deconstruct, reconstruct how the market behaved going in, how the market behaved going out and
during. You have like, you have all of that available to you in a way that you don't have
in other markets. And you have all of like the, the important flow related information and
positioning related information, information as well like again you
might yeah at this point like there's so many different platforms they're all charging i don't
know 20 to 100 a platform but that's required like at some point you're gonna have to jump over a
gated a date to get involved into trading view too like also there's also a lot of them that give you
um late data for free like you get like a one day delay and stuff like that which is fantastic
for for example you know looking at past events 100 so yeah study as much as is available to you
like you could sit very simply like i would say like before all that you could study the basics
right like study price action how it trades again around the open and close right who is trading it
right we'll find out the the very basics um And then some of the more important things you have to learn is like,
focus on the process, right? Not the outcome where you want to be right, right? The faster
that you come to terms with that, the faster you come to terms with like that the next trade
doesn't really matter, the better off you, you can be.
Like, I always give baseball analogies, but I didn't play a lot of baseball. I mean, I did like I grew up in New York, like you play baseball because your dad put you in baseball and coached
you. But like a baseball player batter doesn't get up like thinking that every at bat is going
to be the one that makes his career. Maybe it's like fucking bases loaded and bottom of the ninth
and it's a World Series. But most of the time, it's like, all right, this is just one at bat. In aggregate, I have to be able
to hit the ball. But this one is not going to be make or break. The same thing goes for trading,
and especially for intraday traders, lower timeframe traders, higher time preference
traders, because you're taking so many trades. I mean, to be honest, unless you're really juicing
up the leverage in a way that is risky to begin with, no real trade matters much more than the last one or the next, right?
They're all like you're bricklaying, right?
You're making base hits, and that's it.
So focus on the process more than the actual trade result.
You have to stack them.
You have to be able to stack wins and not worry about single trades. And we said, you know, for beginners
right away, start with the good, start with good habits. So journal right away. Like everyone who's
comes from retail side and gets involved in trading, like journals, like they don't, I don't
know anyone who starts right away journaling. That's a very serious person, but they kind of
feel like they could just wing it and figure it out as they go. Um, and it's the same, like I said, you're not
going to build an airplane in flight, right? Like that shit has to all be buckled down before you're
taking real risk and then write, you know, not only journaling where it's pulling it from the
API, but write down things, right? There's something about like, this is, this is something
that is empirically proven to be true.
You have to if you only just if you don't write something down, it's just an abstraction.
So until you write something down, there's something about the process of writing.
And I'm literally talking about writing with a pen and paper.
That's better than actually typing.
Otherwise, it's an it's an abstraction.
And I personally, throughout my trading career,
I've been known to some periods, I have a lot of post-its on my screen, some periods I don't.
But when you write things down, you're able to kind of lean on them because it's material at
that point during higher stress periods versus like trying to go through the Rolodex of thoughts
and points in your head during that period.
So you have something that's concrete.
So write things down.
And then the last thing I would say is like I say this often to newer traders like your job is to not die.
Don't put yourself in a position to lose all your chips because you can't play at that point.
Yeah, exactly.
Your job is to survive. If anything, if you're new, I would say the focus you should be
having is try to get a lot of reps and try not to lose money. Try to get in the market and out of
the market and not lose money rather than try to make money at first. It sounds kind of silly,
but if you could first try to play defensively, I think you're better off than most people.
I'm saying this, but no one ever follows this. Um, then most people are going in, they're like, oh my God,
my buddy just crushed it. Let me try to find like a home run right now. Uh, and then you zero your
account out and it's like, okay, the next time I'll, the next time I'll be disciplined. And
you know, that just repeats ad na. They're, they, you can only take so many losses before you just
quit as a person
so if you can avoid that, better to you
about what you said in the first point
I remember in Silico once tweeted about
I was really early into just trading perps and I was following him
and he tweeted
the next trade or the last trade don't matter. What matters is the next 10,000 trades.
And that really just made me think about it and realize that, you know,
the next week, the next month don't matter.
What matters is like the next year or two and stuff like that.
So, yeah, just got to keep clicking, right?
Just keep clicking, keep collecting data, keep improving.
It's going to be a long path, that's for sure for sure yeah so uh before we wrap things up uh i
wanted to get your thoughts about just the last couple of days we've had trump going crazy with
all the tariff stuff um you know yesterday was uh exciting. I was just in bed shitposting watching the market nuke.
