 Welcome back to the Trade Hacker Mindset. In this episode, I want to talk to you about how it makes us feel when we find a new trading strategy that we think has the potential to be successful. Trading the markets can be difficult to master and seemingly just out of reach. Professional traders have a secret. Trading requires total mental and emotional control. It requires the Trade Hacker Mindset. Alright, so let's jump into this discussion about how it makes us feel when we find this new strategy that we think has some real serious potential. Now, I'm recording this podcast as I am walking on a beautiful summer morning. And so if you hear birds chirping in the background or if you hear a car drive by, I apologize. But this is what my life has come to. I have to use every spare minute I can to get content out to you all. Focus on the content, not the audio on this one. Alright, so think about this. I recently have been working on a new strategy that I will be rolling out to our community and I'm just, I'm super, super excited about it. I'm not going to tell you too much about the actual strategy here on the podcast because our community, you'll be getting notified via email and post in the community. It'll be rolling out a whole, whole class. But what I'm super excited about is obviously the potential for the profitability for our community but also the simplicity. I've been working with some developers to create these, I don't want to call them indicators because when I hear indicator or when I see people using indicators, you know, they think of it as this magic, magic thing that is going to produce profits. And so while this is technically an indicator, it's something that you're going to be able to put on your charts, it's just, it's really just a way for you to gauge specific criteria of price action to help you in your trading decisions. And so most strategies are fairly static, meaning you do this if this happens and you do that if that happens. The problem with a lot of trading systems is that they work in specific trading environments and then they stop working when that trading environment shifts. So for example, think about a lot of the trading strategies, kind of our core income strategies at navigation trading, we use implied volatility. So let's just use a real basic strategy of selling a short strangle, trading a short strangle. So we're selling premium. Well, obviously we do that when implied volatility is high. And the reason that we do that when implied volatility is high is because when implied volatility is high, we know that the options are more expensive relative to where they have been, right? So we sell those options, collect a credit, collect that premium and we benefit when implied volatility contracts. But think about if we only sold those strangles in all environments, when implied volatility was high, when implied volatility was low, well, if you're doing it while implied volatility is extremely low, then we know that there is a decent chance at some point, because implied volatility is mean reverting, that implied volatility is going to spike and that works against our position, okay? So that's one of the reasons why we don't only trade short strangles, right? I know some people who only trade short strangles and the problem is when the environment is good for trading short strangles, they do great. But when the environment is unfavorable, they do terrible. And so one thing that we do at navigation trading is we have a bunch of different strategies that we can execute in different market environments, right? So that's a key component. Now, with this strategy that I've been developing, it has some dynamics built into it, okay? So in other words, you're placing the trades and where and how you place the trades is based on the overall environment of the current marketplace. So it's very dynamic. Like I said, a lot of, now I got an airplane going by, that's great. So most, like I was saying, most trading strategies are static. So they only work in one environment. Well, in that environment shifts, they tend not to do very well. But if you can have a, either multiple strategies that you can execute one strategy when the environment is one way, and you can execute another strategy when the environment changes, that's part of being dynamic in your trading. And so the strategy that we're rolling out is going to be dynamic in itself. So you can be trading in any environment, but there are just different criteria that's set up to help you adapt to that specific environment. So that's kind of the basis of the part of the excitement about the strategy and obviously the profitability. So what I wanted to talk to you about today is, have you ever felt in trading, whatever you start to learn a new strategy, you start to, and you start to see potential. Maybe you're back testing that strategy or maybe you just started trading it very small or maybe you're paper trading it or maybe you're just looking at charts and thinking that you're seeing specific patterns that you think have potential to be profitable because they continue to repeat themselves. Whatever it is, you start to get this level of excitement inside you. And sometimes, I like with me, because I am just crazy obsessed with the markets. I'll find myself spending an entire weekend just pouring through this and documenting and creating the necessary rules and developing the strategy and not being able to sleep at night and waking up at 3am and jumping into my computer and just being completely absorbed because I'm so excited, not only about the profitability, but I've developed and I've been trading long enough to where I have a very solid foundation of strategies that are very consistently profitable, okay? So the profitability part doesn't get me nearly as excited today as the fact that I'm able to create this strategy that I think is going to help members of our community. And so when I find something like this, like something that I'm working on right now, it just gets me so fired up because every trader has a different personality types, right? Some people gravitate to day trading. Some people gravitate to long-term investing. Some people gravitate to swing trading. Some people gravitate to selling premium. Some people gravitate to directional trading. And so all of us are different and it's really important that we find what works best for us. What works best for you may not work best for me. And I constantly tell people in our community because we have new traders come in and they'll try to mimic exactly what I'm doing. They'll try to place the same number of