Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello. Welcome to the money adjustment. I'm your host, Dr. Marc Kramer, DC. I am a chiropractor who loves investing and trading. Are you interested in what's moving markets and your money? Great.
Let's get started. These episodes thus far, this is. I don't know what episode number this is going to be because I have some that are recorded and I have not distributed them or posted them yet for whatever episode this will be. I am working towards my goal of 21 episodes. That was my New Year's resolution for 2024. Today is October 1, so I have the last quarter to get towards my goal. I currently have four episodes on Apple. Still working on Spotify because these are video and apparently you can't do the video on Spotify. And at about, let's say I have ten weeks left that I want to get these done in. And I have 17 more to go or. No, 16 more to go.
I got to do my math, right, 16 to 18 more to go. So I need to more than likely do more than one episode per week. Otherwise I'm going to be doing like 15 episodes in December, which I think is going to be very daunting is context for my guest today, who he and I. I know that was a big bill. You're like, wait, I didn't even hear my name in there. I'm going to get to you. Wait, don't say anything. I want to get to you. All right, so, like. So, like, my guest today, we've done some YouTube video. We've done a YouTube video together. And if you've seen anything of us that's on social media, it's probably more from shorts. I have not done a long form podcast with my guest yet, but today will be the first one. So this will be kind of fun for everybody. And without further ado, my first guest is George Racolta. George.
[00:02:10] Speaker B: Thank you.
[00:02:11] Speaker A: Yes. George is. Are you 18 or 19 now?
[00:02:15] Speaker B: I turned 19. That's right. Awesome. We did this.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: So George just turned 19. And George. George and I have a relationship from the yoga studio, not from yoga practice so much. I don't even know. Do you practice yoga, George?
[00:02:36] Speaker B: I've never done a class ever. I just. I just check people in. That's about it.
[00:02:41] Speaker A: Yeah. All right. So, like, George is up front. He checks people in. I am one of those people. And he and I developed a relationship through the studio because one day I came out and I saw George was working on his computer. Something was going on. And we found a mutual interest in trading and technical analysis. Right, George that's right.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: I had the, I had the trading view pulled up, and I was looking at it in the morning, and all of a sudden you came by. I was like, oh, what's that? Yeah, we just started talking for like, about probably like close to an hour.
[00:03:17] Speaker A: Yes, right. Totally. We were. That's when you have. When you. Anybody, if you're interested in anything, if you have an interest, when you find somebody that shares that interest and wants to understand it and talk about it the way you want to talk about it is like magic.
Would you agree, George?
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah. Because that's why every time we, like, I think we started off talking about Mara, was it? Right?
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: The morrow train. Yup. And then hut. And then all those. And we kept on just talking at the studio for about like an hour each time after the class.
[00:03:56] Speaker A: When I was at one point, you told me one time, you're like, I doubled my portfolio last week. Which was true, by the way.
[00:04:05] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: And so that was pretty exciting.
So. And then I think. I think that I started thinking about that because that's going to be our segue into what George and I are actually going to talk about today. Yeah. Right. So a few weeks ago, actually, my first episode of the money adjustment was this live trade I did of Palantir. And I decided to post it as the first episode just to test out the systems, and it worked. But I also felt good posting it because it was a successful trade in a short period of time, which, when you get those trades, what do those trades feel like, George? When you make a lot in a short period of time, they feel too lucky.
[00:04:49] Speaker B: Like it feels too good to be true.
[00:04:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it's something, in my opinion. Yeah, it's like a real shot of something.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like an adrenaline.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: It is like a little bit of. Yeah, you get a little bit of an adrenaline.
[00:05:02] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: If you've seen those memes where they have the green candlestick going up into the sky, that's that elated feeling of just making a lot of money in a short period of time. So wouldn't that be fun if that was our whole episode? We were just going to talk about how to make a ton of money in a short period of time.
[00:05:20] Speaker B: Wouldn't it? Wouldn't it be.
[00:05:21] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, it would be.
[00:05:23] Speaker B: Unfortunately, what I've seen in options is what comes up must come.
[00:05:30] Speaker A: Yes. For all of those moments of elation, they are paired with just complete devastation.
If I may, George. Yes, if I may. To share a story real quick. So I got. I've been in and out of the stock market since the 1990s, and I can't say I've been really actively engaged in the stock market until the late two thousands. And then I really didn't get into it until 2020.
So if you're around in 2020, you know what happened then. And we had circumstances that really challenged people to do different things. So I got into the stock market in 2020 aggressively.
I, in the beginning, I was making a crazy amount of money, and I just couldn't believe it. I was making as much money as I would make in months of my regular job in a week.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Wow.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: So, yeah, it was. Talk about the rush, right? Yeah, it's a crazy rush.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it's a crazy rush. And so then, like you said, what goes up must come down. I had some series of not so good losses. And not only did I lose what I made, not only did I lose what I made, but I lost more. So I went down even from where I was at, at one point, and then I recovered, got back to break even in my account, and I thought, I'm done. I'm not. I can't do this. I don't have the stomach for it. So then weeks passed by, and it's just what it looks like on a chart. When you trade and then stop trading is like a flat line. It's like your pulse just stops. And so I couldn't watch my trading account just die. So I'm like, I have to develop some kind of resilience that will allow me to enjoy the joys of trading. And what it took me too long to learn is mitigate the downside risk to that joy. Because if you could keep the elevation elevated and minimize how much pain you take on the back end, then it could be a very lucrative endeavor, trading for the right person.
So one of the experiences I remember, and I don't remember the exact date, but I feel like it was in September.
It might have even been 2020, like September of 2020, like these highs and lows, but overall, it was way up. And then there was, like, this significant market correction. Not the one that was as significant where it threw the market back five years like it did in March of 2020. It was more of, like a.
More of a natural type of correction that happens in the stock market that for people who aren't familiar with the stock market going down, felt like your blood was being drained from your body. Like, I came off from trading that day, and I just went upstairs and I. And I just passed out on the couch. Like, I just laid down on the couch in a full depression. I don't know how else to describe it. It was unlike anything I had felt before. And it was like, I'm never trading again. This is never happening again.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: So in one day, was it that.
[00:08:55] Speaker A: In one day it was just a, it was just a massive market correction. It wasn't an individual trade or anything like that. Just the market was correcting. And not only that, that was the beginning of a three day significant correction, the biggest one since March of 2020, and which wasn't big compared to March of 2020. It was just the first real, you know, the market was down like 10%. And that's a, that's an absurdly large number for the market to be down. The market usually fluctuates between like 1% either direction.
[00:09:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So when you sometimes not even a percent.
[00:09:32] Speaker A: Yeah. Overall, the overall market is actually very stable, but you do have corrections that can feel like a knife in the gun. So this is all a prelude and to give context to what George and I are going to talk about today, which is the darker side, the darker.
[00:09:51] Speaker B: Side of trading, the dark side.
[00:09:54] Speaker A: So after, I'm gonna, I'm gonna give, I'm gonna give you the floor in a second here, George. Cause I know I'm hogging it after that trade that I posted for the first podcast and feeling like I had figured the market out, which is always a sign to stop trading when you think you have it figured out. The next week, I maintained a modest loss, small loss that didn't even faze me. On the Monday of that following week and on the Tuesday I let it trade. It just got away from me. It's just before I got my stop in. I'll go into detail about things I could have done better at a different time, but that led to George and I talking about losses. So, George.
So, George.
[00:10:44] Speaker B: Yup.
[00:10:45] Speaker A: Yeah. That was my story. Now we're going to hear George's story.
[00:10:49] Speaker B: Well, see, I think we experienced the same kind of lost streak in a sense, but in completely different worlds.
