 Welcome to the After Hours podcast, hosted by Harry Haas and James Friedlender, presented by My Investing Club. What's going on guys? We're back with another episode of the After Hours podcast. Today we have Byron, who has been a long, everybody just keeps asking us to bring him on. So I'm finally, we're really excited to get you on here and you can tell your story. So thank you for coming on, man. Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Of course, man. Of course, it's our pleasure too. So lately you've been killing it. You guys don't know, we have like a main chat where people post their trades, their charts and all that. And Byron posts his trades like daily and he is killing it. And he's very insightful into like market moves and stuff like that. I always look forward to his post. So, you know, if you want to give us a little insight, you know, how did you even get into trading? How did you get, how did this whole thing start? And kind of take us from there. Absolutely. So thanks again for having me on. It's a pleasure to be part of the MISC family and just learn from you guys and all that. But my journey, so my journey trading wise started about late 2018 or probably mid 2018, I would say. With me for those who didn't see when I was brought on as a junior moderator, like I'm starting a lot later in the game than a lot of you guys. Like I've got a wife, got four kids. And back at that time, so mid 2018, like we were just starting to explore what are different options, ways we can bring more income into the family. And so, you know, I looked at eventually crossed some day trading videos on YouTube. And of course got connected with Tim Sykes. He's the gateway drug. Yeah, no. He's the gateway drug. He's the gateway drug. And actually like it was crazy because I bought his DVD where he goes through like the different patterns of a basic run up, right? And that's some basic foundation stuff from him. And I originally opened like a $1,000 account. And I knew that he had said something about holding overnight and waiting for a gap up in the morning. I had no idea what I was doing. But on like that first weekend, I just randomly held a stock overnight and was just sitting there in the pre-market, like not knowing what am I supposed to do. And the doctor started spiking, probably around like 7 a.m. when the volume started to come in. And I sold it quick for like 800 buck profit. And that was the fish hook right there. It was like $1,000 down, almost doubled it. I'm like, okay, yeah, this is it. And this is gonna be easy. So, yeah, I started trading and you know, had mixed results initially. But actually I'm one of those guys who did things the wrong way coming in initially. Like because I had some mixed results and was old confident, I was like, if I can just load up this account a little bit more, I'll have bigger numbers and be able to push myself forward. And so I actually loaded up some credit cards. Got some debt on me and really blew up that account in epic fashion. I don't know if y'all remember, I don't know if y'all remember the BPTH. Yeah, the best short squeeze in history. Yeah, exactly. Yep, that was the day where I was completely hungry. For those of you who don't know, you can look back at a chart back on like March of 2019. It went from like six to, what, six to 60? And like, yeah, it went to seven. Seven, yeah. In like two days, it had recently, it had failed, I forget what the level was, but it had failed somewhere around like 15, 20 bucks or whatever, like three days prior. So I was shorting into that and just holding and gapped up the next day and ran to 70. So blew up that account and actually took a year off of trading of just like handling that debt, just completely stepping away, but still like I had so fallen in love with it by that point that I was still like for a year without trading, was still studying charts like every day, trying to learn what I could and didn't jump back in until... Now, were you emotionally like, were you okay? Like, cause I know a lot of people like, you know, if you blow an account or especially when you like take out money to fund, like were you like emotionally like kind of like fucked for a while or were you... Yeah, I mean like it was tough because I mean, I had to completely come like my tail between my legs. Like I tell my wife, like I hadn't told her this is also husband team, poor husband team 101. He didn't know the extent of which I had loaded up this account. So when that happened, I was like, all right, I gotta like lay everything out there and just let her know like I completely screwed this up. So what was her response? Silence at first. I think that's generally how my wife like broods, she will sort of take it all in. But yeah, it was not the blow up type, but it was just like, I mean, there was that trust that was eroded there, you know, for a while and it was just... It's tough man, it's tough. It's tough when you have a passion for like markets and you have a passion for stuff like that, like anything that's kind of risky. And, you know, it's like, I think we all have girlfriends or wives, they're most people in MIC and it's, you know, trying to explain to them how it works sometimes. And, you know, especially the blow ups, they probably think you're nuts, but