who now runs the intervening private access. He's also the author of Trade Like a Stock Market Wizard. How do you protect your money? Well, you stay away from the companies that can't grow those revenues and you go with the companies that are showing not only earnings but also strong revenue growth. It tightens up real nice here and holds its gains. Sets up a perfect look at. It's a perfect couple of handles, right, VCP, what I call it. Boom, comes out here. We're back in. We'll right back up. I think Yahoo's short term is definitely extended and it's ahead of itself. The internet is something that's very viable. It's going to be here for a long time, probably forever. If you lose on a trade, it's because you missed something. Either with a market, the stock, it wasn't set up properly. Something you missed because when you do it right, it works perfect.
All right. Welcome back, everybody, to the Trade Align Conference. I'm very excited to welcome our next speakers joining us, our Mark Minervini. Mark Ricci II and Brandon Hedgepath. Mark Minervini, as many of you know, is a market wizard, author, foundational trading and mindset books, a two-time US investing champion and a 40-year veteran of Wall Street. He is also the founder of Minervini Private Access and the creator of the Master Trader Program Super Performance Workshop. Mark Ricci and Brandon are both experienced portfolio managers who teach through Minervini Private Access and they both attended the first Master Trader program back in 2010 with Mark and over the 13 and a half period working together, they achieved an outstanding, compounded total return of 5,667 percent.
And today, I'm really excited. We'll be discussing a wide range of topics based on your guys submitted questions and we'll be covering setups, trading mindset, position management, sell rules, progressive exposure and much more as well as covering a few of their key trades. Mark, Brandon and Mark, welcome. It's a real pleasure to have you guys here. Thanks for having us. Yeah, that's great. Great to be here and I'm really happy to be here with my team with Mark and Brandon. So I think everyone's going to get a chance to meet some really great traders that I respect more than anybody probably in the world, that probably the only two guys that I would trust my own money with. Yeah, perfect. As round as Richard, good to see you again. So it should be a lot of fun.
Yeah, perfect. And yeah, I think it's excellent to get all your guys different perspectives and all your nuances that you guys will share. To start things off, I want to kind of bring it back to the very beginning of your trading careers. A lot of people watching maybe kind of just starting out a few years into this. Looking back at your early years of trading and Brandon, I'll kind of start with you on this one. What were some of the key mistakes that you found yourself making over and over again? And what were some of the key steps and improvements that you made to kind of correct those and work towards improving as a trader?
Sure. So a style drift, I would say was a key one. So I would, you know, I think I spent, I don't know, maybe $10,000 jumping from one strategy to the next, whether you first started with options, then it was selling options, right? So I was trading options on the long side. Then it was selling premium. I jumped to, I mean, I don't even remember, I traded Forex. I paid a guy $4,000 to teach me how to trade Forex that didn't pan out. And it was like every three months or so, you know, I'd have success and then I'd give it all back. And then I'd be like, all right, this isn't working. Or do I go to the next thing?
And then there's over a two-year period before my Marky turned me on to what Mark Meinervini was starting. So, you know, I had a good, I don't know, two-year experience of screwing things up, put it that way. So, you know, this idea of I was always, you know, committed, but for some reason, I just had a sense like I was missing some pieces. Yeah. And was a little rich, just to point out Brandon calls Mark Richie, Marky and I'm Mark. There you go. That's a good point, Mark. Thank you for that. Yeah. So Mark, Mark Richie's Marky to me. So, well, that makes it easy to differentiate. So thank you.
And I also want to kind of touch on for and hear from each of you guys kind of some aha moments. And it sounds like the Master Trader program for you, Brandon and Mark Richie, of course, or Marky. It was kind of one of those turning point moments. So would you guys kind of touch on, you know, what were the key takeaways from that experience that, you know, really set you on that path towards getting super performance and really improving as a trader?
Can I just give a little, a little setup here? Because it's really inspiring when you hear about Brandon in particular, Brandon, but Mark and Brandon together, what they've done. And Brandon came and Mark came to the very first Master, my first Master Trader program, I think there was 25 people in the room. It was simply an experiment at the time. I was for me to try my material that I was using to write my book and I wanted to see what would resonate with people and if it should go in the book or not.
And so I said, let me do a seminar and we'll, you know, that will get to see, you know, people's visceral response and questions and that's how it all started. And now it's, you know, become, it's 15 years later, we're still doing it. But Brandon, at the time, couldn't afford to come to the Master Trader program. So he sold his car to pay for it, which you want to talk about commitment. He said he was committed. He certainly was committed.
And they came, you know, with, and collectively they left and started trading as a team with, you know, a relatively small amount of money, 25 or 30, $40,000. And now they managed to get their own money over 20, 25 million, I think now they're in the tens of millions of dollars that they've grown it. So, and they were a customer of intervening private access for a decade where they traded on their own and it was after all that.
And we, of course, over time became friends and so forth. And I was real proud of them. Then they started working for me and been with the company now for a good number of years. So it's just a great story. And I just wanted everybody to know what incredible dedication these guys are amazing.
So, Mark, you want to, you want to lay the backdrop or you want me to? Sure. Well, the original question was, you know, mistakes and those types of things and just taking it back to there because, you know, a lot of people know, obviously, or maybe failure. My dad was a retired trader, but I never actually worked for him or did anything like that work for an old associate of his. That's actually how I met Brandon and really got off to a terrible start.
So even the idea of. It's in your blood or it's in the genetics or that it's really not the case. And, you know, even I think it was talking offline. Sean Ryan made the comment interview with you, Richard, the markets don't care who your dad is. Couldn't be more true. You know, there is no gene for trading in my view. But anyway, I didn't have a process. You know, I didn't. Discipline is something that, you know, it did come easy.
I don't say easy, but something that I understood that listen if you can apply a process or tactics and discipline that work. I just didn't have that. So you did what a lot of people did. You tried different things. And then, you know, fill in a little of the details. I had market just started doing a few things, even on stock twits and had a blog and then started the NPA thing and I told Brandon is like, look, I'm making money and just kind of learning.
Well, you know what this guy's doing, but he's doing sort of a. Yeah, this seminar. I'm. And, you know, very similar, I made a little bit of profits. I just took some of the profits and said I'm paying. I'm paying for a trip to, you know, Myrtle Beach to go figure out. You know, how, how he makes the sausage, if you will, you know, and to me, it was really more like I said, I think one of the biggest things I took away I still talk about this is this idea of not being in too big of a hurry.
Where I felt like armed with the knowledge that we learned there and then, of course, you're going to workbook and all these things saying there's a real path forward. If you can continue to be disciplined and get good at this. You know, most people don't care what it what what the, you know, the discipline or the avenue is they don't spend enough time really getting good. They just want to be successful.
One of the things Mark talks about is you get the skill first, then then the money and the success come later. And to me, I actually felt like, you know, that was really what the, the course provided was like this is a consistent approach to the market that is timeless. That that isn't just a one trip pony, you know, or is going to cut, you know, go in and out of vogue and then not work anymore.
It was it was working before any of us were around it'll be that's this approach will be working long after we're dead and gone so it was this idea of, you know, for lack of a better word, this is the brass ring in as far as trading is concerned it's just going to require a consistent application and just want some hard work and it doesn't feel like that was 15 years ago but I can't believe that was actually almost 15 years ago in 2010. Yes, we just got put our heads down and did work it was actually years later when Mark was like, you know, you guys have done a really good job and Fran and I were like, we're, yeah, I guess so you know we're just, you know, again heads down trying to do the work. Good things.
I gotta say something I gotta jump in because it just reminds you of certain moments we were all together one time and this is after these guys have been trading for like a, you know, a decade and a half and they've, you know, amassed tens of millions of dollars and I said to Brett you guys are, you know, massively successful and he said, you know, I'm just starting to feel like I'm successful.
So, yeah, I go out and the ability and the discipline and these guys are really purists, you know, and, and now we're seeing lots of, you know, we've got the US investing championship, you know, Norm Zader restarted a number of years ago I guess it's maybe six years now or so. Five, six years and we're just seeing, you know, our members dominate, you know, this last quarter we had all four divisions were our members so it's just these guys and all these people that are entering the contest are showing that it's teachable, you know, and I think O'Neill did the same thing, you know, and he'll had David Ryan and had leaf and had leaf resstone and it's duplicatable, it's teachable and these are principles that are timeless and there's going to be people long after us and these guys are the next generation and the people watching here are also the next generation.