Because what I was doing, my lost story is I have a very strange, I could actually pull up the graph of the, like, let me explain. So what I kept doing when I started options, it was, I was on tasty trade and. Yeah, yeah. Remember when I was on tasty trade? We were talking about it when, like during the Mara season.
[00:11:24] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:25] Speaker B: And when I was on there.
[00:11:27] Speaker A: So wait, hold 1 second, George. Hold that. Because you said mara season just for the audience. And I'm, I'm attracting entrepreneurs and small business owners as well as investors and traders. So like Mara may or may not mean something to everyone.
[00:11:41] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah.
[00:11:42] Speaker A: Yes. So you want to give them a little bit of detail on what Mara is.
[00:11:47] Speaker B: Yeah, it was a, it was a high, was a high volatile stock that we were.
[00:11:54] Speaker A: It is. Mara is a bitcoin, predominantly bitcoin mining company. I do think they mine other types of crypto assets, including Ethereum, but that's a, it's a publicly traded company. So people who speculate in the crypto space but don't necessarily actively trade in on the platforms that support crypto, like Coinbase and crypto.com or two types of, of mind finance. They will play finance. Absolutely. Finance. One of the largest ones, though, people will play the stock. Mara, the mining companies, similar to how people would play gold through the gold mining companies. If you have speculated gold is going to go up, you'll. Some people like to trade the miners.
[00:12:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Like the coin stock to coin. I think Coinbase has.
[00:12:43] Speaker A: Absolutely. Yep.
[00:12:45] Speaker B: Coinbase is also, I think like that's a way to play the crypto through the stock market, I think with the mining stocks and. Yeah.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: So I didn't want to get too divergent, but when you said the Mara season, for people who don't know the beginning of this year, crypto had a nice run. Bitcoin had a nice run back from, from the depths of crypto winter into the elation of.
I think it got to a new all time high this year. It like touched where it was at. Yeah. Broke 70. So it didn't break seventy k the last cycle. Broke 70k this cycle.
This was, I think, I think when we were doing, when it was Mara season was before. It was before the first bitcoin ETF. It was, I think it was pre announcement.
[00:13:33] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:13:33] Speaker A: So there was a run up, a run up of Mara into that announcement. So.
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because I remember when it was like running up, we were talking about like some huge dips or some huge spikes ahead. And like, I remember that I barely traded it because I know its contracts are really bad because I play contra options, but I remember just looking at it and seeing that thing, rocket, upper rocket. Same thing with hut, too, when hut used to actually be a stock. I think thats another mining crypto mining company.
I can't remember, but I think the.
[00:14:10] Speaker A: Other big one that I, I can recall is riot.
[00:14:14] Speaker B: Riot. Yes, yes, yes.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Yeah. All right.
[00:14:16] Speaker B: But yeah, yeah, during that whole season when we were talking about these big wins and losses, I was on tasty trade, and they had, I believe, $1.50 fee per contract, and I had a $100 account because I was an itty bitty little trader. And I would buy. I would do, like, five trades per day with two contracts and buying and selling and buying and selling because you can trade with unsettled cash on tasty. So half of my account would typically go to fees in the first week, and any loss streak would just kill my account.
But I thought it was the way that I was trading, not what I was trading on. So every two weeks, I kept putting in a. I'm like, this is way too small. So I was working at the studio the whole time. I kept saving. I started putting in $500 accounts, and I just kept blowing the accounts over and over and over again. And then I moved on to Weeble in June or July because I couldn't. I couldn't do the fees. It was, even if I had a 15% gain, they would all go to the fees. So I found webull with the zero fees for the contracts, and I kept losing over and over again. I had. I think I started with a $1 $100 account lost. That started with a su. No, I started with a $200 account, and that's when I doubled my account. Remember when I told you that? I think. Yes, I think no, I think I started with a dollar 300 account, and in. Was it one week that I did? I can't remember what I. Yeah, I think at one week, I got it to 600, I think in two or three trades. Yeah, because that was when the market was running up, and I blew that, too.
It's so much easier for me to lose big plays than a win small. Like, I'll have multiple wins in a row, and then one loss takes them all. And I think out of all the accounts I've blown, if I had to count, I'm probably out to ten blown accounts. This is crazy.
[00:16:53] Speaker A: Wow. So when. So let's define a blown account here, because sometimes I hear that word, and I was like, what does it mean? Does it mean you go to zero, or does it mean you're just. It's. Or it's just. Yes, go to zero. For you, it does mean go to zero.
[00:17:05] Speaker B: Yep. Either it goes to zero, or it's such a small amount where I can't even buy a single contract, like $3.
[00:17:11] Speaker A: When I hear you tell this story, I'm just visualizing. My grandmother retired in Las Vegas, and she loved to gamble, and she loved to play the slot machines. And to me, it's like I just see you throwing these hundred dollar bills into the slot machine of the market and then just like. So that's a strange visual. It just popped into my head.
[00:17:34] Speaker B: It kind of is too, because I'm. Every single run, I think you can see this more on the Weeble chart that I'll pull up and I'll show my whole account history. I'll just go for it and leak everything. Because what happened was every run I was learning more and more, right? I'd study more, I'd look at why the price didn't break the stereo, why didn't crash through this area, why it rejected so fast, and what I was doing wrong. And every run I learned more, but I had the same crash effect at the end. And it would always, like, I would maintain you, you know what you can see in the graph, you can see I maintained the account for longer every time. I recently had my best run ever. So I started with.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah, hold on. I just want to make sure that I hear this right. You were you, let's say you blew ten accounts. What differed between the ten accounts is maybe you blew the first five real quick, but like, the back five took much longer to actually blow the account. So there. So you could, you could feel progressed?
[00:18:41] Speaker B: I could feel progress. But it was very small progress until recently. Until very recently. But it was very small, small progress.
Each time I'd reach maybe $80, a higher peak than the other account. And so this is baby trading compared to other investors.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Yeah. But still, you're getting higher highs. Or your accounts are getting stronger before you blow them. Before they break.
[00:19:11] Speaker B: That's, that's true. And with this, I'll get to a thing. Remind me to talk about this. A dead end effect.
[00:19:18] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:19:19] Speaker B: But after I say this, my most, yeah, my most recent run, I did what, what I actually, I did is I took a big break. I blew two dollar 500 accounts back in. I actually have it pulled up here, let me. I blew $2500 accounts in seven, three and 717.
So.
[00:19:43] Speaker A: So in July, July 3 and July 17.
[00:19:46] Speaker B: And then I took a huge break. Remember? I, I don't think I told you I took a big break from trading from July 26 to August 21. So about a month. Yeah, I think. And I took a big break. Let me actually, you know what? Let me do this. Let me show you.
I'm gonna share my screen. Should I share my screen?
[00:20:08] Speaker A: You could share it, but I'm having a feeling because we're just like, it's just me listening to you that I'm probably going to release this podcast as an audio.
[00:20:18] Speaker B: Oh, so the. Yeah, okay.
[00:20:20] Speaker A: It'll be easier. People are going to want to look at me, listen to you talk for, you know, it might work for a short barely, but I don't think people want to see the rest of that.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: Yeah, you're right. But I took a big break from trading, and then I.
And I came back and I rethought everything. I had a big kind of reflection point where, what am I doing wrong? What I was. The biggest thing I was doing wrong is I was holding the losses.
I was. Even though I knew my rules, or if it's a 10% loss, it's not going to recover. And I knew that. I knew that. I said that many times.
[00:21:04] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:21:05] Speaker B: It's. I was too weak to oblige by my own rules and preach it. Yeah. That's the thing that was killing my account every time. And I did my most recent run, I put in $300 on 822, and on the first day, I got it up to 470.
[00:21:29] Speaker A: Hold on a second. You put in 300 and you got to 400 and 7470, so that's an over 50% return.
In what period of time?