So what are your thoughts about this whole tariff thing and just in general, the state of things in the market?
Yeah, so I'm like definitely not qualified to say much from an economic standpoint, from a macro standpoint.
But I think it's your job obviously
has to be able to identify what conditions are favorable and where you should be very cautious.
And we're in a period that is really unpredictable. Trump is a curveball, right? I mean, I think from
and maybe people could argue the opposite. And I have no interest in talking about it deeply.
You know, I think tariffs are not good. Tariffs are clear. So if
you consider that if you ever want the answer about something market related, the best resource
for that is probably how the S&P is responding to that, because that is kind of your weighing
machine, voting machine, and indicator for the wisdom of the crowds, right? And you're probably not going to outsmart,
you know, everybody. So I think it's a good reflection of how the market, you know,
markets find truth, right? Markets fucking hate Trump right now. Like that is,
it's impossible to deny that. They do not like everything that he is doing.
And it's for good reason, right? Markets love, you hear my doms in the back telling
me that connections are reestablished. Markets don't like uncertainty, right? This is why they
trade the way they do going into significant economic events, going into earnings. They don't
like uncertainty. And there are certain conditions where markets can begin to parse out and traders
can be, investors can begin to parse out kind of like they get a feel for maybe what to anticipate
and you see behavior smooth out a little bit.
And Trump doesn't really offer any of that.
So I talk about this a couple of times in the last couple of weeks, like one thing you
would want to do naturally is like, okay, if someone is consistently talking about something that is spooking the market, we'll use tariffs as an example.
And as a side note, this is why news traders have a really good edge.
If they're consistently saying something that is spooking the market, then naturally, if they're repeating that thing and there is less market impact, you can begin to make some kind of assessment as, you know,, maybe if we're close to a turn or if the market has kind of begun to really price that in,
because you'll see over time, OK, every headline that came out, and this is why I said news traders,
the market has jumped X, Y, Z. The market has, you know, this much position has either came in or
left. And you can see how that transitions over time. And you could begin to extrapolate from
that. But with him, it's you think that you're onto something like he's talking about. It might be tariffs. The market's beginning to get a feel for that, get in position. And then he hits you with a curveball over the weekend about, hey, I'm going to run for a third term. So there's no you can't predict this guy. So you can't really price in anything.
predict this guy so you can't really price in anything um that board yesterday so i was uh
so yesterday i bought a new car and then um we went out to dinner and uh i ended up shorting btc
at 86.5 before we went out to dinner thinking okay and mostly hedging off when i say short it
was not a excess exposure i was hedging off some spot exposure that I had picked up towards 84. And I had done that. And then over dinner, like, I don't want to have my phone out,
but I opened my phone and I saw Trump holding a board and I saw those, you know, it was like
egregious percentages. And I thought it was, I thought someone had created a meme over an actual board he was holding.
So I was like, all right, this is ridiculous.
Like no way.
I had no idea this guy was holding a board up with just completely arbitrarily arrived to tariff levels.
It was like based on the deficits multiplied by two.
I don't know.
No, nothing thoughtful behind them.
And then not for nothing, like they weren't even like in alphabetical order, I don't think.
I don't know who's in the cabin right now flying this thing.
But yeah, I mean, that was, you couldn't see that coming.
Like, so you just have to, I think that, you know, when you have conditions where the Vix is where it is which is not actually that crazy
but you could tell right now like books are thinner across all markets markets are on a
you know you a 24-hour news cycle even tighter than that um and you have to dial things down
because you can't really act with too much certainty i personally think like at some point
this can't continue right because i i think at some point
like people's pockets are going to get hurt enough yeah you think like people are going to try to
like just control him kind of thing yeah i mean that seems like it should happen to me right um
he doesn't care about crypto as much as crypto people think he does he doesn't um he's a grifter
right the guy sold vodka so i'm sure his friends have positions, and at some point he'll speak to that.
But the S&P is, what is it, like 12% off the highs, 10% off the highs?
That's not even in classic Fed put territory yet.
They're starting to see, with credit spreads, they shifted a little bit, I think, over the last week.
Things are, listen, things don't feel normal right now.
But depending on who you're talking to,
someone saying how the economy is humming and moving along really well, and then the next
person is saying, you know, we're on the cusp of a recession. It's very clear right now that if you
could draw anything from what is taking place, that you should not be putting too much risk on
the line. Unless I tell you, my father-in-law people like, hey, like not for nothing, please
don't look at the market every single day. But if the S&P, the QQQs, certain tech names,in-law, people like, hey, not for nothing. Please don't look at the market every single day.