Yeah, and I love that like that that's one of the things that really stuck, stuck out to me, Mark, when the first time I met you because you did say that you said timeless principles and I really thought about that for a long time because I'm like, well, what does that mean? You know, and I think one of the things I always struggled with when I was bouncing around other places was I had so many unanswered questions and not that when I, you know, when we started doing the minervini style or approach that Mark was teaching at the time to us even going leading up to that seminar was, you know, he gave you everything you need that the process was there and I never saw that from the beginning of the day, I was like, I don't know if I was going to be able to do anything to me anywhere else.
And it was like, I had this aha moment, like, holy cow, here is the holy grail and, you know, the risk management alone, you know, which is what we talk about is the holy grail. No one taught me that. I didn't stumble across that but that was something I knew in my mind I needed because I'd always ask these questions of like, well, how do I know when did not trade? Like was I trading too small was I trading too big, you know, it was like, I could never, I knew the market changed but I couldn't put my finger on it. Because clearly what I was doing wasn't working and when I when we went to that first, well leading up to that we actually mark, you know, we were subscribers to the platform under someone else's name actually.
And we mark sidestep the flash crash in 2010 and we were like blown away. And so leading up to Mark and I, Marky and I actually had lunch and he's like, hey, I'm going to go to this thing. I think you should come. And I was like, I can't pay for that. And that's when I was like, well, I guess I could sell my car after thinking about it for a little bit. And so yeah, I did. I sold my car for I think $14,000. And I took the four paid for the seminar. And, you know, it's funny Bob Oyseman told me too that he, this might be the last one. So it was one and done. So I'm like, all right, well, there's no next to you.
We truly believed we truly thought that we're just going to do it just to, you know, do an experiment to get data for the book to figure out, you know, what materials should go in the book. I wanted to make sure the book was good. But, but another thing too. I mean, it shows a great commitment, but the real commitment. I think this is a real, you know, we'll get to some of the tools and the important things that people want to hear of how they can be successful. And the real key is that we're 15 years later. And these guys have been doing the same thing. I've been doing the same thing for 40 years. They've been doing it for 15 and I'll assure you 15 years from now they'll be doing the same thing. And they'll be able to say what I'm saying now, and sticking to that strategy and becoming really good at it.
And it's not just my strategy. This bar strategy is not the only strategy that works. There's other strategies. There's people do an option spreads and value buying and all kinds of things and day trading. But whatever strategy it is, you need to make a commitment to it more than a year or two. And you got to think in five, ten year increments as opposed to one or two. So that's the real key. That's the real. And with me, I didn't do well for six years. I didn't make any money for six years. I mean, these guys got you guys will quicker to get, you know, to do well. Well, and to be honest, I mean, we struggled to.
I mean, there was some periods where Mark and I, you know, I mean, listen, if we weren't taking the approach that, hey, what did we learn versus how much money we made. You know, we really valued of taking the wisdom that we gained from the market versus, okay, well, we didn't make what we wanted. So we should just quit or what. So, you know, Mark's key to on like, you're going to have rotten days, right? And if you take that approach, and I think a lot of people don't understand six years is a long time to not give up and not make money. Yeah, it felt like a long time.
Hey, Rich, I'm just going to let you know that the three of us could rattle on for all. I'll jump in. I'll try to get to like people's. Sorry. No, no, that actually leads me right back to the question I want to ask you now, Mark, about those six years where you struggled. And you mentioned in your book, the realization you made when you looked at your data and you calculated if you capture loss, I think it was at 10% that you would have been up, I think multiple double digits, maybe 80% versus being down.
Was that the key moment for you where everything changed and, um, and what kind of specific changes did you make going forward to get on that path towards profitability and, of course, the performance. There's been a lot of aha moments and that was the main one that I realized that the law, cutting the losses and what O'Neill was saying was even more important than I had understood and that I didn't really understand risk management very well.
And I went from I had a 15% loss. I normalized everything to a 10% stop. And my account would have been up 72% and I said, wait a minute, that has to be wrong. I obviously did a calculation wrong. I calculated it again. Came back the same. I calculated it the third time. Low and behold, it was correct. So then I went and I said, well, let me look at survivorship bias and see if you know, would have knocked me out of some of the winners and, you know, there's got to be something here that it's wrong. It wasn't even with accounting for all of that. It was still right around that same number.
So that was on that day. I'll never forget it. I said to myself, never, ever again. Am I allowing a loss to balloon. I'm cutting the line in the sand. And that's it. A loss unless it was going to have to gap through and I'm taking the next best price after that. But I'm never ever holding a loss. I'm not going to have to go to the hard fast rule that I'm making and I'm sticking to it. And they're going to have to take if they're taking me out, they're taking me out by little death by 1000 cuts.
I'm never getting taken out by a big loss ever again because I was every now and then I have a stock blow up. I'd fall in love with a stock and I buy more of it when it's down and it just I just kept distorting my returns and any little progress that I made would just get destroyed. Everything changed from that point forward. It was just amazing. I just I started getting consistent returns my drawdowns and I just started perfecting the risk management and before you know it, I went into the 90s.
I had that stretch that people read about in market wizards 36,000% in five and a half years and you could do the math regardless if you start with $2,000 or $10,000. It turns into a lot of money. You know, and that was the beginning of a career. So yeah. And what are your goals right now for risk management in terms of, you know, average stop. I know you track your numbers quite diligently and and Marky and and Brandon. I like to hear your perspectives as well with what you guys like but but starting with Mark. What are your goals right now in terms of capping your losses and keeping very strict risk.
So we all work together and we actually at minimum private access. We have a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a mini event or any select trade portfolio that we managed as a team. And then we have our open positions where we put breakout stocks and all that. So you'll see that in real time and are and also manage our own money as well. And these guys, if you looked and I don't know what they're doing with their own money, they don't know what I'm doing with my own money. We don't really talk about that much. But if you, if we go back and we look at their, their losses, my, they're about the same, you know, we're averaging anywhere between if we're really tight.
You know, 3% 3.5, 4% in a, in a market that's not very good. We might be 5, 6% averaging 4, 5%, 6% line in the sand that at 8%. But we stagger stop sometimes. So we'll put like a 4 and a 12. Usually it's not even 12. Usually it's a 10 is the max. And we might use, you know, a staggered stop. And from there, you will still average that 8%. That 8% is a number that goes back to O'Neill. And it's a, it's a number. It's a very important number for a few reasons. Number one, if you just do the math, once you start going over 10%, the math starts working against you because losses work geometrically against you.
So now, you know, you're down 20% takes 25% to get even you down 50%. It takes 100%. Right. Everybody knows this. Well, 8% is about 8% to get even. And also, when you look at charts and you go back and you go all the way back to the 1800s, we looked at charts. I've looked at millions of charts, literally millions of charts. And we've got the research and O'Neill had the research and love had the research and you go back to all of the Jesse Livermore. When you look at these charts, you don't need more than that.
Like that, if you back into these, the way charts fluctuate and stocks fluctuate, if you know how to enter properly, well, then this, it will be abnormal. If you start getting 10, 15% moves, that's abnormal fluctuation and you'll know it. So it's just, that's what's necessary. And that's what mathematically works. Yeah, perfect. Brandon, mark anything to add there.
Yeah, I'll just add, obviously, in terms of the risk management where we're all cut from the same cloth and that regard and look, the tighter, the better Richard is generally when people are going like, well, how tight do you like to be? Well, it depends on the setup. But the one thing I will just add, and we were Mark was talking about post trade analysis. And that process, though, is something that no one can do for you. But if you faithfully do it, where Mark was saying, I had this, ha ha, where I was like, all right, I am drawing the the the marginal line in the sand.
Like I've never frosting it again. I, you know, I had a similar experience on the on the upside, you know, five or six decent years and I'd gone to my third and fourth fifth master trader program came back and did a big study of all my biggest winning trades. And actually found out that they were in the same groups that Mark had written about in his books that I feel had written about that. I was like, my own results were bearing out that like, I should be, if anything, more aggressive.
What did all my biggest winners have in common. They had earnings or sales, or they were part of some of the classic growth areas minus the biotech. And so I just said, I'm not going to play favorites but if that's where I've made all the money. And then going into the next cycle was I think was 2016 17 we did something like 200% in the next 18 months. Armed with that information. And this is where, again, one of the things, you know, we, we learned and we teach is that process of grading yourself going through studying your results.
