 Let's talk about the losses, right? My favorite. Yeah. HKD pulled just enough times to make me feel like, oh, it's working. Even though I'm down on my position. It's the I'm digging through the filings, trying to find out what's going to work. Yeah, I started searching the cash talk on Twitter, like, see, this is why I'm short. So everyone, welcome back to the After Hours podcast. Today, we have a very special guest, Kyle Williams. Thanks for joining us, man. What's going on? Thanks for having me, guys. So let's get started with a little bit of your history. How'd you get started trading? And yeah, we'll take it from there. So I started back in college as a sophomore. I guess I'll go back freshman year. Freshman year, I went to San Diego State University. I was an engineering major because I've always liked math. I've always been good at math, but I just knew the first, call it a couple of months, all my engineering friends were like, yeah, let's build a car this weekend. And I was like, I don't want to do that. So I liked the math part. I didn't actually like the doing part of the engineering. However, I didn't know what I wanted to switch to. I didn't know where I wanted to go with my actual career. I just didn't want to change my major six, seven times. And then so eventually, I ended up watching the movie, The Big Shore. I'm sure you guys have all seen it or heard of it. And so that opened my eyes to this world of the economy. I actually had had a mutual fund since I was a kid that my parents made a deal with me. Like, if you put in all your allowance and if you save up enough money and allowance, we'll put it in a mutual fund. And at 10 years old, all I know is more money equals more money in that sense. So I'm like, oh, yeah, sure. And I then came to the conclusion that in 2008, my mutual fund worth maybe a couple thousand dollars at the time cut half in 50%. And I was like, wait, what? And so I realized I need to learn more about this if I'm going to protect any sort of wealth that I want to create for myself. So that led me down the rabbit hole of actually discovering what trading was, came across Tim Sykes's what is penny stocks kind of thing, found him, joined the challenge in what is it? June or July, 2016. And then call it seven years later, here we are. And I'm up over about $4 million in profits. So let's talk about that. When on your profit Lee, there's this defining point in your trading where you are just consistently kind of the P&L curve is just creeping, right? It's no dips, really. It's just like straight, it's not straight up, but it's like extremely consistent. What were you doing during those times prior to hitting that kind of 500,000 mark? Because that was really what it looks like to be the defining moment. Once you hit 500K, it skipped from two, three, 4,000, a little bit here, a little here, a little here, a little here, and it went 500, 600, 700, 800, 1.2, 1.4. Rocket ship, right? And so what was it during those times that helped you stay consistent prior to hitting that big milestone? I would say, well, the first thing I'm thinking about isn't really the answer to your question, but I feel like I was just also in a good place at the right time. When I crossed 500, was during kind of COVID, was during that late 2020 mark where the market had, I was already prepared in the sense with the setups that I knew worked. And so I guess to answer your questions, like it was like I had, when I first started from down about 4,000, not 5,000, about 4,000 bucks at my peak in, like that's down 70% of my account, I'd finally found two setups that really worked for me and I stuck with those for about a few months that got me to break even, which was like, I love to buy panics on the OTC market. I mean, the most classic example is like that Fannie Mae kind of thing where the classic, Bao makes one of his best days where it's just all green, all red, all green. And so I actually got lucky where, and I wouldn't say lucky, but I was able to trade that very last time Fannie Mae ever did that before. Now it's, I don't even know what sound like 40 cents was it now? But I'd watched Bao do it, I'd watched Grittani do it. And then in February, I don't know, February 22nd of 2017 or something like that, it was happening and I was like, oh my gosh, I've seen this. And so I just waited for the level two turn and I dip bought like a hundred shares. And this is when E-Trade had $10 commissions in and out and I'd made 25 cents in my dip buy. So I literally made like five and a half bucks. But like, it was so like, such a turning point for me was like, oh, this is a setup I can learn. Like this is a setup that I can repeat over and over again that I wasn't just randomly guessing where a stock could go. I actually had a framework to follow. So it was doing that and then eventually I got into the idea or I finally came across, you know, shorting. I mean, I always was testing shorting, but I realized a lot of the stocks I was dip buying were also just stocks that were overextended and they had to lead to some kind of panning to me for me to dip buy them in the first place, which led me to realize like, I could short these and then before, you know, looking at the signs and the indicators before actually panicking, I could kind of get behind that move and be short for the panic cover and then dip buy it. And that was really the majority of my profits up until maybe up 5, 10K. And then it led to me kind of shorting some pump and dumps, some OTC kind of scams. Same thing as like shorting a first red day, but a little more like long-term swing style. And then I got a little bit better at buying breakouts from learning how to short sell. I used to be terrible at them, but learning how to short sell made me a better long trader in a sense. And those four kind of things kind of created my process and my system for me. And that was really the bulk of that first few hundred K there, for sure, that was really the bulk of it. Do you do any, any longing now or is it just strictly shorting? No, I'll do some longing. This year in 2023 has been a bit different. Cause yeah, I mean, OTC panic dip buys have been since the OTC bubble popped back in, what would you, what was it like April, 2021 or 2022, I should