you know, it's hard, it's hard. Now, how did you explain that to her? How did you, if you don't mind, you know, how did you kind of get over that fear of talking about it even? Well, it was just like, it was obvious, it was immediately obvious, because it was like in a single day, my account was probably, I was using the offshore, I was using Shirtraider at the time and it wasn't, yeah, exactly, it wasn't quite at like PDT, yeah, I was hovering around PDT and was sort of counting on that money to be able to generate profit to pay off the debt. Well, once I blew up the account, I mean, it was just like, immediately obvious, like there's no way I'm gonna be able to just, I mean, this definitely paid off and I need to be honest with like, where all of our actual funds from working and stuff were coming, we're gonna go into that. And so it was just like, immediately obvious, okay, gotta come completely clean, gotta let her know exactly the extent of what's happened and just deal with it as it came and she's amazing. And so we got through that. Kudos to Herman, huh? Kudos to her, improv, to her first. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's amazing. So at this point, so at this point you take a year off, you kind of worked through the debts, get everything going, what kind of brought you back? Again, like I've never, I've never lost the bachelor training, like it's, for those, for any, all of us know, once you catch that bug and, I mean, just what can, what it can afford you. And if there are those that also just love the challenge of training while you're in love, the challenge of trying to execute better and better, sticking to our plans, sticking to a process and challenging myself. So never lost that bug and, you know, just spent all that time studying patterns and sort of back testing strategies and just believe that I had some solid trading plans in place. And then it was just a matter of, I had just raised some money on the side that wasn't part of like our budgeted money to jump back in to the markets. I think it was roughly a couple thousand. And this was late 2020. So from March 2019 to like late summer 2020 is how long I was off. And then was able to find some pretty good success late 2020. And then 2021 just kept building from there. It was my like first year of like real, like serious profitability and just growing and scaling my account. And that just brought a whole new set of challenges, which was, I grew so rapidly in 2021 that oversizing was a problem. Like impulse control, like recognizing that. And that's still the biggest thing I think I struggle with. People think you become profitable and then they think it's easy. They think it's like, oh, yeah. I mean, cause even cause, right, right. Cause even when I've recognized a good setup, what I'm often tempted to do is to like just, I don't, I have to make sure that my scaling strategy is tight. Because if I get in too much too early that I'm uncomfortable and I can't really let the stock fully do what it wants to do before it starts to move in my direction. So that was like one of the challenges started to need to deal with. Yeah, okay. How did that go with kind of like education-wise? Like were you an MIC at like any point then? Like kind of like, when did you join? Were you anywhere else? Like, I mean, you can talk about like really anything on here. So I did a lot of YouTubing and was sort of spinning my wheels there. Really the biggest thing was just like tracking my own like setups that above that observe and just again, again, day after day, just studying charts. Like I've logged so many hours just studying charts and becoming familiar with patterns. And I came across, I think I came across like Alex and Bao a while ago. Like I saw his video when he went up to SMB and it was just detailing some of his early journey there. But I joined MIC last fall, I think. And some of the biggest lessons that have really shaped my training today have come since then. Sizing properly, fantasy orders is the biggest thing that's helped me. Waiting for certain lines and that's really helped me. So I think what MIC has helped me in is alleviating some of those super high bounces in my P&L and also, you know, like a much more gradual incline and have the patience to wait for, you know, we say scalping was the scale of the rest. Yeah. Yeah. Sizing is the best scale for the rest of the year. That's the size of your setups and... I think that's awesome. I feel like a lot of people like, like I like to talk about MIC, especially because a lot of profitable traders will hit me up on like Instagram or Twitter and be like, you know, like, I do make money, but like I want to learn more like can MIC help me? And I always kind of like, lately I've been using the referral of like, because I'm a golfer. So I'll use like, oh, like I'm a decent golfer, you know, when I go out there and I play well, but sometimes I go in and get those lessons and like talking to like the pros that work at, you know, shops and all that stuff, they can make you 10 times the better trader you are. It could be your golfer you are. And it's just such a little tip and stuff like that. And, you know, I like that you were talking about how size, like, this is the problem I deal with. I think most of my DMs as a