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STA #15: Surviving & Thriving While Trading w/ @RealPropTrader
Recorded: July 24, 2025 Duration: 1:04:09Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent discussion, crypto enthusiasts explored the evolving landscape of trading, highlighting Kuma's strategic partnerships, significant fund allocation for rewards, and educational initiatives aimed at empowering traders. The conversation emphasized the importance of community engagement and the potential for yield through innovative programs.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Hey, hey, man.
What's going on? Can you hear me good i'm good let's give it a couple of minutes uh to let some people join in sounds good how's your day man i know it's uh just the morning for you
right yeah doing okay doing all right just Just finished up with the morning session.
Like to finish off right around 11.
The volatility dies down.
There's not too much going on besides giving yourself a chance to give back money.
Yeah.
We were actually discussing this in the last episode.
I've had uh kane on um and
we were discussing like we were just talking about how nice it must be for people trading
trad fi just you know enjoying the fact that until the market opens there's just nothing you can do
and yeah and then like you can just choose the sessions you like, the time of the session you like, and stuff like that.
Yeah, it makes it a lot easier to build this sort of a routine,
some structure around your life.
Even though Trump fucking made it difficult
when at any moment in time he could say something that breaks everything.
Yeah.
I mean, do you think we will see 24-7 markets at some time?
So I primarily trade traditional futures now.
So they're almost there.
We're basically trading 23 hours.
24-5, right?
right? Yeah, exactly. So I don't think we'll see weekend trading, but I could definitely see for
Yeah, exactly.
So I don't think we'll see weekend trading,
stocks for them to be open 24 hours a day. I would be maybe a little concerned about then
the timing of like certain things and certain news events come out and you're kind of a
if to then expand your like time that you're
sitting in front of a computer in the same way crypto is now.
We really need to be there the entire the entire time not to miss out on anything.
Yeah, it's kind of like how, you know, you know that let's say you're I don't know you're
you're long, you're long spot like SPX and yes, and then I don't know, your long, like, SPX and ES,
and then, I don't know, we have some big reports of, like,
Tesla and, like, you know, Apple and stuff like that coming after close.
You're like, yeah, I'll go over them tomorrow or something like that.
Or, like, you're not in a – well, if you're holding stocks, that is, right?
If you're in the futures, yeah.
But, no, i think uh listen at
the end of the day the uh the guys at the nyse uh the companies that own the stock market and get
paid each time you trade their incentive is just to increase volume as much as possible
so it makes sense for them to want to keep the casino open all day.
Yeah.
Well, the weekends, that's the nicest thing that you guys have.
Yeah, exactly.
My uncle trades futures, and I always tell him that I'm so jealous of him being able to just fully disconnect for the weekend.
And even if something happens like i don't know
there's something in the middle east someone is attacking someone else so yeah i can't do anything
anyways yeah and you have time to make a plan like before anything moves so you kind of are able to
think about things without any external factors affecting your decision yeah that's super nice maybe someday i'll advance a little bit more
to futures my my futures trading career has been abysmal at the very best listen there's definitely
downsides it's it is one or some of the markets s&p and nasda, they're definitely the most efficient markets out there.
So there's really not much edge there.
But yeah, I mean, if you go down the ladder, stuff that's less liquid, there's always opportunities.
There's opportunities everywhere.
Yeah, 100%.
Well, I think we can just jump right into it.
Let me just welcome all of our listeners uh
thank you guys for coming i see marusha migmas shout out to you guys uh thanks for coming this
is i'm pretty sure this is episode number 15 we have it in the title but uh i'm not sure if it's
16 or 14 but i think it's 15 uh but yeah thanks for coming i'm sure that you guys will enjoy this
episode we have a little bit of a different angle for this episode we have a prop trader a real prop trader with us
if you guys don't follow him make sure to give him a follow i've had the pleasure of working
with him in the short time that i've been taking apart with trading in a prop desk and he's a
fantastic trader lots of experience lots
of insight and I'm sure that you'll be able to learn a lot from him he doesn't post so often
hopefully that'll change but uh but when he does it's it's really fantastic quality stuff so make
sure to give him a follow um should I just call you prop trader yeah sure yeah all right so yeah
thanks for coming on I really appreciate it.
Yeah, I appreciate you having me.
This is exciting.
Is this your first time talking in public or something now?
I think so, yeah.
First time on a podcast.
So I hope it goes well.
Yeah, I'm sure it's going to go well.
I want to remind all of our listeners,
before we start and just jump into discussing everything,
on the bottom right corner, you have a chat box icon.
You can click on it at any moment, leave any questions you might have,
and we'll touch on them towards the end of the show.
This space will be recorded.
So if you miss out on anything, you can just catch that at the end of the show.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
The last thing, huge thanks to kuma for hosting these spaces
uh we're now live with up to 50x leverage uh you can trade and deposit from many different chains
and we're currently giving out around 17 000 every single week in trading rewards so yeah if
you want to grab a piece of that pie make sure to check out kuma um well i want to start with um the first basic question of like how did you just
get into trading and i will say to all of our listeners a property trader doesn't trade so
much crypto he has some crypto experience um but he mainly trades uh futures right yeah exactly
yeah so how did you get into this world of uh trading um so i was always kind of
interested in strategy games growing up uh first one that like really got me hooked was poker and
i played a lot of that growing up with friends i mean the online poker boom happened and yeah i was
into that for a few years i realized though fairly early on that kind of the ceiling in poker is fairly low
so there's no like next next level to get to and at the higher stakes you're ending up you're
competing against much much better players and that kind of led me into looking into other things and recognizing trading.