contracts even though their account size is totally different. They'll try to get the same exact fill price when the only relevance to the fill price that we got was based on when we happened to be looking at the trade at the time that we were looking at has nothing to do with anything. And so I really encourage people to try not, don't try to mimic what exactly what I'm doing. Watch what I'm doing. Understand why I'm doing what I'm doing. And then if that trade or if that strategy fits into your overall portfolio, if it fits into your overall mindset, if it fits into your overall trading style, then execute something similar. You know, I mean, that's the goal. The goal is not to be a copycat of our traders. That's never worked for anyone and it never will. That's why no black box copycat trade signal service will ever be successful because you can't, you can't copy. Like our trade alerts are very successful. They're very profitable, but they're for us and it's us. The whole goal of the alerts is us showing you how we trade, not for you to be a copycat of every exact facet of those alerts. That's not how it works. So that's a kind of a long-winded roundabout way of just of saying, you know, when I get excited about a new strategy, it's because I think that this strategy has the potential to reach certain individuals, certain members of our community who have a certain way that they want to trade, a way that they trade that really fits with their personality because not everybody wants to trade the same way I do. And by the way, this new strategy definitely fits with my personality too, but it's different and so I'm really excited to roll it out. So a couple of things I want to point out when you find a new strategy that you're excited about, and this really goes for trading in general, is you want to try to not get too high on the flip side. When you're losing in trading, you want to not get too low. You want to keep your emotions. You want to keep your excitement a little bit muted because a lot of times when you start to create a new strategy or find a new strategy or learn a new strategy and you get super excited about it, there are definitely some nuances that you don't see at first. There are definitely some nuances that you can only realize when you actually start placing trades with some actual real money, with some actual size. And so, because I've gone through this so many times where I've something, you know, kind of a light bulb has gone on and I'm like, oh my gosh, what if I do this in this situation? And, you know, at first it might look like it's the holy grail, the greatest thing to slice bread, the most profitable strategy ever. And then when I get in there, I start trading real money, you start to realize, oh, that piece didn't really work like I thought it would, but this piece did. And yeah, it's good, but it's not as great as I thought it was. You know what I mean? So you've got to kind of temper your excitement till you really start going through the trading process. You know, one thing, I mean, I'll give you a perfect example and this is something that I'm not proud of, but a while back, I think it's a couple of years ago, yeah, it was a couple of years ago, we rolled out a new strategy called the bunker strategy. And when we first rolled it out, we rolled it out using options on the VIX. Well, if you've ever traded the VIX or traded options on VIX or any volatility related product, you know that because of the environment of how they are priced, you know, the options are not priced off the actual price of the VIX, they're priced off of the VIX futures, which continue to roll and expire. And so it's constantly going to a new expiration cycle. And so there are some dynamics around trading options on VIX that are different than trading options on normal equities. Like an index, like an SPY or SPX or anything like that. So we had this strategy that was meant to be kind of a hedge. And I just, I rushed it out. In other words, I didn't, I don't feel like I tested it in enough environments. I tested it in certain environments and it worked. And I was so excited to get it out to the community and so excited for our community to have it, that I rushed it out without vetting it as I normally do, as without vetting it as in a way that was extremely beneficial and started trading it and some others started trading it. And while we did end up hitting the corona crash and it ended up being profitable, it just didn't work to the expectation that I thought it would in that environment. And so I literally scrapped that one and redid the entire course based on a little bit more, you know, newfound knowledge of how it reacts in a actual crash situation. So bottom line is that's the only course that I've ever rushed out to our community. Every other one has been tested over, you know, at least a year or more in multiple market environments and in ways that allows extreme vetting to take place, not only from real life trading, but backtesting in every angle you can think of to make sure that it's, you know, high quality type trading strategy. And so this isn't something that I'm going to rush out, but it is something that I'm excited about and I can't wait to get in the hands of our community members. So just remember when you get excited about a strategy, just take it slow. This is a marathon. It's not a sprint. I know a lot of people come into trading and part of the reason that they fail quickly is because they try to make money too fast. And so when you start to learn a new strategy, take it slow, paper trade at least 100 trades, then and only then start to trade with very small size with real money until you get comfortable and still until you work out all the nuances, because we're so excited to make money quick. And when we try to make money too quick, it ultimately comes back and bites us and we end up losing money. And so while we're anxious to get going, we're anxious to make money, the slower you go sometimes, the slower you push, it's going to save you money in the long term because it's going to help you understand and realize some of the nuances that come along with that strategy that you were blind to when you first started learning. Hope that was helpful. If you're not part of the navigation trading community, just go to community.navigationtrading.com. We've got hundreds of traders there interacting on a daily basis, not only about the mindset stuff, but also sharing trade ideas with the sole purpose of helping each other become better traders. Look forward to seeing you on the inside and we'll see you in the next episode.