say. No, it was 2021. But since then like panic dip buys have been done. So I've been buying those. There's some good breakouts here and there, but really what I've been doing is kind of unconventional where there's not really, I mean, I guess you can call it a setup. Like some of my best long trades this year, I've just been buying sector momentum. So like the AI stocks back, not the most recent run, but the first run that we saw when the actual ticker AI went from, you know, 10 to 30 and then GF AI went from like 17 cents to like 50 cents or SAUN went from, you know, one to three or whatever it was. I actually would just long, I just longed SAUN, long BB AI, longed GF AI and made like, I don't know, 30, 40 grand from that. So that's probably the bulk of my long profits there. The only other long trade I can think about that I've made good money on this year would be SDA. SDA was one where I lost some money on it or such a good amount of money on it short. I was like, this thing's so difficult. I'm just gonna flip long. And I flipped it from like 25 to like 35. So they're really, so I hate kind of saying because there's no like good framework set up that is repeatable per se. Besides maybe sector momentum, but it's been a bit different long for me. But I mean, short, my profits are like 90% short. So I've never been a huge dominant long trader to begin with, so. When you're kind of going through your daily process each day, what is kind of like, for like a newer trader who's listening to this and saying like, oh, Kyle Williams, like I want to learn a bit more about his process. Like, so when you kind of wake up in the morning, like what is kind of like your routine? So I'm gonna sound lazy saying this because I'm on the West Coast. Market opens at 6 30 AM for me and I am not a morning person. So waking up, I mean, this morning I woke up at 5 45. I'll never wake up past six. But you know, I get up this like, literally this little room, like that's my bedroom. I kind of come out this little office space here. I'll literally just wake up and then just straight to the office. And also I'll have my watchlist made the night before. I'll do all my scanning, all my watchlist planning, all my possible trade kind of building per se. And then I'll come into the market, pull up the screens, pull up the charts, see what's gapping, see if it's like, that's aligned with what I thought the stock was gonna do in my watchlist to begin with. And then from there, I'll usually narrow it down to the one or two stocks that I actually think are tradable based on what I thought was gonna happen and what is still happening, from whether it's gapping up, gapping down. And then we'll go from there. Like for example, last night, MVIS was my top watch, being kind of the most extended stocks that I'm personally seeing, came into today and it blow off to eight. And then started looking weak. I got short in the kind of low to mid sevens and then covered in the mid sixes. So that was pretty much it. And that was my only trade today. So it's kind of like how it works. I just show up the market a little bit later in the morning because I just love sleeping in and then reevaluate my watchlist and go from there. Your watchlist is kind of like, okay, I'm looking at the most extended stocks on the day. And now I'm gonna try and formulate a plan, like maybe if this goes red tomorrow or if I can short it into like a morning spike into like some resistance, that's kind of your thought process for the watchlist. Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Also it's sometimes when it's like slower days like I'm expecting it to, I mean, it could be dead wrong but especially over summer months, like I'll just expect days to be slower. So I'll just like put stocks on watch just to stay familiar. Like if MVIS was like, for example, I guess not what's today, Wednesday on Monday when I saw MVIS, I was like, I'm just gonna put on the back burner because I know it's not extended yet. But if it actually gets there, it's like I'm stocking a stock, you know, until it gets to where I want it to go. And if it never does, then I never trade it, you know? So totally you nail it ahead in terms of it does get there than I have an idea of whether it, getting to a shorter spike, getting short of it goes red, all those good stuff, so. Yeah, when you were kind of like learning how to trade, did you have like a, like a tab group that you were kind of, you know, like talking with, did you have guys who you were kind of like in the trenches learning with or was it like, until you became successful that you started kind of like talking to the other guys? Cause I know you met like Jack and like how I kind of met you was through Jack, right? Right, we had Jack, we had Jack previously on the podcast. And I know you guys were cool. I listened to his, or you guys to show with him. It was good. Jack's the great guy. Yeah. So how'd you guys meet? How'd you guys get together? So to answer both questions. So I, I was quite a loner starting out. I didn't really, I'm very sociable in person, but online, like reaching out is not necessarily my strong super say. And so I was up around $30,000 in profits, not having a talk to really anybody. I was just doing my thing in my own little world, my own little bubble, just trading the setups I knew. And Kellogg around that time was right around 30K, me and him both. And I remember he reached out to me because I was, it was like the week of trading. There was this old OTC pump and dump called, I think FPTA, forgive me if that's not the ticker because it might not even be a ticker anymore. It was so many years ago, but I was shorted. He knew I traded pump and dumps probably because he saw some of my trades that I, you know, posted publicly or whatever. And that was the day I actually got bought in and lost like 10% of my accounts, my biggest loss since finding profitability. So I lost like 10% of my account in this one trade, got overly aggressive and I got bought in right at the top. Yeah, that chart there. And the very next day it dumps and I just didn't have shares of short. So it's also ironic, he'd like messed with me and I'm like, oh my God, this guy knows. Like I gotta tell this guy about my huge loss here. And since then