Chat With Traders

Growing up poor and living in violent neighborhoods didn’t stop Erik Smolinski from being motivated and curious. Erik only needed to hear a few words about investing including the power of compounding from his high school instructor to light the passion and determination to take ACTION. The discipline, responsibility, accountability, and patience he cultivated as a Marine Corp officer strengthened his ability to stick with his well thought out trading plans and persevere. His use of derivatives strategies help him to minimize painful drawdowns while creating consistent, long term market-beating returns.

About Erik

Erik is a Marine veteran, options trader, real estate and angel investor. He is a strong advocate for authentic investing information. Erik became a first generation millionaire before 30 through hard work and unwavering dedication to his Outlier mindset. He started investing in 2007 and has spent more than 30,000 hours honing his skillset.

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Experiencing the brutal bear market of 1973-74 impressed upon Tom the necessity to find ways to hedge risk. This began a multi year long quest to find the right combination of uncorrelated assets, technical indicators and adjust the weightings as needed to provide enough protection to fill in the potholes of equity drawdowns while retaining the bulk of upside potential. Having a sweet balance between risk and reward both in the financial markets and in his personal life has enabled Tom to maintain a serene disposition.

Tom Basso’s Background:

Tom Basso is an American hedge fund manager. He was president and founder of Trendstat Capital Management. He has authored two books, Panic-Proof Investing and the self-published The Frustrated Investor. In 1998, he was elected to the board of the National Futures Association. Basso graduated from Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York in 1974, where he majored in chemical engineering. Prior to his career in trading, Basso worked as an engineer for Monsanto Company. He became a registered investment advisor in 1980 and a registered commodities advisor in 1984. Basso established Trendstat Capital in 1984 and served as its CEO until his retirement. Having retired from active trading in 2003, he now manages his own portfolios and provides guidance to aspiring traders.

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Every now and then, we like to switch things up and take a break from our usual program. Today, we present a special episode for that purpose. So, what keeps you in the trading game? The voices you hear in the podcast introduction belong to our listeners from all over the world. We share these voices with you because we believe you will be able to relate to them, just as we do. These voices mirror those of many traders like us who are on similar paths. They also serve as a reminder that we are not alone on this journey. We also reflect on the key messages and valuable lessons learned from the amazing guests we have interviewed, as well as the common threads that distinguish them from the rest.

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The shock of his first major losing year in 2004 as a discretionary trader, propelled Rob Hanna to find quantifiable statistical advantages that would help mitigate the fluctuations in his equity curves. Knowing the dangers of curve fitting, in trying to find that ‘perfect’ system, Rob zeroed in on simpler approaches that would combine seasonality, overbought, oversold and Federal Reserve days. The result is a system that helps minimize anxiety and drawdowns while keeping him invested for the bulk of bullish moves.

Rob Hanna’s Bio:

Rob is a Registered Investment Adviser Representative for Capital Advisors 360. He has worked as a full-time market professional since 2001. Prior to joining CA360, Rob managed his own private investment fund from 2001–2019 and has also run Quantifiable Edges since 2008. Quantifiable Edges offers a subscriber letter and other services focused on quantitative market analysis. Over the years, Rob has spoken at major conferences for the Market Technicians Association (MTA), the National Association of Active Investment Managers (NAAIM), and the American Association of Professional Technical Analysts (AAPTA) among others. Rob is a 1992 graduate of the Boston College Carroll School of Management. He lives and works in Massachusetts but serves institutional and individual clients across the US and Europe. You can find Rob through Quantifiable Edges, or on X (Twitter) @QuantifiablEdgs

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Paying to take and pass the Series 7 license as a teenager in the 1980’s led Bryan Holdford into the high commission world of stocks and options without mentors or the internet. Starting with investment newspapers Bryan tried many trading ideas without any risk controls. Despite frequent and numerous losses, he was hooked on the game of trading. Obsessive determination drives him to stay in the game despite a boom bust performance. Recently he seems to have found the right balance.

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Stinging losses with mutual funds in 2008 drove Dan to become an active manager of his portfolio. Enticed by the legalization prospects of marijuana, he dived into learning the fundamentals and technicals of the sector. Learning how these stocks traded relative to each other, he cultivated an awareness of the correlations between these companies. These interrelationships would later be applied to large cap stocks, Commodities and Crypto across different time frames to give insights on when to participate in Bull and Bear runs, and when to back away.

Feeling the pain of big early profits evaporating over months, Dan was forced to cultivate a mental flexibility in trading by considering both Bull and Bear signs in every stock he follows. Combined with correlations over multiple time frames with other stocks in the same sector, influences from Commodities, the dollar and various sectors, he flushes out nuances with scalpel-like precision and is ready to flip bullish or bearish without attachment.

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An engineer at the core, Mark Bennell, a Private Trader who has been trading full-time for 15 years breaks down what it really means to “Treat Trading As a Business” and why this mindset was incredibly important in turning his trading around and why it has kept him in the game for this long.

About Mark Bennell

Mark Bennell is a Private Trader who has been trading for the last 18 years, 15 of those being as a full time trader. He holds a Diploma in Technical Analysis, a Diploma in Share Trading and Investment and the International Accreditation as a Certified Financial Technician (CFTe). His trading preferences include discretionary swing trading, scalping Australian equities, and swing trading and scalping the Forex markets. 

Mark is also a trading mentor and enjoys utilizing his knowledge and experience to conduct live daily analysis on the Forex, Commodities and Indices markets, weekly workshop sessions and assisting others on their journey to become consistent traders. He has also been on stage and presented for the Australian Technical Analysts Association – Victorian Chapter and National Conference, and appeared in Trader’s Edge magazine in Australia, ‘Traders Story’ article.

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Seeing and feeling the intensity and chaos of the trading pits back in the 1980’s, Pete knew immediately that trading was the career he had to have. Starting as a floor runner making $5/hr to later trading full time for a living Pete discovered the importance of finding stocks with relative strength during the bear market of 2002. Pete uses a top down 3 step methodical process which helps him zero in on stocks to go long or short. From longs to shorts, conservative credit spreads, high leverage options to occasional Lotto trades, Pete fine tunes his versatile strategies to match current market conditions.

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Growing up poor in the Philippines, Gabriel sought a way to supplement his income. Dealing with the emotional challenges of giving up his profits in his long-term positions, he switched to trading to have a sense of greater control of the outcome. Starting out using many technical indicators, he later switched to just price action as it gave less false signals. After blowing up several accounts, he honed his skills to become the winner of the 21-Day Trading Challenge Contest inside the Chat with Traders Community and become a funded trader.

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Seeking financial opportunities overseas just before the Great Financial Crises, Andres Granger was motivated to learn how to trade after falling victim to a Ponzi-like trading scheme. He worked hard and diligently studied order flow and scalping while trading Futures in different markets. Later, he was introduced to crypto through a prop firm, where he honed his skills to exploit large market inefficiencies through market neutral trading. Emboldened by these incredible opportunities, Andres then went on to create a crypto strategy fund.

He’s the Co-founder and Head of Trade and Strategy Development at Active Digital Funds, one of the very few Crypto funds that runs all of their strategies fully automated, and one of the few audited crypto funds to make a positive return for clients in 2022. Recently, they won the award for Best Market Neutral Fund under $25m from HedgeWeek European Digital Asset Awards.

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This is a special episode of a recording of a recent discussion that occurred within the Chat With Traders Community on a Zoom call. The discussion centers around Henrik Johansson, a beginner fellow trader, who embarked on a journey to obtain funding from a proprietary trading firm within a 60-day timeframe. Patrick Petersson leads the conversation with Henrik. If you recall, Patrick was a guest on episode 260. Patrick and Henrik traded together during this period with the goal of helping Henrik to achieve the goal of getting funded. They provide an overview of these 60 days for the CWT Community and offer valuable insights. 

We learn about their process of selecting a suitable prop trading firm that catered to Henrik's requirements, strategies that helped him to overcome psychological barriers, factors behind Henrik's decision to modify his trading style, and the tools and indicators he incorporated in his trading practices, and about the three most significant lessons Henrik gained while trading alongside Patrick. This episode is especially enlightening for traders interested in the route of getting funded.

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First seduced by advertisements of easy money, Shay a.k.a. Humbled Trader learned that she had to find her own way of trading. Taking the skills she learned as a special effects artist in Hollywood, she created the popular Youtube channel for traders to share her trading wisdoms in a humorous creative way. Join us in the story of how Shay was able to quit her full time job to trade full time.

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Growing up in a family and culture strongly critical of trading as a profession, Patrick Petersson opened his first trading account on his 18th birthday and risked his reputation and family money to follow a deep growing passion he had for years. After blowing up many accounts, he found himself homeless and rejected by all in his family despite fully paying them back. Passion, determination, and persuasion gave Patrick another chance as he started managing money for wealthy clients. Join us in this unusual and fascinating journey as we learn about his trading and intuitive Jedi skills to make lightning-fast discretionary executions.

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Lacking education, mentors or money, Lukas Frohlich, known to many as The Short Bear, became fascinated with financial markets when only 13 years old. Saving everything he could from jobs, he started trading before he could even legally drive a car. He created Youtube and Twitter accounts to share strategies, victories and defeats to help fellow traders improve their game.

Obsessed with learning from mistakes, understanding gains and improving his process lead to outrageous gains in 2020 with his Agenda Trading strategy. Changing market conditions propelled Lukas into innovating new strategies quite different from what he started with. His focus, dedication and discipline for self improvement allowed him to branch out in new business areas helping others that go beyond just the trading world.

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Dedicating significant hours to books and market analysis, Alexander Moreno sought regular counsel from a seasoned trading mentor. After refining his abilities through months of paper trading, he ventured into live trading, reaping consistent profits as planned. This success bolstered his confidence to trade full-time as a livelihood. However, the unforeseen market turbulence in 2008 unleashed his psychological struggles, leading to impulsive trading and ultimately, homelessness. This harrowing experience granted Alexander invaluable insights that he now imparts to others.

This might be one of the most important episodes to listen to in a while when it comes to the topic of frank discussion on losses in trading and the practicality of managing risks so that traders can stay in the game long enough to have the opportunity to learn and improve.

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Deep in debt after finishing Architecture school, David Capablanca, originally from Miami and host of the Friendly Bear Podcast, desired an alternative career with independence, freedom and potential for high earnings. Naturally drawn to a contrarian psychology, he zeroed in on short selling. The challenge of uncovering scams through a deep dive into company fundamentals, history of founders and visiting company headquarters overseas on a quest to find clues were the things that energized David and brought his trading approach to a whole other level.

Let’s go on a “short” adventure with David today!

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After an accident ended her career as a professional athlete, Louisa Nicola became a Neurophysiologist and human performance coach, in order to understand and share what improves and degrades the brain’s short term performance and long term viability. Adopting certain habits, diets and supplementing with technology can give us traders the edge needed for peak performance and overall mental well-being.  

Bio

Neurophysiologist and human performance coach, Louisa Nicola is the founder and head performance advisor of Neuro Athletics - a consulting firm that boasts the best athletes in the world. By using science driven data from EEG scans, lab tests and cognitive assessments, Louisa has a first class ticket inside the brain of elite NBA and MLB stars. Louisa graduated from the University of Sydney medical school and is currently completing her doctorate studying the effects of resistance exercise on the brain.

Louisa serves on the board of Momentous, Tonal, and Klora.

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As a former poker player, heavy gambler, and professor of statistics, and after having had a successful professional career in the movie industry in Hollywood, Vincent Bruzzese (aka Hari Seldon of Real Day Trading group) took his poker skills and expertise on statistical predictive modeling of human behavior and ventured into the world of trading with a goal of finding an edge. 

But, after blowing up his accounts multiple times, he had to go back to the drawing board and hone his trading skills, mindset, and discipline to become a high probability trader before putting in another dime into the markets. Vincent is an advocate for the small traders, and shares a more holistic and contextual approach to the markets and focuses on following the money which has led to his consistency in day trading.

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Growing up poor with kidney disease as an immigrant from Mexico, Christian Carreon’s trauma with health issues and family financial instability resulted in the drive and hunger for financial success and security through redemption in the markets. Despite suffering through physical and emotional pain from his condition, his spirit and determination remained strong. He dove deep into the markets and after trial and error, eventually honed down and refined his systematic approach to a “trading boxes” strategy, which he explains.

As an avid student of chart history, he gets comfortable with specific price setups which give him the confidence to go “all in”. Lacking basic day to day health impresses upon him the importance of being grateful in everything he does.

In addition to trading using the mentioned "box" strategy, Christian is also the founder of Create Wealth Management where he applies a modified version of that strategy. He also started a private group called Paradigm Shift Trading.

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Patrick is a finance professor, author, quant hedge fund manager and a connoisseur of financial history. As a young investor in Utility stocks, Patrick’s hunger to learn and apply the lessons of financial history helped him to maintain composure during the frenzied bubble market in the late 90’s and avoid most of the losses his colleagues suffered during the dot.com blowup.

His studiousness, and growing aptitude for finding opportunities, resulted in him making valuable connections with mentors and business partners. His desire to understand history by analyzing data led to building quantitative trading models and eventually launching a quant hedge fund Palomar Capital.

This episode is packed with so much rich information, wisdom, and humor. 

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Growing up poor with learning difficulties, Yvan Byejee’s early trading failures drove him to understand his own emotional turbulence and instability in the mind through deep inner work. With a heightened sense of mindfulness, he embraced uncertainty and became systematic in his trading to develop an edge.

Yvan discovered trading in the late 90s and has been trading for a living since 2006. He struggled and failed his way to eventual consistency and market success over time. He’s the man responsible for the creation of Trading Composure, where he generously shares with traders all over the world his knowledge, experiences, and wisdom of the inner game of trading.

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The FTX collapse, arrest of Sam Bankman Fried, and the subsequent collapse of the crypto market opened new opportunities for Kasper Vandeloock, as some players were forced to exit the market. Note: There are 2 parts to this interview. Part 1 was recorded prior to the collapse of the crypto market due to the downfall of FTX. Part 2 (listen right after Part 1) is a follow-up interview with Kasper to get his perspective on the impact of the collapse of FTX and how it impacted his strategies.

When Kasper was just 16 years old, he received his first Bitcoin as payment for his programming skills. Intrigued by the emerging opportunities in crypto currencies, he dropped out of high school to dive deep into learning everything he could about this fast-paced new type of finance and medium of exchange. Spotting market inefficiencies in prices between the different exchanges inspired Kasper to write his own programs which took advantage of delta neutral arbitrage opportunities.

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As a highly driven, methodical stock and futures day trader, Sunny Harris didn’t survive the four major market crashes, she thrived through them.

A strong believer of technical analysis, back testing, and systematic trading, this vivacious Southern California trader and entrepreneur leveraged her background and skills as a mathematician and programmer to develop and refine her own trading system that she has come to rely on throughout her trading career.

Listen to some enlightening and surprising perspectives from Sunny Harris, a mathematician, programmer, author, teacher, mentor, and veteran day trader who is very active in the markets every day.

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Starting out juggling multiple jobs as a valet driver, firefighter and entrepreneur, Jack Kellogg at 18 years of age about 6 years ago dreamed of financial freedom, became laser-focused on saving money and learned everything he could about the stock market before turning to penny stocks.

Jack's intense drive for success pushed his mental and physical health to unhealthy levels as he managed hundreds of trades, and at times in illiquid, unregulated securities that often saw hundreds of percent increases, quickly followed by spectacular collapses within just a few weeks.

This multifaceted discussion takes us inside Jack's journey, which was met with setbacks and struggles, along with wisdom gained earlier than usual for someone so young.

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From Electrical Engineer to Hedge Fund Manager, David Sun, previously on TastyTrade as a Rising Star guest went on to start his first hedge fund in 2018, and then went on to add a second one in 2021.

Learn about one of David's concepts applying a systematic approach to Options trading. It has to do with these 3 things; stop losses (which is not common in options trading), how he takes advantage of high implied volatility (IV) - but not in the way most options traders would think, and his approach on managing the win size: loss size ratio, all to manage risk exposure and optimize edge.

Looking for actionable ideas to explore? Then this is a must-listen-to episode!

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It's about time we have a discussion on Forex Trading, but this is not your average Forex Trading discussion.

Some Forex traders may be unaware of how stop loss hunting and market manipulation is done by the smart money. Like many Forex traders, ex-stockbroker Djamal Adib experienced early losses which compelled him to study the inner workings of Forex trading, and how stop loss orders are hunted by the smart money.  

Djamal spent four years pouring over thousands of charts patterns of different time periods and programmed his carefully back tested algorithms resulting in him winning an international Forex competition.

He shares his enthusiasm and much wisdom of the opportunities and dangers of trading Forex and why you need an edge.

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Seeing the great potential and opportunities available in decentralized finance and the crypto currency universe, Uri Klarman left academia with a PHD in computer networks and later specialized in Blockchain research. He started a company that would help crypto traders avoid the front running flash traders which had plagued Wall Street for years.

Uri shares his contagious excitement and passion combined with his in depth knowledge about the history, technology and benefits of decentralized finance and crypto currencies which many feel that traditional markets cannot match.

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Jason Shapiro has been a trader for 30 years and was interviewed in the Unknown Market Wizards book by Jack Schwager.  From early on Jason was a rebel who avoided group think and sought out contrarian trading opportunities in overhyped, or deeply oversold stocks and commodities. 

Blessed by early trading successes, Jason retired to a beach in Thailand in the late 90’s and traded his account full time only to experience tragedy less than a year later.  The painful lessons he learned drove him to give up his opinions about markets and instead listen to what the market is saying by becoming a great market tape reader.

You’ll hear how Jason finds great trading opportunities through a combination of weekly trader reports, media commentary and news events to put on his contrarian trades.

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Ian Cox, new host from Seattle, Washington joins Tessa on Chat With Traders.

Trading and investing since the mid-90s, Ian eventually worked his way towards success which afforded him early retirement, financial and time freedom. Of course it wasn't all smooth sailing as you'll learn in this interview. It never is. Passionate about the financial markets, Ian continues to expand his horizons by continuing to stay curious, learn and grow, even as a veteran trader. He currently still trades stocks and options, but Crypto is what really captivates him these days.

Learn more about Ian in a special interview that originally aired in early May on an episode from the Affirmations for Traders Podcast hosted by Tessa earlier in the year, and brought to you again right here on Chat With Traders.

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This episode won’t be for everyone…

It contains no chatter about how to read charts, how to pick the direction of stocks, or even, how to handle your trading psyche.

However, for some, this episode will spin minds and bend preconceived notions about trading. It shines a spotlight on what happens should you uncover a structural inefficiency that can be exploited, as was the case with today’s guest Moritz Seibert.

Many know of Moritz as a trend following guy and someone with vested interests in the crypto market, but (almost) no one knows he was once arbitraging warrants on Germany’s DAX. It was an extreme edge, and he traded it rigorously for three years.

Moritz has never publicly spoken about the arbitrage, until now! Over the course of this recap, he details all aspects: the market, the inefficiency, the trade, and the—inevitable—decay.

