 I'm like in the zone so so I knew it was coming and you know in one month I had a friggin huge two million dollar month and I didn't feel shit Alex. What's going on guys we're here with a special episode of the after hours podcast. We have probably one of the most badass options traders out there, Shane Loochie. Someone that we've been excited to talk to so thank you for coming on my man we really appreciate it I appreciate you guys having me so my question is Loochie a lot of people know you as the badass options trader who moves millions and millions worth of size but I don't think a lot of people know about how you got started no you were flipping early on and then you went into the prop trading world so can you give us quick intro on how you got started yeah man I started man I had my I had my daughter when I was 20 20 or 21 I think it was 20 but it was just you know it was a wake-up call man it was a wake-up it was a wake-up call of course you have a you know you have a daughter at a very early age again and it's a girl too so you know I was I was flipping as you were saying right just buying and selling tickets which by the way that hustle is still alive and booming after COVID you know so COVID now is ending and everybody's paying ridiculous money I don't know if you've seen what happened to the to the ticks as soon as Messi got as soon as Messi got signed to Miami I don't know if you saw I don't know if you saw way more than that way more than that it was absolutely ridiculous Taylor Swift too and everything so the money is coming back to the market so I was always a flipper in college and everything and I had my daughter and I went to get a real job this is my only real job that I ever had and real job kind of related to my degree in in college right my degree in college was finance which they didn't teach you anything about finance in reality it was just all corporate theory kind of stuff and and you know you never really got to apply any of it so I ended up doing financial analysis at at this medical company called for sent his medical care and I was there for like nine months and during the nine months that I was there at the PlayStation threes came out I think it was the three of the four and I made like four I made 40 grand flipping that and my salary at the at the company was like 40 grand to I made that shit in a weekend and I was like what the fuck am I doing at this horrible place looking at the same spreadsheet every day I was just I gotta get the hell out of here and I go online I go on Craigslist you guys remember freaking Craigslist and there was a there there's a job posting there for like an equities trader it was a hundred percent comp a hundred percent commission kind of thing and I walk into the office it was a prop trading firm in New Hampshire in Salem New Hampshire and I'll never forget this the first day I walk in I mean it's it's 25 kids the oldest kid there was probably like 26 it's one kid in the office he made like 15 grand and bought everybody pizza I'm just sitting there like what the fuck is going on here everybody had like two monitors and everybody was just watching level two and you know it was just such a weird vibe and I was just like hmm this looks this feels like home to me you know so I sat there for like a year trying to figure out what the hell was going on I didn't know what was going on and then you don't really get much help at these prop firms from back in the day there's no it's not much education you just kind of learn by doing which by the way is the best education one could argue that is the best education and that's it man after that I just I knew it was there I knew the money was there because you see it every day you see it every day every trader who who is break even or trying to make money like you know the money is there that's why you keep coming back every single day you can't you can't avoid it it's right there I mean we just saw Tesla go up 15 freaking points I go to lunch I go to lunch today it was trading 264 we go to lunch I come back and markets starting to come back up and it runs a friggin 10 points into the clothes those options alone on the weeklies there's a double right there you know so the money's there all day you just got to figure out how to grab it and then how to keep it right so this the two difficult parts so it took me about a year and a half to kind of figure out how things are kind of moving and then 2008 happened the crash happened and I'm I'm like a kid in a candy store man I'm just short I'm just come in every day short Goldman Sachs short JP more short everything and I'm just printing money every single day so so you know it took a while it took a while to figure things out and then it takes a while for you to figure out what your style is and what you're good at and like what kind of markets you trade well better than others you know so that's kind of the short story of it back in these prop trading days this guy that made 15 grand you know pizza cost him probably a hundred bucks so what do you do with the rest of it have you seen these prop trading days it was kind of like Wild Wild West you know so like are there any crazy things you saw whether big party and fun this that I mean remember this was this was still back in the day right these were all in New York guys so they're still had that they still had that vibe to them right so I remember I remember coming in one day and there'd be friggin they'd be strippers in there you know everybody you know bunch of people had a good day or something like that they did it you know everybody would go out you know yeah there was a lot of that obviously it wasn't as excessive I mean you know we weren't popping Colotta pins or whatever the hell that dude was doing in the movie I met him by the way I met I met him too after he got out I met him too in New York and you know you you realize where all those stories came from you you really see where all those stories came from and then after living in New York I lived in New York for good five years running a hedge fund and running a shop right down on Wall Street we would meet a lot of we would meet up with a lot of the HFT guys a lot of the back office guys a lot of the friggin brokers that were there because they loved my options flow right some of the some of the brokers were having their whole salaries off of my off of my off of my executions so they would always it was still that time they would always take us out to dinner they would take us out to dinner once a month man fanciest restaurants down in the city you know so that shit still existed now you don't see that stuff anymore you know you don't you really don't see that stuff anymore we're all this woke culture shit nobody wants to do their kind of stuff and whatever what would you say it's like the thing that like kind of like separated you from the pack you know you start off in this like prop firm you know there's like 20 guys like and you're probably the most successful person coming out of that you know so like definitely so like what do you think you know it's a great question it's a great question I asked myself this question because I was like you know you're always thinking why you right because at the end of the day you have that you have that thing swirling around in your head like am I really that special like no you know you ain't that special you know what I mean but what is it about what is it about that person that makes them the one versus versus everybody else in that office there was 40 guys right and they had they were 95% short traders by the way so they would in the error before they changed the uptick rule and again I don't know if you want to give a preface Alex here on the uptick rule but the uptick rule basically just states that you can't you can only short on the uptake which meant if if Tesla's trading 275 74 right now you can't just hit a bid and just get in and short something you got to sit there on the offer and a tick higher right so if the last tick is 74 you got to sit you want to put your short at 75 and hope somebody buys you out you know what I mean that's the only way you can get short now imagine a world where everybody on the street had to play by the rule and then all the prop shops had a tool to bypass the uptake rule right so that's how 94 95% of their trades were all short because all they were doing were looking for aggressive shorts that were sitting on the offer that had to sit on the uptick and they had a bypass and they would beat the shit out of a small capital illiquid stock get the short to step down and then cover right into the short right but now imagine 40 guys in an office doing that shit on a 10,000 or a 20,000 share stepper and the whole office has 50,000 shares has 50,000 shares they smoke it down a point now everybody's got to get out right and the first schmuck in the office whoever hits that button first he's getting thrown out the window man he's getting thrown out the window because as soon as that short disappears the whole thing runs back up to points now the whole office is fucked so that was the game that these guys played before the uptake rule got got got changed and I think I was the only one who learned how to go long in that office I was the only one who learned how to go long shit because I saw the writing on the wall I was like yo y'all this number one the tool to use it was so expensive to use it was like it was like some of these hard to borrow locates where you see like 300% 400% or something like that it was it was you had to pay to use this thing so if you were gonna pull it out you better be you know there was a cost to it there was a there was a cost to it you have to pay that cost no matter what and you know I kind of saw the writing on the wall so I kind of figured out alright let's figure out how to go long stuff too and I don't know man I was just hungrier than everybody else man I think that's the answer to your question man I was just fucking hungrier than everybody else how old are you back then when I was 23 24 maybe to yeah 24 at the time and bro I spent four hours a night four hours to five hours a night I would print out the trades from the head traders and I would go back on the tape I'd be like all right you know why did why did they get in why did they get out and I do that for four hours every single night I did that for a year straight I got to the office at six and I left at 10 o'clock I didn't fucking talk to anybody I came home I went to sleep and I went back to work bro so and you're the kid too and I had a kid too you know I mean so I don't know man I think I was just hungrier than everybody else bro I think that's yeah I think a question and something that's I think obvious about you is one you're a hustler and I think that you were kind of born to figure shit you're gonna figure it out no matter what yeah you know you just tinker because you know the game is there you know there's a game right in front of you just gotta figure it out was it was it hard for you being this much of like a hustler and someone like this while having a kid at home did it put pressure because you seem like someone who sees his opportunity quick and you're gonna take advantage of a big trade or anything like that was it hard knowing you had a kid at home and it's obviously it's money there's money on the line so yeah man I think the pressure but I think that pressure and again God bless the people that I had around me right I mean my daughter's mother is a freaking soldier man that the woman will take care of