Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: Welcome to the Money Adjustment. I'm your host, Dr. Mark Kramer, D.C. i am a chiropractor who loves investing and trading. Are you interested in what's moving markets and your money?
[00:00:13] Speaker A: Great.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Me too.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Let's get started.
So today, so today, so today. That's how I like to start is so today, so today, so today I again was going to do a live stream. Actually, I wasn't going to do anything. I was going to, I should say, for the past month or so, I came up with different ideas for episode 21, the current episode that you're listening to of the Money Adjustment podcast. And I think that I overthought it. I went into some type of analysis paralysis. I kept coming up with different ideas and then I didn't execute any of them. Even to this point, I haven't executed any. Hi. Yes, there you are. So I was like channeling into my inner self and now just face the camera. I don't know how much of this is going to be left after I'm done editing. Um, anyways, I have been postponing doing this episode for whatever subconscious reason that I've told myself, like, it's episode 21. Let's do some promotion, bigger promotion. Because this was my goal to get to 21 episodes. And if you're listening to this, I have achieved that goal. But one of the things about hitting a target, even if you've hit it later than you anticipated, is that you have to think about what's next. So I have to think about what's next because I committed to doing 21. I started a good network. I had some really great interviews. In fact, if nothing else, it's the networking aspect of it and the learning from other people who are knowledgeable in areas that I'm interested in, like entrepreneurship and specifically the stock market and cryptocurrency and pretty much anything that has to do with money. I like those conversations. So, yeah, that brings us to this episode. And what I'm going to do is it's not going to be live, but I may do something like this in the future in a live format.
But today I am going to show you what a morning is like for me. I have to do at least 18 reviews per day to meet my quota for work.
So 18 reviews a day, and that usually takes me anywhere from six to eight hours broken up throughout the day. And this morning I was up at my normal time, but I didn't go to yoga because I physically, my body was telling me that I needed a break. And I'm the kind of person that I usually push through these things. And I thought, you know what? I think I'm going to listen to my body and give myself a break for today. And what that break allowed was an opportunity to get on and do this recording that I've been postponing for quite some time now. And when I sat down, it was 8:30 and 8:30 is usually when I get back from the gym. And that's when I look at the market I turn on. And that's actually the process that I'm going to walk you through. Today is my morning routine looking at the stock market.
So let's see, I'll share my screen with you guys. All right. And then we get into this really meta looking situation here, which is kind of cool. So let's do this. First thing I watch is the first place I go is YouTube and I pull up this and it's right there for me. So this is Trader TV Live. This is a prop desk out in Canada and it's got a morning chat. These guys are live traders.
This gentleman here keeps us updated on what's happening in the news that would affect the stock market.
And so these are two live traders. They'll show you their positions. Let's give this a like.
The fact that I can watch this and record and eventually share just boggles my mind in terms of what's possible.
The other thing I have on is cnbc. Let's do it like this so you can hear. There is two live streams happening, actually three, including the one I'm sharing.
I am currently watching Trader TV live, which is, like I said, a prop desk. I like to watch the traders to see what's happening in terms of stocks that they want to trade and that part of the market floor in terms of what's the pulse in the on the floor. But I like to watch CNBC because CNBC will give you the broader macro picture of what's happening economically and globally and things that are related to investing.
So today's news, President Trump's tariffs policies, implications for the Federal Reserve. That's tariffs is obviously the hot topic right now. It's probably super distracting having these three things going on at the same time. You can imagine I'm usually having these two things and a few other things going on.
Let's take a look. Post in here. What's up all? Yeah, there's a lot of good stuff happening here. Not sure what this video is actually going to turn out to be. Maybe we'll do some editing Later. All right, so here's my trading account, which I'm currently not trading at because my positioning fell below 25,000.
This is my current watch list. Names I have on here are Hood, Palantir, CrowdStrike, Meta, Apple, Tesla, Google, Amazon, Lily.
Let's see. Uber, Zoom, IonQ, Roblox, IBM Spy, GCT.
Yeah, some smaller stocks that are not really talked about a lot.