My idea was, okay, if I can trade something profitably with 100 shares, you don't have to change your strategy around too much if you want to 10x or 100x or size.
Obviously, that was a little naive at the time.
But yeah, that was kind of my thought process and led me into that area.
While I was in university, I interned actually at a prop shop. I got very lucky. One of my friend's uncles
owned one that was focused on stocks. So I kind of got hooked within the first few days and I was
there for a couple of months. And then the following year, once I graduated,
I applied to a bunch of different positions
and started working at a different prop shop.
And this one was focused on futures.
So traditional markets, BES, silver, gold, oil,
you name it, whatever is listed on CME or any other futures market for that matter.
I've taken a look at and I've traded over the years.
And by the way, I just want to make sure this is like a real prop trading firm.
A firm backs you, they keep a percentage of the profits.
This isn't like a bullshit you see online you need to pay for
something yeah with evaluations and all those things yeah yeah this is uh
i don't want to call it the real deal but you're trading on an actual market this isn't a
a b book where the uh yeah whoever you're signed up against is kind of taking the other side and
just hoping you lose.
Yeah, that's dope. And then you just got hooked. And ever since then, you've been in this. Yeah,
exactly. And the way I kind of got into crypto was through Bitbit. So I'm sure a lot of the listeners loam or follow him on Twitter. So I've been working with him since I think almost a
decade now trading traditional markets.
And since then, he's always been dabbling into crypto. Most of the office thought it was crazy.
Yeah, I was I just kind of stayed out of it. I was very comfortable in my own lane doing
TradFi stuff. And I never really explored it until really the 2020 crash.
And that's when I kind of decided, OK, there's a lot of shit going on here.
Maybe I should take a look at this.
But at the same time, I was so, so busy with the other TradFi stuff that I didn't deep dive into it.
And then when BitBit kind of opened the prop shop just for crypto, uh i joined and helped him out with that for about
three years or so yeah that's like i'm actually i'm interested in your perspective so you've been
trading um futures for like 10 15 years until you started dabbling with crypto right um when you
first saw the crypto volatility and just how crazy the market is in
comparison to you know futures for example how how was that to you was it like did you see it as oh
it's really volatile that's nice i can make a lot of money or did you see this that's really volatile
this is crazy i mean definitely a little bit of both more so the crazy side i uh i should
have went in and kind of realized oh shit with all this volatility there's a huge amount of money to
be made but yeah i was very much in the oh this is a scam this is just going to go to zero why even
waste time on it and a lot of the trading was done at that time where the underlying was btc or eth right yeah
so you're kind of like back at the bitmix days still yeah exactly so you're your leverage on
leverage because if the market's going down and you're long you're losing on your position and
you're losing on your collateral yeah and obviously go ahead yeah i was saying that we we have marusha in the crowd shout out to him and
he me and him we often like when people start talking about like trading with leverage and
oh it's so dangerous and you can get white out so easy like we often both of us find ourselves in the
same like thread replying to people like dude you have no idea you're like trading with with like
stable coins as a margin you have no idea like how badly
and how fast you can get just caught off guard exactly i think uh one of the first few trades
right when i was beginning uh bitmiss sent me i think it was just one eve and he was like yeah
around you're gonna blow it like don't worry about it just understand the market understand what's going on here so i traded it you know the first week put it up to five or ten eighth second
week double it again and i'm thinking god um i'm gonna be rich in like the shortest amount of time
this is a fucking joke and of course everybody knows there's a liquidation cascade I get caught in it continuously buying and just get wiped out
and that's I feel like a very standard welcome into crypto that a lot of people it's like a rite
of passage or something like that exactly yeah I mean we've all been there I remember like the
bad part for me was I think the first time I was caught in the situation where I was like, oh, I'll just keep buying.
And at a certain point, I'll just be in profit was like when we had the first crash in May 21.
When I was like, when I started consistently trading with leverage and I was just buying all the way from 60 to like 30K.
That was really painful.
But yeah, you you gotta learn somehow so uh yeah so like talking
about losses um how long did it take for you to feel like you're starting to get the hang of
things when you started trading like starting to turn a profit and was there like a pivotal moment
that you were just dabbling with markets and you were like, okay, I can do this for a living. This can be my career. It probably took about a year or so to really feel like I could do this and
consistently. I would say one of the big things that kind of allowed me the time to figure it out
was I was living at home, having minimal expenses and really giving myself that time. I mean, when I was hired, I was told, be prepared like six months to a year.
You're you're not going to get it.
It's going to take time.
And everybody comes in cocky and gets humbled fairly quickly.
But, yeah, I was getting the hang of things and learning from other traders helped.
And I feel like one of the big things that helped me and i've always been good at was recognizing very early on when there was kind
of uh i'll call them free money trades on the table trades where you're right like 95 or more
of the time i i really wasn't scared to go max size and take advantage of the situations, especially
if it's something that was kind of repeatable or something that I'd seen before.
So I got a very good example of this because it doesn't exist anymore.
So I have no problem talking about it.
But there was this insane edge in live cattle, which is like an absurdly random product to
trade to begin with. with right it's a thin
market there's like not much daily volume and nobody's looking at this besides fucking cowboys
in texas looking to hedge their like live cattle i don't know so anyways the the story is me just
looking at different markets trying to see what else I could trade, because I've been losing money in the afternoon and I want to figure out
something else to look at so that I'm not just donating to the algos.
