Podcast Episodes – Traders Podcast

Will reading a bunch of books and obtaining academic knowledge about the markets guarantee that you will become a more profitable trader? We believe that everybody knows the answer is, “Not necessarily, and in many cases, probably not.” Most people understand there’s no guarantee. So, the real question is why? Why doesn’t the acquisition of knowledge yield an equal, one-to-one benefit?

In Episode 581 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles talk about blazing your own trail instead of just trying to do the same thing everyone else is doing. Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:

Hear Jason’s movie podcastMovie Podcast Weekly where he and some friends review new movies that are in theaters!

Movie Podcast Network Jason’s movie podcast network.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Direct download: RB581.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:46am EDT

Welcome to The Traders Podcast! In Episode 580 your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles continue their conversation from the previous episode in which Rob said he was moving forward with Bitcoin and made some predictions! In this show, Rob’s predictions are even bolder — about five times bolder… Rob also talks about why he’s giving cryptocurrencies a shot. If this kind of talk intrigues you, join us for Episode 580 to hear more!

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and don’t miss a single release!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Hear Jason’s movie podcastMovie Podcast Weekly where he and some friends review new movies that are in theaters!

Movie Podcast Network Jason’s movie podcast network.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Direct download: RB580.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:07pm EDT

Yep, you read that right. As has become a Christmastime tradition on The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles are musing about Bitcoin again. And in fact, it is here in Episode 579 that Rob explains his ambitious albeit late-to-the-game plan to go all in on Bitcoin. This episode is a must-listen for anyone who is typically amused by Rob’s shenanigans, because he explains his cryptocurrency plans for the next 12 months!

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly Jason’s movie podcast.

Movie Podcast Network Jason’s movie podcast network.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Direct download: RB579.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 10:17am EDT

Though it may seem unusual, Episode 578 of The Traders Podcast isn’t as bizarre as you might think. Sure, Jason the producer plays a sample from his rap alter ego, “J-Flexx,” and your host Rob Booker briefly talks with J-Flexx about “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (don’t worry — no spoilers!). But really, that’s pretty typical stuff for The Traders Podcast, all things considered.

What makes Episode 578 special is a listener feedback text message from Louis, an insightful, 21-year-old steel mill worker in Texas. Louis doesn’t want to work his physically taxing job forever, so he asks Rob for some advice regarding getting started with trading robots!

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly Jason’s movie podcast.

Movie Podcast Network Jason’s movie podcast network.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Direct download: RB578.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 10:30am EDT

Thanks, in part, to the long-suffering influence of Traders Podcast listener, Talon, your host Rob Booker recently moved from the Mac platform back to Windows for trading. In Episode 577, Rob and the producer Jason Pyles talk about Rob’s readjustment as he gets used to Windows once again.

This unusual episode features “Dark Rob” talking about a light topic. You hear about surprising developments such as Rob giving up his iPhone X and starting to read the Bible again. Rob doesn’t preach any scripture, but he talks about the clarity he has gained from spending less time on his phone.

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly Jason’s comedic show where he and some friends review new movies in theaters.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Direct download: RB577.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:22am EDT

In Episode 576 of The Traders Podcast, your host Rob Booker talks to the producer Jason Pyles about a text he received from Paul, who works a full-time career as a pilot. Because Paul travels on long-haul flights, it proves to be difficult for him to monitor his trades.

Many currency traders complain that they can’t trade as their full-time job because they already have to work a non-trading-related full-time job and can’t be distracted by devoting their time and attention toward the markets. But that’s where automated trading can be helpful. In Episode 576, Rob talks about some of the finer points of robot trading.

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly Jason’s comedic show where he and some friends review new movies in theaters.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Full Episode Transcript:

Rob: Mr. Pyles, I got a text message from one of our listeners.

Jason: Oh, did you? I love when the listeners text you at your personal phone number.

Rob: All right. So years and years and years ago, like when we were doing trader radio.

Jason: Mm-hmm.

Back in the day.

Rob: A hundred years ago, one of our listener’s name was Paul. I won’t give Paul’s name, but one of our listener’s names was Paul. Paul’s a long haul pilot for Delta. London, Paris, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Beijing, Dublin, Honolulu, Japan. Now, Delta doesn’t fly to Houston, so I don’t get to see him. Well, he texted me the other day. I haven’t heard from him in just years. He texted me. Now he’s doing a route from wherever. I don’t know where his home base is now, but Salt Lake and also Honolulu, which is just awesome stuff. Anyway, he’s like I’m getting back into it. Here’s what he writes, he writes, “Hey. I just grabbed your lifetime membership deal. I’ve known you for a long time. Have you lost your mind? That’s a lot of value. Thank you. Looking forward to getting some time with you between flights. I need to fly less, help my folks, and help my family. One of my family members has an issue with vertigo. Plus I’m going to retire someday. Wouldn’t mind cutting that retirement short. Move to Florida a few years ago from Long Island. Hope’s all well with you. My cousin is near to you in Houston and she works in mission control maybe we can go on a tour of a lifetime if I go over there.”

Jason: Oh, nice.

Jason: Lots of updates there.

Rob: How would you handle trading if you were a pilot and all these long haul flights? I remember talking to him about this.

Jason: Oh, my.

Rob: Way back when. Like how difficult it is to juggle flying, trading, all that stuff.

Jason: Well, I think there are two ways to handle it. At least two that I can see, Rob. It’s have a trusted trading partner for when you’re in the air, or to use a stop loss, right?

Rob: Yeah, that’s a good plan.

Jason: Okay. So those are probably the boring answers. I bet you have a more exciting way.

Rob: No, I love your answers. I love it when you comment on this stuff.

Jason: Okay. I know because it’s like …

Rob: I love it. I’m in the process now a year plus ago, I interviewed on the podcast on Trader Radio, I interviewed Scott Haywood who was, at the time, had gone from a dollar a day to a thousand dollars a day then got up to $2,000 a day by trading the robot. The robot is lovingly referred to as Finch. Still running. Still hundreds and hundreds of people out there running the robot. There’s a new version of the robot that is come out. I call it the Dr. Bill Finch because Scott Haywood and Dr. Bill in Los Angeles, who’s a real doctor, anesthesiologist, and Joel, super genius, former IT director at a major American university, and Steven, a ex-Marine. Anyway, just an awesome crew. I would call us the trading expendables.

Jason: Yes. Yes. I like this.

Rob: Get an imagine in your mind. As a side note, last night I got out of bed because I couldn’t sleep. The reason I couldn’t sleep is because I needed to see Rocky 2. Rocky 2 opens up by literally playing the end of Rocky 1. That’s the beginning of Rocky 2. It is some of the most gripping movie film that you can ever watch is some of this stuff. Unless you hate violent sports and that’s, of course, you get a pass.

Anyway, so being in the expendables. The expendables and I, we get together and we sort of formed a group of people who test and experiment and built and refine this robot to reduce its draw down and in some cases use a stop. In other cases, not use a stop. Dr. Bill reached deep into the Rob Booker archives of materials that I’ve taught over the years, and he made a refinement to the Finch robot that I now lovingly refer to as the Dr. Bill Finch. This one reducing the draw down and has a very consistent track record over the worst periods of time. 2014, which is garbage for robots and early 2017, which is double garbage for robots. The early 2017 is the financial equivalent of Rocky’s left eye in Rocky 1. You got to cut it open and let it bleed out in order for it to get better.

Jason: Right.

Rob: This robot refined things in a way. He just used stuff that I’d taught in the past, and he paid a programmer to build it. This refines that robot to the point that it’s consistent, the draw down is lower, and we’re in the middle of testing it. We have a new member of the back testing expendables. His name is Frederick. Frederick’s in Lexinburg, another lifetime member.

Jason: Mm-hmm.

Rob: Frederick is just pounding out the tests in meta-trader using our friend Daniel’s portfolio tester. We are fast approaching a time where I could say everyone listening who is a pilot. Just kidding, I know that that’s a really small number of people.

Jason: Right.

Rob: Anyone listening that doesn’t want to sit in front of the computer. Anyone who wants to get exposure to this stuff, but literally there’s no way that you’re going to sit there and day trade, which I don’t know why anybody would want to do in the first place. That seems like a complete waste of time. Anybody that wants to do that could actually run that robot and not have the same risk of significant draw down because it does kind of filter out the trades. It’s more selective. Salon selective. It’s really selective. You’re worth it. You’re worth it.

As you can tell, I’m really excited about it. That’s what I would suggest to someone like Paul. You get that thing running because when you’re in the air, when you’re on the ground, when you’re with your family, what you’re going to do is you’re going to check in on it, but it’s going to run in the background. Every once and a while you’re going to need to get together with your family of traders and you’re going to need to tackle a problem that might have arisen. The robots turned off or the server went down or one trade didn’t close out at its profit. You’re going to have to deal with problems, but you’re going to be an asset manager. You can’t do this trading as your full-time job because you have a full-time job, and it’s hundreds of people in the back of a giant flying metal thing.

Jason: Right.

Rob: You can’t trade during that.

Jason: Mm-hmm.

Rob: So that’s what I would suggest.

Jason: I like that. Is Scott Welch apart of the trading robot expendables?

Rob: So Scott Welch would be like Jason Statham. He’s on the fringes. He’s so good and he’s so dangerous that he’s on the edges of it.

Jason: He’s so dangerous.

Rob: He’s just almost too dangerous for us.

Jason: Right. Right. I can see it.

Rob: No, he doesn’t do our same robot. So he has his own collection of robots, which are awesome.

Jason: I see.

Rob: On that note, I’m actually creating some of these robots now for stocks to run when the trade station platform.

Jason: Neat.

Rob: I’m very excited about that, Jason. It’s going to … In our last episode, we talked about buying value stocks on a dip. I have a way of doing that and we’re going to put that to work in the stock market. Then I’m going to be running … Remember, I said if the long term way to get rich off of Bitcoin is not to trade Bitcoin, it’s to take extra $200, $300, $400, $500, whatever you can per month, and buy value stocks.

Jason: Yes. You did.

Rob: That’s exactly what this robot will do. It will just do it automatically without you having to think about it.

Jason: Nice. That’s nice. Well, I hope you have followed the Dwight Shrute advice from the Office where you give the robot just a six foot cord in case you can unplug it if it turns on you.

Rob: I don’t remember that one. Scott Welch is going to love that comment.

Jason: That’s one of the funniest. I just love it. Anyways …

Rob: That’s pretty great. That’s pretty great stuff.

I have some news for anybody that’s interested in any of that. So I had some news that that robot is done. That robot is complete. That robot is ready. You can just … I don’t know. You can go to RobBooker.com. That’s the best place to go. You want more information about that stuff. But we put the robots on sale because I know a lot of listeners are going to want to see that. Some of you have been thinking about it for long time, so we put them on sale. It’s the end of the year and we’re having the online trading version of the Toyota-thon. You know, the end of the year sale. So go to RobBooker.com and I will put a link on the home page. It’ll just be a giant link on the home page with a robot with a six foot cord.

Jason: It should be you like jumping up in the air really slowly and then they freeze frame it when you’re half way up. Remember that? Oh, what a feeling.

Rob: Oh, right. Okay. I’ll do that in the office right now. I’ll take a picture of that. That’s a great idea.

Jason: I’m full of them today.

Rob: We call it the Rob-athon.

Jason: Right.

Rob: The Bot-athon.

Jason: Love it.

Rob: That’s actually … Yeah. On the 12th day of the bot-athon … Yeah, that’s good. My true love said to me Dr. Bill Finch … Yeah, go get it everybody. Do it. The bot-athon. That’s what we’re going to call it. Whatever. But, hey, you know what to do, people.

Jason: Mm-hmm.

Rob: Get the robots.

Jason: That’s right.

Rob: Jason, I had a question for you in the last episode and I forgot to ask it.

Jason: Okay. Let’s hear it.

Rob: You keep talking about a movie about a billboard.

Jason: Oh my goodness. Yes. It’s called Three Billboards Out Ebbing, Missouri. I know that’s not …

Rob: You’re just joking around with me now. There’s no way that’s the real …

Jason: I know. That’s what everybody says to me when they hear that. It’s not the sexiest title, but it is about three billboard outside of Ebbing, Missouri, except that’s a factious place. But it’s amazing. Do you like Francis McDormand? Do you like Fargo?

Rob: Yeah. A lot.

Jason: Okay. Well, see, if you like that, I think you’ll love this. It’s not a Cohen brother’s film, but it has that feel.

Rob: It has that feel to it.

Jason: It sure does. It’s a very dark comedy. It’s a crime drama. It’s very violent, as well, but hilarious. I saw it with a couple of friends in the theater. It was uproariously just a good time. I was crying laughing. Hilarious.

Rob: Where can people hear about your review of that movie?

Jason: Mm-hmm. MoviePodcastWeekly.com.

Rob: All right. Thanks, Jason, for your advice and your thoughts and your movie recommendations and your friendship.

Jason: Absolutely, Rob. My pleasure. It was fun to be here today.

Rob: We’ll see you next time everybody. We’re on every Tuesday and Thursday. Download us on iTunes. Wherever delicious podcasts are consumed and leave us a review. I like to read the reviews of the show and see what you think of the show. So if you could jump on over to iTunes and leave us a review or rating, that would be spectacular. That’s something you could do for us that we would really appreciate and really helps us out.

Jason: Mm-hmm.

Rob: And love the crap out of all y’all. We’ll see you later everybody. I’m Rob Booker. He’s Jason Piles. This is the Trader’s Podcast.

Direct download: RB576.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:58am EDT

We’re not really known for being conspiracy theorists, but in Episode 575 of The Traders Podcast, your host Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles discuss the continued meteoric rise of bitcoin and whether it is the target of North Korean hackers.

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly Jason’s comedic show where he and some friends review new movies in theaters.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Full podcast transcript:

Rob Booker: Mr Pyles.
Jason Pyles: Hey Rob. Good morning.
Rob Booker: I was wondering if you would like to travel to North Korea to teach the people there about bitcoin?
Jason Pyles: Probably not.
Rob Booker: Probably not, so that’s a no?
Jason Pyles: Well …
Rob Booker: That’s a hard pass?
Jason Pyles: Well, yeah, I’m not sure. I’m not sure. What kind of other vacationing opportunities do they have there?
Rob Booker: Well, they have a … Okay nothing.
Jason Pyles: Okay.
Rob Booker: Really nothing. Absolutely nothing. There’s nothing going on. Did you know, according to Vice News, David Gilbert of Vice News reports that students at Pyongyang University, has been accused of training North Korea’s state hackers. All right?
Jason Pyles: Oh.
Rob Booker: The university and the government invited Federico Tenga, who is the Italian founder of a bitcoin startup, they invited him to travel to the capital in North Korea and teach more than three dozen of the countries elite mathematical and programming students about bitcoin.
Jason Pyles: Sounds comical for some reason. I don’t know why.
Rob Booker: Okay. Okay. Fair enough. It sounds comical. Here’s the part that’s frightening. This is the world’s leader, I mean, next to Russia. This is the world’s leader in hacking. Bitcoin has shown itself susceptible to hacking. Could you imagine now, a world in which, now that bitcoin is reaching 10,000 or so … Could you imagine a world in which all these people, over 100,000 new bitcoin accounts were opened on Thanksgiving day at Coin Base. Just one wallet. Just one wallet provider. Just one place on one day, grew by 100,000 accounts. Could you imagine if bitcoin was, in some way, shape or form, at some wallet provider, hacked again. I know I’m gonna get a lot of comments from listeners, cause every time we talk about this, I get corrected and that’s fine. I stand corrected on a number of issues regarding bitcoin. I’m not afraid to be wrong. It helps me learn. Could you imagine the potential to hack into bitcoin wallets. We’re now talking, not about millions, but tens of millions, or hundreds of millions of money that could be stolen. This is the wild west, Jason.
Jason Pyles: Wow. It sounds crazy.
Rob Booker: Why would this guy travel to North Korea, and teach them about it?
Jason Pyles: Hm. It must of-
Rob Booker: What’s wrong with this guy?
Jason Pyles: It must have a pretty good paycheck, right?
Rob Booker: Must have been. It must have been some kind of payday. I imagine they paid him in bitcoin.
Jason Pyles: Right. Exactly.
Rob Booker: I mean, I don’t know.
Jason Pyles: It’s what I’m guessing.
Rob Booker: Earlier this year, to add to this … I read this in another source. Cyber security, a company reported that someone from the North Korean capital, originating from IP addresses in North Korea, attacked at least three South Korean crypto currency exchanges, and used the fact that bitcoin is anonymous in its exchange, as a way to avoid the financial sanctions that have been imposed by the US and other nations in response to their nuclear tests. That’s absolutely frightening.
Jason Pyles: It’s slick. You gotta admit, that’s pretty slick though, right? I mean, that’s a …
Rob Booker: Yeah.
Jason Pyles: one way around it.
Rob Booker: I mean, it’s too late now, to get into bitcoin. It’s funny. It just seems too late now, to so many people. I’m certainly not going out there and buying any bitcoin, or whatever. I have a bitcoin wallet. I didn’t get in early like our friend, the commander, Rob Wilson, or anything else like that, but … There are other cryptocurrencies coming online, not every day, well, probably every day, but …
Jason Pyles: Right.
Rob Booker: You know, legitimate ones maybe, not every so often, but there still are brand new ones coming online. It makes me wonder at 10,000, there’s this rumor circulating now.
Jason Pyles: Okay.
Rob Booker: When it hits 10,000, that’s when everybody’s really gonna start getting in. That sounds crazy to me. Imagine that, that’s when a lot of people stand up and take notice and say, “Oh my gosh.” This is now at 10,000. If it’s at 10,000 now, it’s going to be at 20,000, or 100,000 in a couple of years. That’s the way people are talking Jason.
Jason Pyles: Wow.
Rob Booker: Does that sound rational to you?
Jason Pyles: No, because … You know, at some point, the other boots gonna drop right? The bubbles gonna pop.
Rob Booker: I guess. We’ll get accused of … I’ve been wrong about this now, before. I’ve been right about this, and wrong about this. To put it into perspective, hundreds of episodes ago, literally …
Jason Pyles: Yeah.
Rob Booker: Years ago, we called for 10,000 and 20,000 dollars in bitcoin. You can find those episodes at traderspodcast.com. A long time ago, when bitcoin was trading at, I think hundreds of dollars, we talked about it getting to 10,000 or 20,000. I’m not a bear on bitcoin. I don’t think it’s wrong or bad. I think it’s revolutionary. And then recently I was wrong. It looked like it was ready for a … It did correct, but I didn’t get the strength of the correction right. It corrected like we talked about, but it didn’t go far. I didn’t get in. I didn’t buy any, and then it just shot right up over the holidays. It shot up over the holidays Jason, because everyone was …
This is really what happened. People got around the dinner table at Thanksgiving and instead of arguing about politics, which most families want to do, people talked about bitcoin. You could do it 24 hours a day, through Coinbase for example, which has really high fees, but I mean, it’s an easy way for people to do it. You know, whatever. People stopped what they were doing at dinner, and they got a Coinbase wallet, and they got themselves bitcoin, over the holidays.
Jason Pyles: That’s pretty funny. I don’t know. We just watched Brian Reagan after dinner.
Rob Booker: Okay.
Jason Pyles: On Netflix.
Rob Booker: Yeah.
Jason Pyles: Yeah, it sounds like that’s exactly what happened. You’re probably right about that Rob.
Rob Booker: This isn’t over. I mean, if you think about … If you wanna call it a bubble, I think that’s interesting, but until it stabilizes, it’s, as far as I’m concerned, it’s just another asset, like the technology stocks, until it stabilizes. At some point in time, this will end … The fanaticism will end around it. The people who don’t know what they’re doing and whatever else. And then bitcoin will settle into a range, and it will be a more stable financial instrument. And then Amazon …
Some people say Amazon in some countries is already accepting bitcoin, but at some Amazon will start accepting bitcoin. Walmart will start accepting bitcoin. Then at that point it’s all over. Then it’s just gonna be a real thing. It’s not gonna be an asset that appreciates anymore. It’s just gonna be a real … It’s just gonna be something that we use in our daily lives.
Then, the government’s gonna come in a try to regulate it or whatever. I think it’s gonna be really difficult for them to do that. I guess they could prohibit the transfer of money onto bitcoin exchanges. They could do that. They could say that’s illegal. That seems exactly like the kind of thing that the government would overstep it’s bounds and do. Would that anger you, if the government said that?
Jason Pyles: Oh. I guess it’s a little … Yeah. It’s a little concerning.
Rob Booker: Yeah, me too. I wouldn’t call myself a conspiracy theorist, Jason Pyles, but …
Jason Pyles: Right. Yeah.
Rob Booker: A few years ago, the government said we could no longer open up currency trading accounts outside the US. That means we couldn’t open a … You can open a bank account outside the US. That’s totally legal. You can open up all kind of financial accounts outside the US, but they said, “No. You can’t open up a currency trading account outside the US.” That [inaudible 00:08:08] total overstepping of the bounds. Complete invasion of someone’s independent economic sovereignty. I mean, at some point in time, people are just gonna opt out of the system. At some point, people are gonna say, listen. You get your greedy little paws off of my … I’m even willing to pay taxes, even though some people feel that, that’s unfair. I mean, I’m even willing to pay taxes, but just stay out of my friggin’ business.
Jason Pyles: Right.
Rob Booker: I’ve been wondering. I’ve been waiting to ask you this. Where is the next financial … You know what I’m asking. You already know what I’m …
Jason Pyles: Where is it coming next?
Rob Booker: Yeah. I mean, is it too late? I missed this. I was thinking the other day. If I took 100,000 dollars, in December when I went and visited Rob Wilson … If I took 100,000 dollars back in December of 2016 …
Jason Pyles: Okay.
Rob Booker: I had bought bitcoin. Let’s go back on the charts here. Let’s say, Jason … Let’s say you took 100,000 dollars also. Let’s just say you …
Jason Pyles: All right.
Rob Booker: You know, you took 100,000 dollars of your hard earned podcasting …
Jason Pyles: Yes.
Rob Booker: spoils. And let’s say that on December third, I was Sydney Australia, hanging out with Peter and Diane and the crew. Let’s say that we did that then. Bitcoin would be trading at 762 dollars to the dollar. You would have bought, for 100,000 dollars worth of bitcoin. You would have gotten it at 762 and it would now be 12 times. Let’s just round it up. It’s 12 times higher than that.
Jason Pyles: Wow.
Rob Booker: You would have 1.2 million dollars, and it would be less than a year.
Jason Pyles: Oh my goodness.
Rob Booker: As we speak now, bitcoin will hit 10,000 dollars, as of today, the day we’re recording this episode. Bitcoin will hit 10,000.
Jason Pyles: Rob, here’s my question. Obviously, like you were saying, at some point, it will stabilize, but … You know, by the time it gets there … When that happens, some people will be very wealthy, and will other people be destroyed, if they’ve gone all in? I mean, is that how it works? Is this gonna lead-
Rob Booker: Well, it’s the only way to do it with things like this. You take a small amount of your money and you go all in. The problem is, this is like getting hit by lightening. Not only is it almost impossible to have happen ever. You don’t really know if you want it to happen. You know, suddenly striking it rich can, as much as we all like to think that, that doesn’t necessarily lead to a lot of good things in one’s life.
Jason Pyles: Right.
Rob Booker: I met the guy who won at the time, the largest power ball jackpot of all time. I met the guy. He lived in West Virginia. Do you remember the story of this guy?
Jason Pyles: That sounds familiar, but no. Tell it. Do tell.
Rob Booker: He was already a millionaire, and he won 500 million. He used to drive a truck around and he used to … Inside the truck he used to, at all times, keep a few hundred hundred thousand dollars sitting in the truck …
Jason Pyles: Oh wow. Okay.
Rob Booker: and was robbed repeatedly, stolen from. Eventually, lost everything. He was a West Virginia guy. Just old country boy from West Virginia. Eventually lost everything. The stories of athletes hitting the jackpot and then two years after they leave the league, becoming bankrupt. The stories of people who win the lottery, going bankrupt are frequent enough that it defies coincidence. There’s a connection. I mean, it’s not like you want to strike it rich like this. It’s not like that’s what you want.
I get text messages and email every day Jason, from people who say, “You know, where’s the next one? I missed out on this one.” The answer is always this, There is always something you can do to make an extra thousand dollars a month, or even 500 dollars a month. There is always something you can do to do that. And then, you can always buy a collection of financial instruments, which have demonstrated value, such as …
You just look at value stocks. Read the old Benjamin Graham book, or the works of Warren Buffet. You look at value investors, which are not in vogue anymore. You should run toward that right now. That’s what you should be doing right now, because it’s not longer in vogue. It always falls out of favor when the stock market’s running up, because value stocks and the companies that have assets, and return on their investment, they always go down, or they don’t do as well as the companies that are high flyers, or developing the new app that delivers a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to your door 24 hours a day, or you can date a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Jason Pyles: Right.
Rob Booker: Do disgusting things with the peanut butter, whatever it is. You take that extra money you’ve made on the side, and you get a list of value stocks. These are the traditional companies that are overlooked, that split into their separate parts are worth more than what they’re trading at now. You take that five hundred dollars, or thousand dollars and you just plow it into those financial instruments. It’s not gonna appreciate like bitcoin will, within a year. Over the course of the next 10, or 20, or 30 years, is not guaranteed, but has an enormously high probability of success. Beyond anything, once again, that can be tied to coincidence, and that’s the way it’s done traditionally. Everyone can do that.
It’s fascinating that we’re so enamored with what no one can do anymore. No one can get in on bitcoin at 762 dollars. It’s a shame that I didn’t take 100,000 dollars, because today I would go right now, and I would buy five 911’s, or I’d buy one Porsche 911 R. Right now. I’d just go do it right now. That’s what I would be doing. I wouldn’t even be podcasting with you, and we’d all be sorry for that.
Jason Pyles: Yeah. That’s true.
Rob Booker: Yeah, so, you can do that, and yet no one does it. Right now, you can put 500, or 1,000 dollars a month, with a side job, or a little side business, or selling stuff off, or selling your neighbor’s furniture. Just kidding. Whatever. Everyone can make an extra something per month and put that into value stocks and hold those forever. Everyone can do that. Yet, no one does.
Jason Pyles: Right. Yeah. It’s too gradual. They want the faster, quicker answer right? The overnight.
Rob Booker: Yeah. Okay, so maybe we could walk through that. I mean, yeah, we do want that. We want the quicker stuff. We want the excitement that goes with it. We wanna be able to brag about it.
Jason Pyles: Well, okay. There’s a song. I’ve been hesitant to bring this up Rob, cause …
Rob Booker: Okay.
Jason Pyles: I think that enlightened climate or culture that this [inaudible 00:15:12] could be viewed as distasteful. Do you remember that song, maybe even a little chauvinist. If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, make an ugly woman your wife, or something like that. It’s a terrible song. Okay? I hate that song, and both you and I married beautiful women, so you know … Anyways, I’m just saying, that song reminds me of this situation that you’re talking about …
Rob Booker: Yeah.
Jason Pyles: Where, it always seems like the advice is, you know, forget about this get rich quick stuff, and just, you know …
Rob Booker: Do what is ugly.
Jason Pyles: Yeah, do what is ugly. Make small gains, and you’ll be happy. That’s what you gotta do, but it’s like, nobody’s like … Eh, no thanks.Rob Booker: Spike Lee’s, Do the ugly thing.
Jason Pyles: Yeah. That’s right.
Rob Booker: That is a brilliant comment. As usual ….
Jason Pyles: Thank you.
Rob Booker: You make the most insightful comment that, in this podcast could literally be 15 seconds long.
Jason Pyles: Right. Well, I just hope that our listeners don’t think that’s chauvinist. I didn’t write that song, just for the record.
Rob Booker: Yeah. It’s not like you really believe it.
Jason Pyles: No. No. No, I …
Rob Booker: If you do what’s fallen out of favor, what is unpopular, and you do … It’s not even about hard work, Jason. It’s not even about that. It’s just about doing what has been proven to work.
Jason Pyles: Yeah, I mean it’s the same thing with eating healthy or exercising. It’s like, “Okay. Yeah, but that’s not fun.”
Rob Booker: Yeah.
Jason Pyles: It’s like, you want your body to look good. You wanna feel good. You wanna get healthy. You know, eat these carrots, and this salad. That’s like, “Nah.” You know, I’d rather …
Rob Booker: Is there any other way I could possibly do it?
Jason Pyles: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the answers are there for people in these situations. We don’t want those answers. Myself included.
Rob Booker: Well, Jason, how can people argue with us about this show?
Jason Pyles: Well, they could actually text you at your cell phone number, if they want. It’s 304-281-8332. They could leave us a comment in the show notes for this episode at traderspodcast.com.
Rob Booker: Where can traders, who are interested in movies hear your podcasts about movies?
Jason Pyles: Moviepodcastweekly.com. I would highly recommend Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. It’s a very dark, comedic crime drama a la Fargo. You know, a lot like Fargo. Pretty violent, but pretty hilarious. Check it out.
Rob Booker: Very nice. All right. We’ll see you next time everybody. I’m Rob Booker on behalf of Jason Pyles, the greatest producer in podcast history. You’re listening to the Traders Podcast.