That is one of your best teachers. Let me just say two two points one is the, the, the results bearing out the research as, as Mark just said that that's what happened with me too. As I started getting the results, it was, it was confirming the O'Neill research research I was confirming the Richard love book it was confirming Jesse Livermore was confirming all these people who I had concluded were on to timeless principles that that principles that will work forever because it's a love's loss applying to man is like gravity, you know, it's not going to change.
So here's and you asked about the ha ha moments there's there's there's two, there's two more. And the one and this is what I something I've said many times that I learned from O'Neill O'Neill was a man of personal responsibility. I mean, he really was and I met him a bunch of times. And he said some things that were just so enormous that just lasted for the rest of my life and one thing he said was, look, if you lose on a trade, it's because you missed something. All right, either with the market, the stock, it wasn't set up properly, something you missed because when you do it right, it works perfect. And when the market conditions are right. That's, that might sound obvious. That's a big statement. That's a big statement. And that means that, you know, there, this, there is a certain time to do this and there's a certain time not to. And it's up to you to learn and get the skill to be able to do that and you're not going to be perfect.
You're not going to be perfect. So then not only you have to get that skill to do it well. But when it's not working and things aren't going well, you have to have a mechanism to mitigate the downside, right? So what I did is I just listened to David Ryan. I went just like these guys came to my seminar and David Ryan actually became his of my instructor for eight years at the Master Trader program. I went and saw David Ryan when I was a young kid and I saw O'Neill. I saw David Ryan. David Ryan said, you know, just take a green pen and a red pen and mark where you bought and sold on a chart. And that's your best teacher. And that was the big aha moment. I reckon. And I still, it's funny because originally the mistake that I found that I was making very often, besides holding losses, I corrected that. But then I was selling too soon. I was constantly selling stocks way too soon.
And I'm still doing it to this day. Fortunately, I selling them too soon. I still make enough where it pays for the risk. And I've been able to build a fortune off of that. But I wouldn't go over and video and I sold and video both times too soon. Just these last couple trades bought it as perfectly as you can possibly buy it. And both times sold it too soon. But so yeah, doing that post analysis and you will find common denominators, things that you do over and over good and bad. So you'll see these are my strengths. You'll see your weaknesses. And when you start to see something, you're doing over and over and over. Now, that's what really tells you what you need to work on and what you need to exploit. And how often would you guys suggest for traders watching this to do post analysis and what would be kind of the key steps?
There's there's calculating your numbers. And then there's as you mentioned, going over the charts and the trades and marking them up. What would be kind of your your guidance there. That's a great. That's a great question. The way you partitioned into two things where it's the numbers and it's the charts and the traits. And they're two completely different things. One is the math. And I'll let you guys talk about it too Brandon and Mark, you know, they don't do any differently than I do where we do it the exact same way. But looking at the charts, there's a couple of general rules of thumb. One is I find it's best to look at it later to let some time go by months go by when you do that. When you go back, it's kind of like I'm grading your trades, Rich. You know, like you start to look at them as objectively and not emotionally you're away from the trade you kind of forget about it.
And then you can really honestly identify and you could be more objective about it. With the numbers, the math is the math and the math. This is the thing I think that people have a hard time with is bringing the two together. I always say, let the spreadsheet wait, make its way into your trading. So you got to be cognizant of your numbers. And then you know where your average loss is your average gain and you see the math. Well, this math isn't working. You know, my losses are bigger than my gain. Obviously, you don't have to be a rocket scientist figure out. You're going to lose money. Right. So you've got it. You got to get that math right. But then you've got to back into trades and back into the risk into the charts that that that math works. And that's where that's the hard part.
That's why I'll leave that up to you to explain Mark and Brandon. Go ahead, Brandon. Oh, you want me to jump in here. All right. So yeah, so that's, that's what I did. You know, in the early days was three months and six months, I would always review the trades. And I think for me, you know, before Mark and I officially formed our partnership. We would trade in the same office, but my tracers, you know, those are sometimes different than his. So, yeah, I want, I was always selling too soon. So, you know, I was very risk adverse to the point where as I was choking everything off. So to me, the math making sense with, you know, how the chart, you know, where I want to be the last week holder, meaning when the charts hours, that's when it matches with my, you know, our percent stop that makes mathematical sense.
You know, typically for us, you know, we run our win rates a little bit lower because our average loss is like what? We're going to be doing it every percent. So we, we don't have a problem taking, you know, stepping aside quickly, but we'll also look to get back in quickly. So for me that, that aha moment or, you know, using doing the hard work because it is hard work. You know, seeing how well you've, you know, played versus in your mind how well you think you did is two different things. Yeah. Yeah. For me, the, the, you know, just understanding that I don't want to stop out something that's not doing anything wrong without the idea of like, okay, well, if I do, I got to get right back in.
If it starts to go in the direction I wanted it to. Yeah. And that's where we learned. That's where in my book, I talk about confirmations of violations. So if you're breathing in trade like a champion, you'll basically what Brandon's referring to are violations, you know, if there's no violations, then you want to stick with the trade. But go ahead Mark. I'm sorry. I was just going to say, I'm not going to add a whole lot of color other than just, I can remember though, it was, I think at the very first seminar on Mark called it knowing the truth about your trading, which is what he refers to in his book too. And, and he said, you know, how many of you are tracking your trades here and it was like, I think our two or the only two hands that went up. I was like, I couldn't believe the number of people that weren't doing this.
But because it really is an exercise in seeing your own look, it's the way you look at yourself in the mirror in terms of the numbers don't lie, but I would, I would agree. I think you. We try and log them right away and then come back to grade them later. So, yeah, I have to tell ourselves and then come back and grade them. I have seminars, you know, I have 400, 400, 500 people in the audience to say, how many people right now raise a hand raise your hand? How many people know your average gain average loss percentage of winning trades. Biggest loss smallest smallest, biggest win biggest loss. Raise your hand. Yeah, five percent of the room, 10 percent of the room, the hands go up, you know, and that includes the people that are lying.
So, and I say, I'm going to fall on you. So you better, if you raise your hand, I'm going to, I might ask for your numbers. One time one guy raises hand, I said, okay, what are your numbers? And he's a, a, a, a, a okay, you don't know. So, but yeah, it's very few people, you know, do the math and actually know the numbers. So my question always is, well, how do you know where to cut your loss if you don't know your gain. If you don't know, like, how do you know the math behind it? If you don't know what's going on in your trading, well, how would you know how to manage your risk against what. So knowing the truth is the very first thing, drilling down to the truth of your trading. And that's for most, that's painful, you know, and it's even painful to look at the, you know, we have some really great tools on my platform on the NPA platform for analytics.
We have where you can put your trades in, it gives you breaks down all numbers, it gives you these bell curves and so forth proprietary stuff. We've got a greater where you can grade your trades. Surprisingly, a lot of people don't use it. They don't, they don't use it way less people than I would think and should. It's not the, it's not the most favorite part of the platform and it that's the part that is the most important. To add to that, if, if for instance you do your calculations and your average gain is around 10%. Where would using that information, where would you say, all right, given that average gain, where should I cut my risk now? Are you shooting for two to one, three to one?
It definitely depends whether you're more of a swing trader and turning things over faster versus more of a position trader. But I'd love to hear your guys thoughts with that and maybe start with Mark Minervini. Well, we were shooting for a minimum of two to one. We'd like to have, you know, the gains cover the losses by two to one. That gives you some room, you know, to be wrong. Three to one to five to one is, you know, where I'd like to be on my, on my better trades on the, on the bigger winners. And sometimes you get, you get eight or 10 to one, you know, eight or 10 or 12 hour trades. But on average, this is the thing that people have to understand. It's all about what happens on average. It doesn't matter what individual trade, what one individual trade does. It matters about what you do on average.
When it all comes down to it, it's going to be your average gain divided by your average loss times your batting average. And that's it. That's the Holy Grail. Manage that. Keep that a positive number. And, and you're a winner. The bigger that number is, the less trading you have to do. So if it's 1.1 to one, and you're making a dollar 10 for every dollar you risk, you're going to have to do a lot of trades. You have to turn that over. If it's three to one, you're not going to have to do a whole lot of trades, and you're going to be able to be wrong a lot more. So that's the balancing act that you, you know, that you play, and that is going to depend.