everybody without bitching and complaining the woman is amazing you know I mean so so props to her props to my one of my really good friends is still a great friend to this day he he was going through a divorce at the same time that I was like trying to figure this shit out and dude it's he was he was miserable and you know he let me stay in his crib for free bro he let me stay in his crib for free so I didn't have to pay rent you know I wasn't living it with my with my daughter's mother at the time and there was so much pressure on my from my father to perform to because he had lost he had lost you know all his cash during the crash and you know he was about to retire and again like he was like at that moment in time like he was like a real pissed off old man who who did not he didn't hit on some of the bets that he was trying to make in his life and and and at that late stage you know you're 59 you're about to retire you're 60 years old you don't have you can't you know you ain't 20 years old anymore you ain't 30 years old you can't manifest a new freaking life you can I don't get me wrong you can anything you know you you you really want to do something okay fine but this dude was on his last bits you know he couldn't manifest the energy anymore to go to work and play the game anymore so all that pressure I think helped I think it helped because it was less like you only have this one shot you got this shot you know this you know this money is here you just have to you just have to sit here and figure this shit out and just twiddle your fucking thumbs until you can figure this shit out and I think that helped I think it helped were you always pushing like the size you do not obviously now but were you quick to jump into sizing the way you do definitely I think I've always you know what man in trading and in life too is like people will be like you know you need to do you know you need to do X Y and Z cut your size down do this do that you know try this strategy try that or whatever you have to you still have to admit who the fuck you are and you still have to admit to yourself and to you know and to more or less just to yourself who you are in trading and how your emotions how your specific emotional makeup expresses itself in the trading rooms you know and not in the trading chat rooms but in your trading in your strategy because it's built into your strategy because who you are is it's gonna be a reflection of your strategy as well you know what I'm saying and and I've been this way since I fucking started but then there's so many periods in time where you fight yourself and you fight who you are and then you just turn your wheels you know what I mean you just you just sit there and spin your wheels because the whole time you're fighting who you are and maybe you don't have the account size anymore to do what you need to do but there's a lot of internal conflict between you know in any trader's life and you know and it all really comes down to not admitting who you are or trying to run away from who you are and that's where I found I've had the most I've had the most issues that's where I've had periods of you know losses of course two years where I'm not making any money you know you're trying to you're trying to change something that is innately you you know I'm saying so you're gonna push up on that resistance all the time every day more or less and you know it's people say like okay you know you have to change these things you have to change these things but do you really do you really do you really need to you know I mean how much do we really change you know how much have I really changed since 24 as as a trader I was literally like this at 24 so how much have I really fucking changed and how much have I tried to in those 15 years of trading you know what I mean to come to the same damn conclusion and be like yo you're Lucci man you got to do what Lucci does you have to you have to you can't fight so so yeah man I've been that dude since bro I've been that dude since yeah that's crazy I mean and what people don't realize is to move size is really freaking tough bro it's options world is different because it's you know you have the flow coming in you have they might be swiping here swiping their program here program there but what a lot of people don't understand is some of the biggest lessons come from the biggest losses so you're known for some pretty sick wins but in terms of losses is there something that you've learned from your biggest loss that has carried on to help mold you into a better trader yeah man it's it's awareness of what's happening internally right so there's an instinct once you have enough losses and once your body feels enough of those losses and enough of that pain it already knows it already it it already knows right so when that loss comes or when it's about to come the instinct starts to move your body already starts to move it's already sending you those signals it's like yo motherfucker you better get the hell out of the way this shit's coming this shit is coming with or without you it's coming so the awareness of your of the internal shit that's happening in your mind your stomach your heart all this all this stuff there's just weird ticks man that it becomes more metaphysical than it is about trading you know cuz I'll put the size on for anything I'll put the size on for anything and then immediately after just reading and everything like that you'll know you'll know if you're right or wrong or you'll know if you you're a little bit too early or a little bit too late you'll know these things your body knows these things too and it's just learning more how to listen to it how to listen to it all the time how to listen to it but the problem is is that life tends to tends to put you in a place where you can't listen to it or you're you're a half a step late or it brings other bullshit to the equation so life will tell you yo you need you know you need two million dollars on this trade because we got to pay for this damn project that we just started up in wherever the fuck we just start you know we got to pay for this real estate project we got to pay for this cannabis thing we got to pay for all kinds of operations that you have this different businesses that that I'll go ahead and and and try to get off the ground life will tend to throw you these curveballs or let's say you're going through a shitty break up and you and you're just you're just off man you're just off man you know life will tend to get you away from that instinct and get you away from you know the true feel of it all and then you start overthinking now you're just overthinking and now you no matter what you do you're gonna fuck it up so those that's what it's taught me the most the pain has taught me how to be way more aware of it and and to be able to see it coming and that way at that way even that fraction of a second that I own back is enough to save me from you know an outsized loss that's gonna put me on my ass kind of what do you do to kind of like maintain that's end you know because like just talking about it like it's very easy but like in that fucking mental like zone that you're talking about even when I'm thinking about I'm like damn this is very difficult like it's impossible honestly honestly if you really break it down for the majority of people it's impossible let's just put it out let's put it out that way it's impossible okay what I try to do and and again it's just have good daily my morning routines are just everything they're everything but by the way even if you have a great morning routine where by the way I'm four of them four o'clock in the morning I'm up I do yoga for an hour I get to the office I change I hit the beach I played beach tennis for about an hour an hour and a half right so I'm sweating I haven't eaten anything right I'm still just running on fumes from from from yesterday I haven't eaten shit I'm just drinking water but by the time eight o'clock comes around 7 30 comes around after that morning even if my fucking lose I can't lose bro even if I lose I can't lose I already had the best day in the world you know I'm on the beach is 7 30 the mother's the sun's coming up that's the you know it's 75 degrees 80 degrees and I'm playing a sport that I love I absolutely love and if I wasn't trading or I wasn't doing anything like that I'd be on the beach for eight hours a day anyway so once I can get that out of the way you can't you can't touch me you know it doesn't matter what you bring to me I already had a great day you know now now to his point how difficult it is you know market turns on market turns on you got your brain's got to go your brain's got to go now it's got to analyze all this stuff right we got it we got all our morning prep you know you got eight names that you might be sitting there watching and now you're in the shit right now you're in the bit now you're now you're in the battlefield and you're just kind of moving around names you're moving around names you're moving around names you're just plug you're just plugging around trying to find out what's working and that process by the time you're it's 10 30 11 o'clock I'm fucking exhausted bro I'm exhausted at the 11 o'clock I'm fucking exhausted so I got to eat I have to eat and then after then you get theitis from the eating and you can't produce that same energy that you had from 9 30 to 11 o'clock there's no way I can it's never happened for me but there's still game to be played right I mean this afternoon moves all over the place so you know I definitely take it a little bit easier in the afternoon and everything and you know if I have a bad day bro I've had so many of them it just doesn't matter anymore it really doesn't it doesn't you get to a point where it's it really is just numbers as much as difficult as it is for somebody to internalize that right now for a lot of your your viewers who might be listening to this as difficult as for you to internalize that it's true it's true you get to a point where it doesn't matter because you already have your life you have the shit that you have in your life you've made enough right and I'm talking you know for a trader who's it has been in the game for as long as Alex and myself you know we have enough shit we're fine is it ever enough dude is it ever enough is the problem it is it is it always is it always has been even when I was starting out like I always was fine you know what I mean when we look at the big you got to look at the big picture of this thing are we eating you know do I have a roof over my head you know can I enjoy the fruits of life can I go to the beach can I play some tennis can I take a trip every once in a while yes yes yes yes yes what the fuck else you know what I mean and of course all the wants and desires that's what keeps us that's what keeps us coming back but that's what keeps the pain coming to because we suffer for our desires we suffer for the next million that we want to make the 2 million that we want to make we got to put in some work I have to put in some work mentally to figure out how I'm gonna connect with this market with whatever the hell is going on with however janky this freaking market is or whatever the you know whatever new market we're looking at you have to study you have to you have to figure things out you have to slowly adapt over time you know and then be there when the cash is there you got a fucking be there man so that's that's work that is work that is pain and suffering and we do it because we want we want we want