we were just, we just, you know, and I'm sure you guys know, Kellogg, he just, he'll just ask you questions. He's curious, he wants to know how you trade and we became friends. And then we ended up getting an Airbnb together at the 2019 Sykes conference. And that's how I met Dom and I met so many other people. And then it just kind of grew from there, just keep beating more and more traders that just love being in the community, you know, so. So would you say that that pushed you from that when you hit that milestone, now you had people that were right there hitting that milestone of one of their own with you and you were able to have that confidence to push the pedal even harder when the opportunities came along, say when you hit that 500K mark because if we got to go back to your profit chart, it hit 500 and then just stacked. So what was it during that time of hitting that 500,000 that clicked in your brain that went, it's time to push? Yeah. I think around, so I think it was two things. One would be, like you said, I think a lot of it, I didn't even think about it this way but a lot of it probably was Kellogg specifically because I'll never, I'll always remember during COVID, there was like a few month period where we would just hop on the phone together, not every day and it wasn't like we traded together but we just wanted to hear each other's thoughts. Like it's almost like we went over each other's watch list together and it ultimately resulted in a common joke we'd make with each other where he would ask me like, oh, how many shares do you think you want to take? If you were gonna be max size, what would this look like? And then it'd be any random runner. And I'm like, oh, I think if I got 10,000 shares, that'd be great. And he's like, oh, mine was 20. Or he's like, oh, mine's 30. So like every play we had, his would always be double or triple me. And I never, I never saw it as a competition but it was always good to like, oh, I'm about as big as I should be, right? We kind of found this ratio. What's up? I said that guy, man, he's always, if he finds out that your short like 10K or long 10K, he's like, fuck it, I'm 20, 30, I'm 40. You talk to that motherfucker at the end of the day. He's like, oh, yeah. Yeah, I ended up sizing in like about like 50K shares. I'm like, what the fuck, what? Yeah. So I just went in half my account right here, you know? It's like, no way to do it. Yeah, exactly. Jesus Christ. And so it was kind of a common joke we had together where he was just big and to me it felt small but I realized like I was being aggressive and it was the time to do it in terms of the market. And along with that, I think, you know, so call it mid-2020 is when I kind of got to that point where I'd been about four, four and a half years in and I think I really got a good understanding now where instead of just sizing up evenly across the board across all setups, like let's say between a dip buy, a breakout and a first red day, like I'm pretty much going to size generally the same amount, right? So like I'd be losing like 500 bucks of trade, let's call it as an example. Once I got into year three and then really perfected it in year four as COVID came around, I really started getting good at like, okay, here's a first red day and it's average and it's got a little bit of dilution but it's not as extended. You know, I could run through all these different kinds of indicators and scenarios, right? I started learning like the best of the best where it was like it made sense for me that if I traded, you know, the best of the best like 10 times in a row, I'd be okay with taking an average loss instead of 500 and double it or triple it to like 1500, you know, because it was so good and the odds were such my favor that I'm okay risking more because I know the payout can be so much more worth it. So right around the time again, and not only just in terms of how ideal plays were, there also were so many of them. So I think that definitely contributed to that huge kind of blow up move after 500 because it was really just all this kind of stars align between just a good market, me really understanding how to size up at the right spots and again, having that friendly competition of being a third of this guy named Jack Kellogg who makes, you know, like a million, he made like a million per month in 2021. I mean, he just exploded, you know. For real. No, I like that you said that. I like that you said the fact that you should be sizing kind of based on the setup because I think a lot of people struggle with that because, you know, when I first started, I thought that I had to use the same size in every single setup, but as I evolved, I learned that there's certain setups that require more size based on the probability of that setup. If you know that there's a 90, 95% chance of winning, shouldn't it make logical sense to bet heavier? Whereas if there's a 20 or 30% chance of winning, it should make logical sense to bet smaller. Right. Yeah, absolutely. And I think people fall into that, not knowing that in a sense. And it's for good and for bad. Like I'm glad I was maybe even across the board only because I didn't know what it ended no. I didn't know that maybe this first red day that I was trading was 90%. I just saw it as a first red day across the board average until I understood like, okay, this little indicator or this little difference about it, say it has dilution or I finally understand what dilution means, right? I'm like, oh, this has an insane amount of dilution. Like why wasn't I three times bigger? Like I'm gonna be three times bigger next time I see a first red day with dilution. And so it just came with enough practice and hours to really understand which and where the best first red days were gonna come along and really push it. So yeah, totally. So we've talked about the wins. Let's talk about the losses, right? My favorite. Yeah, that's where the real lessons are, right? That's where the real lessons are. So if we go back to this, there were these key times, right? Where in my opinion, your profit chart is one of the most unique. It's one of the most consistent because up until you really started pushing the pedal, there was never really any big ups or downs. It was just really