 Welcome back to the Trade Hacker Mindset podcast. We have a special guest with us today, Mr. Mauro. Trading the markets can be difficult to master and seemingly just out of reach. Professional traders have a secret. Trading requires total mental and emotional control. It requires the Trade Hacker Mindset. All right, Mauro, how are you, sir? I'm good, thank you. Happy to be here. Yeah, thanks for joining me today. I've been excited to, we've had this on the books scheduled to have this conversation for, well, for weeks at least, maybe a couple months, but yeah, so I'm excited to jump in. So for those of you who don't know Mauro, if you're not in our community, Mauro hails from the great country of Italy. So let's start there, Mauro. What's it like trading U.S. markets from Italy? I guess not very different from any other place because nowadays, you know, we use electronic trading and I use interactive brokers personally. As you know, because I have a big fan of interactive brokers. We have to, from Europe, especially if you want to trade options, ID is, well, technically is either ID or case reward that have U.S. options, you know, all of them and ID has, I think, probably even more because you can trade this about anything and ID. And in my case, because I did start with options, although at the beginning we used to be stock options. That's why it was the only choice. And yeah, other than the, I guess the time zone and the trading hours, probably the main difference, I had to get used to all your good morning, etc., which for me is always good afternoon and, you know, market closes in the evening. And you may remember, you know, last year when we got into power hour, you know, for me, power hour is the last thing before going to sleep. May not be the best thing to do before going to bed. But, you know, other than that, it's not that different. I mean, in my case, I guess I am in Italy and I am originally from Italy, but I spent a few years in other countries, including the U.S., with my previous career and life, I should say. So I know your, I know the time zone kind of changes compared to what ours is. But so right now, what are the market hours for you? So all year round, except for the free weeks issue, amazingly, when the U.S. switches to the daylight setting time three weeks before we do in Europe, but other than that, you know, market opens at 3.30 in the afternoon and it closes at 10 p.m. So these are my market opening hours. And, you know, I, you know, the way I got used to it by now is in a few years to do it every day. And it provides some advantages as well, because, for example, we leave the entire morning, my morning, which would be your night, free to do other things, starting with my other main activity, which is rocklining, as you know, but also other, you know, market research or strategy research and analysis. In fact, my mornings and the weekends, when the market is closed, those are the times to do all research and analysis. And of course, preparation for the day. So in that sense, I like to have like half a day to do, let's say, non-live trading activities. And then, yes, when the market opens, typically half an hour earlier, you know, from 3 p.m. onwards, you know, this is what I'm doing. It's, for me, at least with my habits, especially in summertime, I tend to, because I climb, you know, in the morning and I get up very early, I would like to go to bed earlier, but I can't, power hour or not. Because, you know, I tried even lately when power hour is not regularly on my plan anymore, but still I can't just close the platform and go to bed, you know, if I know that market is open. There may be other positions and other things to watch anyway. So in that sense, the only disadvantage is that typically in the summer months, because that's when I get up even earlier than usual. You said you've been trading options for a couple of years. You are, you're now a full-time trader, right? That's what you do full-time. What did you trade before that? Or how did you end up in options? So the basics of trading and also the first experiences, they go back some, a few years. I think about 15 years ago, I was still in my previous career, but I was always interested in that. And so that's why I, you know, I guess what most people do at the beginning, which is trying to get as much info as possible via, you know, books and articles and all various materials, that stuff was all done back then. And though I did study, you know, forex and futures, the actual trading when I started was on the forex, on the foreign exchange, which I think it's still good because although options are different, you know, you still need to learn all the basics, right? You need to learn, for example, the technical analysis stuff. I mean, in order to know that it doesn't work, you have to study it first, right? So, you know, all the indications. A lot of trading is figuring out what does not work, right? Yeah, and I think it's all interesting background, right? You know, all this whole indicator thing. I don't even remember when I learned that, you know, the moment you realize that an indicator is, you know, a lagging indicator because it's backward-looking, there you go. You probably don't need to know anymore to realize that, you know, again, they could be a useful tool just like anything else. And all this learning was done back then because that doesn't really depend on options or, you know, what is the market you're actually trading? It's all about trading. Learning, trading platform. Of course, in those days, it was different. I used to use Maida Trader, which was the, you know, the best platform at that time for Forex. Getting used to some of the feelings and the example I always provide because it's the most interesting one is I was actually in Euro-Swiss rank when, I think it was in 2015, if I remember correctly, or 2014. So it's basically when the S&B, the Swiss National Bank, announced that they would no longer support the 120. They were artificially maintaining the 120 parity between Euro and the Swiss brand. And they, this announcement came out, I think it was in a Sunday evening. And basically, if you look at that chart of the Euro-Swiss, yeah, it's, I never seen anything like that. It dropped so much. It didn't recover like three quarters of it in the next two or three days. And this is also when the Forex market almost came to hold. You know, the Forex doesn't have an exchange. It's really, you know, the network of banks that do the, you know, get it to work. Right. And a few brokers went out of business. I think FXEM was one of the largest UK Forex brokers at the time. They went out of business because of that. It was an embryo of flash crash, but it wasn't any flash crash. It was simply a news that caused such a massive move that, you know, nobody was prepared for it, basically. And this was just to get some feeling. But then again, it was all on the side. I was working on my other career. So nothing more than that. But then I got into options, yeah, two years ago and initially was a version of the real strategy, something like that, so options and stocks. That's why I needed interactive brokers because I needed access to all the stocks potentially. And then at the end of 2022, my job at the time, which I knew was going to be my last because I was already considering it for a while to move into trading. And I was not as motivated as I was before in my previous career. So I kind of knew that was going to be the end of it. Eventually it came, which was in December 22 and I was already actively trading options for a year at that time. And I said, all right, you know, the time is now. I think it was about the same time. I also joined navigation training. Like, yeah, how did you run into us? How did you find us? Maybe October, but certainly that period. I was looking for a community because that was also part of the learning I had in my, you know, in the 10 years prior when I was learning all the basics. One of the things I had learned was that it is really important to have a community of people. You know, I had already learned how lonely that can be when it's just you and your platform. And so I was looking for that and I surely must have been some search. It was no, let's say, direct connection. I don't think I knew anybody at that time, but I just found your website and I did all my research as I normally do. I initially joined with the calendar spread strategy. Somehow I got attracted by calendars. It's only just a couple of months later, maybe just the following month. I switched to the full, you know, membership because I was interested also in the other strategy and I've been in ever since, as you know, as you know. And so full time, yes, a year and a half, let's say, ish and then of course, shortly after that, probably a year ago, maybe early 23, as you know, then the zero DTE