If you're, if you're a day trader, you could have a 1.1 to one reward to risk. And you're going to turn that edge over. I mean, I have, I have a couple friends that are day traders, very successful. And one of my friends, he does in one day, sometimes 5,000 trades. I mean, can you even, I, it's almost unimaginable how that is possible with the amount of time that's in a day, but I've seen it with my own two eyes. You know, thousands of trades in one day. So think about that, turning that edge over. Even if you're making, you know, a dollar, 1 dollar and 1 cent versus what you're risking. If you did it 5,000 times a day, that can add up.
And one thing that I've struggled with, especially, you know, say you do it quarterly and looking back at a trade that was a few months ago, is it's a little bit tough. Of course, you can add an index to the chart, but it's a little tough to know the context surrounding that trade, because we all know that if it's a semi trade and, you know, it starts pulling in, you know, it's still above the moving averages. But all the other semis that are also maybe in your portfolio are pulling back in the same time, you know, putting pressure on your equity curve, that type of thing. So my question is for you guys, how do you take into account the context of a trade to identify maybe those hidden mistakes that you're making selling something too early. Just because everything's pulling in when the chart is still not broken and still, you know, fine overall.
And maybe I'll start with Brandon on this one. Oh, you want to start with me on this? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a tough question, because, you know, listen, we always want to try to expand that average gain as well. So it's like, you know, you could be a strict two to one trader. That's fine. And your goal is to turn that over as much as possible. What Mark and I learned, though, is we got some really good stocks that we sold up 10% that we should have held for 2030. Right. So it's like, you got to, again, this is going back to the post trade analysis to understand how to understand the price.
So understand how a stock fluctuates. Right. So if you get 10% and you haven't even sat through a first natural reaction, maybe you don't want to sell yet. Or maybe you just sell a smaller piece, right? And then you want to hold for a bigger move. And that's typically what we try to do. You know, again, I think, Richard, the idea of like, what is the market? What's the environment? Right. So we do stock tactics feedback, right? What's the feedback from the market? So it's important. But if you're just coming out of a bear market, you know, you know that, or you don't know, but you're thinking, you're thinking should be, I want to hold maybe a few of these if they have the earnings and it's coming out of the right pattern for a bigger move.
So, yeah, we always it's this again is something, in my opinion, is hard to have a good answer for because each stock is kind of unique in its own. So, like, this is where we talk about, hey, give us an example. Right. And this is where Marx from the MTP, the, the, the trading book that he gives us, which is a model book, is so valuable. And I will still to this day, Marky and I both will review these charts if we have if we're just not doing anything and I have one on my desk from the first one. And I'll just flip through it because I want to see how just the natural flow of a stock X and we want to maximize, obviously, the most gain we can in the shortest amount of time. And that's something that stood out for me, whether that mark taught us originally to, but you're either have a 60% gain that took a year, you know, 10 or six 10% gains they actually compound and equals more than 60% that happens all the time.
So, yeah, real quick too, you asked about context and I'll mark if you have anything to share too, but you asked about context to learn and I don't generally worry too much about like if another stock in the group unless it's a key stock and it has a major break. You know, Nvidia, you know, has a major break and has the biggest down day since the last five years and the biggest down week on the largest volume. And that's it, that's what we call the acts the acts in the group. So, but I tend to stay stock by stock right but here's the real key. Are you in a bull or bear market, right? Are you in the early stages of a bull market or the late stages of a bull market? What kind of traction are you getting in your own trading so now if I'm in the early stages of a bull market we have we've had a bear market right and now all of a sudden. Stocks are breaking out and we're coming off the lows and this is the first sign of stocks breaking out of really great high RS names are coming on a basis.
Well, I might have, I might have a monster by the tail, you might have Nvidia Amazon at the beginning of a big move. You even if you keep a tiny position you sell 90% of it and you keep 10% you could it could be life changing. So, at that point now I have a different tactic right I'm going to maybe even though I might short term trade some interest. I'm going to finance my risk and I'll play the rest for a big move and you some of these stocks go up thousands of percent they're even closed below their 50 day moving average, let alone the 200 day. So you could you start back stopping on now now let's say we're in a late stage we've been in a bull market for two and a half three years. Stocks are coming off then the groups are coming off their fourth fifth stage base and you're running up that that's a gift. Those are gifts that you have to take sell right into.
And now I'm short term trading, you know I'm and I'm getting shorter and shorter and shorter as the bull market gets older and older and older. That's really the key and the traction is the real important part with Mark Brandon I wear everything that guides us and whether we get aggressive or not is all based on it is our own trades working. Doesn't matter the whole world can be doing well if our trades aren't working we're not increasing size. It's pure gold right there. Yeah, Mark Richie did you have anything to add on this. You don't think I would just add back to your original question was because you had asked about you know hey what if I sold the stock for other reasons or things like that I would just put it I would just put that in your notes or you know our greater now with this annotations where you can say you know hey maybe I was getting stopped and so I just reduced overall risk.
But generally when we're grading stuff we're just looking at the chart. Like in a vacuum even to Mark's point about you want to be in your own little echo chamber in terms of your own trading that's what you should be hearing you know how how are how are I tactics working right here right now in the market. And that should be the only thing really driving am I getting more or less aggressive. The same thing though like that trade has to stand on its own. So yeah I may have you know I look I got stopped on a few other positions I was raising a little bit of cash so I sold this one a little early I might make a note for that but that still doesn't mean it was a proper sell on that chart. Right. That stock was acting really well I might I might rate that as an early sell or a bad sell I'm still going to be honest in terms of how I do the grading of each one trade on its own.
Yeah perfect I think that's what I was looking for and to rewatching you know some of this might seem theoretical but we're going to actually jump to some trades in just a minute. I'm going to have a few questions on mindset first where everything hopefully will come together. Yeah and very little of what we say is theoretical I mean it is it is practical we use it in real life but you're right Richard will sound theoretical it does it can sound theoretical yeah.
Just to start with Mark for you. What are some kind of mindset shifts that traders can make to unlock the belief that they can achieve super performance and be very successful is there something that you've noticed over time either teaching many many traders at your workshops as well as through MPA. To me the human superpower is choice you know it's the power of choice and the power of making the choice to believe and to believe in yourself you know the way I looked at it was and again it sounds corny but I you know when I was a kid I watched the movie Rocky and there's a part in there where they say you know he's great.
And then his cornerman says he's just a man just you know be more man and I started thinking about it and I said you know when I was going to see O'Neill and these guys I said these are just men you know he's just people just like me if they did it I could do it too if I learn you know and so I took that personal responsibility. One of the things I got from O'Neill was that personal responsibility I mean also Dr. Wayne Dyer who I was a people know I'm a huge fan of it was like my life coach he passed away unfortunately but there's someone who I spent a lot of time with and and and study in his work with the people who I was a person.
然后他的场边教练对他说,他只是一个普通人,你知道,要更有男子气概。我开始思考这个问题,我说,当我去看奥尼尔和那些家伙的时候,我就想,他们也只是普通人,就和我一样。他们能做到的事情,我也能做到,只要我学习。所以我承担起个人责任。我从奥尼尔那里学到的一件事就是这种个人责任感。我也是Dr. Wayne Dyer的忠实粉丝,他就像是我的人生导师,虽然他不幸去世了,但我花了很多时间和他一起学习他的作品。
He was all about taking really you know 100% personal responsibility and saying that you know I can do this because someone else did it the four minute mile you know after they broke the four minute mile the whole bunch of people broke the four minute mile that's the way it works right. That's why we do this is to inspire that's why I write books is to inspire others you know when I see these guys went in the US investing championship and I had a little to do with it. It makes me way more happier than me winning it to be honest with you and why we wouldn't have you know 30 years ago but now it does.
So, yeah you know the mindset has to be where you need to be open minded to number one that if you're not doing well you probably suck at it and that and you're going to suck at it because you don't know shit. You know you're going to be in the bottom line all right and you don't know shit for five or 10 years and you got to realize that that's the way it is and find somebody who knows what they're doing shut up listen and make a commitment to something you know make it you can't go to a coach.
And give it a half ass effort for a couple months and then go to another coach there's no magic coach you've got it. There's coaches that coach different ways and you know some coach with a lot of positive motivation some coach like Bobby Knight screaming yell and you know there's different ways right so but you got to make a commitment to that coach you got to make commitment to a style. And you know the commitment where you spend a lot of time not being very good at it and working and working and working and I think that's the mindset is that I think that's my strength is my unconditional persistence.