more it is what it is I want more you know so that's a whole another conversation Alex me and you can you can go to war on that human greed and human emotion right that's all it is I have so much money I have a beautiful car beautiful house beautiful girl I got everything that I want probably for some stupid ass reason it is never enough for some stupid reason I'm still pushing size for some reason I'm still getting stuck for some reason I just can't control myself and I can't help myself maybe because I'm young maybe it's because I want more for myself maybe it's because I'm just sick in the head I really don't know and that's a choice man it's a choice you know we can go down this rabbit hole all you want this is what I do this is this is literally what I do and this is what you know people pay me to talk about because it's it's such a big deal you know the human emotion of it and people want to walk around and and act like it ain't and act like it's all easy and act like they got solutions for everything or whatever but me and you are sitting here right now having the same existential problem and we have that same issue every single day that those thoughts are going on in your head and in my head every single day you can't escape them it's part of who we are as part of our emotional makeup and it expresses itself in the markets as well we know these markets are super emotional these moves are super emotional and people still want to deny how much of an impact our emotions have on everything our decisions are the way that we live our lives how happy we are how miserable we are all of that shit this is all this is this is all I talk about so this is why why is it so that I have a green day I am kissing my girlfriend like baby I love you we're gonna go out to dinner I have a red day don't talk to me it's not even a matter of a fact if I make 100 grand in the day it never feels as as emotionally powerful as losing even 10 grand on the day if I lose 10 grand on the day it makes me feel disgusted it makes me feel like a horrible person it makes me feel like sick in my stomach and then I make that hundo and I'm just like do I really even need it Alex Alex has gotten to a place where he's miserable either way you know me so you got it you got to come to Costa Rica man well let's do some money once go something like that yeah I mean I've really been I've really been trying to dig deep and find that solution and I don't know what that root of the problem is it's not it has nothing to do with the market and it has everything to do with like if you take work take all the material take everything out of the equation completely and then figure out who you are after that after you after you delete all of that stuff then you start to figure out you know who you actually are after and besides all that shit the money the the the material all that stuff like who are you really what makes you happy once you start there then you can start then you can start really building that framework for for a much more stress-free happy sort of lifestyle so regardless you already know if you make the hundred if you lose the ten it ain't gonna mean nothing so you have to look for that elsewhere you know I mean that money that meaning in that purpose has to come from from elsewhere and again I'm not you know I'm not telling you to do a damn thing over here I like so I'm just I'm just giving you my story of how of how I went about it because bro when I came to Puerto Rico and I knew I was gonna hit it you know how you have that feeling that you have you have that feeling where you're just like yo it's coming some something something is about to hit and I'm in the best mental state I'm like in the zone so so I knew it was coming and you know in one month I had a freaking huge two million dollar month and I didn't feel shit I didn't feel shit and I was just I remember looking at my girl just being like what the fuck is this really you know what I mean it's like you I moved my whole life to get to this point I did it I did it you know and and you telling me I'm not gonna feel anything so it just it just threw me for a world we sensitize it's being sensitized to the money so much so that it is completely irrelevant which is it's a good thing in a bad it's a very good because it allows you to put on the tremendous amount of risk without really giving a fuck that's the benefit of it that's the better the worst part about it is that it also creates so much more risk for you that you do not need that leads to more potential headaches because like you said yep if you have a loss it may lead to you making emotionally bad decisions on those future trades absolutely if you think about it logically to prevent those future bad decisions so long as you just size down and just show up and probably make like if I give you an example like you could probably with your eyes closed make $2,000 $3,000 a day eyes closed like this you said that Alex cuz the kids the kids that are sitting next to me some of the kids and I call them all kids by the way they're not actually kids but I call them all kids they sit next to me and they watch me make fucking 20 grand in my sleep bro I'm not even I'm not I'm like on YouTube I'm like on YouTube fucking around man and there's 20 you know there's 20 grand in games right there I don't even I don't even flinch bro I don't even flinch but it's just like you said bro just like you said it's nothing bro it doesn't even mean anything to me which is a horrible thing to say at the same time but it's real it's real that is a real emotion that I feel on a daily basis and the problem is that once you get to that level the problem is that you can't go back you can't fucking go back you tried you if I tell you Luci every single day no matter what you're gonna make 3-4k a day you're gonna be like that's that's probably gonna make you miserable right it's not gonna make you miserable in terms of you're not gonna be rich you're gonna have plenty money problem is that there's something deep in us and I think there's something deep in a lot of traders the ones that kind of surpass a certain boundary that we're kind of crazy bro we're kind of crazy we may not look it we may not act it but there's something inside here that is just it's it's like a primitive survival attack attack attack at least in me that I just can't control bro I can't control sometimes yeah I have learned to accept it and the shady part is is that and again we as traders like I mean you guys are all do you guys all trade by yourself you guys all trade at your houses that's it yeah yeah right so in that kind of environment you're in the zone you're in your world nobody can take you out of this world if you trade around other folks you know and if you trade in an office like me for example everybody's trying to help each other to progress right like I have a goal of hitting 10 20 million you know the kids here have a goal of you know 100k 200k you know we had a guy over here that was trading a 30 million dollar freaking account he was trying to hit 100 million you know so everybody's on their own path right but if you do it in a space where you're kind of sharing all this kind of stuff there's an interesting value that that happens right on on top of it however the other side of it is they'll watch me beat up 100 grand 200 grand not take the profits and then and then have a 10 grand day you know what I'm saying and or they'll watch me have string of 10 grand 20 grand days and then I'll put on some serious size because I see something I like and then losing freaking half a million dollars you know so you know there's something to be said about all of it but you are who you are again Alex we go back to the same shit we are who we are man I don't I'm not a 10 grand a day trader so why am I trying to force myself into that fucking peg man just because what for the good of for the good of who you know so at the end of the day I am who I am man I push the size because I see it I push the game because I see it and if it's there oh I'm getting paid and I can use that money to help a lot of other people I can use that money also to help of course to help myself you know so that's how I rationalize it so I think you kind of talked about like you know you see the eight tickers gap up on your screen and analyzing the information and you're talking about you know paying yourself and being able to hit it what is that that you're hitting you know like what are your kind of like typical go-to setups or like is it in the tape or like is it resistance or support or like what are you looking for you know every everything is tape for me and it's a lot of options base tape and then and then equities base tape so I'm looking at level twos of options and and of the equity as well so for example like if we're looking at this Tesla like we have a gap down in the market today and Tesla was up four points it went red I think well at some point in the morning and immediately it's right back it was right back to 264 this was this was 11 o'clock so you knew the thing had some relative you knew that thing had some relative strength then I'm looking at the tape what do I see I see I see some guy buying next week $300 calls and I can see him buy $2 million worth of this shit and I'm like why what the fuck as soon as I see that some guy two weeks out the next couple of weeks out buys the 300 and puts a million down on it and then some guys out buying in January for the next year and it's there buying 10 mil of this shit and I'm like no way and I'm like and in my head I'm like this is gonna happen again yeah because on a dead market like like like like today more or less they'll pick one or two names and they'll fucking run them and Tesla was that Tesla was just that one today so I sat there I started looking at the options I'm like dude if this thing blows to 5265 266 forget about bro and boom you know even if you catch two three four points out of that it's fucking great obviously if you catch the 10 you know I'm making a million bucks but you know as it that's what I'm looking for I'm looking for signs of of just something going down you know so for example on the UPS T's and all those super bottom arc names the affirm the UPS T the unity all those names pulled back today and if you looked at the tape on every single one of those names somebody was just gotten stuck the whole day somebody was just taking profits the whole freaking day and they chose those names the affirms the UPS T's and all that no all that nonsense the CVNA the Carvanas all that shit they went from you know eight bucks to $24 over the last couple of months you know they took profits on those names too so I'm looking for like big picture tape ideas where I know there's gonna be an outsize move in something and I know it's gonna be worth it for me to hop in the option because if you don't have a decent move you're gonna buy an option and no matter what you're gonna sell it for break even or or you're gonna lose on the time premium and everything like that like most people who go long options they'll always lose money it will always always lose money because most of the time there ain't shit to do there's not shit that there's nothing to do most of the time and most of the names that you look at you need you need something going down is what I'm hearing down so either somebody's on the wrong side of something and there's enough people on the wrong side of it and everybody's just gonna get hosed in video you know there was a there's a lot of shorts that got trapped