Gct, Giga Cloud Technologies, and Hive Digital Technologies. I'm in those both for different reasons, and neither one of them is one I would ever recommend to anybody. Actually, trading GCT was just a hot stock tip from my friend. And the other one, what was the other one? Hive. I heard the CEO of Hive speak on Trader TV Live, actually, and he made a pretty good case. First off, Hive is a mining company, a crypto mining company, and they mine for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. I guess they would. They're a smaller version of Mara or what's the other popular one? Riot. So this is a digression here. The CEO from Hive made a case for the stock and I kind of at the time, it. It impressed me and I wound up taking a small position. And I also have a small. Not in this account, in a different account. Actually, in this account, I only have four positions. And I have those four positions because once my trading account fell below 25,000, I. I knew I wouldn't be able to actively trade whatever day that was, whatever stocks were speaking to me. Then I picked four stocks and just put my money into it, hoping and expecting. But mostly, I guess, I guess hoping, right? We don't never know how it's going to play out. I'm still pretty confident that my positioning based on my theses are still viable for this year. So once that account gets back over 25,000, I'll be able to actively trade again in this account. In the meantime, I have these positions that I just took the knowing that I pretty much have to stay long because once I sell them, I won't be able to buy back any new positions because my account, I currently have a margin call on it. So one day I was at 25,000. Had I closed out that day, I would have been. I could have started actively trading again. But I actually don't mind taking a break from trading so that I can just lad a couple positions that I think this year will do well, even if they're a little bumpy and rocky right now and let those get me above 25,000, which I think they will.
Pretty confident you Never know. But I'm pretty confident. My reasoning too was last year, one account that I manage is up 66%. And so I was like, okay, what strategy did I use in this account? And then I'm going to take that strategy and do it in my other accounts. Because my trading accounts because of one trade, one bad trade. I think I had like two or three profitable good trades and one Brad, one bad trade, like they say, I mean, and it's true, just wipe me out. So that was fine. I've set up the trading part of my brain to just trade when circumstances are in place, when certain criteria are met, then I can actively trade. And for me, my personal rule, my discipline, if my account falls below $25,000, then I cannot actively trade until that account gets back above $25,000.
So I can either put in the difference of what I'm below 25,000. After the two down the two, the two really rough last weeks, I'm down probably close to 4,000 in the account. So I either would have to put 4,000 in today to actively trade next week, or I just let the account sit. I don't have. I'm not. It's a margin account, but I'm not using any margin. That's also important. You have to know when, first off, if margins are something that you should understand before you try to use them at all. And because they could be complex for it could be too much for some people. Just, people will say just stay away from margin is the simplest thing to say and do. If you don't have any interest or don't really understand how margin works, or don't want to understand how margin works, then don't use margin.
But if you are curious about margin or are educating yourself or have some knowledge, then a margin account can be a very useful tool to have in your investing and trading tool belt. So I can either get my account back up to 25,000 through depositing money or having the account grow into it. I've seen the account hit that number a couple times because of the volatility and in somewhat volatile position. So I have to be able to tolerate a larger degree of volat. I'm just going to wait and not trade. And so for me, the consequence was you like trading, but if your account falls below a certain level, you don't trade until that account gets back above that level. It's kind of just part of the game. So it's almost like going back to level one.
And actually maybe you can even say going back to Level two. The story is my friend George, who is a young man in his late teens, early 20s, was already trading and already showed interest in trading. Because we recognize that mutual interest, we started talking about it and doing a couple episodes recording. I'll have to see what episode it is because I did post one podcast episode with George where we discussed trading in detail, give some insight into our trading process. Wow. Okay. So the reason I'm going back here is because let's say level one is just earning money. Level one is you have to have money to be able to spend it, invest it, trade it, do all of the things that you do with money. So you have to earn. That's zero to level one is earning. For trading, your goal should be to get to a thousand dollars and then trade that thousand dollars into $25,000, which some people that number is going to be too small. Meaning if you're someone who's already making revenue or bringing in income over whatever, 50,000, 500,000, a million, $2 million annually and earning up to $1,000, it doesn't even, it's not even on your radar. So when I'm talking about this, and in this particular case with George, George is basically a college student with no money. He doesn't have the resources. Which is why a lot of people start trading is because that is, I think people think it's going to be an easy way to fast large sums of money. And maybe for the rare percent of a percent it is, but for the majority, trading is not always a profitable endeavor. Even when you are good at it or not good at it, you realize the end game is not so much about making money as it is about preserving the money you make and using proper risk management. So lots of variables here. Getting back to the levels I wanted to help George and that cohort of people that are not, not necessarily high income earners yet and just have smaller dollar amounts to play with. Which is great because if you have smaller amounts to play with, you're going to lose less money. And in the beginning you're probably going to lose money. They call it paying tuition to the market. Until you really understand how the market works, you're probably going to lose money. So that being said, why do it at all?