These guys I know again I don't know why if I had anything to do with convincing them to stay with something for 15 years straight and doing it over and over and a lot of other people too that have followed in my footsteps. And so Neil did a great job of convincing me that this was the way to go and that if it doesn't work it's because of me not because of the style of the strategy. And that was the key the key was convincing myself that it wasn't it wasn't the strategy it was me.
I think that's the ultimate mindset is the is the responsibility. So you won the 100% challenge after 2010 attending the MTP. Was there a mindset unlock that you made there or kind of a realization what kind of led to that you know shift in performance there. Well I was just you know again armed with all the things that we're talking about you know and the idea of you know we talk about this one preparedness meets opportunity.
That that is essentially what what what we do in this business in my opinion is just making sure you're prepared for for those good periods in the market. And you know there's so many that you know we're all complicated individuals right and some people's we all struggle with different things. And so the reality is the market has a way of you know exposing our weaknesses and through a number of the things we just talked about post trade analysis you're never going to perfectly remove those things the keys you but you can manage them.
And and even the idea of you know whether it's holding losses selling too quickly style drift. You know as getting over those kinds of things and realizing to all the way back to this isn't a business about you know i've got to be right. My goal is to make money if your goal was real and you have to. You know it's very humbling even mark those like to have we have people now complimenting branch and I go and you guys are. You know helping us change our lives or whatever and that means a lot to me because. I was broke when I came to the first massive trader program so I know that feels like to try and figure this out where you know okay I didn't work at a investment bank or a big hedge fund or anything like that.
And to be able to go from you know very barely getting by to being quite successful is humbling but yeah I would just say I think it's once you start to realize. You know, I've seen this and I've seen this okay okay there's a setup here and it's working and I can do this repeatedly. Or is I remember Mark first saying like the best sign is there going to be more set up than you have money to buy I have that like written in the little margin my very first master trader program that was probably my first. Ah ha and then I remember seeing with I was maybe a month later two months later I can't remember it was like holy cow there's just these setups like they're everywhere.
You know I remember saying that to Brandon and it was like I was just buying every one of them so aggressively and it was the again using that whole progressive exposure though I was at new highest things are working and it was like when you made a ton of money in a very short period of time with what seemed very low risk. There's silent gold there by the way there's a there's you know because right now right now we're in a situation and you heard you heard what Mark said. A lot of setups right but you also heard him say they're working. So right now just last week I just did my weekend report and it was how there was a lot of setups last week lots and lots of stocks were on our focus list.
There's a lot of reversals didn't the cues obviously they went to they went tag that high and reversed if you take a look even the equally weighted cues tried to break out of a base had a big reversal. So but a lot of stocks are were failing. So yes the setups are the setups there and are they working those are our two gauges if they're setups and if they're working and if they're not working even if there's lots of setups we're not going to get aggressive until they actually produce results. And then we'd start you know progressively exposing which I know I'm sure we're going to get into the rest of exposure because that's that's the most popular question that we ever get is the progressive exposure.
Yeah. And Brandon before we move on was there anything else you want to add mindset wise about you know key things that that unlocked a belief in yourself that allowed you to push past what you thought you were able to do and really get stronger performance. Yeah so what's that saying feelings are great servants but terrible masters is something that comes to mind that's something that I think we all have to battle you know some of us are better at it than other but it's like anything the more you practice and build that muscle the better you're going to be where your feelings.
And when you know mark you know laid the ground where you know he was just another iteration from one ear right and now he's passing this on to us and it's just like said some point you have to surrender you know what you think you know to the guy that knows more than you and focus on what he says is the process and refining the process who cares about the results and that once you do that and that's exactly what I had to do and what Mark and I you know have done that that has led to our successes.
And we don't wave it from it. Yeah and I've done that's what I did I had a surrender to I had a kid off of my own opinions and I had a surrender and quite frankly to one of the reasons why you know Brandon has a place with my heart for his dedication is because I was broke too. When I first started I was broke beyond broke I mean I grew up in a family that you know my parents got divorced and my mother I said listen to her cry at night because we didn't have money for food.
So I came from a incredible poverty so to be you know it was I had to get over a poverty mentality which was very hard to even accept even when I started doing well I had to pinch myself and go watch this really happening here. But yeah so there's you know that that's look. I know everybody wants tools and they want to know what moving average you use and but really read my mindset book because that book is life changing. You know my I read my own book it may sound nuts but I read my own mindset book over and over just to keep that stuff in my head and I wrote the damn book.
But but it's it's a great it's just a great book and it's really the most important elements. It's the most important part of the whole equation of becoming a great trader or becoming a great anything. And I'll just add one more thing you know when I first when Mark and I first started we're trading so small. You know a few hundred dollars was a big deal to us. Now you know we have a million dollar months and it doesn't matter. Like it's not about the money it's about the process. And that's really like when you get to that point that's when you know like okay you have something you've worked has paid off and I think Mark helped Mark Meantarvini helped us realize that. I started off when I first started in the 80s I made my first trade in 1983. And my goal as a trader. The my long term the big goal like if I would say this would be successful was to make 500 bucks a week. That was my that was my original goal.
Yeah. I went from $500 a week to tens of millions and that takes a mindset shift because man and you guys are perfect to speak to this because I know some people you should have this problem you should have the problem where you start off with $10,000 it becomes a whole. And then it becomes a million and then it becomes 10 million. You should have the problem of saying oh you know it's a lot harder now to mentally deal with taking a $50,000 loss as opposed to a $500 loss. And if you get to that point believe me you're going to hit a serious wall. It's it's and this is why a lot of people don't become really rich from trading. They can't elevate to that level. It's the same thing as if you're playing little league baseball and then you play high school and now you go to the major league. It's a whole different story. It's a whole different game. Right. So once you start moving up but you so that mindset's got to grow and and that belief in yourself. It's it's really it's really key.
It's it's more important than the strategy strategies at least important because there's lots of strategies that you're going to have to commit to something. Yeah, I think that was I saw a few people ask that question where what's different between trading a $1,000 account $10,000 account $100,000 account a million dollar account and what kind of adjustments you have to make along the way. But I think you answered that but was there anything else you wanted to add on that front or technically nothing is different mentally everything's different. You guys need to speak to that in particular because you're closer to that than me. I got that was that was like two, two, three decades ago for me to jump that hurdle. So you're closer to that you've jumped that hurdle more recently.
Sure. And listen, there's definitely a mentality shift, but this is where I think, you know, when Brandon talked about where the process is the same. I don't know if anybody's seen that where yes, there are some mentality and a few shifts but it's still the same process. You know liquidity obviously changes, you know how aggressive it can be in certain situations. You know, may change, but this is why I still like the idea and I always encourage people don't don't keep track of your losses and dollars do it in percentage. So if you lost 3% on, you know, a thousand dollar position or a million dollar position still 3%. And it removes some of that emotional impact from things, but this is also where I think growing into these things is a much better way of doing it. You know, rather than, you know, just starting, you know, too large, if you will, and it's, it's so ironic, you know, when you read a lot of these success stories, most people started off with humble beginnings, at least.
In terms of you read the market wizards and those types of things. I think there's a reason for that. You know, usually you don't hear this though, I came into the market with 100 million and ran into a billion. It's usually no, I came into the market with very little figurates and things out and then, you know, was able to really continue to grow. So, I don't know, Brandon, you can add anything to the whole. I mean, yeah, there's not much to add there. You know, I can, you know, this is where for obviously for marketing, we had each other to talk to. So, you know, when we did whatever feel like as we grew in our drawdowns, you know, you look at the dollars, even though the percentages were fine. It was like, okay, why does this feel worse than it is, right?
And actually a lot of the time it was just because of trading period, you know, it's not the, it's not the loss of money. It's more or less the duration of being in a drawdown. Sometimes that is harder than, you know, the actual drawdown, the percentage decline itself. Because you want to get out of it, you want to claw your way out of it. So, you know, again, this is where it's just, you know, putting things in perspective helps a lot. And he just went and he just inadvertently. Uttered a liver more. Observation or liver more technique and that is time is as important as price. Time wears people out in the morning.
And that's why consolidations and basis and shakeouts and all that stuff is really important to understand because those are people that are sitting with the stock. And as time goes by and the stock drifts down, just think about it. You know, you have a stock and it's, and you've owned it for a couple days, a couple weeks and it has a down day and it's a big down day. You go, you check the news, you see what's going on. You don't usually panic right out of it. You know, but if that stock just drifted off little by little every day after day after day after day for a month straight it went down every day, you'd be worn out to death.