started to take off and he got bigger and bigger because amazingly, I do remember when I joined in 2022, there was no zero DTE yet. Which will be interesting for other people to remember because now it seems so obvious to focus on that. But no, I did join and that was interesting also in the other strategy started calendars and then I certainly played with, you know, option selling and other strategies as well. And now are you, you're obviously heavily focused on zero DTE, but what other, what other strategies are you focused on now? So last year, yes, I definitely got into zero DTE and it's amazing because it's only been a year, a little over a year, but we have gone already through so many different phases in the market, you know, some strategies that became available, some others that's, you know, stopped or certainly, you know, didn't work in the same way as they did before. It's amazing how the market continuously changed. So I did mention calendars, which I got into that a lot. And in those days, of course, you remember that the discretionary calendars like the GIF were doing pretty well, then they started to struggle and then of course with the advent of Option Omega, you know, using back test also for calendar that was, you know, a very important step also because we have a number of, you know, back test reading strategies and calendars which are doing pretty well. So I tried almost all of the strategies that you have, you know, certainly all the option selling for sure. I've done quite a few of those and then, you know, the time flies and I'm also part of the portfolio margin group, did quite a few of those as well and it was all going well. In fact, too, too well, especially September and October because then, you know, in November, Mr. Respiax decided to take off with that unprecedented move and that also caused some of the strategies to create some issues. So in November, I had some losses because of that. Of course, in the meantime, I had increased size because things were going so well and so that's why in the last four or five months, I've also been spending quite a bit of time in what I call longer term strategies. So maybe not back test driven like, you know, struck a bit more complex structures. So looking for that kind of income, which I was always aware of, never particularly attracted to because A, you know, loading up on those negative vega positions is, you know, as long as the market goes up, yeah, it's all happy. But sometimes the market goes down and I'll be surprised. Number one, which is why I've been working a lot on trying to figure out how to hedge that and to build a portfolio. This is literally sucked hundreds of hours in the last five months. This is, in fact, one of the reasons, you know, the first time you asked me, I said, I'm in the middle of something right now. I can't really find my time to do this. This is what I was referring to. So I still plan to add some of that. I've been experimented with that because I think it's good for diversifying on strategy on exposure. You know, one of the things that you probably remember because we had chatted about it in November and December when the market was continuing to go up and, you know, all our Delta-neutral strategy was struggling. That got me thinking, well, hoping first that the market would stop going up and maybe reverse, but also thinking, think about those other strategies, right? If I had those on right now, I would be happy. So in terms of diversifying the portfolio, you know, having some of those and retaining our Delta-neutral strategy at the moment is my goal. In terms of return, you know, zero DTE and shorter-term strategies, I think they are still the number one because when they work, I think there is no other strategy that can deliver the same returns as you well know because you post your results every week and every month. But I'm still aiming to continue to trade zero DTE and add something like, you know, a quieter portion of the portfolio with those longer-term structures which supposedly would deliver, you know, less return but a more steady sort of income on a regular basis. This is what I've been trying to... And how do you think about allocating your capital to the different strategies? Do you have a pretty kind of strict criteria around how you do that or how do you think about, you know, position sizing in calendars versus zero DTE versus option selling versus portfolio margin and all the different things that you trade and it sounds like maybe you're still kind of working on that but to this point, how have you thought about allocating your capital? Yeah, correct. It's most definitely work in progress. You know, and this is also one of my weaknesses probably coming from my previous life and career you know, because the approach was, okay, you get into something, it doesn't matter how complex it is, you work on it, you analyze, you prepare and then when you're ready, you go live. And we're trading, I had to learn to... Yeah, you may do that the first time but you're never really going live because things change anyway. So it's more of a continuous evolving process. That's one of the things that I've been learning. Well, I'll tell you this tomorrow. I've been trading for 24 years and yeah, it's always evolving, trust me. And I mean, this is one of the things that I learned. I mean, not in theory because in theory I already knew it but I really learned it on my skin last year because at some point I said, you know, what is the point in putting all the time and energy in all these analysis for something which I know the next month, I will need to change anyway. Number one and number two, I really noticed looking at you because I knew you were trading for a long time and even the example I made about ZODT because when I joined, you know, your community, there was no ZODT. There was not even the channels called ZODT, right? And yet, you know, that was your, I don't know, 22nd or 23rd year and you were doing pretty well. Anyway, and now you are the ZODT which already last year, if I remember correctly, I think he was the main or the largest contributor to your BNL. That's correct. Which is something which at the beginning of the year, it didn't even existed in your plan. Yeah, I think I at the end of my 2022, I went back and watched my kind of end of year recap and part of my plan for 2023 was to continue exploring zero DTE. So it wasn't even earmarked as, you know, supposed to be the biggest part of my plan and end up being the biggest profit maker of the year. So, yeah. And my learning, I know I watched that video probably 20 times and my learning was really watching at how, not at the fact that it happened because it just happened, but the learning was looking at how you adapted to it. And clearly that was a skill that I didn't have, you know, because you could argue when something that you totally, you know, are not expecting happens. As long as it's positive, it's easy to adapt to it. Well, I'm not sure about it because it's something so dramatic and just adjusting to it pretty quickly. Because, you know, by the time of, I still remember every single month because we were all sort of in that journey together. And but by the time, by May, I think, because I remember you increase size gradually, specifically for power hour, that was the main or the core strategy at that time. And you increase size month after month after month. I still remember that month that you were comparing the result with the back test and it was nearly to the $10 close. I think it was $34,600, something like that. Maybe it was in March, maybe it was in April, I don't remember. But, you know, watching you and how you adapted to that, that really got me thinking because it basically went against anything that I had done before and all my approach up until that time, which was, you know, I go in full steam, fully focused. I will figure it out and then I will switch to execution. I mean, boy was I wrong. I mean, there is, you know, this one, two-step approach, it just doesn't exist. It's more about learning, yes, to recognize what's going on in the market and when strategies, you know, come in and out of favor and being able to switch between them and adapt to it rather than, you know, fighting it. And I've seen also a number of other people, including very experienced where they're struggling with that and then also having success with that. So I guess it's, you know, it may seem obvious because clearly you had learned that, you know, way earlier than I did, but I think that was one of the big learning of last year. Initially, I didn't like it. I really struggled because again, it just flew in the face of everything that I did before. I guess time helps with that because I'm getting used to that idea and I'm also getting better. For example, I can give you one example of that because which you also