short bias guys that most people are size too big, they're not letting the stock kind of do, like have wiggle room at work. And, you know, I think, I think seeing someone like you who is successful and does make some good money do that. And people need to take that into consideration in their own trading. And I think it'll make a massive difference. Yeah, for sure. For sure. It's a struggle, man. Those are all fundamental. They're such a, they make such a big difference between even just not being consistently profitable at all to being able to like really start to consistently grow your account, like those small details. Yeah. Those small things. Yeah, what would you say that you're kind of like working on now? Like, what would you say like kind of like, as far as like struggle wise, like what would you say you're kind of working on now? Well, that's, that's definitely one. So the whole, like really, truly trusting my fantasy orders Yeah. Just jumping into stocks because I can or because I have like the cushion. Yeah. To whether it was or all down. I think cutting those law, cutting like, cutting stocks when they go against me and like jumping back in, like being comfortable jumping back in. That's something that I'm trying to consistently do now, like rather than just allowing a bit of the draw down, I'm much, I'm becoming more comfortable just go ahead and just cutting it as soon as it like hits my break event or slightly beyond my break event and it immediately stuffs just like jumping back in. Yeah. That's been like really helpful for just, I guess my psychology of just like being comfortable in a trade and being right. If you know, you got to take paper cuts along the way. Yeah. But I, but you control what I like is that you control it. You know, I see your charts too. Like you control your loss. You're not like, you're not just like scaling to infinity. You're not just like shorting for no reason or longer for no reason. You have a plan and you know, you take those cuts, but like if you take a planned cut, you can make that money back no problem. It's when you take an unplanned cut, like an unplanned bigger loss, it's always bigger. Whenever it's unplanned, it's always a bigger loss than you expect and then you're trigger shy and you won't be able to do it when the time comes. So, I mean, and how long have you been at this again? How many years would this year be? So like, if you like subtract the year off, this is probably what my fourth year of trading. Yep. See, everybody wants to make it in like one year, bro. Everybody wants to talk about, they were like, oh, one year, one year, but like you're on your four and with a year off of studying too. So really almost five. And that's what it takes sometimes is that much screen time to be able to recognize those things. And you know, that's it man. I think that's a huge part of your success too. Yeah. And if there's anything like I could reiterate to people is like, don't try to rush the process because as I was mentioning like in 2021, when I started to like scale and like really grow up to count and build consistency, that also came with that also came those big loss. Like when you're talking about just add, add, adding just because you have like the account size to do so. Like I was telling my tabs, I'm in a tab with Stefan and Vic my worst loss of last year was the six-figure loss. Like and just like ridiculously beyond what anything I had lost before it was on that day when was it Nero? Nero was one of the super, super numbers I lost on or it was in N-E-G-G, whatever one of those low float ones that just like- Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you feel like it's going to stall out a little bit beyond like your, your stop loss. And you say, well, maybe let it go a little bit, let it go a little bit. And then it runs like $40. And by that time, you're so emotionally invested, like you just like can't, you go to a point where you literally just like feel like you can't cut it. Like you're not emotionally strong enough because let it balloon to this thing that you're way uncomfortable with. So. Are you, are you tap as Vick, the moderate or Vick to junior mud? Junior mud. Junior mud, okay. So I like that because you guys all have a similar story. That's what I was asking. You guys have all gone through kind of like the blow-up phase. You've had your initial struggles and like it's kind of cool that you guys are helping each other now. And all three of you guys are trading really well. You know, you guys are all posting charts all the time. Stefan's a beast. He's been a beast for a while. Vick obviously posts like huge P&Ls and you too. So I think that's cool. I could ask you guys for, you know, sticking with it one and two, now kind of being each other support system. Yeah, yeah. I liked that a lot. Would you say that like, like definitely having a taps like helps you a lot more. Like a lot of guys like, they want to like just go it alone. I don't understand why. Like I think for me like, I also have kind of like a long bias like kind of route that I talked to often as well with like a lot of guys who are like kind of growing and like learning. And, you know, I think that as far as like it goes for me, it's also kind of helped me a lot as well because for a while