 A lot of people from Twitter are applying that are like on on Twitter. They're the best traders in the world. But then you look at the broker statements and you're like, come on, then. Bro, I bet you're crazy. You feel like name dropping a few. Welcome back to the After Hours podcast. Today, we're really excited to have Stan Guzman on the show. So Stan, thanks for coming, man. Thank you for having me. I love your show. I watch every episode. So it's a pleasure to be here, guys. Cool, man. It's a long time coming since we had you here. So just real quick, what is your trading history? How'd you get started trading? I started, I think around the time that you started Alex in around 2013, 2014-ish, I discovered trading in 2013. I was in college and I didn't know what I wanted to do in life, you know, as a college student like most. So I randomly discovered trading. A friend of mine called me and he said he offered me to use his referral link for Scott trade for some free trades. And I took him up on that offer and I invested some money into like Apple and some other like big names. And I bought plug. I'm sure you remember that one. And it was just like hot like on Twitter. So I just bought it. And a couple of days later, I was up like 20 or 30% on plug. And I was like, I only invested like $5,000 into like all of them. And I think I put like 500 into plug. And I think I was up like a hundred bucks or 200 bucks in plug in a couple of days. And my Apple is like down like a dollar, you know, and I'm like, what am I doing with Apple? So yeah, so I got bid by the bug right then and there. And yeah, and then I started kind of researching how to do it over and over again. That's awesome. Yeah. And then it was like Sykes. Sykes's room for a while and Nate's room and some other room, like all these DVDs, Tim Grittani. And then yeah, that was like the start. That was the early start of 2013. And then going into 2014. Yeah. I went, I remember like a year or two ago, like I randomly like saw you post a story on Instagram and then I was like kind of like scrolling through. And you have a lot of posts from like kind of like the early days on there, like when you first got started. And what would you say that like kind of was like turning point for you? Like was there ever a turning point where it was like, aha, like I kind of like understand this now? Or was it just like just the grind day in, day out? And then you slowly kind of like understood what you were doing like a little bit. Yeah, it was definitely the grind. There was no real like turning point. I mean, there were like a lot of small turning points. You know, it's not a 180. It's like a five degree turn many times. So yeah, it was a slow grind for sure. Like I think most, like most people, but I think the big one was when I realized that I'm gross green, you know what I mean? Like I was like kind of trading for, you know, for maybe about a year and then I got gross green, but I was still getting destroyed in fees. I used a shirt trader and I was like really expensive to trade with. And they're not around anymore. That's a good reason. Yeah, but gross green. And I was like, okay, I'm just like under capitalized now. I just need to size up quite a bit. Either that or like join a firm that will fund me. So whichever comes first, you know, I got to like save up some money or get hired. And I got hired to the firm in 2015, which was like a year. What was the process like, Stan? How did they hire you? Did they find you? Did you reach out to them? And what type of, do they look at your broker statements for the people that want to get into prop trading? Like what's that like? Yeah, that's a good question. So that's pretty much all I've known since 2015, right? I got hired a while ago and now I'm the one doing the hiring. So it's been a long, long ride, you know, interesting ride. And I love the prop world. I don't know what I would do without it to be honest. I'd like to think that I would be able to survive on my own like you guys did. But basically what happened was I went to Baruch College and Mike Katz, the hiring manager at Seven Points, he also went to Baruch College and he liked to hire a lot of people from Baruch College. So when I was hired, I was in a group with I think five or six other guys and they're all from my school and probably half the firm were from my school. And we're not Baruch, so it's like a trading school basically. We had a trading floor and we had like technical analysis class. It was quite interesting. Yeah, didn't really learn about like trading. I mean, they taught us like some indicators and that sort of thing. And I graduated with finance degree and it has nothing to do with actual trading but you can kind of get your feet where you get like a very like one-on-one introduction to trading if you take the right classes. And so they, I submitted my application. I had like a phone interview and then I came in and I came in with a tablet and with some of my trades and I showed Mike Katz like, this is what I did. This is what I did. This is what I was risking. And he's like drilling me down with all these questions about each individual trade. And then at the end of the interview, he's just like, we basically do a very similar thing here. We do like more, you know, more stuff. We do like more market making, some other different stuff. But we do a lot of like momentum trading as well. So that was the interview process I got hired. And that was probably the biggest like turn, the biggest angle of that turn where they kind of showed me like how to do market making. And I think within like four or five months I was in that green and I was profitable. Were you scared to use someone else's capital? Did you feel like a little bit of sense of like, damn, like if I fuck this up, it's not my money, it's someone else's money as well. Or did you just like, you know what? Like I'm here, I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna nail it. Or did you say the exact same thing? Damn, this is somebody else's money. If I fuck it up, I'd fuck it up and ain't mine. Yeah, you know, it's like, you know, it's like 50-50 for everybody. Some people, some people are like leaning this way. Some people leaning the other way. I think Nico had, wasn't very comfortable when he joined the prop firm, you know, Nico. He wasn't very comfortable joining the prop firm at first because he's like, man, I'm gonna lose somebody else's money. And I'm just like, dude, so it's somebody else's money. So yeah, so for me it was like, I don't care. It's not even my money. We had conversations with one of the founders, Gary, when I joined, you know, one of the guys was like kind of afraid to lose money and he's like, who cares? It's not even yours, you know? And he's the owner of the firm. So that's just like, okay, here we go. Let's risk some money. So I didn't really care, but I think a lot of people do and I don't think that that's a good reason to like hold yourself back, you know? And you also want a firm that's able to support you and be like, listen, we want you to do the best that you possibly can and whatever we have to do to get