[00:21:40] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And in one day. And this run had a very zigzaggy effect.
So, like, I reached 600 on 826 and then lost all the way down to 412 on 827. So it kept going up and down. Like, the next day I got it up to 731. So from 400 to 730. So it was just big loss. Big. Even larger win. Large loss, even larger win. It wasn't a very straight lineup kind of. It was very zigzaggy. And I kept having these, like, repeating big losses. Like something kept trying to kill my account every time, and I recovered it.
[00:22:33] Speaker A: That's an interesting way to say it, though. Something. Some mysterious force was attempting to kill my George's account.
[00:22:40] Speaker B: Exactly. And I wasn't letting it. But one day on 911, 2024, I got to 894, almost 900. And that's when I told you that I was working on.
I was almost at my goal of 1000. That's when I told you that I got it all the way to 894. So $900 from 300, that's a three x. Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:10] Speaker A: From 300 to 900, that's impressive.
[00:23:14] Speaker B: And then in a one day, I lost all the way down to 337.
[00:23:21] Speaker A: George. I know, honestly. Yeah, go ahead. I would let you just process that.
[00:23:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's. You know, this is helping me, too, talking over this, just to reflect on what I did wrong. What I did wrong. I went too heavy on a day that wasn't corresponding with the type of trading that I play ranges.
So I rely on for big gains, not itty bitty two dollar ones. Like, for big gains, I rely on the market breaking a support or resistance level. So I make a range. Let's say Tesla is about to hit. Let me see, like, Tesla's about to hit 259 and it's a resistance area or whatever, and I put a mark there. And once it breaks that support line, no, sorry, resistance line, I need continuation for the contracts to actually pump up. And if it doesn't do that and it rejects fast, which is, like, not a market corresponding day, if it rejects really fast, 90% of the time, I lose. And if I cut at, like a negative 10% loss, yeah, that's totally fine because I can recover that super easy.
But I break my own rules because I get overconfident because of the previous wins. That's how that zigzag effect. I get overconfident because of those previous wins that it'll. It's just a little rejection and it'll continue right back up, but it never does and it always crashes. And I. And I can't get mentally strong enough to sell until I'm negative $500.
[00:25:00] Speaker A: I know. Until it's like crying uncle. The market will make you cry uncle. It'll take your arm and twist it behind your back, and you think you're coming back up and it will snap your arm off if you don't surrender.
[00:25:14] Speaker B: It's. I went too heavy, and I can't follow my own rules. It's a mental thing. If I.
And I founded this new thing called an oco order, but I'll tell you about that after the dead end thing, because I lost at the end, I had a small retraction on the account. I got it back up to 441, and then three days later, it was all the way at $79. So I blew the account, basically.
[00:25:43] Speaker A: Right. So. So real quick, though, how much you have in the account? Yeah, 70. 79.
[00:25:48] Speaker B: So, okay, well, with that account on 926, I got it all the way down to $9.60.
[00:25:59] Speaker A: I'm thinking, oh, you didn't go to zero. You still have $79. You're still in the game.
[00:26:06] Speaker B: 936. $9. All right, so then.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, no, go ahead. I want you to get it all out because this is deep.
[00:26:14] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I put in. I put in another 300 because that's the last time I did that. I put in 300 instead of 500. And that was the best success I've had. 500 I think is too much because this is straight from the yoga job. That's why I almost all of it, all of it goes straight to the account.
[00:26:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So you know what? You're, you're investing in yourself for your future finances and right now. Yeah, go ahead.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: Yeah, no, honestly, I hope I am.
Yeah, honestly I hope I am. Because right now that's the dead end thing I was talking about.
I feel like I'm in a dead end thing for the past. Since January I kept buying accounts, putting all my money into it, maintaining it more and more every time. And I can't tell if that's an improvement where I'm improving to a point where I'll actually be able to have a perpetuating account where I don't just have a big win and it dies all out, where I can actually maintain it and keep going up and have like it sustained. Or if this is just a thing where I'm going to keep having these hills and it's just an endless effect where I put in money, maintain it all crashes, repeat, repeat, repeat. Because I've been doing this for the past, yeah, since January. So like ten months. And I have, you can say I have progressed because I tripled the account, but I haven't progressed in the sense where I haven't been able to get an account that has maintained itself for more than, let's see, 821. That was my longest run, the $800.01. I maintained it from 821 until 918.
[00:28:05] Speaker A: So not even almost a month. Yeah, not quite a month. Wow George.
[00:28:09] Speaker B: Not even. Yeah.
[00:28:10] Speaker A: I think that's a great story because I think it really illustrates for the novice trader, but someone who is committed to learning the skill that it's a certain level of discipline to be able to do what you did to put your money back in the market. And there's a lot of people that once you blow that 1st, 300 actually, for sure, I know this is a fact because I've talked to a lot of these people, once they blow whatever they've allocated in the market, once they've gone to zero, once they're done, they just said I'll never do the stock market again.
And so that's unfortunate. Or maybe it's not if they're doing other and you can make money in a lot of different ways, but if you do have an affinity towards the stock market and you appreciate the nature of it, where it's someplace, if you have a certain level of skill. I take his big sigh here because I'm been, I've been trading longer than you and I still feel what you're feeling like, I still feel like, am I wasting my time here? The difference between, because I had a very similar story to yours, my recent loss was I made like a couple thousand one week and then I gave all of that money back again the next week. So like it was larger numbers but it was in a period of like a week from one week to the next.
And so what differs in my situation than your situation is that that 2000 was a fraction of my portfolio. So I don't blow my account, my accounts don't get blown.
You see what I'm saying? Because I'm always, even with what I'm willing to lose, I'm still like, it's just like pushing against the wall and I'm not getting further ahead, but I'm also not falling behind too much. And in all honesty, George, and even beyond that because I don't want that to sound like I have it figured out because I really don't. And in fact, I'm one of the first people to admit that I'm, I don't think I'm a good trader. I think I'm a, I'm a for certain above average. And if you know nothing about trading then yeah, I'm a great trader. But for, if you're a professional trader and you're looking at p and l because we were talking about this, right? So George, do you know what your win rate is?
[00:30:31] Speaker B: I'm assuming pretty low. I don't, I, I don't know.
[00:30:35] Speaker A: Like, so the answer is no if you can't answer it. The answer is no if you ask me what's my win rate, I couldn't, honestly right now I couldn't answer myself. So the answer is no. I don't know my win rate. But, but if, if you decide, and I'm not saying you're deciding this, which is cool, you and I could talk about this because there's a lot of things on the fire. You're not banking your future on, on becoming a stock trader and making millions in the stock market. You've got other things going on. What's that? Are you, I don't want to crush.
I mean, if you are, you go for it. People do. So it's not that, it's not in the realm of possibility.
[00:31:13] Speaker B: It's a good side hustle to have because it keeps you, I think, informed on things happening in a market and things happening around the planet, which I think you need to know if you're doing anything, which is what I'm doing with the startup. Anything business related, 100%.
[00:31:33] Speaker A: George, that's, I think that's the best answer you could give is it keeps you engaged. Like I'm paying attention to the news because I know the news affects the market. And I used to watch, like I used to watch PBS and then I used to pay more attention to politics and I used to watch that type of news and it just made me feel a certain way. And now when I get my news because I'm paying attention to the market and I like to see how the market reacts to the news, it serves my personality better. I think it's certainly, you can argue it's a phase, but, but I, but I do like the way that it keeps me engaged with the news versus other ways that I've been engaged with current affairs that have been less. I don't know, I don't know how else to say it. Like some people are active politically, especially now in an election year, and they're fired up. And I've been that person once or twice in my life, but now I just like having a more stoic stance. And the market is a mechanism for that because it's quantified. It's almost like quantifying emotion. The emotions are quantified through price.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: Yeah. It makes you feel like you're part of the whole system, like Wall street, that whole. Yeah. And technically you are if you're trading for sure. Another thing is you hope that as you learn and you learn more knowledge, like every one of these runs, I've learned more knowledge. You hope that you can get to that point where it becomes self sustaining and an actual profitable side hustle slash do you know?