Direct download: TTP575.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:38am EDT

Happy Thanksgiving from your friends at The Traders Podcast! In Episode 574, your host Rob Booker talks to the producer Jason Pyles about his disappointment with the iPhone X and smartphone culture in general. Listen as Rob considers taking a hiatus from smartphones for a while.

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Network A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Direct download: TTP574.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:03pm EDT

Good morning traders! Welcome to The Traders Podcast with your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles. Today we are bringing you episode 573. Listen in as we talk about the tax cuts we have been hearing about in the news, surely you’ve been hearing about them, too. Is this new tax plan really going to be a reality? And if so, what would the repercussions be?

Throughout the show we land on the idea that it is OK to be wrong. Rob recommends checking out the book Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Thanks for joining us!

The Traders Podcast releases new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Network A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Direct download: RB573.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:55am EDT

In Danzan Ryu Jujitsu (and other forms of martial arts), taking falls is inevitable. A martial artist will be thrown, and he or she must learn how to fall like a black belt to avoid major injury. There are two ways to take a fall: the way your opponent wants to throw you, or you can actually choose to take control of your own fall and assist your opponent in throwing you so you can remain in control of how you fall and particularly how you land. This is how you fall like a black belt and avoid getting injured.

In Episode 572 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and Jason Pyles draw some parallels to the inevitability of taking a financial loss when trading the markets (and being in control of your own “financial fall” to avoid catastrophic injury). We discuss the inevitable and eventual fall of Bitcoin and whether that great fall is nigh… Join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Network A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Direct download: RB572.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:14am EDT

Welcome! In Episode 571 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles talk about the benefits that come from experience.

Have you ever noticed how you can tell in the first few minutes if a movie will be good or bad? You just know! You’ve probably had a lot of experience with movies and you know what to look for to identify a good movie. Applying the same concept to trading, let’s talk about intuition.

How can you tell in just a few minutes if a trade is going to be good or bad?

There are 3 phases that every trader goes through. First, the trader is excited about all of their trades. Second, the trader experiences boredom. And third, the trader starts to break out of the box. But here’s the key: in order to break out of the box a trader must have the experience under their belt to help them have that all-important intuition.

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Network A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.

Movie Podcast Network Twitter: @MovieCastNetwrk

Direct download: TTP571.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 12:08pm EDT

Welcome! In Episode 570 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles talk about an important lesson: the recurring cycle in the markets which teaches us that anticipation is more powerful than reality. Rob talks about this principle in relation to the stock market’s reaction to the expectation of tax cuts.

We also talk about the problem with deciding how we think things should be rather than recognizing the way things actually are. Rob also tells us about an in-flight discussion he had with an oil trader. Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Network A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.

Direct download: RB570.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:10am EDT

Happy Halloween! Welcome to The Traders Podcast with your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles. Want to talk about something really scary? Episode 569 is a listener feedback “mailbag” episode whose questions coincidentally pertain to discipline in trading. We talk about how getting what you want requires making tough decisions to do things that are difficult. During the course of this show, we field questions from Steve, Tyler and a person we call “Grateful.” Join us!

The Traders Podcast releases new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Network A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.

Direct download: RB569.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 10:10am EDT

In Episode 568 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles talk about fear and how bad experiences with trading can haunt you and tend to affect your perception of yourself and your ability to trade successfully.

Jason cites singer-songwriter Glen Phillips who sings about this victim-mentality rut in his song, “Professional Victim.” Technically, the possibility of success always exists, so it’s never completely impossible to make money. Unfortunately, sometimes we convince ourselves of the defeatist C-3PO perspective that “we seem to be made to suffer” and that being an unprofitable trader is just “our lot in life.”

Join us for Episode 568, so Rob can explain how to break out of the victim cycle of abuse from the currency markets. Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and leave us a review!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Network A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.


Full Episode Transcript:

Rob Booker: Jason, have you ever punched anybody in the mouth?
Jason Pyles: No, actually I have not.
Rob Booker: Okay. I got in one fight when I was in 7th grade.
Jason Pyles: Oh, yeah? How did it go?
Rob Booker: One kid, a little bit larger than me, pushed another kid into the lockers and the other kid was disabled. I don’t know. I just flipped. All of a sudden, I just flipped and I punched this kid in the mouth and then he beat the tar out of me.
Jason Pyles: But still you were trying to help someone and I think that’s admirable. That counts. I mean that counts and you probably got a lot of very positive attention from people after that.
Rob Booker: Okay. True that. That’s very true.
Jason Pyles: That’s right.
Rob Booker: Now, what do you think the ordinary reaction is, kids on a school ground, kids on a playground, the usual reaction if one kid who is smaller gets punched in the mouth and beaten up by a kid who is bigger? What’s the usual reaction the next time the little kid sees the bigger kid?
Jason Pyles: Oh, just runs away. Fear.
Rob Booker: Runs away.
Jason Pyles: Yeah. Fear.
Rob Booker: Fear. Trading is the only profession in which something punches you in the mouth and then somehow you wake up everyday and you can’t wait to go see that person again. I don’t understand why that is, but I think that there are elements of … It is difficult to understand why some people continue to trade, especially when we get punched in the mouth so often. It’s an interesting profession, Jason. We get ground into the dirt by a currency pair or a stock or an options contract and then we get up and we go back straight at it all over again with the expectation that we’re going to get back at it.
Jason Pyles: Glen Phillips refers to this as a being a professional victim. It’s that whole abusive relationship syndrome where the abused is, for whatever reason, just compelled or addicted to stay within that relationship. It’s interesting.
Rob Booker: Is he related to Glenn Frey?
Jason Pyles: I don’t believe so.
Rob Booker: Smuggler’s Blues is one of my all time favorite songs and it’s just not a very good song but… Tell me more about Glen Phillips. Let’s investigate this idea.
Jason Pyles: Okay. You got it. Glen Phillips is from California. He’s the lead singer of Toad the Wet Sprocket, went off on a solo career for a long time but Toad the Wet Sprocket, the band that had that Walk on the Ocean song. You’ll probably remember from the ’90s. Anyway, he’s a good dude like a genuinely nice guy. You could tell by talking to him and he’s thoughtful. Anyway, he has a song called Professional Victim and it’s about that sort of relationship. It reminds me of what you’re talking about with trading, Rob, where someone knows that this is happening to them and it’s not all positive. A lot of what they get from a relationship is negative but maybe a little positive but they keep ending up finding themselves in that same circumstance because they’re a professional victim.
Rob Booker: That’s interesting. It’s so important as a trader if you are continually getting punched in the mouth or left for dead by a currency pair to walk away from it. I don’t want to make any comparisons to abusive relationships necessarily. Those are serious. If you find yourself in that kind of situation, you need help and you need to know that there are people that are ready to stand at your side and protect you from that kind of thing. I don’t mean to make light of any of that kind of stuff and it’s a real problem in society today and I don’t want to make light of it.
In the world of trading, however, what I find is that because we don’t see immediate physical ramifications and consequences for going back to and repeating the same behaviors, what we will do is we will put ourselves in a situation where we allow ourselves to be hurt by financial instruments that we don’t need to have in our life. We don’t have to trade those financial instruments. I see this time and again and I’ve done it myself where a currency pair in particular will cause me a lot of stress and then I will be found months later trading that same financial instrument again against my own best interest knowing that generally I don’t do well at that financial instrument and I will go back to it as if there is something that I can prove to it or something that I can change about it or something I can change about myself.
Meanwhile, off to the side, there’s a financial instrument that has done well for me repeatedly over and over and over again. An example for me is about two years ago I decided I would never trade the Japanese Yen again. Then I traded the Euro, Yen again. Then I lost a bunch of money. Then I traded the Euro, Yen again and I lost a bunch of money. Then I traded the Euro, Yen again and I lost money. Then it swung back and I had a huge win and it was a huge emotional high. What am I doing right now? I’m stuck in a Euro, Yen position again. Why? Because I just can’t stop myself from … I can stop myself but I don’t. Meanwhile, I’ve got the Australian dollar, Canadian dollar which I have just a really simple methodology for getting into a trade on that financial instrument and having a lot of success with it.
Jason Pyles: I have a theory here, Rob.
Rob Booker: All right. I’m ready for it.
Jason Pyles: Seriously I think this is … Unlike the example we were talking about, I think with trading, I think somebody sees the Euro, Yen, for example, they see that and they say, “You know what? Somebody can make money at this.” It’s not impossible, right? There is a way that it can be done. I think it’s the very existence of that possibility. Well, obviously, I got to get this figured out and I’ve already invested so much time and effort and money thus far. It just seems like that they do it because it’s something that you could potentially make money in.
Rob Booker: Right. The danger of having sunk costs.
Jason Pyles: Right.
Rob Booker: That’s really true. That causes so many problems because you’re like, “Well, I already invested all this time and now I have to get a return from it or otherwise it’s embarrassing.” No, you actually don’t.
Jason Pyles: It’s weird to think about because I presume there’s not a currency out there that’s impossible to make money from, right? Or is there, Rob? Is there something that’s impossible?
Rob Booker: Oh, we joke about it but, no, that doesn’t exist. We joke about it but no. It’s possible theoretically to build a trading system that will work on any currency.
Jason Pyles: It’s that possibility I think that lures people.
Rob Booker: That causes the problem.
Jason Pyles: Yes, yes.
Rob Booker: Ain’t that the truth?
Jason Pyles: I sense you’re saying this from experience.
Rob Booker: I certainly am. If you’ve got a story of a currency pair that keeps causing you problems, Jason, how can someone reach the show?
Jason Pyles: Oh, here’s the thing. Well, you can text Rob in his cellphone. His personal cellphone is 304-281-8332.
Rob Booker: I’m holding it right here, banging it on the table right there.
Jason Pyles: That’s right. That’s right.
Rob Booker: Can’t wait to get your message. You can find me on the Twitter. Also I’m back on arguing with people about politics and trading and whatever else. You can find me @robbooker on the Twitter. I would love to hear from you there. Jason, what can we plug for you today?
Jason Pyles: Oh, I’d just love if they check out moviepodcastweekly.com. We review the new stuff that’s currently in theaters.
Rob Booker: Hurray. The upcoming movie that you’re most excited about?
Jason Pyles: Let me see here. Well, I guess it would be Star Wars. I got my tickets, Rob. Did you get your tickets?
Rob Booker: No, I couldn’t get them. Literally, everything was sold out. It just happened so fast.
Jason Pyles: I know.
Rob Booker: I don’t know what I’m going to do now.
Jason Pyles: It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?
Rob Booker: Yeah. It is ridiculous.
Jason Pyles: It’s very frustrating. It was 12 hours into the sale and I’m like, “Whatever. I’ll get it after work.” Then people at work are saying, “Yeah, right. They’re gone.” I found the theater where I could get two seats for my son and me. But, man, it was close.
Rob Booker: I needed five or six seats and I just couldn’t get them.
Jason Pyles: Oh, wow. Yeah, I could see that. Anyways, it’s insane.
Rob Booker: I probably could have gotten one and then been disowned by my family.
Jason Pyles: Yeah, you’ve been like, “I’ll tell you if it’s good.”
Rob Booker: Oh, my gosh. You’re not going to believe how good that was. It will not go over well. It’s pretty funny. Oh, man. All right. Well, have the best day ever. This has been fantastic explaining time with you again. I talk to people all the time now, Jason, that just say how happy they are to hear your voice on the podcast.
Jason Pyles: Oh, I’m glad. Thank you. Thank you. It’s good to be back here.
Rob Booker: All right, everybody. We’ll see you next time. I’m Rob Booker. On behalf of Jason Pyles, the producer, you’re listening to The Trader’s Podcast.

Direct download: RB568.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:37am EDT

Halloween might be around the corner, sure, but of course, serial killers are no laughing matter. In Episode 567 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles don’t intend to make light of how much traders have in common with serial killers, but as you will hear in this episode, the similarities are uncomfortably numerous…

Serial killers can do unspeakable things and still feel totally “normal.” Much like traders, serial killers tend to live outside of typical societal norms (in some ways), and they do things that tend to separate them from others. And they are completely at peace with this fact. We trust that all our listeners are fine, upstanding contributors to your respective communities, but if you’d like to hear more out of morbid curiosity, listen to Episode 567!

Thanks for joining us for The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes so you don’t miss any new episodes!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Network A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.


Full Episode Transcript:

Rob Booker: Okie dokie artichoky. Mr. Pyles.
Jason Pyles: Hey, Rob.
Rob Booker: Have you watch Mindhunter on Netflix?
Jason Pyles: No, I haven’t, but I’m curious about it. Tell it.
Rob Booker: All right, so Mindhunter, without spoiling anything, is the story of a fresh off the boat FBI agent who tightens his tie so tightly it’s shocking that he can breathe. It’s the story of how he ends up on the hunt for serial killers, which they call sequence killers because it’s 1977, and they don’t know the word serial killer yet, I guess. Didn’t realize that. It is a David Fincher show actually. He directed the first episode and produced it, so you know it’s kind of twisted.
Jason Pyles: Yeah. Love it. Okay.
Rob Booker: I love David Fincher, so anything that he produces I really enjoy. What the story ends up becoming is the story of how in order to catch a serial killer, you have to get into the mind of a serial killer. It brings to mind, for me anyway, this idea that in order to become a successful trader, you have to get into the mind of a successful trader. The mind of a successful trader, I’m not going to compare it similarly to serial killers, that would be terrible, but I’m just going to talk about some of the characteristics of serial killers and tell you how that’s similar to traders.
Jason Pyles: Okay. Great.
Rob Booker: All right, so serial killer, in the show anyway, a sequence killer is unable to factor in or in some cases detect the emotions of others. I don’t know if you would call it lacking empathy or just being completely narcissistic. Some of the best traders I’ve ever met, some of the traders that are willing to take the most risk and make the most amount of money in the shortest amount of time, if that’s what we’re talking about, really making a lot of money, they have some kind of way to turn off the connection between choice and consequence. These individuals in some cases sort of have this blank stare when someone else is criticizing their way of looking at the market. They are truly wrapped inside of their own world and their own point of view. It’s not just that they disagree. There are a lot of good traders that get into arguments about what’s best and what works and what doesn’t. I’m saying these individuals appear to not even have processed what you just said at all.
Jason Pyles: Wow, so there’s like a real stoicism about them. They’re stoics.
Rob Booker: Okay. Yeah. You could say that. That’s right. Yeah, really stoicism is right on the verge of sociopathic behavior.
Jason Pyles: They’re stoic about it. Okay.
Rob Booker: Okay, yeah. We can call it that. I’m game for that.
Jason Pyles: Okay. All right.
Rob Booker: Another characteristic in this show, in many cases a sequence killer had a complicated family relationship. I don’t want to spoil anything, but that wouldn’t come as much of a shock. In many cases, a killer has something to prove. A killer is expressing that something to prove in an anti-social, disgusting, and horrible manner. Let’s now talk about traders.
Jason Pyles: Okay.
Rob Booker: A lot of the most successful traders I’ve ever met are individuals who became redundant at work, made redundant or laid off at work, who have a spouse or a partner who is unsupportive of what they’re doing, and they have something to prove. They take it personally, and they act with an energy and determination that otherwise they wouldn’t have in the same way that many children brought up in very difficult circumstances for whom you would feel a great amount of sorrow and empathy actually grow up to accomplish great things or creatively express themselves in totally unique and amazing ways because of the difficulties in their childhood.
In that same way, traders who have something to prove and that desire to prove something is directed at someone close to them, either living or dead, those traders are on a mission, and they do great things. They do amazing things. There is something about that desire to prove something, get back at, that can express itself in anti-social ways. You can channel that as a trader into getting up earlier, cutting off your losses because you certainly don’t want to get caught, that sounds very much like a serial killer, that your goal is to persist in what you were doing and not get caught. Next on the list, Jason, once caught or once found out, a serial killer, a sequence killer, might be effusive in a description of unspeakable acts of terror that seem very ordinary to them.
Jason Pyles: So they’ll go on and on, talk about it a lot.
Rob Booker: Clarice.
Jason Pyles: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Rob Booker: Right.
Jason Pyles: Very nice.
Rob Booker: To this individual, what is unspeakable to anyone else seems ordinary, and they can describe it in great detail without emotion. I’m talking to people who have turned a small amount of money into a lot of money. When I talk to those individuals and they describe what they have done, they do it very matter-of-factly, even though the things they are describing are just outrageous. For instance, and I’ve told this story on the podcast before, but someone asked me about it the other day. They said, “Well that guy you used to travel around with in 2009, he would regularly turn a $3,000 account into an $80,000 account.” What would happen, he would hit the wall. He couldn’t go any further than that. Sometimes he’d keep the money, and sometimes he’d take $80,000 all the way back to 3, fast. He had this meteoric rise and just volcanic eruption at the top and then come back down. Sometimes he’d keep the money, and sometimes he wouldn’t, but he was just this driven individual, driven to prove something and unable to understand why what he was doing seemed so exceptional to other people.
He would stand in front of a group of people and show his trading account. One morning it would be up $25,000 from the day before, so he’d make like $25,000 in a day. The next day he’d wake up, and it would be drawn down or open losing trades of $50,000. It would be so obvious that this was outrageous behavior, which was making money in the end, but it was just outrageous. To him, he just couldn’t understand why people thought it was a big deal. He would just say, “Well, I was just doing what it takes.” It was just so different than anybody else that’s out there learning to trade, who are taking notes and all those kinds of things. Do you have any comments here?
Jason Pyles: I do because what you’re describing right there kind of reminds me to drive the serial killer analogy. He apparently must have had a stomach for risk. He wasn’t really worried one way or the other about that. Just like when serial killers do horrible things, they have a stomach for those horrible things. They can do things that most sane people would think, yeah, I’m never going to do that, or I should never do that, right?
Rob Booker: Yeah.
Jason Pyles: Stomach for risk.
Rob Booker: In the act of doing it, they would feel some kind of a thrill or whatever that would just be terrifying to anyone else.
Jason Pyles: Right, right. Yes.
Rob Booker: Yeah. This is terrible because now I have friends that have made a lot of money that they’re probably thinking that I’m comparing them to serial killers, but whatever. The fourth thing is they take a lot of notes. Their notebook looks like the diary of a madman, the obsessive scrawlings of a tortured individual.
Jason Pyles: Like all the notebooks in the movie Se7en, also David Fincher.
Rob Booker: Yes. Exactly. Yeah, right. Exactly. That’s a great point. As I say this, I’ll just use myself as an example. My offices now, I have these 3 foot x 2 foot post-it notes. We should take a picture of this. I put them on the whiteboard, so there’s no glare when I do a video. I’d make my notes in that, and then I stick those notes on the walls. Now my office walls are surrounded by these notes. I mean, I’m looking around now. I’m frightening myself. It does look kind of scary and weird. I have these notebooks. When I become obsessed about a certain business type project or whatever else, I’ll have these notes. I would say that I share a lot of these characteristics when it comes to just online business and being obsessive about it and whatever else. Not so much in the world of trading. I feel like I’m not obsessive in that way about trading. My results are not spectacular sometimes because of that. I’ll make a consistent amount of money, but I don’t do things that turn $3,000 into $80,000. I just don’t do those things.
Jason Pyles: Right. Right.
Rob Booker: I feel like in order to do those kinds of things you end up sacrificing your personal relationships and your inclusion in regular society, which I have done from time to time with the business type projects that I’m passionate about. That’s happened for me. It’s never really happened with trading, but I’ve watched individuals basically exit society and dive into their work as traders in order to grow those accounts. They become separated from the rest of the world.
Jason Pyles: That’s interesting.
Rob Booker: Yeah. I don’t know if you can even voluntarily choose to go down that path. Turning $3,000 into $80,000, I don’t know if that’s a okay, I’m now going to become crazy and do that. I don’t know if you could even consciously decide that you’re going to go down that path. I think that you can have consistent returns and compound gains, but it seems unlikely to me that someone could ever consciously set a goal to become crazy enough to make those returns.
Jason Pyles: Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it just kind of happens then. Okay.
Rob Booker: Yeah. You’re either crazy or you’re not.
Jason Pyles: Right. Right. Well, it does seem like it’s some sort of a trap though that people could fall into if they’re not careful.
Rob Booker: Right.
Jason Pyles: I mean, slippery slope kind of thing where you could get a little obsessive, I guess.
Rob Booker: Yeah. That’s a good point. Maybe there could be a learned obsession. I mean, people get obsessed all the time with people or projects or jobs or works of art or musicians.
Jason Pyles: Yeah. It’s amazing. It’s kind of weird. Have you ever wanted to kind of take a look at obsession from an outsider’s perspective? There’s a documentary called I Think We’re Alone Now about that ’80s pop singer Tiffany about a couple of her biggest fans. It’s very fascinating. I don’t know. It reminds me of what you’re talking about a little bit where people just allow themselves to go down this road. That’s kind of troubling, I guess.
Rob Booker: Yeah. I don’t know. I’m kind of fascinated, Jason. I wonder if there can be a guidebook to insanity. It sounds like something I would get in trouble for.
Jason Pyles: Yeah, probably.
Rob Booker: It sounds like a great documentary. The only way to make a great documentary about trading is to watch someone descend into the madness necessary to make a spectacular return.
Jason Pyles: I think you should do that, Rob. I’m serious. I think you should do it.
Rob Booker: Does it have to be real, or can it be a fictional?
Jason Pyles: Well, if it’s fictional, then I guess it technically might not be a documentary in the true sense, but you could do a mockumentary that depicts that.
Rob Booker: You think Eugene Levy would be in it with me?
Jason Pyles: Yes.
Rob Booker: He’s in all the great mockumentaries.
Jason Pyles: That’s true. That’s true. That’s funny.
Rob Booker: Oh, man. All right, everybody. How can everybody listen to your movie related podcasts, including movies starring Gene Levy?
Jason Pyles: Absolutely, yeah. They can go to moviepodcast.network. We have a whole network of eight different podcasts about movies, all types and genres. Just check us out there.
Rob Booker: Excellent, and if you want to reach the show, you can send me a text message to 304-281-8332. You can hit me up on the Twitter and say hey, I just listened to the episode, it was great, sort of, @robbooker on the Twitter, and we’d love to hear from you. I’m Rob Booker. On behalf on Jason Pyles, the producer, you’re listening to The Traders Podcast.