you there, we're gonna do that. So I think that's really important. And now you being a head trader, what do you look for before you hire someone? I look for somebody who is very passionate about trading and is not afraid to ask like dumb questions, but also does the work. I don't know, just common sense things, you know? Like there are a lot of people that are like, like profitable, but they don't wanna join the firm because they're already profitable. You know, what's the point for them? Unless they want more, a lot more capital. So, you know, that happens once in a while. But for the most part, it's like noobs are applying that like don't really know what they're even applying for. They just like looking for a job. So I'm just looking for something in between where the guy just, you know, kind of like where I was, I just needed a bit of capital, a bit of guidance, you know, like cheap locates and that sort of thing. And, you know, being in the right environment, like somebody who wants to be in the right environment. So that's kind of what I look for right now. And also, that's important is like, if I'm hiring somebody to be, you know, sitting next to me in the office, he's gotta be like a normal dude, you know, a normal person or a girl or whatever, you know? But normal person, like you don't mind sitting next to the guy, he's not gonna be a kind of an idiot, you know? Are you struggling to find the right stocks to trade? Are you making money for one, two, maybe three weeks in a row and losing it all in one day? Are you struggling with sizing up on your trades? Well, I found that the best way to fix these problems is to trade alongside a millionaire trader live on stream with no delays. My investing club's new live trading stream is the missing puzzle piece to your trader. Every day at 9 a.m., I share my screens, find the best stocks to trade and build my watches live. Then I execute those trades live on screen. It's like you're sitting right next to me as I trade every single day. Due to the high demand of the screen share, we only have a few spaces available every single month. So if you're seeing this now, it means that space is still available and here's the best part. If I do not generate $20,000 in realized gains per month on live stream, you do not pay. So go to myinvestingclub.com slash live trading to get 50% off your first month on the live stream. Spaces are limited and filling up quick. What do you have to lose? This may change your life. It's the little things, bro. It's the little things. And I think it's important too that you said someone that's passionate because trading is really tough, man. And you have to have someone that's not gonna give up easily, right? And for a trader that's brand new, that doesn't even know what the hell he's applying for, he might not have that. One more thing is, is there like a certain, and again, I wanna kind of get into details because I know people that may be watching are interested in the proper world is, do you look for, all right, this trader has made $50,000 in his trading, this guy's made $100,000, this guy's made $10,000? Or is it purely based on their passion and their ability to be coached? Because as a prop trader, you're gonna be coached by a professional trader like yourself. So is coachability more important than P&L for you? Yeah, I think it's probably up there. Maybe it's more important because to be honest with you, a lot of guys that are showing big P&Ls, those P&Ls, a lot of times they're not real. You would be surprised. It's more likely than not that it's fake P&L. I ran into this so many times. And not just me, but also like my cats and like menjure, the owners of the company, it's always like that. So are people trying to like fake their way into the prop firm? Yeah, yeah, I think so. What's been one of the like most elaborate schemes that you've seen? I mean, the guy is just showing his P&L and then once you, so right now what the company has implemented is they are doing a demo account for somebody who's just applying. Just for that reason, because a lot of people would apply and they would show broker statements and they would show the P&L and then they go live and it's just like completely just like really shit, wow. They're just fabricating PDFs, right? I don't know how. I don't know. I would be speculating, but I don't know how it happens. Maybe, maybe it's the truth. I don't know. Maybe it's the truth and then they go live and they just can't make a dollar. So it happens all the time. It happened many, you know, more times that I can count and what they're doing now is they're doing, what we're doing now is we're putting people on a demo. So the guy's applying. He's like, hey, I'm a profitable trader. And the thing is being profitable trader is not really a requirement. You know, it's not really a requirement. You have to be like, Alex, you said, you have to be just coachable guy and you have to want to learn. And that's really, that's enough, you know? That could be enough. You put in the right environment. You have the right set of skills and you have the right mindset and usually fine. But people try to kind of finagle their way into this and okay, you're profitable. So I want to demo for like a couple of weeks, maybe a month while you're studying for the SAE exam. And then that, you know, that account is looking like this and it's just like, are you profitable or are you not profitable? Let's get down to the truth here, you know? So, a lot of people from Twitter are applying that are like on Twitter, they're the best traders in the world. But then you look at the broker statements and you're like, come on then. You're crazy bro, I'm such a crazy. You feel like name dropping a few? I'm just kidding. I'm joking. I'm joking. I'm just joking. You know, my list is very short. My list is very short. But if I were to ask my cats and he wouldn't tell me either but I think his list is pretty long. Yeah. Damn. Oh man. Yeah, so you mentioned joining the firm and you kind of got profitable like pretty quickly after you joined. You kind of said like, it was like, it was like pretty quickly after you joined, would you say? Yeah. I think about within six months, I think I got my first paycheck after four months and it was like a tiny checker. I think I got like $700 my first like month or something like that. But it's been like consistently like bigger and bigger every month for the next couple of years. So yeah, it was pretty, but the thing is like the strategy back then was like super easy. Like we had like good routes and we could buy on the bid and sell on the offer. Yeah. That was the thing for a couple of years. Yeah. And so do you think it was like, you also kind of touched on like the environment as well. Do you think it was like the environment where you're just with so many like-minded people and you're just strategizing and you're with each other and you're just working super hard? Do you think that was what kind of really pushed you over the edge? I think that's a big factor. I think that if you're trading with somebody in the room and you see exactly what they're doing, you see the mistakes