To read the assisting article by Moritz: Click here

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Today, we’re talking volatility with Kris Sidial, Chief Investment Officer at The Ambrus Group. His funds’ primary objective is to make outsized returns in the event of a market crash, and it therefore serves as a portfolio hedge for investors with heavily weighted long exposure.

Kris tells of his prop trading roots, before going on to explain the long vol trade and positioning to profit from tail risk events. He also speaks to the other side of the equation; generating absolute returns in the meantime, via active trading strategies.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but Kris does a tremendous job in explaining strategies and risk management approaches that’ll leave you with ideas to ponder.

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This episode consists of an extremely raw and unfiltered interview with veteran derivatives trader and self-proclaimed Merc Jerk, Jimmy Jude.

As we rewind to the early 90’s, Jimmy relives the rough 'n tumble of CME’s Eurodollar options pit. Telling of power struggles, immense risk taking, and wisdoms gained from his peers.

Jimmy also recounts some of the more notable—and chaotic—events he’s witnessed, such as; being front row to an $8-billion blow up in Nat Gas, when trading on the NYMEX floor.

Then to finish, I ask Jimmy a few things about his way of trading nowadays; working structures on the VIX curve and E-mini futures.

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Returning guest and options veteran John Carter has become increasingly aggressive with his trading tactics, and as a result, has booked a multitude of large profits during the past few years.

In this sequel to the popular Episode 69, John speaks on having surpassed the career milestone of 30-years trading—and how it’s groomed him to maximize recent market opportunities that’ve been present.

More specifically, John recaps a mega options trade ahead of GOOGL earnings, then proceeds to address; trading psychology, taking a holistic approach, navigating markets in 2022, favoring tangible assets.

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For this fourth episode in the My First Year Trading Full-Time series, we speak to retail trader Nicholas Bradburn.

A few years ago, Nick innocently stumbled onto the infamous subreddit Wall Street Bets, which lead to the discovery of options and roaring cannabis stocks. After some meddling and a few hiccups (i.e. running out of money), Nick begun to take trading more seriously once the pandemic hit, the stimulus check hit, and his livelihood became uncertain.

Remarkably, Nick remains a still-standing member of 2020’s Retail Army and has since made a commitment to full-time trading, having found consistency playing in the large cap arena.

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What does the future hold for Chat With Traders podcast? An evolution is on the horizon. Full details revealed in this episode—featuring Aaron Fifield and Tessa Dao.

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Mary Childs—a financial journalist and co-host of NPR’s Planet Money—is author of The Bond King; a biography about industry titan, billionaire bond trader Bill Gross.

Bill co-founded Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco) in 1974, where he would become the worlds’ largest bond trader and revolutionise the market. Heading up the firms’ Total Return fund, Bill served as managing director/chief investment officer, until a shock departure in 2014.

While Bill’s widely considered a market legend, beyond the surface, I had little understanding about his rise to fame and fortune; the primary reason I was motivated to invite Mary on the podcast, as she spent countless hours researching and conducting interviews to produce her book.

In this episode, Mary walks through the life ‘n times of Bill and some of the standout trades that helped to put Pimco on the map—including a highly controversial position in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae during the financial crisis of 2008.

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The promised and much-anticipated follow-up interview with Lance Breitstein…

Lance was formerly a Senior Trader at proprietary firm Trillium. He earned the rank as ‘Top Trader’ in 2020 and 2021 with consecutive 8-figure years, also setting the firms’ all-time PnL record.

While Lance appeared on the podcast only a few months back, the interview was recorded a few years back. However, this interview is very recent, it was recorded 13th June 2022—after Nasdaq declined 4% on the day, sparking initial comments about market context.

Our discussion primarily revolves around several core trading concepts that have greatly attributed to Lance’s outstanding performance: The Broken Slot Machine, The Right Side of the V, and Channel Fundamentals. Furthermore, Lance shares wisdom on bet sizing and methods to accelerate your learning curve.

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Today, I bring you a man who’s truly seen it all: Chris Cady

Having surpassed 40-years as an equity index trader, Chris has lived through every type of market environment imaginable and reinvented himself several times over. But is experience all it’s hyped up to be? Well, that’s the opening line for our chat…

From there, Chris delves into some of the best/worst times throughout his career in futures markets—and shares a captivating story about the “radical” silver traders and infamous Hunt Brothers. Later, Chris lays out his trading philosophy of “structure and process” and use of market profile analysis.

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While many are only hearing about prediction markets for the first time, for near a decade, anonymous trader Domer (@Domahhhh) has been at the frontier of profiting from outcomes of unknown future events.

Political and economic matters are Domer’s specialty, although he doesn’t shy away from the rather abstract events either—for example; trading on the outcome of Britney Spear’s conservatorship and the Suez Canal obstruction!

Now at a point where he’s netting PnL of several hundred thousand dollars a year (across multiple exchanges), much of Domer’s winnings are due to his ability to garner an information edge and rejection of the Efficient Market Hypothesis.

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This year I’ve brought you some truly phenomenal traders and it continues, right here…

Kenny Sharkness (aka Shark) is one of the greatest success stories to come out of proprietary trading firm SMB Capital. In the span of a decade, he’s gone from being clueless about bids/offers to having realised eight-figure years.

After reflecting on his first steps as an aspiring day trader, Kenny tells of a monumental loss that had a positively profound impact, and the ways in which he’s continually pushed boundaries to remain a top performing trader.

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Nishant Porbanderwalla—a senior trader at proprietary firm Kershner Trading Group—is no stranger to the show. In his third appearance on Chat With Traders, Nish recaps how he booked an outsized six-figure profit trading meme-stock NASDAQ: DWAC (Digital World Acquisition Corp).

The date was 22nd October 2021, the day DWAC traded from $50 up to a high of $175, on news of a merger that would launch Donald Trump’s planned social media platform Truth.

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James Chen is an equities trader and a partner at Sydney-based fund BlueLake Partners. Furthermore, he’s a heavy-hitter who operates on a different level to most…

For well over a decade, James has been discovering edges and developing trades that the typical trader would consider as rather obscure. And for that reason, we’re fortunate to have James on the record—being able to learn about how his brain ticks.

Our interview starts with James telling how he cut his teeth trading retail, then how he exploited a loophole in an ASX trading competition, won and got hired. Next, we discuss trades surrounding index rebalances and dual-listed stocks, and lastly, James imparts with comprehensive thoughts on finding alpha.

—

Application, Google Form: U.S. ADR Support Trader

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It was early-2017, Oliver was nearing the end of his high school years, when he had discovered Ethereum—or more accurately, the self-described tech-head had strapped together 6x GPU's for the purpose of mining Ethereum.

Although the mining rig was only a mild success, it did plant the seed for what would become Proxima Capital—the crypto-focused trading firm Oliver co-founded in 2019, that almost exclusively dedicates its resources and capital into market-neutral strategies.

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Lance Breitstein was a Senior Trader at proprietary trading firm Trillium and Manager of the Chicago office. He has trained, mentored and refined dozens of top discretionary intraday traders, while arguably being Trillium’s best trader in the firm’s history.

This episode was recorded in 2019, prior to Lance going on to set the firm’s all-time PNL record, with landslide wins as ‘Top Trader’ in both 2020 and 2021 after consecutive 8-figure years. At the beginning of 2022, Lance resigned from Trillium to better focus on alternative growth opportunities and philanthropy.

In part two of our (two part) conversation, Lance speaks to the uncertainty in stock markets and methods of developing pattern recognition, trading technology and optimisation, avoiding mediocrity, efforts in philanthropy and establishing the Impact Competition, plus more.

This podcast solely reflects the views of Lance and is not representative of Trillium’s views.

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Lance Breitstein was a Senior Trader at proprietary trading firm Trillium and Manager of the Chicago office. He has trained, mentored and refined dozens of top discretionary intraday traders, while arguably being Trillium’s best trader in the firm’s history.

This episode was recorded in 2019, prior to Lance going on to set the firm’s all-time PNL record, with landslide wins as ‘Top Trader’ in both 2020 and 2021 after consecutive 8-figure years. At the beginning of 2022, Lance resigned from Trillium to better focus on alternative growth opportunities and philanthropy.

In part one of our (two part) conversation, you’ll hear Lance expound upon his slow learning curve and how he was on the verge of quitting, systemized learning and repetition, the emotional edge in trading capitulations and more.

This podcast solely reflects the views of Lance and is not representative of Trillium’s views.

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Trade Recap episodes are a new format (in addition to regular episodes), with the purpose of analyzing each aspect of a guests’ trade: idea, execution, management.

Chase Galbraith is an Australian equities trader, with a firm foothold in small caps. The trade in focus today, Chase initiated and held between September – November 2021, in mineral exploration company Kingsrose Mining (ASX:KRM).

This trade could be categorized as a swing, largely driven by fundamental factors and speculation of an acquisition. Though it also combines elements of tape reading and price action, with regard to execution.

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Kyle Schultz is the managing director of Ravinia Investment Management, a registered CTA, operating since April 2019.

With an objective to diversify by market, strategy and timeframe, Kyle has developed multiple algorithmic strategies—for various futures products—that can be categorised into momentum and mean reversion, long and short, intraday and swing.

Through our conversation, Kyle expounds on the art and science of developing and managing automated trading systems, and his unique way of doing things...

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As an extension of the previous episode, I present to you the second installment for the ‘Best of Day Trading.’ This is a compilation of highlights from past interviews, all of which are applicable to active day trading—from technical intricacies and strategy insights, to trading tales and broader viewpoints.

Show notes + full episodes: https:chatwithtraders.com/224

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I’ve gone back over the years and gathered a variety of my favourite clips that relate to day trading (in one way or another). Some include conversation about technical nuances and unique edges, some are interesting stories, others may help you to better read the market and develop the skills that day trading demands…

Given the lengthy list of day traders I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing, there was zero chance I could pack everything into a single episode. So please enjoy this first instalment, and a massive part two will follow shortly!

Show notes + full episodes: https:chatwithtraders.com/223

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Returning to Chat With Traders podcast, Luke Cummings—CIO of Harvest Lane Asset Management—details his funds’ core strategy of trading mergers and acquisitions…

Step-by-step, Luke explains his methods of assessing a takeover bid when it first hits the market, initiating a position, monitoring news flow, and ultimately, booking a profit/loss when the change of control takes place (or the deal falls through!)

Show notes: https://chatwithtraders.com/222

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Matthew Dibb’s the Founder and CIO of Astronaut Capital, a cryptocurrency and digital asset fund—utilizing a thematic approach. Since attracting its first investors in 2019, the fund has gone on to report cumulative returns in excess of 1,200%.

In a life prior to crypto, Matt was a traditional finance guy, having held roles as a futures and FX trader for banks/institutions, while also doing a stint in VC too.

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Erik Swanson's the CEO of Simplex Trading...

While unknown to many, the Chicago-based trading firm is one of the top market makers in U.S. equity options—providing liquidity in (almost) every listed options contract, and in recent times, transacting upwards of 2-million contracts daily.

In our chat, Erik pulls back the curtain, giving a rare insight to how market makers operate; from quoting to hedging, and the complexities that take place in between.

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Edwin Dorsey’s an individual investor, passionate about exposing bad companies…

Since being one of the first to flag wrongdoing at Care.com (while a student at Stanford), Edwin has continued to gain credibility for his well-researched, off-the-beaten-path ideas.

Edwin’s analysis and reports—as well as insights to general activity within the short world—are shared in his popular newsletter: The Bear Cave

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Shaun Factor’s an Australian small cap trader, with 20+ years in the game. He’s also a co-founder of 180 Markets, a firm that provides investors with direct access to capital raises.

With a trading approach that’s heavily reliant on instinct and market experience, Shaun has come to be a substantially large trader of small cap companies. In this interview, he explains his ways, anticipating hot sectors, and how he moves in/out of stocks with size.

Shaun also shares deep knowledge surrounding capital raises—a topic that’s not previously been discussed on Chat With Traders podcast.

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Acclaimed mental game coach Jared Tendler returns to Chat With Traders, after his first appearance on Episode 86 (2016).

Jared has worked intensively with world champion poker players, PGA golfers, Team Liquid (esports organistion), and of course, active traders—sharing expertise in how mental game impacts performance and tactics to overpower emotional weaknesses.

Jared’s also the author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2. And while many traders have found these books highly relevant, Jared has now delivered a book specifically for traders, with a system to resolve psychological problems: The Mental Game of Trading

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Jim Mellon’s a British investor, entrepreneur and philanthropist.

It was 1979 when Jim got his start, in Hong Kong, as a trainee fund manager. When the fund was acquired eight years later, he received a windfall, becoming a millionaire in his late-twenties…

And from that point forward, Jim has spread his bets far and wide, as an investor in emerging markets, commercial real estate, private and public companies—across many sectors; from financial services to mining to biotech and more.

To view Jim’s current holdings, visit his company website: Burnbrae Group

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William Beauchamp’s the founder of Seamless Capital, an algorithmic firm trading in sports markets—most notably Hong Kong horse racing, but also football and tennis.

However, Will didn’t anticipate things would turn out this way…

He spent his teenage years hell-bent on becoming a professional poker player. It was only when George—Will’s buddy who’d recently left one of the major HFT firms—pitched the idea of trying to apply similar strategies on sports betting exchanges.

In time, the two developed several winning strategies, although George would later return to financial markets, while Will persisted as a one-man-band. But it was a bet that’s paid off, as he’s since scaled the operation to a team of 15-people, with £50-million annual turnover, netting seven-figures of PnL.

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It was 2017 when I first spoke with James King [Ep 133], around the same time he’d left a London-based commodity trading firm, where he worked as Performance Director.

Since then, he’s continued advising to proprietary traders and fund managers, specialist military units and professional sports teams, as well as organisations. While also presenting case studies on elite performance at several ivy league universities.

More recently, James has put the final touches on his first book Accelerating Excellence, in which he reveals four foundational principles that’ve been proven to drive elite performance (and serve as the focal point for our chat today…)

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John Roberson's a well-experienced equities trader, who's been able to harness the power of technology and leverage the skills of his team to maximize his trading operation. Since starting out in 2007, John has been involved in various trading groups, and today he's with Kershner Trading Group (Texas).

Although John originated as a discretionary click trader, over the years, he begun to automate more and more. To the point that he now runs a portfolio of 80+ automated models, which do everything from news and earnings, to mean reversion and momentum, to arbitrage and micro structure...

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Since entering the U.S. equity market in 2011, Swedish swing trader Kristjan Kullamägi has attained a rare level of trading success; having realized ten’s of millions in trading profits. Which is only more impressive, given he’s a self-funded, independent trader…

During this episode, Kristjan breaks down the breakout strategy which has lead to his exponential returns over the past decade—and he shares valuable market knowledge he’s acquired along the way.

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Stan Gluzman’s an equities trader at proprietary trading firm Seven Points Capital, he also heads up a small group of traders at one of the firms’ satellite offices in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Now two years since our first conversation, Stan returns, talking through how he’s continued progressing the levels toward becoming a distinguished trader and what he’s found most effective in the recent market environment…

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Ryan Hasson’s a senior trader at Kershner Trading Group/SMB Capital—having joined the firm’s New York office in 2016, after booking a one-way flight from Cape Town, SA.

Ryan may be best described as an intraday equities trader, however he’ll also put on swing positions when there’s a larger story/catalyst/theme at play. I was keen to learn more about how Ryan works these multi-day trades, so we step through specifics.

Additionally, I ask Ryan about his path to becoming a prop trader, early developments, and to conclude our talk, Ryan shares a few of his daily habits, routines, etc.

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For more than a decade, Neeraj Monga was Head of Research at Veritas—a Canadian independent equity research firm—where he published numerous stock reports that garnered plenty of attention from investors, analysts and media…

Although it’s not the case he’s most proud of, Neeraj is perhaps best-known for revealing the shady dealings of Kingfisher Airlines—founded and lead by the larger-than-life billionaire, Vijay Mallya. Neeraj’s damning report was ultimately the precursor to the airliners’ demise (and later became the focal point of a Netflix doco!)

In this conversation with Neeraj, he recounts multiple stocks that he’s worked on and explains why he's often taking a contrarian stance, going against market sentiment. Plus, we get into some broader topics around deep-dive research too.

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Having traded prop for a large part of his career, Brannigan Barrett has since branched out and backed himself by establishing Habitus Capital—a private, discretionary fund that trades select futures markets across multiple asset classes; commodities, currencies, indices, bonds.

When Brannigan first appeared on Chat With Traders (114), we mostly covered his process orientated approach to becoming a bigger and better trader. So naturally, this episode is somewhat of a continuation, discussing his growth and progression since…

This leads to Brannigan’s thoughts on ‘practically applying’ patience and how he’s systematized much of his decision making throughout the day. We also speak about the fund and its strategies, then end with macro themes that Brannigan’s monitoring.

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Rishi Narang’s the founding principal of T2AM, a fund-of-funds investment manager with a sole focus of allocating to quantitative strategies. He’s also the author of Inside the Black Box, an advisor to DARPA’s Financial Markets Vulnerabilities Project, and previously appeared on Chat With Traders in 2016.

Given Rishi’s close contact with many quantitative managers—and being well-versed in the space after 20+ years of seeking alpha—I figured it’d be interesting to catch up and discuss evolving trends…

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Dan David is the founder of Wolfpack Research, a short-biased firm that goes to great lengths to meticulously understand the business operations, technical aspects and financials of listed companies.

When uncovering a disconnect between what a company announces to the market and what Wolfpack deems to be the truth, the firm may build a short position and publish their findings in a detailed research report (commonly regarded as short activism).

Dan also hosts the “I Hung Up On Warren Buffett” podcast and was featured as the lead protagonist in The China Hustle—a documentary about the key players who revealed egregious cases of fraud by Chinese companies that were listing on U.S. markets through the process of a reverse-merger.

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Active equities trader and managing partner of proprietary trading firm Seven Points Capital, Michael Katz, returns for a third appearance on Chat With Traders.

As we’ve previously done a 'regular' interview and an episode analysing how Mike traded the Lyft IPO, we’ve tweaked the format again and this time Mike’s answering questions submitted by listeners of the show.

There were many brilliant questions sent in, which I’ve sorted into four categories: Strategy, Trade Management, Trader Development and Prop Trading.

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Three years ago, Brian Lee—a former esports professional—took a leap into day trading equities. Having since developed a talent for shorting the backside of inflated moves, paired with a great emphasis on risk management, Brian’s experienced tremendous growth, both financially and in terms of market knowledge.

In this chat with Brian, we go over; his first year challenges and overcoming such challenges, the time he lost it all and how he bounced back, his most frequently traded setup, and a detailed discussion about the use of R as a risk model, plus more…

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Casino floor or trading floor, Bob Bright has forever sought an edge for favorable odds…

Counting cards in Las Vegas at blackjack tables, calculating three-way options at the Pacific Exchange, pairs trading correlated stocks, exploiting the tracking error of leveraged ETFs; Bob’s always pursued a mathematical advantage to win the game.