[00:33:14] Speaker A: I know exactly what you're saying and I'm with you.
I think you and I are on that journey together because that's an ongoing journey. And I don't care what level you're at, you're still playing that game. Because I watched the pundits on CNBC and they're still playing that game. There's still wins and losses and making guesses and based on fundamentals and technical analysis and predictions, you get the idea with that.
But I did not want to lose this train of thought. I think I'm going to lose it. You're illuminating something here, and one of the things you're illuminating for me personally is when I say I'm not a good trader. I make a lot of money in the stock market, I don't make that money trading in my trading accounts. That's what I mean. My trading accounts is where I take all of the pathology, for lack of a better word. I know there's a better word, but it's kind of a pathology, a human condition, where when we feel loss, it's painful. And if you're going to take risk, you're going to feel loss at some point.
[00:34:23] Speaker B: Right.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: And so when I have my trading account, it's me working through the psychology of what's involved in the stock market for me.
But where I make my money is I know how to pick longer term. Like I'm a better asset allocator than I am a trader. And so like my p and L for my long, my long portfolios, one of the portfolios that I've managed for the longest period of time is my Roth Ira, which is a retirement account that I self manage. And that one has performed phenomenally for me over the past ten years. Like, I'm like, I don't know what percentage I'm up, but I'm up a decent amount for what I've put into it. And, but, but I find I know when the good longs opportunity comes and that's where you really make your money is when there's, you recognize something in the market that's very unusual. So. Right.
[00:35:21] Speaker B: Like investing versus trading.
[00:35:23] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:35:24] Speaker B: So like you're better at investing in like the long term rather than traders?
[00:35:29] Speaker A: Hundred percent.
I'm a much better investor than I am a trader, but I still trade and I still like it and I still do it.
[00:35:38] Speaker B: I personally think trading is a lot more fun, but it is probably less.
[00:35:44] Speaker A: Profitable, but it is more fun. But like you said, it keeps you engaged in whats going on. And because heres something thats key. Im thinking for you. If youre blowing up accounts, youre not going to have money for that long opportunity. That one where, its like where you see something happen in the market. We had a recent one with the pandemic in 2020, the stock market. That correction rolled the market back five years. That meant that if you for some reason were not able to invest in the stock market and you were just an outsider watching it go up and up and up for five years, all of a sudden some major, they call them the black swan events. Those are the real, like something major happens that just crashes the market.
And thats what happened in 2020 where it went back five years. And people who recognize that opportunity because theyre paying attention to these things recognized the opportunity and made a ton of money.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Ton of money, yeah, but even more than trading.
[00:36:49] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, for sure. More than trading, but. And even trading makes money in those periods of time, too. But the thing with trading is it fluctuates. Like the market fluctuates. But if you hold a. For the longer period of time, the Buffett method. And it's tricky, George, because when I say hold, it's different even than Buffett's hold. Buffett whole. Buffet's hold was buy and hold forever, pretty much. Which is. It's. The philosophy is correct in terms of investing. If you believe in a company, it's like you're taking ownership of piece of that company. That's what an investor does. So they don't get in and out of positions lightly. They're like, I'm entering into as close to a marriage as I'm going to get. Especially when you're playing with institutional money and pension funds and things like that. You're marrying, you're like. When you're getting into. When you're investing in a business, you're putting in sums of. In the billions of dollars. Investing.
[00:37:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:44] Speaker A: In terms of economies of scale. Right. It's a whole different animal, but for the individual. Oh, go ahead.
[00:37:50] Speaker B: If you like, think about it, though. Is trading just like if everybody loses at trading, and I mean, I'm not saying everybody does, but is the money that the winners have from all the losers, people that lose in the market?
[00:38:07] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like, where does the money go? Because it doesn't disappear, right? If someone, if the whales dump bitcoin, they still have the money. Whoever sold still has the money.
The people that lose are the ones buying on the way down and blowing accounts and things like that. You know who loses, George? I think there's only one loser in the market. Like, true loser. And that is the person that gives up on the market. If they recognize the market for what it is and then just give up on it. How's that for deep thoughts? Deep thoughts with Doctor Mark. Gonna add it to the drive now. Do you want me to elaborate on that? Or was that too. That was big enough. That was a big enough windfall because I was.
[00:38:51] Speaker B: Is it? Then it wouldn't be worth giving up. But would it also be worth keep trying? Yet it never worked.
[00:39:00] Speaker A: No, but that there. And actually, that's the answer to the question. Eventually something kicks in for you, because what you're learning about is the financial markets. And because you said trading is fun, it's the easiest way to get engaged with the market to, like that idea that I'm going to get one big score and I'm going to get in and get out. That's what gets people attracted to the market.
What discourages people is when they realize what the market actually is. And you have to have a degree of discipline to stay in it, and you have to recognize things and pay attention to its movements and then kind of get in sync with it. And then once you see how things move, you make better decisions. And when you make better decisions, smarter decisions, you're going to make more money, I think.
[00:39:43] Speaker B: Yeah, you're right. That does take time. That takes a lot of time.
[00:39:47] Speaker A: Yeah. Like I was talk. Oh, go ahead.
[00:39:50] Speaker B: No, no, you go ahead. You go.
[00:39:51] Speaker A: So, like, I was talking to my wife last night, because I'm into this real estate program now, and I was talking to one of my friends before about real estate, and he's like, why do you. I thought you hated real estate. And I'm like, I do hate real estate. There's a lot that, that goes into real estate that I think maybe the numbers, you could get larger if you're not a hedge fund or something, you could probably do better financially in real estate than you can in the stock market. But it's an economy of scale, and there's a learning curve to the real estate market. So my wife, I was telling my wife, I'm interested in this real estate in terms of, I'm starting to see things more broadly than I saw them before because I've taken on some mentorship. But it took me about ten years to get comfortable with the stock market like I am now. And I know if I go down the real estate path, I'm probably going to have a real estate learning curve that's going to be like ten years of kind of the winning and losing that I don't know if I want to go through that again because it's going to take so much time.
I might even edit all of this out because I don't want to discourage anybody from doing anything, and I still am actively engaged in it. So I'm not saying I'm not doing it, but I think what made me think about it is what you said, it just takes time. So whether you do real estate or the stock market or some other kind of investing endeavor, the people who do success, who are successful investors, are long term investors, because over time, you will get smarter with your investing decisions and as you get smarter with your investing decisions, because you're paying attention and you understand what's happening in the market, you'll make more money because better decisions mean you take profits when they're there to take. You raise your stop loss, you mitigate your risk. You become an outstanding risk manager because when you can manage risk, then you can play the game and you can feel confident. And if you have a good risk reward. So like my risk reward now is one to four. That just seems to be, I've seen setups that'll give me, when you talk about a range like you're a range trader, you want to see something with a large range that can give you a lot of movement. So that fits into what you're saying. That range is like youre, you're trying to pick a support level once it's broken, resistance that you will either enter or exit, depending on whether you're long or short. So that was just a whole bunch of jargon that may or may not have lost the casual listener.
[00:42:24] Speaker B: But honestly, I think I just realized something. I think in this loop that I've been in since January, I think event, eventually it has to work because if you think about it, all the successful traders that we look up to, all those posts, oh, look, my account, another 2000 a day, all that, everyone's successful that you've looked at, they're successful because they never give up on it. The hundred percent loss. They only. Right, you don't see the, all the losses and all the, I love, well.