that some other people are doing that are not making it because in the trading world on the trading floor, the turnover can be pretty high. You can be seeing somebody come and go within three, three, four, five months, five new people come and go. And like you can learn from those mistakes as well. And then you can learn from the guys that have been there for a while too. What are they doing? How are they acting when it's slow market? What are they doing when it's a hot market? So absolutely, yeah, that's a big thing. That's one of the biggest pros of being on a trading floor. And it doesn't necessarily have to be on a prop floor. You can like, some people just have an office and they just trade together individually, but it's just harder to find, I think people and then get together and like trust each other enough. I would assume, but I would do that. If I were like trading by myself, I would try and find somebody to trade with in an office because it just feels different. Like right now I'm at home and I traded from the office today. Like sometimes I trade from the office, sometimes from home. And from an office, it's just a lot more productive. There are more eyes on the market, like people are calling out setups and like people are calling out certain things that like I don't see by myself when I'm at home, stuff like that. And you see how people deal with draw downs and you help each other out. There's a lot like kind of brotherhood there, you know? That's awesome. How was it prior to COVID and now post COVID? What that mentality and that brotherhood of being in-person versus how you guys handled it when you were forced to stay at home? I mean, it's pretty similar. We just kind of took a break on being in the office for a little bit, but it's quite similar. I mean, COVID was a crazy time and we try to like kind of communicate as much as possible. So we did a little bit of like, you know, video chats and stuff like that. But I would say like 2019 compared to 2023, it's quite similar. The only difference is there's now a lot more people that are like they stayed at home because some people prefer to be at home. They prefer to like lock themselves in the room and just kind of put on some music and trade and not be distracted. And I would say for newer guys, they kind of have to be trading in the office. And for me personally, I feel like I trade better when I'm in the office. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, you've got those other, you've got other traders influencing what you're doing. Like you said earlier, you've got the eyeballs on you. You've got the eyeballs, yeah. Yep. And also you have conversations. You know, you have like conversations that are not like scheduled, let's talk about, like let's do a meeting, a Zoom meeting, let's talk about risk management or like this or that. You just like come in and somebody's like, hey, like what do you think about this? And now you are just like discussing a topic that's like really productive, you know, and it happens naturally. And so that's I think like super, super cool, you know? And I love that stuff. Were there traders that benefited more from, or that's, sorry, their P&L curves is what I'm referencing. So did you notice any kind of trends in that you could send these people home during COVID, right? And they struggled because they don't have that mentality around them. They don't have the influences around them. And all of a sudden they're on a downturn or and then when they come back into the office and now all of a sudden things are turning back around for them or the vice versa trader where they have too many influences, right? They have too many eyeballs looking at them and they want to be home by themselves in their zone allowed to only do what they do. I think it's, I don't think there's a correlation there that I've noticed. So people during COVID, I think everybody did well for the most part. I think everybody did really well. It doesn't matter where they were because they had the skill set to do well. But yeah, I don't think there's any direct correlation that I've noticed. Just some people are experienced enough to trade from home by themselves and have enough confidence to put on the trade and not to look over their shoulder, make sure everybody else is in the same trade for conviction, you know? So I think it comes down to just your experience. Makes sense. One of the benefits of working at a firm is having a risk manager. So my question is, how do you determine what type of risk to give someone and how do you determine when to cut them off? Yeah, that's a man, that's a very hard question because it's a very like, as much as like I try to standardize it for everybody, it's kind of like a case by case basis. Like somebody joins brand new, like they're trading pretty small. They just have like a few hundred dollar max risk on the day and like the job is to just get green. And then once the P&L is going upwards, like I try to push it as far as possible without affecting the trade management. So if the person is risking $50 in a trade, next week, let's go to 75. Next week, let's go to 200. And he's like, oh, 200, I don't know. Okay, let's go to like 150. I'm sorry. I just got, I got lost in the numbers, but I try to push it up like 10, 20%, you know, each like week or so, every couple of weeks. If I'm pushing him from like 2K per trade to 4K per trade, he's gonna get lost. You know, he's gonna be like scared, popping out too soon. So it's like, okay, you don't wanna do 4K. Let's go to like 3K. Let's go to maybe 2,500, you know, something like that. So I try to like push it as far as possible without, you know, kind of scaring the guy and without like affecting the trade management. Yeah. One thing I'd like to talk about is kind of like setups. So you kind of touched on when you first started at the firm, it was a lot of like market making, buy on the bid, sell on the ask. What are your setups mostly like now that you can kind of like share anything on that? Yeah, I mean, I just focus on like two things. One is like a fade, you know, reversion to the mean. So in the last few months, it's just been a lot of like sub dollar names, just running from 30 cents to 90 cents and then failing. So I've been fading a lot of those. And then there's been a lot of like, you know, a couple of like day two and day three runners. So I like that like day two gap up, push and fail or day three gap up, push and fail. I don't like like day four to day fives now. You just like maybe it's gonna be like on day nine or something, but I like that like reversion to the mean type of trade. And also I like the multi-day breakouts where the stock will consolidate for like a month, build the base and then get a catalyst and then get some volume and just break out. So I try to trade those as a swing trade. But that's like the main two things. And I used to have a lot more setups that I would trade. And it was just really exhausting when you have so many setups and you're trading all day. And then at the end of the day, you don't even know what you did, you know? There's just so many setups. You can't even