Chat With Traders End of 2023 Message

Growing up poor and living in violent neighborhoods didn’t stop Erik from being motivated and curious. Erik only needed to hear a few words about investing including the power of compounding from his high school instructor to light the passion and determination to take ACTION. The discipline, responsibility, accountability, and patience he cultivated as a Marine Corp officer strengthened his ability to stick with his well thought out trading plans and persevere. His use of derivatives strategies help him to minimize painful drawdowns while creating consistent, long term market-beating returns.

Experiencing the brutal bear market of 1973-74 impressed upon Tom the necessity to find ways to hedge risk. This began a multi year long quest to find the right combination of uncorrelated assets, technical indicators and adjust the weightings as needed to provide enough protection to fill in the potholes of equity drawdowns while retaining the bulk of upside potential. Having a sweet balance between risk and reward both in the financial markets and in his personal life has enabled Tom to maintain a serene disposition.

The shock of his first major losing year in 2004 as a discretionary trader, propelled Rob Hanna to find quantifiable statistical advantages that would help mitigate the fluctuations in his equity curves. Knowing the dangers of curve fitting, in trying to find that ‘perfect’ system, Rob zeroed in on simpler approaches that would combine seasonality, overbought, oversold and Federal Reserve days. The result is a system that helps minimize anxiety and drawdowns while keeping him invested for the bulk of bullish moves.

Paying to take and pass the Series 7 license as a teenager in the 1980’s led Bryan Holdford into the high commission world of stocks and options without mentors or the internet. Starting with investment newspapers Bryan tried many trading ideas without any risk controls. Despite frequent and numerous losses, he was hooked on the game of trading.

Stinging losses with mutual funds in 2008 drove Dan to become an active manager of his portfolio. Enticed by the legalization prospects of marijuana, he dived into learning the fundamentals and technicals of the sector. Learning how these stocks traded relative to each other, he cultivated an awareness of the correlations between these companies. These interrelationships would later be applied to large cap stocks, Commodities and Crypto across different time frames to give insights on when to participate in Bull and Bear runs, and when to back away.

An engineer at the core, Mark Bennell, a Private Trader who has been trading full-time for 15 years breaks down what it really means to “Treat Trading As a Business” and why this mindset was incredibly important in turning his trading around and why it has kept him in the game for this long.

Pete uses a top down 3 step methodical process which helps him zero in on stocks to go long or short. From longs to shorts, conservative credit spreads, high leverage options to occasional Lotto trades, Pete fine tunes his versatile strategies to match current market conditions.

Growing up poor in the Philippines, Gabriel sought a way to supplement his income. Dealing with the emotional challenges of giving up his profits in his long-term positions, he switched to trading to have a sense of greater control of the outcome. Starting out using many technical indicators, he later switched to just price action as it gave less false signals. After blowing up several accounts, he honed his skills to become the winner of the 21-Day Trading Challenge Contest inside the Chat with Traders Community and become a funded trader.

Seeking financial opportunities overseas just before the Great Financial Crises, Andres Granger was motivated to learn how to trade after falling victim to a Ponzi-like trading scheme. He worked hard and diligently studied order flow and scalping while trading Futures in different markets. Later, he was introduced to crypto through a prop firm, where he honed his skills to exploit large market inefficiencies through market neutral trading. Emboldened by these incredible opportunities, Andres then went on to create a crypto strategy fund.

This is a special episode of a recording of a recent discussion that occurred within the Chat With Traders Community on a Zoom call. The discussion centers around Henrik Johansson, a beginner fellow trader, who embarked on a journey to obtain funding from a proprietary trading firm within a 60-day timeframe.

First seduced by advertisements of easy money, Shay a.k.a. Humbled Trader learned that she had to find her own way of trading. Taking the skills she learned as a special effects artist in Hollywood, she created the popular Youtube channel for traders to share her trading wisdoms in a humorous creative way. Join us in the story of how Shay was able to quit her full time job to trade full time.