relate, if you remember that presentation I did last year, you know, in the mastermind group and at the beginning of that I was showing at the time, it was October. Seems like a completely different world from today, but in October we were trading the three tranches power hour, it was doing great. And at that time I was showing the fact that I was excluding French one on Thursdays. And I remember you asked me a question at that point in that call, which was how do you know when to bring it back? How do you decide when to bring it back? And of course, at that time I didn't have an answer because I was still partly in that mindset. But it stuck with me and I kept thinking about it. Now I think I have thought or at least considered the area that I want to explore for it. I haven't done it in practice yet because it would require some works and modeling some Excel and data crunching. But I think I found because I would like also to find a rigorous or at least a more formal way to decide when to bring in a new strategy. That's easy because we all do that. But then when to put it on hold, when to bring it back and this is something called I want to explore the area of forward work analysis or forward work optimization specifically used on that purpose. So and I think I will do it after my trip after my climbing trip because I really want to invest some time on it. And because now I had many, many months of evidence of the fact that the very same strategy literally goes in and out of favor based on what happens on the market. You know, if we are in a 20 to 25 VIX environment and a certain environment as opposed to a 12 VIX environment and a different environment. And in the end, even though we like to treat them all the time, the types of strategies that we use on zero and T, they I think there is a finite number of types because it's, you know, I don't want to make it too simple, but you know, it's either a constant you know, what we nowadays call the re-entry which we already tested with last year or, you know, exploiting the initial of the market open, you know, wall spike. That's one or the last hour of the day because they have to go down to zero or some variations of these. But at the end of the day with Delta Neutral this is what we're trying to do. And at the moment I'm staying away from any, you know, directional or like full credit spread or stuff. So, you know, the only looking at the Delta Neutral ones and the rest is just tweaking the various strategies. You know, over time we added what some people call target, you know, credit targeting like using fixed dollar amount instead of Delta's. But these are tweaks to those three main types of strategies. So finding something which will give me the confidence to say, you know, I don't have to think about it or I don't have to get my emotions involved in defining, you know, are these two losses enough to pull the flag or so having a process, a more formal process to define that. At least I want to work on it to see if I can find one that works. And for that I will need to do some data crunching and some testing to see if it really works. But I want to explore that, you know, forward work analysis area for that. So stay tuned. Yeah, no, I'm highly anticipating that because your analysis goes deeper than anything I've ever done myself. And it really, I mean, I would say you're, if we had to rank the most analytical people in our community, I'd say you'd be at the top. You know, I, in that mastermind channel I had presented kind of some thoughts that I wanted to do for my challenge portfolio, for my re-entries that I'm going to be compounding in that one account. And I, you know, I put that out there and you immediately came back with this very, well, maybe it was simple to you, but to me it was this highly detailed Monte Carlo simulation of projections and, you know, based on different risk factors and different factors that I was using what I might be able to expect from a high, low, you know, within a standard deviation, you know, all these metrics. By the way, I still look at that every week as I'm kind of looking at my performance, as I'm looking at my back tests, as I'm looking at my returns in my account. I always look at that to kind of just gauge, okay, here's, you know, it's right in line with, you know, the Monte Carlo statistics that you put out. So it's really cool to see somebody like you analyze things the way you do, because your brain works much different than mine does. And so anyway, I, all that to say, I, yeah. Which is a problem for me because I would like in some respect that my brain would work much like yours because I, you know, right now I wouldn't be able to trade, you know, the compounding portfolio that you're doing. So that is the main obstacle that I have right now. The analysis part is the easy side to me. But the execution and particularly getting for, you know, getting my mind to stay away and, you know, from execution, that's the main issue. Which clearly you have, you know, practiced a lot more and you've got a lot better on that. Yeah, practice is definitely a big part of that. But, you know, but that's, but that's also the beauty of our community, right? You know, we have people like you who think like you. We have people who think like me. We have people who think completely different than both of us. And, you know, we just all kind of feed off of each other and find little, little nuggets here and there that help us in our, in our trading journey. Yeah. And I think that the value of the community is, is undisputable. You know, in that sense. I mean, you can tell especially when you people join because they, especially now, because of course they are benefiting from everything that we have been doing for the last year. We think about zero DT is somebody that joins now. You know, they get access immediately to, to a wealth of information that it's there simply because a number of people, you know, including us have been putting a lot of time and energy and effort and in some cases money to, to create. And so in that sense, benefiting from that is, is great not to mention all the let's say the psychological support because that's important too. Right. Well, so Maro, you talked a little bit about kind of your daily routine, you know, being that the market doesn't open till 3.30 in the afternoon for you, you spend your morning doing, doing analysis. Tell us a little bit more about your routine. You get up. What is, what does Maro do right after that? Yeah. I mean, usually pretty early, typically summertime even earlier. I mean, of course, if I go out climbing, that's, that's the reason for it. And I like to climb early in the morning also because most of the cries I have in my area are West facing. So of course you want to climb in the shade in the summer. You don't want to do it. You know, in the sun and so you need to do it before the sun turns around in the morning. And in general, I am a morning person anyway. So if I had to choose, I would, I would choose the morning for all the time. I prefer doing stuff in the morning in general. And the first thing I do at 7 a.m. my time is when optional mega refreshes its data. So that would be mitten at your time. It's actually one of the two times. So at 7 a.m. it refreshes the regular back test data. And then at 8 a.m. it refreshes the one minute stop data. They are one hour apart. And which I know that. So it's, it's okay to run a back test at 705 because if, if the result was pretty clear, like it's either, you know, a profit target or a stop loss very clearly, then the intramine and stop data will not change it. If it's on the, you know, on the border between the two, then it might change if I rerun it after 8 when the intramine and data come in. But anyway, so this is what I do. I always check my strategies the day before, you know, with the, with the data. And that's something that I did. The, the main analysis and review is done on the weekend or at the end of the month or intramount. So I don't tend to do significant review during the weekend, which is a very good reason for it. It's mainly checking that my strategies and my life trading was in line with the back test. And if it, if it wasn't understanding why, which is why probably when you get up, you often see my posting in the community. If I found something. You know, worth mentioning or, or strange. So that's one thing. Then unless I have a specific topic to explore, I will go up doing my other things and I go back to trading about noon. My time. So that would be in three hours before the market opens. And then I check all the environment. So in schedule news, what's going on, what to expect. I check that against the strategy I have for that particular day. I like many people. I also have started by day of the week. You know, I, as you know, an option Omega, we have those tags, which I use. I