Also considered by many as a pioneer of proprietary trading, Bob and a partner formed Bright Trading in 1992—at its peak, the firm was home to 490-traders across 42-offices in the U.S.

Today, at 80-years of age and undoubtedly a market legend, Bob remains an active trader and a serious high stakes poker player.

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Wayne Himelsein begun his career on a proprietary trading desk at Carlin Financial Group in the mid-90’s, doing statistical arbitrage—complimentary to his mathematical nature.

Come 1999, Wayne launched his first fund to begin managing money for clients and institutions. Then in 2011, Wayne founded Logica Capital Advisers, where he currently takes the role of Chief Investment Officer.

Logica, as a quantitative investment firm, relies on rigorous research to develop its various model-driven strategies. For the most part, these are mean expansion strategies that generate alpha from being long volatility.

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For the past 5-years, Hayden Beamish has been a portfolio manager and director at Endeavor Asset Management—a hedge fund based in Melbourne, with ~$300m AUM.

The Hedge portfolio that Hayden manages ended the 2020 financial year up 28% after fees—in comparison, the benchmark Australian All Ordinaries ending down 7%.

The main purpose of speaking with Hayden was to gain insight to his institutional investment process. This includes talk of; researching companies and prerequisites for investing, the role of analysts and brokers in providing information and flow, and managing investments.

It also includes a detailed discussion about the various types of execution algorithms he’ll use for buying and selling large volumes of stock.

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As an extension of the previous episode, I present to you the second installment for the ‘Best of Trading Psychology.’ Taken from past episodes of Chat With Traders, this is a compilation of snippets on psychology and mindset—an important topic to highlight, given the psychological aspect can truly make or break many traders.

With any of the snippets, if you’d like to hear the full episode, direct links are listed in the show notes at: chatwithtraders.com/200

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Much like the recent Best of Risk Management episodes, here is another compilation. Except this time, I’ve compiled the best clips on trading psychology, for you to hear how varying types of traders deal with mindset maters to stay focused and competitive.

Again, I dug up way too much from the back catalogue of almost 200-episodes to pack into a single episode, so this is only part one—part two will follow shortly.

Besides creating a go-to trading psychology resource, I hope this might also highlight some past episodes that you’ve not yet heard. If you’d like to hear the full interview with any guest featured, you’ll find a link in the show notes: chatwithtraders.com/199

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In her early-20’s, after graduating from MIT, Christina Qi and two classmates; Luca Lin and Jonathan Wang—who had collectively been trading futures from a campus dorm room—founded Domeyard. It was 2012, and Domeyard was to be one of the few high frequency trading hedge funds…

As Christina states during the interview, “By all means we should have failed,” given the three of them had little trading experience and minimal insight to the hedge fund industry. Not to mention, the three had almost no money, so Domeyard is also one of the few hedge funds that went out and raised money from VC’s (such as Softbank and a RenTech co-founder) as a necessary means to launch.

Now eight years on, the Boston-based fund is well-established and well-passed the start-up phase. Domeyard trades thousands of times daily, sometimes exceeding 10,000 trades across various futures products. And during its single biggest day this year, the fund did turnover in excess of $7-billion dollars.

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Featuring on this episode is Haim Ben Ami; CEO of Raft Technologies.

Having constructed shortwave radio towers in Chicago, Frankfurt and London, Raft have established ultra-low latency connections between various exchanges, which are leased to algorithmic trading firms who seek a speed advantage.

In talking with Haim, we discuss why some firms are prepared to pay big bucks in order to be a few milliseconds quicker than other market participants. Haim also draws comparisons of the various technologies used to transmit data (shortwave, microwave and fibre optic cable), and going beyond the connection, how firms further optimise for speed, plus what’s next in the race to zero.

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For this third episode in the My First Year Trading Full-Time series, I speak with Ryan Trost. At the time of recording, Ryan had recently crossed 12-months as a junior equities trader at SMB Capital in New York City.

Our conversation begins with Ryan speaking to how he was trading the massive intraday ranges of TSLA during it's parabolic run in February.

From there we chat about Ryan’s trajectory in life prior to trading, how he landed a seat on a proprietary trading desk, lessons from losing money month after month, how he began to develop an edge, Ryan’s take on trader psychology, a recap of his best and worst days, and ares in which he’s trying to improve upon.

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Ilan Israelstam’s a co-founder of Australian ETF manager BetaShares and a principal at VC firm Apex Capital Partners. Betashares first begun trading in 2010, and currently, it manages approximately $10-billion dollars in assets, across 61 funds—all of which trade on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).

The motive in asking Ilan to be on the podcast was to learn more about how ETF managers operate and to delve into some of the technical aspects of ETFs. In summary, the topics we cover: risks for ETF managers, how ETF managers make money, the necessity of designated market makers, how ‘short’ and ‘leveraged’ ETFs trade as intended, tips for investing in ETFs and researchable ideas for trading ETFs.

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Liam Vaughan is a finance author and senior reporter for Bloomberg.

His latest book Flash Crash tells the story of Navinder Singh Sarao, a London trader, living at his parents house, who made ~$70M from his bedroom and was later accused by the U.S. government of playing a role in the 2010 Flash Crash.

For anyone unaware, this was a deeply perplexing event in which the U.S. stock market, one afternoon, plunged approximately 9% and then almost completely rebounded, all in the space of just 30-minutes.

While Liam speaks on many interesting moments from Nav’s life in this episode—from beginning as prop trader in 2003, through to when he was extradited to the U.S. in 2016—it’s only a sample of what’s covered in the book (an absolute must-read!)

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Returning guest, Greg Newman, is a founding partner and the CEO of Onyx Commodities—a London-based proprietary trading firm, prominent in market making of oil derivatives.

This episode focuses on recent events pertaining to the global oil market. More specifically, Greg talks through; key themes impacting prices, supply and demand dynamics, why Crude and Brent futures alone aren’t entirely a true reflection of the oil market, how lower prices affect producers and corporates, etc.

Given the subject matter, this episode won’t be for everyone—it’s very specific to oil. But if the energy sector interests you, believe me, Greg’s an incredible wealth of knowledge.

Episode recorded: 2nd April 2020.

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As we’ve seen making headlines recently, reserve banks around the world have been adding liquidity to the market in an effort to stabilize economies. While some listeners will already understand how reserve banks conduct these operations, I figure there will be others who don’t completely grasp what takes place below the surface…

To get clarity on the subject, I kindly asked Kevin Muir to appear on Chat With Traders for a second time and to explain the actions of reserve banks during this market downturn. Because, in my opinion, Kevin has a gift for analyzing and explaining complex subjects in a way which is easy to follow.

Kevin was a derivatives trader for a Canadian bank during the 90’s, and has been an independent trader from 2000 onward. He also writes a brilliant financial newsletter, The MacroTourist, and co-hosts The Market Huddle podcast.

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This is an episode to cover the extreme volatility in markets, following the recent outbreak of coronavirus…

Joining me is Nishant Porbanderwalla, returning for a second time on Chat With Traders and here to discuss how he’s been navigating through the turmoil of a global pandemic. Nishant is a proprietary equities trader at Kershner Trading Group, with well over a decade of experience behind him.

For the purpose of a timestamp, please note this conversation was recorded immediately after the U.S. close 18th March 2020.

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In a recent episode, I mentioned that I'd be doing a few more interviews with less-experienced traders, who begun with $20,000 or more, have completed 12-months of full-time trading and are making a real effort to get better. Here's another one in the series...

My guest is Christian Castillo, he resides in California and trades the foreign exchange market using methods of technical analysis. Although Christian is relatively fresh as a trader, he put up—what I would consider to be—a solid first year. He made money 9 of 12-months, and finished 2019 with a profit just shy of $20,000.

We speak about Christian funding his account from driving Lyft, his experience going full-time (favorable and adverse moments), the premise of his trading strategy, the forex market in general, among other things too.

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Welcome back, as we continue from where we left off last time—here's the Best of Risk Management, Pt 2. Again, this is a compilation of highlights from past interviews, all of which are applicable to managing risk and staying in the game.

My hopes in compiling this 'best of' episode is that you'll have a go-to reference for anytime your risk controls require attention, as well as drawing your focus to a few episodes that may have gone unnoticed. If you'd like to hear the full interview with any guest featured, you'll find the link in the show notes: chatwithtraders.com/189

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After sifting through the archive of near-200 episodes, I’ve compiled some of the best bits pertaining to risk management. As there were many bits I deemed fitting for a ‘best of’ episode, it made sense to split the compilation across two parts—this is part one, and part two will follow next (Episode 189).

The idea behind creating this compilation, is to reinforce the instrumental role that risk management plays in a traders’ ability to stay in the game. It can also serve as a go-to reference for anytime you find trading loses getting out of hand.

One other reason, is to highlight some past interviews which you have missed or skipped over. If you’d like to hear the full interview with any guest featured, you’ll find the link in the show notes: chatwithtraders.com/188

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I recently had an idea, I thought it may be an interesting exercise to have a few less-experienced traders on the show. On Twitter, I wrote that I’d like to chat with someone who:

1. Has just completed their 1st year of full-time trading

2. Started with a minimum of $20,000

3. Is or isn’t profitable (not important), as long as he/she is taking deliberate action to improve

From this tweet I received many DM’s for consideration, and after filtering through them, I’ve asked several people who fit this general description to share their experiences on the podcast…

The first cab off the rank is Josh Evans; 30-something years of age, living in Melbourne (Australia), and actively trading ASX equities.

This conversation with Josh follows his progression from newbie investor to intraday trader—including his motivation and preparation for going full-time. A few specific things which have helped Josh to get his equity curve pointing in the right direction. Plus, deliberate processes Josh has implemented for improvement, one piece of advice he received that made a difference, and that’s not all!

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Joining me on this episode is Sudhu Arumugam, the co-founder and Chief Risk Officer of cryptocurrency futures exchange CoinFLEX.

Though prior to this, Sudhu spent near 20-years in various trading roles for banks and hedge funds—mostly transacting in options on indices and single stocks, exotic derivatives and fixed income.

We start things off by talking about Sudhu’s early days and experience in London’s LIFFE trading pit, meeting and trading with DRW founder Don Wilson—who he identified as a “force to be reckoned with.” Sudhu also speaks about heading a small institutional trading team within Merrill Lynch and shares insight to its OTC dealings.

Then in the later part, we speak more about crypto and the efforts of CoinFLEX to become a market leading exchange.

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Jaime Rogozinski, a serial entrepreneur who resides in Mexico, is the man responsible for bringing WallStreetBets to life—the infamous and wildly popular subreddit, which proudly boasts the tagline, “Like 4Chan found a Bloomberg terminal.”

In other words, WSB is an online forum (on Reddit) where the majority of it’s 700k+ members aren’t looking to establish long-term, sustainable trading careers. Instead they’re buying lotto tickets on commission-free trading apps, taking almighty risks, and attempting to strike it rich fast.

This is a community, of mainly unsophisticated investors, where losses of 10’s and 100’s of thousands of dollars are so common that it’s considered the norm. And although less common, there’s also the occasional member who’s handsomely rewarded for his or her audacious risk-taking. It’s kind of insane what goes on here, especially because it’s real-life (minus the odd trolling stunt).

But make no mistake, I’m not throwing shade at WSB! The brazen culture is fascinating and you can’t help but appreciate the rawness of it all, not to mention the comments provide priceless entertainment value. And there just might be some insight to gleam, if you look hard enough (even if it’s do the opposite!) Sound and rationale financial advice has no place on WSB.

Speaking with Jaime, he tells how the subreddit evolved and took on a life of its own, highlights from the timeline; featuring a member who exposed an ‘infinite money cheat code’ on Robinhood and the infamous ‘Pharma Bro’ Martin Shkrelli who was once a moderator, plus the largest gains and losses in WSB history.

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Mike Mangieri’s a co-founder and managing partner of Seven Points Capital—a proprietary trading firm in New York, and with several smaller offices in other U.S. cities as well as Toronto.

Although Mike occasionally trades in volatility products, his days mostly revolve around operations of the firm and overseeing the traders. Therefore he has a slightly unique perspective on things, compared to the perspective of an individual trader…

In our conversation we roll through subjects, such as; the birth of a trading firm, a day in the life of Mike, monitoring risk—both, on a firm and individual level, psychology and mindset, examples of general interactions that Mike has with the traders—and some of the difficult conversations he has from time to time, plus more.

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Gregory Zuckerman is a writer at the Wall Street Journal and author of The Man Who Solved the Market: How Jim Simons Launched The Quant Revolution.

For anyone unfamiliar, Jim Simons is the brilliant-minded mathematician who founded hedge fund Renaissance Technologies. Using quantitative models and with billions in AUM, Renaissance has averaged annualized returns of net 39% since 1988. And these returns only become more spectacular, once you discover that Renaissance investors pay a management and performance fee of 5 and 44—therefore bringing the gross annualized returns to 66%.

Due to the superior performance, today, Jim has an estimated net worth of $23-billion. Greg describes him as being, “The greatest money maker in modern financial history.”

Although journalists have previously covered the rise of Renaissance, for the longest time, much of it was still shrouded with mystery. But by gaining remarkable access to Jim and also many of the people around him, Greg has been able to tell the full story, in print, with detail and accuracy.

Pick up a copy of The Man Who Solved the Market, available on Amazon.

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Nico, who goes by @InefficientMrkt on Twitter, is an intraday equities trader. His area of expertise lies in low float, micro cap stocks, near-exclusively playing the short side of overextended moves.

Nico and I spoke almost exactly 3 years ago on episode 96—which was memorably titled, "An 8-year overnight success story." Now picking up where we left off, we discuss what's been happening as of late...

The most notable development being; after many years trading retail, Nico has gone into proprietary trading with Seven Points Capital. Going one step further, he has also established and heads up the firms' San Diego office.

During the second half of this episode (from 40:20), I ask Nico to share how he's evolved as a trader in recent years—or more specifically; what has changed, what remains the same and what's been fine tuned.

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This episode features high-profile American businessman, Robert Greifeld, who from 2003-2017 served as the CEO at Nasdaq—one of the world's largest and widely known financial exchanges.

Bob came into this role at a time when Nasdaq was on the verge of an internal crisis, he was tasked with turning it around and making transformational change. Throughout our conversation, he tells of the critical moments and drastic actions, insight to Nasdaq's many acquisitions and its business model, plus lessons in leadership and career advice.

Having since stepped down from Nasdaq CEO, Bob's recently written a book that details his entire experience at the helm. The book is titled Market Mover, and you can get a copy here.

Today, Bob is the managing partner of Cornerstone Investment Capital—a fin-tech investment firm, and the Chairman of Virtu Financial—a prominent trading and technology firm.

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There’s no other way to say it; Larry Hite is the definition of a market veteran, he’s someone who first developed an interest for trading and markets during the 60’s…

Besides a reputation for extreme risk management, Larry is perhaps best known as co-founding Mint Investments—a hedge fund formed in 1981. He’s also considered to be one of the forefathers of trading systems and a pioneer of trend following.

By 1988, Mint achieved an average annual compounded return of over 30%—it’s best year being 60% (in 1987, the year of the stock market crash) and it’s worst year up 13%.

By 1990, Mint was the world’s largest hedge fund at the time, with $1-billion of assets under management. It was also around this time, that Mint’s performance caught the attention of Jack Schwager, as Larry was profiled and interviewed in the first book of the best-selling Market Wizards series.

Now almost 30-years on, Larry has written a book of his own titled The Rule. It reflects on life experiences, trading lessons, and pretty much, how the most unlikely kid in the classroom went on to generate a significant personal fortune.

During this episode, Larry and I discuss trading, risk philosophy and probability, life and memorable moments, and Larry’s work as a philanthropist too.

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For many, this will likely be the first time hearing about Mike Komaransky, but those who know him already, know him as a Bitcoin OG—and deservedly so, as he began accumulating the cryptocurrency around 2010.

Though Mike has been a professional trader of fixed income derivatives since 2001, when he joined powerhouse trading firm DRW. Mike later became a partner at DRW, and in 2014 he launched its cryptocurrency trading business Cumberland—which grew to become one of the world’s largest market makers.

After leaving the company in 2017 and a hiatus from active trading, Mike has returned as the founder and head of Grapefruit Trading.

Over the course of our conversation, we chat about; Mike’s distinguished trading career, the strange ways that he bought Bitcoin in the past (when it was far less accessible), Cumberland’s participation in the auction of seized Bitcoin from the Silk Road bust, Mike’s disdain for technical analysis, and plenty more…

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Returning guest Nick Radge is a systematic trader of trend following, momentum and mean reversion strategies—which he runs across Australian and U.S. equity markets.

When I asked Nick if he'd be willing to do another podcast, I said to him, "This time around, I'd like to discuss something very specific with you; how to create a simple trend following system."

So, that's exactly what we did; a complete breakdown of Nick's process. This includes details about strategy objectives and idea generation, portfolio testing and analyzing results, position sizing and risk management, and execution in a live market.

This episode should be helpful for anyone interested in riding big market trends (regardless of asset class). And even if trend following doesn't overly appeal to you, then you'll still pick up useful insight to trading systems.

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This episode features Sam Bankman-Fried, who’s trading skill originated from 3-years at Jane Street—a proprietary trading firm renown for being one of the world’s largest ETF liquidity providers.

In late-2017, Sam relocated to Hong Kong and began his foray into the cryptocurrency market when he co-founded Alameda Research. Alameda trade a range of quantitative strategies—such as statistical arbitrage and market making—which are mostly automated, but with a layer of human intervention.

Within 2-years Alameda has grown to a point, where each day, it does approximately one billion dollars of turnover across 35 exchanges, accounting for somewhere near 5% of global crypto volume.

Sam and I got to discuss many aspects of how Alameda operate and how his team have found lucrative opportunity amongst a chaotic environment…

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This episode takes on a slightly different format to normal. Essentially, it’s a response to an email that I received from a listener…

The email comes from a gentleman who’s 38 years old with a full-time job, his wife is currently studying and he has three kids. He also has the goal to transition out of his current career into full-time trading, but he has a family who are dependent on his income. And that’s the part he has questions about.

Therefore, I asked Alex (@TAGRtrades) if he’d be willing to join me on this episode and share his thoughts on the matter. Alex is a full-time day trader, who has developed skill for trading long side momentum in U.S. equities. He’s also appeared previously on episodes 119 and 157.

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Jonathan Shapiro's a senior reporter at the Australian Financial Review. While he writes about a range of subjects from banking to hedge funds to private equity, he's renown for stories that uncover dishonesty and the crafty schemes of listed companies—for which, he's won several awards.

Our conversation begins with Jonathan telling the story of Blue Sky Alternative, a fund manager that came unstuck following the release of a short sellers research report. From there, we roll into a very detailed discussion about about Jonathan's investigative work on Big Un.

Without saying too much, Big was a video marketing company listed on the Australian stock market and a top performer in 2017. But as you'll soon hear, Jonathan discovered much of it was smoke in mirrors...

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’d like you to meet part-time Bollywood DJ, full-time equities trader: Nishant Porbanderwalla.