Direct download: RB567.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 10:06am EDT

Most people go through life making the same mistakes at age 60 that they made at age 20. It’s astounding and even discouraging, but unfortunately, it’s true. And some people structure their lives so they can succeed in one area while acting out internal conflicts in another area.

In Episode 565 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles explore the pitfall of self-destruction and how many traders get caught in this downward spiral. Rob says that 75 percent of experienced traders are struggling with self-destructiveness. Join us to learn how to escape the self-destruction cycle!

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes, and please leave us a review!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
http://moviepodcast.network/ – A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.


Full Episode Transcript:

Rob Booker: Mr. Pyles.
Jason Pyles: Hey, Rob.
Rob Booker: Did you know that four years ago this Christmas it was a very Bitcoin Christmas?
Jason Pyles: I remember that Christmas.
Rob Booker: Episode 214 of The Traders Podcast featured a conversation about Bitcoin, and then episode 224 featured a conversation about Bitcoin and Tesla Motors and some other stuff. Four years ago in one or the other of those episodes, I think we talked about Bitcoin at some point in time, at some day, would travel all the way to $10,000 or even $20,000.
Jason Pyles: I remember that very Bitcoin Christmas. I think if I’m not mistaken, either that was going to release on Christmas Eve or we actually recorded it Christmas Eve morning, and so I have fond memories of this, yes.
Rob Booker: Yeah, I do too, especially of those episodes. Back in 2013, I can’t even go back this far on my Bitcoin charts right now. I can’t even go that far back. After that time, Bitcoin went up and down, sideways. It went down again as far as … it halved in value at that time. It dropped precipitously in value. It went down to 200, then it hovered around $200, $250, $400 or whatever, and I have a friend and a friend of the show that around the time that Bitcoin was still trading in the $100-$200 area put his life savings into Bitcoin, Jason.
Jason Pyles: Wow, okay.
Rob Booker: Not because of the podcast, but put life savings into Bitcoin, and then started a business that basically ended up handing him a 1,000 … it was so many Bitcoins I can’t remember anymore. 2,000 Bitcoins? A lot of Bitcoins. Today as we record this episode, Bitcoin has now reached $5,800 per Bitcoin, is trading at $5,500 per Bitcoin right now, and all of this movement has happened this year. All of it, from $700 to $5,800, the big jump happened this year.
I just want to say two things: Number one, everyone should listen to us, because it only takes about four years for stuff that we say to come true. When Facebook IPO’ed, we did a podcast and we talked about it, and I said Facebook will be $100 a share stock, and we had people write us and tell us that we were stupid and that we were crazy. We had a lot of people tell us that we were insane. Today Facebook is trading at $172 a share, and it will probably fall from there, but …
Jason Pyles: Right.
Rob Booker: Still the same, that’s an extraordinary move. Anyway, the point that I want to make is that Bitcoin is on this run, and everybody’s calling for the end of it, and everybody’s talking about how this is a bubble, and it is a bubble. It is a frothy bubble, and it is insane. It is crazy, but it’s for real. This is really happening, and every time you think that a trend is going to stop, it just keeps going. Trends will go a lot farther for a lot longer than we think they will. It just happens.
Jason Pyles: That’s amazing. One question about Bitcoin, Rob, and I’m sorry if I reveal my ignorance to everyone here, but do you think Bitcoin has had this kind of a run and this ride because digital technology and the world of the internet itself is so insulated? I don’t know if that’s the word I’m looking for, but it just seems like a very secure … the future of it just seems like a very secure place to go.
Rob Booker: There are a couple reasons, I think, and I’m going to do my best here. This wasn’t always true; however, it’s really hard to hack the Bitcoin or trace the route of transactions in Bitcoin, so if you want to hold a bunch of Bitcoin and then you want to spend that Bitcoin or you want to move it somewhere, no one’s really going to know it’s yours. You’re going to know it’s yours, and you’re going to have a unique identifier. That’s number one. Number two, all transactions on the network are peer to peer, so the entire network is supporting the transaction log of all the Bitcoins. So there’s an incredibly secure process for verifying and processing transactions that’s not instantaneous but is verifiable and trustable instantaneously.
That is really appealing in a world where the entire financial system is really easy to hack, and people are very suspicious of it. Bitcoin is, on the other hand, a complete fiction. It is a completely made up, absolutely made up coin. It is no different than US dollars. US dollars are backed by the full faith and credit of the United States government, which means as much as you want it to mean. And the value of a dollar can change, and so can the value of a Bitcoin. The value of a Bitcoin is really just what the collection of people who are holding Bitcoins, or who want to hold Bitcoins, think it is. You can say Bitcoin is worthless and doesn’t have any underlying value, but that doesn’t really make it any different than any currency in the world today.
Jason Pyles: That’s amazing.
Rob Booker: It is really amazing.
Jason Pyles: It’s just fascinating. It’s like, “Hey, everybody, let’s across these clouds, and just because we believe they’re there, they will support us.” It’s just amazing to me.
Rob Booker: Yeah, right, it is. The insular nature, or whatever you want to call it, of Silicon Valley and the tech industry in general perpetuates this. There’s confirmation bias. Bitcoin is amazing, and you say that to your friend who thinks that Bitcoin is amazing, and then your friend says, “Yes, Bitcoin is amazing.” And then you both go out and you buy more Bitcoin, and you’re like, “Yeah, we’re amazing.” You don’t really ever have to hear the counterargument. I’m not real familiar with any credible counterarguments right now. Four years ago when we talked about this, I said that what a lot of people think ought to be happening with gold is going to happen with Bitcoin, and that’s played out to be absolutely true, that Bitcoin has been the one that has moved in response to the fact that people don’t trust the international financial system anymore. They don’t trust it anymore.
Four years ago when we were podcasting, gold was trading around $1,300. Guess where gold is trading now? $1,200. It’s basically gone sideways over that same amount of time, and Bitcoin has gone straight up. The point is this, that when Donald Trump was elected I said he’s going to be elected President, there’s no way he’s going to lose, and then I said the dollar’s going to tank and gold’s going to shoot up to $1,400 and then $1,900 an ounce. None of that … the financial side of that didn’t happen. The Bitcoin side of it did. And what the price of Bitcoin is reflecting is a distrust in the political systems of the day, and plain and simple a place where people can go off-grid with their money.
Gold really doesn’t represent that. If you want to store gold in your house, it represents that, but Bitcoin can be stored securely and privately, and almost no one is ever going to know. And eventually you’re going to be able to spend it. On top of everything else, eventually you’re going to be able to spend it too. At some point in time, Amazon’s going to accept Bitcoin. It’s going to happen, and when that happens, that’s where Bitcoin goes to 10,000.
The other side of this is that China is just filled with miners, companies that are building giant warehouses and water-cooled computers where they are mining Bitcoins, and when China says it can’t be done anymore, that’s going to go someplace else. Someone else is going to do it. This trend, like all other trends, will last longer and go farther than people think it will, and it will have deep corrections and significant problems, but it’s hard for me to imagine a world in which it goes away, because of its nature as a private peer to peer transaction network that people will depend on in the face of political and economic uncertainty.
Anyway, Bitcoin is going up, the stock market is going up. They’re both what you would call risk-based assets, but if the stock market takes a significant drop and people run out of the stock market, I don’t know what will happen to Bitcoin. I imagine there would be a correction, but I imagine that Bitcoin is becoming more and more the new flight to safety. Now it’s too expensive for a lot of people to get involved. It’s kind of sad, Jason. But we did do a podcast long ago about it, so I feel like we’ve done the right thing there.
Jason Pyles: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Rob Booker: And gold probably is … I mean, I was early but I don’t think I was wrong. At some point in the Trump presidency, love him or hate him, gold is going to rise to $1,900 an ounce. I guarantee it. If not to all-time highs. I guarantee it. Because Bitcoin is so expensive right now and there’s just no chance I’m going to buy Bitcoin at these levels, my thing is I’m now looking at ways to buy the gold ETF and have some exposure to that, because although it won’t go as far and it’s not going to double in value necessarily, I think it really in times of uncertainty and political strife and whatnot, it really will be one of the safest places to go.
Jason Pyles: Mm-hmm. Nice.
Rob Booker: All right, so do we have anything in the mailbag?
Jason Pyles: We sure do, Rob. Yeah, we got a text from… let’s see, this is from is it Bama Garrett. It says, “Hey, Rob. Bama Garrett here. I hope all is well with you and your family. I’ve told you previously that I listen to every episode of The Traders Podcast twice, well all the ones prior to the reboot. Anyway, the latest episode reminded me of episode 211 where you said, ‘Peace comes from the doing. The unhappiness/anxiety comes from the wanting.’ That’s so true, and it goes hand in hand with what you were saying about just putting in the time and not wanting everything right away. I’m happy to report that I’ve been trading stocks live since February 2016 and just recently have crawled out of the negative, thanks to a $2,300 September, and I feel that I have turned a corner. I’ve been trading only one system for probably about 14 months of the 18 that I’ve been trading, and I have tracked every trade via a Profit.ly. My system is solely focused on the stocks that have missed three or more daily pivots, using Paladino’s brilliant missed pivot scans, and distilled further with Nox D and 5 RSI.”
And then he says, “I hope to meet you soon. Ever since you had to go and meet your now wife the weekend we were supposed to catch the ‘Bama game, I have wanted to meet you. Thanks for all you do and God bless.”
Rob Booker: The story behind that, Jason, is that the weekend that Garrett from Alabama had bought us tickets to go see the University of Alabama play in Tuscaloosa … I think that’s where they play … go to a college football game, to the best college football team in the United States at the time, and still is today, I had an invitation to go see who is now my wife for the weekend. I just said to Garrett, I said, “Alabama will play more games, but I may never get another chance …”
Jason Pyles: That’s amazing.
Rob Booker: “… to date this woman, so I am going out to see my …” Because I kind of knew I wanted to marry her too. I mean, it was pretty early on.
Jason Pyles: It sounds like you certainly made the right decision, but I think you owe Bama Garrett a game, it sounds like, Rob. Just saying.
Rob Booker: I do owe him a game, that’s true. That’s great. Appreciate him. If we can stop there and come back to the mailbag next episode, I have a couple announcements to make.
Jason Pyles: Let’s do that.
Rob Booker: All right. Everyone’s asking us how they can easily get the archive of all the episodes of The Traders Podcast, and it’s not easy to do. For reasons of space and time and the time-space continuum vortex, if we plug all 500+ episodes into iTunes, because our show notes are sizable and descriptive, it blows up the iTunes feed. So what we’ve done is if you … This is what I want you to do if you’re listening right now and you’re someplace that you can use your fingers and whatever else, and you’re at your computer, I want to ask you go to The Traders Podcast website, and that is TradersPodcast.com, and on the right hand side of the page on the navigation page, I will put up a link where you can download every episode in .mp3 form straight to your computer, and then you can load it into iTunes and sync it up with your phone. But you could just have all of those files, all of them, all the episodes right on your computer, and that makes it easy to listen to all of them.
We’ll never be able to count those downloads, Jason, which is really unfortunate. I wonder if there’s some way to count those downloads. I’m going to find a way. But anyway, we want you to have those episodes, so go to TradersPodcast.com, click on the right side of the page. This will be up for just a limited amount of time, because it’s going to cost us like $1,000 in bandwidth just to give so many people all the downloads, but we want you to have those episodes, so go there, check that out right now.
And then, Jason, while we’re talking about downloading a bunch of podcasts, are you going to go to the “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” the night it opens?
Jason Pyles: Well, it’s actually the very next morning is what it will be, the 16th I believe it is, or 17th.
Rob Booker: I can’t get tickets. I can’t get a ticket.
Jason Pyles: I know. I almost didn’t … I waited 12 hours, it was like seriously 12 hours, and I’m like, “Yeah, I’ll get them, it’s fine.” And almost all the seats were gone, and they were like, “You can sit in the front row.” And it’s like there’s no way I’m sitting in the front row for that movie, this terrible place. So anyway, I went around to theaters and I found a theater that happened to have two seats for my boy and me, and we got it. We got it.
Rob Booker: Oh, that’s awesome. Speaking of movies and where someone can hear your review of “The Force Awakens” and “Rogue One” and other Star Wars movies, where can they find that?
Jason Pyles: Yes, sir, that would be at MoviePodcastWeekly.com.
Rob Booker: Excellent. All part of the Movie Podcast Network?
Jason Pyles: Yes, sir. We got lots of different kinds of shows there, like western podcasts, sci-fi, horror, whatever you want.
Rob Booker: That’s so awesome. I love just the regular Movie Podcast Weekly. Highly recommended, friends.
Jason Pyles: Thank you.
Rob Booker: I’m Rob Booker, that’s Jason Pyles, the producer, and you’ve been listening to The Traders Podcast. We’ll see you next time.

Direct download: RB566.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 10:51am EDT

Most people go through life making the same mistakes at age 60 that they made at age 20. It’s astounding and even discouraging, but unfortunately, it’s true. And some people structure their lives so they can succeed in one area while acting out internal conflicts in another area.

In Episode 565 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles explore the pitfall of self-destruction and how many traders get caught in this downward spiral. Rob says that 75 percent of experienced traders are struggling with self-destructiveness. Join us to learn how to escape the self-destruction cycle!

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes, and please leave us a review!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
http://moviepodcast.network/ – A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.


Full Episode Transcript:

Rob Booker: Mr. Pyles.
Jason Pyles: Hey, Rob. Good morning.
Rob Booker: How are you?
Jason Pyles: Oh, I’m great. How are you?
Rob Booker: I’m good but I have a really important question for you.
Jason Pyles: Okay. I’m ready for it.
Rob Booker: I need your advice for our listeners.
Jason Pyles: Okay. I’ll do my best.
Rob Booker: I’m going to share with you a problem that most traders have, and then I’m going to ask your opinion about it. Then I’d like to read a quote from one of my favorite trading books I ever read.
Jason Pyles: Okay. Excellent.
Rob Booker: How do people control or contain their self-destructiveness? In your experience, is that even a real thing?
Jason Pyles: Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. In fact I think that a lot of people go through phases so you don’t even have to characteristically be a self-destructive person. Sometimes you just go into a phase of this. All kidding aside, sometimes you might buy a bag of Oreos and feel like you’re going to destroy yourself that night. But, anyways, let me see here.
Rob Booker: Well, I feel like going out and buying that bag of Oreos when you know that it’s going to cause some health problems, or immediate problems, or whatever is kind of like in those horror movies when someone looks under the bed.
Jason Pyles: Yes. It’s like-
Rob Booker: You feel like they’re better off not looking under the bed.
Jason Pyles: Why are you doing that? What’s wrong with you?
Rob Booker: But, we don’t often think that it’s that way because fulfilling a desire is like a first order consequence, meaning I’m hungry for Cookie Crisp cereal. I’ll go get the Cookie Crisp cereal. Now, I have it. Now, I fulfilled the basis first order desire and then there’s all kinds of second and third order consequences that are now tripped up because of that. Self-destructiveness is trading what you want most for what you can have right now.
Jason Pyles: That’s right. What you mentioned there, Cookie Crisp, is a great example because that’s among Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Yes, it’s an excellent example.
Rob Booker: What is it? It’s video game time, texting your friends on an iPhone. The highest need is having Cookie Crisp cereal?
Jason Pyles: For sure. At least it is for me. That’s been my experience.
Rob Booker: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
Jason Pyles: Right? Doesn’t it come down to if one wanted to try to contain this, this self-destructive thing, doesn’t it come down to, as you’re talking about here, priorities? If you were to try to make a list of what is most important to you and then start doing that reverse engineering that we do, it’s like how can I get that thing that’s most important to me? Is that unreasonable, Rob, for someone to do?
Rob Booker: No, it’s not unreasonable and it brings up the point that … Let’s say that one achieves the discipline necessary to strive only for what they want most and can put off what they want today. The question then becomes does that person even know to what end they should apply that discipline? Great. Now, you only want what is most important. What are you going to with all that discipline? And a lot of people then just flail because you still have to have a plan. You still have to know what’s going to work. But, I think that’s the easier side of the problem. I think the harder part of the problem is even just getting to the point where we get out of our own way. As traders, Jason, what they’ll do is a trader … The equivalent of getting a box of Cookie Crisp cereal and sitting on the couch and eating the entire box, the equivalent is sitting down in front of the computer and then breaking one’s rule about trade size.
This is the number one way that it’s done. A trader will sit down and they’ll be ready to have a perfectly normal trading experience and session. Let’s say that they’re just looking at bitcoin and they’re just ready to buy some bitcoin and they’re going to long bitcoin, which we’re going to talk about in our next episode, and then they just get so excited about how right they’re going to be that they just think, “This is a chance of a lifetime. I can always close this immediately like I can always stop eating the Cookie Crisp anytime I want. I’ll just get the entire box out. I won’t portion it out in the same way that I’m not going to have somebody supervise me eating. I’m just going to do this myself.”
The next thing you know they’re trading a much larger trade size. The trade goes against them and they get into this negotiation. I’ll just have one more Cookie Crisp and then I’m closing the box or whatever. They say, “I’ll just let it go a little bit further but then I’m cutting it off.” And, then it comes back a little bit and you’re like, “Oh, it came back a little bit. Oh. Well, see, I made the right decision in the first place. I think I’ll hold on for a bit.” Then it even comes really close to the original entry of the trade and they’re like, “Well, this is great. Now, I made the right thing. I’m not going to close it now. Why close it now? Everything is actually going in the direction that it should have gone.” Then it drops even further against than it went the first go round and now they’re in this just … They go into a self-denial, or they just close the charts, or they just … Now, there’s a monster living under the bed and now there’s a real problem.
Jason Pyles: What strikes me about this, Rob, if somebody is new to trading or new listening to The Traders Podcast, they might think, “Oh. Okay. This must be a problem that beginners have.” But, honestly, I think this is even more characteristic of veteran traders like people who’ve been doing this and “should know better” and I say should know better in quotes because this is a very difficult challenge.
Rob Booker: It’s funny you say that because there are … Let’s just divide traders arbitrarily, not arbitrarily, but let’s just for the purpose of this episode divide traders into three categories. Category one, brand new and reasonably successful because they’re brand new, small percentage of traders, and I would say brand new traders represent … Let’s just even say that it represents 15% of the total universe of people that are attempting to trade. And then on the far end, opposite end of the spectrum, there are veteran experienced traders having success and we’ll go on the high end and we’ll say that’s 10%.
Now, there’s a 25% made up from 15% of just absolute beginners experiencing all the thrills and the highs and seeing the chart for the first time and entering their first trades and experiencing success and then following the rules because at the beginning, you follow the rules and you get the right to be creative after you’ve learned to follow the rules and your platform. Then there’s the experienced traders making money and that’s another 10%. There’s this middle ground. Imagine this big middle section of traders. 75% of all traders are experienced traders who are struggling with self-destructiveness, all of them.
Jason Pyles: Wow.
Rob Booker: I’m sure that this episode resonates with almost every listener, almost every person listening.
Jason Pyles: Well, let me ask you a question about that, Rob. Because as people know, I’m not a trader but I can see parallels in my life with this kind of thing. Is it a matter of pride, I mean I don’t want to say pride, but we just think we can handle it. What is that? We just think, “Oh, I’m different from everybody else. I’m above this. I can handle this.” I don’t know.
Rob Booker: Yeah, right. Well, let’s read a section from Alexander Elder’s book Trading for a Living, which is the book that didn’t start it all with me. It was Thomas Dorsey’s Point and Figure Charting that started it all for me. This book, Trading for a Living by Alexander Elder, was the first book that I bought when I opened my first trading account. Page 27, “Controlling self-destructiveness. Most people go through life making the same mistakes at 60 that they made at 20. Others structure their lives to succeed in one area while acting out internal conflicts in another.” That is so true, Jason.
Jason Pyles: Yes.
Rob Booker: A lot of successful people in business or life or their career will come into trading, and they’ll be completely disciplined and successful in their business in other life and then they’ll just go bananas in the world of trading. “Very few people grow out of their problems. You need to be aware of your tendency to sabotage yourself. Stop blaming your loses on bad luck or on others and take responsibility for the results. Keep a diary with reasons for entering and exiting your trades. Look for repetitive patterns of success and failure. Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Now, I don’t agree with everything he’s saying but this wakes me up. This is a call to action and this next part is where I’m going. You need a psychological safety net the way mountain climbers need their survival gear and then that just shocks me back into consciousness. Living in the middle 75% of experienced but unsuccessful traders as I have done at times in the past, dip back into that world, it reminds me how important it is to have a safety net in the same way a mountain climber has survival gear.
Just like you said, we have this go it alone mentality. It’s so brilliant what you said that we want to climb without a safety net because that gratifies our vanity and it makes us feel stronger, more capable and it’s embarrassing. It’s one thing to be a climber and have a safety net. As a trader, what I would say is if trading were climbing, what I would want isn’t a safety net. I would want a whole bunch of motherly type of women giving me sandwiches and I’d want multicolored lines stretching all over the mountain, and I’d want soothing music playing to keep me calm. I would just be like that. You have to go overboard on how embarrassing it would be for someone to see how much help you are allowing yourself to get.
There’s 10% of successful veteran traders. They’re not like John Wayne out on the open plane drinking coffee grounds straight with no water, shooting themselves in the foot if a snake bites them. That is not the image of the successful veteran trader. The image of the successful veteran trader is someone who is surrounded by people who fire them from trading inside of an institution if they break their money management rules or someone who has a group of people who they depend upon to keep them straight and keep them because they know what it was like to feel like you’re trying to go it alone.
The image of the lone cowboy out there getting it all done, or cowgirl, or whatever, getting it all done and going it alone and facing danger on their own and looking under the bed by themselves without calling their friend, those people are the failures. Those are the ones not doing well.
Jason Pyles: That’s right. Watch any horror film and people always go off by themselves and those people die. [inaudible 00:12:17].
Rob Booker: And a group of teenage kids are excited to go do disgusting things to each other and drugs in the woods and they split up.
Jason Pyles: Yeah, exactly.
Rob Booker: Then they get killed off one by one.
Jason Pyles: Yup, that’s how it happens. Yes.
Rob Booker: All right. Anyway, I just wanted to bring it up and I think people are smart enough and mature enough that are traders that they know the things they need to place around them. Other people, they need to be transparent about their performance with someone they trust. They need to have written rules for money management. They need to keep, I wouldn’t say a diary about every single trade, but you need to keep a record of and a recording of the mistakes, the big mistakes that those are the ones you want to just sear those into your memory that you never want to repeat that again.
Jason Pyles: Yes.
Rob Booker: Any other thoughts that you would have for someone out there seeking to cure their self-destructiveness?
Jason Pyles: Yeah. Honestly, for me, I’m a rewards-based motivated type of person. Once you slate out what your objective is, then I would think of some sort of reward that would I guess encourage me to get to that next goal before I bail out and crash and burn. There’s got to be a caret for me personally to help me get through and stay disciplined.
Rob Booker: I really appreciate what you’ve said. That deserves some more conversation at some point in time on the podcast.
Jason Pyles: Thanks. Let’s do that.
Rob Booker: All right. When we come back, friends, we’re going to talk about bitcoin in our next episode and we’re going to reach deep into the mailbag if we have some and we’re going to hear from you, the listeners. I always love that kind of stuff. Jason, while they’re waiting for the next Traders Podcast to come out, let’s just say what other podcasts might they want to listen to?
Jason Pyles: Well, let’s see. If they like movies, if you want to learn more about horror movies and people who go off by themselves and get killed, then you have horrormoviepodcast.com. Then if you just like new movies of all genres, moviepodcastweekly.com.
Rob Booker: Excellent. I’m Rob Booker. That’s Jason Pyles, the producer, and you’ve been listening to The Traders Podcast.