build like a hierarchy of tags. So by selecting, for example, today's Wednesday a.m. I have different portfolios. So I select the portfolio I'm interested in, which is typically one that I'm using at that moment. And then within that portfolio, I have a tag, which I call, um, prod for production. Like this is my old corporate IT background. So the status prod is for the strategies that I am trading right now. And then I have a second status, which are let's say optional strategies, which I like a little less for some reason, or that are an alternative to the ones that I have in the main group. So in that sense, it's probably different from the plan that you have, which like you do this review, you select what to put in your plan and then you trade everything that is on that plan. Let's say that I have a variable plan. Again, this goes back to the point that I'm still partly work in progress. But you know, this is how I've been operating for the last few months. And so combining the news, the environment, you know, what the SPX is doing and you know, volatility and all the rest with my strategies. At least by one or two PM, my time, my define, okay, these are the ones that I'm going to trade today. There could be some of them, of course, I will need to wait very close to market open because of some filter needs to be checked. You know, we have many strategies with filters based on gaps. And so we will only know very close to the time. But other than that, you know, typically by two PM, I know what strategies I want to trade. And then I go out for a walk. Hopefully I don't bump into, I don't run into any dogs or anything and I come back and I get ready for for execution. And so unless my mind, you know, finds excuses not to trade something or to bail early or something like that, I will then trade those strategies that I have defining this process or nothing strange. And then I found that when market is open, I mean, like right now, while we are recording this market is open. So sometimes I can do other things, but I typically prefer to, you know, stay on the market. So I don't tend to do analysis or review or research when the market is open. So that is really confined to my morning or the weekend. When the market is closed anyway, because that way I can, I can focus my mind on it without, you know, any distraction. I see. And so going back to, you know, I talked, I asked a little bit about how you allocate capital, but then and we're only going to be able to scratch the service on the analysis that you do here. And by the way, if you're in our community, you can go to our trade plans channel where Maro presented last year his, his trade plan and he dives pretty deep into some analysis metrics that he uses. But just if you had to, you know, on option Omega, we've got, we've got win rate. We've got premium capture rate. We've got Mar, we've got drawdown, you know, we've got these different metrics. You, you go a lot deeper than that using different analysis. If you had to, if I asked you, Maro, your top two metrics, like what are the two biggest things that you look at to decide if that strategy makes it into your trade plan? Right. I don't mean to be difficult, but it's really not possible. I mean, it's just a bit more complex than that. And the reason is it really depends on the, on the strategy. I mean, I can give you my view on, on the metrics that option Omega provides because they are the same for everybody. But then if you ask me, which one do I really look at? That depends on the strategy. I had briefly touched on that during that presentation when I was talking about, you know, depending on what the edge of the strategy is. So for example, those strategies with a super high win rate and typically a very large stop loss, like the version of the DKS that we were using, at least some of the version of that strategy. Clearly the edge of the strategy is the win rate is the fact that it never, let's say, very, very rarely had has losses. So in that case, if you are back, back testing a strategy like that, clearly the win rate is super important. Why? Because it only takes one or two losses to typically, you know, turn that in what would many people call it a losing strategy, because you can't afford to have three or four losses. So monitoring that metric for that strategy is very important. On the other hand, if you look at some of your strategies that you're trading right now, that we generally call them as re-entries, I mean, some of them also, I mean, I'm not saying that the win rate for those strategies is less important. It's always important. But, you know, that strategy has a kind of a different kind of an edge because it works on larger, larger number of occurrences, let's say. And so winning every single one of those for almost all of them is not as important. And typically, you see them in the win rate and you see that with those strategies, the average winner tend to get higher and higher compared to the average loser to the point that the average winner is higher than the average loser. So in that sense, the win rate is less important. It's more important is the expectancy, which is the average portray, which is the average between those two. And you want to make sure that the average winner is, you know, continues to stay larger than the average loser. Because if you do that, you need a much lower win rate to be profitable. You need still need to watch the drawdown. So in that sense, it depends on what the edge of the strategy is. The other point is that it also depends on the frequency because if you have a daily strategy, then you can afford to go much more into those large numbers and let the probabilities out. If you have a strategy which has a ton of filters, I mean, other than the fact that it's probably, you know, overfitted anyway, and so that's not a good thing. But it typically has a smaller sample size, which is not good. Number one. And then number two, even if you want to play this large occurrences, because some people look at this strategy, which is let's say a weekly strategy because it only sets up once a week, especially if you go by day of the week and you only have it for Mondays, for example, then you can only trade it once a week, which means not even 50 times a year, let alone all the holidays and maybe he has some filters. So even if you go back five years in your back test and you still come up to a decent sample size in real trading, you know, if you need suppose that this is a high wind rate, which means if you take a loss, it will wipe out, I don't know, six or seven wins for a weekly strategy like that. It means that you have to be comfortable with a two month drawdown even if the strategy comes back because it doesn't give you enough occurrences. If you do that on a strategy that you trade daily, then all of a sudden you have five times more opportunities and with a reentry that's it's daily on steroids because you have potentially five a day. So it really depends on the strategy. That's why it's not it's not that simple to answer that question. Maybe another point about speaking of option omega about the Mar and the maximum drawdown and of course the Mar ratio is simply the you know, the compound on your growth rate divided by the maximum drawdown and I don't have a problem with the compound on your growth rate other than people should be aware that if like you're doing right now, if you're trading by compounding, then it's very interesting for you. If you're trading with this contract. Yeah, I'm not saying don't look at it. You can look at it. But again, keep it into perspective because that percentage is probably nothing to do with what you would be doing even in the best case scenario. If you're not compounding number one number two, the big problem they have is with the max drawdown because as important as it is the max drawdown is one data point in the entire sample size. You know, if it's a daily strategy that is the value of one day only and again, I'm not saying it's not important because you could argue is the max pain point of that strategy. But you know, if you have two strategies, you know, like A and B and one has a you know, a max drawdown of 20% but then every other drawdown is less than 5% and then you have another strategy we has a max drawdown of 15% but more often than not is near 12 or 13% all the time. Then which one of the two you would want to trade? You know, the first one for sure because you know, if you have max drawdown as one data point, which is what it is because this one point is much less predictive for the future. He has much less predictive power because it's just one point. However, you know, nasty that is, but it's only one data point. So what I do not for every strategy because I have a sort of an informal for now process whereby I tend to look at the back test and as a first step and that tells me