For the past 12-years and ever since leaving college, Nish has been a proprietary trader at Kershner Trading Group—KTG is a trading firm in Austin (Texas) founded by Andy Kershner, who appeared back on episode 128.

Nish was very open in talking about the ups and downs he’s endured throughout his career, including actual PnL and the psychological states. He also tells an incredible story from trading the Flash Crash of August 2015—although it was only a very short moment in time, it’s a perfect example of what happens when experience meets opportunity.

Additionally, Nish gives insight to his trading strategies (past and present), and you’ll pick up a few of his general trading thoughts for how to perform at a high level.

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After appearing on Chat With Traders last year for episode 156, Michael Katz returns: Mike’s a short-term equities trader and managing partner of proprietary trading firm Seven Points Capital.

The purpose of doing this episode was to have a very specific and detailed discussion about how Mike traded ride share company Lyft on the first day of its IPO (Mar 29).

And to make it easier for you to follow along with our discussion, I’ve included intraday charts with Mike’s entries and exits in the show notes—go to: chatwithtraders.com/173

Note: You are responsible for your own trading decisions. No recommendations given.

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Anthony is a proprietary futures trader from Sydney, with 10-years market experience. He's active—particularly during the night—in a range of products, such as; Australian and U.S. bonds, equity indices, currencies and a few commodities. While he's a click trader, Anthony is quite systematic with his processes and strategies—which are mostly trading spreads between correlated products.

Naturally, we speak about many things during this episode, but one of the highlights was hearing about how Anthony got himself into a six-figure drawdown and was able to claw it back in just one-month. We spend quite a bit of time breaking it down.

Anthony is also a budding podcaster, who hosts the show Minds of Motorsport. So, if you'd like to hear from people in the world of motorsport, be sure to give it a listen!

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It’s with great pleasure that I introduce to you, Stan Gluzman; an intraday equities trader at proprietary trading firm Seven Points Capital. Stan also heads up a small team of junior traders at one of the firms’ additional offices—outside of New York—in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

We discuss Stan’s path to consistent profitability as a prop trader, and then we get into specifics about the various strategies that Stan has traded in recent years—including the actual strategies that he implements today. I also ask Stan to share details about the various forms of analysis (statistical, fundamental and technical) that he uses to identify his best trading opportunities each day.

And if you like this episode, you should go back and listen to Mike Katz on episode 156. Because Mike’s the co-founder of Seven Points, and as you’ll hear, he was a mentor to Stan while he was still developing the skills to trade professionally.

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My guest on this episode is Joshua Greenwald, the CEO of a newly formed crypto derivatives exchange, LXDX. But the part that got me keen to speak with Josh, was the fact that he was a professional trader for more than 10-years prior…

Josh started his career at DRW Trading in Chicago, he then left after six years and went on to co-found Greenlight Trading—a proprietary firm specializing in low-latency options market making, almost exclusively for Asian markets. Greenlight grew to be a team of approximately 30-people, before it was acquired.

Over the next hour or so, we spoke a lot about Greenlight; the timeline from beginning development up to beginning to trade, the signals and the opportunities that they went after, and even the technology that they utilized (i.e. custom built FPGA chips).

Towards the end, we discuss what’s involved in starting an exchange, the functionality and features that are missing from most crypto exchanges but common in traditional markets. And how LXDX is using a security token offering for additional funding (not an endorsement).

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Jack Ma is a proprietary futures trader from Sydney and the head trader of Minter Capital—a firm he established this year, in which he currently mentors and backs a group of developing traders.

Jack trades an “inventory style” in the market of Australian 90-Day Bank Bills—continually working structures around his expectations of yield strip movements, with minimal exposure to outright risk. He also trades Australian 3-year and 10-year Government Bonds, but predominantly during rolls (contract expiry).

During this conversation, you’ll hear about Jack’s progression over the past 5-years—breakthroughs and lessons learned, plus his thoughts on trading as a skill (not a strategy), gaining an edge, mindset and competitiveness.

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If you’ve been through the archives, then this weeks guest will be no stranger; it’s the options madman and trader of 10+ years, Anand “Lucci” Sanghvi.

Lucci was one of the first guests to appear on Chat With Traders—back in 2015. As you can imagine, there’s been plenty happening since then, so we took this opportunity to catch up…

Topics of discussion range from life in Puerto Rico, dealing with taxes as a trader, a failed hedge fund, what’s been working for Lucci in equity options—and how he’s continued to evolve in recent years, plus many thoughts on trader psychology.

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Bobby Cho is the global head of trading at Cumberland—which is the crypto arm of Chicago trading firm, DRW and it’s one of the largest liquidity providers in the space. Prior to this, Bobby was director of trading at itBit and vice president of trading at Digital Currency Group (formerly known as SecondMarket).

After featuring on the podcast in August last year, I thought it would be fitting to check in with Bobby again, because of the events which have unfolded in cryptocurrency markets over the past 12 months…

Our conversation begins with some of the highlights from the recent Cumberland Summit—which was an industry event for insiders, and Cumberland’s international expansion. Then we get into Bitcoin’s sudden rise and decline from $20k, whether or not crypto markets have matured, decentralised exchanges, crypto’s value and use cases, institutional involvement and the bigger picture moving forward.

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For this episode, I speak with Hugo Bowne-Anderson; a data scientist at DataCamp (an educational platform for learning to code) and host of the DataFramed podcast.

The idea for asking Hugo to appear on this episode, was to chat about learning a programming language. Because for some traders, having the ability to write code can have great advantages—such as having the ability to collect stats on market behavior, perform research in a robust data-driven way, visualize large amounts of data, backtest and analyse trading ideas, implement algorithmic strategies, etc.

Plus more professional trading firms and finance related positions now require applicants to have some programming skills. And the same goes for many industries, which should be no surprise, considering a recent IBM study revealed that ‘90% of the world’s data has been created in the last two years alone.’

Hugo and I discuss when someone should consider learning to code, determining what’s relevant, the time it takes to become fluent in a programming language, working with new datasets, what to be wary of when using predictive models. And for fun, I ask Hugo (as a data scientist) how he’d go about creating a basic strategy…

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I was introduced to this weeks guest by an experienced trader and fund manager, who described him as being "hands down the best trader I know..."

Michael Samuels is an equities trader, who once traded for First New York and Apex Capital, he now trades his own money under the banner of Broome Street Capital.

Michael describes himself as being an 'event driven trader' with a primary focus on news flow surrounding mergers and acquisitions, shareholder activism and fundamentals—to seek out valuation disconnects.

During this episode you'll hear about merger-arb strategies (including examples), what happens during takeovers, a case of "excessive" due diligence, mistakes made and lessons learned during Michael's career, plus plenty more.

You should also note, Michael has recently begun hosting a podcast about M&A activity and the journalists who report on significant company news: According To Sources

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Nick Fabrio is an exceptional day trader. With a bias for short selling and playing catalysts on the Australian stock market, Nick had surpassed a million dollars in trading profits within his first three years. And all along, he’s been a self-directed ‘retail’ trader.

Although he currently lives in Texas, Nick and I were able to catch up, sit down and record this podcast while he was back in Sydney last month. We got talking about many things; from dealing chips at The Star casino to receiving threats from a company’s lawyers, analyzing market depth and everything in between.

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This special episode of Chat With Traders was recorded in June 2018, in front of a live audience in Sydney. It’s a conversation I had with John Moulton, though better known as Rambo.

John’s a serious trader, and for good reason, he’s considered to be somewhat of a legend trader in Australia…

In short, John left the Chicago trading pits in the 80’s, bound for the Sydney Futures Exchange. During the years that followed, he became a VERY large spread trader of Government Bonds and Bank Bills—he was responsible for a major share of the trading volume done each day.

Now forty years on, since placing his first trade, John is still an active market participant—trading from a coastal location in Queensland, Australia. So, press play and listen in to our conversation, as John reflects on the things which matter most for achieving success and longevity as a trader.

With great honor, I present to you John Moulton (aka Rambo!)

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Returning for this episode, is Mike Bellafiore—the co-founder of New York City prop trading firm, SMB Capital. Mike is also the author of One Good Trade and The Playbook, and he was the featured guest on episode 022.

As the title suggests, the purpose of our conversation is to breakdown how you can formulate a plan for becoming a 7-figure day trader. Mike is well-qualified to speak on this subject, because he’s mentored and lead traders within his own firm to reach this level of trading success.

There are no quick fixes packed into this episode, but there is real value—if you listen carefully, take notes and intentionally act on some of Mike’s suggestions, I know it will make a difference over time.

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Don’t miss the upcoming LIVE podcast event in Sydney, with special guest John “RAMBO” Moulton. And did I mention there’s beers ‘n pizza too?! → Get tickets

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For this episode, I got to catch up with Mike Agne (@EconEmotions). I know some of you will be well acquainted with Mike; I first interviewed him last year in New York—in person for a live event, and then he was on the podcast in August last year too.

Mike’s trading experience runs deep in bonds/fixed income, also index futures and options. And for a long time he was a prop trader at the renown TransMarket Group. Additionally, Mike writes an excellent weekly newsletter about global markets.

Catching up this time, we talk; relative value trading, the recent pick up in volatility and regime changes, Mike’s economic outlook, risk parameters, technical analysis, making money in bear markets and developments in the world of crypto assets.

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For this episode of Chat With Traders podcast, ironically, I’m not chatting with a trader. Instead, I’m speaking with Kimberly Trautmann and she’s Head of DRW Venture Capital.

DRW began as a Chicago trading firm, founded by Don Wilson 25 years ago. Since then, it has grown to be one of the world’s largest firms, with offices in six major cities around the globe and over 800 employees.

It has also become much more than solely a trading firm—the firm’s operations have extended to cryptocurrency market making, large scale property development, and of course, venture capital.

Kim and I talk about; why companies seek venture capital, how investment opportunities are assessed and valued, thoughts on risk/reward. Plus, why the firm has a keen interest in companies innovating with blockchain technology (and ICO’s!)

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I was recently introduced to Greg Newman by James King [Episode 133]. The two previously worked together at Mandara Capital, a London Trading firm…

There, James was the performance director (with a background in sports science), and Greg was head of a highly successful oil trading desk—which he built from the ground up in three years, with some guidance from James for overcoming obstacles.

Now, Greg remains a serious participant in oil derivatives and has gone on to become a founding partner of Onyx Commodities. Greg and his firm are most active in oil futures (and the energy sector), but also trading in related OTC products, or better known as swaps.

So naturally, you’ll hear Greg speak about futures, swaps, producers and the physical—which is really interesting! He also talks about “trade craft” and how stoic thinking has moulded him into the trader he is today.

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Phil Goedeker has been trading stocks for, roughly, 15 years. He started young, in college, made a truckload of money in a short period of time, which then afforded him the luxury of never having to work a “real job.”

Admittedly, Phil will tell you, luck was a major factor early on. Nonetheless, he’s been abundantly successful since, and has continued trading—now with a strategy, with rules and with an edge. Phil’s way of trading is to short parabolic moves—on low float stocks which have been seriously hyped up, and when he senses golden opportunities, he strikes with real conviction.

You’ll hear Phil speak about; his early days and progression, his obsession with cutting losses quickly and going hard on trades which can make a good year a great year. Plus some talk about strategy, timing, setups and why Phil is set on filtering his trading profits into farmland…

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When Alex (@TAGRtrades) was on CWT for the first time—Episode 119, he was beginning to make head way as a full-time day trader, since abandoning a secure job in recent years. But since then, he’s really stepped it up a notch…

Alex started 2017 with an account balance of $32,000 and finished the year with a compounded return of 1,400%. But what makes things more significant, is how he was able to achieve this with minimal drawdown.

Over the course of this episode, you’re going to hear Alex and I reviewing his performance of the past twelve months—what he did well and areas where he would like to further improve. Alex also talks about his strategy; from scanning to entries to managing positions. Plus psychology, self-discipline and more.

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Michael Katz is an active day trader and the managing partner of New York prop trading firm, Seven Points Capital. Mike and his firm, are large volume participants in U.S. equity markets, and to a lesser extent, futures and options too.

In this episode, Mike discusses the things which have attributed most to his consistency over the years, insight to his momentum strategies, and how he’s able to turnover millions of shares each month, and of course, plenty more.

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Anthony Saliba, an original Market Wizard, was first on episode 107. On that episode, we mostly discussed Tony’s life as a trader and related subjects. But one area we didn’t get into too much, was his life as a parallel entrepreneur and an investor.

So, I mentioned to Tony, this time around, it’s something I’m keen to hear a lot more about. Because his success extends far beyond trading alone…

For example; LiquidPoint, an options execution and technology firm which Tony founded, was acquired in 2007 for a sum of mid nine-figures. He’s also invested in upwards of 100 companies—in a whole range of sectors, owns a golf resort, shopping centers and other real estate. And that’s not all.

The underlying theme throughout this episode is not how to become a better trader, but how to build generational wealth!

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Andreas Koukorinis lives in London and in 2013 he co-founded Stratagem Technologies—a tech startup using AI and machine learning to trade sports as a financial product. These sports predominately include; football, tennis and basketball.

But for Andreas, his roots are in trading instruments and markets that most of us are more accustomed to. He’s worked for the likes of Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank, and before Strategem came to be, he was trading at DeepValue.

From listening to this episode, you’ll soon notice that Andreas is passionate about applying rigorous trading principles to nascent markets, as well as the broader applications of AI as a technology.

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Xiao Qiao is a research analyst for a Connecticut-based hedge fund, focused on trading commodity futures. He graduated with a PhD in Finance—and was a teaching assistant to renown economist Eugene Fama.

Notably, Xiao has also worked directly with trading legend Blair Hull on two quantitative research projects, which concern market timing and return predictability.

The main objective of this episode with Xiao, is to learn how a research analyst thinks about things directly related to research, and ways that you can do better market research for yourself.

On top of this, Xiao, based on his experience, shares a few tips for those who have an urge to study something—but are unsure about what to study, and some of the differences he's observed between the world of academia and working as a practitioner.

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Rick Lane is the current CEO of Trading Technologies—a software provider that develop high-performance trading platforms which are used by; proprietary traders, hedge funds, CTAs, brokers and banks etc.

The reason why I asked Rick to appear on this episode is because, as we know, not everyone is cut out to be a trader. And that’s fine! I’d like to highlight, there are many other roles in the world of trading where you can have a great impact by leveraging skills which you may have already attained…

Prior to teaming up with his cousin, a large interest rate trader, who anticipated the inflection point of automated trading, Rick was modelling combat scenarios for the military and he also did a short stint at Google as a product manager.

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Following on from Episode 149, here’s part two of the interview with Aaron Brown.

To refresh your memory, Aaron is highly regarded as an authority on the subject of risk taking. For the past 30-years he’s worked as a dedicated risk manager, and for the past decade, Aaron was the risk manager for renown quant fund, AQR.

Coming up on this episode, you’ll gain deeper insight to how you can better understand and manage risk for yourself—we go over: Questions traders should be asking themselves, how to leave less money on the table, high win rate verse low win rate strategies, black swans, killing opportunity while trying too hard to prevent disaster. And that’s certainly not all!

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Aaron Brown is highly regarded as an authority on the subject of risk management. Although he originally started out as a poker player and sports bettor (then a trader and portfolio manager), for the past 30-years Aaron’s been a dedicated risk manager. And for the past 10-years, he was the risk manager for quant fund, AQR.

Aaron has also authored several books (ranging in topics from poker to finance and risk), contributes to Bloomberg View and writes a column for Wilmott Magazine.

On this episode, part one, we talk about: Aaron's early days playing poker, unconscious influences on decision making, the goals and objectives of a risk manager, how Aaron managed the quant equity crisis of August 2007, and much more too.

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John Grady is an independent futures trader from Florida, who primarily trades Treasury bonds. His trading is purely discretionary, based upon his read of order flow. Essentially, he’s a scalper.

Throughout this episode we talk all things order flow; the basics, the value of an order book, some of John’s trading methods, order types and managing positions, how to build skill at reading order flow, as well as, the impact of HFT and what’s commonly known as spoofing.

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Dr Thomas Starke is a Physics PhD who once designed microchips, worked as an engineer for Rolls Royce and lectured at University of Oxford, before applying his know-how of modelling to financial markets…

As a trader, Thomas has contracted to various funds and up until recently, he was a Quantitative Developer at a well-regarded Sydney prop trading firm.

Thomas was great to chat with—not only did we talk about things related to quant trading, strategy development and robustness, but also his infatuation with disruptive technologies; artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

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On this episode, I’m joined by three traders from a data-driven, options trading, performance based fund, Blackpier Capital…

Ryan Moffett, the Lead Investment Manager—and a prior guest on Episode 83. Tyler Michalove, who plays a key role in trade execution. And Wayne Klump, who heads up research and strategy development.

We discuss mentoring, the benefits of working in a team, the upside to trading options, the unique edges which can be gained from the multiple dimensions inherent to options, an example of how options could potentially improve an existing strategy and plenty more.

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Episode sponsored by TradeStation – A trusted online broker geared towards active traders. Discover the benefit’s of trading with TradeStation: tradestation.com/traders

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Here’s the first episode in the history of Chat With Traders podcast, where I don’t have a guest with me. That’s because, this episode is the recording of a talk I gave at Noosapalooza 2017—a trading conference hosted by Nick Radge, here in Australia.

Throughout the talk I pull upon many lessons and snippets of wisdom which have been learned through conversations here on this podcast. So, I’ve appropriately titled the talk; Six Ways to Emulate Talented Traders…

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Sponsored by Scoop Markets: Use a powerful algo to analyse 1000’s of tweets every second—identifies breaking news, before it breaks → Learn more

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Since 2013, Tim Steenstrup has been a cross-border arbitrage trader at Conventus Capital. Though markets have been a part of his life going back to 1994; Tim’s been part of a brokerage firm in Japan, a hedge fund—which was featured in The Big Short movie, and a prominent New York trading firm.

As you’ll soon hear, we skim through Tim’s backstory and then spend a large part of this episode going into the mechanics of how a cross-border arbitrage strategy works. Tim does highlight, this strategy may be difficult to implement as a retail trader, but regardless, I think it’s valuable for you to hear about the various approaches of how professional traders trade…

Episode sponsored by TradeStation: A trusted online broker geared towards active traders. Discover the benefit’s of trading with TradeStation.

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You’re about to hear a first-hand account from someone who’s been on a wild ride through the U.S. justice system. My guest is Michael Kimelman; a former prop trader and hedge fund manager who was convicted (and served time) for insider trading…

You’ll hear about the series of events leading up to his arrest, details about the trial, revelations of a rogue judge and the dim reality of life while incarcerated.

If you get through this episode and you’re curious to know more, then you might be pleased to know Michael has also written a book—the title: Confessions of a Wall Street Insider: A Cautionary Tale of Rats, Feds and Banksters.

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It was exactly 100-episodes ago when I first had Bert Mouler on the podcast. This week, I’m joined by him again for a second interview…

Bert is an algorithmic trader with a serious focus on machine learning. His trading decisions are driven purely by data, and he goes to great lengths to remove human bias and flaws through the use of automation.

