Chat With Traders

The lure of the markets seduced a successful musician into full time trading at a prop firm. Collaborating with other traders, Garrett Drinon learned the market signals, and other ingredients which go into great setups. Wanting to expand his reach, he uses his programming skills to create new algos which help him and his colleagues find the Unicorns and manage a larger portfolio than he could norm...

As a risk officer with the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Will Gogolak was setting margin requirements and saw a wide variety of traders’ accounts and what separated the winning traders from the losing ones, before leaving to pursue his own trading and obtaining a PHD in finance and share his knowledge of quantitative analysis and market experience with students at Carnegie Mellon University. Combin...

Experiencing the noticeable communication differences between his childhood culture and his new home in the U.S., William Lam was driven to become aware of how his limiting thoughts imprinted from his family drove unhealthy unconscious actions. Learning how to shape his mental thought process played key roles in fulfilling big desires and creating a richer life. Hear how our minds are like operati...

A humble beginning as a gopher in the intense trading pits of Japanese warrants was shocking for Gary Norden when he was a teenager. As this volatile market was beginning its meltdown, Gary saw how easily star traders lost immense amounts of money as past overconfidence and sloppy risk control undid their previous gains. This impressed upon Gary the importance of a risk averse stance to keep himse...

James is the co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Azoria Partners, a global macro investment firm. Prior to Azoria, he served as the Head of Macro at Greenlight Capital, a two-billion-dollar hedge fund led by David Einhorn. He is also the founder of Incubate Debate, America’s fastest-growing high school debate league. As a former national high school debate champion and volunteer debate coac...

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Growing up poor and living in violent neighborhoods didn’t stop Erik Smolinski from being motivated and curious. Erik only needed to hear a few words about investing including the power of compounding from his high school instructor to light the passion and determination to take ACTION. The discipline, responsibility, accountability, and patience he cultivated as a Marine Corp officer strengthened...

Experiencing the brutal bear market of 1973-74 impressed upon Tom the necessity to find ways to hedge risk. This began a multi year long quest to find the right combination of uncorrelated assets, technical indicators and adjust the weightings as needed to provide enough protection to fill in the potholes of equity drawdowns while retaining the bulk of upside potential. Having a sweet balance betw...

Every now and then, we like to switch things up and take a break from our usual program. Today, we present a special episode for that purpose. So, what keeps you in the trading game? The voices you hear in the podcast introduction belong to our listeners from all over the world. We share these voices with you because we believe you will be able to relate to them, just as we do. These voices mirror...

The shock of his first major losing year in 2004 as a discretionary trader, propelled Rob Hanna to find quantifiable statistical advantages that would help mitigate the fluctuations in his equity curves. Knowing the dangers of curve fitting, in trying to find that ‘perfect’ system, Rob zeroed in on simpler approaches that would combine seasonality, overbought, oversold and Federal Reserve days. Th...

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

Stinging losses with mutual funds in 2008 drove Dan to become an active manager of his portfolio. Enticed by the legalization prospects of marijuana, he dived into learning the fundamentals and technicals of the sector. Learning how these stocks traded relative to each other, he cultivated an awareness of the correlations between these companies. These interrelationships would later be applied to...

An engineer at the core, Mark Bennell, a Private Trader who has been trading full-time for 15 years breaks down what it really means to “Treat Trading As a Business” and why this mindset was incredibly important in turning his trading around and why it has kept him in the game for this long. About Mark Bennell Mark Bennell is a Private Trader who has been trading for the last 18 years, 15 of those...

Seeing and feeling the intensity and chaos of the trading pits back in the 1980’s, Pete knew immediately that trading was the career he had to have. Starting as a floor runner making $5/hr to later trading full time for a living Pete discovered the importance of finding stocks with relative strength during the bear market of 2002. Pete uses a top down 3 step methodical process which helps him zero...

Growing up poor in the Philippines, Gabriel sought a way to supplement his income. Dealing with the emotional challenges of giving up his profits in his long-term positions, he switched to trading to have a sense of greater control of the outcome. Starting out using many technical indicators, he later switched to just price action as it gave less false signals. After blowing up several accounts, h...

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

This is a special episode of a recording of a recent discussion that occurred within the Chat With Traders Community on a Zoom call. The discussion centers around Henrik Johansson, a beginner fellow trader, who embarked on a journey to obtain funding from a proprietary trading firm within a 60-day timeframe. Patrick Petersson leads the conversation with Henrik. If you recall, Patrick was a guest o...

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

Growing up in a family and culture strongly critical of trading as a profession, Patrick Petersson opened his first trading account on his 18th birthday and risked his reputation and family money to follow a deep growing passion he had for years. After blowing up many accounts, he found himself homeless and rejected by all in his family despite fully paying them back. Passion, determination, and p...

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

Dedicating significant hours to books and market analysis, Alexander Moreno sought regular counsel from a seasoned trading mentor. After refining his abilities through months of paper trading, he ventured into live trading, reaping consistent profits as planned. This success bolstered his confidence to trade full-time as a livelihood. However, the unforeseen market turbulence in 2008 unleashed his...

Deep in debt after finishing Architecture school, David Capablanca, originally from Miami and host of the Friendly Bear Podcast, desired an alternative career with independence, freedom and potential for high earnings. Naturally drawn to a contrarian psychology, he zeroed in on short selling. The challenge of uncovering scams through a deep dive into company fundamentals, history of founders and v...

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

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

Growing up poor with kidney disease as an immigrant from Mexico, Christian Carreon’s trauma with health issues and family financial instability resulted in the drive and hunger for financial success and security through redemption in the markets. Despite suffering through physical and emotional pain from his condition, his spirit and determination remained strong. He dove deep into the markets and...