in this thing every single day you see shorts get trapped in a video every single day and they cook them they cook them throughout the afternoon and then the thing comes back to highs you know you need some kind of catalyst you need some kind of juice if you ain't got that it's stupid to play options and it's the right play is to sell the options so that's what all most days I'm selling a lot of options I'm selling you know 60 70% of the trees that are making I'm just selling shit so I sold puts on Tesla and I sold puts on a video of course because even if I'm not a part of it let's say I didn't catch the 10 points I can sell the puts and scrape that premium all day I can do that I can at least do that because I know Tesla ain't gonna tank in my face so I can sell some out of the money puts and watch them go to zero by the time Friday comes those are kind of my those are kind of my games man you know I'm always writing I'm always writing and if there's somewhere to shoot and if there's some you know if there's some shit going down I'll take a shot I love that I think something that's cool about listening to you is one you're incredibly like Zen and you have this like great internal reflection like you're able to like analyze like Alex's even emotions and hearing it just like I'm sitting here I'm usually not quiet but I'm listening to this that I feel like I'm at church it's amazing but I know on the other side of that Zen guy there's also a freaking monster I when I first got into trading I used to listen to one of your old interviews and you had said it's patiently waiting until your market and then it's all guns blazing yeah man so for you what does that look like when your market hits what changes in your demeanor and your actions as a trader yeah man it's range man it's range and we all got standing desks up in here so so boom I'll stand the desk up and I'm ready you know what I mean I'm ready I'm jumping around I've there's tons of energy and I'm you know I'm ready to express it through the market so so guns blazing my market is when there's panic when people are fucking panicking you know when people are panicking for a bid and they can't get a bid because there's nobody buying and that market is always is always when I'm I turn into a complete monster man and just the adrenaline alone that shit will last you for 48 hours 72 hours however long you need it man however long you need it and that adrenaline alone man well because once your once what you've been waiting for has come around so for me in this case I'm waiting for this market to finally just come back around and we get a hundred point move down on Nvidia or you know whatever these pullbacks that on Tesla or things like that you know something that I can really sink my teeth into Netflix you know things that can really short but the panic won't the panic doesn't happen it happens once or twice a year you know I'm saying so you're patiently waiting for a year most people can't even do that you can't sit there and wait because most people just just get bored right and then they over trade and then there's accounts blown more accounts are blown off of over trading by the way then one or two bad trades right more accounts are blown off over trade and most people just sit there and over trade every day myself included yep that makes sense I mean just to kind of shift gears a little bit I don't know if you know this or not but in 2018 I actually joined the steam room to get a little bit of options knowledge so I want to talk to you about how you started the steam room how you met Wall Street Jesus and what you guys are doing with steam room yeah man steam room is a really cool place and I invested a good a good chunk of change in there to kind of build my own world so to speak right because I was always unsatisfied with the chat room experience for most especially this discord I don't know do y'all use discord do you guys like as much cleaner man discord is a fucking shit show man it is such a shit show I don't even know how to run these things and I always had problems customizing we're like I wanted to customize my own room because I wanted to add so much data in there like like now the future of the steam room is gonna be so much of our biometric data it's gonna be your trading data as well just synced right into the room you know a lot of the analysis that Wall Street Jesus does I'll talk about how I met him in a second but a lot of the analysis that he does some of the new tools that we create we just put it all into the room and then have an open API so even the customers can kind of just do whatever the hell they want with the data as well so that's gonna be like the future of it because you know again as an options trader number one everybody needs flow we happen to be the first ones in the door when you know for options flow Wall Street Jesus was one of the first ones who was doing this and he's a dude he's dude from Long Island man he's a dude from Long Island he lives in fucking Long Island and calls himself Wall Street Jesus obviously doesn't show anybody who the hell he is you know so for us to just even come across him I remember we've been you know we've been at you know down in New York this guy was a broke he was a broker and you know he oh he would always follow you know those reports or whatever when you as you're a broker you got to advise your clients here to buy x y and z so he would always follow these reports and and try to figure out what to put his clients in and he was a he was a gambler to his father was a horse track you know he's gamble on the horses all the time so he was a degenerate at the same time as well just pushing out free information and you know he kind of started looking at the options flow to figure out how to scalp equities and he just put that he started putting that shit out there for free and when we came across him you know he probably had like 30,000 followers or something like that he didn't have a room he didn't have anything and we were like yo just come on board with us and we'll build this whole system behind you right we'll actually build by the data build the tech around you and you know and then and then push it all through this platform so you know he's kind of the OG of it man and and now we're in this conversation about options flow there's so much there's so much shit there's so much trash platforms out there pushing options flow and then they don't realize that trillions of dollars gets traded in the options market every day if you looked at all of it you'd be fucking miserable you'd be the worst trader on the planet you'd be it's it doesn't even give you any value to look at every single order that hits by and every single order that hits tesla it's the same thing as reading a level two on tape if you read time and sales on tesla and you try to make sense of every transaction that comes out on tesla what the fuck what the fuck good is that gonna do for anybody you know what I mean let alone for you making any money so you need a filter you need a filter you need somebody to tell you what's a what's an aggressive bet how that bet is actually being how that order is actually hitting the tape why it's aggressive you need all that stuff and people right now are just selling flow platforms and they are the worst platforms they are the fucking worst platforms and they won't help anybody out and a lot of them look for unusual options activity and that shit that shit again is is next to useless as well so it has to come with context and the same thing that I teach for the tape it has to come with theory it has to come with context so you know so that's how we linked up a Wall Street Jesus connected at all and and for the future of the steam room it's just gonna be a lot more data a lot more data and I can't wait to do the biometric stuff as well because if we can get to a point where okay I can tell your heart rate is going crazy I can see what your eyes are looking at on your screen maybe I know you're watching a YouTube video while you have a hundred thousand dollars like while you're down a hundred thousand dollars which which tells me you're escaping you know what you need to handle here on your screen you know what kinds of influences and what kinds of data can we cook up that can tell us you know that can that can even predict if we're about to take a 30% drawdown or 40% drawdown or you know whatever you don't you don't know you know so right now I think with this with this AI stuff that's all coming out with these platforms now that are all coming out the technology is slowly getting there to the point where we might be able to to to have sort of controls in place for our own emotions you know you might be able to save ourselves from ourselves I think that's our biggest risk is traders you yourself are the biggest risk to yourself and your emotional state and if we find more ways to help you know traders with that I think that's going to be the next generation of trading products yeah that sounds awesome man because that that makes a lot of sense because something I've learned from Brett Steenbarger back in the day was your being use if you're stressed in a position chances are that you are either too big in the position or you don't have a plan so whenever you feel that internal stress in you that's your trigger to say wait a second let me just double check let me see if I have everything in place and that's kind of like what you're talking with the biometrics if you feel your heart rate going up if you feel whatever that that happens then you'll be able to kind of adapt that's really awesome yeah so that's that's gonna be the future that's some of the stuff that I'm working on right now and also one more thing that's really awesome that I like to see is you do the YouTube stream in the morning and bro it is I actually have it on the side while I'm playing in the morning yeah my favorite thing is yo Ben check that bit on the you car that shit bro makes me lose it every single time doing that stream and honestly honestly it's always like it's always like the advent of creativity for me after I've kind of gone stale for a while like I was I remember being big on Instagram for a little bit and you know and then I just get tired of these things cuz cut just pushing content do you guys like pushing content I mean Alex I've seen you push a lot more content these days I see you a lot now on the YouTube short so I know you up in there I know I know you're doing something but do you enjoy it or does it does it feel like like let me let me tell you so I've been I was making weekly content every single Monday for like four and a half years every single Monday without a doubt I would make a YouTube video or I'd make some clip content and it was fun because I was doing it live at first where I got to interact with the chat I get to talk to people and after a certain amount of time I was like you know what like if I'm stuck in a trade because I did it religiously at 11 a.m. no matter what 11 a.m. every single Monday no matter what there'd be sometimes I'd be stuck in a trade or if there'd be a big opportunity I'd be like you know what like it makes more sense to focus on the opportunity than to make the YouTube video so yeah and then eventually what happens is like we at the education that we give there's no sexy girls there's no black cars so no one watches it right so after yeah half years I'm just making content and content and content of people that teaching people ways how to make millions of dollars eventually hard stops