So, coming up over the next 60-minutes or so, you'll hear about:

• Bert's increasing efforts to automate as many decisions as possible
• The attraction of markets and areas with less sophisticated participants
• Other potential sources of edge—beyond alpha
• A peek into Bert's high frequency market making strategy
• And that's certainly not all...

While listening, I encourage you to keep an open mind and mull over Bert’s creative thoughts!

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Featuring on this episode is former software entrepreneur turned hedge fund manager, Erik Townsend. I’m sure some will already be quite familiar with Erik—in particular the macro investing crowd, as Erik also hosts the Macro Voices podcast.

After selling his company in 1998, Erik made a few lifestyle and investing decisions which he soon began to question, but took ownership of his situation and the discovery of global macro set him sailing in a new direction…

Major talking points we cross off, include; how Erik uses the concept of The Fourth Turning and major cycles to guide his macro outlook. And one possible scenario for the future of cryptocurrencies—I'm sure some of you won't like what you hear, but I think it's well worth listening to!

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My guest on this episode is Jimmy Soni—who, with his co-author Rob Goodman, recently wrote the biography of Claude Shannon, titled; A Mind at Play.

Shannon was born in 1916 and became one of the foremost intellects of the twentieth century, before passing away in 2001. He was a mathematician, a scientist, an inventor and also, a stock market investor…

Although he’s widely unknown by the general public, Shannon is responsible for Information Theory—a revolutionary method of measuring information which stands behind much of the technology we use all day everyday.

Shannon’s other achievements, discoveries and inventions range from artificial intelligence to cryptography and fire breathing trumpets to chess playing machines and the world’s first wearable computer, and that’s not all!

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Bobby Cho is a cryptocurrency trader at Cumberland Mining—which is a company of DRW Trading. Ever since getting involved in financial markets, during 2008, he has gravitated towards mostly illiquid/difficult-to-trade products…

So, in some ways, it was inevitable that Bobby would begin to explore Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. This was around 2013, while Vice President at SecondMarket.

In 2014, Bobby became Director at Bitcoin exchange, itBit, and then in 2016, joined Cumberland Mining—one of the largest institutional liquidity providers in cryptocurrency markets (predominately Bitcoin and Ethereum).

During the episode, Bobby and I got speaking about some pretty interesting topics, which ranged from; the infrastructure of crypto markets to the curiosity and entrepreneurial mindset which powers DRW, and the challenges of exchange arbitrage to the real world value of Blockchain technology.

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During the 90’s, Kevin Muir was a proprietary derivatives trader for RBC Dominion Securities. In 2000, Kevin branched out to begin trading independently, and since 2014, he’s been writing a daily blog, The Macro Tourist.

Kevin’s unique in the sense that he fits the bill of two largely different trading types; an intraday trader and a global macro trader. He also doesn’t specialize in one particular thing, or certainly not to the extent that many traders do…

Kevin can be quoted as saying, “I never know where I’m going to make money next year.” And that’s because he’s someone who’s continually seeking out the next great trade. In the past, Kevin’s great trades have come in the form of; risk arbitrage, mining Bitcoin, convertible bonds and day trading futures—amongst many other things!

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Dr. William Ziemba’s an academic, a practitioner, gambler, trader and an author. He’s worked with and consulted to many well-respected names in the field, such as; Edward Thorp, Blair Hull and the very successful horse bettor, Bill Benter.

In the beginning, horse betting was William’s field of expertise (he even published a book titled, Beat The Racetrack!) And in many ways, for William, horse betting worked as a gateway to trading financial markets—which he’s been doing since 1983.

Now in current times, William manages a fund; Alpha Z Advisors—which started trading in July 2013 and as of May 2017, has returned 527%.

Much of William's trading revolves around calendar anomalies, arbitrage strategies and behavioral biases. We spend a good amount of time discussing these few things, plus William shares one anomaly he's been trading for many years.

In the later part of this episode, we also talk about position sizing, the Kelly Criterion and finally, horse racing.

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I first interviewed Mike at CWTNYC, in May 2017. The 100-listeners (give or take) who attended, will already be very familiar with Mike and there may be a few moments of déjà vu throughout this episode. But for everyone else…

Mike came into trading around 20-years ago, beginning at Chicago prop firm, TransMarket Group, where he ultimately spent 12-years of his career. Over the course of his time there, Mike became one of their largest 30-year Treasury basis traders, both in terms of volume and performance.

Now days, Mike is trading a relative value strategy through his own book, and building out a track record with the aim to launch a hedge fund in the coming years…

But you’ll hear more about all of this, the things which have helped Mike get to where he is now, and how he trades bonds using a relative value strategy during this episode.

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Sheelah Kolhatkar is a writer at the The New Yorker, who was previously a journalist at Bloomberg Businessweek, and prior to that, a hedge fund analyst.

She’s also the author of New York Times bestseller, Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street.

Of course, the most wanted man being referred to, is the ultra-wealthy hedge fund legend, Steven Cohen of S.A.C. Capital Advisors—someone who Sheelah has become very familiar with, through much of her own tireless and strenuous research…

During our conversation, Sheelah gives color to; where Steven started out in life and how he became an ultra-wealthy multi-billionaire—with, might I add, an elaborate art collection, how S.A.C. became the target of one of histories greatest insider trading investigations, and ultimately, how it all played out...

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On this episode, I have a returning guest—who first appeared on episode 53. His name is a mystery, but he goes by the handle: @BTCVIX

Episode 53 was the first time I covered Bitcoin on this podcast, and that was at the very end of 2015. As you’re probably aware, the cryptocurrency markets have evolved a lot since then, so BTCVIX is here to fill us in on what’s been happening and, potentially, what lies ahead…

We also cover how to acquire various cryptocurrencies, best practises for protecting your coins, is Bitcoin in a bubble, the frenzy surrounding ICO's, and much much more.

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Up until recently, James King was the Performance Director at a commodity trading firm in London, Mandara Capital. And it was here that he implemented scientific methods to stack probability in the favour of success—by using techniques he learned from his education in Applied Sports Science and Performance Psychology.

Now, James is setting out on a new venture, Project Thor, which aims to support talented retail traders with extra capital and other beneficial resources—which we discuss briefly towards the end of the episode.

But for the most part, we discuss; principals for success, testing for resilience, ensuring you’re motivated and focusing on the right things, how ‘stretch goals’ can be used to massively multiply results, routines and heaps more.

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Mark Gardner began working in the field at 17-years old, straight out of high school. Initially he began with back office duties, before broking on the floor of the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE). Then later he was picked up by a large Bank Bills trader to exclusively execute trades, and who he learned a great deal from.

Around 2005, Mark started trading his own book. Over the 10-years that followed, Mark had only two losing months—and to date, he’s never encountered a losing year. Though in 2015 he did suffer a substantial blow, losing months and months worth of gains in the space of just a few short hours.

Today, Mark is also a partner and the chairman of Genesis Trading (one of the larger prop firms in Australia). He’s also leading a new venture, 42Trading, as a foray into quantitative trading. And to top it off, Mark is the president of the Australian Securities Traders Association too.

Throughout this episode we speak about Mark's insane work ethic (and no, that's not exaggeration!) We also get into lessons from his past, why he sees a future in quantitative trading and more...

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Morgan’s career as a trader and portfolio manager began 20-years back, and since then he’s worked at many prominent firms and funds—to name just a few; Millburn Ridgefield, Merrill Lynch, Citadel and Allston Trading.

He’s currently the CEO of CloudQuant, a cloud-based algo development platform and fund.

During our conversation, Morgan explains why he feels as though the ‘common’ approach to strategy development can be counter intuitive, and he gives an alternative 3-step formula. We also spend time discussing how machine learning fits into a traders toolbox

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Ben Mallah is a trader of a different kind—he doesn’t trade stocks and bonds, he trades in real estate. You could probably call him a property developer, although he doesn’t build from scratch; he buys distressed apartment buildings, hotels and shopping centers, fixes them up, and then sells to make a profit.

He grew up in one of the roughest areas of New York and had a very tough upbringing, but Ben is the true definition of a ‘rags to riches’ story…

During his early 20’s, as a side hustle while working in the military, Ben began getting into real estate. Thirty years have since passed, and in that time, he’s built up a real estate empire worth (approximately) $200,000,000.

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Victor Haghani began his career at Salomon Brothers in 1984, starting out in a research role before joining their prop trading desk. In 1992, Victor left Salomon to become one of the founding partners of Long Term Capital Management…

LTCM was an incredibly successful hedge fund, up until 1998, when it failed in a spectacular fashion. Causing the Federal Reserve to step in and organize a bailout, in order to prevent the possibility of a collapse in the global financial system.

Victor took a ten year sabbatical after the dust settled, and in 2010 he founded an active index investing fund, Elm Partners.

For this episode, much of our discussion is in reference to an experiment Victor carried out (with some involvement from Edward Thorp), on the patterns of how 61 participants would bet on a biased coin.

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Andy has been an active stock trader since the early 90’s, and in 2001 he founded Kershner Trading Group—a proprietary trading and technology firm in Austin (Texas) and, through a partnership with SMB Capital, Kershner Trading have a second office in Midtown (Manhattan) too.

So, what did we talk about? Andy's ability to take pain on adverse positions, whether or not this has been a key ingredient to his trading success, and do traders with higher risk tolerances make more money. Andy also shares his daily habits and critiques a trade which didn't go so well from the session prior to recording this episode. And naturally, we cover a few other things too...

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Though not a trader herself, Nell Sloane has been in and around markets and exchanges for roughly 30-years, mostly working in roles that assisted commodity traders and brokers in one way or another.

Then since 2006, Nell has been the Principal of Capital Trading Group—a Chicago investment firm, which she co-founded with Patrick Lafferty. And this is the reason why I asked Nell to come on the podcast; because the role of CTG is to support traders who wish to expand their operation by managing money for others as a CTA.

CTG do also offer services to professional and individual investors to help them navigate managed futures. But for this episode, we focus on…

What does it mean to be a CTA, the incentives to become a CTA and where to begin, fee structures, the requirements and regulations, how to attract capital from investors, and other related subjects.

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Matthew Hoyle was once a trader, or more specifically, an options market maker. And he started at a very young age, on the exchange floor in Amsterdam. But since 2003, he’s been in the headhunting (or recruiting) business. His firm, Matthew Hoyle Financial Markets.

Essentially, Matthew finds the best candidates for hard to fill roles. He’s contracted by banks, hedge funds and all sorts of trading firms—for example; Tibra, Optiver, Tower Research, Citadel, Millennium Partners, amongst many others.

Matthew’s deeply knowledgeable on the industry, and he’s won many awards for doing what he does…

During this episode we get talking about; tips for getting hired, the skills which are most in demand, what firms are looking for, also, how firms attempt to attract and retain talent, various compensation structures – and everything in between!

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Max got into trading about six years ago, after a co-worker pulled up in a brand new Lotus Elise—paid for with gains from trading BP stock. Working as an engineer at the time, with average pay, it wasn’t long before Max opened his first trading account and got to work…

Having now developed a unique style of his own, which he describes as a scalping method—focusing on NASDAQ listed stocks, Max has become very consistent and profitable. (If you’re interested, max regularly posts PnL on his Twitter account.)

To mention a few of the things we discussed; how traders can benefit from being independent thinkers, the nature of scalping strategies, optimizing your workflow, mindset and improving your psychological game, and plenty more.

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Darren Reed (@LiftTheOffer) has been a stock broker, the head trader at a $300M hedge fund, and an active prop trader at Australian firms, Propex, Aliom and Gensis. At the later two, he also mentored traders as part of his role in trader development.

But this year (2017), Darren has returned to Perth—on the west coast of Australia, to establish a new proprietary trading firm with a few partners; Cygnet Trading.

The main focus of this episode can be summarized with just a few words; grit, hustle and intent. Further, Darren speaks about paying your dues, why environment is everything, and a window into the life of a discretionary prop trader.

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Doug Cifu is the co-founder and CEO of Virtu Financial, one of the largest electronic market making firms in the world. Around the clock, Virtu are trading in 12,000 instruments, across 235 markets and 36 countries, with only 140 staff.

Virtu often trade more than 4.5 million times a day, and prior to their IPO in 2015, Virtu reported the firm had made a profit 1,277 out of 1,278 days—losing money just one day between 2009 and 2014.

And in recent news, Virtu made headlines 20th April (2017), after announcing their acquisition of rival, Knight Capital Group for $1.4 billion.

Doug is also the co-owner of NHL team, Florida Panthers—with the second owner, being none other than his Virtu co-founder, Vincent Viola.

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Michael Mauboussin is a Managing Director and Head of Global Financial Strategies at Credit Suisse. He’s also a professor of finance at Columbia Business School, and the author of several books, such as; The Success Equation and More Than You Know.

Michael is widely-recognized as a thought leader on the subject of decision making, as well as thinking about things in the way of process over outcome, and skill vs luck.

And it’s these three things which are the over-arching theme of this episode. So hopefully, you’ll pick up a few good tips from Michael, that will help to improve your ability of making better decisions (and creating better processes) as a trader.

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Mebane Faber is the founder and CIO at Cambria Investment Management, where he manages Cambria’s ETFs, separate accounts and private investment funds. He’s also authored numerous white papers and five books now, on various investing subjects. Meb’s a budding podcaster too, his podcast; The Meb Faber Show.

The main reason why I asked Meb to join me for this episode, was to share some simple ways that active traders can capitalize on the opportunity and compounding effect that (somewhat passive) longer-term investing has to offer.

So, I ask Meb about; where to start out, how to set expectations, various types of portfolios, when to enter the market, what to do during drawdown, what things new investors struggle with most, so on and so forth…

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Alex (@TAGRtrades) is a 27-year old day trader, from Texas. He’s been trading full-time for four years, and has really begun to hit his stride. Alex closed Q1 of 2017 with a $49,000 gain, after going into the year with an account balance of $32,000.

He’s a small-cap momentum trader, but unlike most guests who I’ve had on previously that play in this space, Alex takes the majority of his trades on the long side. So naturally, we chat about his reasons for this…

We also chat about; the leap into full-time trading, key lessons Alex learned in the early stages of his development, how he manages trades, and why journaling has been immensely helpful.

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High-speed trading veteran, Manoj Narang, originally worked on Wall St for the likes of Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs prior to founding Tradeworx, which became one of the larger trading firms in the U.S. (in terms of volume).

He’s since parted ways with Tradeworx to start MANA Partners—an innovative quant fund which raised almost one billion dollars for it’s launch in January this year (2017).

As a brief summary for some of the things we got to chat about; the value of technology which drives some trading operations, capitalizing on the explosion of data, plus why aspiring traders should be willing to buck the trend and think freely.

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Larry Alintoff was a prop trader for Paul Tudor Jones, before running the largest group of traders on the AMEX (at the time). When he later went over to the NYBOT, Larry became the largest trader in the Frozen Concentrated Orange Juice pit, and now days, he’s CIO of The Toro Fund.

During this episode, we cover; the thing which helped Larry to become consistent, why there’s great opportunity in knowing when things that “should” happen, don’t happen, and how he’s been able to successfully apply a similar trading style from the floor to the screens. Plus, how a market obsession has carried him this far…

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Sean Hendelman is the co-founder and CEO of T3 Companies.

T3 is one of the larger proprietary trading firms in the U.S. And incase you’re curious, the three T’s of T3 stand for; trading, training and technology.

A few of the things Sean and I spoke about, include; how he got his start, how he lost all his money twice—and why it was a worthwhile experience (in hindsight), and some of the great lessons he’s learned from the business of trading.

Even as CEO today, Sean is still very hands on with T3’s automated trading, so we also had an interesting conversation around this—some of his comments and views may actually surprise you. And hand traders, need not feel neglected, because there’s something in this for you to!

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Adam Grimes has been a trader for more than 20-years, he’s traded all major asset classes, across various timeframes. He’s traded independently, with a prop firm, and he’s run other trading businesses also.

The main focus of this episode is to explore some of the things which discretionary traders can adapt from quantitative traders, and vice versa—meaning, what things can quants take from those who rely on discretion.

Then in the later part of this episode, Adam lays out a solid framework which can help struggling traders to move forward. As well as, the types of questions you should ask when you don’t know what you don’t know.

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Brannigan Barrett is a futures day trader—who trades a total of eight markets, across; bonds, equity indices, currencies and commodities. He was previously a trader at prop firm, Futex, but is now part of Axia Futures.

The subjects we cover during this conversation, include; how to progressively become a bigger (and better) trader, how a “dogfight” attitude has helped Brannigan’s trading career, how he prepares going into major news announcements, his daily process for journaling and being ready for “one good trade.” Plus, how to think about and achieve your trading goals.

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Benjamin Small is an electrical engineering PhD. He’s worked in quantitative research roles since 2006, at UBS, Citadel, Credit Suisse and the stock exchange, IEX.

Today though, Ben is head of market structure at Gemini—the world’s first fully licensed and fully regulated Bitcoin exchange, which is based in New York.

During this chat, we get into; payment for order flow and high frequency trading, why there’s an incentive to normalize Bitcoin, the cryptocurrency ecosystem, potential outcomes for the future of Bitcoin, and becoming a cashless society.

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Jorge Soltero began as a floor trader in Chicago, where he was an options market maker. A few years into his career, he landed a position at Hull Trading Company (the renowned firm of legendary trader, Blair Hull).

After Hull Trading was bought by Goldman Sachs in 1999, Jorge became more of an institutional trader—not only working at Goldman, but later, UBS and Merrill Lynch too, where he specialized in options and ETFs.

Listening to this episode you’re going to hear about; the culture of trading pits, exactly what it was like to be a trader at Hull Trading Co., the transition to electronic trading, what makes ETFs an attractive product, and more…

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Returning to Chat With Traders for a second time is David Bush—first on episode 23.

David began as a discretionary trader, more than 20-years ago, but over time he’s developed into a quant trader. And he’s exceptionally good at what he does; David’s been the first place winner of two (real money) trading competitions in recent years.

Last time David was on we spoke fairly extensively about his path as a trader and a high-level overview of his process. This time around we covered plenty of new ground—exploring David’s process in greater depth. Also, I particularly liked David’s comments towards the end about, “Intensity, not time.”

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On this episode, I’m joined by George—who goes by @RollyTrader on Twitter.

George is an Australian equities trader, with a momentum/swing trading type of approach. In the past, George has held a few finance-related positions, but since late-2009 he’s mostly traded independently.

During the interview, George and I got speaking about; lessons he learned early on, the effect that coaching and mentoring has had on his trading, specifics about the setups George trades, and also, his involvement with venture capital.

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I’m not sure how to best say this, but Edward Thorp, is kind of a big deal…

Not only in the world of financial markets, but he’s also a household name amongst the gambling scene. He’s the man who beat the dealer, and later, beat the market.

It was during the late-50’s and early-60’s, when Ed, a math genius and professor at MIT, took on the challenge of discovering a way to get an edge playing gambling games such as blackjack, roulette and baccarat. Long story short; Ed won—and he’s now considered the father of card counting.