You know, as opposed to a real quick drop. And so that's what, and now it comes back up and it gives you some hope, but then it comes back down and it crushes your hope again. And all these emotions get tied up in it. And that's what you're seeing in a chart. You're seeing the emotions on display and you're seeing the supply and demand intersecting and all that when you learn how to read that properly, then you really know how to make heads or how to make heads of it and find out, you know, where the line of least resistance is.
And that goes again back to Livermore, line of least resistance. One of the best books to read that crystallized everything from me was a Livermore's little book, How to Trade in Stocks. That's one of my favorite books of all time because that was a pivotal moment. When I read that, I said, okay, these are timeless principles. This work back then. It worked for love. It worked for O'Neill. And these, this is amazing stuff here that I can count on that I can build a career on. So I was willing to put the time in because I felt like it would pay me for a lifetime.
And that's precisely what happens. Real quick too. You know, if you want to get into specifics, I know we're going to end the runner out of time here. I do have a couple charts. You know, you asked for a couple of trade examples. We can show how this looks. And then talking about risk too. I think we talk about risk as far as stops are concerned, but risk is more than just your stop. And the way we look at risk is in a, it's like there's five levels, you know, and we're assessing a stock on, of course, the stop. The stop is where you're going to get out.
And that's whether it's technical or you just decide I'm going to get out at $500 down or 5% that depends. But there's liquidity. All right, there's, as you get bigger, you can, you have to get out when you can get out. Again, you should have that problem. But in the beginning when you're buying 500 shares, you don't have that problem. But you do have the problem that if it's, if it's on liquid, it could be fluctuate quite a bit. And then that gives you overnight risk where now the stock may gap down against you when it rips through your stop.
So that's your next risk. Your next risk is position sizing. Right. If you have your whole entire account into one stock, well, then if the next day it gaps down 50%, you're down 50%. So that's another level of risk. And then you've, we've got spread risk. We got spread. And that's for more shorter term. You know, I'm taking a big position. I'm buying 50,000 shares and the spread is a $2 spread. I'm not buying that. I'm not starting at $100,000. Oh, I could tell you right now.
So, so I take spread risk into consideration. So if it's, you know, general motors, it's, you know, it's a good year tire. It's got a penny spread. I'll go buy and it's completely liquid. It trades 8 million shares a day. I buy 100,000 shares. No problem. But now it's got two points spread and it trades 150,000 shares a day. I'm going to put very little money into that. So that I'm going to have to be a lot more careful. So there's risk on a bunch of different levels and it's assessment of all that.
That gives you your risk profile. Yeah. That's a real nutshell version. But you know, just giving you sort of the basics. Yeah, that's perfect. Let's let's actually jump to those examples. Now, Mark, if you want to bring that up. And I know a lot of people's questions had to do with position management, selling to strength. And there's some really good examples that we're going to walk through here and kind of everybody will chime in and provide their perspective on things.
I think so this is I tweeted this pretty much along the way as we did this trade. This is the micron trade and a couple of things that are interesting about this. And on this chart, we've got some proprietary gauges that we use this is sort of what I call the fab for panel. And we don't have the time to get into it right now, but these are the charts that we use on our platform. You'll see we this is a little uncharacteristic for me. This is sort of a bottom fishing pivot when you come back near the 50 day and you just formed that very short term little pivot.
I very seldom do this. This is one micron. I like what AI is doing for this industry group. I think they're elongating their cycle, their earning cycle. This is a cyclical a growth cyclical group that is turning more to the growth side now because of AI is obviously, you know, moving in pushing all types of it's like a big, you know, river pushing out all these little streams all over the place so AI is very influential in a lot of areas. So we got aggressive on it right off the lows.
And, but it didn't, it didn't go right away and it started turning down. And so we immediately started reducing it. And we reduced it on the on the second day it turned down. And then after I got that little bounce back. I actually thought we were going to get a little bounce. And that was sort of like the bounce before the dead cat bounce before it was going to collapse. And I had it wrong. So I reduced again, but kept a little position, but then it held up and it moved right up and then it formed what I call a cheat area.
This is the, this is the cheat, which is just a basically a handle or a pivot within the middle portion of the base. And then I had a lower third. I call it a low cheat. If in the middle, I call it a cheat and the top would be a typical on the handle, which on the old got the handle from Jiller who had the saucer and platform and on the old changer to the cup of handle. I took the cup and handle started realizing, you know what, there's, there's, there's lower points in the base that you can buy this.
So I had a friend of mine, we used to trade and we used to call each other throughout the day and talk about our trades. And I said, Hey, did you buy, you know, did you see a XYZ? And I said, Hey, I already bought it. I cheated. And he said, what do you mean, I bought it? You know, we could go was a lower lower pivot. And that's how the cheat started. And we realized that when the cup completed before the handle, you would get what we call the cup completion cheat.
So then I realized, and that was, we would have to have the stock run up the right side a bit and it would form in the lower, I'm sorry, the middle portion. But then years later, it was like, maybe 10 years later, 15 years later, I started recognizing and going, you know what, there's a low cheat. There's even a weight, there's more like on TV, you know, there's even another spot. But the thing is that you're going into the lower you buy the more you're going into overhead supply on the left side.
And as I developed as a trader, I started getting better at recognizing overhead and being able to read it and be able to effectively buy off the lows a little bit better. And that just takes, I call it an expert by as you go down in the in the base, you need to be better your skill needs to be better because you have to be able to assess overhead supply to the left. When you're on the right side, and you're up by the old highs and you're breaking to new high, there is no overhead supply or there's very little.
So you don't have to be as skilled. So with this one, this is what we would call an expert by coming off the lows, and then we quickly lightened up, but as it's set up now it improves and very often, whether we're putting progressive exposure and building into a position. Or just buying it for the first time, the best buy is at a higher price than the previous by. And you can see here we're buying here we're buying higher here, but I get even more aggressive so here I go full 100% not 100% invested the whole account but a full position we went to the full 100% position went back, then it was able to mark itself up and tighten up even more and really form a nice large base.
And at that point, that's when we went overweight. Now we now we took a really big position. Now with that overweight, a lot of times what I'll do and I'm just walking you through this so you can see sort of how, you know, we trade I trade they trade. A lot of times what we do is we have if we're overweight and we're fortunate to get a quick move will take the overweight off. Because now we still got a full position and now maybe you know we were up, let's just call it 10% and our stop is eight or 10%. Well now we have a full position and we fully financed all the risk. Holy cow, what a position to be in. I have my whole position and I have zero risk. That's what we call asymmetric leverage.
So we're always trying to get to a point, an angle ourselves to have asymmetric leverage where the upside far outweighs the downside to a point where we've improved our worst case scenario, but we don't have any risk anymore. And that's really the key. That's the key to making big returns having low drawdowns is to always move for asymmetric leverage. This is a term that I learned from my very good friend and one of my mentors Larry height, who those of you who know me and came last year to our gala met Larry height.
我们一直在努力达到这样一个状态,也就是让自己处于一种不对称杠杆的位置,使得收益远大于风险,直到我们把最坏的情况都改善了,而不再有任何风险。这就是关键。获得高回报、减少损失的关键就在于始终追求这种不对称杠杆。这是我从我的好朋友兼导师 Larry Hite 那里学到的一个概念,去年参加我们晚会的朋友们就见过他。
Well, you know what I know he's someone one of the most beautiful people you ever meet in your life. He's awesome and he's in his 80s and he calls me up and he goes, I just love to learn. I just love to talk to you and learn. And he's still learning and we learn from each other. But we always talk about asymmetric leverage, creating this asymmetric leverage. So then as you rally here. And you get the stock gets extended from a swing trading standpoint, you know, very often we'll just sell this stock, take a quick profit, whether it's 15, 20, 25, sometimes, you know, 40, 50% or more, and sell right into strength and get out when the getting is good.
This particular time happened to be the day before 17% draw down so it was a perfect sale, but it could have very easily been a horrible sale. I mean, if you look at Nvidia, I don't have the chart. Actually, I could pull up a chart. Hold on. Let me see. Let's pull up. So two things about Nvidia. Let me say one thing. First of all, we heard some people say that breakouts don't work anymore. And we hear this from time to time.