Direct download: RB565.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 8:35am EDT

We understand. We like excitement, too. But trust us when we tell you that your trading account is not the place to look for thrills. In Episode 564 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles warn that when your tried and true trading strategy becomes boring for you and you’re tempted to mix it up, remain steady and safe. Look for roller coasters and drama elsewhere in life, but not in trading.

Also in this episode we discuss our newly opened comments section. We hope you will get involved in our community! Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
http://moviepodcast.network/ – A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.


Full Episode Transcript:

Rob Booker: All right, Jason, I have a special announcement, which we alluded to on the previous episode.
Jason: Okay. Yeah, tell it.
Rob Booker: The comments section of Traders Podcast.com is fixed. That means that hundreds of comments that were previously not visible on the blog and on the episodes are now visible and you can go in there and just argue with your friends right on the episodes.
Jason: Right. That’s right. That’s what we do. We tend to sow seeds of discussion, right?
Rob Booker: That’s right. Exactly. And we ran a contest recently, and I think it came in episode 559, and we said, “Hey listen. Go to the episode. Leave a comment and we’ll give an Amazon gift certificate to one of the commenters.” And we’re ready to announce that winner, because now we can actually see the comments. So, I’m going to read you a few of these comments. You ready for some of these?
Jason: I’m ready. Let’s do this.
Rob Booker: Desiree writes, I think the idea of a live stream of people is great. You guys are awesome together. I love listening. I listened all the way through and always do. I thought that was a really sweet comment.
Jason: Yeah, that’s nice, because a lot of people shut off a podcast like three fourths of the way through, but it’s amazing she goes all the way to the end.
Rob Booker: I heard that the new version of analytics for Apple podcasts is going to include the ability to see how far into each episode people are listening.
Jason: Okay.
Rob Booker: Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that. Scott writes, Jason’s rules for movies sounds legit. That live trading idea is something Myfxbook or Fundseeder should jump on. The top ranked traders on Myfxbook will be given the option of live streaming their trading. Those top ranked traders would be compensated for sharing their live trading and compensation would come from traders who paid to view the live trading streams.
Jason: That’s kind of brilliant, actually.
Rob Booker: Subscribers would be given a preview for each top trader to let them know how they trade. Price action, Fibonaccis, etc., swing, day trading, et cetera. What a wonderful comment.
Jason: Yeah, I like that one.
Rob Booker: This one comes in from Rohan. It just made me think of the Lord of the Rings.
Jason: Yeah, me too, I was just thinking that too. Like, wow, this is serious.
Rob Booker: I wonder if that woman that Aragorn, I wonder if that woman that he spurned or didn’t marry, I wonder if she ever found anybody she fell in love with. Maybe she fell in love with a hobbit.
Jason: Maybe, I bet. She was a keeper, I think.
Rob Booker: She was as keeper, yeah, exactly. Okay. Plus, her dad wasn’t a zombie anymore.
Jason: Yeah, that helps. That helps.
Rob Booker: Rohan says hi. Just listened to the episode. Rohan here, from Jamaica. Welcome back guys. I didn’t enjoy this episode as much as some of your previous ones, but just wanted to give a shout out and put my application in the hopes of winning that gift card. Now, points for being honest.
Jason: Right, right. Because, that was that one episode where we were just kind of talking about nothing sometime, yeah, I remember. I remember it.
Rob Booker: But…
Jason: It’s fun.
Rob Booker: Andy says best. Random. Episode. Ever. That’s great. So, you either love that episode, or you hate that episode. Lynn says, sorry, I wouldn’t like a trading reality show and I heard this from a bunch of people on the Twitter and on Facebook and a bunch of other places. Some people just said, “No, that’s a terrible idea.” I don’t want to get confused by other strategies, I don’t want to watch other people do it. I thought, fair enough, that’s fair enough, and then for someone who’s purely interested in making money as a trader, I agree. Watching a show of people trading other strategies would only mess you up.
Jason: Right. It reminds me of watching golf in a way. Some people find value in it, but I could see where some people would be like, “Oh wait. I’m overthinking my swing now.”
Rob Booker: What if the golfers, though, could run after each other and hit each other with the clubs?
Jason: Now that’s hilarious. That’s almost as funny as mascot fights.
Rob Booker: Exactly. That’s what I’m talking about for the show.
Jason: Right.
Rob Booker: Ivan says, very interesting topic. It seems a difficult choice. I’d watch it, something like poker on ESPN, but at the same time, may become so hooked on it that it could be counter productive for my work. Keep up the good work guys. Peter says, great podcast. Even more fun when they’re a little random. You mentioned the shotgun and then you think of an analogy, which is what you tend to do a lot. I recently started to go clay pigeon shooting, something I’ve always wanted to try. Not blowing my own trumpet, but was a natural when having lessons. Hitting roughly 8% of the clays, like my first few months of trading, the more I learned and progressed and a keen urge to get better, the worse I got. Yep, that was my trading too. You just go the same trap where you know the direction, the angle and the speed, but what’s this, an unexpected win? Oh, I missed the clay pigeon.
Was there some unexpected trading news? This is a good comment, I like this. Okay, I’ve got this now, I can compensate for the wind direction and just shoot below the target. The wind didn’t behave as suspected and calculated. I traded what I knew and I took into consideration what might happen. I watched the news, I took into consideration all the stuff and I missed again. So, I bought my own gun, and in the end, had it customized just for me. In other words, I changed my changing trading strategy from what worked to customization. So then I went out to shoot with my shiny, new customized 12 Bore, my result was hitting about 20%. I did this with my trading and it went downhill. Now when I go shooting, I learn again from the beginning how to shoot, same with my trading. I go back to the basics and I do what works. Pete from the UK.
Jason: Wow, that was-
Rob Booker: That was a lot of really great wisdom.
Jason: … and profound, really, yeah, excellent Pete.
Rob Booker: Peter, you’re the winner of the gift card. Peter, would you, well, I don’t know, maybe I can even reach out to Peter. I can’t reach out to Peter. I got to find the comments and … Peter, you’re the winner. Write to me. Write to us. Send me a text to 304.281.8332 and give me your email address and I’ll send you back an Amazon gift certificate. Peter, thanks for listening to the show, that was awesome. We’ll do a new contest, and we will … one of the listeners of this episode who leaves a comment on this episode, just leave a question for the show and we’ll read your question on the air and respond to it and let you know what we think and give you an answer, and we’ll give you an Amazon gift card as well, to one of those commenters.
About that, I want to just jump on this point that Peter made and we can close out with that, Jason.
Jason: Mm-hmm, okay.
Rob Booker: He’s got this point that when you deviate from the basics everything starts to go wrong. But the problem is sometimes the basics are boring. How do you deal with that?
Jason: Well, honestly, for me, it seems like in that case you wouldn’t want your whole world to revolve around trading in the first place. If that’s the only fulfillment you’re getting out of life, then maybe you should add some other things into your life. Trading doesn’t have to be all consuming and life consuming, and so, that’s kind of where I go. I mean, it’s like, yeah, that’s boring, but I’ll do what I need to do and then move on to the next thing. That’s my two cents.
Rob Booker: All right, well, we look forward to hearing your comments on this episode. Go to Traders Podcast.com. Leave a comment on this episode and leave a question for the show, we’ll read it on the air. I’m Rob Booker, that’s Jason Pyles, the producer, and you’re listening to the Traders Podcast.
Jason: Perfect.

Direct download: RB564.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:26am EDT

Sometimes the most valuable truths about trading are those we don’t want to hear … or accept. In Episode 563 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles talk about the importance of focusing on how to reduce your risk, not making money. If you manage your risk, the money will accrue over time. This is not very sexy news for those who want to “get rich quick” and become overnight successes, but those are the realities of trading.

Also in this episode, we receive a question from Dave in Columbus, Ohio, who asks about hedge funds and why so many have closed this year after being so profitable for so long. Dave wants to know why they aren’t profitable anymore. Join us, and we’ll discuss it!

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and leave us a review. Thank you!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Be sure to catch up with Scott Welsh at his Website
and at Twitter

Jason’s movie podcasts:
http://moviepodcast.network/ – A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.


Full Episode Transcript:

Jason Pyles: Hey, Rob. One of my favorite things on The Traders Podcast and something I really missed was getting questions from the listeners because I find that these episodes where we’re discussing the listener’s thoughts and concerns are some of the most insightful, for me at least.
Rob Booker: I love it, and I love the episodes where we get comments inside of the show notes, so wait a minute, are you saying you have a question?
Jason Pyles: Yeah. Well, there’s a question here that comes from Dave from Columbus.
Rob Booker: Dave from Columbus.
Jason Pyles: Yeah, and Dave says, “Home of the greatest trader in history, Scott Welsh.”
Rob Booker: Not anymore. Scott lives in Florida now.
Jason Pyles: That’s funny. He says, “Hey, Rob. I thought that this story might interest you. Apparently several hedge funds have closed this year due to poor performance. I’m curious to hear why you think all these guys who have been elite for so long can’t seem to turn a profit in the markets anymore.”
Rob Booker: Well, fascinating. Yeah. There have been, especially in a year where the S&P 500 is way up, the stock market’s way up, it is interesting that hedge funds are down. Like a lot of hedge funds are down. Now not all of them are down, but it is interesting. Jason, it is a quandary wrapped in a paradox.
Jason Pyles: Okay. A conundrum within a donut. Yes.
Rob Booker: It’s a shroud of uncertainty wrapped in creamy filling.
Jason Pyles: Yes. Right.
Rob Booker: The answer is most of these hedge funds are driven by performance, meaning they are constantly striving for gains, and most of these hedge funds were started, I hate to be so crass, but the reason they started was because someone wanted to make a lot of money. If you just think about it for five seconds, if you build a set of relationships in the world of finance, and then you have the potential to go out on your own and raise 100 million dollars, you’re going to do it. It’s just going to happen. Finance and arrogance go hand in hand. If you have had one good year, you suddenly think that you’re going to have 30 good years. This business is terribly difficult.
The other part about it is that hedge funds, they are restricted by what they can do. Once you put together an offering document and you say that this is what you’re going to do. You’re going to trade Norwegian bonds against Afghani currency or whatever, and you’ve specialized in a method for doing that, then you’re kind of stuck. That’s the method you’re going to do. That’s the crazy thing is that once you’re stuck in that method, if that method stops working or goes through a difficult period of time, then you’re screwed. I mean, that’s it. A lot of these funds are hampered by the fact that they promise that that’s what they were going to be doing.
You kind of get the feeling that these people shouldn’t be managing money, but it’s not about getting a return. It’s about getting more money to manage. When you manage money as a hedge fund, automatically you earn every year a percentage of the assets under management, generally 1 to 2% automatically. If you raise 100 million dollars, you get 2 million dollars every year just for having the 100 million, whether or not you make any money for any of those people. To me, also the incentive to make any money, then it goes down. I don’t know. I just think it’s a cycle that spirals out of control. You start because you want to make money, and then you’re stuck with a strategy that might not be working, and then you panic, and then investors want quarterly performance. You’re chasing after performance instead of chasing after actual processes.
Instead of focusing on what works, you’re trying to quickly make a bunch of money. It’s such a vicious cycle. I don’t know how anybody makes money managing money professionally. I don’t know how anybody does it. The largest hedge fund in the world is Bridgewater Associates, run by Ray Dalio, which we’ve talked about him a lot. Ray is the most successful hedge fund in history, and it’s the largest hedge fund in history. The whole thing is basically fully automated. The whole thing is automated because it’s so hard to make money, but they find strategies that work, and then they program them, and then they run them automatically. I think a lot of hedge funds are run by people who want to be the one that pushes the buttons. They’re constrained by the strategies they use. If they’ve had a somewhat okay year, they want to make it better so they don’t lose their investors. It’s a cycle that just spirals out of control
Jason Pyles: Wow. It sounds difficult. If we were to analyze that, though Rob, the reason that happens is because, I don’t want to say inner principles, but the priorities of how they’re going about making money, that shifts, and they’re not focusing on the true principles that they know. They’re just focusing on desperation and emotion.
Rob Booker: Yeah, right.
Jason Pyles: Interesting.
Rob Booker: Yeah. Agreed. I mean, if you want to turn this into lessons for us as traders, you’d say be flexible enough to achieve your goals. Don’t constrain yourself by one strategy, although you might have one strategy that you’re best at, one pattern that you recognize that you do over and over. You want to remain flexible. The goal is not necessarily even to make money. The goal is to manage risk. The goal is to reduce risk. The goal is to never get yourself into huge amounts of trouble, and then let the money take care of itself, as opposed to being a hedge fund who believes that the goal is making as much money as possible, all risk be damned.
Jason Pyles: Right, so-
Rob Booker: Yeah, go ahead.
Jason Pyles: You said this before. Really what I’m starting to take away now in trading is that being a successful trader isn’t about making money, it’s about not losing money, right?
Rob Booker: Yes.
Jason Pyles: I love that. [crosstalk 00:06:59]
Rob Booker: Yes. There’s only one rule of trading. Never let a small loss become an unmanageable monster loss. That is the only rule. If you abide by that only rule and you don’t lose money, you will survive, and if you survive, you will eventually come across a trade, a strategy, or a method, or a situation where you have the opportunity to make money. There’s a balancing act. There’s this tension that exists between how badly do I want to try to make a lot of money versus how badly do I want to stay in the game for a long time. This is the same tension that exists in all areas of our lives. I want an exciting relationship, but I don’t want to blow my relationship. I want to drive fast in my car, but I don’t want to die. I want to have as many really fun technology gadgets in my life without going broke. What most of our world is centered on is the risk taking part of that.
We idolize and put up on a pedestal all of the people that have taken huge risks and then succeeded. We read news stories about them. We live in a world that sensationalizes and makes it seem easier than it is to accomplish and have extraordinary success having taken huge risk when day-to-day grinding it out and reducing risk is boring and unenjoyable, but it’s the way that you get from here to there. It’s the way that spectacular successes really are made. You put yourself in a position to have spectacular success when you have lasted through all of the difficult experiences in the world of trading without losing all of your money. That’s how you get to the point where you can take that big trade.
So many people, they just want the big trade. They just want it now. They don’t want to put the work in, and they don’t want to go through seven years. If I tell somebody, “Okay, it takes seven years to become truly successful at trading,” they’ll just go on to the next podcast. They’ll just go on to the next teacher. They’ll just go listen to the next interview with somebody. They’ll just think, where’s the shortcut? The Tim Ferriss 4-Hour Workweek spawned an entire industry of how do I get the same result that I don’t have to do the work? What they forget is you can trick your body into growing muscle quickly. You can shortcut it. The trade-off is you’re going to take risks with your health, and you’re never going to grow the mental stamina along with the physical growth. That’s what everybody seems to be interested in these days is how do I get the result, how do I pump whatever it is up by taking shortcuts, and then you don’t mature as an individual during that process at all, and you lose all of it.
I’m not trying to be old school. I’m just trying to be real school. There isn’t a shortcut. There are no shortcuts without consequences. The shortcuts exist, and I don’t hate Tim Ferriss. I just think that a lot of this advice is really, really problematic because it sells well. How do I get from here to there more quickly, how do I take a pill, how do I take a little bit … I mean, there’s a whole industry. Do you know this Jason? There’s a whole industry, like a little cottage industry of selling small doses of LSD in Silicon Valley to programmers.
Jason Pyles: Whoa. No. I didn’t know about this.
Rob Booker: You don’t know about microdosing?
Jason Pyles: No, no. I’m out of touch with the cool kids and what they’re doing.
Rob Booker: I hate my job. I’m not happy at work, so I microdose, and it puts me in a state of mind so that I can get my work done. People microdose. It is like an erection for the happiness portion of your brain. I’m just going to take a pill and that’s going to happen.
Jason Pyles: I do that too, but I do it with Snicker bars in the afternoon.
Rob Booker: Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. All right, fine. Now, how far do people take it? This is exactly the thing is that maturing as an individual says, I’m going to face the reality that this situation isn’t working, and I’m going to work through the root causes of the problem. Whereas the new shortcut industry is how do I ignore the root cause of the problem and treat the symptoms?
Jason Pyles: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah.
Rob Booker: In the world of trading, that’s really dangerous. How do I shortcut everything, learn a pattern? Can I make a million dollars tomorrow? No. However, the journey is enjoyable. That’s the best whole thing.
Jason Pyles: Yeah. Yeah. No. Wow, that’s so interesting. It reminds me of The Karate Kid in a way. Do you remember that movie from 1984? It’s one of my favorites. Daniel just wanted those beliefs to stop. He just wanted a fast solution. Mr. Miyagi started out with having him stay on the floor. You know what I mean?
Rob Booker: Yeah.
Jason Pyles: It was a long progression to get him where he ultimately wanted to be.
Rob Booker: Yeah. Favorite line from that movie, Jason?
Jason Pyles: The one where he talks about being on the right side of the road as [crosstalk 00:12:09]
Rob Booker: “Squish like grape.”
Jason Pyles: Yeah. “The middle of squish like grape.”
Rob Booker: Yeah. That’s my favorite too. I also never forget the, “Put him in a body bag.”
Jason Pyles: Yeah, that’s hilarious, and “Sweep the leg.” Yeah.
Rob Booker: “Sweep the leg.” Oh my gosh. All right. Well, to our dear listeners, we have a special announcement here at the end of the show. We ran a contest on the comments section of the podcast. Two things have happened. We have a winner, which we will announce in the next episode, and we also fixed the blog so that all of your content, all of your comments, are now visible on the blog. You can talk to each other and comment to each other, and all the comments are now visible on each episode. Go to traderspodcast.com, leave a comment on your favorite episode, and, Jason, we’ll do it again. We’re going to announce a winner next time, but we’ll start running the contest again for the next few episodes, and we’ll give an Amazon gift certificate to the comment or question that comes in that we like the most.
Jason Pyles: Yeah. I like that. That’s fun.
Rob Booker: Love you all, everybody. Thanks for listening. I’m Rob Booker and on behalf on our esteemed producer, Jason Pyles, you’re listening to The Traders Podcast.

Direct download: TTP563.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 8:58am EDT

Do you use the news to make your trading decisions? Or perhaps you’ve been wondering if you should learn more about trading fundamentals in relation to economic news and news in general. In Episode 562 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles discuss trading off the news cycles and how economic fears and hopes can influence the markets. Join us to learn more!

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Be sure to catch up with Scott Welsh at his Website
and at Twitter

Jason’s movie podcasts:
http://moviepodcast.network/ – A group of eight movie-related podcasts covering new movie releases and many genres: sci-fi, horror, western, etc.