[00:42:59] Speaker A: I love those guys. You don't see the losses now because they're probably at the, the polished end of their career. Meaning like all of the loss period was early on and probably the years.
I know there's this one guy, I don't know his, I don't recall his name. He's one of those youtubers and he shows, he has a public portfolio. At least this is his public one. I'm sure he has multiple portfolios, but he has one that he shows publicly and he showed it his journey, trading through the chart. It's a graph of your progress. And a lot of times what that graph looks like in the beginning, it could look good to the positive side. And then you just see this gaping hole of where you kind of lost track. You get a big learning lesson. And that's when it washes. Either it washes the casual player out and it keeps the serious player in. So it's Buffett's. Yeah. It's like Buffett's expression when he says, you know, when the market's in correction, you see who's wearing swim trunks and who's not like when the tide is down, you see who's actually swimming and who doesn't, who's just naked in the water. So that's like people, people get, like, margin calls and are not paying attention to their risk. And when the market's going up, they don't have to because the market's just going up. And you could throw a dart at the wall and make money. And when it's not going up or it's not moving in the direction you think it's going to move, if you were not managing your risk throughout the process, then you're going to get wiped out. How do you manage your risk? Keep cash. So, like I'm saying, you're going to have lifetime opportunities are going to present themselves where you're going to be like, holy moly, I want to put some money to work here. Keep cash. Make sure part of your portfolio is cash. So people are like, oh, cash is trash. Get out of cash.
That makes sense. If you're not, don't have a plan for that. Cash. But if you have cash that's specifically set aside as like a war chest, like when things get, when the shit hits the fan, I got a reserve of capital that I'm going to put to work. That's a comforting feeling that plays into your psychology. And it doesn't have to be a specific number. It just needs to be a percentage of your portfolio. So if you're, you know, 100% of your, if you have $1,000, 250 of that, that's 25%. Even that's too much. If you have $1,000, $100 of that should be put aside towards, that would be like your cash fund. So you'd always have a $100 in cash, and then you delegate the rest of that portfolio however you want to, wherever you're at. I think in the beginning, George, what you're doing and playing single stocks and taking single positions is what you have to do because you have a small amount to play with. And if you're trying to get any kind of leverage, you have to get focused on something. And to have a broader balanced portfolio I don't think is realistic. I mean, it's not unrealistic, but it's not where you're at. So where you're at is where you need to be, and that is managing your risk on certain positions.
[00:46:06] Speaker B: Like going, yeah, like what I was doing wrong. Like going too heavy. Like, right. I'm like, I've been staring at my portfolio. The six month, the six month graph on my portfolio. And I can't. Like, it has to eventually work because there's higher highs. Every run, it's been higher and higher and higher.
[00:46:27] Speaker A: But that's awesome.
[00:46:29] Speaker B: Right now it feels like an endless tunnel of just this repeating, right?
Yeah. I mean, you wind up in the.
[00:46:38] Speaker A: Valleys and they're like, so freaking annoying, right?
[00:46:42] Speaker B: It's like, do I know fully what I'm doing wrong? If this same pattern of, of blown account, you don't happen.
[00:46:51] Speaker A: You don't. But that's, but you know that you don't. You know that there's still something that you need to learn, which is where that's what differentiates you from someone who just gives up because they just say, oh, it's rigged. It doesn't make sense, it's garbage. It's whatever story you want to tell yourself. But if you own the way you're playing it and you recognize that, you're like, I'm not there yet, but I'm making progress. And I could see that if I keep doing what I'm doing, I can get there.
[00:47:27] Speaker B: And that's hopefully that's what's happening now. Because, you know, right now it just looks like there's no light at the end of the tunnel. I mean, this has been going on for like, yeah, almost a year. And it's just the same pattern. But technically, eventually it has to work. It's not unrealistically impossible where I can't get to that point where I can have a sustaining account where you can look at the six month chart and see like spy, right. You can look at, it may be down like crazy for the week, but if you look at the yearly chart, its up and the year before that, its up.
[00:48:07] Speaker A: Right. You recognize the longer term pattern is up. So thats where the investor comes in versus the trader. If youre an investor, that longer term pattern is going to work in your favorite and all you need is an index. Even Warren Buffett says just put, if he was going to do it from scratch, he would just put it in an index because they didn't even have him when he was starting out. They didn't have ETF's and easy ways to just play the whole market as far as I can recall. Yeah.
So now if you were going to be a passive investor, that's what you would do. You would just have exposure to the market, but it would be through a.
ETF's are managed, but they're just not, they're not managed by you. They're managed by someone who knows what they're doing. And they're managed. They're managed for a smaller fee than if you wanted some personalized wealth building advice, which is a different animal.
[00:49:00] Speaker B: This was, like, interesting talk because it's kind of like making me rethink the whole way I see this kind of what I'm, what I'm striving for and how, how, when, when do you know when you're successful? Like, as a trader? Where's that point where you get to, like, technically you can look at the chart and you can see, oh, there's higher highs. Like this first run, I got it to 523. The second run, I got it to 593. The third run, I got it to 894. So there is progress, but it keeps coming back to the same end result. The account hasn't been, it's only been able to do that because I've been putting all the money from the yoga job into the account. So it's interesting.
[00:49:58] Speaker A: Yeah, no, and I struggle with that myself. And I'm doing the real estate course because I'm like, the market's driving me nuts. Let me check out real estate. So you're asking, I think you're asking a question that traders will ask themselves on this journey and continue to ask themselves. And I'm still asking myself this question in terms of why am I still trading when I know it's, I'm not, I'm not, I can't see that. I can't say yet that I'm great at it. But I will tell you, just like you, I've gotten better and better and my positions and my risk management has gotten better and better and my numbers have gotten larger and they've gotten smaller. As I said that, I'm like, well, that's not true because the overall portfolio is, I'm not a great trader yet. And I'm going to say this to that question because you're helping me process along with you, because we're just talking about things that people go through when they think about investing in trading. When I recognized, I was smart enough to recognize what was going on in March of 2020, because I lived through 2008, so I never felt anything like 2008 before, until 2020. And then I was like, holy crap. And it was for different reasons, but it was this whole where all of a sudden it feels like the world is one, we are all connected, and there's something big happening to all of us. And the market reflected that by just dropping every single day for like a month. It was, it was a really, it was a devastating period for about 30 days. And once the dust settled from that, it was like one of the greatest bull runs of all time. And because I had lived through 2008 and I went all in in 2020, I was able to see gains I had never seen before in my life. But that's like a moment in time, that's a larger timeframe where I lost, and I say I lost because, like, what goes up comes down. And if it goes up real big, real fast, guess how fast and big it's coming down. I had to have a bigger life lesson. It wasn't a watching a tick on a five minute chart or a ten minute, an hour chart or daily chart. It wasn't watching ticks. It was. I had a frame of reference from 2008. Now I have a frame of reference from 2020. And in 2022, two to 2023, when the stock market went into a correct, a massive correction that was overdue. If you had bought Facebook during this time, Facebook got down to $87 for different reasons.
But Facebook particularly went down, and I think of that one because it was such a dramatic, when that turned around, it went from 87 to.
It's racing towards 600 now.
Yeah, but what I was getting at was when you look at the larger timeframes, so 2000, 820 20 2022, which was like, I got a big lesson. I made the most money and I lost the most money in the shortest amount of time. So I really learned a big lesson. And that big lesson from the last one was, and I kept remember them saying this on CNBC, but it was like, for the people that are in the market, they're new to the market and not used to seeing a tightening cycle, which is what we went through. One of the largest tightening, largest, fastest tightening cycles in history.