But if the S&P, the QQQs, certain tech names, Mag7, if they're 10% plus off the highs,
maybe now is a better time to buy a little bit than at the highs.
Not dollar cost averaging, but averaging in based on volatility.
It might be smart, right?
But please be willing to hold on to this for another year plus.
But it's a better opportunity now than, you know, was when we were, you know, higher. So it's really tough. I don't think this can persist for long because, again, I think at some point, like people who hold U.S. equities, right, larger people in power, they have to feel this right um maybe the guy really was unhinged post that
assassination attempt i understand that but it's uh it's crazy it's it's not really much you can
say other than like keep your helmet on yeah definitely it's it's really just you you you
can just expect anything from this guy like at any moment on the weekend just the most outrageous and
ridiculous stuff i mean after he launched his his meme coin you know that was great it's like a
weird accumulation this yeah because i've seen idiocracy and it seems like it's just becoming
more and more following the path yeah yeah yeah um all right i have one more question for you and
before we uh go ahead to that i just want to remind our listeners, if you have any questions, you can click on the bottom right corner at the chat box icon.
Leave them and we'll touch them in a couple of minutes.
But, yeah, my last question to you is what do you believe making it is and do you feel like you've made it?
And also what car did you buy?
I got a new Range Rover so I got the the big boy yeah I love it absolutely it was like super spontaneous my I'm so spontaneous
like my wife knows better than anyone else like I'll I'll get an idea I'm like ah on a Tuesday
I'll be like I want a new car and'll just go buy it off the showroom.
No hassle, like not trying to nickel and dime anyone.
And that was yesterday.
I'm going to get rid of my M5, though.
Oh, really?
How come?
It's just because of the second kit and everything?
No, it's like M5 is a sedan, right?
I've always loved M5s.
It's just so loud. And I could take the exhaust off. I could take all the pipes off. But it's, I right um i've always loved m5s uh it's just so loud and i could take the exhaust off i could take all the pipes off um but it's i don't know i'm just like i'm over it i might go
back i was either going to i was looking at um range rovers or considering going to porsche route
but i think i'll hold off on the porsche route until like you know i have another little one
on the way and like i don't know, dude, I don't even drive much.
Like BMW offered my car.
My M5 is a 50th anniversary M5.
And they reached out to me and they're like, people call us every week for this.
We'll buy it from you at a premium.
Oh, and they check it out.
You got it recently, right?
Like a year ago or something?
Yeah, I only had like 4,000 or 5,000 miles a year on it.
They're like, what do you do?
You don't even drive this thing.
I'm like, no, dude, don't go anywhere, man.
I go to Jiu-Jitsu.
I'm like at home, like I'm a homebody.
But making it.
Yeah, I mean, people have different definitions of what making it means.
I mean, when I was younger, my making it meant like it was monetary, right?
It was like I want to be, yeah. When I was in college, it was like it was monetary, right? It was like, I want to be,
yeah. You know, come when I was in college, it was like, if you made six figures, that was like,
fucking you're balling, man. Like, oh my God, you're making six figures out of college. It's
crazy. Um, and then, you know, you want to be a millionaire and, and, you know, you hit those
things and you realize like, it's cool for a month, you know? And then I don't know myself,
like I didn't really change too much. Um, making it, making a lot of money, it just amplifies who
you already are. So like, I just give a lot more away. I still, I'm the same dude though,
that wears like sweatpants and the same pair of jeans, like five days a week, you know? Um,
days a week, you know? Um, but making it is, is, I think is, is being able to like dictate your own
day, right. To not have to answer to anybody. I think it's like the best feeling. Cause I've had
decade of my life plus where I had to answer to somebody. Right. Um, and I remember telling my
boss multiple times at my last, during my last year that I was going to go off on my own and him being like, yeah, like not taking it seriously at all.
And telling me that, you know, a bunch of people had tried that.
He knew that.
And, you know, he'll see me soon kind of thing.
And so for me, making it was like the first year, two years of actually flying solo.
And before I actually did, like I wanted to make sure I had enough money to do that.
And there was a period where I was doing it on my own, crushing it and didn't want to even make the jump yet because I just I don't know.
I felt like sort of insecure about going off on my own and literally just trading my own capital.
I felt like sort of insecure about going off on my own and literally just trading my own capital.