So the market for it normally closes at 2 p.m. Eastern time. And then from two o'clock till 2.05,
there's this kind of aftermarket where it's still trading normally. And then at 205, the market is closed and it locks.
So during those five minutes, as you could imagine, most liquidity just
disappears completely.
And there's kind of like four to eight lots per price, which is size.
So if you're not, if you're not aware of futures trade in lots instead of shares or instead
of their contracts. So yeah, that's kind of four to eight, four to 10 per price is the average.
And for whatever reason, I was looking and I started noticing that there was
huge volume during that five minute period. And that kind of piqued my interest, checked it out.
during that five minute period.
And that kind of piqued my interest, checked it out.
And for whatever reason, it turns out that someone was coming in
and just buying market 50 lots, like every 30 seconds or so.
Just a complete moron, awful execution at the worst possible time of the day.
So immediately I got limits for it.
I tested it out for a few days. And then I sized up basically as
much as I could, and just printed off of this for a while. And it
kind of like really helped me build some kind of cushion and
consistency early on. And I think it's important to mention for
the viewers, like I didn't waste time analyzing why it was
happening. I really I think can we important to mention for the viewers, like I didn't waste time analyzing why it was happening.
I really I think can we swear on this?
Yeah, you can.
Okay.
I didn't give a fuck.
Like if it's some junior idiot trader or if it's like I mentioned, like a
Texas cowboy just hedging his cattle like they who cares if there's a big edge
immediately attack it.
The these types of trades don't last a long time.
Yeah, one of my biggest advice would be like for small accounts, these kinds of edges could really, really help.
And they exist in tons of different forms, all different markets.
I know there used to be a lot in crypto.
You just really like need to get into the weeds and explore places that don't make
a lot of sense for big funds but can really help you out i'm pretty sure for ftx there used to be
a like an end of day rebalancing on certain contracts that was easy to game yeah you can
write a book about all the ftx stuff yeah exactly like there was mean, even used to be able to open like max leverage trades and there
was dislocation between mark and last price and like really give yourself a good chance.
But yeah, there's lots of these situations that are kind of massively EV, but you really
just, like I said, get into the weeds, explore opportunities, just be curious and like check
out stuff that nobody else is really looking at or
talking about because that's where you'll find very i'll say inexperienced counterparties
yeah i mean it's definitely one of the key abilities of uh of like a good trader which is
just finding those opportunities but not just finding, but also making sure that you start as soon as possible
to just extract as much as you can from it
and just squeeze it out until it just stops working.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah, and I wrote a tweet.
I was discussing with a friend on Longo Varro,
and we were just talking about it was starting a company
and stuff like that, and we were just talking, and he brought up this sentence that I tweeted it and I really liked it.
And it's correct.
It's stop trying to make it perfect or something.
Just if there's something, just work with what you've got and just jump into it.
Yeah, 100%.
And you risk as small as possible early on just to kind of test
out your hypothesis but once it's being proven to you i mean you gotta you gotta put your nuts on
the table you gotta really put some risk on especially if it's these situations that can
kind of propel you a few steps forward and really give you that edge because the this uh cattle thing i was probably
one of honestly the first in the world that saw it but within a week i noticed there's other players
and within two weeks it's getting way more competitive there was still edge but you know it
kind of dropped by 50 percent then another 50 and then it very slowly ends up becoming zero yeah well there
you go guys start looking into cattle futures and and poultry futures um but so what do you feel were
in that first year that you were trading where you were just you know trying to figure things out um and
even after that because i feel like um a lot of people go through these two periods where
at first you just stop losing money and only then you start actually making money um and there can
be some time between those two like i'm i've met a lot of people who are trading for a year a year
and a half and they're just break-even traders they just cannot you know grow their balance but they don't lose money as
well um so in in those periods if you've experienced them can you share what were just the most
significant mistakes or just general challenges that you felt are going through uh yeah so definitely i mean we could go back to that same example
of this cattle and then not sizing down when the big edges kind of stopped being there so i
definitely gave back a bunch that i didn't have to um a few years later did very similarly. I think it was March, April 2020 during kind of peak COVID. I had one
of my best months trading oil when it was going insane, probably like three to four times my
previous best month, every single day it was printing. And then once that extreme volatility slowed down, I wasn't quick enough to adapt back to this semi normal environment.
And again, giving back more profits than I needed to.
You're always going to give back some profit.
That's kind of the nature of the game.
And if you're not giving back profit, then you're not hitting it hard enough when there's this great opportunity.
not hitting it hard enough when there's this great opportunity uh the other kind of big mistakes
definitely early on my career I would be very very inconsistent uh low confidence from one week to
another just one month to another and then swinging kind of swinging for the fences on every single
play once you once you notice there's an edge somewhere
and then kind of taking that same size and putting it on in something where it's like uh let's say
one is an a plus trade and one is a c trade and doing the exact same size there just doesn't make
sense but i mean you learn quickly kind of i put myself in a hole and then being forced to size down for
a while so that's a very quick learning experience of kind of donating money back for no reason
yeah I mean the part about giving back profits is 100% correct uh I I really do believe that
there's only there's two types of people there's the people who give back profit because, you know, the market has shifted and then you find a solution to that, right?
You sell for a little loss from like the, not for a loss, but like you sell after giving back a little bit of your profit or you sell early and then you just watch it go without you.
