 What's up everyone, I'm back here for another video. So this video is gonna be a little bit different than the other videos that I do. So I'm coming up on my nine year trading anniversary. So this is in 2023 and I started trading in early 2014, February of 2014. So I thought it'd be a cool idea to make a video on nine lessons that I learned after nine years of day trading. So for those of you that don't know me, my name's Alex Temis, I'm 28 years old and I made over $7 million day trading in the market. I primarily focus on short bias trades and some of my biggest trades are shorting the backside of AMC for about $700,000, shorting the backside of Bed Bath and Beyond for like a combined of $500,000, INDO, shorting it $700,000. So I made a pretty decent amount of money on the short side and what I do is I focus on hyped up momentum stocks and shorting them when the price goes down. So I wanna start off with the first lesson that I learned from day trading is that you need to find a setup that works. So when I first started day trading, what I would be doing is I'd be buying the breakout and every time I bought the breakout, I had an amazing talent of the stock just cratering. I bought the stock and the stock would just collapse every single time. So after my first year trading, I didn't really make money. By my second year trading, I found out what short selling was, which was you could make money when stocks go down. And I said, this is perfect. But when I buy stock, it craters anyway. So all I have to do is hit the short button instead of the buy button and I'm gonna make money. And I quickly figured out that that really wasn't a strategy that worked because you can't just be shorting a stock just because it's up. You need to have a catalyst and you need to have a reason as to why you're shorting it. So by my third year trading is when I finally figured out that, okay, I should be looking for stocks that are up on no news, stocks that have dilution, stocks that have rehashed PRs, stocks that are scammed. So I had to refine my process. So lesson number one is find a strategy that works, okay? Lesson number two is back for singles. When I first started trading, I thought that I had to make $10,000 in every single trade. I thought I had to make $20,000 in every single trade. But what I found out over the course of my career is that slow wins add up. If you make just $1,000 a day trading, which is pretty relatively simple, you can make a quarter million dollars a year. And all it takes to be a millionaire trader is to make $4,000 a day, okay? You know, you don't have to make $10,000 a day. You don't have to make $20,000 a day. You don't have to back for home runs. If you slowly and consistently back for singles, they will add up. Now, the third lesson that I learned is that when your opportunity is there, when your A plus setup is there, you gotta size the hell in. You gotta pull those into that setup. Now, what do I mean? I say this analogy all the time and the way it works is this. Let's say I'm making a bet if someone is gonna get drunk, usually use a bow, who's the guy that taught me trading. Let's say I'm gonna make a bet if bow is gonna get drunk today. So the win of the bet is if he's gonna get drunk. Now, if I say that bow goes to Disney World, I would say there's probably a 50% chance that he gets drunk. That's pretty good odds. But if you tell me that bow is going to the club, there's a bottle of Hennessy and there's a couple of cute Asian girls with short skirts. There is a 99.99999% chance he's gonna get drunk. And that setup with that type of probability is the setup that I've pulled those into. So those setups like AMC, Gamestop, Bed Bath and Beyond IMDO were those 99% setups. Those setups that I've made the most money on and I've pulled those into those setups. So day to day, back for singles, but when that high probability opportunity shows up, which may only show up once or twice a year, you must bulldoze into that stock. Now the next thing that's very, very important is you must get out and stop out of a stock when you're wrong. If I just stopped out of stocks a little bit earlier when I first started trading, I would've probably had an extra million dollars to my name. It took me a very, very long time to learn how to stop out because I was very stubborn. You know, I've kind of had a couple of tips and tricks that kind of stop out properly. What I like to do is if a stock is going against me and reaching my stop, I stop out of half of my position at the high of the day because I'm shorting, so shorting. I would stop out of half of my position at high day. If you're long, you would stop out of half of your position at the low of the day. And then if it continued to go lower, you would stop out of the rest of your position. But if that was just a fake out, then I could put back my position and get back in. But the key is you always gotta take some off at your stop loss, right? And for me, the stop loss is where the trade thesis is no longer valid. So I have to think to myself, where is the trade thesis no longer valid? On the short side, the trade thesis is no longer valid if the stock breaks above high of the day or the stock breaks above pre-market high of the day. If a stock breaks above that level, that's where my stop gets triggered. That's where the trade thesis is no longer active and I urge you and urge you to use hard stops, hard market stops because the limit stops will not get executed. How many times have you hit the stop and because the limit order just blows through your order? Hard market stops. And additionally, do not use mental stops. Do not use mental stops. You are gonna be a deer in headlights. How many times has a stock hit that stop and you're like, you know what? I'm just gonna give it a second. I'm gonna see what it does. And it balloons even bigger, guys. You can't let that happen. Not be a deer in headlights. I was a deer in headlights when I first started trading and I will never let it happen again because I want to be able to keep the money that I have in my pocket. Anyone can learn how to trade. Anyone can make money trading but not everyone can keep that money in their pockets. So stopping out is very important. Hard market stops. Stop out of half and then get out of the other half if it continues. That's what helped me mentally. Now, another lesson that I learned is that you have to take it slow, right? Trading is a marathon. It is not a sprint, okay? The way that I compare it to is a doctor probably makes anywhere between half a million dollars a year to a million dollars a year but a doctor had to go to medical school for about eight years, okay? A lawyer probably makes a quarter million dollars a year and the lawyer had to go to school for five years. So you as a day trader that could make more money than a lawyer and a doctor combined, you have to be a little bit patient. It's gonna take some time, right? Getting rich quick does not exist. So for me, when I first started trading, there was not all these resources. There was not all this education. There was not all this mentorship when I first started. So I had to lose money to learn how to trade. So it took me about three years to become a