But for me, making it is being able to have time now with my family, do whatever I want.
I don't have to trade anymore.
I answer to myself and that's really it.
Like if you're able to honestly, if so for anyone who's like, I want to trade for a living, if you're able to pay your bills and have, you know, a little bit
extra, that's awesome, right? It doesn't matter if you're making, if you're clearing your bills,
you have money to do the things you love to do. I mean, you can only spend so much money
and buying material shit gets really old. I'm a car guy, so I love cars. But other than that,
like, I like watches. But other than that, I know, like, I don't know. I want, like, the $10 Hanes T-shirts, the fucking $40 Converse.
I'm happy.
And that's all that matters.
Like, if you're happy, that's it.
Yeah, that's really awesome, man.
And I fully agree.
I think that it's almost, it goes through everyone, this process of starting that, you know, making it as a monetary number.
And then not even well reaching.
And sometimes even when you're just getting close to it or something, I just realized that freedom is like, that's really making it.
When you can do whatever you want, buy whatever you need, and, you know, just live on your own terms kind of thing.
100%. And being able to, the best thing about it is being able to help other people so
giving we're like literally you know whether it's donating to charity or it's
like giving your friends a little bit extra helping your parents especially
that has been the most rewarding thing you know the silly like Tony Robbins
quote and I love Tony robbins to be honest
like i know there's a lot of gurus out there but is the secret to living is giving and that's
like you know i know spf has like ruined the idea of uh effective altruism and all that but if if
your money is and here's the thing and i don't want to you know keep this too long the ruining
all right go ahead i'm not in a rush if you're not
Money is energy. Okay, there's there's a lot of people that are literally waking up They're leaving their families
They don't get to see their kids a lot and they're trying to go get some of this energy so they can use it on the things
They really just keep them up to the next day to go to work again and do it all over again
So if you have extra energy, right
you can afford to give it to other people because a lot of times, like especially this day and age with people living paycheck to paycheck, crypto Twitter has a way of like completely distorting reality.
Completely.
Divorced.
It's insane.
Divorced from the idea.
And a lot of people are LARPing, but a lot of people are just they've made a lot of money in a short amount of time and they have no accountability.
They don't understand the real world.
But for some people, like actually for most people, a couple hundred dollars, a thousand dollars is fucking meaningful, you know.
So being able to to to give access where you know, to where it's needed, that can that changes people's lives.
Right. In many many cases so being able
to do that has been the most rewarding thing and i feel like you're kind of you have a responsibility
to do that that's my personal feeling if you make it it's not you like if i'm you know we didn't go
into like detailed detail but me being here is like i don't't know, 60% luck.
It's kind of for everyone.
Like I was at the desk at certain times.
I took certain trades.
I bought Bitcoin at the right time.
Like a lot of that is, you know,
I can't take responsibility for that.
So I have to give this shit away.
Yeah.
Well, you know, with the luck argument,
I do agree that it takes a lot of luck to make it.
Let's call it that way, right? But it's like the old saying of if you want to win the lottery you got to fill up the you got to buy a ticket
right so it's like you know you do need to get lucky but it's also the harder you work the
luckier you become yeah wayne gretzky yeah exactly um so that's awesome. That's all the questions I have for you.
So again, thank you so much for coming here and answering everything.
And before we go to my closing remarks, I want to go over the questions, see if anyone has any questions to you.
We have Wannabe Quant asking, did you consider an X7?
So I don't know why.
I love BMW.
BMW, it's a driving machine.
I don't like the X7.
So at the time, a couple months ago, we just bought a GLS.
And we got rid of our pickup truck.
And my wife needs something that can tow the horses.
And people had said to check out the x7 but i i found the mercedes to be so much more comfy
um and the same thing with like range rover uh bmw you really like you feel like you you're in
tune with the road um whereas now i think i kind of like the idea of like right it feels like you're
riding on like a couch like you're sitting on a sofa when you're driving a Mercedes or a Range Rover.
But yeah, BMWs are great either way.
Just the X7 is not my style.
Yeah.
All right.
We have Dave Scales asking, how do I know if trading is for me?
I don't know, man.
You have to walk a path on your own. It's really it's, it's really tough to, to tell, like
at some point you're going to have to turn the corner, right? So I'm assuming you're losing a
lot, right? Um, like I said, you probably know some of the things you do consistently that get
you, put you in the red. So are you able to, because you're the only person who's going to
be telling yourself to do this, are you able to stop doing some of that dumb shit to give yourself a chance?