whether I'm interested in investing more time in it. If I am, I take it to the second step, which is downloading the data into Excel and I do the rest into Excel and something that I do all the time is calculating what I call the average drawdown, which to me is much more interesting than the max drawdown. And the average and when you say average drawdown is that based on a a dollar figure or a time or both? So I do both. I look at the how it develops over time. I simply use a chart in Excel. So I look at the curve and that curve as two moving averages, but you know, looking at the curve itself is sufficient. And I also do it on a dollar average. So basically I calculate all the drawdown and if you run the strategy in the portfolio feature in option omega and download that you don't even need to. I mean, the option omega does it for you and then you can take the average and if you want to do it in my view in a better way, you can take the average in a moving period like you can calculate the average every month depending on the frequency of the strategy and how many data points you have in it. You can calculate the average in every period and you basically plus like a like a moving average and you want to see, you know, where those drawdowns typically sit. It I mean, I have seen some strategies which tend to have one very large, maybe two very large drawdown meaning to two trades. So if it's a daily one, it's two days but then everything else is way below that. So ruling out the strategy because of that max drawdown only, you know, and I think you mentioned this point a few times when you tell people, you know, go through the trade log. That is one way to also check that right because by looking at that you also look at the size of the losses and you know, this may be an informal way of doing it but still I guess when you go through the trade log you don't only look at the wins you all you look at the losses and you can tell, you know, if there is maybe two or three which are very large and then the other 20 which are very small, you know, maybe that could trigger some, you know, second thinking because the max drawdown is not as important as you thought it was, right? It depends on the strategy. So for example, you know, a strategy with a trading stop clearly can have much more variation than a strategy with a fixed stop because, you know, if the stop works with the fixed stop then it cannot be any more than that. And so the spread or the standard deviation of the drawdown shouldn't be, you know, as dramatic. I mean, still you can have many stops, you know, in one period and less in another. So you still want to look at that, you know, the distribution of drawdowns. But again, not to make it too complex. My point is that when you look at the max drawdown, just remember is one data point. So either, you know, do as I do or just looking at a trade lock is important to really get a feel, you know, how those losses typically look like, how they cluster because, you know, those clusters are what give, you know, what give you a drawdown. And so it could be, especially in those batches with a small sample size, which are bad anyway. But if you still want to look into those, you know, it could be that maybe one or two or three individual losses are the ones that cause that are causing the so-called max drawdown. And maybe it's worth to even check what was going on in those days. You know, so, yeah. Well, I asked you that question for a couple of reasons. One, I really wanted to kind of hear your perspective because I know you, you think through these things more and differently than other people. But the other reason is because it's something that I've been thinking about for myself a lot. And what I've come to the realization at least right now, at this specific point in time is for me, you know, I asked you what would be the two biggest two top metrics and I've come to the conclusion for me that it is yes, max drawdown is is, you know, there's a there's a max pain point that all that all of us have, right? And so, so even though it's just a data, you know, a single data point, I definitely look at that and I would say that's number two for me. Number one that I've that I've realized also has to do with drawdown and it's the duration of that drawdown. Oh, yeah. And and and so to me, you know, win rates, great. You know, I want to win a lot, but I can I've I've gotten to the point where I feel like I can handle a lower win rate strategy as long as it's profitable and specifically going back to my number one metric that I think is for me is as long as it gets out of a drawdown fairly quickly, you know, I've talked a lot about over the last few months, how I, you know, in one of my accounts, I've gone through three different drawdowns this year, right? It's like the first couple of weeks going down and then I got to dig my way up goes down, dig my way up, goes down, dig my way up. And and so, you know, a two week getting out of a drawdown within two weeks, that's pretty reasonable, right? And so, but if it was a more sustained, longer drawdown, you know, just from a psychology standpoint, that just starts to wear on you, wear on you, wear on you. And so for me, that's that's kind of what I've come to the conclusion is that yeah, there's a max pain point from a max drawdown standpoint, but more importantly for me, it's the duration of how long that drawdown lasts. Yeah, absolutely. And this is related to the average drawdown because by looking at least when I look at that chart that I have in Excel, it also tells me exactly that, you know, when you get into a drawdown, how fast you get out. If you remember in those Monte Carlo simulation, I always also calculated and I call it exactly that, the drawdown duration. So in that sense, that is important. There are some metrics out there. Some people call it the the drawdown recovery ratio. But, you know, these are always precisely to address that. So it is, I don't want to say it's not as important, but it's definitely more important to know how long you're going to stay in it even more than how big that is. Because if the strategy has a positive expectancy, you will hardly get a 100% drawdown. It's just not possible mathematically. So, you know, it can vary quite a bit. But, you know, even if you had to know that you could get down to the 25%, yeah, you could size your account, you know, to cover for a 25% max drawdown, meaning that you're not going to get a margin call. But if that drawdown, you touch it for one day and then you bounce back and you know that that is very, very likely to happen. And then the real drawdown, the one that happened all the time, you're going to stay within 5%, that's much more important, as you said. And because in real life, you know, it's like that. The other point, and I think you had an entire podcast to talk about it some time ago, is of course the so-called sequence of return risk, because it also depends, and I'm seeing some backtests shared in the community that, you know, they had a terrible drawdown, but if you look at the curve, just by looking at the graph, you can see it took place right at the beginning. So, a 20% drawdown, yeah, it's still a 20% drawdown, but if it happens on the first week of trading, it's way less painful. It's painful psychologically, but in terms of your account, it's way smaller than if it happened at the end of the curve. Oh, right, right, right, right. Right? And probably if it happens at the beginning, maybe you are still, you know, tweaking it, you're still getting into it. You also need to be careful at the period you select, because when we say at the beginning of the curve, who defines the beginning? It's simply the date that you pick for your backtest. If you pick a year earlier, well, there you go. You have a different curve and a different drawdown. So, you know, all of these, they really have to be looked at, you know, knowing really how they are calculated. You know, some people look at the sharp ratio, for example, which is superior, you know, to the, to the ma ratio precisely because the max drawdown is only one data point that ignores all the others. But in the end, I think as long as, you know what they mean and how to read them, they can all be, they can all be useful. But as a category of metrics, I have also migrated much more to, let's say the drawdown family of metrics from the wind rate because clearly the wind rate helps a lot the psychology of trading because typically, you know, you will complain less if you have a win, even if it's a smaller win as opposed to having a loss. But then is when you do your review at the end of the month and you realize that, you know, all the money you left on the table, that's the time that you realize probably I should have, you know, I should have used a different strategy. So in that sense, the wind rate is not the