David Ryan and I commented about this many times where you get periods of times where breakouts don't work, just like anything nothing. If this system, you know, and what I do work every single day professionally, I'd be a trillionaire. You know, so yes, it takes work. It takes faith to go through the tough times. And you got to give everybody gets their chance, you know, like your breakouts will work for some cycles and then the value guys get their chance. But you got to stick with it because you're not going to be good at switching from one to the next to the next to the next.
So, but the same breakouts don't work is to ignore, you know, okay, we look at, let's say we look at a 10 year period, even if they didn't work for 10 years, they were for 120, you know, so it's to ignore history. And if you look at that 120 years, you'll see that there's stretches where, yes, it's very challenging to play breakouts. But here's the great news. When they don't work for a while, I love it. Mark smiling because he feels the same way he knows he learned what I know is that when they don't work, it's perfect because you weed out everyone.
And then they work like a charm. The longer they don't work, the more I am adding money to my account and getting ready for the chance of a lifetime where I'm going to make a fortune in a very short and mark and Brandon have years where there are up 350%. So, I was in the year where I was up 412% of three in the, in the US investing championship in 2021. I was up almost 350%. So you have those years every now and then you only need a few of those, you know, and as long as you keep the downside and check, you make a lot of money.
So, but looking at Nvidia, we bought Nvidia right here. Right, right on this day right here, just as it started to come out. When I was in the house, I was like, I was like, I'm not gonna buy it any better. It was textbook. I'm sure lots of people bought it there. But I also just sold it right into the first rally. But I also bought it back here. I'm sharing other times. And this just speaks to two points. One, breakouts. This is one of the biggest companies in the world. And it should be these are the companies that the breakout shouldn't work because they're so efficiently priced.
But look at this breakout here. I bought it. And I also sold it into strength very quickly. And it turned out to be, you know, obviously way too early. But that's just been my ammo since day one. So, and a lot of times what I'll do is I'll sell into strength and it'll read base. I'll buy it again. I'll sell to strength. And when it's all said and done. I traded Yahoo of 1997 off the IPO like seven times. I didn't make it. I don't even remember what it was four or 500% on it. And I traded the first time for a double next time 60% the next time 30 the next time 20 next time 25 when it was all said and done. I made hundreds and hundreds of percent on a stock that went up 8000%. And over the years, you know, I bought Amazon right off the I right off the IPO base. I bought Yahoo off the IPO base. I was Cisco off the IPO base people go. I sold that you would have made 100,000%.
I've made over 600,000% in my career. If you compound everything I'm up about over 600,000% over my my it's actually over about 30 years or so. I think it comes out to 35 or 40% a year compound. Funny thing is Mark, when we were just preparing for this, I looked at your return 5,000 plus. I think about the same that I am up career. I think I think your return comes out to about 35% a year or something like that. So, so I've had those triple digit runs where, you know, in the 90s, I had a run where I was up 220% average for five years, but over the long, long term. You know, I'm up in the neighborhood of just under 40%. But anyway, I want to show you that.
Let's go on just to add a quick comment to the Nvidia. You know, Mark, you know, Mark's talking about, you know, yeah, selling to early and to my comment before. Listen, if I make multiple of my risk and the stock goes higher. That's fine. I'm in this. I'm in the business to make money. And if you look at the way Mark is handling these, the way we're handling even this most recent example, the Nvidia, it's all alpha. He's grabbing that quick alpha. And for a lot of people don't understand this concept. They want to just be an Nvidia forever, because it's the stock that's always moving. But we're looking and that's another way to skin the cat.
That is another way to skin the cat, but it's a much more volatile way to skin the cat. You know, you're skin in a live cat, if you will, or something, you know, where we're sitting here trying to grab, you know, that quick alpha move. Before letting, you know, being very precise on our timing. And that's what we're trying to continue to turn over and not allowing that stock then, you know, to take you for a while to ride as it gets extended. The other point I would make from the micron is that every one of those buys, if you just look at them in a vacuum stands on their own. And that's one thing we're always talking about.
Each one of these buys. So even if you didn't own the name and that that first buy was the most professional buy for sure. But the second and third buy, if you didn't own the name, that's where I'd be wanting to buy it. It's just sort of a great point. Well, Mark is saying is that we're not adding to it just simply because we'd be buying at that spot anyway. So they, that's a really important point that everybody stands on its own and you're not just haphazardly. You know, people think that when they listen to comments like O'Neill makes where you say, you know, you, you pyramid into the stock that you just buy it just for the heck of it because it's up 5%. No, it still has to meet the same criteria meet the same hurdle.
Now, you know, these techniques will work and, you know, this is something that Mark pointed out a long time. He said, you know, why are we trading, you know, crypto and all these cryptos. They're like responding perfectly to your tactics. And then of course, recently we were trading I bit, which is Bitcoin, of course, but there's lots of cryptos, but this chart shows a couple of things and how we trade and also how we handle the risk side and getting stopped out. But one point to make is opportunity cost. So yes, you could own a Amazon and hold it for the, I have a friend that's held Amazon for like 15 years.
现在,你知道这些技术是有效的,而且这也是马克很早以前指出的一个观点。他说,为什么我们要交易加密货币,因为你知道,这些加密货币对你的策略反应很完美。当然,最近我们在交易 I bit,这其实就是比特币。当然还有很多其他的加密货币,但这张图展示了几个方面:我们如何进行交易,以及如何处理风险和止损。但需要注意的一点是机会成本。是的,你可以持有像亚马逊这样的股票,比如我有个朋友已经持有亚马逊超过15年了。
He's made up fortune in it from a very small investment. But how many people are fortunate enough to do that and how many people would hold through a 50% drawdown or 90% pullback to get to that. Right. So I always say, somebody wins Lotto every week, but every week the name's different. Right. So why, I want, I started trading because I wanted to get rich and I wanted to have the freedom of having a job that I had the freedom and I didn't go work for somebody. And I needed consistency. I needed to make money consistently for two reasons. One, because I need to make money and to grow your wealth, you need to compound.
So I realized that, you know what, stocks go up 10, 15, 20%. Every stock goes up 10, 15, 20%. But only a handful go up 80,000%. And it takes a long time. So I did the math. I realized, and we have something, the mass trader program, it's relatively new. I've been only talking about in the last few years. And it's called mind blowing math. And once you see that, it changes everything. You're, you're entire. I, I, I've had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people send me emails and just go, my God, that is just blew my mind. You said it was mind blowing. It was mind blowing and it changed my whole perspective.
And so. Here's a perfect example. You know, and this is off of the, what we would call the cheat, the low cheat right here. It's a perfect example. And this was already an existing. Security, obviously, but this is where they put the ETF and it formed what looks like an IPO. But you've got this little low cheat, we bought it right here. Right. Took a full size, big position right into strength, reduced it. Bitcoin could be volatile. So I said, you know what, let's take some off the table here.
Now we're free rolling, right? But then it's set up. And like I said, you could sometimes get very often your, your best buy is at a higher price. So it sets up, it tightens up real nice here and holds its gains sets up a perfect. If you look at it's a perfect cup of handle right BCP, what I call it. Boom, comes out here. We're back in. We move right back up and we ratchet up again. And I, I do the process all over again. I reduce it into the strength. And I cover my risk once again. And now I've already backlogged the profit and now I backlogged to profit.
So now I'm really free rolling. It moves up a little more. I reduce. And then it had this break. And I felt like, Oh, shit, I should have sold it into the strength and just closed it. But I got what I call the gift when you get a big break and you get that dead cat bounce, especially if it comes back two thirds or so. I usually just get out right then and there. So I, I punted it on that next day. And then it went up a couple more days rolled over. And then we tried to get back in it over here as it came off the lows here and a little pullback by and we were, we were thinking this will probably not take off right from here.
You'll probably come up and tighten up and then we'll add to it. And it did. And it was looking perfect, but then it turned tail and we put a break even stop we got out. Then we, we kept watching it, watching it and went through this and undercut these lows perfect tightened up. Now I was like, Okay, this is it. This is where it's really going to take off. I got a nice big base now and really getting, you know, aggressive on it and started buying it right here again. And then we just put a super tight stop.
And then got out on it right away. Got stopped out of it. And I thought I might have blown it because it right after that it took off and up a few days. And Mark, you know, we had a conversation is like, Oh, I think we might have got out too quick here. But since then it's rolled over and now, you know, we're out of it. But that's the, that's the way, you know, we're trading around positions. We're adding back, we're reducing, we're using strength to sell into getting out when the getting is good.