max size yeah stopping cutting off your trading after a certain period making sure that you don't have you have a plan all the proper information that we want to get people to succeed maybe thousand people watch me thousand people watch and then in my head I'm like you know what bro like enough is enough after four and a half years doing this shit bro enough is enough and what we realized is just having the shorter form like youtube shorts or whether they tiktok clips yeah it's in the same amount of views so for me I'm we're kind of now focused on more quality rather than quantity rather than making another video on you know the next black swan that's happening the short squeeze that's happening that this that's happening the index the cpi now what I want to do what the team wants to do is we kind of want to be able to focus on things that we love and for me bro this is like the first time that we're getting to talk on like a more formal intimate type of way and I'm having like this you like this I'm having a blast because you are not only an incredible trader but your mindset bro is so freaking awesome because you're the way that you answer questions I could tell bro that you've been through the ringer I know exactly what's like you've you've definitely made a million dollars in a day you definitely lost a million dollars in a day you definitely know what hardship is like you know what the good days are you know what the bad days are and for me I'm the type of guy that I just want to learn bro I'm I'm not the smartest guy in the room I don't make the most amount of money if I see someone making money I ask them questions I am humble enough to say you know what like you're a badass trader I'm gonna join the steamroll you're a badass trader I'm gonna look into the options the master course I want to be able to improve so for me being able to talk to a trader that is not only smarter than me emotionally more capable than me someone that has more experience than me someone that is a lot more like I guess like more mentally strong in certain areas that I lack this to me is the type of content that I want to create this is the type of stuff that I want to learn about and if this gets a thousand views if it gets ten thousand views it doesn't matter to me because now I'm doing what I think is not only going to help my trading is going to help their trading is going to help everyone's trading and at the end of the day if we go if this creates some sort of friendship in the mix where I come to Puerto Rico we hang out we have some stakes we hang up do whatever it is that to me is more valuable than making just another video that no one is going to watch and no one cares about that at the end of the day is not going to change my life I got tired I got tired of it too bro and when I did the live I realized it was the most it's the it's the rawest form of me that everybody you know it's not a short video it's not something that was uh it's not highly produced it's not highly edited it's the camera's on you're fucking trading you're in the jungle bro you're in the jungle because a lot of people don't understand trading it's quiet bro it's quiet but like it's not really fucking quiet bro if you have all this crazy you should move it yeah yeah man and I realized that was the most rawest way like that was just the rawest way that you could get you could get me right and I am uniquely me on that stream because I'm in the mix and I'm just I'm just voicing my thoughts and again the whole office feeds off of it as well right so the whole office is listening as well and then the whole office is like yo you gotta you gotta take a look at this you gotta take a look at this this this and this and we all everybody helps each other you know so a lot of trades get thrown around in here and just one idea here at the office by the way my best idea today came from one of the one of the boys at the office it was Mara it was Mara Long he called it out in the morning and I didn't realize what BTC was doing I go look at BTC I'm like oh shit okay then Mara's got a big short interest so so now you start thinking all right now now we got a now we got a little plan I threw out a feeler it wasn't doing anything and then BTC just started running it ran like a thousand fucking points and it's Mara squeezed the shit out of everybody and I you know I made 30 40 grand on that fucking trade my favorite is when you're trading the stocks that I'm trading like when you're trading the GFAI oh yeah trading the u-car that's me because I like people may see all right he's down 50k he's down 100k but I know this motherfucker bro 100k is like it's like all right like 100k is there like all right let's see what you got let's see what you got right so that's that's the way that's what I enjoy seeing is not only am I trying to improve my options trading by watching learning but when you're trading something that I'm trading and I see you put on 20 30 40 000 of the u-car or 20 000 30 000 of GFAI and you're like there's a seller on the tape at 33 look at him refreshing look at him refreshing and I'm like you know I see the same shit bro I see the same shit and that to me is like all right wait a second tape is universal is universal in small caps large caps sneakers tickets this that it's at the end of the universal supply demand supply and demand in every type of thing bro if you're at a bar and there's one girl and she's the ugliest girl ever she's a high demand it's the same thing in every single type of scenario and that's the type of shit that I like to see bro that's the type of shit that I like to learn from bro that's by the way that's the whole master course right there that's most of the master course right there is me just going through all of these different forms of tape and extracting extracting the information that we need to either to either make a trade or or to keep it moving you know what I mean and and trying to shape the students mindsets to change a little bit to and everything is tape mindset right because if you can look at the markets with a tape mindset and you look at your life as a tape mindset I guarantee you everybody will be better off from a business perspective from just an overall understanding perspective everybody will be smarter immediately if you learn to look at the world as tape you know if you and to me everything is tape so I love that you say you say that Alex that's exactly that's exactly how I roll through my days that's funny as hell but dude you're such like a you're such an intense guy and it's like you say obviously so passionate and like like how you approach markets how do you detach yourself at all from this yes I feel like you seem obsessed with yo but that's my secret that's my secret I don't give a fuck about this shit that's my secret man at all times man I really don't give a shit you know I really don't I really don't care of course it's it's levels to it right I mean you know you can't you know you have a big loss of course you're going to feel some kind of attachment to it but once you've once you've understood that's where your happiness comes from because your happiness will only come from the detachment you have to you have to if you want to be happy at all I've met tons of traders you know and you guys know this is I connect traders for a living and this is what I enjoy doing because nobody understands us you know even our freaking girlfriends don't fucking understand us they don't understand how we talk they don't understand how we how we think they don't understand how we act why we act this way but you guys the four of you guys or the three of you guys I can see you anywhere and you know me I know you and we have way more fun than than half of you guys you know with your with your best friends you know what I mean just because we we we're on the same page you know so for me like I just want to connect all of us from all over the world in whatever freaking language and the key to all of it if you want to be happy at the same time you're fucking trading is the detachment part that's the toughest part that is the toughest part and it only comes with experience to me I've seen some people who are a year in two years in and they already understand it you know and that's crazy that is crazy to me but again you know you never know where a person is going to be until you until you you you you push up on that resistance so enough things have happened to me where it ain't gonna you know none of this shit is going to make any fucking difference man and the only thing that's going to make a difference is if I'm if I'm healthy I'm I'm active I'm working out I'm I'm you know I'm meditating my mind is calm you know I treat people I treat people right I try to be better not as fucking angry as I was as a kid and all that kind of stuff if I can do those things you know the rest of this shit the money will come the this will come that will come or whatever like you know so those are the kind of the things that that matter and unfortunately it takes it takes a long I think it takes a whole year it takes a whole lifetime for for for somebody to really get there but what you're talking about and what you asked me you know the the how do you detach you know if if people were actually looking for rules or like things that you could do you know immediately hanging out with friends is is obviously a top one you know the one thing that you don't want to do and then there's a isn't is if you do have a bad day you tend to go towards the things that push you further into the negativity right so let's say you have a bad day your diet kind of goes to shit right or maybe you don't hit the gym that day or maybe you don't you know you don't want to pick up the phone that day and talk to anybody you know what I mean we start to do things that push us further into that energy the energy of the loss the energy of the attachment the energy of the shit what am I going to do tomorrow or I can't pay this bill or that bill we tend to we tend to go deeper there and fighting that every single day that's the that's the game it's the game of it all fighting that every single day and bro even if you fuck up it's okay it's okay most of the time we're so hard on ourselves we take a loss we lose this we lose that blah blah blah we're so hard on ourselves especially traders too man we beat the shit out of ourselves this is no need for that there's really no need for that you know just dump it get to the next day you know try to get in the right mindset and wake up and and and go for it again yeah uh we kind of touched on this at the beginning with you having a kid and stuff like that yeah and um obviously she's probably a lot older now she's 18 man she's about to go to college bro goddamn bro yeah yeah we're uh kind of like perspective as far as like raising a kid in today's world and like how did you kind of go about that trading because that's a big balance you know trading and then sure kid as well and also it's kind of crazy now today's world with all that like whoa stuff like that man it's it's brutal it's brutal i'll say it's brutal because i'll watch other parents and i'll watch what is considered acceptable now for parenting and and it's not even parenting like it's not 90% of these parents they'll just they'll just let the kid do whatever they want to do and and the kid the kid's not there yet to be able to allow that or to be able to have that you know that is a privilege that just needs to be earned they're not developed yet so the phones of course the ipads i