top one, but again, the wind rate is one ingredient. You know, that goes along with expectancy and with a drawdown because the wind rate and expectancy is just the mechanics of the strategy. They really tell you if this strategy is going to work, it's going to make money or not on paper. The drawdown family of metrics tell you whether you will be able to sustain that when we are trading them off. Yeah, I think I think what you need to come up with tomorrow, I'm going to put this on you. Can you come up with a mental drawdown metric for us? Like, I think it's going to be like an accumulation of all these different metrics and then there's going to be one number and you're like, this is my max mental drawdown. Can you, you think you can come up with that for us? Yeah, I don't think I have the plan yet. You and me cable. My brain. But yeah, I mean, but I think that's what it comes down to you, right? It's like, what can you handle? It's not it's not just the metrics. It's just it's not just the numbers. It's what can you personally mentally handle? Whether it's duration or dollar amount or whatever, right? I mean, that that's kind of what it and it ends up coming down to if I have to sum it up, which is also my partial conclusion because I'm sure that in six months, I will probably have a above again as I have done in the last few years. But as of now, you know, I would sum it up like this. You have to do the work. You have to look at those metrics. You have the objective metrics like understanding, you know, expectancy win rate, the edge of the strategy. Why they show you those numbers. Then looking at the drawdown as the sustainability metrics because that is what makes it sustainable for you psychologically, you know, to your account, etc. And then I think the third piece is really what I was talking about earlier about the forward work optimization, because at least for me, that would give me the confidence to or let's say that would give me something to answer the question. Is the strategy still viable the way it is? You know, is it now the right time to pull the plug put in a hold or maybe to bring it back after I put in a hold two months ago? And this is that piece of the work that I want to do, which in my view is still the missing piece because of course, for example, you are doing a way better job. Certainly than me in terms of execution and keeping your mind out of the way. But you're also confronted with the same question and then you do this in your monthly review when you decide, you know, I should, you know, what should I keep? What should I put in hold? What should I change? And I also do that. I just wish especially when it comes to, I mean, adding a strategy is easier. I would argue because we look at it. Clearly we like it. We understand the metrics and we decide to add it. But deciding when what went to pull the plug on one that we are using, that's much harder. And this is why I want to, you know, I'm doing it as you are doing it. But if we had something a bit more scientific, you know, for lack of a better word, you know, some sort of process to do that. In the end, again, everything that we do is backward looking because we cannot predict the future. There is no stat that can tell you where your count is going to be in six one time. No, but you know, it's important to have that confidence just like again, I still remember the brief moment that precisely a year ago when we were trading zero VT strategies and for example, I didn't have option Omega yet. And I wonder how could I possibly do that? Yeah, it happened for a brief period of time. So it's a constantly evolving for the better, I hope process. And so if I had that, you know, third piece, which I can add to the analysis to evaluate a strategy, something that is a constant review, for example, a monthly review of a strategy. And ideally automatically tells me at least it speeds out, you know, the metrics based on the threshold that I have set up because at the end of it is not universal. It depends as always to your account size, your, you know, preferences, your tolerance to pay and all of that, but you stick all of that into a model. And then the model based on that tells you, yeah, this strategy is still working. So even if your mind is complaining, you're supposed to keep trading it or okay, now you can put it in hold because, you know, these three metrics confirm that it's time to put it in hold is not performing anymore. So I think this would nicely, you know, close the circle as of now, but I'm sure I will find some other missing pieces going forward. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that would that would be ideal. A lot of variables there. But but yeah, that would that would definitely be helpful if there was a specific criteria we could follow to pull the plug on a strategy for sure. Yeah, and that I mean, I can maybe spend like one minute on that, you know, that forward walk analysis. I mean, you can you can Google it. I mean, it's and there are some platform out there, which already have it. One of the reason why I've been waiting a little bit is I realize the amount of work that needs to go in it because I will do it in in Excel and I can automate as much as possible with macros, but it's still a ton of work. There are some platform. I mean, the best one I know is called strategy quant which doesn't have options. It has all the other markets, but not options. The part I'm interested in that is is not the whole thing because again, my purpose would be to evaluate the strategy. Yeah, so the way it works is like this. Imagine you run a back test, which means you have you have to have access to some historical data. Right now, if you have a new idea, you're going to option omega and you would back test. I don't know. For example, since May 22. I think option Omega has data since 2015. 15 or 13. So you have that period of data and you select which one is your period you want to test with that and you will run one back just right looking at the entire sample when you define whether it's the last year or two years or whatever with the forward forward work analysis. What you do is you take your sample and you divide it into two sub samples. One is called the in sample and the other one is called the outer sample and the idea is in your in sample, which is a smaller sample. You do exactly the same thing that we do today with option Omega and you define your strategy. And suppose and that sample has to be smaller than the entire one. So suppose if we start as a convention from May 22 suppose that my in sample window is three months. So you take May to July and you use those three months of data to define your strategy. You come up with a back test that you're happy with. Yeah. And then what you do you test that strategy against the outer sample, which for example is the following month. And there is a whole body of literature about the ratio between the two and one to three. It's usually work. You can even have three years in one year depending on how much data you have. And it's a way to do some sort of a forward testing. So imagine that you're sitting at the 31st of July 22. You have a strategy and now you start trading it. You're doing this backwards, right? You are trading your strategy on the next one month and you see how it performs and then you have a sort of metrics to compare the actual performance with which is the outer sample with what you had defined in your in sample. And then the idea I'm going really fast because I don't want to talk for an hour about it and the idea is to repeat that and you have a sliding window and then there are metrics like efficiency metrics and other metrics and you basically see every time you do that because when I say you do it again, it means you go ahead by one month and then you redo your in sample, which in that case it will be from June to August 22. And you make a map with exactly the same strategy or it may be slightly different. Maybe the stop loss may be different. Maybe you are the filter, whatever. And you repeat that and by doing that, you're basically comparing how the new strategy would perform in every cycle. Okay, and you can record the performance and then at the end of all your run, which would be up to today in terms of historical data, then you can build your equity curve and you see if by working in this way, your equity curve looks better than the one that actually took place if you had traded that strategy as it was at the beginning. I see the only thing that we do today. Yeah, so we don't have this process of going back. I mean, of course, we rerun the back test and we may tweak it, but we don't know what would have happened if we did that in the last two or three or four years. Right, gotcha. We just go by trial and error. This by combining this approach with the metrics that go with it, it will tell you yes, by doing