profitable trader, three years, right? But now, on my ninth year trading, I'm making a consistent multiple, multiple millions of dollars a year. So was it worth that three year sacrifice to then make millions of dollars for the next six years? The answer is yes, but the problem is that people are not patient enough for that opportunity, okay? So I'm not saying that's gonna take you three years. It's probably gonna take you realistically one year. So if you could sacrifice one year of your life for the next 50 years to be free, then you must do it. So be patient, take your time, and understand that your first year is gonna be spent learning. So be patient, be patient, be patient. I can't believe I'm trading for nine years. I can't believe how fast the time flew, but now looking back on it, I am very, very grateful that I learned how to trade the right way because now it's gonna pay dividends for the rest of my life. The sixth lesson that I learned is find someone to balance ideas off of. So when I first started trading, my mentor, Bao, me and him would balance ideas off each other every single day. And the way it worked was this, if Bao saw stock A and I saw stock B, we talked about it. If Bao liked stock A, but I didn't really like stock A, we wouldn't trade it. If I liked stock B and he didn't really like stock B, we wouldn't trade it. But stock C, if he liked it and I liked it, that means that we should trade it. That extra level of confirmation, that extra level of idea flow is very, very essential to trading. You need someone to not only bounce trading ideas off of, you need someone to be able to pick you up when you're down and give you a high five when you're up. So in addition to finding a trading accountability buddy, someone that's gonna kind of keep you accountable, you need to find a community of traders. You need to find a community of traders of like-minded people. If you're the type of guy that wants to yolo and gamble and do all this stuff, go find a Discord chatroom and lose all your money. But if you want to be surrounded by professional hedge fund level traders, then you need to join a community of professional hedge fund level traders. So that's very, very key in your trading. Have you heard the saying, you are who you surround yourself with? If I surround myself with alcoholics and potheds, I'm gonna be an alcoholic and pothed. But if I surround myself with hedge fund and very smart traders, eventually that's gonna rub off on me. So your community is very, very important. So surround yourself with the best possible people and that's what we have at MIC and My Investing Club. So be sure to bounce ideas off of a trading accountability buddy, make sure to check your ideas, see if the ideas match, see if it makes sense, see if the flow is there and then from there you'll be able to determine and decide if it makes sense for you. So when I first started trading, I would just wanna grow my account and grow my account and grow my account as large as I can. But what I realized is the more money that I had in my account, the more risky I was getting, the more I was like, you know, screw it. If I lose $1,000 here, it is what it is. If I lose $5,000 here or whatever it is, cause in reality, if I had a $100,000 account, I wouldn't really care about losing two, three, four, $5,000. But if I had a $30,000 account and I lost $5,000, that's really, really bad. So what I've found is I like to keep my account smaller. I like to keep my account around $35,000, right? Because for me, that's the sweet spot where, you know what, I'm not taking on too much risk. I'm very comfortable with it. And when I grow my account to above $50,000 or $60,000, I wire out. And the reason why I wire out is twofold. Number one is I wanna have money in the bank just in case something goes wrong or just in case I have a really bad day or there's an emergency that I need money. So take that money that you have in your trading account and put it in your bank to protect you, right? Just in case something bad happens. And number two is it's a reward for all the hard work that you're doing. Oftentimes in our trading accounts, we just see money. We just see numbers. But until you equate that number to something real world or something tangible, it doesn't really make sense, right? So what I like to do is I like to wire out and I like to buy myself something or buy my girl something or buy someone something or just save the money or put it somewhere else just to give myself a paycheck. Just to give myself a pat on the back saying job well done, you did it right. Now take some money. So after every single week, maybe wire out 50% of your profits and put it in the bank. Save it for a rainy day. God forbid something happens. You don't want to have all your money locked into your trading account. And that brings me to the next topic and the next lesson is diversify your income. So trading is active income. You make money from the markets actively every single day. What you have to do with that money is now diversify it at the other places, put it into real estate, put it into indexes, put it into venture, put it into watches, put it into whatever you want. But the active income that you make from day trading, you have to diversify it in other places. You can never have all of your eggs in one basket, put it in this basket, put it in this basket, put it in this basket. So what I do is I take my money, I put it in real estate, I put it in indexes, I put it in venture capital, I put it in watches, I put it in this, I put it in that to take my money outside the market, extract it into passive places so that I could build my wealth with other types of businesses and avenues. So take that money that you make from day trading and put it in other places. Find the lesson that I learned after nine years of trading is that the market always changes so you must be able to adapt with it. In 2020, what worked in 2020 did not work in 2021. What worked in 2021 did not work in 2022. What worked in 2022 is not working in 2023. So understand that the market is always changing and you must change with it. Adapt or die. The markets are always getting stronger. The markets are always getting smarter. The robots are getting more and more vicious. So every single day, you have to understand that if you are not improving and if you are not putting in the work to get better, the robots will get better or some new trader that is hungrier than you will get better. So these are the nine lessons I learned after nine years of day trading. And again, guys, if you want to learn more lessons or you want to see some live trades from me or you want to get some free mentorship, just go to mindvestingclub.com slash webinar. We have a free mentorship course that walks you through our MIC strategy, that walks you through a bunch of our live trades and teaches you how to consistently profit in the stock market. It's 100% free and it's available at mindvestingclub.com slash webinar. So thank you guys. Please subscribe to the channel and please leave a comment with maybe one lesson that you learned from your day trading and maybe we could talk about that together. So thanks guys and I will see you for some other videos.