Right.
So it's like, like nobody sells the top, right?
And when I say nobody, I'm generalizing, right?
There will be probably a few people that sell the top,
but it's impossible.
Yeah, you shouldn't try to.
Yeah, yeah.
It's so pointless.
And I always encourage people to just open the charts.
And yeah, it is, you know, hindsight.
But if you look at previous cycles in crypto, from my experience, from my examples, there's always been an opportunity to just exit the trade on a bounce or something like that, or just at a place that makes sense, right?
A hundred percent. So yeah, you yeah just gotta control yourself in those scenarios no i uh i completely agree and yeah one i guess
i could go back because it's one of another big kind of mistake of mine was this term i learned
in poker which is called being upstuck and that kind of would just put me on tilt where let's say,
I don't know, let's say you're in a trade and you're up $1,000 and unrealized.
And then it goes down to $700 unrealized.
And the market shifted, you should probably take profit.
But I'm sitting there kind of mentally attached to this $1,000 number. And I want to
get to that. And so then I'm adding in a place where I shouldn't, where I should just be taking
off the trade and being happy. And that kind of makes a good winner turn into a big loser.
And then that could affect your psychology for the next trade. So those types of things early
on in my career definitely affected me.
Yeah, and it's just trading your P&L,
which is like the biggest sins.
Exactly.
Yeah, I mean, I use in silico term when I'm trading,
depends on the venue I'm trading at,
and they have this amazing tool which just hides your P&L.
It just says in profit or in the loss
and much easier definitely
um how do you feel your trading strategies have evolved over time are there any specific
methodologies or tools that you utilize now that you did it in the past um that's a good question
whenever like i mentioned used that or i didn't it, but whenever I used to have a big, either a max loss day, I would kind of try and make it back as quickly as possible.
And again, that comes back from, oh, I was here previously.
Let me try and get back there as soon as possible.
Whereas you're mentally attaching yourself to a number that just doesn't mean anything.
So it usually resulted in the sequence of the following days or weeks that would then, you know, set me back even longer.
So now, whenever I have any kind of, even a modest red day, I make sure the next day to come and just extremely focused.
thread day. I make sure the next day to come and just extremely focused. And I know you mentioned
kind of following your P&L is basically the devil. Sometimes I just enjoy liking, like to end the day
green. I'll set a P&L target. And if I hit it, sometimes I'll just walk away. And I understand,
I'm very aware that's not maximizing my ev that everybody kind of preaches
about but in my opinion for a long career it's way more important after you take a hit you're in this
more vulnerable situation and mindset so it's way more important to regain your confidence as quickly
as possible and for me what works for me the best way is just consistent green days
bring that confidence more than any kind of singular home run win it lowers your stress level
and uh yeah that's kind of a big thing that has helped me recently and i guess this is uh this
is different for everybody but for me my max loss day is two times my average
winning day.
So as my average winning days grow bigger, my max loss, I'm comfortable doing that.
And that's kind of, for me personally, for some people that might be very different.
And for crypto, I would recommend your max loss being whatever you have in the account.
So definitely don't keep more than you need to for multiple reasons.
Obviously, you could have exchange issues, but you could have tilt issues.
And it's just that it's a much easier way because the exchange provides you the leverage.
There's no reason not to take
advantage of it there's no reason to keep more money than you need to in the account yeah and
and i agree about like the the part where you said you don't necessarily always chase like
being max you know performance and all that um and i agree because I think there's a time and place for that.
I feel like especially, like you said,
when you're looking at it as a long-term career,
there's just no reason to just try to extract
as much as you can every single day
because sometimes the market is just going to be too hard.
The market is just sometimes it's not it's not giving you what you
want and it's just gonna be boring and like you know summertime and stuff like that um and it's
just better to chill and take it easy and you know like for example i i i don't i won't even right now
with crypto going crazy it's not really that crazy still i feel like i still sleep eight hours a
day i still go to the gym i still you know i'll go have dinner with friends and stuff like that
i don't see a reason to just oh i can't you know i'm gonna skip the gym because i want to
watch the eth chart or whatever right and doing those things in my opinion definitely helps out
with your trading because you're not as focused on it.
And the biggest factor, there's always more opportunities.
There's always another trade.
And the most important trade is the next trade.
You need to kind of look ahead always and not look back and say, oh, but I was here.
So I need to get back to here for you
know some arbitrary reason yeah I mean I was just talking uh yesterday to another uh one of them
we got one of my friends from crypto and he he was sharing with us how he made like a couple
million dollars in the last couple of months and then and they said yeah i'm i'm happy but i'm still kind of disappointed
because i could have like i'm i fumbled these like three trades that could have been like extra three
million dollars or something i was like dude you you made like five million what are you talking
about yeah and the same like at the same time you could have lost it all and be sitting here right
now still telling me like hey how can i like what what am i doing now uh i feel like like the same time you could have lost it all and be sitting here right now still telling me like hey how can i like what am i doing now uh i feel like like the numbers of portfolios is is
really uh something to ignore like at least on the mental model in terms of like oh it can turn into
this it could have been this it could have been that absolutely and that's that's uh a way that kind of uh when i was at a credo the crypto prop
firm we we spoke to a lot of traders who had similar stores but kind of ended up on the other
side of that where they ran up you know we had a guy who came to interview with us i think he ran up about 50 or 100 000
to 10 million and then from 10 million right back down to 1 million and the mental anguish and pain
of going through that is very very difficult of if you were to just had he gone from 100k to a million much much slower
and then built the right kind of set of risk management framework to continue on and have
a much smoother chart and not go through this uh yeah kind of this depression i guess yeah
yeah that's why i always feel like it's uh it might not
be as exciting and it might not be what uh you know especially twitter is selling people and
like the narrative that it's pushing but i feel like um even underperforming especially in crypto
underperforming in a bull market but overperforming in a bear market is the strategy to go with.