From there, the next obvious move for Ed was to take on financial markets—which he also did with a great degree of success. His first hedge fund, Princeton Newport Partners, achieved an annualized return of 19.1% (before fees) over a 19-year period, with 227 of 230 months being profitable—the worst monthly loss being less than 1%.

Ed’s most recent book, A Man For All Markets, is now available on Amazon.

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Throughout this series, which has been a window into the workflow of professional quant trading firms, we’ve encouraged you to submit questions and requests for further clarification. So, in this episode, being the final installment, Delaney answers as many of these questions as possible (within 80-mins).

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John Netto, a former U.S. marine, describes himself as a high velocity, cross-asset class trader. He connects the ability to be versatile, adaptable, and interpret large amounts of information to be his greatest edge—for making lucrative returns.

These are all things we cover during the interview, which includes discussion about; process, research, strategy, macro, and market regimes. We also talk about the benefits of stepping outside of your comfort zone, why there’s a need to embrace growing pains, and when emotion can be an ally.

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For the great, Anthony Saliba, his initial 13-years in the field were spent as a market maker on the CBOE floor, where he made approximately $9,000,000 before 30 years old (and that was during the 80’s). At which point, he was one of the traders featured in Jack Schwager’s first Market Wizards’ book.

Since then, Anthony’s continued to scale up—making major moves, both, through trading and through various business ventures.

We spoke for close to two hours; about his experience on the floor, a trader education company which he founded, some of the non-cliché traits of great traders, longevity, and how he’s grown wealth as a parallel entrepreneur, amongst other topics.

Anthony has also authored a new book for options traders; Managing Expectations.

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Turney Duff was a hedge fund trader on Wall Street who lead a truly excessive lifestyle. In 2013 he released a book about his experiences—titled, The Buy Side. And currently, Turney is a consultant on the Showtime TV series, Billions.

On this episode we cover everything, from what it was like to trade more than one billion dollars at Galleon Group—which was the hedge fund run by Raj Rajaratnam, currently serving an 11-year prison sentence for partaking in one of the largest insider trading rings in U.S. history.

Following on from this, we discuss Turney’s relationships with the sell-side and the extreme measures they’d take to win his business. Which leads into the shenanigans which took place after-hours—the cocktail of drugs, alcohol, sex, money and power.

We finish up with Turney’s fall from the top, some of the greatest realizations he’s come to, and the life he leads today… Enjoy!

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Brendan Poots is the founder of sports betting hedge fund, The Priomha Group, who mainly bet on football, cricket, golf and also horse racing and tennis.

Priomha setup shop in Melbourne (Australia) in 2010, and more recently, have expanded with a second location in Gibraltar (Europe). From inception up to the release of this episode, Priomha’s Cloney fund has returned a little over 220%.

From listening to our discussion, you’ll gain great insight to how Brendan runs his operation—from getting investors to buy in, to controlling risk and minimizing the volatility of returns, and how the fund makes money trading sports games.

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Alex (@AT09_Trader) is a 22-year old, discretionary day trader, who’s seen great results in the few years he’s been grinding away at this. He trades small caps, and he trades aggressively—as you’ll soon hear, Alex is far from conservative.

This conversation was recorded on the 16th of November (2016), right around the time when the madness in the shipping sector was unfolding. So we got talking about the ticker DRYS and how Alex racked up a $40k loss a day or two before our interview (although, he had his first +$100k day shortly after too).

Also we spoke about how Alex got started, the types of trade scenarios that he looks for, areas that he’s working on to improve, and also his venture into real estate—where he flipped a foreclosure property for a tidy profit, plus much more.

Note: Nothing you hear on this podcast is financial advice. You’re entirely responsible for your own trading decisions.

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Machine learning is a hot topic right now, with a lot of people wondering how it could be used in finance and trading. Used naively, machine learning poses a great deal of risk. We’ll discuss why that’s the case and also some good ways to use it carefully.

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On this episode, I’m joined by a quant trader who works at a high frequency trading firm—though you might be surprised to hear, he started out on the same path that many retail traders do—his name is; Dave Bergstrom.

The thing that makes Dave unique from most traders who’ve been on this podcast previously, is how he uses data-mining techniques to develop trading strategies. Though data-mining, in trading, often has a negative connotation attached to it, Dave believes this stems from bad practices and poor evaluation of methods.

In addition to the above and ways to reduce curve-fitting, we talk about escaping randomness, learning to write code, Dave’s three laws for strategy development, setting expectations and plenty more.

Q+A: Got a question for Dave? Write in the comments area at chatwithtraders.com/103.

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When one has a price model that they think will work well for forecasting returns, the next step is to actually trade it. This isn’t that simple for a variety of reasons. For one thing, you need to define how much risk you’re okay with taking on in a portfolio, and then try to maximize your returns while staying within those boundaries. This is the foundation of modern portfolio theory—we’ll discuss some real life issues with this.

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Eugene Soltes is an author and finance professor at Harvard Business School.

Over the past eight years, give or take, he’s spent a lot of time with many big-time executives and professionals who have been convicted of major financial crimes, such as; cooking the books, fraud, Ponzi schemes, and insider trading.

What initially began as nothing other than self-interest has materialized into a 464-page hardcover book, which was released in October this year (2016). The book is titled, Why They Do It: Inside the Mind of the White-Collar Criminal.

Intrigued by the subject matter, I invited Eugene onto the podcast and we got talking about; how Bernie Madoff became the mastermind behind the biggest fraudulent scheme in US history—sucking billions of dollars from unsuspecting investors, some of the notorious insider trading cases, and ultimately, why they do it.

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In practice, no one trading model will ever be that good on its own. Luckily statistics has come up with a lot of theory about how you can combine weaker models to create better overall predictions. We’ll discuss how to combine many different trading signals into overall models and some of the practical considerations in doing so.

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My guest for episode 1-0-1 is Siam Kidd, from Norwich in the UK. He’s a former-air force pilot, turned retail trader. He’s also a serial entrepreneur, and on a quest to dramatically improve the schooling system.

We got to chat about his shaky beginnings as a trader, his rock bottom moment, and how he trades currency pairs—using a technical-driven approach, with the goal of catching major trends when they happen.

During the later half, I ask Siam about why he got into business, how he’s found the ability to “think big” and how he’s gotten to a point where he now owns fifteen businesses. Then we also talk about flaws in the schooling system, Siam’s grand scheme, and what the future has in store for us.

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Factors are at the core of a modern quant equity workflow. This episode introduces the notion of alpha and risk factors at a high level, and delves into some of the use cases which include: understanding how the market is moving, understanding how a portfolio is exposed to sources of risk, and turning ideas for price forecasting into encapsulated alpha factors.

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My guest for this special milestone (being episode 100!) is someone who I’ve been attempting to bring on since before episode one was even released…

Folks, I’d like to introduce you to Bao—or better known as @Modern_Rock on Twitter.

Bao is an independent day trader, and a former-Silicon Valley software engineer, who made the large majority of his fortune trading stocks on the OTC bulletin board market. His story emphasizes; anyone with the will to succeed, even amongst adversity, can become unstoppable.

During the interview we speak about avoiding complacency, the greatest trade of Bao’s career, discovering a niche, managing confidence, consistency tips, how to progress as a developing trader, and much more.

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The worst case in finance is when you think you’re right, but you’re actually wrong. This can be especially dangerous when you’ve used some methodology or statistics to justify a decision, but are unaware of all the subtle biases that can cause false results. In this episode we’ll cover many of the ways that you can be wrong without knowing it in trading and finance.

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My guest for this episode is Brynne Kelly; an electricity, natural gas, and crude oil trader who’s spent the majority of her career on merchant trading desks, for the likes of BP amongst others. She has also been a prop trader and has experience as a hedge fund portfolio manager.

A few of the key topics we hit on include: Brynne’s responsibilities as head of trading desks, how she taught, trained and managed newer traders, and an overview for how Brynne trades relationships using fundamentals and macro trends. And plenty more.

For many listening, much of this may not necessarily be directly applicable to your own trading, but you’ll get great insight to how things work from the merchant side.

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Before day trading equities, Peter To played a lot of online poker and did fairly well for himself. He then dabbled in markets as an investor, but was soon attracted to OTC stocks after discovering a strange inefficiency…

In this episode we spend quite a bit of time talking about Peter’s prop trading experience, both the good and the bad. Trading nihilism and doing everything you supposedly shouldn’t do, why Peter accepts he’s not a “cold blooded assassin” and does trade with the influence of emotion. Plus, we briefly touch on Bitcoin and exchange hacks towards the end too.

Peter also writes about many of these subjects on his blog, which you can read here.

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On this episode, I have our very first guest from China; Derek Wong—he is the Director of Systematic Trading and Options at a private fund in Shanghai.

Initially though, Derek got his start in the agricultural pits at the CBOT, then following on from this, he’s worked at various quant shops in Chicago, South Korea, and now days, mainland China.

After discussing Derek’s backstory, we talk; emerging markets, cultural differences of Chinese investors, convergent and divergent strategies, diversification, and some slightly unconventional ways of thinking about how you trade.

Additionally, Derek also has some awesome insight for traders who are discretionary and what traders should focus once reaching profitability.

Derek has agreed to answer any trading questions you may have. So if you’ve got a question go to chatwithtraders.com/97, scroll to the bottom of the page and write in the comments area…

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Nico (@InefficientMrkt on Twitter) is a day trader with a thirst for momentum. He predominately trades low-priced stocks that have a tendency to move fast and far—and roughly 90% of his positions are on the short side.

But the main reason why I brought Nico onto the podcast, is I feel as though he has a story which many traders will be able to relate to, on one level or another…

The short of it is; Nico placed his first trade in 2007, made 4x on his starting capital year one, and then slowly bleed his trading account for the next seven years. He’s now found his groove, but his overnight success was eight years in the making.

This episode is very much centered around Nico’s journey and development as a trader, and how full-time trading became more than a pipe dream.

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For this episode, the trader who I had the opportunity to speak with, and who you’re about to hear from, is Adrian—or @AdeyF69 on Twitter.

Adrian was a pro sailor for almost two decades, but for the past six years, he’s been on dry land, taking an income from financial markets as an independent day trader.

Adrian primarily trades the Bund and the DAX, though he initially started out in foreign exchange. His trading strategy is influenced by support and resistance areas, volume profiling, order flow, and stats.

After talking about how Adrian’s survived storms at sea, torturous sleeping patterns, and run-ins with pirates, we spend a fair amount of time discussing; how Adrian uses stats and some things to watch out for, and why it pays to be process driven.

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My guest on this episode is a former-stand up comedian, turned questionable stockbroker, turned day trader—folks, I’d like you to meet, Kenny Glick.

During the 90’s, Kenny went from the stages of comedy clubs into a hyper-aggressive brokerage firm, which he describes as being identical to scenes from the movie, Boiler Room—and he has some wild stories to share, which you’ll hear very soon.

Once Kenny realized his morals were getting in the way of his ability peddle junk stocks, he went on to pursue a career in trading stocks and options. And that’s, also, what we go into detail about during this episode.

Additionally, you’ll pick up some simple chunks of wisdom which you can apply to your own way of trading—if you choose to.

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What you’re about to hear is a conversation I had with a short-term futures trader, Ben—whose last name we won’t mention only for privacy reasons, but he goes by @BLB_Capital on Twitter.

Before entering the market, Ben previously ran a construction company until an injury put him out of action for a period of time, which is when a friend got him interested in trading. Developing his craft over recent years, the bulk of Ben’s trading now revolves around order flow and he’s most active in Oil, Gold and ES.

Over the next 50-mins or so we discuss; what Ben learned and emulated from a large bond trader he was trained by, insight to his core trading strategies, how he utilizes automation, why traders should be aware of “right-to-left syndrome” and more.

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For this episode I spoke with fund manager, Dario Mofardin.

Dario went from a finance degree, straight into a market analyst and then trader position at a private global macro hedge fund, during the early 90’s. He then went into investment banking for 13 years, working with mergers and acquisitions from various locations around the globe. And since 2008, Dario has been trading independently, but has recently begun trading external funds also.

Some of the key points we chat about during this episode include; seeing the whole board as a global macro trader, how to build a body of evidence, why Dario went from short-term trading to higher timeframes, plus trade management and checklists too.

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Craig Scott is someone who has been trading and investing for most of his life, first starting in school when he participated in a year long stock picking competition.

Once completing a double major in finance and accounting, Craig spent many years as an auditor and an accountant, and later on, the entrepreneur within had him start and grow several businesses (doing similar things) along the way.

As Craig describes his style of trading and investing; it’s a hybrid of fundamentals, momentum, sentiment and instinct. He uses options for short-term positions and for mid/longer-term positions he uses stocks. And worth mentioning; Craig’s very adamant about the fact that he does not use charts!

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For this episode I’m joined by Michael Halls-Moore, who runs QuantStart.com—a site well-known by many algorithmic traders.

Prior to trading, Michael studied computational fluid dynamics and was the co-founder of a tech startup, before getting involved a small equity fund as a quant developer—where his key role was cleansing data.

Now, independently, Michael trades his own short-term algorithmic strategies, consults to hedge funds on machine learning and quant infrastructure, and also has a keen interest in space exploration.

We discussed a whole range of topics, including; the need for quality data, thinking about risk from a portfolio level, trading multiple automated strategies, the role of common sense in parameter optimization, learning to program, and more.

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Blake Morrow (otherwise known as @PipCzar on Twitter) started out as a stock broker in 1995, but this only lasted for a short period of time, before becoming a trader…

A wealthy friend put up $50,000 in starting capital, which Blake lost about $30,000 of it within the first six months. Though, before wiping out, Blake was able to turn that remaining $20,000 into roughly $1.5M in the next few years that followed.

He’s since been involved in various trading and technology firms, but today, Blake is the Chief Currency Strategist for WizeTrade, co-founder of Forex Analytix, and an independent forex trader.

Over the course of this episode you’ll hear about Blake’s story in greater detail, how he navigates forex markets—using charts and technical analysis as well as economic drivers, some tips for beginning traders using leverage, and plenty more.

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Dave Lauer is a former-high frequency trader for firms such as Citadel and Allston Trading. He’s worked specifically in various areas of the HFT pipeline, including; research and modelling, building hardware, and programming and operating strategies—which are measured in millionths of a second (or microseconds).

Following the Flash Crash, Dave left his role as a trader (for various reasons we discuss during this episode) and now, as a partner of KOR Group, consults to institutional managers on market structure and best execution.

Dave was also featured in the VPRO documentary, The Wall Street Code, along with other Chat With Traders guests; Haim Bodek, Eric Hunsader, and Blair Hull.

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This week on the podcast, I spoke with Tom Sosnoff, who many of you will already know—he’s pretty close to a household name name in this industry. But if you don’t…

Tom was a floor trader at the CBOE for 20 years, later going on to co-found thinkorswim—a widely popular online brokerage. In 2009, thinkorswim was sold to TD Ameritrade for approximately $606M, and Tom left the company shortly after to start financial news show, tastytrade.

In this episode we hit on; the issue with being too risk adverse in markets and in life, Tom’s extensive trading career, plenty of talk about options, the value of intellectually challenging ourselves (with respect to finance), and more.

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Jared Tendler is an internationally recognized mental game coach. His clients include world champion poker players, the #1 ranked pool player in the world, professional golfers, and more recently, traders too.

If Jared was to summarize exactly what he does (and what he specializes in), it would be; removing negative and excessive emotion from decision making.

So naturally, this serves as the underlying theme throughout our conversation, but we also discuss higher-level topics like; variance, the major crossovers between high-stakes poker and trading, how psychology has been oversold and when it really matters, plus how to identify various types of “tilt.”

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Blair Hull has been labeled by Forbes as, “One of the most successful traders of the last 40 years,” and he was also profiled in Jack Schwager’s, The New Market Wizards.

Prior to trading, Blair was a serious Blackjack player for 5-years during the 70’s. From there he took his winnings to the the Pacific Exchange to trade mispriced options, and in 1985, he founded one of the world’s premier market-making firms, Hull Trading.

At its peak, Hull Trading was active on 28 exchanges in nine countries. Then in 1999, the firm was acquired by Goldman Sachs for $531 million dollars.

Today, Blair is the founder of Hull Investments—the parent company of an actively managed ETF, Hull Trading Asset Allocation, and proprietary firm, Ketchum Trading.

Listening to this interview, you’re going to hear more about Blair’s career and his observations as a trader, why he believes great things happen in teams, and why everything revolves around having an edge.

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This episode features Dr. Yves Hilpisch—the founder of The Python Quants.

TPQ do a lot of good for those involved in quantitative finance, they; frequently host meet-ups and workshops, have developed platforms and analytics libraries, and often contract to exchanges, banks and hedge funds for custom Python development.

Yves is also a three-time published author, with his most notable title probably being “Python for Finance” which was released through O’Reilly. He regularly gives presentations and speaks at events on the subject of quant finance, and lectures at Universities too.

Over the next sixty minutes, you’ll hear us unpack many subjects related to being a quant and why programming in Python can be a useful skill to have in your toolbox.

Note, some of the discussion in the later part may be a little heavy for non-programmers. So if there is something that doesn’t make sense or you’d like more context around, please just write in the comments at the bottom of this page and I’ll do my best to point you in the right direction.

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The trader I interviewed for this episode is; Ryan Moffett from Blackpier Capital.

Having been involved with markets for about 12 years now, Ryan has experience in trading, strategy design, portfolio construction and even alternative investments—all, while working for several firms (one of which, managed upwards of $2B).

More recently though, Ryan’s ventured out to start a fund of his own, where he wears the badge of Lead Investment Manager.

Some of the subjects we check off during this episode, include; the snapping point that lead Ryan to pursue trading and cold-call 50 fund managers for guidance. How he was able to form various mentoring relationships, the first steps of starting a fund and the unseen challenges.

Plus we discuss options, strategies and research, but the highlight for myself was hearing Ryan’s insight on deliberate practice and mental discomfort.

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This week, for the second time on Chat With Traders, my guest is Morad or better known as; Futures Trader 71.

As you could imagine, FT is a futures trader, he’s also very short-term and has been trading for about 16 years now. During this time, he was the founder of a successful prop firm and more recently, has started a brokerage; Stage 5 Trading.

First time around (on episode 37) we spoke extensively about FT’s path of becoming a trader, market profile and volume profile, and creating a legacy. This time we spoke about all new topics…

For example; how to learn a new skill, how to measure your progress besides PnL, how to remove attachment to the outcome, how FT uses a regressive risk management strategy, and plenty more too.

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Our guest this week is Alan Farley, who took his first trades in the late-80’s.

Alan is an active swing trader, and most of his positions take place in the US equity market—although he occasionally trades index futures and currencies too.

In 2001, Alan released his first book, The Master Swing Trader, which may be the best-selling book on the subject). He’s also a regular contributor to The Street and Investopedia, having written hundreds of articles over the years.