consistent until you started to again push that pedal. There were finally those times when you had those pullbacks and these GBTC, HKDs, these were some of the largest losses. So what were some lessons that you learned from these trades? So a couple of them are for various different reasons, which are good because they're very good lessons that are completely separate from each other, right? So like HKD, and specifically in 2022, I really, it was like I learned a lot of 12, just 10 days ago. And I'm like, ah, I knock it off to the same, if you remember when Grittani ever talked about his drys loss, he just put on 5K shares at 15. He's like, ah, this thing's up from five, like I'm just going to short 5K here and I'll wake up in a week and it's going to be back down, right? It's kind of the same thing for me. I like, I just saw this thing in the mid 100s. It's like, ah, this thing's up 10X and 10 days, like, let me just sort it out. There's no freaking way it can do this, right? Right, like let me just see how it goes, you know? There was no, there was very little structure in this. I've said for a long time that every single black swan is something we've never seen before. Right. Every single one that comes along, you know, it was, it was the iLags, it was the HKDs, it was, before that it was the BPTH, right? It was the BPTH that went from three to 80 and at 40, everybody went, this is done, this is done. And then it goes, ew, no, it's not. And so every single one of these, man, it's like, just like you're saying, like Grittani talked about too, and he was on one of the first pods and dude, it's like, yeah, every single time you're like, dude, how can it get any higher? How can it get any higher? And then a TOPS happens and HKD happens and you're like, well, guess I remember. The longer I've traded, it's like never, just when you think you've seen it all, you just haven't. There's always something around the corner. And so eventually with HKD, it's like, I just kept, I finally made a trade plan overnight. And so like, so I got short 150s, it goes to 180s, 190s, cops out right at 200 there and closes, I believe it pulled back to like 170 or something. And so it made me feel good. That was the one thing too, like HKD pulled just enough times to make me feel like, oh, it's working. Even though I'm down on my position. And then we're in the next morning, I'm like, okay. What's the joke that Bal always makes? It's the one, it's the, I'm digging through the filings, trying to find out what's gonna work. Yeah, I started doing research backwards and you're like, I knew it, I knew it. Yeah. I started searching the cash talk on Twitter, like, see, this is why I'm short. Stock Twits is the worst. When you start searching Stock Twits for people's research that you've never found, that my ticker for that was Intel set. Just I, the ticker, I was my kryptonite. Gotcha. But so, yeah, so it's top to 200. I wake up the next day and the next morning I'm like, okay, my trade plan is I wanna risk those highs, you know, and it should pull back, right? Cause it's up so much. It doesn't. I don't cut it. I'm like, ah, whatever. Goes to 250, then it pulls a full 150. Literally goes from 250 to 150. I'm like, oh, hey, this is backside. Now we're risking 250. And then we just watch it just zombie back. And then it breaks 250. And ultimately, I freeze, you know, no, no, no, like not falling risk. It's like, I just, and then by the end of the day, it's at, you know, high to 400s. And then I finally realized, I'm like, you need to get out. Like there's, luckily, thank God, I, it finally hits me. I'm like, no, no, there's like, get, get out, please. For your own sake. So walk us through that freeze. What goes through your mind when, you know, we all have our own thoughts, you know, I think we've all three, all four of us been in that exact same situation where we go. And the freeze, in my opinion, is different for everyone. It's the deer and the headlights. Yeah, it's the deer and the headlights. And so what goes through your mind in those cases and how did you break that kind of freeze pattern? What did you do to break that kind of rider's block, right? And then go right back and attack. The freeze for sure to me is definitely deer and the headlights. And it's almost freeze. And then immediately like, you can, I can feel my body clamping, right? So like the way I envision it, I remember, it's like it breaks 250. And before you know it, it's at like well over 300. And so it went from freezing to just like, because it's like, I can't take this loss. It's like, let us pull back. It just turns into this almost not stubbornness because it very quickly, that quickly went away and I ended up cutting it. It just turned into this, I can't believe this is happening. I don't want to, I can't accept what the actual hell I'm looking at right now. But then I kind of go through that cycle for me, which is I go from freezing to denial to, oh my gosh, to then it's already gone this bad. I don't know where the top is. I don't know how high this is and go. And I'm like doing now the rough numbers of like my position size. And if it goes to this price, like can I survive? And I'm like, no, like, no, my account will not be here. Like it became, it became, I no longer cared about the loss I was in. I cared more about the loss that could have happened, which would have like blew up well over half a million dollar count. So like the loss looks bad, but in my head, what the loss could have been was 10 times worse. So to me, cutting at that point was no problem. I was like, get me out, you know? And it was right. Like I don't need to, and even if it wasn't right, like it's never worth looking back. I say HKD died at 400 and I cut the loss for no reason. It's not worth looking back and like, damn it, I should have held, you know? Cause the one time you don't, you're gonna, you'll be met with a top. You'll be met with the next HKD. And so that was not right. And then what did you do after that? So for me, You take that massive loss, what do you mentally do to get back in that headspace of being able to attack? Well, for HKD, I actually never retouched it. That was one where I kind of just had to, I just ate it and I knew no matter what, I was never gonna