And it's just a chance because there's no, again, like I am, so I personally believe,
and this is how I've lived my life, that if I try something that I can reach the utmost level of
success doing it, I'm kind of like the best examples, like that image of the
guy digging for the diamond and the one guy quits. That's how I've lived my whole life. Like
if you just continue to try, everyone's path might be different in terms of length,
in terms of experience. But I think that somehow the universe rewards you.
The trouble with trading versus like someone hearing that and being like, yes, I want to be
a professional soccer player where there is is, there's genetic component, um, is that trading, if you continue to bang your head
at this, trying to figure it out and you don't make any changes and you're just losing money,
like, yeah, you're really probably screwing your life up because you need money, you know? Um,
and then if you have people relying on you, it's really tough. It's much easier for people to pick
it up before they have anything important. So before they have anything important so before they have a wife before they have kids before they have mortgage all of that so for young like you could
take much you could take more risk but you only know if it's for you if in your heart like as as
hokey as that sounds um it's there's no guarantees right the market is i will say like there's this
weird sense of urgency that crypto twitter creates of like like, if you don't make the money now, like, you're never going to have a chance again.
And it's like, shut the fuck up.
Dude, markets have been, they've been around forever.
The behaviors have not changed.
Yeah, this is the last cycle.
They have not changed.
This will repeat forever until we get hit by a fucking, you know, an asteroid.
Yeah.
There will always be people programming the machines to do the trading even when things
get more advanced and to be honest human behavior behaviors in markets and animal spirits
they're kind of predictable on larger time frames like people when they see something they like they
buy a lot of it and markets respond one way right when they stop liking something they respond another
way that's not going to change but only you'll know if this is for you. Got to keep clicking.
Just keep clicking.
And yeah, we have Vinstar's asking a little bit of a price question.
Now that crypto stocks, gold, and most assets are crashing down after yesterday,
which assets do you think will rise first?
I mean, it's tough.
I think that BTC will be, depending on what conditions, right,
how we're arriving at a bottom.
Who knows?
Maybe this is the bottom in the making.
I think personally we are, because I can't imagine this persisting for too long
and markets actually
getting to a breaking point before they realize we have to do something, I think it's more likely
that markets are going to spend more time correcting through time than through price.
So the depth of the correction, I think, is meaningful right now. Yeah, we could go a little
bit lower. I think it's more likely that we have a longer sideways period than maybe most people
are anticipating. People tend to have this really skewed perspective of how fast things are going
to shift, especially after they've changed significantly in the way they have. It broke
down. We were going sideways for a long time and we broke down. So we've got a lot of ground to
cover. The chart is still broken. I think that from a traditional standpoint, you're going to see traditional assets move off the lows or find the bottom, I think, a little bit sooner, to be honest.
But that's my opinion.
I don't think people are going to go further out the risk curve before they work the stuff that's closer.
You'll see right now, as markets are moving down, gold is moving down.
It's because people have to at some point sell positions they might not necessarily want to sell to shore up capital for other things they want to protect.
And crypto is just, again, I know there's a lot of belief in it from this market, from people here.
It's a big echo chamber. But outside of it, portfolio managers are more interested in making sure they protect their meta position and NVIDIA positions and have that proper exposure settled versus getting BTC exposure again.
So it's a tough question to answer.
Again, I think that the one thing I will say is I think that we're probably correcting more through time than through price at this point.
I think this is a good area for crypto to find a bottom. Temporarily, I never want to speak with too much certainty, but I don't know
if we just cut through 70s and break down into that gap, into that range between 50s and 60s.
I don't know. That would be really fucking ugly. Can it happen? Absolutely. But I think it's more
likely we kind of, this is starting to look really similar to summer 2021.
I agree, which is dangerous because you could find examples all over charts because there's not really much to judge.
It's just candlesticks and your mind's going to play tricks on you. Right.
But it's looking like that. It kind of feels like we're at a we're getting towards an extreme emotionally, positionally.
But who knows?
Because Trump, he's a curveball.
At the end of the day, I just can't imagine how this continues for much, much longer before we break something.
And then they have to step in.
So on a positive note, if you end on a positive note, if you have cash, you're in a really good position.
cash, you're in a really good position and you don't have to rush in. But at some point,
And you don't have to rush in.
I think we're going to have a 2.0 of what happened, not necessarily from COVID,
but if markets break, they're going to have to step in and do something. And that's another ride
on the merry-go-round. When they inject liquidity into the system, who knows when that happens.