Like, yeah, you'll open Twitter and you'll see people making like millions every single day.
But at the same time, everyone disappears in the bear market because like they just gave everything back.
Yeah.
And a lot of people on Twitter, if they're saying that either they're lying
or they're just trying to sell you something yeah it's unfortunately just in the trading
arena as a whole yeah it's kind of like how just trading became uh like i've been trading i've
been involved like i've been watching charts let
me say it that way i've been watching charts for like a decade now um and you know trading on and
off but i've been full-time only for like five years and it kind of became so common like every
i swear to god every second person i meet is like oh yeah i trade i'm like oh okay what do you do it's like oh yeah i'm like
trading on binance you know and um and like if i'm trying to have a discussion with them
like not to sound cocky or something but it just at some point i'm like oh yeah like to tell i'm
telling myself oh yeah so you're just gambling you're just gambling and you're calling it i'm
trading yeah exactly a lot of people place
one trade and you know think they know what they're talking about i think they know what they're doing
and they uh and then open a group on telegram and start charging people to join it exactly that
generally happens either once you hit a big trade or once you hit a big loss and you want to make some money back.
Yeah. So talking about the psychological side, you already mentioned how you have this model where you just try to end your days green. And like, if you have a bad day, your goal is just going to be to
like, you know, trying to recoup whatever was lost and just go back to your baseline.
But how do you just manage the psychological aspect of trading other than that
like you know just dealing with the stress of like volatile markets or just you know maintaining
a discipline where you have a bad day or an underwater trade or even just like the good
periods where just app massively um how do you handle all of that uh i generally just try to do like other shit to
decompress walk away from the screen and yeah playing sports i mean started picking up golf
i've been playing basketball volleyball everyone in corita starts picking up golf
very very north american of us yeah uh but yeah like i don't know hanging out with friends like
anything to remind myself that there's just way way more important things in life than these dumb
numbers on a screen like that you mentioned your friend who just made probably a life-changing
amount of money like take it out take a lot of it out,
buy a house, get yourself set up. And then if you still want to do this, you're coming at it from a
place of strength, of security that in your real life, you know, you're going to be okay. And that
in turn will make you a much, much better trader because you're not trying to eke out profits in order to pay rent.
Yeah.
I mean, it might sound boring, but that's the first thing I told him.
If you listen to this recording later, I'm talking about my friend Pig.
And I was like, dude, you made millions.
Just cash half of it out.
Put it into a money markets account, like Fidelity or something. Make like cash half of it out put it into like a money markets account
like fidelity or something make like four percent on it yearly and you're good you're making like
six figures a year from that alone and you're just chilling a hundred percent that's uh but
but again i'm i'm all the people i'm around are crypto people. And and like I always have this like old grandpa rep
because because because again, that's how I view things.
I'm like, yeah, dude, just chillax, you know, enjoy.
Not the most exciting thing.
But yeah, maybe maybe soon I'll pick up golfing too.
It's a great game.
Yeah.
It's fucking frustrating.
Yeah, so that's the thing.
A lot of people that play golf and trade told me that it's really similar to trading.
I don't know how, but I believe them.
I'm still at the beginning stages, so it's very, very frustrating.
Yeah, I mean, it's similar in that it's extremely inconsistent.
And you're talking to yourself a lot saying, where the fuck did I do that?
There you go.
I want to talk a little bit more about your career in being the head of trading in Credo
and just being the head of trading in other venues as well.
I know that you've had a lot of different
titles you've done a lot of different things but it's all been around uh traders and prop firms
um so can you tell me a little bit about why did you even choose to go into prop trading when you
started out um and not just do it on your own as most people listening to the space probably do.
And if you think it's something that most traders should try doing.
I think it's definitely something that most traders should try and get into.
I mean, if you're around other people, you could just bounce ideas off of them, kind of understand what they're looking at, how their opinion of the market differs from yours.
Yeah.
So just in general taught me a lot of different strategies.
There's like unlimited amounts of ways to make money.
And so just being exposed to all of them it's very very good and it kind of helps mold you as you you
might pick up different things from different people as well as just kind of one make you
believe that oh shit this is possible i see people making money consistently which is obviously very
good and then yeah you're bringing more eyeballs on different products so for example if you're having more eyeballs on different products. So for example, if you're just watching BTC and ETH,
but somebody points out on a random shit coin
that does no volume that he sees,
there's this $5 million bid that's sitting there
and normally it does nothing
where you can kind of play with that
and make a bunch of trades
just based off of that information
that you might've,
or you would have probably missed had you been alone. Again, so being in the right environment,
the right kind of firm is very important. But yeah, I think if you're able to as a beginner,
it's very, very good. Obviously, the other advantages are just the sizing up. So you're able to size up a
lot quicker. On the risk management side, you've way less chance of blowing up because there should
be risk managers behind you, helping you out either by, like I mentioned, just keeping your
account at what your max loss is so that you're not a danger to yourself. And on the other end, you know,
just being able to,
I guess it's almost like inspirational and that you see people that are one
step,
five steps ahead of where you want to be and you're able to ask them, okay,
what was the path that you took to get there? Cause I want to be and you're able to ask them, okay, what was the path that
you took to get there?