get back in. TOP was one that I lost big on, but was willing to re-attack. And I think because I had a little more conviction on that one, HKD was just, it got so illiquid up and when I hit 2,500 that I was like, I can't even trade this I wanted to. Like if it was that illiquid, when I got short at 150, I would have never even got short. Cause it just, it became untradable for me. But in terms of just big losses, how we recover, I tried to remove myself like from the actual loss and look at like, okay, what rules were broken? Did it even break any rules? Like for example, TOP when I lost about a little over a hundred, I looked at everything and I'm like, you know, I just, the only rule I really kind of grazed, I guess you can say was, it just was too aggressive. At the end of the day, I would have taken that trade over again. I just would have risked, I risked less. I just risked, I just would have wished I didn't hit my pretty much max stop of how much I would have wanted to lose. I didn't really want to lose more than a hundred. And so give it, take some slippage and over trading. You know, I'm right there. HKD for me, I just, I broke those rules. And so for me, when I, it's different. It's like, so I guess to break it down. It's like, if I didn't really break any hard rules, I just was over aggressive or over traded a little bit. And I am, I understand that that loss I took is acceptable as long as it's not, it's in within my realm, I guess you could say, of possibilities and I can do that 10 times out of 10 and know the odds are in my favor per se. Not necessarily Topsky is going to, you know, cause I didn't, I cut it at like 19. So obviously it's the same scenario I knew if I, if it gets over any higher than, you know, the call that 2022, whatever it was, that, and if I froze, it's like, uh, then there, that's where the problem lies. But with HKD, I broke so many rules. Again, just seeing how it went that I knew I kind of put myself on time. I was like, I am, you're done. Like there's no coming back from this. So it's, and I know it's really hard. Like I, I have gotten comments that before, like how do you separate that? And I just think practice. I think it's, it's, it's a double edged sort of looking at your P and L as either points or actual money. And it's like, if I break my rules, I look at his actual money. Like you're like, Kyle, you screwed up. You just lost this much money. You're done. You're in timeout versus, you know, you kind of stayed within your plan. You just maybe aggressive or you trade it. You just trade it. You didn't trade it as well as you know, you could have, but no real rules were broken. It's like, okay, we're still in, I don't want to call it video game mode because it diminishes the fact that it's still money, no matter what, right? But that's kind of how my, my brain works in a weird way. Yeah. How do you recover from losses like this? Is it, do you have any touch routine or anything you do personally to be able to recover? Not necessarily. If it's, I mean, taking time off is always good, but for me, I just, I really like to separate it. I really like to try to desensitize myself in some way of as, again, as long as I know I follow the rules, I best I could, which when we're in place and as they trade longer, the more and more strict my rules get to keep me in a safer spot, which weren't, which weren't in place when HKD was happening, you know? As long as I did that, I feel pretty mentally okay. And at some point I do, if I ever get to the point, it's like, I kind of, I'm on it, I kind of have to, it's like, you have to be honest to yourself. Like if I, it's not necessarily how the loss is like, how do I feel? Like if I feel mentally just drained where I can't even look at a chart again, then I just, I'll just take off. But it's almost like, it's almost meant to mess up to say like, I've taken enough big losses now where I know if it's too big or it's an HKD big where yes, my, so put it this perspective, like HKD's loss total between the two was a quarter million, way too much, didn't have rules in place. If I did, I would have cut it way before, I would have had it cut, you know, the broker cut for me, right, at over, over 250, whatever versus now with the most recent of top, I had that kind of in place. And even so, there were still more rules I hadn't figured out. I made this, I made a little recap video about top and one of the ways is like, okay, so I have a max amount I want to lose for my biggest account. I didn't have a max for how I wanted to lose on my little account. So so much more of my top loss was the small account I don't care about, just like, ah, let's just throw money around because I have the big account over here that's not going to lose this much. But I have the small account, like it's like funny money. And so that was something else that kind of like, it was always another rule that I found and a further like refining of my system. And again, personally, the more I find those rules I get put in place, the more in control I feel when I do take that next big loss, or I do take the loss that I just shouldn't have took, but it's still, it's more rules for me to feel comfortable and lie back on. They're like, you know, I'm safe, I'm trading okay, this was just one little mistake or this was one little hiccup. So yeah, hopefully that makes sense. I know it's kind of rambling, but it's kind of how I try to envision it on my head and my head. Yeah. So some of these largest losses are the same stocks that are the same pattern that you're going to make your biggest wins on. Right. So what have you adjusted in your trading in terms of rules or things like that when you've taken these losses and you learned from it that you're going, okay, next time I can avoid that by doing this, right? Yeah. So what I learned from top was that, well, let's put it that way. I learned from, you know, to call it iLag and HKD was like, I need a max stop. I need some kind of price where if I see that price on my screen, whether it's mental or you just give it to hands, you're a broker, right? Either or you're done. You've stopped out, you're out. And I've always, and what is unique about this is that I've always thought that for individual losses. And I mean that