Join us in this unusual and fascinating journey as we learn about Patrick's trading and intuitive Jedi skills to make lightning-fast discretionary executions.

Lacking education, mentors or money, Lukas Frohlich, known to many as The Short Bear, became fascinated with financial markets when only 13 years old. Saving everything he could from jobs, he started trading before he could even legally drive a car. He created Youtube and Twitter accounts to share strategies, victories and defeats to help fellow traders improve their game. Obsessed with learning from mistakes, understanding gains and improving his process lead to outrageous gains in 2020 with his Agenda Trading strategy.

Dedicating significant hours to books and market analysis, Alexander Moreno sought regular counsel from a seasoned trading mentor. After refining his abilities through months of paper trading, he ventured into live trading, reaping consistent profits as planned. This success bolstered his confidence to trade full-time as a livelihood. However, the unforeseen market turbulence in 2008 unleashed his psychological struggles, leading to impulsive trading and ultimately, homelessness. This harrowing experience granted Alexander invaluable insights that he now imparts to others.

Deep in debt after finishing Architecture school, David Capablanca, originally from Miami and host of the Friendly Bear Podcast, desired an alternative career with independence, freedom and potential for high earnings. Naturally drawn to a contrarian psychology, he zeroed in on short selling. The challenge of uncovering scams through a deep dive into company fundamentals, history of founders and visiting company headquarters overseas on a quest to find clues were the things that energized David and brought his trading approach to a whole other level.

After an accident ended her career as a professional athlete, Louisa Nicola became a Neurophysiologist and human performance coach, in order to understand and share what improves and degrades the brain’s short term performance and long term viability. Adopting certain habits, diets and supplementing with technology can give us traders the edge needed for peak performance and overall mental well-being.

As a former poker player, heavy gambler, and professor of statistics, and after having had a successful professional career in the movie industry in Hollywood, Vincent Bruzzese (aka Hari Seldon of Real Day Trading group) took his poker skills and expertise on statistical predictive modeling of human behavior and ventured into the world of trading with a goal of finding an edge.

Growing up poor with kidney disease as an immigrant from Mexico, Christian’s trauma with health issues and family financial instability resulted in the drive and hunger for financial success and security through redemption in the markets and going all in...

Patrick is a finance professor, author, quant hedge fund manager and a connoisseur of financial history. As a young investor in Utility stocks, Patrick’s hunger to learn and apply the lessons of financial history helped him to maintain composure during the frenzied bubble market in the late 90’s and avoid most of the losses his colleagues suffered during the dot.com blowup.

Early trading failures drove Yvan to understand his own emotional turbulence and instability in the mind through deep inner work. Embracing uncertainty and becoming systematic in his trading...

The FTX collapse, arrest of Sam Bankman Fried, and subsequent crypto collapse opened new opportunities for Kasper, while other players were forced to exit (2-part interview: pre & post FTX collapse)

As a highly driven, methodical stock and futures day trader, Sunny Harris didn’t survive the four major market crashes, she thrived through them. A strong believer of technical analysis, back testing, and systematic trading, this vivacious Southern California trader and entrepreneur leveraged her background and skills as a mathematician and programmer to develop and refine her own trading system that she has come to rely on throughout her trading career. Listen to some enlightening and surprising perspectives from Sunny Harris, a mathematician, programmer, author, teacher, mentor, and veteran day trader who is very active in the markets every day.

Starting out juggling multiple jobs as a valet driver, firefighter and entrepreneur, Jack Kellogg at 18 years of age about 6 years ago dreamed of financial freedom, became laser-focused on saving money and learned everything he could about the stock market before turning to penny stocks. Jack's intense drive for success pushed his mental and physical health to unhealthy levels as he managed hundreds of trades, and at times in illiquid, unregulated securities that often saw hundreds of percent increases, quickly followed by spectacular collapses within just a few weeks. This multifaceted discussion takes us inside Jack's journey, which was met with setbacks and struggles, along with wisdom gained earlier than usual for someone so young.