Pollinate Trading

Everyone talks about how hard you need to work at becoming a good trader

It’s true 

But doing the right hard work vs just hard work is where most fail

The old saying “practice makes perfect” is usually improved by saying “perfect practice makes perfect”

When you repeat a task over and over you get more efficient and more effective at that task

 You could practice throwing a golf ball with the intention to get good at golf

But in the game of golf, throwing the ball is not allowed as a way to advance on the course

I use to think that making a trading plan the night before and sticking with that trading plan the next day was what working hard was all about

Then the market would have its say about my trading plan and I’d get so bothered because I made a plan and it didn’t work out

I’d get frustrated, I’d feel defeated, I’d want to give up trading

Then I’d motivate myself, get pumped up again and talk to a few...

Equities Bullish - hold long

Bonds Bearish - short

Currencies - sideways mean reversion (focus on swing trades)

Metals - short

Energy - sideways mean reversion (focus on swing trades)

USDCAD - sideway mean reversion - compressed vol
USDJPY - sideway mean reversion - compressed vol
USDCHF - sideway mean reversion - compressed vol
USDBRL - attempting vol extension in bull volatile regime
USDMXN - sideway mean reversion - compressed vol
NZDUSD - downward to sideway mean reversion - low vol
AUDUSD - downward trend with expanded vol contracting
EURUSD - downward to sideways trend with expanded vol contracting
GBPUSD - sideways mean reversion - compressed vol
ZB - FVBO (with strong buying pressure) - short target 149'19
ZN - FVBO (with strong buying pressure) - short target 123'225)
ES - VBO long and strong with measured move to 3300-3500 range
YM - VBO long and strong with measured move to 33,000
NQ - VBO long and strong with measured move to 10,700
CL - sideways mean reversion wide range...

There is a big desire to want to be right about “calling” the future outcome of a market 

Would you rather make more money, consistently

Or 

Be right about calling the market top/bottom and not be in the trade?

Trading is a damn hard job

Only about 10% of all traders make money (Student)

Only about 2% make a living as a trader (Pro’s)

Only about 1% make incredible returns (Elite)

To be clear, about 90% of traders LOSE money trading (Gamblers)

I work with every one of these groups from the struggling trader who is looking to start this new trading business/lifestyle

To people who make over a million dollars in a single day

I have identified a number of characteristics of each trader type and I will break each one down

GAMBLERS - 

New traders who are full of confidence that they are able to predict the future and rightly so, they are usually very successful already in another...

Systems trading is by far the most boring way to trade

You know that you are either going to win or lose on the trade

You know how much you are going to earn or how much you are going to lose +/-

You know what time of day to review your setups

You know when you need to update your profit targets

You know when you are going to stop out of positions

You know how much money you will make that month

You know how much money you will make that year

You know when your system is broken and can turn it off

You know exactly how much money you need to use to achieve your financial goals

You know when you don’t have anything to do for the day

You know when you are going to be a bit extra busy (20 minutes instead of 10)

The only time it isn't boring is when you don't follow your systems rules, then there is no predictability and whatever the outcome you have no clue!

When I first met her, she had just blown up her first account

It was the summer of 2000, the Dot Com bubble had just burst and she was one of those buy the dip people who made millions only to give it all back and a lot more

She had no idea what she was doing up until this point, but she was very good at coming up with unique perspectives on things and creating very successful outcomes

She was also an attorney, this is a unique skills that attorneys tend to have

They can see a problem and fuss around with it until they figure out some completely out of no where solution that no one else even considered and run laps around everyone

Back to our story

At this time the trading world wasn't as remote as it is today, there still was a big focus on going to offices. So we would all meet up for breakfast after the opening session and share ideas to get that human interaction

She was very inquisitive on what strategies people were using, asking a lot of questions and doing a lot of research

One of the best traders I know:

Smokes weed all day and takes Modafanil

Uses Tradingview and Excel to do all his trades on Interactive Brokers

Walks for 2-4 hours /day listening to Audible/Podcasts

Sleeps >8 hours /day

Lives in a 1 bedroom basement apartment in San Francisco

I've seen him make >$1M in 1 day

All of that sounds weird to most people, but he is more focused than anyone I know. We constantly discuss morning routines, types of meditation, breath work, workouts, books we are reading. Everything is an experiment until he finds success with an idea, then he goes very deep on that idea, fanatically.

The stack of ideas that he has tested is massive. The stack of ideas that have been proven successful are few. But of those few, they have been impressive in the results they bring.

Let's focus on trading ideas that work: Statistical advantages Price Action setups

Now let's look at what ideas are in the pile of garbage: News based strategies/analysis

Everything else:...

How to make trading your career

I’m going to break this down step by step, from day 1 of “I want to be a trader, but I’ve never traded, I don’t know markets, who is this Chris guy”

To

Trading successfully for a living

Scroll along until you find where you are now and jump in there….

Step 1 - Follow and retweet everything I say or do LOL

Step 2 - get your hands on a copy of “Idiot’s Guide to Making Money on Wall Street”

I know it seems old, lame, cheezy, but this book does a great job of explaining the basics if you don’ t know anything

Step 3 - Consume Consume Consume

Your job here is to learn as much as you can, broadly, and focus only on the surface level

Don’t worry about the details yet, just get comfortable with the jargon and understanding what is what

Step 4 - Take notes of all that you are discovering so that you can come back and explore some of those ideas later

By taking notes you can know that any random...

Let’s talk indicators

Indicators are helpful but if you are using indicators with no knowledge of what the underlying price action is telling you and how to exploit edges

Then it’s just a matter of time before you blow up

I constantly see traders sharing charts with a dozen indicators on them and the rest of the internet gets all shiny eyed agreeing with them because, well the RSI is up at the top of it’s range so we are obviously overbought and the market will drop from here

RSI, MACD, Stochastics, Elliot Wave, Gann, Fibonacci, Wycoff, Bollinger Bands, Keltner Channels, ATR, VWAP, MA, EMA, SQN, Ichimoku Clouds or whatever are worthless

Without an understanding of price action and position sizing, the above indicators will wipe you out

In the hands of someone who understands price action and position sizing any of the above indicators or philosophies are damn useful

Indicators are like stop signs, green lights and lanes on the road

If you don’t...

What would happen if you only allowed yourself 1 trade per week?

A thought experiment for you

Here’s the rules:

• You have $100k account of my money
• You can only do 1 round trip trade per week, but you don’t have to exit that week
• You don’t have to do 1 trade per week
• You can only risk 1%
• You get to keep 90% of all profits

You can only trade the following assets:

$DIA/$YM, $QQQ/$NQ, $IWM/$RTY, $GLD/$QO, $USO/$QM, $TLT/$ZB/$ZN

$BTCUSD, $EURUSD, $GBPUSD, $USDCAD, $USDCHF, $USDJPY, $AUDUSD, $NZDUSD 

Every time you close the month >1 penny higher than the previous month, I will increase your account by 10%

Any month that the balance ends less than $100,000, you have to pay me the difference to bring the account back to 100k

If you lose more than 5% in one month you are on 3 month probation, no live trading and we spend time together restructuring your system

There is no limit to how much money I will give you to trade with, if you follow these rules

What would...