like, I would talk to like James and Tom all the time in the morning and stuff like that. But like as far as like actual training goes like James and Tom and I don't really have the same struggles, you know? Like James is shorting and training different setups and we can talk about it. Like they'll say, oh, Harry, you did a good job or oh, Harry, like good stuff or like good, good this or they'll give me tips too. But like we're not really trading the same setup. So it gets a lot kind of like harder because like James can't relate to getting like stopped out at the, at the low. Just like I can't relate to getting stopped out at the high day or something like that. Right? I think that that's helped me as well. Just kind of like, you know, talk it out, kind of get on some calls with like Joe Angelo's in there, he's a junior mod. There's a couple other guys in there and you know, they're growing, they're kind of on the come up, but like it's nice to kind of like talk to people who are like seeing the same things as me. I think that that helped me a lot as well. So like, did you start to kind of like progress even further once you got the tab group or like how did that kind of work? I would say that like even just like beyond just the tab group, just being like actively monitoring the main chat in general has helped a lot. Just like seeing not only like Vic and Stephens, like you start to get a feel for how people trade when you see their charts and you're able to chat with them. But then obviously like Bow posting all day long and when you guys post and when I'm trying to learn some short strategy trying to learn some long strategy just like the fact that there's this community here where you're constantly sharpening one another just even despite participating if you're an active participant and you're trying to keep up with what everyone is posting and not only like alerting the new stocks, you know, come on board, but just you see how people are actually trading just being in MIC since I joined has caused that process to happen for me. I think it's a lot of like dropping your ego too, right? Because it's like I feel like most traders have such an ego and like they don't want to hear someone else talking to them or trying to teach them or it's like a weird thing, but you know, you seem like a really like just like normal humble dude. So that probably helps you because it's helped like me, it's helped Harry just being in chat, being with people, talking to people. And it's like huge, you know? So, and I have a question for you because something I noticed about you is you, you have really good like analysis. Like whenever you write about something, you're like, oh, I feel like this might be a top or you always just, you have good insight into a lot of stocks moving. So I was curious if that just came from charting over time. Do you have any other kind of people that have helped you out or you know, how did you kind of come to have that? I don't want to say intuition, but you really do have a lot of good calls and stuff. So I was curious. I would definitely say the main thing is just charting. Like seeing not only chart patterns, but like volume patterns. Like it's not just the candlesticks, but like how does volume change when a stock is breaking through a high of a day? Is the volume ramping up or is it basically like dead to where you know, there's no interest here. So it's a safer bet to try to short this top or something like that. So yeah, so just mainly just, and I would definitely say that volume has been the most helpful indicator for me. Like learning to learn and study and have a field for what's happening but beneath your chart throughout the day as the stock is moving. The biggest thing for me, I would say. Yeah. As you find, like as far as like volume goes, like it's a lot of like kind of like, like almost like inverse analysis whereas like if the stock is like has no volume and like doesn't break down through a level or like has no volume and we're just kind of consolidating and then we get like a burst of volume. You're kind of like looking for something like that, rather than like we're doing like, would you say like it's more so inverse? Like you'd say that like if we're not doing a lot of volume we should be going lower. So like that's obviously something that you'd want to be paying attention to. It's the same thing. Like if we kind of like break through like let's say high of day and then volume drops off like that's something abnormal. We should be getting more volume and we should be moving higher. Do you kind of pay attention to stuff like that or kind of like, how do you use it? Yeah, yeah. Like I would say like for example, if I'm trying to long and I see like there's high volume in the morning, stock pushes up, starts to consolidate volume, starts to taper off. Yeah. One of the first things I'm looking for is when does that does another burst in volume sometime in late morning, early afternoon come back into the stock to if it does and that shows me that, okay there's still interest in this stock. There's still people monitoring the stock, they're looking to push it higher and depending on how it pulls back then I'm looking to see, does it pull back and still hold above lows? Like does it make higher lows and does