But if you have capital, you're obviously
in the best position. So just make sure
that you don't die between now and then.
It's going to be really fun
if that happens again.
There's nothing like trading an easy
market. No, nothing.
Yeah.
Well, that's pretty much it.
Wait, let me see. Someone added a question. Let's see.
While you look for the question, just to clarify, because there's way too much of this on the timeline.
There's no I'm not sitting here saying that QE is around the corner.
I'm saying if you're in cat, like you could afford to sit and sit this out for a little bit, I think.
But calling for QE is like something that happens like every other week on the timeline in crypto Twitter.
Yeah.
And that's being signaled as not in the near future right now.
So, yeah.
It's crazy how many people have seen today just like it's like this brain shift that happens.
Just like if we have one green day, that's it.
We're so back.
One red day.
It's all over.
Like today I woke up.
The whole timeline is talking about a recession.
That's it.
We're in it.
We're into a Great Depression.
You know, it's just ridiculous.
So true.
Yeah, well, that's pretty much it from me.
Again, thank you so much for coming here.
I wanted to ask you if you have anything else you want to add before we end things up.
No, I don't think so.
I have approximately probably 30 minutes left before my little one wakes up from a nap.
And then, yeah, it's off to play with a toddler for a little bit.
I advise people, if you're thinking about having kids, it's really really cool it's a lot of fun yeah it's it's really awesome i feel like a lot
of all of my friends i don't have any kids but uh all my friends that do have kids tell me that it's
it's a really really hard and you suffer a lot but it's an amazing experience and they all tell me
like actually it's funny because every
single one of my friends who has kids told me the moment i had a kid i realized i wish i would have
done this 10 years for sure earlier yep exactly 100 100 yeah and it's uh i hopefully i'll experience
it someday i remember we we had this night me and my friends were just chilling out
drinking beers and just watching tv and stuff and we stayed up till like six in the morning
and one of his girls woke up he has two girls and uh then he went to help her to brush her teeth
then he comes back all like happy and excited i'm like what happened he's like dude she just
brushed her teeth on her own that's really cool and then he said no no you don't get it i don't
care about it being cute i'm just like you see parenthood is like you give up all of your free
time and then you just get it back in small increments and i just got extra 15 minutes of
my morning back to me it's yeah it's you could spend hours talking about it man but it's uh
it's everything honestly well brilliant again ryan
thank you so much for coming likewise to all of our listeners if you don't follow ryan make sure
to give him a follow a lot of real high quality stuff unlike me who i only almost shit post
ryan actually posts about trading and setups and i also also follow you on Telegram. You have the stable, right?
The Telegram channel?
I do, yeah.
Which is really awesome.
So guys, if you're not in the stable,
if you don't follow Ryan,
make sure to do that.
I'm sure you're gonna,
this will be a fantastic addition to your timeline.
And again, Ryan, thanks a lot for coming.
This was fantastic.
And I hope you had some fun as well.
My pleasure, man.
Thank you so much.
Awesome. To all of our listeners who missed out or joined in the middle,
there will be a recording available once we're done with this episode.
And notes, as always, will be posted on my profile on Monday.
So make sure to give me a follow if you want to see those.
And make sure to give Kuma a follow for our upcoming episodes.
We're going to have an episode next week with Smokey the Bear, the founder of Bearatrain.
And we're going to be talking a little bit more about the technical side of things, about different opportunities.
So make sure to check that out.
I think it'll be a really fun one.
And if you haven't tried Kuma yet, you can click on my profile.
There's a referral link in the bio. If you don't click it, yet you can click on my profile there's a referral link
in the bio if you don't click it they will fire me so please do that but yeah you can trade with
up to 50x leverage on majors we just listed xrp with 20x you will get 10 off of fees if you click
on my uh referral link and um yeah and currently we have an emission reward for the bgt token for bera you
can exchange it to bera token we're giving out 30k a week uh for trading so yeah just like the
points program that hyper liquid and stuff like that have and everything we have something even
better uh 30k a week to all of our users uh i personally tested it and i got like i think i got
like six or seven times what i was paying for fees just back and profit to me so yeah that's pretty
much it guys thank you so much for coming ryan again thank you kuma thank you so much for hosting
this uh make sure to check kuma out if you haven't already give ryan a follow and check my profile out if you
want to see some just shit posting and yeah see you guys next week thanks a lot for coming guys