You don't have to do it. Either have someone professionally manage your money or figure out for you how you want to invest your money to grow it. For me, that's the stock market and trading.
I like the stock market. I also do cryptocurrency. I'm learning about real estate. I've been in real estate before. I don't. It's not my favorite vehicle for different reasons, but I do think it is probably one of the better investment vehicles that is out there. We're looking at the chart here. I'm going to see what time it is. It is 8:54, so it's not even. The market hasn't even opened. You see, like I told you what's on my watch list, I am not trading anything in this account because I fell below that. $25,000.
Yeah, I was talking about levels. So zero to a thousand, a thousand to 25,000 would be level two, and then 25,000 to 100,000.
So that's where things really start to get interesting. The easiest level, level of the three that I mentioned is going from 25,000 to 100,000. There's. That's because there's a cheat for that. So I don't want to give too much away. And people who have listened to me are probably already know what it is. It's worth a reminder, including me reminding myself, yeah, it's easier to get from 25,000 to 100,000 than it is from 1,000 to 25,000. And the level after 100,000 would be infinite. Probably a million. Probably 100,000 to a million. That actually. Yeah, that gets a little scary. You really have to develop Confidence Trading $100,000 before you can feel confident trading a million dollars. And then if you're playing with institutional money, billions of dollars. So the principles of trading are principles. They are what they are. So it doesn't matter the dollar amount. But the individual employing those principles has to get comfortable with each level of trading to get to the next level. Because I think the hallucination is that you're going to trade and you're just going to make a killing on one trade and then take your money out and then go buy a yacht or a Lamborghini or something super fun if you're materialistic or just use it for noble things like, you know, buying a house or taking a vacation or something. So there's a lot of different reasons for wanting to trade as a vehicle to make money. But once you've done it, you realize the money money is not necessarily guaranteed. And there's a certain level of risk and skill set that you have to develop to be able to do that. So you want to make sure you have that aptitude to want to take on that endeavor. And a lot of people do. That's why there's such big communities around trading. And I think the retail trading community, especially after the GME saga, really saw the power of the retail trader in the grand scheme of economics and moving markets. Yeah, that's another interesting story. The GME saga, which is still ongoing. Yeah. And so we talked a little bit about levels. I talked a little bit about my morning routine when I look at the market. I think there is a way that I am going to be able to do this live at some point. Yeah. I'll see what I can actually edit and use. And thank you all for listening and watching and being part of my emerging community.
I have a lot of work to do to develop a community around the money adjustment. If you listened or have listened to any of my past 20 episodes, then you're going to see and get a taste and flavor for what I'm trying to do here. And in fact, I review some of those episodes and I listen to them again because I was having conversations with people that I wanted to learn from and grow with. And that's been helpful to me to reinforce the journey that we're on, which is money management. No one can really escape money management. Even if you delegate it to someone else, it still needs to be done. So you either do have to delegate it to a professional or you have to do it yourself. Or in my case, I do both. I have some of my money professionally managed, and I manage some myself. And that for me, is a way of diversifying my risk that is outside of the traditional ways of thinking about diversifying risk.
So I hope somebody found value in this. I hope when I listen to this later, I still find value in it. I really appreciate everyone and hope to be able to continue to do this in some way, because I'm doing it for me first and foremost, which is good, because right now I'm among a very few small listeners. But I say I'm doing it for me first and foremost to appreciate that I want. I either have to want to do this or I don't. I'm not dependent on the podcast for making me money. And I know the podcast, like, that's not its purpose. I have to want to do more episodes, to do more episodes, because I'm not financially incentivized directly to do this. So I have to want to do more. And I think I will, because the ones I've done, I still like that. I'm really grateful that I did them. And I'm hopeful that I can just build on that library because I have three children and each one in a different decade, and each one's going to have a unique set of financial challenges because every generation does.
So I hope that by archiving these podcasts and just getting this part of myself out can help. If nobody else, my future generations, to at least understand my thought process behind money management, and if it's helpful to other people to use this strategy or employ it in their own strategy and then see how it fit tests relative to their own way of thinking, then that would be awesome. That would make me feel really good about what I'm doing here. So I hope you all have an amazing journey for the rest of your day and week and month and years. And I will see you on the next one.
[00:21:25] Speaker B: Thank you for watching this episode of the Money Adjustment. If you want more like comment and subscribe, you can follow me on X Ark Kramer until the next episode. Stay healthy and wealthy.