Full Episode Transcript:

Rob: I call this meeting to order.

Jason: All right.

Rob: The Traders Podcast Episode 562, I believe.

Jason: I think so. It might be right.

Rob: I’m not quite sure, but I believe it’s 562 and want to welcome our new listeners to the podcast. If you want to start with the Traders podcast and you’re brand new to the show, might I recommend episode one which you can find at traderspodcast.com. And if you like the show, we’d love to hear from you and you can leave a comment on the episode post at traderspodcast.com. Just leave a comment. We’ll maybe read it on the air, answer your question. That kind of thing.

Okay, let me ask you a question Jason. Nothing in mind, I just want to ask you, right now in the United States, as we’re talking and as we’re recording this message, what is the big news?

Jason: Oh, the big news?

Rob: First thing that comes to mind.

Jason: Presently the NFL people kneeling and people standing for the National Anthem.

Rob: Okay, it was easy. You came up with it. It rolled right off the tongue. It didn’t take you a long time to think about it. Now, there are some days and times when answering that question is a little bit more difficult. There are quiet news cycles, and during those quiet news cycles, there really isn’t a major thing. You might have said recently, Oh well it’s Hurricane Irma or Hurricane Harvey or this devastation in Puerto Rico,’ from I think it was Maria. Whatever it was. But from time to time, there’s no major news but usually you can say, with absolute certainty, this is what the major thing that I’m hearing about in the news is. And today on the podcast, what I’d like to do is address how that relates to the world of trading, because there are traders out there who announce that fundamentals or economic news or just news in general, is the major driver of price action. And because it’s the major driver of price action, that it is the sole thing that someone should focus upon.

Now hey listen, I’m no one to argue with focus and I think that’s a great idea. And I think that if you do want to focus on fundamentals and you want to make that a strategy, then focus on it exclusively and do great at that. And if you want to do that, focus on watching for the release of the economic news reports that come out and focus on learning how to trade short term strategies that are in line with whatever numbers were released or the surprise, or I don’t know, whatever else.

Jason: Is it okay if I have three different TVs to watch?

Rob: Yes.

Jason: Okay, awesome.

Rob: There were these commercials about trading back in the day when Yahoo was a thing. And I wish I could find this commercial online, but this guy wakes up and there’s a TV with Yahoo Finance on it. And then he walks in the kitchen, there’s a TV or monitor with Yahoo Finance on it. Everywhere he goes in the house, he’s looking at economic news or something and everywhere he goes, and I thought, Oh, that guy’s got the life.

Jason: Right.

Rob: Or it was like an E Trade commercial but I really think it was Yahoo. But anyway, I was like, Yeah, that’s the best ever. That’s amazing. And now I want to get away from that stuff and I just want to sit and read and stuff. Okay, but yes you can have three TVs and whatever else or you can get a Bloomberg terminal and focus on the news and economics and diving really deep into that one subject area. But I want to just speak about a particular way that our listeners can focus on the news and use it to benefit their trading or to avoid costly mistakes or big problems.

Jason: Okay.

Rob: So the other big economic and political news that’s going on right now is that there is a major conflict politically between North Korea and the United States.

Jason: Yes.

Rob: And it seems to have escalated into some pretty significant tension and that tension has resulted in the financial markets gyrating more wildly than usually and risk assets like the stock market’s dropping, and safe haven stuff like the Japanese yen, rising. And it really as of the time of this recording, it’s still really in its infant stages and we’re not seeing a lot of that yet. And by the time you listen to this episode, maybe a lot of this has already played out. But the lessons that I want to talk about right now are still the same and still going to be applicable. And here they are.

The question you want to ask at a time like this is what is the major political or news related influence right now? What is influencing the collective consciousness of the nation wherever you live? And in the United States right now, it’s the National Football Association and kneeling or standing during the National Anthem. And then you’re gonna ask yourself, does that inspire fear or hope or indifference in the financial markets? What would your opinion about that be Jason?

Jason: I think that would be indifference for that particular subject.

Rob: Right, it’s indifference. And during that time, if that’s the only major economic news or whatever news, if that’s the only thing, then there is no reason to incorporate economic fundamentals in your analysis. And I know some of you listening disagree with me. But I’m talking about the big moves. Of course, if there’s a consumer price information release that day you could use that for short term trading or whatever. I’m speaking about something bigger and that has more influence.

Now we’ll move on to the North Korea. Do you think that the North Korean news which is capturing the fearful imaginations of so many people, do you think that inspires fear, hope or indifference in the financial markets?

Jason: Well, it seems fear, but my understanding of trading is, traders can usually benefit from other people’s sorrow and pain. Is that right Rob?

Rob: That can be true, yeah. So let’s talk about that. That’s a great segue way into what we’re doing here. Okay, perfect. Because the North Korea situation is so dominant and its on the front pages, and because it does lead to fear, what we then look at is we have some options and we want to be careful. Number one, we don’t want to be going long or buying lots of risk-related assets. We don’t want to go long, lots of technology stocks. We don’t want to go long, the broad financial markets. We don’t want to do that immediately because that fear is pushing the markets lower and causing people to, in other words, worry and that worry is expressing itself through declining prices. And what you can do in a situation like that, as that news dominates and as that news escalates and as that news sort of just circles on top of each other and comes back around on itself, you can basically turn that into a trade that lasts more than one day.

Last week, I shorted the Euro Japanese yen, and I did that very publicly and I did that on Twitter and on my big telegram channel that everybody follows me on, and in my members area and whatever else, and I shorted the Euro Japanese yen and it dropped significantly. And the reason that I did it was primarily economic or news related. This news was gathering steam, hitting the front pages and the only thing that it could result in is fear. Now I could have done what you just mentioned, Jason. In a situation where there’s a lot of fear, like a financial crisis or whatever else, I can wait for that fear to dissipate or in another words, I can use that fear as an opportunity to buy financial instruments that I have wanted to buy for a while and I can buy them on sale after they’ve dropped.

Jason: Yes.

Rob: I can use every drop of information to sort of enter the market and collect some of this asset that I know I really like.

Jason: That’s neat.

Rob: And you could do either one of those two things. I’ll give you another example. So when Donald Trump was elected president, I know this sounds like I’m just bragging but maybe I am a little bit, but I said back in March of 2016, there’s no way he loses. He’s absolutely gonna win the presidency and I remember my mom called me. She goes, Oh that’s so great. I’m so glad. I really hope you’re right. And I was like, You’re a Donald Trump supporter? I was like, What? What? I don’t understand this but okay. And a lot of people were really happy with me because I said that, and a lot of people really hated me because I said that. I think all told that week, 150,000 people heard me say that, that week.

Jason: Yeah, it’s not like you were making a value judgment, right? You were just making a prediction. Right.

Rob: Right. Yeah. And then, I made a value judgment and said, When he wins, the dollar will fall and gold will rise within 12 months, gold will rise to $2,000. Was totally right about the election and totally wrong about the result. Totally wrong about that. He got elected and all of a sudden his promise to put a ton of money into infrastructure and possibly lower taxes, just pushed the dollar up and be protectionist, pushed the dollar up and the financial markets just went crazy. They loved it and then gold fell. And I was wrong about all of those things.

But, okay, that doesn’t matter, that’s not the most important part. The most important part of it is, is that I could either have said, All right, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to go ahead and I’m gonna just trade this sentiment. I’m going to go with this sentiment. I might not have thought it was going to happen but I’m gonna view it, it’s reality. It is what is happening and so I’m gonna go along with it. I’m just gonna basically ride this thing all the way up. I’m gonna just go with it because the news is dominating, it’s causing this momentum and I’m going to ride it.

Or, just like you said, everybody else’s euphoria could be an opportunity for me to get in and trade against them when the time is right. And so the other way to play it was, to wait until the end of last year when the dollar sort of topped out after a giant run upward, the dollar kind of topped out and then started to fall. And I could have waited for the euphoria to settle down and dissipate and I could have used this rally in the dollar for example, to start shorting the dollar every time it moved up let’s say 5%. Just like you said, I could basically fade euphoria or fade fear. Go the opposite direction that the entire crowd is going and use that as an opportunity.

Jason: Yes.

Rob: And I think that’s the real way that you play the news or whatever you want to call it. That’s the way you do it is you either take the sentiment as it is right now, you say, Does that inspire fear or hope? And then you trade that hope or fear. Or you say, That’s not gonna last forever. I’m gonna start fading that or trading against it and building a position. And those are some of the biggest trades that you can ever take in your whole life.

Jason: Yeah, because it’s not a matter of is it going to move the other way. You know that that’s gonna happen, that’s inevitable. But the question is, when, right? So that’s a timing matter.

Rob: Right.

Jason: Gotcha.

Rob: Yeah, and because most people are pretty good at picking direction, because these are obvious things that nothing can go up forever and any euphoria associated with Donald Trump’s election or any fear associated with the North Korea situation dissipates over time, because it’s just a reality, that will eventually turn around. The real question is how do you build a position slowly and surely without losing your shirt and keeping your losses down. How do you build a position over time and can you become patient enough? Can you do that? Are you able to be patient enough to build that position? That’s the real question.

Jason: Yes, yes. Tricky.

Rob: So in other words, I don’t know what’s happening right now in the markets, but I’m long the yen right now anyway, as most of the yen pairs, the Euro yen, the Aussie yen and the stock market, they’re all up. THey’ve all gone up and so as they’ve gone up, I’ve wanted to basically fade that euphoria and this North Korea situation is sort of the catalyst that turns all that stuff around. That one news reporter, or one news event, or one news cycle ends and then another thing picks it up and carries it in the other direction. And that seems to be or appears to be what might be happening now. And so I’m kind of hoping and maybe I’ll get lucky, that I’m gonna be able to catch the beginning stages of something that maybe lasts for a long time and travels in the opposite direction. Maybe. If not, I’ll just stop out and not worry about it.

Jason: Yeah. Set your stop losses, right Rob?

Rob: Yeah, yeah. Maybe you’re right, maybe you’re wrong. But if you’re wrong, just get out and just go back in later on with whatever. Exactly.

Jason: Yeah, it’s simple.

Rob: Where can I go to hear more about movies?

Jason: Well, you could go to MoviePodcast.Network. We have eight different shows there and it talks about all different kinds of movies, like sci-fi movies, westerns, horror movies, new stuff that’s in theaters. So yeah, check it out, MoviePodcast.Network.

Rob: That sounds amazing. As of the time that we are discussing all of this stuff, what are you going to see this weekend?

Jason: Oh yes, American Made, the new Tom Cruise movie. Have you seen trailers for that?

Rob: Oh yeah, yeah. He’s like a crazy wild adventure guy.

Jason: Yeah, but once again, on an airplane. It’s like you can’t have a Tom Cruise movie where he’s not flying in airplanes improperly.

Rob: Did you like the Jack Reacher movies?

Jason: I liked the first one. I did not like the second one.

Rob: Yeah, okay agreed. I didn’t even get through the second one.

Jason: Yeah, yeah. Agreed. I know what you mean. Yes. The first one’s very good though and it was set in Pittsburgh, our old stomping grounds.

Rob: Oh. Oh right.

Jason: Thereabouts, right?

Rob: Yeah, okay.

Jason: That was kind of cool.

Rob: All right, well, Jason thanks for that. And thanks for listening our dear friends. You can go to traderspodcast.com, comment on the episode. Don’t forget in iTunes, we’d love it if you’d click that subscribe button in iTunes, that helps us out. That helps the show. That helps us all, helps us all, helps all people of all walks of life. Not really, just helps us. Just me and Jason.

Jason: That’s right.

Rob: Hopefully that’s worth it still the same. We love you all. We’ll see you next time. Bye for now.

Direct download: TTP562.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 10:49am EDT

Peter Drucker once said we greatly overestimate what we can do in one year, but we greatly underestimate what is possible for us in five years. In Episode 561 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles discuss trading goals, namely, what they could be versus what they should be. Often a trader’s goal-setting has to do with bottom-line numbers, as opposed to goals that help the trader develop characteristics over time to accomplish those goals. Join us to hear more!

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Be sure to catch up with Scott Welsh at his Website
and at Twitter

Hear Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly where we review new movies in theaters.

Horror Movie Podcast where we’re Dead Serious About Horror Movies.

Movie Podcast Network a group of eight film-related audio podcasts that cover various movie genres.


Full Episode Transcript:

Rob Booker: Mr. Pyles.

Jason Pyles: Rob Booker.

Rob Booker: Peter Drucker once said, People often over estimate what they can accomplish in one year, but they greatly underestimate what they could accomplish in five years. Your thoughts?

Jason Pyles: Oh my, when I hear this quote it’s a little overwhelming for me because I’m like, okay, how am I supposed to know? If I have trouble grasping the smaller amount of time, how could I even have an idea of what to shoot for in the larger amount of time?

Rob Booker: So, where do you fall on the subject of, the spectrum of goal setting then?

Jason Pyles: Well, that’s a good question. I get the concept that where if you work backwards, reverse engineer your big goal, then you can break it down and find out what the smaller thing should be, what you should do next. Yeah, I’m a big fan of goal setting actually. My biggest mistake has always been I try to make too many goals, too many things to accomplish. For me it’s like pick one or two things and focus on those, accomplish those, and move on to the next thing.

Rob Booker: Oh, that’s interesting. I really like that. I was thinking this morning about my own goals related to trading and what those goals could or should be. I realize that so often in the world of trading, what we do is we set goals that are largely financial in nature. We set a goal to make a certain amount of money, but we don’t often set goals, or we forget that we should set goals that focus primarily on the things that someone does to make money in the markets. What someone will do is they will set a goal to make $500 a week, but they don’t really set any goals related to the type of person that they’re going to be or the type of schedule that they’re going to keep, or the little things that they do, the incremental things that get you all the way to the goal that you said that you wanted. A little bit of each of those things is really necessary, and as a trader, it’s good to think about what you can and want to accomplish in purely financial terms.

What I thought I’d share today is maybe a little bit of a strategy that has worked for me in the past, and even try to explain how those things are interrelated for a trader in particular. Because as a trader, it’s not going to work if you simply say, I want to make a lot of money and I’m going to use the law of attraction, and suddenly then you’re just suddenly making a bunch of money in the markets. It’s just too difficult. It’s just doesn’t really work.

Jason Pyles: And it’s not really specific, right?

Rob Booker: Yeah. I’ve seen this happen a bunch of times to myself and other people. I’ll set a goal to make a certain amount of money from trading, or just make a certain amount of money, and I’ll assume that it’s from trading and then I’ll make the money from somewhere else. So it’s like, okay, I mean thank you universe. That was great, but I really wanted to learn how to do this trading thing. So let’s say someone out there is listening and they’re relatively new, and maybe even they’re listening and their partner or spouse is listening with them and they’re interested in the financial markets. They don’t really know if it is a scam or if it’s possible. They want to set some goals because setting goals makes it sound like you’re serious.

So here’s a little strategy for goal setting. If you’re brand new to the world of trading then your goal should be to not lose more than a certain amount of money. Your goal should be within a six-month period of time to discover and focus on one particular trading method that you’re going to use somewhat exclusively, whether it’s systematic and robotic or otherwise. Those are the two things that matter so much. When you take Peter Drucker to heart, and I’m sure he was a good man … Well, I don’t know if he was a good man. He could’ve been a complete deviant for all I know. I don’t know anything about the man. I mean some of the stuff was kind of creepy.

Anyway, the point is that he said, Oh well, think about what you can accomplish in five years. Let’s see, if you started thinking about five years, you run into what you said, Jason, that when you’re just starting out as a trader thinking about the five-year thing is ridiculous.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, you’re like, I don’t even know if I want a baby in eight months, right?

Rob Booker: Exactly. Think about all the children we could have in five years. Well, let’s just focus on maybe taking care of the one we have. So you don’t want to have an expansive vision as a trader. Maybe if you’re in some other industry, but as a trader you want to focus at the start on finding and excelling at a system that’s going to require a ton of experimentation and a ton of creativity, and a ton of learning about lots of different things, and diving in and bringing in information from all different kinds of sources and all different places. It’s going to require that.

So you’re going to do a lot, but during that time your goal is to eventually come to love and focus on one system that seems to produce any kind of return, any kind of positive return, even if it’s just a dollar a week, anything that produces a return, positive return. Then the second focus is on not losing more than a certain amount of money within each day, week, or month. Those are the two most important … those are the goals that matter that lead to incremental success.

Jason Pyles: So Rob, I have a question about this, that what you said is just very simple and I love that, actually. But I wonder if somebody kind of new to trading, maybe in their previous work … You spend eight hours at a day job doing whatever it is for eight hours and it’s complex. There are lots of things to do. Do you think that traders get a little bit … They’re a little surprises that, Oh, so all I need to do is A and B, like what you just said? Do you think that sometimes they just feel like they should be doing more and so then they try to do more?

Rob Booker: Yeah, I feel like people are disappointed when they find out they don’t have to do more. There’s this badge of honor of martyrdom that traders, or really everyone kind of has it; I’m doing something difficult. Like the tech used to say, I’m doing the laundry, if you wanted to be called a superhero for having done something really ordinary. I think we want trading to be different and we want it to be exciting, and we want it to be complicated. A lot of people get into trading because they’re interested in the markets, and they’re interested in the markets because it seems like a get rich quick scheme. So they learn everything they can but as soon as it becomes apparent that the primary responsibility is to not lose money, the primary responsibility is not to make money then people just, they lose their interest.

I think one way that people get caught up in the markets is this idea that you can make a lot of money and that’s what inspires … So, it’s the same way that you want to learn everything you can about someone you’re dating in order to get that relationship to the next level, hubba-hubba-hubba, you know. If you realize that that’s never going to happen … yeah, maybe it’s just not going to happen, then your interest in learning their favorite color or favorite flavor of ice cream … then you’re not going to do it anymore. You’re just not as interested.

I think that happens a lot in the world of trading that true love is in a relationship … Listen, what I’m learning in life is that it’s getting through the simple moments and enjoying the companionship when all that other stuff has faded away and some of that passion isn’t the same as it was at the beginning of the relationship, and it’s a friendship and it’s a lot of other things. You want to know more about that person even though you already know everything about that person. I want to get to that stage and getting to that stage requires not blowing it, you know.

Jason Pyles: Right.

Rob Booker: Not blowing it, but the challenge at the beginning of the trading career isn’t that you’re going to become bored with it or it’s going to bad or whatever. The challenge is blowing the whole thing to the high heavens. That’s the challenge and that’s the same with the relationship. In trading, it’s very similar that the goal is to just not blow it. Don’t lie to the other person at the beginning of the relationship. Don’t give them a disease. There’s just things you don’t do, and the same with trading. Don’t blow it. It makes it kind of sad because you want it to be all over the top and crazy and wonderful and amazing, but there are these simple things to do and that’s all you need to do. It’s your only responsibility.

Jason Pyles: Well, as most of the traders out there know, I’m not a currency trader myself. But I will say I can see into the world sometimes, maybe. I think that the reason why perhaps they feel impatient or frustrated is it reminds me exactly of that dating advice you get when you’re single and they’re like, Hey, when you stop looking, that’s when it’s going to happen and you’ll fall in love. Because I feel like we’re saying, Just don’t lose money. Then once people get that and they stop having their hearts set on making money, then they actually do start making money, but we can’t think of that.

Rob Booker: Yeah, right. I mean imagine a movie where the hero of the movie is desperately seeking love, and then in the search for love becomes lonely, and in the search for love hit’s rock bottom, and in the search for love exhausts all the options that they could have thought and runs through everything. Then doesn’t notice, right, the person that works at the record store that’s kind of geeky, and loved them all along and he didn’t really notice it and invested … Anyway, I mean you get the idea that this is what traders do. They go, Oh well, I didn’t know how to use those moving averages. This Fibonacci stuff is amazing, [crosstalk 00:11:06]. They have an affair with Fibonacci and then one day they wake up and the Fibonacci is tying their shoes quietly at the edge of the bed and they’re like, Where are you going? The Fibonacci is like, I just need some space, and then they leave.

Then they’re like, Oh, fudge muffin, and later on by the pool they meet again, or they meet exponential moving average and they’re like, Oh, wow, that’s just what I needed! It’s my rebound. They’re constantly going from one to the next and it’s exhausting. Then they realize that there’s this simple way of doing things that produced a return, and it wasn’t spectacular but it wasn’t for anybody that’s doing well.

I have a friend. His name is Tim Sykes and he’s a penny stock trader. He’s good to his family and he’s good to his students. He’s just … overall he’s a good person. He used to have as really brash persona. Time says to people, he says this all the time, Like start with a small account and you’d be surprised what you can accomplish if you focus. He’s not saying you’re not going to make a lot of money. He’s just saying don’t put your entire focus on that. Learn the pattern. Learn the system. What I say is download a simple robot. Automate your trading and watch the robot trade. Manage the robot. Be an asset manager, and don’t go down the road of all the other crazy things that you can do. Just be a little bit less frantic about trying to achieve success and do one thing, and that is protect your account. Don’t lose money. Don’t have a big loss.

If you can do that, if you can simply cross that hurdle, the stuff that opens up to you as a trader is unbelievable. It’s unbelievable what will happen to you if you simply never allow a significant loss to occur in your account. If you’re constantly paying down your bad trades or cutting off your bad trades, or whatever … Everybody can find a simple strategy that will make some kind of return, but most everyone blows it all because they get too excited. That’s the challenge. Do the things that are incremental. Do the incremental small things well and then just, as a primary responsibility, protect your trading account.

Jason Pyles: Uh-huh (affirmative), I love it.

Rob Booker: Let’s plug the movie podcasts.

Jason Pyles: Sure, yeah. So if people out there are into movies, which I am, then you can listen to our reviews of the new movies that are in theaters at MoviePodcastWeekly.com. If you happen to like horror films, we also have another show called HorrorMoviePodcast.com, which is perfect for Halloween season.

Rob Booker: Brilliant. I love the podcasts, can’t wait.

Jason Pyles: Thank you.

Rob Booker: I might even start listening to the horror movie podcast.

Jason Pyles: You’d be surprised Rob. It’s a lot more analytical than you think.

Rob Booker: Okay, that sounds good. Hey, I watched A Ghost Story, starring Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, so what did you think?

Rob Booker: Okay, my wife was like, What is going on here? [Crosstalk 00:14:19]

Jason Pyles: She’s eating pie for 10 minutes straight, right?

Rob Booker: I loved it.

Jason Pyles: Me too.

Rob Booker: It’s a movie that stayed with me after I watched it.

Jason Pyles: Uh-huh (affirmative), it sure does.

Rob Booker: Which is a defining characteristic of a movie that I know I love.

Jason Pyles: Same, yeah.

Rob Booker: But it’s not … It’s a frustrating movie also.

Jason Pyles: It’s a little bit of an art film, so yeah.

Rob Booker: Yeah, exactly. All right everybody, until next time, I’m Rob Booker, and that’s the producer. Thanks for listening and subscribing to The Traders Podcast.

Direct download: TTP561.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 11:26am EDT

Author Ray Dalio is the founder and co-chairman of Bridgewater Associates, which has become the largest and best-performing hedge fund in the world. In Episode 560 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles discuss Palio’s book, “Principles: Life and Work.”

Rob says what was most important in building his company wasn’t knowing the future; it was knowing how to react appropriately to the information available at the time. We traders often become obsessed with a desire to know the future and with being right. Join us for this episode, and let’s explore these principles together.