The market doesnt do well. And so people who insiders, people who understood the market, knew it was going to have a real bad go for a long period of time, which it did, and they got out and they were smart. But the people who were did not smart, the dumb money, us retail investors who had not felt viscerally that experience of a cutting cycle or understood it at the level an institutional investor does. We got handed our asses because they were dumping on us. And it's not because they're malicious, it's because they're protecting their constituents, which are retirees and teachers and firefighters and police. Like, anybody who's got a pension fund is in the market. Even if you, if you're like, I'm not in the stock market. If you have some kind of funding from your company that you work for or your profession or whatever it is, you're probably in the market in some way.
If you have none of those things, then you're not in the market and you don't have a pension fund. And even pension fund is an outdated thing now for younger people, I think. I don't even think about. I'm a Gen X. I don't think about a pension fund. I think Roth Ira and even those are becoming questionable for other reasons that I'm not going to get into in this episode.
I think I'm trying to instill on the broader audience and you and myself included, just to reinforce. It's these larger timeframes. When you've been in the market, like you're kind of right now, you're in it, you're playing around in it, you're having fun in it. Sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's not. But there's going to be a moment in time where you recognize something because you've been consistent and watching and paying attention, and you're going to capitalize on an amazing opportunity.
So for what crushed the novice or the less experienced or the unfortunate in 2008 and 2020 and 2022 was to the gain of the people who had experience and knew, understood what was going to happen. And even those people during those time. Let's take Warren Buffett.
He was still in the stock market when it crashed all of these times. His stock, Berkshire Hathaway, crashed during these times. It's not like he didn't lose money. He didn't lose money because he didn't sell.
The only reason he didn't lose money is because he stayed. He knew what his risk was. He still had cash, and now he has even more cash than he had then, which is freaking a lot of people out. That's another thing. It's like, what does Buffett know that we don't know? He's also older. It's wiser for him as an older. If you're an older investor, they tell you should be cutting back some of your risks. So it's wiser for him maybe to be in cash, but everyone's going to have a different reason. Everyone's going to have a different reason without losing. The broader theme is that if you take a larger context to everything that you're doing, like I said, with my trading, I would like to get better. I would like to say that I'm a consistently profitable trader. I would love to say that, and I'm working towards that. So to what your point is I still believe in that dream, too, where I can trade and I'm profitable and it's green, and I'm like this profitable trader, and my trading just brings me money without losing me too much money. So right now, it brings me money and it takes money. It brings me money and it takes my money. So I don't have that strength. And I've had, and I've been measuring it, like, diligently for quarters now. So I look at my quarters, and it's like, oh, this quarter I made money. This quarter I made money. This quarter I made money. And then you get cocky, but you get cocky on a larger scale because I had three quarters of incredible success. And then this last trade that I had, unity crushed me. It just, like, wiped out three quarters of gains from one trade. That should never happen. That should never happen to anybody. And it's shameful that it happened to me at this stage in the game, but it happens.
And so I'm still in it. I'm still.
[00:57:40] Speaker B: You feel like you're not going anywhere because you've made so much progress, and then all of a sudden you get back to where you started. It's like you didn't do anything.
[00:57:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it's frustrating as heck. But what I'm trying to give context to, even for myself, like, reinforcing in myself, like, this is what it is for me. What it is for me is when I trade. And like you said, I'm paying attention to the market. It gets me engaged in the market. So if trading and managing my risk and even staying neutral gets me to pay attention, that's good. And if that paying attention even serves a grander purpose, because people want to make money, I mean, it's a money game. It's a financial. When you're talking about the stock market, you're talking about money. This isn't a spiritual event. This is a practical money thing. So you get, when you have those larger timeframes and you're paying attention to the market as it goes, you will have these opportunities which you will be able to capitalize on. So it's like luck favors the prepared. So everyone in everyone to agree, this is going to sound ridiculous, especially if it's taken out of context, but everyone could have made a ton of money in 2020 if they understood what was happening. But if you didn't understand what was happening, if you were a victim to life or. I don't even want to make it that dramatic. Let's. I mean, we're into the market, so some people are, and some people aren't. They do other things. But if you were, you had that, just a little bit of awareness of what was going on, and you. How do you get that awareness? You buy a stock, you have to buy it. You have to buy it to know what's going on. And then if you want to know what's going on, you have to trade it. Maybe you sell it, maybe you don't hold on to it, and maybe it doesn't go up fast enough for you and you. So you buy something else from there. It's infinite. It's an infinite game. So that excites me. You can hear even in my voice. I get excited about that. And those are the things that keep me going. That's what keeps me from not giving up. Like, I thought I was out. Like, I lost that ton of money and then I was fine then, and then I got a little bit of money, and then I lost that little bit of money and I'm like, I'm out. I think I'm out. And then, sure enough, a week, I just, I'm like, I'm not. Definitely not. You did the right thing when you took. I think you did the right thing and people would argue you did the right thing when you took a break. If you get some hits in a row, that's when you take a break.
[01:00:07] Speaker B: I agree. I.
You need, you need to reflect on why.
[01:00:12] Speaker A: Right.
[01:00:13] Speaker B: Why did that happen? Why'd you lose all that? I don't know. That's what I'm doing right now, actually, this whole livestream. I'm kind of like reflecting on what I've done because I've never talked about.
I've only. Right. We've only ever talked about the wins and.
[01:00:30] Speaker A: Oh, yes.
[01:00:33] Speaker B: But I haven't really out loud, let alone on a podcast, about all the not so good, which is the majority, the far majority of what I've done over the past nine months, ten months.
[01:00:47] Speaker A: I think it's very. It's not a sexy message, George, to go out there and say, you might make money, you might not make money. It's hard, all that kind of. It's like nobody. Who's clicking on that? Nobody. Yeah, but you say, and you have a goal, and I still think we can do this. So, like, we have to stay true here when you have a goal and you define an outcome for yourself. So, for example, I want to get to $1,000 to open an account.
So I want to start a fund account. A fund and account to $1,000 or whatever the number is for you, 10,000, 100,100, 50,000, a million, the number doesn't matter. You decide you're going to put your chips on the table, you're going to annie up, and you're going to play the game. That's step number one. You've done that successfully already. You've already succeeded. And the fact that you kept going after a loss, you've already, you've already outpaced a lot of people that have started on the same road you're on now that have given up and they're doing something else now.
[01:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So if you look at it like that, then that is progress.
[01:01:55] Speaker A: It's huge.
[01:01:56] Speaker B: Even though it may not feel like it in the current.
Current, like where I'm sitting now. Currently.
[01:02:04] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely.
[01:02:05] Speaker B: After this huge loss.
And I put in on.
Let me look this on. 926, right? I put in another 300, and now I'm at 226. So it's like, when does it make sense to take another break? Cause clearly it did work. When I took that break, that's when I had the next long run. And how can I get to that point where I can maintain an account?
[01:02:33] Speaker A: Because so this is what we're doing together. Oh, go ahead, George. I want you to finish your thought.
[01:02:38] Speaker B: Okay? Because I'm trying to work towards a goal like that. But what defines that goal? Like, when I hit thousand, I was a $100 off.
[01:02:48] Speaker A: You define that goal. You define that goal. You said, what defines the goal? You do it. It's arbitrary. Alex Hermosi said, I'm going to build trust with you because I'm going to get you to a million dollars. At first he said 3 million, but I guess that was too much because now it's a million dollars. But he goes, I'm going to get you to a million dollars. And so who knows if he will or if he won't. But it's someone having a belief. It's two people sharing a belief. It is the guru messiah telling you, you can do this, because I've done it. And I'm going to tell you, you can do it, too.
And then they create your dream inside your head that's already, or they either wake up your dream, or they plant the seed or whatever it is, and then you go, oh, what harm is it to follow this path if I'm just shooting towards a million dollars? Like, what's the worst case scenario? I don't make a million dollars. Okay? I don't have a million dollars now. So it's like, if you don't have a million dollars now, and you don't make a million dollars then. You didn't lose anything.