journal. You don't know what to eliminate. There's just too much going on. You're exhausted. That was 2021 for me. I was like, whoo. Yeah. So yeah, like eliminating things I think is like really healthy because you can now really dial in on like the one or two setups that you have and just push the size in those, like get like really good conviction and just get like really into that, like every little detail of that setup and just eliminate the bad and then just go really in on the good and size up in those setups. Yeah. I also saw that you were kind of doing a bit of swing trading. Are you still doing that? Or did you just cut that off completely and said, like, listen, it's just like too much. Or are you still kind of like dabbling once in a while? I'm dabbling once in a while, but it hasn't been, that setup hasn't been profitable. Like there has been like a few setups here and there, but it's not a setup that I take on a daily basis or even on a weekly basis. I've taken maybe like less than 10 trades this year. So 95% of my PNL came from shorting. So. Yeah. But in 2020, 2021, that was like one of the craziest bull runs of all time. And I just kind of learned to buy those breakouts in that market and it worked really well. And I think I'm gonna go really, really hard if and when we get another one of those like bull markets, I would really focus on that setup because the risk reward and the liquidity you can get is just mind blowing. Yeah. For real. Do you think we're on? And it'll double, you know. Do you think we're on the cusp of another one anytime soon? It's no idea, man. No. Yeah. Yeah, for real. One thing that I saw too, that you kind of posted about on Twitter, was that you scratched out the liquidation setup. And I know that it is some traders like bread and butter, you know, but also maybe for some traders, it was the worst setup of their life after eye leg and stuff like that happened. So could you kind of talk about your process of saying, like, listen, I'm scratching out the setup. I'm done with it. I'm not gonna touch them anymore. I think I know the answer, but just maybe for some viewers, because that's a topic that has come up a lot on the podcast, those liquidation setups, everyone seems to be after them. So I'm just kind of wondering your approach. Yeah, so my process basically, I tag my setups in TraderView and then I click on that tag and I look at the stats and I see the performance of that particular tag. And I think this year, I took five of those trades and only one of them was green. And my losses were greater than that, you know, each individual loss was greater than that one little win. So it's just like the win rate is like tiny and the risk of war doesn't make sense. And it's just like, I just don't feel any, like I don't feel like I have any confidence going into the next one. And then that's that. Is that like kind of like, would you say that's like common, like as far as like setups go, like if a lot of people kind of start doing the same thing over and over and over, you have to kind of look at a different and say, okay, this is getting a little bit too overcrowded because like I feel like that liquidation setup, like everyone was short looking for that big liquidation move, you know? So then you get these big wicks trying to stop people out and you just get this kind of like wacky price action. So like, do you kind of take it into account saying, okay, maybe this setup is just too crowded. I'm scratching it out. I don't think about it like that. I don't think so because like, for example, we've been shorting day one stocks for years and years now and it's really crowded now, but they still fade, you know? But this one, there's obviously some manipulation going on. There's something, some Chinese traders behind it that are pushing it up and they know they're gonna get some liquidity if they like wipe the offers. So I think it has some, that one is definitely crowded but I know it's not because people are stopping themselves out, it's just like somebody is wiping and manipulating the offers there. I think that's what's going on in that one. But I think like the more people they're trading it, I don't think it really affects the setup like all that much in the short run. Maybe in 10 years it'll be completely different but right now I don't think so. In the short run, I don't think so. What is your daily routine like? What time do you wake up? What time do you get to the desk and like what's a typical day in your trading life look like these days? Well, I try to wake up not too early anymore. I wake up at like six and then I do like, I work out in the morning. So I try to sweat every morning. I try to do like four to five workouts per week. And then the rest days I have a steam room and so I jump in a steam room and sweat a little bit for 15 minutes and then jump into a cold shower. So I like to like stress my body out in the morning. And then- As if you didn't have enough stress trading, dude. Yeah, I know. But then I'm ready to trade. If I don't like stress my body out in the morning, I just feel like I'm too lazy. I just feel like I'm just not ready to do my prep. And yeah, I don't know. I just feel strong in the morning when I stress my body out like at the gym do some like weight training in the morning. So that's my thing. And I'm at the desk at like 8.30. I don't do pre-market trading unless like a really, really good setup. But I don't think I'm a very profitable pre-market. I like to get in like in the first like 15 minutes, I kind of scale into my positions because the bell rings and there's a lot like more volume that's coming in and it could be to the buy side whereas before it was like selling off. So I think it's like kind of throws me off. So I don't trade pre-market. And then I'm usually flat like before like 1 p.m. And if I'm flat before 1 p.m. I'll just leave the desk and do something else. I think if you trade from bell to bell it could be counterproductive. You could be burning yourself out like on by Friday you're just like you can't do it anymore. You hate trading. So I try to do less and like, and I try to like trade like I mean it, you know, I try to like do the right thing and in and out and that's it. And then in the evening do some recap, you know, do some journaling, look over some trades that I might have missed like today AMC. I was one of the nicest moves I've ever seen. And, Chris, yeah. You mentioned kind of having like a data driven approach. You mentioned using like kind of trader view and stuff like that. Is there anything else that you use to kind of collect data? I know that you have, there's another site I think it's like Spiket or something like that that you've used before. Maybe you could kind of touch on that a little bit. So Spiket is one of the best ones for like back testing a setup. It's a little bit like complex. You have to like really, you know, mess around with it, spend some time on it. There's a new one that just came out. It's called Quanted. I really like it because you can set criteria to what your setup kind of looks like. And you can run each individual tickers against like those