mean these kids are hooked to that shit it never leaves their shit they gotta strap backpack on with the motherfucking ipad right you know they go they sit down to dinner and the shit's right there they're eating a french fry while sitting there you know at fucking two years old and three years old and everything like you i'm still old school in that sense where and if you guys ever do meet my daughter um you'll see immediately in her and the way that she talks and the way that she acts the things that she does it's like i brought her everywhere when she was a kid i brought her everywhere i didn't speak to her like she was she was she was a kid she was the most beautiful girl in the in the in the world but i didn't i never spoke to her like a baby really i always spoke to her as an adult and you know and man you can't you can't you can't tell you can't tell somebody how to parent right you can't tell the world that we're going down this shitty trajectory right now i mean i can say it to you guys or whatever but you know what are you gonna do you're gonna tell your brother that he's a shitty dad and you know his kids are gonna be you know absolutely useless by the time they're 20 that's that's that's what's gonna happen and it's sad it's it's just sad i'll keep it i'll keep it at that i do have a lot of stronger opinions on this whole on this whole topic and where these kids are going but what if we're wrong what if we're wrong and all this iPad shit is completely okay what if it's what if all this ai stuff is completely okay what if all that you know having an online relationship and never actually seeing somebody is is completely okay who are we to say that it's wrong or that is fucked up right i mean you know i just know that my kid and my family and the way that i raised that way they were that i raised these kids or that they're they're resourceful man they're resourceful they ask the questions they are polite they know how to speak they know how to communicate and that's half of it right there and they and the most important thing is they know how to think they know how to freaking think so with my daughter every you know every time she's going through some shit i'm there to just kind of be like listen you know it's not the end of the world all this kind of stuff this stuff is going to come and go and everything she's she's super dope man so all i can do is try to is try to control what i can man and try to do the best with my kids but everybody else's kids man jesus you know for me to even say like i don't want you talking to these kids you know some of her friends too so i mean you know some of the kids at at school you know at her school want everything and i'm just like what the fuck they can't do shit bro they can't do shit they don't know there's no problem solving skills as you go to the store to go get me some you can't even do that you can't even do that the moms don't even want to let them out of their sight they don't even want to so it's this it's just this weird thing where both sides are so scared man are so scared about everything and we're just we're just we're just being these shitty helicopter parents and given these kids everything that they freaking want to so that they you know they get to the point in 1516 they think they're entitled to everything bro everything and i'm looking at these kids and i'm i'm still that guy who if you put a kid around me i'm gonna all of a sudden become a parent to that child and and i've been in so many situations where their parents their actual parents will just give me the evil eye man you know what i mean and and i'll look at i'm like dude come on man they don't even have these kids playing sports anymore bro no and you don't put you know no no we're not gonna play sports and everything oh are you kidding me or are you fucking kidding me bro so i could go on for days about this shit i don't think we're going in the right place as far as the youth is concerned but i could be completely wrong man what if ai saves all this shit and they really don't need to problem solve anything right what if i'm completely wrong and they don't need any skill sets they don't they can just sit at their computers they can just be these sort of loners here but have all this um have all this shit going on on tiktok where they get all their their their self-worth from on tiktok on instagram or whatever the hell it is maybe all that shit works out i can't see it i can't see it working out but maybe i'm i love that you can say that what if i'm wrong because i agree with everything you said but i think it takes us like a real special person that you can say like i could be wrong because no one else no one will say that now either yeah yeah i mean now are you telling me the only way that you can figure out and realize what's going on in the world is by watching an episode episode of fucking black mirror you have to watch an episode of fucking black mirror to see to see some shit that's going on in front of you every day every day every day you look around that shit is going on right in front of you but we have to look we have to watch an episode of fucking black mirror for it to actually make an effect on us and even then we don't give a shit we watch an episode of black mirror go right the fuck back to whatever the hell we were doing bro you know and black mirror shows it in such a horrible way that this could be the end of of of this trajectory that we're all going meanwhile we get up we do the same thing every day and nobody says a fucking word man china meanwhile doesn't even allow their kids to be on tiktok and they have that whole damn platform right you don't think this shit is happening right in front of us and nobody says anything nobody says anything nobody questions it nobody says a fucking word man we just go on we just go on with status quo and brainwashes i don't get it i don't get that part something that's really important bro that you mentioned is the entitlement and what i what the way that i think about it is that the next generation whatever it may be it's probably going to be some of the laziest most entitled people ever and what that tells me is for hardworking guys like us it is going to be a piece of cake man they are so they are so fucked in this world that all it takes is one fucking gypsy and one fucking guy to just work all we have to do is show up and work and that's already going to be light years i have what they do so to me i understand it i think it's horrible i think it's the worst thing ever i don't think it's going to change but now my mindset is how are we going to make money on it all we're going to do is we're going to just keep showing up keep working hard and there's going to be a new era of like the lazy people and then the not so lazy people and the not so lazy people are going to start cleaning up so for us like you say you're an old school guy my father taught me the old school guys i'm going to show up i'm going to work i'm going to hustle my ass off and i hope that these people enter the market whether it be through the stock market itself or whether it be in any type of market any type of tape because there's going to be so much advantage to be taken off just because of their lack of understanding of how the world actually really works i agree and i think off of that comment i think blue collar jobs come back to the next you know it used to be the doctors who had the guide complex right yeah any of the ones that were getting paid the most then it became the developers right the the program developers yeah right and these guys have the new guide complex you can't tell them shit they don't give a damn about your project they just get paid stupid amounts of money to write code and blah blah blah blah blah now we're moving into ai right so now there's going to be a point in time where ai takes over the writing of the code right so your developers here you're sure they're still going to get paid but they ain't going to be the guide complex now what if it goes back to the blue collar guys the guys the electricians the plumbers the guys who fucking actually know how to do shit the guys who actually know how to build shit you know and now these guys are getting paid stupid amounts of money because there ain't none of them left there's no there's none of them like you said bro it's tape there's going to be the same fucking thing it circles back to the same fucking thing is apply and demand now another thing that i think is really important that people don't understand is once you've made it in any type of way and maybe making it for someone is making 100k a year maybe it's 500k a year maybe it's a million a year is what do you do with that extra money so in terms of you luci how do you diversify your money whether it be into real estate whether it be into gold whether it be to watch his shoes whatever it is what do you do to diversify and protect yourself so that god forbid if there is a million dollar day that's on the wrong side how do you make sure that you're there and not only protected it's what's your insurance policy yeah so real we have to talk about real estate as being the the the top sort of insurance policy you know so once you come into some cash immediately the first thing that you should think about is purchasing some property doing some you know some rentals here if you need to or just living in this place and then just watching it you know accumulate here and and that's kind of your your nest egg because not only do you have you know the equity in the house you also have a you know an asset here that you can take some liabilities off of you know so you have you know you have a place where you can pull some cash out as well you know it's a it's a it's an asset that everybody freaking needs you need it at some point especially if you want to protect yourself from trading you know the volatility of trading once you get your home that's the first thing that you got to do man once you get your home set you get your home freaking set in a nice area that's up and coming that everybody freaking wants to be in or whatever maybe it's not priced out already but it's up it's about to happen and you can see these things in every major city walk around just fucking walk around and read some damn tape read some fucking tape look around man open your freaking eyes which by the way these kids can't fucking do they can't do at all you know what I mean there's no way they got a shot reading any kinds of freaking tape you know walk around some of these cities see what these up and coming areas are you know and plant yourself plant yourself in the mix there so that's that's step number one because you know your trading is going to go on but you got your house you got your house you got your food your kitchen is freaking good you know that asset you can use for a lot of creative things in the future so that has to be freaking number one number two number two for me personally it's with the current situation that's happening right now I'm doing a lot of crypto stuff I'm accumulating a lot of crypto but it's mostly BTC and ether so a good percent of my portfolio is always going into more BTC and more ether and it's always I run a couple strategies here where I just write options on BTC and ether they have daily explorations on all this kind of stuff so I'm just scraping pennies just like I am in the equities markets on BTC the difference is is that it settles in BTC right so as you write your options it just settles right in BTC and now you have more BTC of course assuming