individualized and smaller. So like if I gave a stock, you know, more than five tries, I was done. Didn't matter how much I lost, but if I lost like, you know, two cage time, I just, I can kill myself by a million paper cuts, right? But on top of that, in terms of knowing a loss that you can take versus a loss you're willing to accept. So for example, you know, I like putting my max stop or at least after HKD, I was like, okay, I'm gonna put my max stop at 10% of my account. There's no reason to ever risk, you know, on a loss more than 10%. It's just not worth it. I don't need to pull back in my account that big, let's say, right? And unfortunately after as 2023 started, I had a really good first three months from January to March, really through April as well, that pretty much doubled my account. It went from roughly, I started the year roughly with my biggest account being 500K. And before I know it, I'm looking at a $1 million account and like, wow, this is great. And I had such a rough choppy year all 2022, as you can see with some of the biggest losses there, right? And so I start 2023 and I'm like, oh my gosh, this feels so, it was such a relief. But the problem is with the relief also came off the breaks, if you wanna call it, where numerically in my head, I'm like, okay, my max stop is call it 10%. I have a roughly a million dollar account, oh, $100,000. Well, then there we go, here comes top. And that's why I say I didn't really break any hard, hard rules on top because I lost exactly how much I would've in the worst case scenario, give or take some over-trading and slippage. But then I look at myself and I'm like, no, no, that's still too much, you know? I was like, just because I have that rule doesn't mean you have to like, let that rule hit you or let that rule be broken. Like it's still unnecessary to lose that much. So now I've removed the 10% rule and I just have a maxed off as a number. So for me, as long as my account is above, call it half a million, my max stop is 50. And even in a slower market, I've contemplated like if the summer market gets even slower, my max, I should drop it to like 30, you know? It's like, it goes beyond just what my account is at, but really how necessary is a loss like this that needs to be taken on any given market environment on any given trade. And of course, if it's like what me and Alex were mentioning, if it's your A plus first red day short set up, well, yeah, that's a little bit different than some of these huge massive squeezers that are kind of sketchy China tickers. So it's all about, you know, juggling it all. But I also knew, essentially my lesson was like, I knew just because my account could take the loss doesn't make it necessarily okay. And so now I've kind of moved down to what I think is beyond necessary. And even five 50K is a little bit necessary, but I know if I'm highly convicted of a certain ticker, I could take that loss and be like, yep, okay, you know what? That's, it is one of this, you know, versus approaching 100 and be like, wow, Kyle, you really just gave away your whole last two months, like you're an idiot kind of thing, the self-talk, you know? So. Yeah. You mentioned earlier kind of a little bit about like dilution and stuff like that, maybe for just like some newer people who are listening or maybe even some experienced people who just like have no idea. What stuff would you kind of look for in your patterns as far as like dilution when you're going over the filings? So I'll admit, I don't go over them as much as I should. In a lot of ways I will, because part of me, and it's a double-edged sword, part of me almost doesn't want to know. Like I definitely think there's a subconscious part of me that's like, you don't want to know because if you do, you're gonna be a little too convicted or stubborn or want to call this ticker a piece of crap when we all know trading this industry, like crap could run higher than we ever expect, right? So I won't look as much as someone who is really into it, but when I do look, I would love to find just if they have an ATM or not. Like that's definitely my bread and butter. Like if someone has a stock has an ATM, which is an offering where a stock or shares can be sold at any price. There's not like an offering price of three bucks and the deal's kind of priced in there. Like a stock will drop to $3 and then just stay there versus ATM if they just can sell at any price they want, some of these tickers get obliterated. So I love that, but in terms of really looking, I really don't look much beyond that. For me also, it's sometimes not knowing and then a long way, but also slightly thinking I know by looking at a chart. Like for example, I shorted H-O-T-H, was it yesterday? I think it was yesterday. Being a Gap and Crap. And I don't even like trading Gap and Crops. They're not really my favorite. I don't like shorting day one movers. But I look back at the daily chart of Hoth and I'm like, this thing has never ran. Like this thing has never held up one time. And even if it does hold up one time, it literally next day it gaps it down losing all its gains. So it just one of those like history kind of charts. I look at the kind of the characteristics of it and I knew without even having to go to the filings and like the odds of this kind of having some kind of ugly day are at least on my side. They may not be great, but I was like, I'll give it a shot and I made a few grand on it. So, yeah. Yes. Where do you park your money outside of the market? So you made all this money trading, but do you have any investments in real estate, long-term stocks, or what do you do with the extra capital that you earn from the markets? Well, the first place I stored is the IRS. They have a good chunk of that. Yeah, but another place is so, there's a few things. So one, obviously giveaway. I do have some money in crypto. Mainly Bitcoin, there's a lot of all coins or just absolute crap. Bitcoin, I do have some belief in, but I don't, I mean, it's not like I throw it all in there. I have just appropriate money. The amount of money I have in Bitcoin, if it went to zero tomorrow, I'm okay with. My life doesn't change, right? And a couple other places I have. So obviously, I'm not a financial advisor. This