criteria. And it would show you what happened, like what happened when this stock gaps 40% and traded, you know, 20 million shares pre-market that sort of thing. What happened? And chances are like, if it's a stock that gaps, you know, gapped up multiple times, it'll have like three or four examples in the last five years. And you can see like five times out of five, it literally, you know, just faded the entire time. And so I want to be in it. But if it like ripped up, then I don't want to be in it. And it's good to, because you can see the chart as well. Yeah. So Quanted, that's a really good one. That's a new one. And you could run it really fast with one click. You could run it on the backrest on it. Yeah, that's super cool. I remember listening to your chat with traders interview and you talked about kind of like the money box or whatever. Do you still use that stuff? I don't think you do, but I do. No, no, I don't, but you know, if I ran the stats on it today, I think it would be pretty valuable. I would think it would be helpful. Yeah. But it was a good one. Yeah, it was a good one. It would calculate basically like on average, how much the stock ran. And sometimes in the time period, so I'd get the money box on the chart and then the stock would like enter the money box and consolidate and start turning. And that was just like you all in, you're risking, you're putting on the risk when that happened. So I don't use it anymore, but I think that's a pretty good tool to have. I think a question that would be valuable to a lot of like traders listening to this would be like kind of like, how do you use volume and how do you use kind of like different confirmation signals in your trading? Because a lot of people, I know DM me on Twitter, probably DM you on Twitter or Alex, Joe, anyone. And that's kind of like, what are some confirmation signals? Is it like, are you using tape or using volume? Are you kind of like using key levels on the chart? Maybe you could kind of talk about like just a bit about your process kind of like that. Yeah. So I don't really use like support and resistance all that much. And I know that's a very fun, very, very fundamental aspect, but I don't really pay attention to support and resistance. I like to see the flow of the chart. I like to see how the trend unfolds, like higher highs, higher lows, lower highs, and if the stock is trending up and you mentioned volume, if it like has a big green candle on big volume and then it gave everything back so that bar break on big volume after that big green candle, that bar break, that's like an entry for the turn, basically. That's the confirmation for me. So if it was on like small volume, not as much confirmation, maybe I don't even want to be in it. Maybe I want to be in it a little bit. But if that volume bar, that candle is like the biggest volume on the day, that's probably the top. And the turn, if it keeps going, like I don't want to be in it, I want to see the turn. So once it turns and that bar break is like for sure confirmation. So before, if it's consolidating here, I can take a position, but that turn is the confirmation and it has to have that volume on top there. So that's kind of the main thing. And same thing for the bottoming type of turn. Yeah, that's pretty solid. I was just wondering too about tape. Do you use tape at all in your trading or like for hidden sellers, hidden buyers or do you just completely pay attention to kind of what you see on the chart? Yeah, I only use tape where like I'm looking for liquidity. That's really like I'm just trying to get a position in. And so I'm looking, you know, if there are some big bids, I'll sit on the offer, see if it gets filled. If not, I'll hit the bid, that sort of thing. But for confirmation, I don't use the tape. I try to keep it super simple. Bar breaks and volume as far as like, yeah, like support, like as far as support resistance, if the chart is creating the support and then it's breaking it, then that's like a confirmation for the short and vice versa. But yeah, no tape, not as much anymore. I know I'm just absolutely hammering you with questions here, but yeah. I was just wondering also on Twitter, we've seen a lot of kind of like the whole like clear out conspiracy. I'm not sure if you've seen much of that. Have you implemented any stuff like that in your trading? Like there's been a lot of talk about like the high day clear out, the low day clear out, the this, the that. Do you mostly kind of ignore the noise and just focus on what you're doing or you see something on Twitter and you're like, okay, maybe I could try and implement this in my strategy. Yeah, I mean, I do try to implement things that I like that I, you know, if I like something, I'll see if it works in the real world. But like high day clear out is definitely a thing, but it's not enough of a factor for me to have my trading revolve around that, you know, like sometimes like my stops are high a day, like most of the time, you know, so I get cleared out all the time, but I'm still green, I'm still profitable. So it's not enough for me to avoid the trade because most of the time I don't get cleared out. Most of the time, if it breaks the high, I'm not the top tick, it'll keep going higher. So very rarely I'll get cleared out. And even then like I'll get back in, if I was the top, I'll get back in and hopefully it'll work next time. But if I get cleared out again, that's an avoid, there's something's going on, I don't wanna be in it anymore. Yeah, and you mentioned kind of like leaving the day at like 1pm, has that helped you kind of like avoid any like of those midday clear out moves where the stock, like I don't know if you've seen much of that, but like just the stock will just randomly rip up in the afternoon, has that helped you kind of avoid situations like that when you're short? Yeah, for sure. So the reason I leave at around one is I only leave when I'm flat. So if I still have open positions and sometimes I have an open position the entire day into the close and sometimes it'll take it overnight depending if my target got hit or not. So yeah, sometimes midday it'll just start turning and then my trails go off because I trail my stops. But I don't open positions after one because my stats, my trader view says I'm red after one o'clock, after one o'clock I open the position, it's probably gonna be red. So I just like I don't have that conviction. Most of my money I make after like 9.30 before 12 o'clock, so. Yeah, and I noticed that you kind of touched on, well Joe asked you a question about kind of like team building. As for FOMO, what, is there any like exercises that you guys kind of like use in the room or like do you guys talk to each other and you're like, hey man, like, I know this is gonna be a good short setup but like Jesus Christ, like just wait for the backside. Yeah. Is that kind of like something that you guys do or is there just one dude in the corner who's like his face is red and you're like, oh shit, what have you done, bro? That's usually me, you know what I mean? You recently had a kid, right Stan? I'm not yet. Now you have girls