Cause I want to get there.
Yeah.
I mean, I, I definitely agree.
I think having that just group of people, you're almost as if working together, but
you don't really, um, but since all of you are in the same markets and stuff like that,
and you all know that you cannot share the company's secrets and stuff like that,
I feel like it's really helping everyone work together, you know,
and help each other without any worries about,
oh, but what if I tell people about my edge?
It might go away, go bad, whatever.
And I've been, I mean, it's not a secret.
I've traded with Credo for like two months or
something like that a very short period um didn't uh at some point i just felt like trading in a
prop desk is not for me but it was still a fantastic experience because especially what
you guys built there was really amazing just a group of people working together um it it felt like you
have a very live and you know good environment and this was also before like bitcoin went to like
above its all-time high and stuff like that so i was really missing that that was the reason when
i was talking to bit but back then i was telling him i'm just i want to have like a group you know
i want to have a group of people i can chat to and stuff like that i think it'll be really nice yeah i mean like it's
definitely not for everyone but for the guys that want to get there especially during quiet market
times where not everything is going up and there's way less volatility. I mean, there's still ways to make money.
And I think kind of being exposed to that is a lot helpful, is helpful for two reasons. One,
you're able to actually generate some income. And on the other side of things, you're not just
just gambling and giving back all of the profits you had made during the bull market
gambling and giving back all of the profits you had made during the bull market.
yeah yeah and actually it's uh i'm i'm sure that a lot of uh prop firms really miss out on this
aspect i don't think a lot of places actually do it um so yeah maybe maybe someday credo will open recruitments again or something. So, yeah.
So talking about you being the head of trading there,
from your experience of just not only managing traders in the prop desk,
but also just being on Twitter, watching your feed
and seeing what people are talking about,
what would you say are the most common or just reoccurring issues
that many traders have and how would you suggest people solve them? So I just want to clarify, I was
the head trader credo, I took a step back, focus on just the traditional futures market,
still have great relationship with them, still still part of the firm so just wanted
to clarify that yeah um as for most common issues that we saw honestly hiring uh i think 50 plus
guys one of the big things was very simple it's like just not working hard enough you know a lot
of guys want just they came in and they were like oh cool
this group is just going to give me the next 100x coin and that's it like that that's not what we
offer i mean trading is like as long as you can do basic math it's like the simplest math formula
right so your win rate times your average winner minus your loss rate times your average loser.
Like it's it's very, very simple.
So if you're coming in as a trader and you can't tell me what your win rate is, what the size of your winners are or the size of your losers, like don't call yourself a trader.
That's like the guy you meet at a party who who said they bought like a penny stock.
They're just a gambler.
So you, I don't know, I find you can really only improve on these things that you're tracking.
It's like if you're going to the gym, you're trying to get stronger on the bench press.
But if I ask you, you know, what did you do last week?
You don't know what weight you did, when you did it, how many sets or reps.
It's like, how the fuck are you you gonna get stronger if you have no idea so yeah i don't know i i've thought
about just like opening a discord or a chat and being like i just want to see trader stats i'll
analyze those i'll help you out with that but it's probably not worth the hassle. Yeah. Doing the work
for them is not going to help.
Exactly. People need to do the work
themselves.
Journaling is so massive.
Honestly, so many traders
on CT just don't journal
at all and think it's pointless because
the market moves fast and because
they think everything's in their head.
It's insanely important.
Yeah, listen, you forget a lot of shit.
Everybody who's trading is like some form of ADD because you're just focused on so many different things for split seconds at a time.
Your brain's all over the place.
So coming back afterwards and reviewing and even just saying, oh, you know, my plan before was to buy BTC at this price.
So why the fuck am I short?
Like, if you can't follow a plan that you had made beforehand, then we've got a problem.
I would say another big thing that a lot of traders get wrong generally is sizing.
And it's from it's from kind of this fear or this need to not want to be wrong.
So it's kind of very simple.
You want to be bigger in your positions that are going in your favor and smaller
in the ones that are going against them and like logically this is this is
kindergarten, the statement can't be wrong.
But in practice, you see, I mean, a lot of traders end up doing the opposite.
You want to be pressing your winners.
It's like the most powerful way to grow your account pyramid into trades
that are going really well.
And that's kind of a very good way to take stuff to the next level,
obviously keeping within
your risk management framework. And I mean, on the other end, like being exponentially
bigger when you're just more and more underwater is like the quickest way to a Wendy's application.
Yeah, sizing is massive. Yeah. And it's 100% connects to just trading your P&L
because very often people will just get so emotional
and just add to a trade
just because they want to get to break even faster.
And it's such a bad place to be in.
I remember a bunch of times where i've done that
and it never ends well it's it rarely ends well exactly a lot of the best trades from my experience
are ones that work immediately yeah like you're above you're in a nice profit instantly. Exactly. And it very rarely comes back and touches even your entry price.
So if that happens, and again, you're following whatever rules you've set out for yourself, add into the position, move your stop up a bit, just have a trail and try and get kind of very slowly, steadily build up because it's going to be uncomfortable the first time you add.
And then the next time it'll be a bit easier
and you need to be willing to accept,
okay, this trade would have been break even.
Now I'm taking a loss.
But on the times that these trades end up working out,
you're making 10, 20 X your risk.