Subjects you’ll hear about include; the unusual way in which Alan got a well-rounded education of financial markets. Some of the big lessons that shaped him into the trader he is now, in particular, the concept of convergence and divergence. Plus, we talk about the dynamics that generate price movement, and much more too.

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Anthony Crudele started at a very young age on the CME floor, and he has one really interesting story about coming up as a trader…

It does involve some pretty drastic failures, burning through significant amounts of cash, and a whole lot of perseverance. But, he eventually broke through and went on to have years of making six and seven-figures, while heavily trading the E-Mini S&P 500 from it’s inception.

In our chat, you’ll hear about Anthony’s multiple blowouts and comebacks, his turning point as a trader, his approach to trading futures today, and a healthy reminder to protect your downside.

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Raoul Pal has a history rooted in the hedge fund industry, and with him, he carries more than 25+ years of experience in financial markets.

For a number of years he worked at Goldman Sachs where he co-managed the hedge fund sales business in equities and equity derivatives. He later moved on to GLG, one of the largest hedge fund groups in the world, where he launched their global macro fund in London.

Today, Raoul no longer manages client money but continues to invest his own. He also writes a premium research newsletter, The Global Macro Investor, and is the co-founder of Real Vision TV.

In this episode we navigate through some uncharted waters which have not been explored previously on this podcast. So in addition to macro investing, technical analysis and hedge funds, we discuss theoretical economic models, business cycles, negative interest rates, and why the world is economically in a frightening position.

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As I’m sure you already well aware, Jack Schwager has been involved with financial markets for many years, he’s the author of the acclaimed Market Wizards series and others, and he’s also the co-founder of FundSeeder.

During our talk, we go behind the scenes of the Market Wizards and Jack shares his experiences from conducting interviews with trading royalty and some of his most memorable moments.

Of course, I ask Jack to flesh out some of the great knowledge he’s learned from this—discussing; self-confidence, sacrifices, what separates a profitable trader from a super trader, and the issue with seeking comfort.

You’ll also hear an update on FundSeeder, as well as something you might be very interested to know, what trading books does Jack recommend to others?

The New Market Wizards is now available as an audiobook on Amazon. Get a free copy

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You’re about to hear a really interesting conversation I had with Dennis Dick.

Dennis first started out meddling with penny stocks, before soon joining a well-established prop firm known as; Bright Trading—this was in the late 90’s. To this day Dennis remains with the same firm, still as an active short-term equities trader, but also as their Market Structure Analyst.

If his voice sounds familiar, that’s probably because he’s the co-host of Benzinga’s PreMarket Prep live morning show too.

Some of the key talking points that come up over the next 60 minutes, include; scalping, surviving as a short-term trader in a high frequency world, various order types, and the opportunities that can be found trading the open (this is actually where Dennis makes 50% of his money each day—within the first five minutes).

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Our featured guest for this weeks interview is, Saul Knapp.

Saul originally started out as a runner on the floor of the LIFFE exchange (in London), when he was just 16 years old. Later moving on from there, he’s had various roles as a risk manager for proprietary trading firms, at times, monitoring positions for as many as 120+ traders. Today, Saul lives in Spain where he runs a small prop firm of his own.

In regard to how he trades, Saul is a spread trader who’s most active in the energy markets. So, spread trading is something we cover during our conversation, as well as his observations from being a risk manager and helping other traders improve.

If you have any questions, or if there’s anything which you’d like further explanation on, just write in the comments below to get a response from Saul.

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For this episode, I had the great pleasure of speaking with Dan Aisen—one of the co-founders of IEX, and one of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in Finance (2015).

Dan got his start at RBC where he developed their flagship execution algorithm, THOR. This was also where he met and worked under Brad Katsuyama—one of the other co-founders and CEO of IEX, who was heavily profiled in Flash Boys.

As many of you may already know, IEX is an Alternative Trading System (ATS), or more commonly referred to as a dark pool. However, they’re currently in the midst of filing for exchange status.

During our talk, I asked Dan more about the projects he worked on at RBC, how IEX went from nothing more than an idea to an operating trading venue, and why they’re on a quest to make markets “fair”.

We also discuss the “speed bumps” which have been implemented at IEX, the mechanics of dark pools, and general chat about the broader market structure.

[FREE: An unreleased interview with trader, Peter Brandt]

Peter’s been a market speculator for 45+ years, and is undeniably one of the greats. Listen to his wisdom in our second interview—available here only.

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My guest this week is John Walsh, aka The Black Cabbie Trader.

The backstory of John; in 2012 he entered a competition—the City Index Trading Academy. The idea was to take a group of people with very little market experience to see how well they would perform as active traders, over the span of 5 weeks. John came out on top and won the £100,000 prize money which was up for grabs.

He’s of course continued trading ever since, and has developed into quite the trend/position trader—focused on US equities, making simplicity an absolute top priority. He’s also a black cab driver in London, which you’ll hear more about shortly.

In this episode we chat about; the competition, John’s trading methodology, why you must ‘stay out of your own way’ (as John puts it), and plenty more.

Please take two minutes to support this podcast by leaving an iTunes review.

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For Charlie Bathgate, trading has been a part of his life since as far back as he can remember—his father was an options market maker, and not to mention his brothers and sister work major-roles in the industry too.

Today, Charlie is a partner and the CEO of two operations; Sang Lucci and Flammarion. Sang Lucci being a provider of trader education, and Flammarion being a hedge fund (which mostly consists of automated traders).

We had an awesome chat, speaking about; his observations from working with and evaluating traders, why humility is key, and what it means to “own your strategy”. Also Charlie shares big insight from his obsession with psychology and biohacking, and how innovative technology being used by the NBA can benefit traders.

Join the free Facebook group for Chat With Traders listeners and traders.

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This weeks guest preferred to remain somewhat anonymous, although his name is Rob – others know him as RG, and he’s a part of Discovery Trading Group.

Rob is an active futures traders and is what most people would call a pure scalper, but he refers to himself as a “street level gambler with an appetite for risk”. Either way, he is very short-term and often just trading for a couple ticks at a time. So that’s one side of what he does, the other side, Rob is also involved in a quantitative research firm which trades a whole range of strategies, over various timeframes, in many different markets.

Over the next 60 minutes; you’ll hear about Rob’s early years of trading during the 80’s, and how he’s developed into the trader he is today. Rob also drives home the importance of risk management, shares a few gambling analogies, and talks about the benefit of interacting with other traders on a regular basis.

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A big guest on the podcast this week—a man who for many won’t need any introduction, he is; Eric Scott Hunsader.

Eric started out as an algorithmic trader in the early 80’s, soon after became a self-taught programmer, and since then he’s written many software applications for financial data. But today, Eric is the founder of Nanex, a whole market streaming data feed, which transmits 20 billion data points every day.

Well-known for speaking out against the many issues that surround high frequency trading, Eric will tell you straight; HFT firms are stealing money, exchanges have rigged the market, and the regulators that allow this type of activity to continue are corrupt individuals.

Additionally we talk about quote stuffing, mini-flash crashes that occur on a daily basis, and why Eric recently received a $750,000 whistle-blower award from the SEC.

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Jeff is a day trader who specializes in the S&P futures, and predominately trades a mean-reversion strategy which is built upon data and statistical probabilities.

Across his 20+ year trading career, Jeff has also been heavily involved in the process of developing and deploying algorithmic strategies—but slightly less these days.

In this interview we talk about Jeff’s prop days, risks of being a one-man-business, automated trading, specializing, statistics, and more.

From this conversation, I think you’ll pick up on the underlying theme, which is all about building confidence in your strategy and then being able to size up when you have an edge.

Also, Jeff is answering your questions…

So if you have a trading question or would like more depth on any topic discussed, leave your question in the comments area at chatwithtraders.com/70 and Jeff will respond to you.

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Welcome back for another installment of the Chat With Traders podcast. I’ve got an awesome guest lined up for you, John Carter, from Austin Texas.

In short; John is an options trader (and also futures, to a slightly lesser extent), he’s been trading for around about 25 years now. His typical holding time for any given trade is just a couple days, and he classifies himself as an aggressive trader – which I think you’ll pick up on pretty quickly.

In this interview, you’ll hear I ask John about the multiple boom ‘n bust cycles he endured over the space of about 8 years before gaining real consistency. I also ask, is a high risk tolerance essential for becoming a successful trader?

Then we get into some talk about options, and John has some really great advice for those who are still trying to find their feet. Additionally, we talk about indicators and technical analysis, and we go step-by-step through John’s million dollar TSLA trade.

So there’s a lot packed into this episode, I hope you enjoy it, but more than that, I hope you can take at least just one thing away from this and apply it to your own trading.

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For this episode, we have our very first guest from Sweden—big shout out to Sweden!

I spoke with Mikael Syding; a value investor who spent 15 years in the hedge fund business, and in 2009, he was awarded European Hedge Fund Manger of the Decade before retiring shortly after.

During the interview, I ask Mikael to share his three greatest lessons for traders and investors, how he spotted growth opportunities, and I also ask him how his views on money have changed over the span of his career, plus a whole lot more…

All of this was great, but I have to say, my favorite part of this conversation was the last 10-15 minutes, where Mikael talks about artificial intelligence and technology becoming one with humans. It’s full on—prepare to have your mind blown!

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We have a very special guest on the podcast right now; Jerry Parker.

For those who don’t know, Jerry is one of the original widely-recognized, Turtle Traders. The Turtles were a small (somewhat secretive) group of traders who were mentored and trained by Richard Dennis, a big time commodities trader, in the 80’s.

It’s an interesting story and you’ll hear more about this in just a moment.

Today, Jerry remains the founder of Chesapeake Capital, which is a commodity trading advisor, and he has well ‘n truly stuck to his roots as a die-hard trend follower.

We discuss all the above at length, plus I also had a few questions for Jerry around the subject of trading other people’s money–which is something you may not have considered before. And on the other side, some of the questions you should ask a CTA (or money manager) before investing.

It was a huge honor to speak with Jerry Parker, and I hope you enjoy the interview.

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This week we have returning guest, Dan Shapiro, who was first on episode 32. And after receiving a lot of really great feedback from that interview, I knew I would have to have him back on, so here we are…

Dan works on an intraday timeframe and predominately trades high beta stocks. He’s been trading for 16 years, and during this time has experienced the extreme highs and lows that this business can throw at you. For a good part of his career, Dan was heavily involved in the prop world, but now trades independently from New York.

Over the next 60 minutes you’ll gain some insight to Dan’s methodology, thoughts on managing risk, an outsiders view on the current state of prop trading, and more…

This interview will leave you with plenty to think about, and may even help you to adjust your mindset – if that’s something which is holding you back.

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For this episode, I interviewed a very special guest; Dr Brett Steenbarger (after many, many requests from listeners).

Brett is a very well known trading psychology coach, and has consulted to some of the biggest names in the industry. He’s also a respected author who has now published four books, some which have been recommended reading by previous guests on this podcast.

During our conversation, I asked Brett how to break bad trading habits and introduce new best practises, to explain why traders need to be adaptable in markets, plus how we should think about goal setting and measure progress. And of course, much more about how to enhance your performance as a trader.

If you do enjoy the interview, please leave an iTunes review! Click here

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For this episode I spoke with returning guest Nick Radge, who was originally on episode number 4.

But in case you missed it; Nick is a systematic trend follower and momentum trader, most active in Australian and US equity markets.

This time around, we discussed mean reversion strategies and why they may appeal to certain traders, the importance of trade frequency when developing a system, which then leads into the characteristics of a robust trading system.

One of my own ‘top takeaways’ from this conversation, was hearing about Nick’s emphasis on trying to break and stress test systems – rather than simply trying to develop the “best system”.

Like the last few guests, Nick has also offered to answer any trading questions you might have. So if there’s something you want to know more about, just leave your questions in the comments are at the bottom of this page.

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Here we are, episode 63 and I have another brilliant (and very experienced) guest lined up for you this week.

Her name is Nicola Duke, or @NicTrades on Twitter. She’s a professional swing trader from the UK, actively tracking 36 futures and forex markets – who takes a technical and systematic approach to trading.

Some of the highlights from our conversation…

Hearing about how Nicola’s typical trading day used to start 1:30am, learning that her mentor never showed her a single setup, the concept of preserving ‘mental capital’, and insight to how she trades with a systematic approach.

You may also like to know, Nicola is open to answering any questions you might have, so if there’s something you’d like to ask leave a comment at the bottom of this page.

And if you’re enjoying the podcast, please leave an iTunes review. It’ll take you no more than two minutes and it helps more than you know – you can even do it while you’re listening.

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For this episode, I spoke with a trader who has spent many years in the financial hub of Chicago; Tracy – otherwise known as @ChiGrl on Twitter.

Tracy is a technical intraday trader, but also tracks fundamentals very closely. She solely focuses on the energy sector and has an obsession with crude oil...

During our interview, Tracy shares her story about how she up and left LA to chase her desire of becoming a trader. And how she wound up at a “hack-shop” brokerage, which is best described as a scene from the trading movie, Boiler Room.

We also discuss the bear market of oil, the impact falling prices have on a macro level, the skill sets that are have helped Tracy to survive and thrive as a trader, plus much more.

And last thing, Tracy has kindly offered to answer any questions that you may have – whether they’re about oil specifically, or just trading in general. Just scroll to the bottom of this page and write your questions in the comments area.

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Ari Pine has many years of real market experience on his side, and during this time he’s traded a whole range of markets in various positions and roles…

Some of those include; working at J.P. Morgan, developing risk management software, trading for a long volatility hedge fund, making markets in gold and silver options, and even giving presentations to the Chinese stock exchange.

Moving forward to current times, Ari is now in charge of building out a quantitative trading group – approaching the markets from a scientific perspective, and asking “good questions” to solve trading problems.

Our conversation includes all the above, plus some really valuable info about; positive expectations, the law of large numbers, and process over outcome.

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Here we are at episode 60, and my guest is Peter Tuchman, aka the ‘Most Photographed Man on Wall Street’.

Peter is a broker on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and he’s worked there for the past 30 years. So as you could imagine, he’s seen massive shifts in the landscape of trading (especially on the floor), and has been in the thick of it for many significant market events.

During our interview, Peter shares some of his most memorable moments – reflecting on the crash of ’87, and what it was like to be there trading the Alibaba IPO. He also explains the role of a broker on the floor of the exchange today, and almost like a lesson in history; how this has changed over time. And of course, much much more.

I had a lot of fun doing this interview, Peter has an undeniable passion and excitement for markets, which you’ll pick up on straight away – so I hope you enjoy this interview.

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This weeks guest is Daniel Goldberg, an active trader and partner at Futex – a proprietary trading firm located in London, UK.

Dan has been involved with financial markets since 1995 (straight out of college), and got his start as a book-runner on the exchange floor. He later became a pit trader, and was also there for the transition to electronic markets.

These days, Dan plays a major role in training new traders to the firm, and predominantly focusing on two markets; Bunds and Euro Stoxx.

Some of the topics we covered during our discussion; how Dan seeks out trading opportunities and uses tools such as the price ladder and market profile. And how macro events effect have a significant impact on his trade decisions.

I also ask Dan a bunch of questions centered around prop trading, and he has some really interesting points to share on the topic of risk. So there’s plenty to learn from Dan, enjoy!

Note: This interview was recorded 3rd February 2015

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This week I spoke with Paul Singh, a long-time trader who has been doing this since his college days. Over the years he’s traded stocks, options and futures, but now tends to focus purely on stocks.

In fact, Paul actually began trading during the ‘dot com boom’ and quickly racked up huge profits – he was living large in a penthouse, his neighbors were professional athletes, and all was good …until the bubble burst, and that’s when he returned to square one.

So, during this interview we discuss; the light-bulb moments and changes he made to his trading which helped him to achieve sustainability and consistency. We talk about how he transitioned into full-time trading, why you should be cautious of micromanaging positions, and overall; how to be a better swing trader.

It’s worth mentioning, there’s also something within this interview for day traders, because Paul is very active on an intraday timeframe too.

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This week, I have a really interesting guest on the podcast; his name is Jesse, but in the Twittersphere he goes by @PsychoOnWallSt. (a play on the cult film American Psycho)

A couple things you should know about Jesse is; he made $500,000 in 90 days trading marijuana penny stocks, and then lost it all just as quickly – one wild story…

He went from part-time to full-time trading, and for now, has returned to part-time trading with the results confirming this was a profitable move. He describes his approach as a hybrid between a day trader and a swing trader.

And his motive for trading, is to one day open a fully-functional no-kill animal shelter – needless to say, I have a great amount of respect for Jesse.

All of these topics and more are covered in-depth during the interview. Plus, Jesse has also offered to answer any questions you may have for him at chatwithtraders.com/57. So go ahead and take advantage of this!

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This weeks guest is Matt Zimberg – the founder of Optimus Futures, a boutique brokerage firm.

Matt has been deeply involved in the business of trading since his early 20’s, and while he’s no longer an active trader – he is extremely insightful on the subject. Keeping in mind, he has extensive conversations with many traders every day; from absolute beginners to those trading 7-figure accounts and upwards.

In particular some of the topics we covered during this interview, include; the make-up of a successful trader, why professional trading should be boring (you hear it all the time, but Matt does a really great job of explaining WHY), some tips and pointers for selecting the right broker, and much more.

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This week on the podcast I interview Nathan Michaud of Investors Underground.

Nate has been a day trader since 2003, and the stories from his first few years in the game are enough to make your head spin. After experiencing major highs and lows, both financially and psychologically (all covered during the interview), he’s gone from strength to strength playing small-cap momentum stocks.

Over the next 60 minutes you’ll learn about; Nate’s approach to fast moving stocks, the additional risks linked with short-selling, a smart way to scale up, the power of compounding, and heaps more.

For educational material and on-going support from the Investors Underground community, go to chatwithtraders.com/IU for a discounted rate.

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To start the year with a bang, I have a very special guest on the podcast this week, who I’d like you to meet – his name is, Rishi Narang.

Rishi has an impressive background, and has been involved with financial markets for over 20 years now. He originally started out as an analyst at Citibank, prior to co-founding TradeWorx with his brother Manoj Narang (a fintech company, turned high-frequency hedge fund).

Since 2005, Rishi has been the Founding Principal at T2AM – a fund of funds, which specialize in short term quant trading strategies.

He’s also the author of Inside the Black Box, and was featured in a must-watch VPRO documentary titled ‘Money & Speed: Inside the Black Box’.

During our discussion (which went for well over an hour), we spoke about; the non-textbook definition of alpha, the components of a black box, where humans have an advantage over computers and vice-a-versa, and we also explore the subject of high frequency trading and speed.

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This week I interviewed a short-term Bitcoin trader, who goes by the alias of BTCVIX.

As you can imagine, this episode is a little different – this is an area (or should I say, a market) we haven’t yet explored on the podcast, in past interviews.