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Be sure to catch up with Scott Welsh at his Website
and at Twitter

Hear Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly where we review new movies in theaters.

Horror Movie Podcast where we’re Dead Serious About Horror Movies.

Movie Podcast Network a group of eight film-related audio podcasts that cover various movie genres.


Full Episode Transcript:

Rob Booker: All right, there’s a new book out, Jason.

Jason Pyles: Oh, tell it.

Rob Booker: This is my favorite book, other than Shonn Campbell’s book Inventory Trading, which if you have not read that book, stop everything, go to Amazon. I think it’s even part of the Kindle Unlimited program. It is magnificent. Shonn’s not a writer and he’s not a professional educator, but it’s a great book. I’m just going to give him a little plug there. Other than that, I just finished reading essentially what is the best book about the financial markets I’ve ever read in my life.

Jason Pyles: Wow. That’s high praise. What is it?

Rob Booker: And I don’t ever say that, really. I said it about Shonn’s book, but there’s not a lot out there otherwise.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, okay.

Rob Booker: So a few years ago, I became enamored with, and there really is not a better word for it, enamored with Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates, and the story behind the building of the largest hedge fund in the world, now managing over $160 billion in assets. And I became fascinated, Jason, with this guy because of his reputation for having a culture at work of radical transparency, which I think we’ve touched on this subject before in previous episodes.

Jason Pyles: Okay, yeah.

Rob Booker: At the company, there are no meetings about other people held in private, unless it’s something sensitive to do with their health, which you don’t reveal outward. But there are no conversations about other people, there are no reviews, there are no private conversations in the company. Everything is recorded all the time, and there are editors at the company that chop up the footage into digestible chunks so that it can be archived and searched for and watched later. There is a culture of radical openness about disagreement, and there’s only about 1,500 employees there, and they have just cycled through and chewed up people left and right, because this culture just does not do well for people who are conflict avoiders. As you and I know, you and I are both world class conflict avoiders.

Jason Pyles: Oh yeah. That’s [inaudible 00:02:12].

Rob Booker: We actually almost made the US Olympic Team for conflict avoidance, but since it was a competition, we dropped out. We didn’t want to compete.

Jason Pyles: Exactly.

Rob Booker: We didn’t want to compete with … We didn’t want to take the spot from somebody else.

Jason Pyles: That’s true. That’s true.

Rob Booker: That’s the culture, and I became really fascinated by this culture that has built this great company. Anyway, they had an internal document at Bridgewater Associates, and this internal document was written by the founder and it was called Principles. Seven years ago, you could only get it by finding a copy somewhere on the deep web, like you could find someone had uploaded an original copy in PDF form somewhere on the web. And you could download it and read it and it was all formatted incorrectly and was messed up, and it was just gold to me. It was just absolute gold. And I would save it to all of my electronic devices, print it out, get it bound, highlight it, everything, because they’re these principles that he used to build his company and run his life, and principles are these universal laws that can be applied to any situation. Instead of directives, which are do this in this exact instance, a principle is a general law that can be applied in a variety of circumstances. And he wrote all 200+ of his principles out.

That became popular, then he offered it for download on his website, and then that turned into a book contract. And near the end of his career … he’s in his early 70s now … he wrote Principles: Life and Work. And I just got a copy on Tuesday, and I just blew through this book, and it was astounding. If you’re listening now and you haven’t downloaded the book or you haven’t read it, I think it’s sold out on Amazon, but you can still of course get the electronic copy. I want to read some quotes from this today, Jason, and just talk about some of the concepts that are in this book. It’s just absolutely brilliant.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, let’s do it.

Rob Booker: What was most important in building my company wasn’t knowing the future. It was knowing how to react appropriately to the information available at each point in time. And As traders, we become obsessed with knowing the future and being right. This is the world’s most consistently successful hedge fund manager ever in history. He’s the most important … other than Warren Buffett, he’s the most important financial persona in the last 50 to 100 years, and he’s telling you it’s not important to know the future, which so many people think is important, that predicting the future is really important. It’s not. It’s learning how to react appropriately to the information that you have in front of you.

An example of this would be thinking that when you plan a trade, you need to plan a trade that’s going to work out. Well, you just need to plan a trade and take it, and then all the money is made, or the success comes, from dealing with it as it is once it’s open. The money isn’t made before it’s open. The money is made from dealing with situations as they go. In other words, to be prolific in your trading at the early stages and learn as much as you can from each individual trade that you take, and then become more selective over time. Anyway.

Jason Pyles: May I ask a clarifying question there, Rob?

Rob Booker: Yes, I mean I’ll take on the persona of Ray Dalio and then I’ll answer your question.

Jason Pyles: All right, thank you. In terms of what you just said, if someone … so how does that jive with not interfering or fiddling with your trade prematurely or something like that? You know what I mean? Where’s the balance there between those two?

Rob Booker: At the beginning of one’s trading journey, there is no balance. You fiddle infinitely with it. You accept that you know nothing, but that there’s so much power and success that can come from openly admitting that you don’t know anything. For as long as you can possibly keep that attitude toward life, you don’t mind fiddling with it, but the point is that you fiddle with it consciously with the goal of learning from that. Open a hundred trades and fiddle with all of them, but make notes about what didn’t work, and in particular, make notes about what didn’t work.

Jason Pyles: Nice, okay.

Rob Booker: And then don’t repeat that. But at the beginning, instead of trying … This is so good that you brought this up. Instead of trying to be so selective at the beginning, putting so much pressure on oneself to be right and to prove to others that you know what you’re doing, don’t even try to prove to others that you know what you’re doing. In fact, openly admit that you don’t know what you’re doing, and don’t put the emphasis on that. So when you open a trade, don’t worry about whether the trade is right, worry about what you’re doing with it, and at the beginning of your trading journey, do all kinds of stuff with the trade. Open up the same trade in five different trading accounts, and treat every single one of them differently, and see what didn’t work. Then as time goes on, see what did work.

Jason Pyles: That’s good. I like that.

Rob Booker: All right, this is another great one. Maturity is the ability to reject good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.

Jason Pyles: I like that. I like how he says maturity, because yeah, that’s the key to that right there. An immature person would just take whatever they can get, but this is having the insight to take what is best.

Rob Booker: Exactly. Exactly. And maturity … It automatically builds into it the fact that when you start off as a trader, you’re not mature, and you shouldn’t … you don’t have the ability to reject good alternatives to pursue even better ones, because you don’t know the difference. Part of maturing as a trader is taking enough trades and learning enough from them that you can sort out what doesn’t work for you and what does work for you. And he has this intense process that started manually, by hand, and then went, as the computer age evolved, he could throw all this stuff into a computer. But every single time when …

In the early ’80s when faced with the thought and the idea that inflation was spiraling out of control and it was going to lead to a depression, he basically drew a conclusion and went on Wall Street … what is the name? Louis Rukeyser, who was … he did this PBS show on Friday nights that I used to watch … and he went on there and he announced that there would be a depression. And he says, I’m certain of it. And there was no depression, and he was fantastically wrong, and he lost everything. He lost his company, he had to fire everybody, couldn’t even afford to fly to Texas to meet with a client that would have kept the company going.

That all happened because he bet the farm on … and he wasn’t mature, he didn’t know and he thought he did. So when 2007, 2008 came along, they by that point had built all these models, and they could run the data through all of these models. He went through newspapers from a hundred years ago. He went through everything, and he said when all of these economic conditions exist in this way, this is what has generally happened.

And this time, in 2007 and 2008, he didn’t bet the farm, so to speak, and he didn’t say that he was certain. He did meet with government officials and published warnings, but in his own trading and for his own clients he didn’t bet the farm. He put a bet that things were going to go wrong, and he put protections in place so that if the market dropped there would be a hedge. In the year 2008 when the market was down and the average hedge fund was down more than in any year in history, they were up like 42% or some crazy number. Or 14%, whatever it was.

And he said, I could have made even more, but what I did this time was I didn’t bet the farm. He was mature. He did all the things right because he was mature, and he only got that way because he’d been doing it at that point since the early ’70s, so for 30+ years. There are a lot of people in our industry and in our world of trading that want to be that good, and they want to be that good within 12 months.

Jason Pyles: Oh yeah, that’s the hard part. You just want to be successful and mature right off the bat, but …

Rob Booker: Somebody asked me one time, they said, I want to do a podcast. How do I do a podcast? And I said, You get a microphone and you start talking into the … well, get in touch with Jason and have him produce your show, ask him to produce your show … but get a microphone and start speaking into the microphone and start uploading the content. They said, Well, how do I have a popular podcast? I was like, Oh, do that a thousand times.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, Rob. Brilliance. That’s exactly right.

Rob Booker: At this point in time, you and I know what works and we know what doesn’t, right?

Jason Pyles: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Rob Booker: And we’ve tried hard on some episodes and come up short, and naturally released episodes that were the best ever, to our listeners anyway. And how are you going to know the difference between those? How would we at this point know how to redirect an episode that might not be … whatever. You only know it through experience and through doing it wrong and through making the mistakes. And we’re still learning. We’re still learning how to do a full transcript of each episode and promote the … You have to just fall for the idea, fall in love with the idea that you don’t know anything, and that to the extent that you can, you’re going to figure out what generally works, a principle. And you’re going to do the best you can of implementing those principles in your trading. But you’re never going to fall for the idea that you know exactly what’s going to happen next.

Jason Pyles: It’s a marathon, not a sprint, right?

Rob Booker: Right. And there’s just an obsession with … it’s perpetrated out there by podcasts like this one, that there’s a chance that you could make a lot of money within a really short period of time. But really, there’s a chance that you can make a lot of money over a long period of time …

Jason Pyles: [inaudible 00:13:04].

Rob Booker: … if you’re stupendously lucky. All successful people operate by principles that help them be successful. Without principles, you’d be forced to react to circumstances that come at you without considering what you value most and how to make choices to get what you want. This would prevent you from making the most of your life. He also goes on to say, Three questions matter most: what do you want, what is true, and what are you going to do about it? What I love about these three questions at the very beginning of the book is that a lot of us think we know what we want. At the same time, a lot of us haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about that and thinking about the consequences of wanting something most. And that’s the first question: what do you want most? And then second, say what is true.

So let’s say I said, What I want most is a million downloads of the Trader’s Podcast within the next 12 months starting now. And then I would ask, But what is true? Will people listen to podcasts that are uploaded consistently, and people are responding to Facebook advertisements, and unless I get a lot of people to share the episodes with other people, I’m not going to get that many downloads. People are going to have to introduce the podcast to their friends. So I would have to build a plan that took advantage of that. We’d have to upload consistently, we’d have to be dependable, and then we’d have to build a program where more people that don’t know about the podcast find out about it, and then people who already know about it are incentivized to share it.

Those things are true. That’s true. At this point, we know that those things work. We know that. And we’d probably have to be … we’d have to do a bunch of things. I’d have to be interviewed by other podcasters that have a good audience and whatever else you’d have to do.

Then the third question comes into play. What am I going to do about it, meaning would I be willing to get up early, would I be willing to stay up late, would I be willing to miss stuff with my kids? What am I willing to do about it? How bad do I really … I said I wanted it. That third question asks how badly do you really want it. Our friend of the show, Scott Welsh, he’s a very successful robotic trader, and he got that way from saying what does he want. He wants to automate all of his trading. Well, what’s true? It’s true that you’re not going to find an automated system that works unless you do hundreds of hours of backtesting, even thousands of hours of backtesting.

The final question is what is he going to do about it. Then he did something about it, and that’s why he’s in the upper echelons of people who run robotic systems.

Jason Pyles: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes. That sounded just like him when you were asking those questions. I’m like, Yep, that’s Scott’s philosophy.

Rob Booker: This is probably my favorite quote from the book, and we can end with this one, and I recommend the book to everybody. It’s Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater Associates. Time is like a river that will take you forward into encounters with reality, that will require you to make decisions. You can’t stop the movement down the river, and you can’t avoid the encounters. You can only approach these encounters in the very best way possible. Anyway, definitely worth reading. It’s a hard read for people that don’t like the financial world. If you’re the spouse of one of our dear listeners of the podcast, this is not the book to … Well, I don’t know, maybe it is. The stories are great. I mean it’s just fantastic.

Jason Pyles: Well, it’s a thinker book, you know? It’s not just something you breeze through. You probably have to figure out how to apply it to yourself and how to internalize the principles.

Rob Booker: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. If there are any books that you love as a listener, let us know in the comment section. Leave a comment on the episode 560 of traderspodcast.com. Jason, I would love to know more about movies. Where can I get …

Jason Pyles: That’s nice. Well, how about moviepodcast.network? We have a whole network now of movie podcasts. We have shows about sci-fi, if that’s your thing, even westerns. There’s a show about westerns. I mean, who talks about westerns anymore? That’s pretty cool.

Rob Booker: That’s pretty cool.

Jason Pyles: Streaming movie content, we got that covered. We got horror movies covered. Geek stuff, like if you’re into the geeky world, we’ve got that. There’s even a retro show that covers movies that are 20 years or older. It’s very nostalgic that way. And then of course new movies in theaters. At Movie Podcast.

Rob Booker: Have you seen A Ghost Story starring Casey Affleck?

Jason Pyles: Yes, it’s one of my favorite films of the year.

Rob Booker: I’m really looking forward to seeing this.

Jason Pyles: It’s profound, Rob. It might not necessarily be for everybody, but if you watch that film … like we talked about with this book here … with an open mind and thinking okay, how does this apply to me, it’s very … You will reflect a lot on your own life.

Rob Booker: Is it frightening?

Jason Pyles: No. No, it’s not actually. It kind of looks like it might be a horror movie, but it’s not at all.

Rob Booker: I’m very much looking forward to watching this.

Jason Pyles: It may … It’s definitely going to be in my top 10 list at the end of the year.

Rob Booker: Oh, that’s exciting. Oh, I can’t wait. Did you do a review of this on Movie Podcast Weekly?

Jason Pyles: Sure did, absolutely.

Rob Booker: All right. Go to moviepodcastweekly.com and search for A Ghost Story if you want to read that, or listen to that review.

Jason Pyles: Yep. Episode 251.

Rob Booker: And thank you everyone for listening. We love you so much. Don’t forget to subscribe to the episode on SoundCloud. You could follow it on SoundCloud, you could subscribe on iTunes, that’s always a big help. You can leave a comment or a review. The comments, we’d love for you to leave a comment at the traderspodcast.com website. That’s a great place to leave a comment. We’ll see you next time for 561.

Direct download: TTP560.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:58am EDT

Good morning and welcome Traders Podcast listeners. Imagine if there were a website where you could watch others trade in real time… Not like a webinar, but more like a live reality TV show. Well, in Episode 559 of The Traders Podcast, that’s exactly what Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles talk about, among other things. We’re happy you’re joining us!

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Be sure to catch up with Scott Welsh at his Website
and at Twitter

Hear Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly where we review new movies in theaters.

Horror Movie Podcast where we’re Dead Serious About Horror Movies.

Movie Podcast Network a group of eight film-related audio podcasts that cover various movie genres.

Full Episode Transcript:

Rob Booker: When is your meetup?

Jason Pyles: It’s October 14.

Rob Booker: I really gotta plan ahead on this. I think I already bought my ticket for it and I haven’t even-

Jason Pyles: Yeah, that’s awesome.

Rob Booker: Where is it gonna be?

Jason Pyles: Yeah, it’s gonna be fun. It’s gonna be in Salt Lake City.

Rob Booker: I gotta come to this.

Jason Pyles: And I’ll tell ya, I mean yeah, if you’re gonna be in town, that Friday the 13th, we’re gonna hit a couple movies that day. And then the next day, Saturday, we’re doing the screening. That’s the actual formal event. And then we have a director coming in, we’re gonna do a Q&A. It’ll be really fun.

Rob Booker: Why do I get the feeling that you’re gonna go see a scary movie on that Friday?

Jason Pyles: I think, let’s see, one of them is Jackie Chan action movie, it’s The Foreigner.

Rob Booker: Okay.

Jason Pyles: And then the other one is called Marshall. Yeah, I don’t think there are any horror movies out that Friday, unless I’m wrong. I mean it is October, so they’ll probably be something by then but-

Rob Booker: All right.

Jason Pyles: But there will be a couple non-horror that you could hit with us if you’re around.

Rob Booker: Okay. That sounds great. I really hope to make this. This is really-

Jason Pyles: It’s super fun to go with the listeners, like to a movie. It’s really neat. It’s so funny.

Rob Booker: There’s nothing even similar to this in the world of trading. Nothing.

Jason Pyles: Really? Okay.

Rob Booker: You can’t go to a trading together, you know what I mean?

Jason Pyles: Okay, yeah.

Rob Booker: Are we recording by the way?

Jason Pyles: Yeah, it’s recording.

Rob Booker: Okay. This is the best part about working with you. It’s the greatest part ever, it’s the best thing ever.

Jason Pyles: Oh, thanks.

Rob Booker: So what is the equivalent in the world of trading to, and could something be structured to produce that same, cause going to a movie together, right, you go to see it and then you get to talk about it with people who love to talk about it, right?

Jason Pyles: Absolutely.

Rob Booker: Does anybody talk during the movie?

Jason Pyles: Oh, no. They know all my rules about going to movies cause we talk about it all the time. And so they even giggle about that, all that stuff.

Rob Booker: Can I hear these rules? I need to know these rules.

Jason Pyles: Well, I mean it’s just like for example, I prefer to sit in the top back row, center, in the middle.

Rob Booker: Okay.

Jason Pyles: And not everybody does that, so these other movie buffs who came to our last meetup, they were texting me and making fun of, like, the top back row sucks. And one guy was sitting beside me and he’s like, I’m nervous about even moving in my chair cause I know how particular you are. I’m like, Oh come on. I’m not. You know, they think I’m this Nazi about it, but I’m like that’s right. It’s just funny.

Rob Booker: Oh my gosh, that’s pretty great.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, they know me a little too well and it’s kind of embarrassing.

Rob Booker: Oh my gosh. Okay, so that’s one of your rules. Any other rules that we need to hear if we go to the movies with you?

Jason Pyles: Well, if we’re gonna be at like a ridiculous, okay, so one of my pet peeves since I sit in the top back row middle, is when people come in a little bit late and that’s fine, but their seat, cause in Utah, you pick your assigned seat. You actually know where you’re sitting ahead of time and when they come in the theater and they are actually sitting on the left of me, but they decide to enter from the right, so they walk in front of everybody in the row, rather than just coming up the other side and going directly to their seat. That kind of bugs me, but, I know. First world problems, Rob.

Rob Booker: Oh, this is good stuff. I really enjoy, that’s pretty much my favorite moment.

Jason Pyles: My neurosis, yes.

Rob Booker: All right, so back to the world of trading. We welcome everyone here to Trader’s Podcast, Episode 559. What would be the equivalent? So watching someone live trade a big trading account, that would be kind of the equivalent, and then discussing it afterwards.

Jason Pyles: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Rob Booker: Someone should make a, do you know these websites exist where people can watch other people play video games?

Jason Pyles: Oh yeah, yeah. There’s a lot of, I don’t know, Rob. I don’t know.

Rob Booker: Right. Okay, exactly. I mean I feel, my kids though, they watch it all the time. I mean they’re obsessed with it.

Jason Pyles: Really? Really, that’s interesting.

Rob Booker: Oh, it’s so popular.

Jason Pyles: Well, that makes sense. You know, it’s like okay, you want to learn how to do something so you’re watching someone who can do that thing, right?

Rob Booker: Yeah. I mean I could even prepare a clip for you of one guy playing, I used to watch this guy, b-double o-b dub or whatever he called himself, he was pretty funny. He used to play Sim City and it was, I can’t believe I’m gonna admit this, I would watch this guy on YouTube play Sim City.

Jason Pyles: Wow, nice.

Rob Booker: I wonder if there’s a market for this in the world of trading. I’d love to hear from everybody that’s listening to the Podcast in the show notes of Episode 559 of The Trader’s Podcast at traderspodcast.com. And we would love to hear from you. Wouldn’t that be a practical thing? Could you imagine a website built where there was just live video, streaming video, of people trading?

Jason Pyles: Neat.

Rob Booker: And commentary on it. And then those videos were then saved and archived.

Jason Pyles: Now see that makes a lot of sense to me because you’re demonstrating, I don’t know, I see a difference there. Because you’re demonstrating, okay in this scenario, I’m looking at these indicators, or I’m looking back and there would be a lot of reasons that you draw your conclusions that you could explain in that situation. And I think for me, the reason I’ve personally never gotten a lot out of the video game thing is because I can’t necessarily see what their hands are doing. It’s like okay, how are you doing that? Maybe it’s a direction. I know which direction to go but, so I think it works better for some mediums than others.

Rob Booker: Okay. All right, I like that. That makes sense to me. So what if that also, what if there was a camera on, yeah, so there’d be a specific emphasis in this website on what they were doing showing it, but then why they were doing it.

Jason Pyles: Yeah. Yes.

Rob Booker: Yeah, that’s pretty great. That’s a great idea.

Jason Pyles: Now you’re talking.

Rob Booker: And it would be different than these live trading rooms, like a webinar. That’s not the same thing. I’m talking about a website where there’s like 10 different selections and you could watch any one of 10 different traders trade stocks or penny stocks or options or currencies or whatever and it would be ongoing right now.

Jason Pyles: Neat.

Rob Booker: And it would be, it wouldn’t necessarily be interesting all the time. You might see that person sitting there drinking a cup of coffee, waiting.

Jason Pyles: So like a Truman Show of trading kind of.

Rob Booker: Yes. That’s exactly what I’m talking about. And there’d be some commentary maybe from time to time, but that would be one thing. Or you could do one where there was a row of desks and there’d be a certain stock trader, options trader, currency trader, futures trader and a moderator. And they’d be maybe competing every day and you’d go from one to the other and say, Oh, Jeff is seeing something right now, let’s take a look and see what he’s doing. And that’s different than, once again, it’s different than a webinar. The live action quality to it, that sports broadcasting. And remember, people watched people play poker on TV.

Jason Pyles: Oh yeah.

Rob Booker: That made it all the way to ESPN.

Jason Pyles: People watch people play golf, Rob, for heaven’s sake. Right?

Rob Booker: Do you know what they do in Texas instead of playing golf?

Jason Pyles: What is it?

Rob Booker: I’m not even making this up.

Jason Pyles: Okay.

Rob Booker: They go shoot shotguns.

Jason Pyles: Oh, nice. Okay.

Rob Booker: On a range. Like you get a cart and you put your gun in the cart and you put your shotgun shells in the cart and then you drive on the range, you stop, you put your little key card in the box, shoots out a clay thing and then you shoot at it.

Jason Pyles: I love Texas. That sounds exactly like a Texas thing.

Rob Booker: It is so awesome too. I took Robbie out there to do it. It’s right down the street from my office.

Jason Pyles: Cool. That sounds amazing.

Rob Booker: Yeah. And so I walked up to the guy at the desk and I said, I’m just gonna be honest with you, I haven’t shot a shotgun since I was in Boy Scouts, you know, seven years ago. Just kidding, long time ago. So I don’t know what I’m doing, but we still want to shoot guns and he’s like, Do you feel like you could safely operate a gun and click the safety button? I’m like, Yeah. And he’s like, Okay, here’s a shotgun.

Jason Pyles: Perfect.