pregnant, right? Yeah, soon. So you ready to be a dad dude? Like are you ready to manage a baby and trading? Like is that kind of like, have you thought about like what that's gonna be like in terms of adjusting your routine and what that's gonna be? I have no clue what's gonna happen. I have no clue what's gonna happen but I think we'll manage like she won't be working and then I'm not gonna be trading like full time, like I'll be taking probably Mondays off, maybe I'll take another day off but yeah, hopefully I'll get enough sleep so I can still like trade and be profitable and I thought about just kind of staying at home full time but my wife is like, you need to like go to the office and you're gonna go crazy. So I'll probably like trade fewer days but I'll still be going to the office but I don't know, we'll see what happens. I think the main thing is to get enough sleep. That's what I've been hearing. That's good, bro. I mean, let us know how it is. I don't plan on having kids anytime soon so you let me know how it is on the other side, bro. Well. I wanna ask you, bro, this is my favorite question to ask guests, how do you diversify your income outside of trading? Because my biggest thing is, trading should be a means to an end. You don't wanna be trading monster size for the rest of your life. You wanna take advantage of the opportunities whether it be 2020, whether it be, you know, GameStop, AMC, BedBat and beyond and once you have that chunk of change, how do you yourself diversify that? So if there ever comes a day where trading is kind of tough or you're not really making money for a week or two weeks or a month, you're still pretty safe. So how do you personally diversify your income outside of the market? Yeah, so I kind of had a plan like going into trading. I thought like, you know, what I would do is I would try to make as much money as possible. I'm not gonna spend the money and I will put it in real estate, you know, get rentals, get rental money so that I can kind of live freely off of that income. And I've sort of, you know, implemented that. So like the first thing that I did was I paid off all the debt. So I have like some properties, like the house, my house is paid off, like my mom's house is paid off, that sort of thing. And then I have some rentals that are generating income that are paying all the bills. And so, you know, in that sense, like I've created like freedom for myself and my family. I'm not stressed out. So that's one of the biggest things is like you don't want to be stressed out trading trying to make a mortgage payment. So you kind of have to figure out a way, like I had to figure out a way, I wanted to figure out a way to make it so that I don't have to worry about paying a mortgage, you know? So I have some rentals, I don't recommend it because, you know, you get a call, the toilets clogged and this is like, come on. Hands over here, shorting fucking ICCT. The pen is calling to my toilet's clogged. You're like, I'll buy you a new fucking winger, you're stuck the fuck up. Exactly, yeah, that's literally, that's my trainer thought right there and there, like just leave me alone. Yeah. But apartments are pretty good because apartments are very low maintenance. The houses are the ones that break, you know, something breaks all the time. God forbid you get a vacancy for a month, now you're down in the year, you know, you kind of have to figure out a way to like not have a vacancy and you have to show people the house and it's just like, it's a pain in the butt. But I also tried Airbnbing a house. That was the worst thing I could have ever done in my life probably because people just don't care about your property. They will literally book the house for a weekend just to trash it. And maybe that's the South Florida thing because I live, we're in South Florida, this is like a party capital right now. People like to, you know, get the house for the weekend and just party and we had to call the cops a couple of times and it's just not a good time. We went on vacation once and we had to like call the cops and you know, it was like stress, you know, doing the vacation. But anyway, yeah, like I try to do like passive income sort of stuff. A chunk of the money went into like private real estate funds. So they are like companies that are developing like a hundred million dollar real estate, you know, residential building with like tons of units. They do it in Florida. They do it in like North Carolina, Texas, like states where people are moving into and people are looking to rent. So there are companies that basically are looking to, you know, get like a hundred K, 200 K from like a bunch of different investors. So I do a lot of that and they pay a dividend and then like once they sell what they've built, they sell it to like Vanguard and like big, you know, big funds for like hundreds of millions of dollars and should be like a good return. So that's like one thing. And then also I dump a lot of money into like mega caps like Apple and Google and that sort of thing. I think they'll stick around for a long time. And that's pretty much it. I try to keep it simple, but I do like the ones that are paying out. And also recently the rates went up quite a bit. So like CDs are like four and a half percent. So that was a nice one. I opened account in one of the banks there. And yeah, that's pretty much it. But yeah, I like that Kevin O'Leary type of thing where he's just always looking for a return for a dividend. So that's what I focus on. That's cool. You mentioned kind of like using the R system. Have you just started using that in the past like couple of years or has that been like a thing for a while and people are just kind of like hearing about it now? Cause I only started hearing about our kind of like, I think like near COVID or around there. So is like that when you started using it or have you always been like an R system trader? Yeah, I think I've been using it for, I don't know, many years. I don't know what, actually there's a book. I think it's called How To Make Money. No, it's not how to make money in stocks by just delivering more. There is another book, I forget the name of it. But yeah, even like before I joined the prop firm I read this book that talked about R trading and that put me in that mindset of kind of equal sized bets and whatnot and only going higher when the probability is higher. So I've pretty much always been using it but I've never been really like strict about it because like during COVID you're like, oh, this looks good. They'll throw this amount of money at this and I'll throw this, everything's working. Doesn't matter how much money I'm risking. But other than that, when the environment is like normal like right now, I try to be like very, very strict and there's like a hot button that a DAS trader has where you can standardize that risk where I can be like, okay, I wanna risk say like X amount of money, this is my stop. Okay, calculate and it tells you like in one button like how much, how many shares you need. So then I just go in and I start like looking for liquidity basically if they like hit the bids and sell