you don't get screwed on a on a right and all that kind of stuff so of course there's a risk there so that's my that's my number two number three so that's always that's always there and I'm always pushing more cash to that and then it become then for me like I'm very speculative I'm always I've always been you know so here's where here's where the problems start and when you get speculative and you know when we talk about people you're really investing in people right so so let's say you want to invest in businesses right I have a cannabis project here on the island that's that's basically an outdoor grow operation because most of the projects here on the island are indoor and the cost the cost is too high to produce a pound of weed here in Puerto Rico because the electricity is just the cost of electricity is through the roof so outdoors where the opportunity is but you have to sit on this you have to be able to sit on this until it gets federally legalized and now you can start distributing all over the freaking world that's what we're technically waiting for um you know but there's a lot of there's a lot of you know there's a lot of costs you gotta eat um just kind of waiting and waiting patiently for these things to happen um and then betting on people man because you can have a great idea a great project man and the people just fucking fuck it all up bro and we go back to that emotion and we go back to the condition of being a human a person will make you believe in them all the time let's say you made a girl right we kind of give the we kind of give the trust right away right right off the bat we kind of give it to them and then we allow them to either do something to make us want to pull that trust back now in business what does that look like in business that's like okay man let's get this project off the ground let's get in there you know how much do we need 500 grand okay whatever the hell it is and you really believe that everybody has the the same intention that you do the same values that you do the same mindset that you do the same work ethic that you do and sadly it ain't the fucking case man it really ain't the case so there's a lot of projects that i've i've i've pushed cash to with the best intentions across everybody that was involved and they fucking went to shit and they went to shit because of people so in business in general if you want to invest and you want to diversify and do all these things you really got to be a a good read of of of people you know and sometimes you you you're not even gonna you can be a good read you can be a good read and you still get it wrong you know people will surprise the fuck out of you man and that's kind of where i made some mistakes in business i think and as traders we're kind of most most traders are loners anyway and you know as they sort of make money you know they stay trading here and that's they don't necessarily do anything with their money you know so i'm not going to sit here and say that that's a bad idea as well you could just do absolutely nothing you know there's a couple of traders that i know that just want to trade they don't get they don't want to put themselves in at risk in other businesses they don't want to do any of that stuff you know so i would say the safest bet again real estate also great upside there as well and then if you want to do business and if you want to take that risk you know you have to you have to be a good supervisor you got to be a good manager you got to be a good read you know a good read on on you have to have a good read on people if you can't do those things you know you're going to end up relying too much on your team because you're the you know you're just the money guy and the money guy is the first person to get screwed man the money guy is the first person to get screwed so you know all these other people yeah sure they might have sweat equity but you just lost you know a million bucks because you guys had a great idea and everything is somebody couldn't execute or somebody decided hey fuck it you know i'm done you know i don't want to put that work in and all that kind of stuff so i've had i've had some good luck with people but i've had more bad luck i would say with people generally speaking like i'm a trusting person if somebody tells me like yo this this you know this is what i'm going to do every single day i believe them man and they ain't like us bro they're not like us man they're not like us so watch your ass man watch your ass out there anybody who anybody who's listening if you guys are traders you gotta come in the money you know be careful i also got a non-profit the non-profit is where i love it i love the non-profit so what we do here in uh at the office it's also a part of tradespace uh basically we just teach uh we just give free entrepreneurship classes small business management things like that and um you know the money that we raise here we kind of give it as uh we we give it as fundraising for the for the actual company so we'll get tons of startups on the island and they'll come to us for business advice and things like that we'll do consulting you know we'll give them the legal side of things we'll liaison with accountants and legal so that we you know they can take care of that stuff for free um so that's you know those projects really make me happy there too um you know but i would if you if you guys are trying to diversify and and and and put your hands in a lot of different places just like trading if you if you're trying to run four strategies at the same fucking time you know for most people they you don't have to bend with for that you don't have to bend with for that so be careful man when you come into something when you come into that cast the most important thing is protecting it obviously making sure it it it grows as well and you're a trader so if you're a trader you already have the mindset for it you know so be careful be careful where where you're where it's all going to screw up is always people it's always people and their emotions and their bullshit because that's what it's who we are do you push your daughter towards the risk life yo she she is bougie man she's a little bougie man she's a little bougie because she you know she obviously she hangs out with her father enough times and we're you know we're doing yeah you know and my circle and my circle of friends of course you know there's a you talk about it as much as you want to this class is all over the world right there's levels to this game and shit right so you know when she comes out and hangs out with pops of course she she decides that she she wants that kind of she wants that kind of stuff so what do you know so obviously she already has it that's why as a parent like the best thing that you could do is just fucking be better be a better human being and the shit just glides right over to them and you don't have to you know you don't have to make it a freaking overthinking thing like you have a child you just gotta be you know just be a good man and the kids gonna be fucking great man so the kids already she's an artist she's a musician she plays a guitar she plays a cello she plays a piano so she'll she'll draw and then she'll compose her own piece and then put it on put it on the art that she's selling and everything like that so I mean I don't think it's a genetic thing I think it's something that you see it could be genetics I don't know I I don't know enough about the the biology stuff what gets passed down and what doesn't but she's seen me she's seen me hustle since day one man I've had her helping me with my hustle since day one we were flipping you know I was flipping tickets she was doing my spreadsheets since she was you know 10 years old and 11 years old you know what I mean so she reads tape now too she'll walk into a coffee shop and be like yo just you know this this is this is not right over here there's an opportunity over here so she already has she already has that eye because she's she's seen it she's seen it she's seen the numbers she's ran the numbers so you know it's a it's a really dope thing to watch her kind of come into you know herself and what she wants to do and everything like that and bro if I get to just see and watch that for the next 20 years I'm happy I'm happy that's awesome man so I asked you about your insurance policy yeah but what's some of the stupidest shit you spent money on bro because I know for damn sure bro I spent money on the stupidest this stupid fucking Avengers glove bro I paid like $10,000 for it bro you know what I'm saying like that women women is way up there on my list women women is way up there on my list man it is up there I would and I and again I would I would call and I'm saying that's a stupid there's many situations where it's been very stupid on my part um you know to just kind of throw all this money here on you know a trip or this or that or whatever to get a girl's attention and all that kind of stuff these are the dumb things men do with money um just because they can and then finally you realize like all right don't be an asshole here who gives a shit you know it's not that big of a deal kind of thing so the dumbest thing besides besides women that I have spent my money on um you know what man I'm not like that bro I'm never I've never been like that man I really have never been like that so I've never bought like some crazy material ass thing a car or this or that or whatever like I've never been that guy I mean I spent I spent like maybe 30 grand to customize my Jeep I don't know if that's considered dumb bro that's probably spend more of that on a girl one day that's what I'm saying man that's what I'm saying my biggest stupidest you know waste of money or whatever has always been women man it's always been women so that's my answer man that's gonna be my answer cool talk to me about trade space man how'd you get started with that and what's what's what's that like for people you know imagine us being right next to each other every day yeah having this conversation right here every day at lunch dinner morning every day at the kitchen counter every single day and some kind of derivation of this conversation every day all the time imagine that that's what the value is to this place people don't get it right people will be like yo you know let me buy your course I'll be like dude just buy a desk just get a desk here and sit next to me for a month just shut up and listen and you'll you'll have more you'll have well you'll have nine freaking classes that you could have paid for you know just by sitting in this freaking office and just by listening like I want I think traders are uniquely we're uniquely us and nobody has a clue how we how we think right and we need a space to kind of be around each other and I hate I always hated the fact that I would roll around in these places and the world is the world trades man the world trades now right if you look all over the world everybody has a freaking Robin Hood account everybody's got a freaking binary options account everybody's got a forex account everybody's got something you know but nobody talks to each other not a single person decides to talk to each other about anything so for me that was the core concept so I didn't know anybody would come I just I just put 300k into this into this office and everybody showed up and so now I'm like all right let me put it around the world and now let's do a membership right so Alex Alex pays for the let's say the gold membership right so he can go anywhere