With that being said, I found this discussion to be really interesting and I’m certain you will also. Some of the topics we spoke about include:

• Why VIX went from initially trading stocks and options, into the Wild West – Bitcoin markets.
• We spend plenty of time discussing the landscape of Bitcoin; going into how the digital currency is ‘mined’, how inflation is hard coded in the ‘ledger’, and the real ‘counter-party risks’.
• Changing the way you may think about consistency, and understanding non-linear outcomes within your trading results.

But that’s just a quick sample of topics ahead – hit the ‘play’ button to learn more about the realm of cryptocurrencies.

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This week I had the great pleasure of speaking with Dr Ernest Chan, from Toronto (Canada).

While many traders in the quantitative arena will already be familiar with Ernie, here’s a brief intro…

You could say, Ernie had somewhat of an unconventional introduction to trading – he started out on a research team at IBM, using machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques, teaching computers to understand human languages – before joining a prop trading group.

Today, Ernie has upwards of 15 years applying similar techniques to the domain of finance and trading – working with multiple prop firms and hedge funds across his career. And currently, Ernie is the managing member of QTS Capital Management.

Just to top it off, Ernie has written two books ‘Quantitative Trading’ and ‘Algorithmic Trading’, and also regularly speaks at conferences.

Some of the topics we cover during this episode are; diversification, capital allocation, generating strategy ideas, back-testing and a much more.

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I have a brilliant guest on the show this week who I can almost guarantee you’ve never heard of, he generally likes to fly under the radar, but thankfully for us he did agree to an interview – his name is Bryce Edwards.

Bryce is an Australian equities trader, he takes a discretionary approach, making his money from intraday price movements and goes home flat at the end of each day.

During the interview we walk through the 10+ years in the build up to Bryce becoming a profitable trader – he’s got an interesting story, and you may discover it’s quite relatable to your own situation.

We also talk about how the order book plays a key role in his trading decisions, and how he creates a ‘stocks in play’ watchlist using catalysts such as; company news, underlying commodity prices and broker upgrades and downgrades.

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You may recall for episode 25 I invited Zach Hurwitz back onto the podcast (after being a featured guest on episode 011), to grill me about my own trading progress – well we’re another 25 episodes on now, so I thought it’d be a good point to check in with you and give another update on how I’m tracking…

To do this, Zach joins me again for the big 5-0 – and you’ll find the first part is mostly Zach asking questions for me to answer, then we switch it up, and during the later part I fire questions at Zach to answer. And we dive into a bunch of great topics (many listed below).

Just to add on this – pretty much every question asked during this episode has been crowd-sourced, so if you contributed a question last week, then there’s a good chance you’ll hear it asked at some point.

Two things you should know:

• Zach is offering a FREE 30 minute, one-on-one coaching session to any trader listening who is, of course serious, and feels as though they could really do with some help. This is a very generous offer, and if you’d like to take him up on it – then send Zach an email, his address is [email protected].
• And second, if you have any questions or comments for Zach or myself, scroll to the bottom of the page and drop a line in the comments area – both Zach and I will be keeping a close eye on this to respond and interact with you.

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There’s a very special guest on the podcast this week, who I’m excited to introduce…

His name is Haim Bodek, although some refer to him as ‘The Algo Arms Dealer’ (and I totally understand why).

Haim began his trading career at Hull Trading, a prestigious firm well known for driving forward innovation in the domain of automated trading. Following Hull, Haim then went into significant roles at Goldman Sachs, and UBS – which are all discussed during the interview.

But to further set the scene, in 2007 Haim founded Trading Machines, a high frequency trading operation. At the peak, Trading Machines accounted for 0.5% of all options trading volume, with a team of 25 (one of who, was Bryan Wiener of EP 040).

All was well for a couple years until the beginning of 2009, when Trading Machines ran into issues and began to bleed money, for unknown reasons. Until Haim later discovered, at the root of the problem were secretive order types being used by a select few firms, giving them an unfair advantage to front-run the orders of other participants.

With this discovery, Haim went to the SEC to raise his concern about such order types – little did he know at the time, that this would be the beginning for one of the most sophisticated and complex investigations carried out by the SEC to date. So of course, we speak about all of this in much more detail during the interview.

And we also speak about another fascinating topic – which is, Payment for Order Flow. Haim shares with us what is really happening to your orders after you click the button to buy or sell – you might even be surprised to find out that a large majority of retail orders, never even make it to an exchange…

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This week on the show I interviewed Linda Raschke – an active trader since 1981, when she started out on the floor of the Pacific Coast Stock Exchange as an options market maker.

In 1992, Jack Schwager interviewed Linda for his second installment of the Market Wizard series; The New Market Wizards.

Since then, Linda has traded for several hedge funds, and in 2002 she began one of her own – which has been ranked 17th out of 4,500 hedge funds for ‘Best 5 Year Performance’ by BarclaysHedge.

During this interview we covered some great topics, for example; adapting to environment changes, using models to study price behavior, and the part I really enjoyed was Linda’s advice to young traders towards the end. So please, make sure you pay close attention to this part.

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This week I interviewed Timothy Sykes (of Profit.ly).

If you’re not already familiar with Tim (for some strange reason), he’s made quite a name for himself as the penny stock guru, who trades, teaches and flaunts big piles of cash on Instagram. And before you can get a word in sideways, he’ll also gladly remind you that he does have ‘millionaire students’!

I really enjoyed this conversation with Tim, because we covered many substantial topics that do play an important role in a traders’ success. To rattle off just some of those topics, we discussed:

• What’s all fuss the about making a million dollars?
• How to stay motivated and get the most out of your dedicated study time?
• How to combat the urge of over-trading?
• How to avoid liquidity issues in OTC markets?
• And so much more…

Hope you enjoy this episode, with the man who has become wealthy from penny stocks (the most hated niche in all of finance) –Timothy Sykes.

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This week I interviewed Hans Dederle, the founder and president of Honza Financial – an options trading asset management firm (located in Florida).

Hans originally started out as an accountant, before becoming a stock broker, following that he began to trade independently and now, trades other peoples money as well.

He’s been doing this for just over 8 years now, and one of the things I really liked that come about during our discussion, was how Hans has a laser focus on quality over quantity. As a day trader he averages between 1-3 trades per day, which he’s usually in and out of within the first couple hours of each session.

Which then lead into the topic of making money as a secondary objective, and having a primary objective to consistently make good trades, inline with your strategy. There’s a bunch of great takeaways over the next 45 minutes… enjoy!

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My guest on the podcast this week is Jack Litle of MercenaryTrader.com.

Jack is a global macro trader who originally started out as an international commodity broker – today, he now has more than 17 years of market experience and is a very competitive trader. He’s also a keen poker player, and believes there are many crossovers between poker and trading (which of course, makes for some interesting conversation during this episode).

Also during this episode, we speak about how Jack thinks of trading in terms of probabilistic outcomes, instead of attempting to ‘predict’ the future – we spend quite some time on this subject, and I myself found his views on this particularly interesting.

Another highlight, would be mastering the art of the big bet – where Jack shares insight to the times when you should press hard on a trade to make profits that have real impact.

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For your chance to WIN a free 90 minute, one-on-one mentoring session with a genuine, pro trader – enter here: http://chatwithtraders.com/win

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Let me introduce you to my guest for episode 44 – Michele Koenig of Trade on the Fly, from Montana (at the very top of the United States).

Michele is primarily a swing trader of technical chart patterns, but also takes an occasional intraday position when she spots an opportunity.

During our discussion we spoke about a whole range of really interesting topics. To start with we covered Michele’s first few years when starting out, where she had some early success, then shortly after, lost almost everything – we spoke about how this happened, how she was affected, and how she bounced back.

Plus some of the other highlights would include; insight to Michele’s scanning process and how she tracks a watchlist, a reminder not to ‘trip over dollars while trying to save dimes’, and some words of wisdom to traders who are yet to breakthrough.

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For your chance to WIN a free 90 minute, one-on-one mentoring session with a genuine, pro trader – click here to enter.

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This week we’re at episode 43 and my guest is Jon Boorman (of Alpha Capture).

Jon has been immersed in the world of trading for over 30 years now, and has spent the majority of this time in the institutional space – he’s been on the buy-side, sell-side, run a trading desk, assistant to a portfolio manager, and has also been a prop trader. But now days Jon trades independently and does also manages assets for others.

His approach to trading is best described as a long-only trend following strategy, which we discuss extensively during this episode. Some of the topics we hit on include; why the simplicity of trend following can be both, a gift and a curse, why Jon trades the long-side only and how this affects him in a full fledged bear market.

Plus, Jon shares a few pointers on position sizing, and his best tips for long term survival. Jon was an interesting guest, and shared a lot of wisdom – I feel like you’re really going to enjoy our discussion.

For your chance to WIN a free 90 minute, one-on-one mentoring session with a genuine, pro trader, visit – http://chatwithtraders.com/win.

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What you’re about to hear is an interview with Bert Mouler – he’s a trader of futures and equities, and has been involved with markets since ’07. But he does things a little different to most…

He’s an algorithmic trader who harnesses the power of machine learning to discover and develop profitable trading strategies. This is an area that hasn’t been covered in previous episodes, (except for the odd mention here and there) so it was really great to have Bert on the show to share some insight on machine learning and how it works in the field of trading.

Beyond this, you’ll also hear Bert’s views on diversification and how he thinks about risk management. Plus, one of the things I really respect about Bert – his drive for continual progression, attitude towards further education, and the way he approaches goal setting.

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This week my guest is a discretionary futures trader from London (UK), his name is Kam Dhadwar.

Kam originally started out in 2001, from 2005 onward he spent a few years trading within a prop firm, and now days has reverted to trading independently.

During this interview we discuss the great emphasis Kam places on auction market theory, market profiling and volume profiling techniques, to capitalize on intraday moves.

Additionally, we also discuss the importance of believing in your trading plan, the two types of risk; financial and psychological. And how Kam uses NLP, mindfulness and meditation practices to continually improve trading performance.

Plus plenty more – but, developing the right mindset seems to be the underlying theme throughout this episode.

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This week I’m joined by Bryan Wiener, to put it simply, he’s a man crazy about options. So options guys, this should be right up your alley. I have to admit there were a few moments where my lack of knowledge of options is probably quite obvious – but Bryan delivered well and truly.

So a little background on Bryan…

He’s been actively trading for just over 15 years – and what’s particularly interesting about Bryan is how he’s been involved with markets from a number of various angles. And what I mean by that is…

He originally started out as a market maker on the floor of the CME (and by the way, has some great stories which he shares during the interview). From there he later joined Haim Bodek for the rise and fall of Trade Machines, which was essentially a black-box startup which was ruined due to HFT manipulative orders.

And now days he’s the quantitative options specialist on the Sang Lucci team, as well as an independent trader.

During the interview we of course go right into Bryan’s journey of how he got to where he is now. As well as plenty of discussion about options markets, including; how options have evolved, the various types of options traders and where their edge exists, and a few things aspiring options traders need to be aware of.

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This week, for episode 39 I had the great pleasure of speaking with Tom Dante (who you may already know from Twitter as @Trader_Dante).

But if you don’t, that’s cool – I’ll give you a real quick snapshot now…

Tom’s a day trader from London, who tells it exactly how it is, he makes no attempt to soften the blow from the harsh realities of trading.

He’s got a really interesting and unique story about how he got started trading, which was around 1999. And from that point on there was a period of about 7 years, where Tom struggled to gain consistency with his trading results (we speak at lengths about this during the first part of the interview).

After developing a track record of profitability, Tom joined a prop trading firm, where he learnt many of the solid trading principals that have shaped him into the trader he is today – many of which are discussed during this episode.

Now days, Tom is an independent trader who focuses mostly on the Bund market intraday, as well as other futures.

Besides the few points I’ve already mentioned, we of course discuss much more, including; the competitiveness of professional trading, the importance of learning from your mistakes quickly, and the real cost of becoming a great trader.

To learn more about the dedicated one-on-one coaching service, visit: chatwithtraders.com/coaching

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This week on the podcast I have algorithmic trader, Kevin Davey. Who like many guests in the past, he comes from a background in engineering – there’s something about these engineers, they seem to make really great traders…

After getting off to a bumpy start 25 years ago, Kevin has come a very long way. Between 2005 and 2007 Kevin competed in the World Cup of Futures Trading Championship, where he finished in first place once, and second place twice. Each time with returns in excess of 100%!

Kevin is also the author of Building Winning Algorithmic Trading Systems, a book which has been well-received by the trading community and has plenty of 5-star ratings and reviews on Amazon.

During this interview we cover the great focus Kevin places on trading multiple strategies in multiple markets to achieve a smoother equity curve. And he also walks us through his development process for taking an algorithmic strategy from objectives and initial idea, through to total automation. Plus plenty more, and even if you’re not familiar with this side of trading, you shouldn’t have too much trouble keeping up, because Kevin does an excellent job of explaining everything.

Also, I’m going to ask again… If you haven’t already done so, could you please leave a very brief review on the podcast in iTunes while you’re listening. Just go to chatwithtraders.com/itunes, if you’d like to support the show.

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This week I had the pleasure of speaking to another brilliant trader, who has been heavily requested – his name is Morad, but many know him best as Futures Trader 71 (or FT for short).

To give you the 30 second rundown, FT has been an active trader since 2000, when he started out scalping NASDAQ stocks among the original SOES Bandits. A few years in he made the transition to trading futures, and later started his own proprietary trading firm, where he funded and mentored a team of traders.

These days FT runs a brokerage, where he provides continuous education and risk control to a structured community. And of course, he remains an active futures trader, with a great focus on reading market profile and volume profile – which we get into during this interview.

While you’re listening, I’d love it if you could please leave a brief review on the podcast in iTunes. This helps in a huge way to increase rankings and reach more listeners!

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I can promise you right now, this one will not disappoint…

My guest today is the legendary trader, Peter Brandt.

Peter first started trading around 1975 (which I’m sure is before many of you listening were even born – that’s certainly the case for me). So that’s 5 decades involved with markets, i.e. ’70’s, ’80’s, ’90’s… – a very long time!

To give you an idea of Peter’s performance during this time, he has achieved a compounding annual growth rate of approximately 42%, with his best year returning well over 600%. Of course we want to know about his worst years also, well there has only been three of them, which were all drawdowns of less than 8%.

During this interview we discuss Peter’s early years working at the Chicago Board of Trade, and classical charting patterns (which form the roots of his trading methodology). We also get into Peter’s views on high frequency trading operations, why he has the default assumption that every trade will be a losing bet and some of the common misconceptions about super-traders.

Learn more about the latest CWT eBook here: chatwithtraders.com/read

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This week I have a very special guest on the show who almost needs no introduction, Howard Lindzon. Who’s best known as the co-founder of StockTwits, but he’s a man who wears many hats, he’s also a trader, investor, hedge fund manager, entrepreneur and a rock-star angel investor.

So as you could imagine, I was thrilled to have Howard on the show this week. We spoke for around 50 minutes, and discussed the early years of his career (from the days of when he used to work in the back office of a brokerage firm).

We also covered Howard’s methodology around trading high growth stocks and the idea of ‘buy high, sell higher’, how innovative technology may revolutionize the landscape of trading over the next 5-10 years. And on top of this, we also talk about some of the angel investments that Howard has been involved with.

Now if you enjoy this interview, please go to chatwithtraders.com/itunes and leave a review. It doesn’t have to be anything major, even a single sentence would be a huge help (as it improves the CWT rankings in iTunes). I’d really appreciate this, and it’s the easiest way that you can support this show…

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When the market went down in ’08 this weeks guest, Michael Melissinos was right there, in the thick of it. He was an analyst on the trading desk at Bear Sterns, and then later at JP Morgan after they were bought out.

Since then, Michael’s left his Wall Street days behind him, and now trades a fund of his own, using a systematic trend following approach, that operates on 40 global markets.

Although I missed a large chunk of the story there, you’ll hear how Michael got to this stage of his career during the interview. And a few of the lessons that shaped him into the trader he is today, including the advice he received from Market Wizard, Ed Seykota.

I also like Michael’s thoughts around why you should consider playing a game that’s larger than money, and the emphasis he places on preparation.

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Chris is an equities trader from Southampton, UK.

His journey to becoming a trader kicked off roughly 7 years ago, after his interest in markets was peaked from reading through a book about stocks.

While these days Chris has found his edge, he did spin his wheels for several years to begin with, and also managed to run several accounts into the ground. During this time, one of the greater turning points came when Chris found another trader who was willing to pass down his experience, and offer him some much needed guidance.

And as we all understand, to have a mentor on your side is extremely valuable, so I asked Chris a number of questions around this subject which you may find helpful.

We also discuss the importance of repetition in your learning, how to build discipline and also touch on some mindset challenges that can be early roadblocks for developing traders.

I feel like many of you listening will find Chris’s story to be relatable, and hopefully you’ll takeaway a few important lessons from this interview.

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I’ve received many requests for this weeks guest, in recent months. Maybe it’s because he’s a straight shooter who doesn’t mix his words, or maybe it’s because he’s bounced back from harsh failures, to become an exceptional trader.

Whatever the reason may be, I know for certain, you’re going to appreciate the raw honesty and insight of this weeks guest – Dan Shapiro.

Coming up from humble beginnings, Dan called on the neighborhood loan shark to fund his first trading account, which got him through the door to one of the largest prop firms at the time. This is where he rubbed shoulders with many phenomenal traders, who helped shape him into the trader he is today.

This interview is ultimately focused on the mental and psychological aspects of trading. We discuss some of the darkest moments from Dan’s trading career, how to handle losses and grind through slumps, trading the setup and not your PnL, and why you should care more about trading right, rather than being right.

Dan was great to talk to, and I trust you’ll enjoy this episode. Actually, it may even be worthwhile for you to play this through twice, just to ensure you don’t miss anything.

I’m Aaron Fifield, your host of Chat With Traders, and here is this weeks guest from New York City, Dan Shapiro.

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This week I spoke with Luke Cummings, an Australian equities trader with 14 plus years of experience on his side.

After making a last minute decision that journalism wasn’t a good fit, Luke went into a finance degree which lead him to become a stockbroker, which then lead him to become a trader.

Now days Luke remains an active trader, and operates a hedge fund based in Sydney, as well as running The Long And Short Of It – a model portfolio service and trading blog.

We keep things fresh in this interview, by discussing trading methods and strategies that haven’t been spoken about in previous episodes. And additionally, Luke shares some of the common traps that often catch entry-level traders, and how you may be able to avoid the avoidable with insight.

Enjoy team!

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This week we’re taking it up a level…

I had the honor of interviewing the legendary Market Wizard, Tom Basso, president of former money management firm, TrendStat.

Tom started his working life as a chemical engineer, often discussing stocks and investing with colleagues. As he started to experiment with trading from a $2000 account, there was no beginners luck in sight. Tom consecutively lost money for the first few years before things started to turnaround.

With a series of events that followed, Tom went from trading his own money, to forming TrendStat and managing other peoples money. At the peak of his career, TrendStat managed $600million dollars of capital.

And while Tom’s now retired, he still actively studies the market and continues to trade.

This interview covers many topics that range from trend following and systematic trading, to psychology and why you must never forget to ‘enjoy the ride’.

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