on the offer and I place the stop, including the slippage, this is my one R. And then I can kind of reverse engineer that button. It's on, it's on bull bear form that you can find it on. Okay. And I kind of reverse engineered and I created another one for like adding so where I can just be like, okay, one and a half bar lower to stop and that sort of thing. So it's like a whole system. And it's like my trade management really revolves around that R trading. My targets, I'll never take profit before my one R hits. So it's not based on just that but I'm not gonna book profit if I'm making less than what I'm risking. So that rules around that as well. Yeah. Were you born in America or did you come over and go to school? Yeah, I was born in Moldova. So that's man, most people don't know what that is. It's, I was born and raised. I left Moldova when I was 15 and I only realized it later. I've never seen a tourist in Moldova. And it's actually officially the least visited place by tourists. So that's why nobody knows what it is. It's between Romania and Ukraine. Yeah. Because I actually just like looked it up and because I saw in your username, it's how do you pronounce it? Is it cocaine trader? Chokana. Okay. Well, I completely screwed that one up. Yeah. It's in Romanian language. So yeah, it's, there's more. The alphabet is a little bit different. Do you have any family kind of affected by like the Ukraine war? Because like it's like kind of like great. It's right on the border. So. It's right there, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have, so I have some family in Russia. I don't have anybody in Ukraine. Some of my friends' relatives are in Ukraine, but they've been able to like bring them to the States and to Canada. So I don't have anybody like directly affected that I know. But yeah, it's terrible, man. What's happening because, dude, I've spent so much time in Ukraine, in Crimea. Like the part of Ukraine that was like, was taken over by Russia like a bunch of years ago. Like I spent every summer of my entire life up until I was 15 in Crimea. So I spent a lot of time in Ukraine. Yeah, it's pretty terrible. I thank God nobody that I know is, you know, directly affected. But yeah, it's just, it's horrible. Stan, one last thing before we wrap up is, do you have any questions for us? Questions for you guys. Yeah. Oh man, I wasn't prepared for that. How is your year going compared to last year? So last year, I think I have my stats on the website. Let me just double check real quick. I think last year I made one second. Last year I made $1.4 million. So I made around $1.4 million last year, which is pretty solid for what it was. This year, I think I'm up like, so I took that $35,000 account into a million and then I got clipped $450,000. That's the craziest thing I've ever seen, that $35,000 to a million in like two months or something? It was 53 days. That's amazing. It's the craziest thing I've ever seen, bro. And we have the broker David on the website, but I lost a share load of money on top. So I don't really check my stats until usually the end of the month because I don't want to influence myself if I have a green month or a bad month. But I would say, I think this year so far, I'm still up like, I don't know, maybe like, after that loss, maybe like, I made back most of it. So probably a little less than a million, just a little bit less shy of it. Took me a couple of months to make back the loss, but I would say on track to just do the same as last year, had I not taken that loss, it would have been a significantly larger year. But most of my P&L from this year is Bed Bath and Beyond. I think at least like fucking, I don't know, 400 brand is Bed Bath and Beyond, you know? That's good. The reason I asked, because last year was really difficult for most people. And this year is like a lot, kind of a lot easier. Yeah. I'm just kind of curious like what the ratios are. Yeah. I mean, I think last year, I actually did surprisingly really well. This year, literally it was just that top loss. I really screwed up my year and kind of screwed up my momentum because when you have a loss like that, you're kind of in that mode of just making back the money. Whereas, let's say I didn't have that loss, I would have made an extra 450,000 because now I'm digging out of the hole, you know? So I mean, in terms of everything else, if considering all things equal with that loss, so far it's on track to be the same as last year. But as you know, Q4 is when shit gets crazy. So there might be a time when in November or December, there's $200,000, $300,000 months back to back. So I don't really know. I haven't really been thinking of it that way. My goal this year after that loss was just to kind of refocus myself and just take a lot more risk off the table because I found myself after that million dollar challenge that, bro, I was not wiring out. I wired out like after Bed Bath and Beyond, I wired out like 200 grand and then there was like fucking 800, 700, 800,000 sitting in the account and I got sloppy. I found myself like, you know, ignoring risk. And now I say, you know what? Like after I've made back that loss, my goal is to reduce my account size. My goal is to take it a little bit slower, a little bit more methodical because I don't really want to be risking heavy on the day to day anymore. Like I used to because I got sloppy. I only want to wait for those Bed Bath and Beyonds, the CXAIs on the backside or, you know, whatever type of sympathy play it may be. So yeah. With that, was that your biggest loss that? That was my biggest loss. That was like 400K or something like that? 450. Yeah, what did you do like? I was way too size, I was oversized, bro. I was way too oversized. I had way too much size. I got, I was my own worst enemy. If you remember correctly, the stock halted right before the close. That was me covering. That was me covering size and my core sent it up into a halt and I was still covering even more. Damn. And it was so liquid, bro. It was so. Yeah, it went off like crazy after all. How did you deal, how did you deal with that loss? Like after, were you like upset or did you like not care much? I was really upset. I was really upset because I should never be letting something get to that monumental of a point and the only reason why I let it get so big is because I had to cash in the account and I was like, fuck it, bro, whatever. Worst case, I'll lose a hundo, right? And all of a sudden, bro, I'm looking, it's not a hundo, it's for hundo. It's, it's, it's great. And bro, had I not covered and had I just been whacked in the face and fell asleep, I would have lost like $5, $10 million. All the way up to 300 or wherever the hell it went. So, I mean, seeing that happen, bro. I was like, I never want to really put myself in that type of place and had my size been a little bit more controlled. And the reason why it wasn't controlled is because I missed every single one of those liquidation plays. I missed every single fucking one. And I was like, this one, bro, I got it. I got it. And it turns out that's the one that goes crazy. So it was my own big