this, you would have a higher or lower performance. That's one type of metrics that will come out of it. The other type of metrics would be if you have a certain efficiency, which is typically the ratio between the out and in sample performance. If it falls below a certain value, that probably means something has changed and that strategy is maybe is the time to put it on hold until that efficiency goes back up. So this is just, yeah, I realize it probably was, I won't be too fast, but it's not super simple to explain. But like I said, I want to spend some time on it and see what comes out. I don't know what the outcome will be. That's why I want to do, you know, the test and see whether it can help or not. Well, I thought you explained it very well, but yeah, I'd be interested to see what you find out about that. I mean, definitely having a stable process driven methodology of doing it as opposed to just, I don't think I want to trade this anymore because it's not doing well. You know, I think I definitely think there's a huge benefit in that. So yeah, I'd love to see what you come up with on that. All right, Maro, now for the fun part. Maro is an avid mountain climber, rock climber. And so Maro, if you had to put trading and rock climbing side by side, what gets the edge? What's number one here? Well, if I could get paid to climb, that would be better. Gotcha, okay. All right, so tell us about what you do. Like how often do you climb? What kind of, I don't know, what do you, I guess, is it skill level of the different types of things that you climb and then I want to talk about parallels to rock climbing and trading and some of the things that you've found between those two? Yeah, so I started climbing relatively late because it's only been 10 years and you know, as you know, I'm not, I'm not 25. But you know, I'm not the only one, you know, climbing has become much more popular. As you know, I don't know if you know, but it was the last edition of the Olympics for the first time as a sport. Not now. Yeah, that was the first time and is growing in popularity. You know, you can look at climbing gyms, at least in Europe that, you know, they're really growing. I do personally sport climbing. You know, there are different types of climbing. So what I do is it's basically on rock. You can do it also in plastic indoor, but when I do most of my activities outside and I only use indoors or training. Yeah. And sport climbing means I go on a crag, which is some sort of a rock face. It doesn't have to be on a mountain, although I have lots of mountains nearby, but and there are crags also on the mountain, but it doesn't have to be as long as you have a rock face of some kind. And sport climbing means that those routes are bolted, meaning that somebody else has already stick some permanent nails in it. I see. And so when you climb, you stick your quick drawl when you put your rope in and you don't have to worry about you know, bringing like a hammer and nails. They are already in the rock. I see. And I mentioned this as opposed to another type of climbing which is called trial climbing trial is short for traditional because that's done on a face of rock in which there is nothing and so you have to place your protection as you go along. That's a bit more dangerous. It's it's traditional. So it's like you follow some sort of line on the rock without, you know, modifying it. Whereas what I do is called sport climbing because it's more focused on the on the performance, which is why typically the golden sport climbing is climbing harder, which means pushing the grade, you know, the rock climbing rate, which is a scale with numbers. And typically what most people want to do include it is to push the grade, you know, higher and higher, which is a constant battle with your mind and your body because you're really pushing it to your limits and people say to your genetic limit and there are wonders you can do with training, but at some point there is a limit, you know, that you cannot go over. I haven't found mine yet. So I'm still technically pushing it. Although the last time I pushed was in 2022 and then I had some sort of a little decline, but I haven't given up on it yet. Let's see if I can push it even harder and in fact, as I mentioned earlier, I have another climbing. I like to do some climbing trips in this case. I'm going to Sardinia. I've done into Spain or Greece in other places in Europe. Just always for the in the search of good rock and good places to climb and you know, in terms of the parallel is and I will let you decide because the main let's say I can sum up climbing, you know, to someone that is interested, for example, if I had to explain how it is like and what you need to do it and to succeed. It's really some people call it the magic triangle of climbing. It's really three aspects or three skill or skill sets you need and it's really technique strength and mind. The technique is easy to understand is what you learn, especially the beginning in the courses. Again, some people are more natural than others, but there are techniques and some positions and some movements which you need to learn because it's amazing because when we are born as a young kid, I mean, I know you had kids. So if you remember, when we are really young, we naturally have the ability to climb. It's called instinctive climbing. If you put a very young kid, even if they don't walk yet, if you put it on something they are just scrolling, it's just a natural instinct to use your hands and your entire body. Then we lose it when we grow up. So typically people learn to start climbing unless some very lucky ones, if you are born in the right family, maybe a family of climbing, etc. Otherwise, typically people start as adults to learn climbing, so you have to learn those things because you don't have them normally as an adult. And so the technique is all of that. So knowing what you're supposed to do and at the beginning you have to learn it and then it becomes more and more natural to you. The strength component I think is pretty obvious. You know, we were going up against gravity. So it's really important, especially for your upper body to be strong and I'm really trying to reframe myself because I could talk literally for 20 hours straight on this topic. But there are many kinds of strengths, but basically your finger strength, I would say is the top one, especially for higher grade at the beginning is more about your bigger muscles, arms and shoulders. But as you progress because those larger muscles, they tend to come with you pretty quickly. It's easier to pray and then typically because your holes become smaller, so finger strengths become the key type of strength that you need and it takes years. I mean, in my case, it keeps going up. It's been 10 years. I'm 55 now and I am way stronger this year than I was last year and last year I was way stronger than a year before. So in that sense, it keeps improving and I can measure I can and I do measure it. You know, I use devices to measure the number of you know, kilos or pounds that you're holding etc. So it's it's not just an impression. You know, I do have data for it. But then the third component you need to succeed in climbing is I call it the mind or the mental side of it, which you will be probably not surprised to hear that that has been my personal personally for me has been the main limiting factors at least for the last year and a half. So basically, I would have technically the strength to climb at least one and a half or even two grades harder than I do. But if your mind doesn't cooperate and you don't and that is that a is that a fear based thing like so that includes all the fears for sure that those are the easy ones like fear of falling fear of moving fear of letting go, fear of getting injured. There are different kinds of fears depending on the rock you're climbing on the position, you know, what you have underneath you. So climbing is very safe if you know what you're doing falls typically as very safe. Of course, you need to know what you're doing because they're not safe everywhere. The main risk of injury. It doesn't come from the fall itself. It comes from when you're falling is you know, you're bumping into something underneath you. That's where the risk is, which is why you need to assess every every route every location you are. But the problem is letting it go. So or if you want to let it go or you know, the way it works is that you're supposed to push at your limit and then if the move doesn't work or you know, your hand slips or your foot slips then you fall, which is safe. But if your mind doesn't want to let you fall, then you automatically prevents you to push at your limit. And if you don't push at your limit, you cannot do certain grades because it's your limit. So you need to push through it. There are other other ways that