isn't financial advice, but one thing I like to have done is because now I'm obviously in the income bracket that can't do an IRA, right? Or a Roth, I should say. I can't open up. And I've done the backdoor kind of thing, but even then you're only can backdoor someone to so many thousands per year, right? There's another strategy with life insurance. And it's not using life insurance as insurance as in, if I die, my beneficiaries get my money. It's life insurance. It's still that same policy, which is a plus, but it's life insurance as like, I have like a call it like a variable life policy. And that policy lets you invest in the market. But the kicker is, is that if you don't want to have it as a policy on your deathbed, like say I turned 60 years old, I've got this, you know, million dollar policy. And so I don't want to use that. I don't have any dependence. I had no wife, no kids. And I'm, there's no one to pay out. You can have the insurance company come back or and have them pay you out like an annuity. And the gains from that policy growing over time in the market is tax-free. So it's kind of like a Roth on steroids, where you can kind of, I wouldn't say put as much money as you want. And again, it's different for everybody based on how you do it and who you do it with. But that's one thing I have. The other thing I'm doing is also starting to want to invest in dividend and paying stocks. And I only say that because I, in my mind, I would love to be into real estate. I would love to like own multiple properties and have tenants and get passive income that way. But I'm just not, the more I think about it, maybe I talk myself out of it. I hate the idea of getting a call from a tenant and be like, yeah, my toilet broke. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I gotta do this now. And unfortunately, I guess trading has maybe scarred me in some way. Cause obviously there's different amounts of income you can make passively through real estate depending on how much the rent is and how much the costs are. But for me, it's like, oh my God, I gotta fix this toilet for an extra 500 bucks. Like when I just made 10 X that on an average day in the market, I just like, I cringe at that even though it's a very smart thing to do. Plenty of people make tons of money on real estate. Just hire a property management company. Well, that too, you know, and I've thought about that. But again, I'm so, a confession for me and an embarrassing confession is I am the least handyman you'll ever meet. Like getting me to fix a light bulb is like, wow, Kyle, great job, like congrats, you know. And so I could hire a company, but it's like, for me, even the idea when I can just park the same amount of money in a REIT, in a AT&T, in whoever, and just take money five months or quarterly, I just, I'm like, that's right, I want on some of that over there. So that's kind of the next step of where any money I'll start funneling out. I really want to kind of build that portfolio to just, again, create some kind of passive income that, yes, unfortunately is still tied to the markets, but it's not tied to how well I trade any given day, you know, so. So since you've had all this success, what's been your, what have you spoiled yourself with? So I guess, what was the first thing? So the first thing was I got a, I got a 2022, was it 2021? I didn't know, 2022 Tesla Model S. Still have that, I love that. Prior to that, I was driving a 2012 Ford Fusion, which I loved that car too, that was great, but obviously not, not Tesla. Then the next thing would be I, when was it? Was it 2021? September, 2021, I had, so my grandparents, they're passed away now, but in 2021, they lived in Port St. Lucie, Florida, and I am in San Diego, California. And so, and they're my dad's parents. So they moved down to Florida. They had been there for a few years. One of my grandfather's dreams was to ride a private jet. And I only done it once. And when I did, I was like, this is the, I was like, I'm done. This is, this is it. There's only one way to travel now. Yeah, it's like this. We go broke just by buying private jets. And so we surprised them. We actually flew out to Port St. Lucie, stayed in the hotel for just one night, and then surprised Matt, not even the airport, right? It's like this little walk. I was so shocked when I first did it, because I was like, I just got to walk on, but there's no TSA. Like I can have a bomb, but it's like, they don't care, because you'd just be killing yourself and whoever else is on the plane with you, with just like five other people, right? But anyway, Everyone got paid. Yeah. And so we surprised my grandparents, and we just flew from one jet ride from, you know, Florida to San Diego. And that was just awesome. Like it was, obviously it's pretty penny, but it was, it was worth every penny to see their reaction and do that. And then the most recent, and this is really the last thing I had on my list to do was, and I'm going to nerd out here. You remember the video game, Assassin's Creed? Oh yeah. When you played it. So I played it when I was obviously like 10, 11, 12, 13, and I played the one where you would go all throughout Italy. All throughout Italy to go on. Yeah. And so I remember playing it, and you'd think like if I was any, if I paid attention to all in history class, right? I would have known that Italy was like a real thing, right? It actually looks like the way they made the video game. So I, I had, you know, it wasn't real for you until you played Assassin's Creed. Exactly. And so I see, I see it in Italy real life. I'm like, oh my gosh, like this, this exists. Like this is real. So I was like, I gotta go. It was just some kind of recreation on this game. Yeah, exactly. Like the video game was real life and not actual the country. And so when I was coming up and trading, you know, I say, I think it was when I had my first profitable month of like 300 bucks. And my dad is like, yeah, right. Like that's great. But, you know, you need to make way more to do that, to do that for a living. And I said, well, watch, when I make enough, we're gonna go to Italy together. Like I'm gonna pay the whole family to go. And so 2021 we wanted to, but COVID was obviously still pretty rampant across, getting cross borders and stuff. 