it do so with the volume decreasing back down? Yeah. So showing me that there's really not a lot of selling pressure here. There's not a lot of shorts that are beating this stock back down. So it still has a chance to potentially ramp back up later in the day, later in the afternoon or something like that. And so I'll start to look to set some fantasy orders at some of those lower pivots, risking the low of the day, you know, stuff like that. It's cool. That's like, yeah, that's just an example. I'm looking to see how is the volume changing yeah throughout the day? Yeah, I do something definitely similar to that. Like where I'm just like, it's hard with volume because like there's so many different details. Like even when I was trying to explain it, I was like, how do I make this the most simple way possible? But like there's a lot of different volume. There's hundreds actually. Probably even thousands of like different volume like analysis examples where we could sit here all day and just go over, oh yeah, that's a good one or oh yeah, that's a good one. I think that's where the screen time comes in. I think a lot of people get confused as far as like reading the tape goes. A lot of it is just like being able to interpret volume, you know? Where everyone's like looking for this like secret signal but really reading the tape is just being able to interpret volume and just coming up with your own analysis where it's like I can't explain to James or I can't explain to Byron certain types of like analysis because you see it and you're like, it's that right there but it's very difficult for people who haven't spent screen time or haven't spent a lot of time doing it where I'm like, yeah, did you kind of like see that odd burst right there or did you see how that moved that way there or whatever? It's really just being able to interpret volume well and using that to make money, you know? And that's why it's so hard to explain to people who don't have like screen time or they're newer because they're like, I had a guy asking a question this morning, like he's like, how come you said it wasn't a good long overview app? And I was like, well, we're doing a lot of buying. We should have moved higher earlier on and it just was struggling and struggling and struggling to move higher. But it's like, how do you interpret that in like five words? You know, it's very, very difficult. Yeah, yeah, it's hard. But as I say, it's not just the candles like this. Within the candles, there's like a story happening within these two candles that are exactly the same. Like a different story took place in that window. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I have one last question for you Byron. Jesus, BTTX just talked about. I have one more question for you actually. So as someone who obviously has done a lot of charting and a lot of studying and like back testing and all that and you said you have kids too, you have a family. How did you kind of break it up? How did you study these charts? How did you dive deeper into them and like do that with kids and all that stuff? Cause I know a lot of members say that. They're like, oh, I don't have time to do this, that but it's so obvious that that's what's necessary to be successful in this is screen time and like getting more and more screen time. So how did you do it? Like for you, how did you make it possible? And you know, how did you break apart your studying? I would say. Well, first I would just say like, if you want it bad enough if there's something that you love enough that you're interested enough, like you'll find time to do it. And so for me, like I work full time from home, thankfully, so I'm able to be in front of the screens and stuff, but as a software engineer. So like with me, what that often means is that I can use, I'll wake up probably most weekdays, I'll wake up like four or five in the morning just to be able to try to get some work done for work in order to like have more of my time in the afternoon to be able to sit and trade. And I mean, in the morning and during the early afternoon to sit and trade and stuff. So just sacrificing some sleep, sacrificing some other leisure time when my kids aren't like awake and stuff basically is the time when I can do it. I mean, after hours, that's when I got to put my full time dad had on and got to be with the kids and dinner and schoolwork and all that stuff. So if you want it bad enough, right? You're gonna make it happen. Exactly, if you want it bad enough and just constant exposure to, I would say just even if you only have like maybe an hour or two or three a day to allocate towards it just like constantly being in front of the market constantly trying to just familiarize yourself with how these stocks move, the different variables you need to account for how like why if you were expecting a certain stock to react a certain way and it doesn't like starting to really try to understand all the contributing factors of like why did the stock not behave the way I thought? Okay, let me take a note of that and we found that away and all that stuff. So finding the time, if you want to do it you'll find the time to do it. So yeah, I think that's really important where like for me, like when I was starting to get like I'd say like quote unquote