[01:03:52] Speaker B: This is a very, I'm like reflecting a lot.
[01:03:56] Speaker A: Like, yes, yeah, I have that effect on people. I should let people know. My background's in psychology, so I actually did, my first career was mental health work, so I did a lot of counseling. Yeah. So that, because I'm even trying to figure out, I'm like, what is happening? I'm watching the podcast evolve and I'm like, what is this evolving into? And then I think, okay, I'm kind of bringing things together.
I was into, I studied psychology. I liked talking to people. I probably should have been a counselor, like some advanced psychologist or something, if I followed my initial career path. And then I became a chiropractor, and I like helping people that way, but now I do things. The nature of my job is different than a traditional chiropractor. And so, and then I'm interested in the stock market, I'm interested in finance, and I'm interested in trading. And like, when you talk about trading and why do you do it for this, you and I are talking about it. We're into it. We both recognize something and we don't. It's not just us. We have social proof because millions of people exchange on the market. You said it early on. You just want to be in the game. You're in the game. You are in the game. If you have a take a position in stock, you're in the game. It doesn't matter what that dollar amount is. And then you recognize you're in a game and then you, we've talked about this before, and it's good for us to keep going back to, this is leveling up. It's leveling up. So you talked and the chart is, it couldn't, the stock market couldn't be an easier thing to gamify. And I don't know if that's going to, if that's a hot take or something. I don't think it is anymore because, yeah, it's a, and it's so it's, it's green and reduced green and red. Green and red. And so those are the colors that are in this video game. And then there's these patterns that form from these colors and then these sticks and this chart. And it's telling you something. And it's telling you something. And sometimes when you're starting to play that game, if, assuming you're a technical analyst, I know like fundamental traders or investors are like crawling in their skin right now. But if you're a technical person and you're looking at the green and the red and you're looking at the charts and you're just seeing it like a video game. It's like the first few times you play that game, you can't get very far because you recognize certain things keep hitting me. Certain things keep hitting me. Certain things keep hitting me completely right. And if you pay attention to what it is which you're doing, you're introspective, you're reflecting. That's what traders do. That's what investors do. They go inside and they check their realities and then they look outside to see, does what I'm thinking match up with what's going on? That's a fun kind of game that we're playing. And then on a stock chart. Go ahead, I would love to hear, I'd love to hear your take on.
[01:06:50] Speaker B: That totally right on the game part. Like you're completely right when you said it's the easiest thing that brings in money, huge money related, that's the most similar to a game. Like I've been playing video games since as long as I can remember. And you're completely right if you think about it. Like that's totally a game. And your goal is to level up. Like every single.
Like these runs I've done, they're like hills, but each hill is taller than the other. Is that, yes, same level or is that leveling up?
[01:07:28] Speaker A: So it is leveling up and here it is leveling up because you have to recognize you're making progress. And that is something that you can back up on a chart. And by numbers, it's concrete. That's how you know it's real because you can prove it. You can look at the numbers and the chart doesn't lie. And so the chart becomes a reflection of your ability. So right now, George, quite honestly, in my trading account, I'm in a valley. I'm not at a peak, I'm in actually a deep valley, but I haven't given up and I recognize things and I've learned from painfully, with a lot of money, I've learned that's what's beautiful about where you're at. You're learning for you, it feels like a lot of money now, but when you project yourself into the future, you know you're going to be, you're going to have a lot more money than you're working with now. You're going to have a lot more access to capital because you're a smart guy, and our society encourages us to level up, but you're. So if you make these smaller, if you make these mistakes with what feels like a lot now, but it isn't really, because in the beginning, I played like you. I just threw a $100 in. In the market for years for like a day. I wasn't serious. I just put a few hundred bucks in and. And I few hundred, and I'd make a few hundred bucks and I would get out. But. But then I did a big. I did a trade that. That I put a few hundred bucks in and I made thousands, and then I'm like, oh, okay, now I get it. But that didn't. That didn't. That took a long time to actually. For me to get there to want to do that, but we're. We're just. That put all that on the back burner because you said something about defining how. How do you define your levels? Like, we. They're easy to define. Our first level was a. You hit it and then you lost it. So you just started. It's like. You know what? It's like losing a player if you do that Mario Maker. Did you ever play that game when you were a kid, the Mario game maker? Like, I was. It was after my time. Too old for that. But I have kids. My son played that game. And you could create up to like 90, 99 lives for. For Mario. So you could go and just knock out those lives until you figure it out. And then the player resets and then they die, and then they reset, and then they die and then they reset. So that's the game. So if you're. If your account. When you're. You set a defined goal for yourself and you hit it or you miss it or you die, you. That you blew up your account and now you reset and you're wiser and you're smarter because you're paying attention. Wow. I didn't see that turtle coming from.
[01:10:08] Speaker B: I just realized something. Yeah, I just realized something huge.
Looking at this like a video game, personally, in my opinion, is the most correct way to look at it, because I've been playing video games for the longest time, and every example I can think of with any level based game is like, take. Let's take Mario for an example, right? You're going through the level with the. Let's call, like, parkour, and each. Each level is more difficult, and you're not gonna get through the level the first time. Like, first try. Every level will require a different amount of attempts. Right? Attempt. One attempt to attempt. So if eventually you do get to the next level, but it's just like, eventually you will get there. It's the amount of attempts and the amount of time that you're willing to put into it. It. Because if you're at attempt five and, like, let's go. Let's time travel 30 minutes later, you're in a. In, like, going through the castle and let's time travel 30 minutes in the future, you will beat that level in 30 minutes, in 15 attempts. But right now, you're at attempt number. Now let's do. Let's do 75 attempts. You'll beat that level right now here at them 30, and you feel like giving up, and it's like, this is an impossible level. I'll never be able to beat it. I'm switching to a different game that's giving up. Right, right.
If. If you know that a time travel 30 minutes in the future, you will beat that level at 75 attempts, you don't know that in the current state.
[01:12:03] Speaker A: Right. So. Right.
[01:12:05] Speaker B: Technically, eventually it should work. It's just the amount of attempts. Each attempt, you gain further. You see what that obstacle does and how you get around it. Like, at the. At the bumps in Viaccount, every attempt is higher than the other one. So thinking about this like a video game is totally right. I think.
[01:12:24] Speaker A: Yeah, I I agree. I agree.
I want to say with specific, like, a specific strategy from just visualizing what you're telling me in terms of what your chart looks like and what's being reflected back to you is when you get to those higher highs, that's where the risk management comes in. Because if you just had some discipline when you. If you had a little bit more discipline when you hit those higher highs, you wouldn't let yourself fall back to a certain level. So you go, how do I know when to take a break? Again, it's personal for everybody, but you take a break when you take a break sooner. So, like, before, I would take a break after. I should have taken a break five weeks ago, and then I take a break after it's all bled out. Like, I've just let you know, when I find a swing trade, I just let it go on for months, and I'm just bleeding out.
What's happening now is I'm taking a break sooner.
I got a couple bad trades, but not like the one. Not like the one I had earlier this year. And I'm taking the break sooner, and I'm preserving my capital. So I'm visualizing the chart. So when you get to that higher high, don't let yourself put in the cap your loss, lock in those gains and then start trading.
[01:13:52] Speaker B: Yeah, what's that?
[01:13:53] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:13:54] Speaker B: And like lock in all that other progress you've made and take that break and start only trading small again with that. Maybe that is the key then. I think you need to understand yourself because every trader is going to be slightly different. You can't copy someone exactly and progress the same way. If I take the same trades as you like, or at least like attempt to on like a live stream, like you trade, oh, I enter this, we're both gonna sell at slightly different times. It's like, like, I don't know if I'm just right. You have to understand your, yeah. Like yourself and when to take a break. When the right time. Like if you take a break too early and you lose that momentum too early, you could be a lot higher. But if you take a break too late, then you're not going to have anything left. And honestly, it's better to go earlier.