So it's really, really really worth it something to work on
yeah i mean it's it's really hard psychologically i feel like for many people because i remember
when i just started adding to winners and stuff like that aggressively as well um it was it was
hard to watch my average price growing you know know, and suddenly like if it turns back, you might eat a bigger loss because now the invalidation is like at a different place, stuff like that.
But there's no doubt that it's something good to incorporate into your trading.
And yeah, just like about, you know, having a trade, it goes into negative.
Nowadays, I really often close a trade
if it's not above water pretty fast.
Just because if...
It's like Salsa Tequila always tweets
and Bitbit says it all the time.
Lucky entries, likely exits.
And it really is like this.
If you didn't get lucky by getting this good entry and and you
know other people are able to at will take the same trade you're in or even a better one it's
probably gonna be a shit trade yeah everybody are all of these gurus on twitter talk about okay you
need to stop you need to stop and obviously it to stop. And obviously, it's definitely true. But not just
a price stop, a time stop is super important. If you're expecting, I don't know, something to
break out or something to bounce. I don't know, I'm a fairly short term scalper. So on a five or
15 minute basis, and after two hours, the price is still hovering around your entry. Like the trades invalidated.
Whatever reason you got into it is not the same reason you're in the trade now.
Yeah.
Don't let him drag out.
Yeah, exactly.
Just just get out.
Like I mentioned earlier, there's always another trade.
There's always another opportunity like
it's it's never worth it to just sit there and be in one position.
And then because you're babying that, you miss out on the next good trade.
And then you tilt on this trade.
It's a negative cycle.
Basically, every second that you're in a trade,
you should constantly be kind of reassessing and asking yourself,
okay, is this still a good trade? Is there still a reason for me to be there? If I'm longer,
there's still buyers or there's still a lack of sellers. There's this still structure on the
chart, whatever the reason is, does it still make sense for you to be in it? And if the case is no,
you to be in it and if the case is no then get out most of them most people aren't trading huge huge
size that you can't just get out and then get back in again if things change you know two minutes
later it's one of the biggest advantages of having not multi-million dollars to move into trade
you can be nimble market in and out easily.
Don't worry about anything.
Use that to your advantage.
Yeah.
Amen to that.
Well, I have two more questions left to you.
And I want to remind to our audience, if anyone has any questions,
you can click on the bottom right corner
at the chat box icon and ask them.
And we'll touch them in a couple of minutes.
But I wanted to know what would be the advice you would give your younger self or just someone listening to the space coming into trading and yeah what advice would you give yourself or just
any of them it's a good question I would say more more life advice than trading advice i mean trading
i see it as a means to an end the goal should not be to just accumulate more dollars or more crypto
on a screen it's to exchange these tokens whatever you have for real life experiences
i think people kind of forget that or they'll say, you know,
they'll do these things only when they like make it.
Fuck that. That's, that's terrible. You know,
if you're in your twenties and all of your buddies are going on like a
backpacking trip, staying in hostels, you're staying home,
save money to grind out more trades.
But like if your friend mentioned, but he's got a few million in crypto, like you're missing the point of life here.
There's always another opportunity that comes around the trade, but certain experiences kind of only happen in specific seasons in your life.
And yeah, you can't get those back even with all the money in the
world later on. So that's kind of what I would focus on as I see all the Twitter people terminally
online.
This is really good advice and it kind of hits home. I had this, it was back in 21, I
think. I had two really good friends from back home just texting me like,
hey, listen, dude, we're going to bike through Vietnam.
We're flying to the south.
We're buying bikes and we're just driving all the way to the north.
It's going to take a month.
We're going to be back sleeping in tents and stuff like that.
And I told him I can't do it.
The market's too active.
It was like the
midst of the bull market I was like nah I'll I'll join you guys the next time and now I'm
five years later I'm realizing there won't be next time because they all have kids now exactly
it's a huge huge change they're unfortunately I I mean I have a very similar thing where
friend went to southeast he i think
he lost his job and he was like you know i'm just gonna go to southeast asia for a while
bought a one-way ticket he ended up staying there for three or four months and i could have gone
there's no reason not to but yeah i was trading i working. And that's never going to be an experience that I could have now that, you know, I'm married, I have a house, there are certain obligations.
So there are certain seasons where you're able to do things, take advantage of them.
There you go.
Make sure to take all this bull market money and use it and you know what even
if you don't have money even if again a backpacking trip save up a few thousand dollars
get a real job if you don't have any trading funds like there there's lots of other ways to
make money and it's way way more important earlier on to have the experiences rather than to maximize the earnings.
Because you're hopefully going to be earning way more later on.
So what's the difference of kind of trying to save an extra few thousand dollars early on versus having this experience?
It's not worth the tradeoff.
it's not worth the trade-off no and i mean we've always had this talk you know how especially in
crypto oh this i think this will be the last cycle i think this is the last time we'll have an
opportunity to change our lives and like um i don't know in futures people are like oh we are
gonna that's it next year we're getting into a recession you know es is gonna correct like 40% and blah, blah, blah.
It's like, I mean, probably not.
And there's always gonna be like, and again, like people forget like,
oh, there's gonna be a bear market.
Like, yeah, but you know, there's like, there's a sell button too, right?
Like it can still make money no matter what it might be.
It won't be as easy probably but you can still make money
and honestly like there's always opportunities every single time like there there's rarely a
month in crypto specifically in crypto that there's nothing big happening there's always
some shit going on some airdrops some, some new token dropping, something new to trade, super volatile.