good, like I wasn't like I am now, but like I was starting to find some success when I was kind of in university. And for me time management was like a really big thing being able to like manage my time and save myself like, okay, you know this time is for, you know, studying charts and I'm gonna stick to that. And I also think that like, would you say that your process went from like I'd say like a P and L based oriented process to like a process process where you're like you start to go from like caring about making money and you know, big P and L and like maxing out like the credit cards to have that massive P and L would you say you kind of went from there to like more of a chart based process after that kind of year of studying charts? Yeah, I mean, definitely. I mean, I've just, I've just, I've had that mindset so long of just wanting to, you know grow as quickly as you can. So you're trying to like jam up your P and L trying to jam up your size. And I've been scarred so many times from that. Like I'm, I definitely, I guess the type that needs to put their hand on the stove and I've burned my hand on the stove so many times that you do just eventually get sick of trying to chase profit. And just, it's just a, it's like a relief if you can just consistently, even if everything isn't like huge numbers just consistently growing in the right direction. Yeah. And so because my goal has sort of shifted to that where I just want to be consistently trending towards my ultimate goals. Yeah. Like where I want, you know what I want for my family what I want to be able to personally do with my wife just as long as I'm growing towards those goals and then the speed at which I get there doesn't really matter. And so that's what's, that shift in focus is what's helped me to say, okay then I really need to hone in on what are those little things that I keep doing that are the reasons why I take three steps up two steps back three steps up four steps back five steps like I can just take one step or two steps forward and then even just plateau and then eventually move forward. Like that's where process really comes in like just minimizing the things that you're doing that are killing yourself. And that's where like keeping a journal is like really important, you know like a lot of people, like for example like I know some long traders that message me and it's like the same mistakes every single day. The most common mistake I see from like longing is like people trying to long broken charts with no volume where it's just like fading and they try and catch the bottom year try and catch the bottom year try and catch the bottom year. And if those traders had kept like a report card every single time they trade it it's like if you, you know like just like you, you know like you find those little mistakes by keeping a journal, keeping a report card you know, talking to other people because you're like, man I made this mistake again today you know, I need to work on this at least you're verbalizing it and explaining with the tab and finally it slowly grows and you can kind of make those building blocks to like grow and grow and grow and a lot of traders they come into the market especially newer ones and you know, they take a loss and then they just shut down and leave but it's like if you go one step further where you take a loss you explain the setup you explain your idea and you kind of write a little bit about it and then you kind of say like okay, this is what happened today this is what I need to work on and then you shut down and then you do whatever just that little bit of extra work probably can like save you a year of just doing the same shit over and over and over again. Yeah, yeah because what you're really doing is like you're multiplying the amount of times that you're seeing certain patterns like you saw the chart while you were trading it and then going back over you're seeing it again so it's like you're doubling the amount of hours that in terms of just trying to log hours and trying to log experience whatever the more that you go back you're really like multiplying your experience and just like paying more attention to those little things that you like I said, like those little things that you're doing that they made all the difference in the world and yet we, they're the mistakes that we'll make repeatedly and so we're finally just like stubborn enough to say, okay, I have to change this. Yeah, I like that. James, do you want to say anything? I know I like was kind of like I know you guys are coming. I think that's probably a good place to kind of wrap it. I mean, he had ended on a good note there. Yeah, no, that's great. Yeah, no, I think that was solid dude. I was just listening. Honestly, I found myself just listening to you guys talking. Yeah. Hell yeah, man. I like it. So perfect. Yeah, so thanks, Byron, for coming on again. Yeah, thank you. Especially thanks, James. I know we were going to do this in the evening, but afternoon freed up because your back went out or something like that. So well, I like woke up with like a, either a slip disc or some shit. I don't know what the fuck happened, but I'm in some pain today. So it worked out good for, it worked out good for all of us. It's not good for us. All right, perfect. Perfect.