[01:14:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that does struck home because I had a trade yesterday. It was one of those fast money in like, you know, 15 minutes. I was up like over my days quota and I should have just walked away. Like, you got to know when to.
[01:15:07] Speaker B: Fold so many times.
[01:15:09] Speaker A: And then it's just like, I wound up, I gave most of it back and I still want actually wound up taking like five trades. It was crazy. I wound up taking five trades and I was all over the place and I ended the day positive, but it was a small amount. And I'm like, turn it off.
Walk away.
[01:15:27] Speaker B: I think that proves that we're both still learning. We're not there yet where I think even though you've had a lot more experience than me, like, you've seen the 2008 recession. I only got in the market.
I started with crypto in 2023 spring, so more than a year ago. And then I did that until around winter this year. That's when I got so honestly, a little less than a year or almost a year actually. I've been in the true stock market. So I've, I don't have like a lot of references. I haven't seen the recession. I can't even remember what I was doing in 2008.
[01:16:10] Speaker A: You're playing a different game right now, which is awesome.
All you need to do is exactly what you're doing, which is just paying attention and learning some strategies and then seeing what works for you. And you could play a million different strategies. There's millions of styles, there's millions of assets to trade. You could do whatever you want. But there's certain fundamental principles that we all learn as traders and investors that when you learn those principles, then you just apply it to your circumstances and.
[01:16:40] Speaker B: You need to know which strategy, which style is the best for you, that you can do. And that's when you'll succeed. I think.
[01:16:47] Speaker A: Yes, you'll know it's the best for you because it'll show up in your.
[01:16:51] Speaker B: P and l. Exactly. You just have to understand yourself and eventually you will. It's just, it's a different amount of attempts for everyone, but eventually you will get to the next level.
[01:17:03] Speaker A: Right. So we're gonna love, I'm gonna. Yes, I, and I agree with you 100%. We are going to.
Whoops. Did you hear anything for some reason? Like my, my computer just popped on. Hold on 1 second. Uh, how do I. All right, that was weird. I must have triggered something. All right. I was going to say, because I, this went way longer. I had 30 minutes planned.
[01:17:26] Speaker B: Oh, you're 1 hour and 30 minutes.
[01:17:29] Speaker A: You're one of my favorite people to talk to because it's like you said, we're both learning, but you have to want to learn what you're learning. And the problem is, is some people don't take it this as seriously as we're taking it. I mean, a lot of people do. I don't. I, they're different conversations with people. And some of those people. Yeah, but I'm not going to get into that because it's, that doesn't have anything to do with anything. But for you and I, we have a very defined goal for ourselves in terms of leveling up is taking an account like, I'm invested in you, that I want to see you grow an account from $1,000 sustained and then grow that account to $25,000. I want to see that happen for you. So it'd be, yeah, yeah, it'd be fantastic. You'll feel like a million bucks and I'll feel like a million bucks just watching it. And like, so we define our goals in terms of leveling up, where thousand dollars is the first financial target. It, it's just a target for me, at least. Yeah, for you. So, so, so that's your, that's, that's your target. Just stay on target and you know what's going to happen. I think what'll happen for you because it's, it's similar. What happened for me is you're not going to have to keep putting money in to just fund law. That's the part that, like when investors think about traders, this is the part that drives them nuts, is like all of this money that you're putting in, you could have put into something long term and made a return on your investment. So not only you're not making a return on your investment numerically, because numerically you're losing because you're putting money in, spending your time and not seeing any financial product out of it.
[01:19:17] Speaker B: It's a huge, huge waste. At the beginning.
[01:19:21] Speaker A: Yeah. In the beginning, you're paying your dues. When they say you're paying tuition to the market, that's the tuition you're playing. Because if you stay long term, you are going to recognize the fruits of the stock market.
[01:19:35] Speaker B: You're right.
[01:19:36] Speaker A: And it is that commitment, that longer term commitment. Yes.
[01:19:41] Speaker B: Paying the entry fee now.
[01:19:43] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:19:45] Speaker B: Like entering into the market, you got to pay your entrance fee of a year of losing. And then, or whatever, whatever it is.
[01:19:53] Speaker A: Whatever time frame it is, if you're, if the more dilute, the more you put effort into understanding it, then you're gonna get better faster. I think that just goes with anything. The more.
Yeah, yeah, no, go ahead.
[01:20:09] Speaker B: I think it's, it's like testing you. I think that's the market's goal. I think it's trying to test you to see, because if you, if you're winning at first and you're winning and winning, I think, I think it is luck or like these huge gains I've had, I think they, they are luck because I haven't been able to maintain them.
[01:20:31] Speaker A: Right.
[01:20:31] Speaker B: So if it was skill and I knew exactly what I was doing and exactly how I did it, I would have never lost them. I would have in all these loss, all these wins combined would probably be over way $5,000 in the account. But I think it was just more, way more luck than, than anything else because I haven't maintained them. And I think it's a test.
It's a test of your patience. It's a test of your timing. It's a test of everything.
[01:21:02] Speaker A: Absolutely. And I think we're going to wrap it up on that note. George, that was a great episode. It was. I'm looking forward to hear what the final product is going to be because we went way longer than I was anticipating. I don't know if I'm going to chop it down or if I'm going to load the whole thing, so I'll figure it all out. But I'm glad that we have it recorded, and it'll be something we could reflect on even if we don't listen to it. Again, the value isn't just having that processing happen once.
[01:21:34] Speaker B: I agree. Even if this podcast goes absolutely nowhere, that value of the conversation, really kind of.
[01:21:41] Speaker A: I still gotta get my 21 episodes. Let's not jinx me yet.
[01:21:44] Speaker B: That's. No, you're right. You're right.
[01:21:46] Speaker A: I know.
[01:21:48] Speaker B: I'm saying, like, if. If this. If this one episode has lost to time, I think we both got value out of reflecting what we're.
[01:21:55] Speaker A: What.
[01:21:56] Speaker B: What we're driving towards, because right now, it looks like an endless tunnel. And I think that cleared it up a little bit.
[01:22:04] Speaker A: Yeah. For me, too. I. When I share with you, it gives me perspective on where I'm at. And when I hear what you're going through, I was like, oh, yeah, I get that. I get that. And I still feel that. I think you always feel it. It's your tolerance to what you're feeling and your ability to weather that storm.
[01:22:23] Speaker B: It's good to get this info out of the brain so you can have a second perspective and just. Yeah, it's interesting. I can't really explain it.
[01:22:32] Speaker A: Yeah, no, we'll get there. We're gonna explain it one episode at a time.
Thank you, everybody, for watching this, listening to this episode of the money adjustment. And I look forward. And, George, you want to give him your final.
[01:22:47] Speaker B: Yeah, I think we can do.
I think this podcast could go somewhere because we have a lot of info to discover. Yeah, a lot of stuff.
[01:23:01] Speaker A: Our portion of it where you're. You're a segment in a larger love. Larger segments. And as a teaser to the next one. The next one you and I are going to do is. Well, I don't know if it'll be the next one, but one of the ones coming up is your startup.
So we'll just leave that as a teaser. Thank you again, everybody, for listening to this episode of the money adjustment, and we'll see you in the next one.
[01:23:26] Speaker B: Thank you.
[01:23:27] Speaker A: Bye, everyone.
[01:23:28] Speaker B: Thank you, everyone. Bye.
[01:23:30] Speaker A: Thank you for watching this episode of the Money Adjustment. If you want more, like comment and subscribe, you can follow me on X at Mark Kramer. Until the next episode, stay healthy and wealthy.