So yeah, you won't miss a thing.
Right.
And even if somehow tomorrow, you know, crypto goes to shit,
the skills that you learned can be translated into whatever the next thing will be.
I mean, for the past, let's call it 15 years,
the thing was poker early on.
Then poker shifted.
I saw it to sports betting, like DraftKings, that kind of stuff.
And then it shifted to crypto.
Like they'll always be at the next thing specifically for, I don't know, let's say the audience is primarily like 90, 95% males in their 20s.
There's always something there.
Yep. There you go.
And I mean, even me, I remember in the last, I tried trading futures.
It didn't really go well.
I think you can translate your skills but it
probably will take some time right because like you're getting used to lots and like ticks and
stuff like that um and just the horrible old platforms that traditional finance has um
but i know that it you know if i have to at some, I'll just go trade futures. It'll probably go all right.
I believe in it.
Right.
Yeah.
And if not, listen, there's stocks.
There's always something.
There's always something.
Move from crypto to penny stocks and stuff.
Pink sheets.
Yeah.
I mean, listen, I know there's lots and lots of very successful guys who just focus on shorting random stocks that pump, right?
Shorting small caps is very, very popular, especially now.
We're kind of potentially in the beginning stages of another meme trading with, I think it's Kohl's that just went up randomly.
American Eagle shot up like 40, 50%.
There's always money.
There's always pockets somewhere where there's something interesting to do.
Well, coming to the last question I have for you.
This is a question we ask all of our guests.
And I'm interested in hearing what you have to say.
What do you believe making it is?
And do you feel like you've made it?
I won't give you a philosophical.
I'll give you the boring answer.
So my definition has kind of shifted over the years.
Initially, making it was kind of just being able
to live off of consistent trading profits, right?
Not having to answer to anyone.
And yeah, now I say it would be kind of
when you have enough money outside of your trading accounts.
So whether that's investment accounts,
some type of small business,
anything that produces enough income for you and your family,
whatever you need to take care of
to live off of just
indefinitely. So dividends, you know, if you want to do real estate income producing properties,
just stable business, like anything that is zero to minimal time involvement effort on your part
that can support the lifestyle that you want to live. So I would say, yeah, I'm pretty sure the general consensus based off of
studies is like 4%.
So if you have 25 X year annual spend, in my opinion, you've, you've made it.
You're kind of out of the rat race.
You don't have to focus on making any more money and yeah, you're good.
Beautiful. making any more money and yeah you're good beautiful um not uh you said it's not philosophical but i think it's uh still beautiful i appreciate that yeah um well we have uh we don't have really
any questions seems like the audience is shy um but we have uh cycle echo saying very insightful talk uh thank you real
props real prop trader no problem thank thank you very much for having me this was a lot of fun
yeah yeah my uh my pleasure i've had i wanted to up to have you on for for quite some time and
the first chance i've had i uh i made sure to book you and it was such I'll just say it was such a pleasure of booking
this with you because you're you're like organized you wanted like yeah let's schedule this in advance
this is the time I'm available and like usually I'm scheduling with people they're like oh you
want to do this next week dude just talk to me the day before I'm like dude I can't do that I need to
prepare I need to book you um so yeah thanks for coming man it's uh it's
been a lot of fun and i'm sure that uh everyone learned a lot from this um and yeah is there
anything else you want to add uh no i don't think so just yeah really appreciate having me on this
was uh this was a great time let's do it again sometime yeah yeah for sure
man and uh yeah guys if you don't follow him yet make sure to give him a follow um uh at real prop
trader and uh yeah you can go through his tweets a lot of really really good stuff all of them
unlike me he doesn't post so he just actually posts some things about markets and insights and stuff like that
um so yeah and uh if he doesn't post for a while just uh add him and just tell him like hey man
can you start posting and maybe it'll work but we can't uh we can't promise that um so yeah man
that's pretty much it thanks a lot for coming and uh yeah we will have updates for our upcoming episodes
um on my profile so make sure to give me a follow and for any updates about schedules and stuff like
that just uh follow kuma and we will be posting those there as well a recording of this episode
will be available once it's over on the kuma profile so if you missed anything if you want to hear something
again just go over and check that out and on monday for all the lazy homies there's gonna be
notes i'll be posting them around the us open on my profile and um and yeah that's pretty much it
guys thanks a lot to kuma uh before we leave a couple of updates huge thanks to kuma as always
for hosting these spaces
uh we're now live with up to 50x leverage if you guys want to give it a shot um and take a grab of a 17 000 approximately um pie of rewards you can click on my profile there's a link in my bio
i don't even make any money from the ref link but it gives you 25 percent um off of fees so um yeah
if you want to give it a shot, go and check that out. Around
17 grand every single week, you can name the rewards every single day. No need to wait, no need
to speculate, just take those rewards to yourself. On top of that, we have a weekly raffle of $1,200
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you're in and the kuma academy is coming back next week with more tech defy and trading content
uh we're going to be dropping five new articles every single week um so make sure to check those
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more about DeFi, you can do that in the Academy. And yeah, one last thing. The referral program
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Yeah, all the rewards are claimable every single day.
So no need to wait for cashing in on those rewards.
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Again, Prat Prater, thank you so much for coming.
It's been a pleasure and yeah, let's do this again sometime.
Awesome. Yeah.
And thank you all for listening. Take care. Bye bye.