2022 we had some family complications, but then 2023 came around and now we, everything was free. Nothing was in the way. We just got back on the end of May, did like a full 13 days or so. It was incredible and that was, that's really the last thing I had on my list to splurge and take the family there. So yeah, it was, it was a great time. So is your bucket list done? You got nothing else now? I mean, What are you, 27? You're 27. Wow, I just guessed that. Okay. I guess, yeah. Sorry, I've been doing some research on your social security number. Yeah, I found your birthday here. You're born at 10, correct? Yeah. I mean, own a home, own a house. This is just an apartment that I've rented out, but obviously, oh, it's all in your home, sounds difficult. Even me saying, oh, I want to buy a home in this economy, in this market, at this interest rates. But at the same time, you know. Being the handyman ever. Yeah, exactly. I'm just so excited to have my toilet break down on me and then figure it out, which is funny because my dad is the complete opposite. My dad has fixed and rebuilt practically everything in his house that I grew up in. I mean, it's polar opposites in that way. And maybe it's because he made me help him during, as a form of like a chore as a kid. So I learned to just like hate it. Just out of spite, you're like, I'm not going to learn anything. Fixing a thing. But yeah, own a home, other than that, I mean, just keep, eventually, and maybe I'm thinking too far ahead, but when I do ultimately want to have a family and like kids, I definitely don't want to carry some of the weight and the stress that comes with relying on trading being your income. Cause even no matter how much you make, right? Like, you know, you could say I'm in the top 1% of income earners, but even then I still, it doesn't remove the sense of slight anxiety or slight pressure that like, that's today. That's not next year. That's not in five years when your kids go into kindergarten for the first time, right? So definitely there's definitely an aspect of building out a, and again, the dividend portfolio, the kind of thing is like the start of that. Building something just separate enough where I now have, I could just totally stop trading and not need to worry about who's paying the bills or how money's coming in anymore. It's certainly a long-term goal. Not so much for now, cause I'm here by myself. You know, I have a girlfriend, but like we live in this apartment. There's no, the longer, the older I get, the more responsibilities will come, AKA, you know, kids being the probably the biggest. And again, that's- What we don't like to do outside of trading. Outside? Yeah. Go to the gym, hang out with friends. Going on hikes. My girlfriend, we met cause she was a travel nurse and she can't get her students still. She likes going everywhere, so we travel a lot. You injured yourself, she nursed you back to life and you can't get into her forever. Exactly. So yeah, that's pretty much it. I mean, I don't have much as free time, but if I did, I used to play Call of Duty a lot with friends during COVID. It's funny because because when I found trading, I'd become so obsessed to some degree where I actually kind of threw video games out where I hadn't played in years from call it 2017 and 16 to 2020. And then the pandemic hit, I found myself having all this free time and I just totally like interact myself back in Call of Duty. I don't play nearly as much anymore, but like it was a little break and now I got back into it for a bit, but not as much anymore. So speaking of Call of Duty, I'm gonna take a brief intermission here and I'm gonna tell you guys a funny story. I don't think I've told anybody this story, but it's pretty funny. So anyway, I used to live in Oklahoma. That's why I grew up and we had this big snowstorm come in one time and we lived up on the mountain and it was me and two buddies that lived in a house and his girlfriend kind of lived down the hill from us and she came up and then it started snow terribly. And in Oklahoma, it does really snow. It kind of snows and then ices and then you just stuck. And so we'd been playing Call of Duty like constantly, like modern warfare and my buddy's favorite thing was to turn on the marathon perk and just run constantly everywhere and just knife people. And that was like the favorite thing to do. And so we get snowed in, right? Cause we're too addicted. We're eating corn dogs and playing Call of Duty like a bunch of losers. I'm surprised he even had a girlfriend. I didn't, but he did. And so we get snowed in and her mom calls. This is still that time when you, you know, her mom calls and it still means something. And so she goes, you got to come home. And we're like, well, we can't drive. She's like, well, you then you're walking. And so we're like, okay. So do we fucking, we bundle up, start walking. And it's about two miles probably really ain't that far but it's two miles in the snow uphill. That's long. I'm from Canada. That's a long ass walk. Dude, it is. You know, when you tread through snow, it's a bit, it's a bit. Anyway, so we get all the way there. He sends her up the hill to her house and he comes running back, right? You know, it's freezing cold. Your lungs are just like chipping away at you and you're burning and dying. And he gets to me and he's like, man, I feel good. I feel good. And he goes, I must have the marathon perk turned on. I was like, you're done. We're stopping this game, right? We make a real life, you get out, get out, get out, you're moving out. You're moving out tomorrow. Yeah. To it. So yeah, that was, we had to stop. We had to, we got so into it, we had to stop. We had to stop ourselves. When we started making real life reference to like, oh, it looks like we have marathon turned on. It was like, damn, man. All right. So Kyle, it's been a pleasure, man. It's been a pleasure. We got to do this again. I feel like we didn't get deep enough, but you're a long-winded man. So, I appreciate it. We're going to do it again, brother. Thank you so much for coming on. It's been a great time, dude. Let's do it again, all right? Absolutely. Thanks for having me guys. It's always been good. Thanks, brother. We'll see you later.