Rob Booker: I mean like, whatever. Yeah. Anyway, and that’s what they do. They go around and they shoot at things. But back to the other point. This is a, there’s something to this idea where the live action quality to it, where there’s commentary, discussion and there’s interaction between a host and a, there’s something to this and maybe a, I don’t know, that would really, I think that would come off really well. And it could even be once a week to start. I should just do it.

Jason Pyles: I definitely think you should. I mean it reminds me, for some people this is a dirty word, but I think it’s cool. It reminds me of a trading reality show. A trader’s reality show.

Rob Booker: Yeah. Right. Which is what I, I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.

Jason Pyles: Yes, you have.

Rob Booker: And I just can’t seem to, you know, you gotta have, we just did a podcast about this for the Marketing Podcast Weekly, but sometimes it’s easy to get bogged down on the details and not just do it.

Jason Pyles: Right. Yeah.

Rob Booker: And not just go for it, just stop thinking about it and just do it. Like stop making it into a big production and just do it.

Jason Pyles: Yeah. I agree. I think you should, Rob. I’m always entertained by your projects.

Rob Booker: Oh my gosh, that’s pretty funny. Yeah, it’s easy to get bogged down on the details. Do you ever see that guy that, the movie, Craigslist Joe?

Jason Pyles: No I haven’t seen that actually.

Rob Booker: Oh, okay. It’s, I think he made it for Netflix. Back in the day you could actually make a movie and then upload it to Netflix, you could literally upload it to Netflix, like literally upload it to Netflix.

Jason Pyles: That’s amazing. Wow. Okay.

Rob Booker: You could just log in and you could upload it. And this guy made a video, with a reasonably okay microphone and a shotgun microphone and a shotgun light and a reasonably inexpensive camera, and he lived for a month off of Craigslist basically, I can’t remember how he did it but it’s a memorable film cause he sells everything and then he goes out on the road and he only gets by in life through Craigslist. Everything is done through Craigslist.

Jason Pyles: Right, okay.

Rob Booker: And makes a whole movie about it.

Jason Pyles: Yeah. I’ve heard of this.

Rob Booker: It’s like a one camera movie that he made by himself and it got on Netflix. And I’m sure it’s been viewed millions of times.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, for sure. That reminds me of the Super Size Me movie. The guy that lived off McDonald’s for a month, see what it did to his body.

Rob Booker: Yeah, where his liver almost failed.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, exactly.

Rob Booker: Do you know, have you heard about his new movie?

Jason Pyles: Morgan Spurlock, what’s his latest?

Rob Booker: So, it’s a sequel to Super Size Me. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of this.

Jason Pyles: What is it?

Rob Booker: This is great. Documentary film, this is from eater.com, like eater E-A-T-E-E, whatever. Documentary filmmaker, Morgan Spurlock is gearing up to debut the sequel to his wildly popular 2004 movie, Super Size Me and this time around he’s taking on the chicken industry.

Jason Pyles: Oh, okay.

Rob Booker: Supersize Me 2: Holy Chicken! will focus on Spurlock as he opens his own fast food restaurant. Presumably the fast food restaurant in this film is Holy Chicken!, the four-day fried chicken sandwich pop-up that Spurlock opened in Columbus, Ohio last year.

Jason Pyles: Interesting.

Rob Booker: Yeah. So I actually think that this may be his best movie. It just debuted at the Toronto Film Festival, which kicks off, kicked off, it already kicked off.

Jason Pyles: Mm-hmm (affirmative)-

Rob Booker: What happens at the end of something that you kicked off? You kick it on?

Jason Pyles: Yeah. That’s a good question.

Rob Booker: You kick it out?

Jason Pyles: Right. I don’t know. Interesting.

Rob Booker: That’s interesting. Completely unrelated but because I saw the name James Franco on this website, I tried to watch the first episode of The Deuce-

Jason Pyles: Oh, okay.

Rob Booker: Starring James Franco. Made, basically written and I think the first episode was directed by the creator of The Wire.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, David Simon. Yes.

Rob Booker: It was just terrible.

Jason Pyles: Was it terrible? I’ve been curious about that.

Rob Booker: Yeah.

Jason Pyles: I’m glad to hear.

Rob Booker: It’s just a giant bag of beep. Like it just, if you want like a really great lesson in the male anatomy-

Jason Pyles: Oh, yikes.

Rob Booker: And specifically like, giant males, just hairy men, like you want to see all their body parts, that’s the show for you.

Jason Pyles: Oh, wow. Okay.

Rob Booker: Yeah. Holy Moly.

Jason Pyles: Not necessarily what I was looking for, Rob.

Rob Booker: It gets in the way of the plot. Like literally, gets in the way of the plot. Like actually visually gets in the, like there’s something you’re trying to see on the screen and something else goes full view on the screen and gets in the way of the plot. Yeah.

Jason Pyles: Okay.

Rob Booker: But it’s funny because you see all these characters from The Wire appear in the show. Like all of a sudden, D’Angelo Barksdale pulls up, gets out, he’s got these really long 1970s sideburns and he gets out of a cop car and he’s a street policeman-

Jason Pyles: Oh wow.

Rob Booker: And he goes and sits down to get his shoes shined. Remember Chris and Snoop from The Wire?

Jason Pyles: Oh yeah.

Rob Booker: He sits down next to Chris, who’s a pimp.

Jason Pyles: It’s hard to see those people as different characters.

Rob Booker: Yeah, and Omar’s even in it. Indeed.

Jason Pyles: Oh, I love him.

Rob Booker: Yeah. All the little hoppers are in that, anyway. Dominic West is nowhere to be seen. But anyway, so back to the original point, I’m sure no one’s made it through this episode. I love the idea of sort of a live action, real time, live trading with commentary and hosting. You know, like a host. Someone who’s, all right, I’m seeing that you’re doing this but broadcast live. Not broadcast on a webinar, that’s not the same thing. Broadcast like its poker, like multi-camera shots.

Jason Pyles: Yes. Yes.

Rob Booker: I don’t know. If anybody, if you can even remotely imagine yourself watching that, send us a message on the blog. On the Episode 559 of The Trader’s Podcast. Go to the website, don’t forget to subscribe to the show please. Download all the episodes, just download all of them.

Jason Pyles: That’s right.

Rob Booker: Just go on a download spree.

Jason Pyles: Right.

Rob Booker: You can even put your email address in there. I love getting that email about the new episodes.

Jason Pyles: Yeah.

Rob Booker: Do you get that email too?

Jason Pyles: Yes, yes I do.

Rob Booker: Do you do that for all of your podcasts?

Jason Pyles: Yes, I do. Yeah, absolutely.

Rob Booker: I love that actually. I’m gonna go to your, tell our listeners how they can go to your podcast.

Jason Pyles: Let’s see, well we got moviepodcastweekly.com, that’s where you go for that one.

Rob Booker: Okay.

Jason Pyles: Yup. And just new movies that are in theaters. And then if you’re into horror for some reason, horrormoviepodcast.com.

Rob Booker: All right.

Jason Pyles: Yup. And you can check ’em out there. Love it.

Rob Booker: I can’t find your, the link on moviepodcastweekly for subscribing by email.

Jason Pyles: It may be down lower in the sidebar. I’m sorry, I’ll have to look at that again. We were recently talking about websites that were shotty or shottily designed. Yeah, so, that’s mine. I need to look at where that is. Maybe it got kicked to the bottom of the page.

Rob Booker: Well, on that note, sometimes when you, now we’re talking about all kinds of stuff. Sometimes when you make it more difficult to accomplish something from a marketing perspective-

Jason Pyles: Yes.

Rob Booker: Only the people who want to hear from you the most are gonna do that. Like getting through this episode was really difficult so only people who really love us and the show have listened to this entire show.

Jason Pyles: Right.

Rob Booker: And they deserve something special.

Jason Pyles: Yes.

Rob Booker: One of you that’s listening all the way to the end, I’m gonna say a word now. I’m gonna say, I can’t do a secret word cause the first person to say the secret word, okay, anyway. If you just want to claim that you listened to the entire episode, go to traderspodcast.com, click on Episode 559, leave us a comment and a question, or just a thought about today’s show. Even if you didn’t enjoy it.

Jason Pyles: Right.

Rob Booker: And leave a comment there and we’ll reward one of you with a gift card at Amazon. A $25 gift card at Amazon.com. Or if Amazon’s not legal in your country, then you get nothing. Just kidding. Leave us a comment, we’ll send you a gift card. We’ll have one winner and we’ll reach out to you. You got through this show, you deserve to be rewarded for that.

Jason Pyles: Yeah. Nice.

Rob Booker: I still can’t find your-

Jason Pyles: I’m sorry. I’ll have to see what happened to it then, Rob. I apologize.

Rob Booker: I want to subscribe by email. Now I really want to do this.

Jason Pyles: Okay. All right. I’ll figure that out and I’ll let you know, Rob. I appreciate it.

Rob Booker: That’s great. So go to moviepodcastweekly.com everybody. It is a great podcast and if you scroll down on the right side, you can support the podcast by becoming a monthly reoccurring donor and I only say that because you and I have done hundreds and hundreds, 600, 700 episodes of podcasts together.

Jason Pyles: Right.

Rob Booker: And this is some of your best work and it really deserves to be, I don’t know, subscribed to.

Jason Pyles: Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

Rob Booker: And for those of you that want real stuff about trading, don’t forget to listen to episode 560 of the Trader’s Podcast, available in just a couple of days. I’m Rob Booker, that’s Jason Pyles, the producer, and you’re listening to the Trader’s Podcast.

Direct download: TTP559.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 2:06pm EDT

Welcome back! In Episode 558 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles welcome back Scott Welsh once again to discuss the strangest things that ever happened to them in the world of trading. Rob tells a ghostly tale of a trading account he once managed that mysteriously opened trades on its own! And Scott tells a tale of his early days of robot trading when a storm thwarted his success.

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Be sure to catch up with Scott Welsh at his Website
and at Twitter

Hear Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly where we review new movies in theaters.

Horror Movie Podcast where we’re Dead Serious About Horror Movies.

Movie Podcast Network a group of eight film-related audio podcasts that cover various movie genres.

Direct download: TTP558.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:16am EDT

Rise and shine! Welcome to Episode 557 of The Traders Podcast! In this show, your usual hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles welcome back special guest and fan-favorite Scott Welsh! As a world famous robot trader, Scott gives us an update on his successful journey in automated trading. And we also get a question from Tyler who asks for a recommendation on which trading platform he should use.

As always, thank you for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Be sure to catch up with Scott Welsh at his Website
and at Twitter

Hear Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly where we review new movies in theaters.

Horror Movie Podcast where we’re Dead Serious About Horror Movies.

Movie Podcast Network a group of eight film-related audio podcasts that cover various movie genres.

Full transcript for this episode:

Rob Booker: Mr. Pyles.

Jason Pyles: Hey, Rob Booker, how are you?

Rob Booker: Doing great.

Jason Pyles: Hello, Scott.

Scott Welsh: What is up, Jason? Good to hear from you. Is Rob there, too? I guess it’s good to hear from him, too.

Jason Pyles: Yes.

Scott Welsh: So great.

Jason Pyles: It’s been too long.

Scott Welsh: Too long, but I’m glad we’re here today.

Jason Pyles: I know, it’s great.

Rob Booker: There are some listeners who don’t know that we did, far too few, but about 150 episodes of a podcast together called The Rise and Shine Podcast, and I think we would all agree that everyone should stop listening to this right now and go check that out.

Jason Pyles: Yeah.

Scott Welsh: Just stop. We can wait. How long, 153 episodes? We can wait a half hour. We’ll just sit here.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, they were short form.

Rob Booker: They could play them on fast forward.

Jason Pyles: That’s true.

Scott Welsh: Exactly, yeah.

Rob Booker: That’s spectacular. Our guest today is Scott Welsh, and Scott, what’s your website? Let’s just get that out there right now.

Scott Welsh: It’s ScottWelsh.me. It’s S-C-O-T-T W-E-L-S-H.me, at me.

Rob Booker: Alright, everybody, go check it out. Scott’s a good friend a longtime friend of the show. Not a first-time caller, not a first-time listener. We’re glad to have him here. Jason, we got a question from a listener, did we not?

Jason Pyles: Mm-hmm (affirmative), yeah, we sure did. We got a question from Tyler. I can read it right now. It says, Hi, Rob, my name is Tyler and I recently discovered your podcast on iTunes and have been devouring episodes on my drive to work. I have a question for you about trading platforms. I’m new to this and I’m wondering if you have a recommendation for a platform. I’ve done some research and there are many to choose from. Some cost money, some allow trades in certain markets only, etc.. Do you spend any time in any episodes discussing this? Appreciate your thoughts. Tyler.

Rob Booker: Well, Tyler, we do. We talked about this in episode 557, which is the one you’re listening to right now. Scott, do you have any- You and I have used about every platform there is. Do you have any comments on that?

Scott Welsh: Yeah, I probably used less than you, but yeah. I looked around at a few platforms. I started on TD Ameritrade back in the stock days, and that feels like caveman days even though it’s a fine company or whatever. But as far as technical trading, wouldn’t you agree, if you ever looked at it it’s pretty poor? But as far as technical trading, I love TradeStation. That’s what I grew up on. That’s the first really complicated platform I looked at. I still use it, I still like it. MT4 has been fine for me. It’s super stable, so it’s been fine. But if I’m gonna open up a platform, I’d probably pick TradeStation or its cousin, MultiCharts.

Rob Booker: Got it. Oh, I haven’t used MultiCharts. Is that a Windows-only platform?

Scott Welsh: Yeah, I think it is, actually. Yeah. I’m doing it on Windows so I don’t know, but yeah. It’s basically like TradeStation. It’s similar.

Rob Booker: Okay. Yeah, and it uses all the same language that TradeStation uses, right?

Scott Welsh: Right, exactly. Yeah.

Rob Booker: Can you trade 4X on MultiCharts?

Scott Welsh: Yes, correct.

Rob Booker: Oh. You can use all the robots that you built for TradeStation and you could run them on MultiCharts.

Scott Welsh: Right. I bought it probably over a year ago. It’s very expensive, which is why a lot of people, I think, don’t use it. It’s quite expensive. I’m getting very much into MultiCharts. I’m thinking about running MultiCharts on my VPS instead MT4. That’s the conversation I’ve been having lately with myself.

Rob Booker: Oh, wow. How expensive is it?

Scott Welsh: A lifetime membership, I think, was $1,300, $1,200.

Rob Booker: Oh, yeah, that’s … Yeah, alright.

Scott Welsh: That’s a lot for people to spend, but yeah, I did it.

Rob Booker: Yeah, I hear really good things about the platform, I just don’t have a Windows computer anymore. It makes it difficult to use stuff that needs a Windows computer. Now, why not just use something- Of course, we don’t necessarily want to recommend to Tyler that he jumps onto TradeStation or MultiCharts. What kind of free options would you recommend to Tyler?

Scott Welsh: Free options, then yeah, I’d probably go into MT4. You can do a lot of good things with MT4. I’m just dubious about the testing. For me, I do tons of research. It’s what I love to do. It’s what I’ve done a lot of. For me, the way I’ve done testing in TradeStation, whatever I’ve done, all the work I’ve done, when I take it to live markets I get very similar results. In fact, most of the time my live results are slightly better than my tested results because people get really freaked out by that. Oh, I’ve done some fact testing, it’s curve-fitting, it’s over-optimizing, it’s not gonna work in real life.

Well, that hasn’t been my experience. My experience is if something doesn’t work, it was bad design. It wasn’t because testing was fake and trading is real. I have not yet had that experience with MT4 where it shows up in the live market exactly as strategy tester does. It’s close, but TradeStation is superior. I’m gonna work on MT4 more, actually, in the next actually month or so. I will finally answer that question. I’m gonna buy some expensive data and I’m gonna see if it really can match up.

MT4 might be fine. I would say it’s mostly fine right now, I just don’t like it as well as the MultiCharts, TradeStation option.

Rob Booker: You’re saying that, in your experience, when you’ve done backtesting in MT4, MetaTrader 4, and then turned on a robot onto the live market, that the results have not matched up with your testing?

Scott Welsh: Slightly worse, yes. Almost without exception, when I take TradeStation to the market, the real life is better. But I have yet to do extensive testing on MT4 and have it show up and look exactly the same. It’s a little bit worse so far. I’m gonna be doing more work on this.

Rob Booker: What robots are you running right now?

Scott Welsh: I run a robot that I called The Hornet, which is a day trading robot. I run that. I’m very focused with my trading, so I only have two currency pairs that I trade with that. I’m also running The Heron, which I just [inaudible 00:06:03] robot I released late May. I run a fair value robot, too, also. I’ve got some other things I’m gonna be running, but that’s what I’m running sitting here right now.

Rob Booker: What about your trend trade robot that you had on the dollar/yen?

Scott Welsh: I trade that in demo. I’m gonna open up an account and I am gonna be trading that, but I watch that every day. But I don’t have real money committed to that at this moment.

Rob Booker: I’m obsessed lately with trend trading and trend trade robots. If you don’t mind, I’m gonna ask you a few questions about that.

Scott Welsh: Let’s go, yeah.

Rob Booker: Okay. First of all, does that trend trade robot use any stop losses?

Scott Welsh: Yes. Absolutely it does. Yeah, it is, that robot is the epitome of all the cliches we’ve heard. Stop out quick and take big winners, that’s exactly how it’s designed. It’s got our-

Rob Booker: Cut your losses short and ride your wins.

Scott Welsh: Ride your winners, yeah. That one does exactly that. It takes … Well, who cares how it stops? It’s a short stop-out based on the volatility of the market at that time.

Rob Booker: How many trades a year does that take?

Scott Welsh: Well, I love trend-following, trend trading robots on big charts. I started testing them on 240-minute charts and those are fine. I love daily charts the best. I just love … They’re so much cleaner. The results are actually better. But it doesn’t trade that much and people that I’ve talked to, and I’m sure it’s even more so for you, they want trades, trades, trades every day. How often does it trade? That’s a question that people ask me when they’re talking about robots, which blows my mind.

Shouldn’t it be, How good is it? Right? What are the- They don’t. How often does it trade? If you’re trading it on daily chart and you’re waiting for it to break to an all new level that it hasn’t been to in a long time, it could trade four times a year. That sometimes freaks people out.

Rob Booker: How long are those trades open, though.

Scott Welsh: Well, if it stops out, not very long. It could be a day. It could be a day or two ’cause those stops aren’t big. But the winners can be in for a month or two. But I’ve found that is not a problem. When you’re in profit, that’s a glorious month or two to spend. That’s not a problem to be in profit. The long trades, something good is happening. That’s good news. [inaudible 00:08:17]

Rob Booker: Yeah, that’s really good news. What is that robot called?

Scott Welsh: I just call it The Breakout.

Rob Booker: The Breakout.

Scott Welsh: Yeah, it’s based on the Turtles. It’s based on the famous Turtle methodology, but it’s not exactly the same as Turtles. I get questions about that. Just use it as inspiration. I didn’t actually follow the rules to the T. I made my own rules on it.

Rob Booker: Okay. It’s not-

Scott Welsh: But, yeah, The Breakout.

Rob Booker: It’s not the same as the Turtles, Jason, there’s a bunch of turtles that live in South Florida and they do some trading and it’s not the same.

Scott Welsh: Or the rock band from the ’60s.

Jason Pyles: Not Leonardo, Michelangelo, gotcha.

Scott Welsh: Oh, yeah, or those, too.

Jason Pyles: Gotcha.

Rob Booker: Did you see this comparison between Pennywise and one of the ninja turtles? They live in the sewer, they hang out with children, something crazy.

Jason Pyles: No, but that’s hilarious. I love that.

Rob Booker: But maybe Pennywise is secretly one of the lost teenage mutant ninja turtles.

Jason Pyles: Mm-hmm (affirmative), I think so, yeah. There is a turtle thing from the novel, as well. That’s interesting.

Rob Booker: Oh, interesting. There’s a connection. Scott, there’s also this thought in the back of my mind. Anytime anybody brings up trading, these Turtles, this question does come up. The ’80s or whenever it was, Richard Dennis and his partner had an argument whether or not trader were born or taught. Dennis said, I can pick some people off the street, teach them to trade, tell them to implement a system, and they’ll be successful. He was somewhat proven correct by teaching them a system to follow and asking them to follow it to the letter. The ones that did succeeded, and the ones that did not dropped out. The rest of it is, as they say, history.

Every time we talk about trend trading, I’m sure you’ve been asked this before. Did you ever built a robot that was based on the Turtle trade trend-following system?

Scott Welsh: Yeah, and that’s what this is. That’s exactly it. That was the inspiration for the Breakout robot, absolutely 100%. It’s just not exactly the same.

Rob Booker: Okay.

Scott Welsh: That’s exactly- I got fascinated by that story for the hundredth time and I decided, Well, I’m just gonna build something. I’m gonna get it in the market. There are still Turtles trading and trading very well and trading hundreds of millions of dollars. The Turtles still live from the original Turtle class.

Rob Booker: They live for hundreds of years, as far as I’ve heard.

Scott Welsh: Yes, they’re dinosaurs. Yes.

Jason Pyles: There’s no shortage, is there?

Rob Booker: There’s no shortage of turtle jokes in this episode. How do you answer the question, How many robots is too many? How do you choose a portfolio of robots to run? Did you upload all the results into a portfolio to see that they balanced each other out, or something like that?

Scott Welsh: Well, it comes down to personal preference. It’s like, How many girlfriends do you want to have or How many boyfriends do you want to have? When you’re younger, you like dating around. I like talking to this person, this person. Then sometimes you get to a different part of your life and maybe you just want one person. The first is preference. What do you like? We’ve talked about it in podcasts before. Do you like a lot of action?

Well, if that’s what you need for your trading then you’re gonna have a big portfolio. You’re gonna need a bunch of stuff. Something like the Turtle robot we’re talking about right now, if it trades four times a year, that’s gonna just mess you up. You’re gonna start taking trades that you’re not supposed to take and it’s gonna be awful. The first thing is, What do you like when people say, Well, what kind of portfolio?

For me, the second question is all draw-down. How much draw-down? If you could have a draw-down that you like and it’s just one robot trading one system on one currency pair, and the draw-down is manageable, and it makes the amount of money you want, why do you need 10? For me, I love focus. I love deep focus on one thing at a time. I fight as hard as I can. What’s the least amount of robots I can trade and get the results that I want?

Rob Booker: Okay.

Scott Welsh: When you’re talking about fund managers, though, we’re talking about 50, 60, 100. To manage hundreds of millions of dollars, you have to be diversified. As you get more money in your account, diversification probably becomes more and more of an issue.

Rob Booker: Okay, well that makes sense to me. There’s the famous, who is it, Renaissance Capital and [build simons 00:12:34] or whoever it is in Long Island or whatever and he built this firm of- Jason, it’s all turtles. The whole firm is turtles. The guy’s stiff, but once you break through his shell he’s pretty nice. They have a wide selection of grubs in the company cafeteria.

Anyway, he hired a bunch of Russian physicists and scientists and whatever and they were managing billions and billions of dollars. Eventually, they all were so rich- This is actually true. It sounds like this is a story. They were all so rich that they gave back all the investor money and now this super secretive firm only manages its own money internally from all the people inside of the firm so they don’t have to deal with any of the regulations or answering to people or whatever.

They have been known to … They have hundreds of strategies running, all of them automated, all of them with the computer that’s just making the trades and placing the orders, some of which are doing things as crazy as trading based on the cycles of the moon. He has been known to quote that it even gets stranger than that. If it works, he doesn’t care how stupid it sounds.