fault, bro, for being way too oversized in that situation. And now I even have like a notepad next to my training desk with like size requirements and like what I need to do. So I have like normal size, 10,000, 15,000, special scenarios, 20,000, 40,000 shares and eight plus 50,000 plus shares. And I write liquidity is the issue. If you're oversized, you can't get out. Be patient, small entries, cut if it's wrong, size up if it proves itself. Waiting for the open has the most edge. Day one, starter size, stop out, wait for the open to size up, take a slow pre-market. And day two is size up larger. You could be a little bit more loose with your stops. Add heavy on a low of the day break and focus on money flowing into other stocks. So after that day, bro, I keep this like literally at my desk to review every single morning because liquidity was the issue. My size was my own worst enemy. And had I just kept that a little bit more control, bro, I'd be nearly half a million dollars richer. So that lesson, bro, was a fucking $500,000 lesson. And if I paid the tuition for the lesson, I want to make sure that I at least learn from it. Because the worst thing you could do, bro, is pay all that money and not learn from it. And that's so much money, bro, that I'm going to make sure that I tattoo that on my face, you know? Yeah. Don't do that, but. Bro, it's, and just as what I did after, bro, is like, so I used to deal with losses alone like a lot. Like I was very like independent and I did it by myself. And now I got a girl and she's really supportive and it's really amazing. So like I texted her, I like let her know what happened. I didn't tell her the exact number because if I told her the exact number, she'd fucking go crazy. She just needed to know that it was substantial. And like she just tried to cheer me up, bro. She like came over right after work, like when we got some cake together and like try to like just process my thoughts, like process what I did wrong. And the first day I would say is like traumatic because you feel like shell shocked. You don't know what happened. You're like pretty much stunned. And the next day I just came back and just tried to grind it out every single day. And I found myself trading solid but the greatest scheme of things is I was way too focused on making the loss back. So like the first day back I made like 50K. And the second day back I made like 40K. And then I found myself the third day losing like 30, 40K. And I was like, wait a second, whoa, whoa, whoa, I gotta slow down. So I found myself a little bit over sizing again. So as I slowly started to get back to the basics, make 5K here, 10K here. And then I think it was three months later, I was able to make it back. You know, I've told myself, you know what? Like I'm not gonna put myself in a situation to risk that. At worst case scenario, bro, if I blow up, let me blow up my $50,000 account. I don't wanna owe the broker any money but if there's 800 grand in there, I can lose 800 grand, bro. I don't want that to happen. So I'm trying to keep my account smaller. And if there's an opportunity where I see, you know a bed, bath and beyond or an AMC, I'll just fucking wire, I'll wire in. Because most of the time you know when the day is gonna come, I'll wire in a little bit of money, I'll use that money to trade a little bit more aggressively. But mostly on the day to day, bro, I wanna take it a lot slower because we can still make a pretty substantial income, trading small. So I don't wanna get stuck in a fallacy where I have to make hundreds of thousands of dollars a day because you see people are on Twitter, social media, whether they're real traders or fake traders, people are making a lot of money and it influences you. So I wanna kinda get back into the phase where if I could trade for an hour a day, I can make $5, $10,000 a day, trading an hour a day, I'm gonna be $1 to $2 million richer every single year. That compounds over 10 years, I'm gonna have $20 million. You compound that on top of whatever you invest, bro, at the end, by the time I'm 50, I should have $50 million. So rather than trying to focus on making more money, more money, more money now, I'm thinking about the longer term and that's helping me a lot. I found the first six months last year was really fucking hard. I don't know what it was, but I would call Alex and be like, man, I'm gonna retard, like I should not be a fucking trading anymore. I would literally call Alex and be like, man, I don't know what the fuck's wrong with me, but thankfully this year has been pretty steady, so I'm definitely glad for that. Yeah, last year was really rough for most people, so. Yeah, bro, it was fucking tough, man. I was literally calling Alex, talking to people who I know, I'm like, man, is this happening to you too? Bro, I just can't do fuck all, but. Yeah, and it was also like the sharp kind of transition between like 2021 and then 2022, where just the environment was so different, and you're like, if you're like expecting that, and then there's literally, it's as dead as ever. Yeah. That's a tough transition. Yeah, and when you mentioned sharp, it was sharp, bro. Like it was like night and day. Like did you ever thought we went from this insane COVID action all of a sudden to like a day or a week where like two days out of the week would be dead slow and you'd be looking around like, oh, well, I really fucked up on Monday. Tuesday, there were no runners. Wednesday, this happened, you know, and then you're looking at Friday and you're like, I just, this week is like nothing again. You know, it's just chalk here. That's what happened to me. Yeah, and I really like, bro, because recently you and me have been sharing ideas and like whether it be, you know, here and there. And I think that that helps not only me, but like, I think it helps to reinforce what the right setup of the date of focus on is because I think the most important thing about this market is stock selection and knowing which stocks to trade. So whenever you and I are even bouncing off ideas, I think it helps us reinforce the fact of, all right, this one is the stock that we should be focusing on. This one is the stock that we should be ignoring and like just having someone else at like a high level kind of share the same thoughts is I think really essential to trading as well. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, sometimes I'm really short of stock and you're like, I don't think about, I don't think so and I'm like, oh crap. And it ends up not doing what I think it would. And that's like, okay, that's a different perspective. I have to really investigate like why, you know? So I really like that. Yep, we're cool, bro. That's about it from us, man. Thanks for coming on, bro. Thanks, bro. Thanks for having me. It was a fun conversation. Yeah, for sure, man. And let me know next time you're in New York, I plan on being in Miami, probably hopefully full time next year. So we'll definitely link up soon. I definitely want to come check out the office and see if I can trade that for a day. For sure, yeah. So cool, man. Glad to have you. Thanks. Thank you guys.