your mind can get in the way. So there's fear base, but also and I've noticed. I mean, when I started training, you know, especially the first two months, I was transitioning from my previous lives to my current life. There was lots of uncertainty. I was in a way very happy and I was in a way it was everything was so uncertain and new and I could see it and it's amazing because when I started climbing, I liked the fact that my mind would be empty when I was in the rock. So finally it's like something you achieved via meditation. For example, when you can finally quiet down your mind because you're fully what you're doing in that moment. That doesn't happen anymore. Fortunately, I still keep thinking even when I'm climbing unfortunately and that means that if I have something going on in my mind, I take it with me in climbing and if I am pushing it, you know, just the move doesn't come out back to the point of strength. One of the strength that we train, which we call max strength technically is called recruitment, which is basically a neuromuscular skill. In other words, it's not only training the muscle fibers because for example, the muscles of your fingers are really tiny. They are in the forearm and the forearm doesn't get bigger. So how do you improve your strength is by improving your recruitment, which is literally means training your body when you want, when you want to pull really hard to activate more motor units, which means they will activate more fibers because our bodies are genetically evolved to save energy, you know, to use the lowest number of muscle fibers in every situation. So to train your body to start using more and more of them, which is the way to improve your strength, you really need to give it this kind of stimulus, which is as much neurological as it is muscular. In other words, the signal that comes from your brain has to be really, really strong, which I found if you have something in your mind, it doesn't happen. You simply don't pull as hard. That's just just the way it is. And there are other phenomenons like the last example I'm going to give you is called the people call it the Elvis leg. You know, from Elvis Presley, you know, remember when he was dancing. So sometimes you're simply climbing, you get to a position and then your legs begins to shake. You don't want them to shake and sometimes they shake so hard that they cause, they may cause your foot to slip because it's literally shaking, you know, a lot and sometimes when it happens to me, I kind of try to hit it and stop shaking and it's just amazing how your brain gets into it. And I'm just giving you all of that because as I understand that you're not a lot into climbing. So maybe you didn't know, you know, these things. No, I've never heard the Elvis leg. Yeah, it's very real. It's very real, especially if it happens to you. But even when you watch somebody happen, it just, you know, at some point, your brain and this is your mind playing all those tricks with you to bring you back in the comfort zone because it's a constant battle to you want to get out in your mind, especially the amygdala, which is that, you know, the backside of your the Asian part of our brains, which is doing his job, which is to prevent us to do those right because we are supposed to be, I mean, there is a reason because we have fears of heights and fear of falling because typically it's dangerous. So your brain is doing its job, but we want to do it because it's part of what we do. And so there are this kind of stuff going on. But so, you know, those are the three components and I see a lot of parallels to training because the technique to me is really the theory, the stuff you need to know to do trading, you know, think about the knowledge that we have to have without it. You simply cannot even start strength. You could, you could argue that is the equivalent of physical strength and trading. That could be your funds, your capital. You need to have something. Otherwise you can't, you know, like, like, you know, incline me if you can hold on, then we can talk forever, but if you can't even hold on to a certain hold, then go back, do some trading and come back when you're stronger. Otherwise you simply can't do it. And then even when you have capital, which is Frank, even when you know what to do, all the knowledge, all the technicalities of it, then you still have to execute. And this is where your mind could get in the way. You have to, you have to execute and the big one that comes to my mind was you've got to manage risk, right? I mean, like climbing eight, like I always, I always think about your, your rope or your harness or your clip or whatever. That's your stop loss, right? If that stop loss fails, you might be going down and it's, you got to be able to, to manage that risk as well. But yeah, you need to do things properly because let's say it's a, it's a dangerous environment. So when I said it's very safe, it is, if you know what you're doing, which means if you apply all your stop losses correctly, if you don't do any finger mistake, et cetera, in climbing, then yeah, but it's a dangerous environment. So you're really playing with, with danger. And, and if you make a mistake, that could be very costly. So the risk is high. Another. Yeah. And it, you know, it's funny. It comes down to fear and greed too, right? You've got the fear that you talked about the greed portion would be, you know, trying to get up to get up there too fast, trying to push yourself too hard, you know, so that the whole fear and greed could play into your decision making of, of the. Yeah, yeah, it's very easy, but the greed, yeah, I never thought of that, but I think you're right because that could translate to, for example, getting into a hard climb too soon without doing the warm up or not stopping when it's time to stop. A lot of, there is a lot of literature that shows that a lot of injuries, they tend to take place in the last route of the day. When you probably were too tired and you should have called the day already and instead you wanted to do it one more go and that's when the pulley and your finger, you know, snatched or whatever. So in that sense, yes. And in a sense, this is what I did last Saturday because with this bed, whether we had, it was all wet. That crack was only two dry routes and one okay was easy, but the other one I knew it was too hard and so I shouldn't have done it, but it was the only dry one. And, you know, climbers are, you know, especially if it rains for more than a week, then we tend to get really nervous. We need to do something which is another parallel, is the formal of climbing, you know, and we really have to do something, including get on a route that I shouldn't have gotten to. And so I had this little flapper on my finger because of that. Interesting. Well, Mauro, that was fun. Anything else you want to hit on to the audience before we say goodbye? No, I think we covered it. I guess the main learning is probably what not to do because again, I'm still really going through that journey. But, you know, I think I have learned a lot from other people and not only what they do that works, you know, you include it, but also as I mentioned earlier, just by looking at how you adapted to, you know, getting on into a new field and then by the end of the same year it became the largest contributor to your profits within a year. That's just to me. It's an amazing, you know, skill to be able to adapt, you know, so fast, you know, so well without any problems. And so by watching what other people are doing, including watching their mistakes, because that's also, you know, good part of learning, especially when you can see them. You've probably taken some mistakes for me and gotten rid of those two, hopefully. I don't know. I've already had too many already on my own, but worry about that. Well, this has been great. I think, you know, I love having you in our community. I love the contributions that you've made. I know myself and a lot of other people have learned a ton from you and just you're always helpful in jumping in and answering people's questions and the amount of, you know, detail you shared in your mastermind session on analysis and things like that. It's just been, it's been really great to and it's been really great to watch you grow to right from the time that you came in to where you are now, just from a mental standpoint from a, you know, just a skills standpoint. I mean, it's been pretty awesome. So love having you in the community and look forward to many years ahead as we continue to push forward and get better and better together here. Thank you. All right, Maro. Take care and Maro's handle in the community is at Maro. So if you're in there, you, you know him, if not say hello and look forward to seeing you back in the community, Maro. All right. Thanks Eve. All right. Take care.