Scott Welsh: There was that one time, though, he got flipped over on his back and they had to cease trading, then they flipped him back over and it was fine.

Rob Booker: You couldn’t get back up. That’s right, yeah.

Scott Welsh: Other than that, yeah, it’s been amazing.

Rob Booker: Flipped on his back and he couldn’t get back up. Oh, my gosh. Jason, let’s plug your podcasts. Where can our listeners hear more about the best movies that are out right now?

Jason Pyles: Sure. MoviePodcastWeekly.com and HorrorMoviePodcast.com.

Rob Booker: I’ll plug Marketing Podcast Weekly for our listeners that are interested in online marketing, in particular in the financial space. You can listen to Jason and I sit around and talk about marketing, which I actually listened to Wednesday’s episode in its entirety again. I just listened to it again.

Scott Welsh: That’s a good podcast, by the way, guys. I really like that. I know it’s new, but I look forward to that a lot. I like that.

Rob Booker: Well, thank you.

Jason Pyles: Thank you.

Rob Booker: Scott, two things. One, where can our listeners find your podcast?

Jason Pyles: Yes. That’s what we want to know.

Scott Welsh: Yeah, okay. Well, Rob, knows that I’m thinking I would really like to do a podcast and I’m really thinking about that, so thank you, Rob, for bringing that up. That’s a little sore spot. No, it’s not a sore spot.

Rob Booker: We’ll be on the lookout for that. Maybe we can plug it inside of some kind of a trader’s podcast network of shows.

Jason Pyles: Yes.

Rob Booker: Second of all, where can people find out more about this Breakout trend trading robot? I know that’s what everyone who’s listening right now’s gonna want to know about.

Scott Welsh: Well, you go to that website and I’ve got listings of the robots that I offer. You can also email me, I’m the one who emails you back, which is Scot.Welsh@gmail.com, but it only has one T. My email has one T and my website has two.

Rob Booker: Okay, and you can also go to the show notes for episode 557 of The Trader’s Podcast and inside those show notes, we’ll link to Scott’s website and some information about the Breakout robot. Will you come right back and join us for another episode?

Scott Welsh: I would love that.

Rob Booker: Let’s do it. Thanks for listening, everybody, we love you all. We’ll see you next time.

Direct download: TTP557.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 8:22am EDT

In Episode 556 of The Traders Podcast, your hosts Rob Booker and the producer Jason Pyles discuss how success often comes from setting a goal to do the right things consistently (as opposed to just setting a goal to accomplish some great thing).

Rob also talks about having a specific trick or “scheme” that is your job that you do consistently. And we discuss the approach of sticking to what you’re best at and exploring it further by looking deeper inside rather than branching out and experimenting with new and unfamiliar methods.

Thanks for listening to The Traders Podcast. We release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe free in iTunes and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly where we review new movies in theaters.

Horror Movie Podcast where we’re Dead Serious About Horror Movies.

Movie Podcast Network a group of eight film-related audio podcasts that cover various movie genres.

Full transcript of this episode:

Rob Booker: Welcome back, Mr. Pyles.

Jason Pyles: Thanks, Rob. It’s good to be back.

Rob Booker: When we left our dear listeners, we were talking about the fact that sometimes success comes from setting a goal to do the right things consistently instead of setting a goal to accomplish some big thing. Success in my life has been a mix of those two things and then just pure luck at times. I want to talk today about if someone were to choose the path of success by doing the right things … We’re, of course, specifically talking about trading in the end. But generally speaking, let’s just talk about success in general. If it’s about podcasting because you started podcasting before anybody else that I know … Well, we kind of started together before anybody else that I know.

Jason Pyles: Yes, we did.

Rob Booker: We’ve continued through the years. You only continue if you’re getting some measure of success. What are some of the things that a podcaster does that they have to do consistently well or at least they have to do it consistently in order to succeed?

Jason Pyles: I would say release episodes. You have to actually record the episodes and continue to release them. That’s one thing. I think for me it’s been … You have to have this interest in the topic itself. I genuinely love the topic. If you love it enough, usually you can continue talking about it. There have been podcasts, Rob, that I dropped pretty quickly that I realized I did not have a love like that one really stupid NBC survival show. What was that called? That was awful. Revolution or something like that.

Rob Booker: Yeah, right.

Jason Pyles: We went 10 episodes on that. We’re like, Yeah, that’s enough of this.

Rob Booker: Oh, gosh. All right. You have to release content on schedule. You have to have a purpose, meaning I think probably podcasting about everything is not as effective as podcasting about something.

Jason Pyles: Agreed.

Rob Booker: All right. Let’s apply that to traders. It can almost be as simple as that. Maybe it can be as simple as that. You need to sit down at the computer at the same time everyday or you need to run a robot that’s going to run all the time. Then you need to have a specific purpose, or a specific technique, or a specific trick, or a specific method. I like to call it a scheme these days. Whatever the trick is that you do, you’ve got to have that one thing. That’s it. That’s your job. You’ve got to sit down and do that job in the same way that you have to release content as a podcaster. You have to sit down at the computer and you have to get that work done.

Every month on the first Monday of the month at 11:30 p.m. my time, I sit down in a webinar with all of the members and I trade the Australian dollar when the Australian interest rate decision is released. It is potentially … I don’t know potentially. I mean it is. It is the best trading that I do all month long that I do. But it only happens once a month, Jason.

Jason Pyles: Interesting.

Rob Booker: I would guess that everybody listening, everyone that is a listener of the podcast, all seven of you, all of you, each of you has some kind of scheme or trick that you can do like that. However, that one scheme or trick doesn’t produce necessarily enough profit in order to accomplish your goal of trading for a living and so you seek other tricks, schemes, methods or strategies when in reality you’re already off course if you do that. It’s like saying to a podcaster, Well, I don’t have enough listeners from doing a podcast about scary movies, so now on the scary movie podcast we are also going to review children’s television shows with songs.

Jason Pyles: Yes. And that’s actually a real example. I’ve seen a horror podcast do that where they started reviewing Twilight stuff in order to attract the Twilight fans which to the horror community is a huge betrayal.

Rob Booker: Exactly what I was talking about. You got to stand for something. I’ve noticed, including this text message that I got the other day from our friend that was struggling and on the verge of quitting, this is exactly what I see happen is that I already know how to make this work but it’s not making me enough money so I’m going to add something to it. Instead of focusing on what is working and approaching that, someone will go off course and I mean when you find something that works like this Australian dollar strategy that I have and it’s … I’ve even described it on previous episodes of the podcast. You can go to robbooker.com and get on the email list if you want to learn more about all of this stuff.

Jason, being successful means diving deeper into that. It means, all right, I’ve got one strategy for when the economic news is released and how I deal with it. What about a strategy diving in deeper to the behavior of the Australian dollar on the day that that news is released? That led to an additional strategy for the Australian dollar. Now, I had two strategies because I dove in deeper into what I was already doing. What if I doubled, or tripled, or quadrupled down on that, and I added a trade to one of the trades that I was already taking? What if I quintupled down on that strategy by … I know this sounds absolutely bananas. What if I just dove deeper into reading about the economics of Australia? What if I did those things? Instead of looking for the answers outside, I went inside. Instead of going horizontal or laterally looking for additional stuff to focus on to be a jack of all trades, what if I went deeper into what was already working and I tried to benefit more from that? Ideally, I would just be happy with what was working.

Jason Pyles: Right. That reminds me of two things. It’s killing the goose that lays the golden eggs because then you see … You’re not getting any more golden eggs. You have a dead goose. It also reminds me if you have like an Olympic diver who’s practiced the same dive like a billion times and then the diver gets up and said, You know what? I’m going to try to change this up a little right here. Then they jump off and do something weird. Just saying. That’s what popped into my head as you describe this.

Rob Booker: Right. My niece is a diver. I’m sure she’s got three or four dives. I’ve seen her compete. She has three or four dives, Rachel does, in her repertoire. She’s probably got her one … I don’t know this for sure. I’m going to send her this episode and ask her if she’ll answer. She probably got one go-to dive that she knows she’s really, really good at and that’s her go-to dive, and she knows she can’t lose that one. Why would she still practice that one even after she’s won competitions based on that? She’s not done with it. I see this happen with traders all the time. Well, that works, Rob. But what else do you got for me? I ain’t got nothing else for you.

Jason Pyles: Well, they want something that works more, that produces even more results. That’s what they’re looking for.

Rob Booker: Yeah, yeah. That’s true. Here’s a great example. It’s not a great example. It’s a terrible example but I have to say it. As I’m re-watching The Wire … My wife has never seen The Wire on HBO. It’s every White person’s favorite show about Black people.

Jason Pyles: Yes, I know. It’s awesome.

Rob Booker: I don’t know if that’s true or not. I just thought I’d say that. But, even President Obama said it was the best television ever made. Anyway, let’s get back to the point. In that show, Bubbles, he lives on the street and Bubbles tries to get on his feet and get off of drugs and he starts Bubbles Depo. Do you remember this? He has a shopping cart.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, totally.

Rob Booker: On the front of it, it says Bubbles and then Depo with no T at the end. It’s just Depo. He starts by selling T-shirts, just T-shirts. And, then he realizes that these people that live on the street, they don’t want to go to the store, whatever. They’re out selling drugs on the corner, whatever, and he needs to have candy, or bus passes, or other stuff for them. He went deeper into his one concept. He didn’t then start, I don’t know, a hotdog cart or he calls them pimp steaks. He didn’t start a pimp steak cart. He went deeper into what he was already doing. Maybe that’s a challenge that we could ask our listeners is what can you do to go deeper into what you already are doing instead of seeking additional answers or profit outside of what you’re already good at? It’s possible of course that someone doesn’t know what they’re already good at. That’s possible.

You could listen to 500 episodes of The Trader’s Podcast and inside of those episodes, there would be at least, I don’t know, at least 10 different ways that you could focus. I heard from someone, Jason, just yesterday or the day before who just finished listening to all of the episodes of The Trader’s Podcast. I said, Oh, there’s a treat in store for you.

Jason Pyles: Wow, that’s amazing. I want to thank that person for listening.

Rob Booker: There’s a lot of people out there now that have just listened to every single episode. I think we can turn on the feature so that all of the previous episodes will appear inside of iTunes. We can turn that feature on so that if you want to get the old episodes on iTunes, you could do that. But, Jason, I don’t know if you knew this, of course you did, every single episode of The Trader’s Podcast is available in one location.

Jason Pyles: It sure is. That’s right, Rob. Traderspodcast.com, right?

Rob Booker: That’s exactly right. How can someone contact the show?

Jason Pyles: Well, Rob here, my friend Rob is kind enough to give out his own personal cellphone number and, yes, it is his actual cellphone. You can text him at 304-281-8332 or just-

Rob Booker: And, we appreciate you subscribing and downloading these episodes. We’re now at 1,773,360 downloads and we’d like you to be download number 361.

Jason Pyles: That’s right.

Rob Booker: Oh, my gosh. All right. Jason, let’s plug some movie podcasts here. Let’s make this happen.

Jason Pyles: That’s right. In the time that I’ve been away, I’ve actually started a Movie Podcast Network, if you can believe that.

Rob Booker: Can you believe it?

Jason Pyles: Yeah. I think it’s a eight different shows about movies. We have some about Westerns, sci-fi, stuff like that. Check us out. Our little hub site is MoviePodcast.Network.

Rob Booker: Nice. All right, everybody. Until next time. I’m Rob Booker and that’s the producer. Thanks for listening and subscribing to The Traders Podcast.

Direct download: RB556.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 9:25am EDT

Welcome back to The Traders Podcast, and welcome back to your host, Rob Booker, and The Producer, Jason Pyles! After a very long hiatus, we are back again here in Episode 555, where we address a trader regarding what to do when trading doesn’t work out the way you might have hoped.

Remember to leave a comment below in the show notes and you could win a $25 Amazon gift card! The Traders Podcast will now release new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday, so please make sure you’re subscribed and join us!

Links for this episode:

Subscribe to Rob’s YouTube channel here: https://youtube.com/robbooker

Rob on Twitter: @RobBooker

The Traders Podcast on Twitter: @TradersPodcast

TFL365.com

Trader Interviews.com

Jason’s movie podcasts:
Movie Podcast Weekly where we review new movies in theaters.

Horror Movie Podcast where we’re Dead Serious About Horror Movies.

Full transcript of this episode:

Rob Booker: Mr. Pyles.

Jason Pyles: Rob Booker. It’s been a long time.

Rob Booker: Welcome back.

Jason Pyles: Thank you. It’s good to be back.

Rob Booker: Do you ever have anything that doesn’t quite work the way that you expected?

Jason Pyles: Oh yeah all the time. Like my kids for example.

Rob Booker: Give us an update on how you’re doing.

Jason Pyles: Doing great, thank you. Another one of those things would be my heart. That’s a good example. Earlier this year I had open heart surgery and I’m much better now. Thanks to Cleveland Clinic.

Rob Booker: You sound like it. You sound better than ever.

Jason Pyles: Thank you. Yeah I feel a lot better.

Rob Booker: I did a poll on Twitter on how badly our listeners wanted to hear your voice again. Someone said that you have a mix … Did you see this poll?

Jason Pyles: No but I’m nervous about the results.

Rob Booker: No need to be nervous. There were two choices. One choice was really bad. The second choice was really, really bad. And really, really bad won 78 to 28%. That adds up to more than 100% so more than 100% of our listeners want to hear you back on the show and most of those people want to hear you back really, really bad. One guy replied and said you sound like a mix between Casey Kasem and the Marlboro man.

Jason Pyles: I’ll take it. I love that.

Rob Booker: Sounds like a compliment to me.

Jason Pyles: That’s how I’m looking at it Rob.

Rob Booker: That’s great. That’s awesome. The movie related podcasts are doing great?

Jason Pyles: Yeah absolutely. I still have movie podcasts weekly where we review the new stuff that’s in theaters. I’m still doing that crazy horror movie podcast as well. We’re getting thumbs up for It this weekend.

Rob Booker: Alright. Are you going to go see that in the theater?

Jason Pyles: Yeah. Tonight, in fact.

Rob Booker: Oh my gosh. I can’t even get through the preview. He gets to the … The preview for the movie It, he gets up to the drain on the street and I just turn off the preview. I can’t even get past that part.

Jason Pyles: Yeah. Rob’s like, I’m not doing storm drains. Forget it.

Rob Booker: Storm drains, that’s right, exactly. Oh my gosh. Just one question about movies and then we can move on. At the end of Dunkirk, does somebody wake up from a dream?

Jason Pyles: I know right. You’d wonder right. With Christopher Nolan.

Rob Booker: I’m ready for a Christopher Nolan movie with a twist. I’m ready for that.

Jason Pyles: Me too. Me too. I’ve been waiting for years.

Rob Booker: Did you see his first movie?

Jason Pyles: Yes, I did. [crosstalk 00:02:32] The student film he made?

Rob Booker: Yeah.

Jason Pyles: Hmm?

Rob Booker: The Following or something like that?

Jason Pyles: Yes it is. It’s still quite decent actually.

Rob Booker: Maybe I’ll check that out today.

Jason Pyles: Awesome. Let me know.

Rob Booker: I really ought to start a podcast on your podcast movie podcast network about television ’cause I don’t really see movies anymore.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, you should Rob. You’d be great at that.

Rob Booker: That’s not a bad idea. Maybe one of our listeners would like to join me. I don’t know if you’d have us on the movie podcast network.

Jason Pyles: Yeah. You’re pretty amazing. Even though it’s TV. We would just say, Well it’s the small screen. There’s the silver screen and then there’s the small screen.

Rob Booker: Okay, that’s a good idea.

Jason Pyles: Right, that’s what I think.

Rob Booker: God, that’s awesome. We still haven’t talked about trading, which is the best part about this whole thing coming back together and doing a podcast. Officially, welcome back to both of us on the Trader’s podcast. It’s nice to be here. The subject for today’s episode Jason, is to welcome us back together, remind everyone that new episodes drop on Tuesdays and Thursdays, including full transcripts and show notes. Once again, very happy about that. Also, to talk about the subject Jason, when things don’t work out the way that you might have hoped.

I got a message. Now usually, I would send this to you beforehand but it just came in and one of our listeners wrote in and was pretty heartbroken about the way that his trading has gone. I thought I would read that comment and then over the course of this episode and maybe the next, we could talk about this dear listener of ours and perhaps answer his concerns or whatever.

Jason Pyles: Yeah. I hope we can help.

Rob Booker: Let me pull this up. Essentially this fine gentleman writes in and has just had a really, really tough time. I’m going to read it if I can find it. Maybe one of our support team has already, yeah they’ve already tackled this one. They had originally moved it over to me. Yeah, but it’s gone now. What a bummer.

Alright, well our friend had started in trading years ago, Jason. And had no success. Then started back up and had a lot of temporary success. Just recently went back to some old behaviors and dropped the ball, made some big mistakes and lost 50% of his account.

I just felt heartbroken about it. The reason is, I want everyone to be successful. The question that our friend wrote in was, ‘When do I just quit? This didn’t work out the way that I wanted. This trading thing didn’t work out the way that I wanted. When do I just quit? Do you have any thoughts on this before I just go down this road and start yacking my pie hole?

Jason Pyles: Wow. I can appreciate that because it’s like … I’ll say one thing really quick and turn it over to you ’cause you have way more experience and training. But I think it’s interesting, any time that someone has the courage to be reflective like that and have that be honest with yourself kind of moment where you’re trying to figure out what you should do next. I think that’s a good sign when somebody gets to that point.

In my understanding, in the years that I was on the Trader’s podcast in the past. I think sometimes it’s difficult for traders to be honest with themselves. I think being at this moment where they’re reassessing, I think is an important place to be. I just wanted to acknowledge that and then turn it over to you, Rob.

Rob Booker: I love that. I have a warning for this individual and anyone listening in, and to myself, just a reminder and a warning. The act of quitting because you lack discipline doesn’t reflect upon the endeavor, it reflects upon you, or me.

If I quit my marriage because … Okay, there are reasons to quit a marriage. Having done that, I’m going to justify that. But of course, I’m happily remarried and I love my wife and she’s the greatest thing that ever happened to me. Let’s just say that we have a difficult day and things don’t go the way that I might have hoped or wished they had gone. But it’s just in the ordinary course of a relationship.

If I quit, it doesn’t reflect on my wife, or the institution of marriage. It reflects on me. Let’s say that I lose my temper in the relationship, now it even reflects even more upon me and I have some work to do. That’s not a criticism. I don’t mean that to strike out at this individual.

But I do mean to say, if what you’re telling me is that you’re struggling with discipline or making the right decisions at the right time, or avoiding the wrong decisions. If that’s what you’re saying, then it’s time to get some help. That help can come in the form of therapy or mentorship that you get through books. Or it can come through prayer and meditation. There are a lot of avenues for that.

But the answer isn’t necessarily to close down your trading account and quit because trading doesn’t work. There are times when trading doesn’t work. There are times when that’s the case. And those instances might be when you’re trading a product that no longer is available. Or you’re trading a product like binary options outside of the United States where binary options outside of the United States are a complete scam and your broker’s going to walk away with all of your money and then you have no money left, then yes. There are times when there are external circumstances that prevent anyone from trading.

But if it’s merely and I say merely in quotation marks, ’cause it’s a big deal. A lack of discipline, then I don’t really see what the point of quitting would be. Because the next endeavor that you take upon yourself, or the next really important thing that you try to tackle, you’re going to run up against the same lack of discipline or the same propensity to make a mistake or get yourself into trouble or do the thing that you said you weren’t ever going to do all over again. It doesn’t make any sense.

You might as well draw a line in the sand, now, here. Change the way that you handle things. Get some help. Read some books. Do some meditation, whatever it takes. What are some ways that you have, Jason you’re an incredibly disciplined person. You got up again today at, what time in the morning did you get up again?

Jason Pyles: It was about quarter till six.

Rob Booker: Quarter till six. Our friend of the show Shawn Campbell probably got up at 4 o’clock in the morning.

Jason Pyles: Oh yeah, Shawn yes.

Rob Booker: What is this Jason? Is this cosmic energy flowing through you? What is this? You have an incredible amount of discipline. You once finished a podcast while you were sick. You said, Could you please hold for a moment podcasting crew. You went and threw up and then you went back and finished your podcast.

Jason Pyles: That’s true, yeah.

Rob Booker: That’s the discipline that we’re talking about. That is, you are an example of what we’re trying to achieve. What is it Jason? Were you born with this?

Jason Pyles: I don’t know.

Rob Booker: How did you come back from a surgery that left you feeling really … You were really bad off right after the surgery and then you just came roaring back.

Jason Pyles: Yeah, honestly that surgery was worst thing that ever happened to me this year, this March. I’ll tell you. For me Rob, it seems like with both the surgery and the other thing it’s just a desire to move forward and to progress. Progression is really important to me.

Yes, I plateau like everybody else. I’m not perfect at this. I get stuck in a rut. But when I really want to move forward with something in life that’s important to me like my own life or the Trader’s podcast. I was excited to get up this morning. It’s like, yes, I’m tired right now. Yes, this is difficult to get out of bed. But I want to progress and move forward and keep going. I think discipline can be born out of a desire to succeed.

Rob Booker: Yeah, that’s a really … I like that. That’s the motivation to change for the better comes out of that desire to succeed. There’s a possibility that when I have been … Let’s just use me as an example. It’s not fair to use our friend as an example. But when I have unsuccessful due to a lack of discipline, it is possible that my goal in these instances has been to make money. Or my goal has been to save face or prove a point. Something along those line, as opposed to maybe a goal Jason, ought to be the goal itself should be doing the right thing. Or the goal itself should be to follow a process.

We talked on our other marketing podcast weekly, shameless plug, we talked just on our last episode about the fact, oftentimes success isn’t the result of setting a big lofty goal that is accomplished all in one fell swoop. But instead, success is about setting a goal to do the right things every day and identity what those right things are. And then only do those things. Maybe we could come back in on our next episode on Thursday we could come back and talk about what those right things are.

Jason Pyles: I like it.

Rob Booker: How can, I don’t really remember anymore. How can someone reach the show?

Jason Pyles: You know. I was going to ask you the same thing, Rob. I wasn’t sure what means we were using. I remember back in the day when-

Rob Booker: I think they should send me a text message.

Jason Pyles: Okay, ’cause I was going to say, I remember when you have everybody texting your own personal cell phone.

Rob Booker: Let’s do it. Okay, my cell phone number is 304-281-8332. 304-281-8332. Or leave a comment under the show notes of today’s episode of the Trader’s podcast and we’ll give one commenter who welcomes Jason back, we’ll give someone an Amazon gift certificate. Jump on traderspodcast.com, click on today’s episode. Scroll down though the transcript and leave a comment for Jason. We’ll give one lucky winner, what do we say, $25 Amazon gift card.

Jason Pyles: Yeah. That’s nice.

Rob Booker: Jason, do you want to plug anything before we go today? Let’s do that.

Jason Pyles: Oh, thank you, yes. I hope people could check out moviepodcastweekly.com if you want to hear about new movies that are in theaters. If you’re a horror fan, ’cause Halloween’s coming up soon, horrormoviepodcast.com

Rob Booker: That sounds like a brilliant idea. We’ll see you next time everybody.

Direct download: RB555.mp3
Category:Podcast Episodes -- posted at: 10:20am EDT

1