across the world let's say there's one in Singapore Dubai Argentina you know Colombia wherever right and immediately as soon as he lands he's got a whole crew that already understands how he thinks all he needs to do is pick up a little language and he's already got all the spots all the restaurants all the bars all the clubs everything everything it's already it's already there you know imagine imagine that that's the world that I want to live in so this is the start of it you know like this is this is the start of it I want to be able to pick up in any moment go to Singapore maybe there's some opportunity that we don't freaking know about you know in Dubai or some product that we don't know about and that's what trade you know to me that's what a trader is that's who we are man we we we we roll around looking for how to buy one sell for two this is what we do man so if I can do that all over the world and that that allows me also to get the culture to get the language you know to see the world and all that in a way that immediately I'm plugged in as soon as I fucking land man bro that's what I want that's what I want that's what I want for everybody who decides to to make it their thing too you know that's what I want bro you're a beast man it's just it's just really awesome I can't believe it took us this long to kind of get linked up like this because bro the shit that you're saying I just I just feel it bro like I feel like exactly what you're saying and that's to find someone that you could relate with that under that really gets it is really tough man so I just really appreciate that but before we wrap up do you have any questions for us like is there anything that we could kind of go over like is anything that's like kind of in your head that you want to talk about is this your whole team right here man so so how's it work over there in your crew Alex so yeah so this is Harry who's long bias James more right now he's doing long swings okay and in terms of the team we probably have about 15 moderators yeah we have a couple thousand members and what we focus on man is just honestly everyone has a role right everyone has a role what I learned that to kind of grow MIC is I can't be there 24-7 I can't be there to facilitate everything because my job as a leader is I want to be able to trade in the morning so for me I execute between like 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. I trade and then based on my stats I found out that after 10 30 a.m. I lose money so rather than continuing to trade after 10 30 I cut off my trading and my P&L like dramatically increased so between 11 a.m. to like 6 p.m. my role is to kind of grow the MIC business whether that be marketing whether that be accounting whether that be legally whether that be in terms of advertisements content this that but pretty much because we have traders and members from all around the world 24-7 there's something happening there's something happening in our community there's something happening at all times we're also throwing an event in August in Orlando if you want to come it's super dope man super dope I'm in Orlando all the time man yo every time I roll through there man somebody recognizes me man and there's just like there's a big trading community in Orlando man for real exactly so we're celebrating our five-year anniversary so you're more than welcome to come more than one love that would love that man my daughter lives in Orlando too so it's perfect man hell yeah so that's pretty much it on my day pretty much after the market open is spent on trying to grow MIC as you know the you know the trading industry has kind of contracted within the last two years so it's been a lot tougher to grow the business aspect of it hundred percent but aside from that my my thought process is just like anything else is if you build it they will come so just like you were trying to build a great community at trade space all around the world we're trying to build a great trading community and it's only a matter of time until it really starts to spiral and domino because at the end of the day traders that want to learn about trading usually have another side hustle they may be a doctor lawyer they may be a accountant they may be graphic designer they may be only fans you don't know what they're doing so that's why I love us man I love us so much man we're all we're all so alike but none of us talk to each other if we sat there and we actually did we'd be like holy shit this is my business this is a brother from another mother right here I can learn so much from this guy and it doesn't matter what level they're at they could just be starting out or they could be freaking worth a hundred million that the value is there man in connecting and so I love it man I get some of your guys down here too man so some of your guys come down here yeah some of your guys come down here they're like yo we're an MIC guy or whatever so I gotta come visit you bro I gotta come visit you I gotta make that trip I gotta come for maybe like two three weeks I gotta come set up a desk there trade a little bit I gotta go extend a little bit we got you covered man again San Juan is a beautiful place man it is a beautiful place it's small and literally everything is right next to each other so we got the beach two minutes down the block everybody is there the showers are here too so everybody just kind of comes you know they they hop off the beach to come here take a shower trade a little bit living room is here kitchen is here you know so it's home it will come it's fucking home bro it literally is home bro it's home for traders that's what it is man scared I'll never leave if I want to see it 100% bro 100% man this is awesome bro like I really appreciate your time man I know you're a busy guy I really appreciate how deep you get into this and for those people that are watching just understand that you know we're all just normal dudes at the end of the day man that just have a real big passion for not only making money but doing living this crazy world that we live in where Tesla's up fucking 20 points FedEx is up this is up it's a crazy way something going on man all right bro I have my my friends always ask me like oh like how's how's trading and I've been like I tell them the truth I'm like bro I don't know if I'm gonna wake up to the best day of my life the worst day of my life I have no idea what I'm gonna wake up to at any point any day it's never super it's never super consistent in the sense that the market's going to do the same thing it's just always a different fucking ballgame and just when you think you've seen it all you get something like CXAI gapping up in the after hours to $70 you get something like Tesla or Meta crashing to like $80 $90 and then tripling off the lows like you can't make this shit up bro you really can't make this shit up and the market is almost the best it's like almost the best reality TV show because I don't know bro I don't know if we're gonna wake up tomorrow Elon's gonna get shot and Tesla's gonna be down 50% you don't know that's why I like the live man that's why I like the live the live helps me kind of express all that craziness and all that emotion with stuff that's happening man because it's insane every single day and it's just but it's just hilarious there's so much comedy at all at all times man so I enjoy I enjoy laughing at the way they fuck with people bro is so impressive it's just so impressive like the way you say it is when there's no bid and everyone's screaming for a bid that's your biggest opportunity like they fuck with people to such a point where they're like this thing is going to zero like I remember bro last year meta was a zero everyone like they should go to fucking zero yeah all the time it triples it triples it triples and everybody's like why the fuck didn't I buy that shit what the fuck happened bro what the fuck happened so like I don't know bro this and I think the longer that you're in the game the more you understand that that craziest shit could happen like I started trading in 2014 so I didn't see 2008 but in 2008 I'm sure there was no bid anywhere so now that I've lived through the 2022 I know that when that cycle comes that there's no bid anywhere that you could just hit the short button on anything and it's gonna work even we'll make I'll make millions I'll make millions and all so all this and then we to go to tie it back up here before we before we end right we were talking about desires and we're talking about wants and you know how oftentimes they control us right so you know let's say you gotta get you got a guy that wants to make a million bucks or two million bucks but he wants it so fucking bad it it it expresses itself in in his emotions how he thinks of himself if he has a bad day blah blah blah all this kind of stuff if you're able to look I'm able to look at myself and be like all right I have the skills to get there I have the confidence do I have the market do I have the right market for it is you know is has that market been bestowed upon me yet or is it time yet oftentimes it just ain't time yet it's not time yet and you trying to force it you trying to force it in a world that's just not it's just not there for you it doesn't mean that you can't make the million dollars it doesn't mean that you can't hit the two million it just means you got to chill out is you got to chill out about it you know you got to realize like it's already there for you you just have you get you just have to be patient bro that is as most that's the most truest thing I've ever heard again you just got to be patient about it there's my market will come in when it does you already know what's going to happen I already know what's going to happen and you better make damn sure that before it comes that you do not exhaust yourself yeah 100 you're fucking imagine bro can you imagine that you were the guy that was buying the dip on meta at 150 selling at 140 130 selling at 120 100 selling at 90 and then you're like you know what I'm gonna try to get out of hundo I'm gonna sell it at 110 finally I got it and then motherfucking goes up in our $200 a share so you got to make sure that you don't exhaust yourself mentally during the improper cycle because you may be right meta was dip by right in hindsight it wasn't dip by but if you timed it wrong if the cycle wasn't correct if you didn't wait for that catalyst of them laying off people that change the tape you got too exhausted yep yep and again you know we blow up accounts on over trading and mental exhaustion man because we just can't you can't feel the shit coming you can't feel the car you lose your confidence and all that kind of stuff and boom you start blowing out accounts you know it's not necessary just sit there be patient man when that shit comes and that train comes and you're there mentally man forget about it the money's there you already know it man so that's my dumb ass bro I've had so many scenarios or my dumb ass like I use all the buying power I have of course now you ain't got none left out of the shares and my fucking crazy stupid ass is like how do I get more buying power yes sir perfect cool man I appreciate you coming on thank you so much bro this was like freaking church for me dude I just such it was awesome yeah happy back on anytime and then you guys are all welcome you guys are all welcome to come to PR man just let me know and that's what you guys for real absolutely absolutely thank you again brother I appreciate it all right peace out guys I see you guys