And not, not walking away from a stock, you know, even there's sometimes where I'm buying the stock on the fifth base. I was buying it on the first base. I sold it with a second base. I bought it. Five, six times buying it as it comes out of base after base after base. And then when you're stringing all together, you got this really nice big return on that stock, but it's from a number of traits.
And jumping with the question, because you mentioned free rolling a trade and just to clarify for people who may not be familiar with that. When you're, when you say reduce, if you go back to that chart, just, just quick. Sorry. No worries. I'll ask the question as we start. The Bitcoin, the Bitcoin. This one. I bet. Yeah. When, when you say reduce in, in that label, when you're selling for that first push up, you're also moving your stop up to break even. And that's what's free rolling the trade. Is that correct? And is there anything you want to add?
Oh, all right. So it's a great question. Mark, if you guys have anything to add, I know, usually we're talking the same language, but look, there's a few ways that you can free roll. One is you buy the stock, it moves up, and now you move your stop to break even. Obviously, if it goes down, you break even, right? But the problem with that is that now you choke the trade. You, you, you cinch up on the trade. You do have a full position. You have your whole position still, right? But now you're not giving it any room.
So a compromise is to, if that stock goes up, X percentage, and the more it goes up, the less you have to sell to do this. If it goes up an equal amount to your stop, let's say your stop's 8%. If it goes up an equal amount, it goes up 8%. If you sell half, you now can let it go down at 8% and you're still break even. Now, you only have half the trade, but you have two things to your advantage. One, you have unlimited upside on that half position and you have zero downside. All right. So, and you've been able to give it more room now. You give it the room. So you've got those two things going for you.
Now, you could do the same thing mathematically and say, well, I have 100% upside and no downside and I have double the position. Right. But now you might be knocked out of it and you have no position. So me, I'd rather have half position and give it more room most of the time, especially if it's the beginning of a bull market because now if I'm on a monster, even a half position could be huge. Later stage, I'm not even playing that game. I'm just selling right into strength and just getting out into getting is good.
And I'm not thinking hold for a big move when I'm fifth stage base and I've been in a bull market for three years. Now, I switch over to more to a trader. So again, there's, you know, there's nuances there and there's there is some art to it, but a lot of it's, you know, science too.
And one more question I had about this trade is before your June or late May trade there where you were stopped out, there was kind of a potential low cheat area there in early May, where it pushes off the lows. Was that not quite tight enough for you? There's also a gap out of that area. How would you kind of analyze that part of the chart? So we were looking at it there and that's exactly right. And I know you have a good eye for this. And, but you see it gapped. It didn't really tighten up and then it came out on the gap and we're not going to chase the gap.
So you have the overhead too. You know, you've got more overhead when you're going low cheat, you've got a lot of overhead. So if you're really close to the door, now you've got to measure how much overhead to the left and how deep you are. So let's just say this was a 50% decline. Okay, this overhead is major. I'm not touching that. Let's say this is a 15% decline. Now, this is very viable. Because there's a very little overhead still even with that scenario, probably unless things are going great and everything's just ripping.
We probably still would take a partial position and then sort of build into it because most likely it's going to run up. It's going to go into this overhead and it's going to pause just like it did. And this is where you can see how it's developing is doing what it should do. This is absolutely perfect. You know, up to this point, it's perfect. And even this pullback, nothing wrong. Then here, that's abnormal. That's not acting right. And as it comes below here, now it's really not acting right.
So now it's got to go through a whole reset. That's just not when I say not acting right, meaning that the supply is coming to market. You know, we have not gone through this supply, the supply. And this is a concept that I originally heard O'Neill say he made, he said, you have to find out when supply stops coming to market. And then I termed it, I want to be the last week holder.
We talked about week holds. I want to be the last week holder. You heard Mark, Mark talk about that earlier. That means that the supply, you're in an uptrenders, there's big institutions that are buying this stock. There's a lot of small guys that are trading this that they're weak holders. They're going to get knocked out on a little pullback. They got their stop real tight. They're doing all these techniques that we're talking about. Those are weak holders. But the big guys, the guys that are really moving the stock that can sustainably move the stock, they're forming the cup. They're buying down here.
They're supporting the stock. So when finally you weed out all these little guys, well, there's nothing left. There's no supply. And now you have big demand. So if you have big demand and low supply, what happens? Boom, explosion. That's why it's not a coincidence that when you see these charts and you see these tight areas on the right side that the stock catapult out of there. People think, well, that's because of the chart. Everybody sees it. They're like, no, absolutely not. Just the opposite. It's not the cause. It's the effect.
If everybody saw it, it wouldn't work. That's precisely would be the opposite. So you have to think, how is the supply coming to market? This took me a good decade to even understand, let alone to apply. And even to this day, Bob Weisman, who's worked for me for 21 years, it took him a decade. 10 years later, he goes, all right, I think I got it. It's like 10 years later, he goes, I think I got what you're talking about. He's asked me every day. What, what does it really mean? They say he thought he would get the point. And then he tell me, I said, no, that's not right. That's not what it means. And we had to go over and go over and go over and go over charts.
So once you understand that, then you really understand what's going on here and it can make sense to you. I love it. I just add to you. Look at those. Look at those first two little pivots. They're, yeah, they're perfect. Tighten price. Yeah. And the volume is contracting and that, especially that second one, that volume comes in price only has one place to go. And that demand that Mark is talking about, you're seeing it right there. It's just a textbook example.
Yeah. And again, it, so why aren't you a richest man in the world? You just do that? Well, because it, there's discipline involved. It doesn't work all the time. Matter of fact, the only works about half the time. In a good market in a bad market. This will only work about 20 30% of the time. All right. But that's part of the strategy. Part of the strategy is managing the times where things don't work well. It's like, do you go up to bat and get a base hit every time? No. Do you hit a home run every time? No, good, good baseball players bat 300. That's good. Right. They strike out seven out of 10 times.
So then how do you ever win a game? You know, it's the same thing. You've got it. You've got to manage it. You've got to manage it and take advantage of when it does work with trading. You have the position sizing. You know, you've, you've can step on the gas when it's working. You could ride the break. And that's the art part. That's part science, but also takes a lot of experience to get it to where you really understand when you should be really really gassing it and making those returns and then laying off and letting all the noise go by.
And that ties in really nicely to the concept that we know everybody wants to hear about progressive exposure. Mark, if you wouldn't mind going back to the MU trade because this, I believe would have been one of your first trades at first by coming out of the correction that we were in. Could you kind of talk about your mindset when you're coming back into the market from 100% cash? We've been through correction. What are you trying to do with your first few positions? How are you judging the traction of those positions to determine if you're going to increase size, try more trades? You know, all of that, I think would be really excellent.
Okay. So I'll start off with, I'm going to give you some guidelines on progressive exposure. And then also I'll let Mark and Brandon also come in on that because they're really great at explaining that and deploying it. So you have to think of progressive exposure on a couple different levels. It's not just position sizing. It's exposure is total exposure. So, for instance, 25% you come into the market with 20, whether it's, let's say it's five stocks at five or one stock at 25%, both times you're 25% invested, right? One time theoretically you have more risk because you have one stock. So you have a single stock risk.
Okay. So now there's position sizing. There's that individual risk. So to where you progressively exposed, maybe I start off with 5% positions, but now as things get better, I moved to 10, 15, and I moved the position sizing up. And then there's your number of, your actually number of stocks, which by default is going to happen. But actually, you would think as you're getting more exposed, you have more stocks? No. A lot of times it's just the opposite where for me, I start off with some lighter positions, some smaller positions, and then I start concentrating. As things get going well, now I'm taking bigger positions. So I actually have less actual positions.
So those are your, and I don't know, Mark, did I, Brandon, I leave anything out with progressive exposure? A question. I'll jump up with a question. Sorry. And Brandon, feel free to elaborate on this. I think a common question people have is, are you selling those first smaller positions and then going back in with a bigger position on a new stock, or are you just adding to those first initial positions? I think that's, that's a good clarification question there. Mark, you want to take that as far as adding to a position and talk to me?
Yeah, I think the money on its own two feet. Yeah, my examples are perfect one. In the same way that you want to add to a position as it's working as the same way you want to step up exposure in your overall portfolio. And to the specific question, Richard, though, are do you have to take profits in order to buy another name? You can, but you don't have to. And I often, we often don't will lean on those gains in the form of cushion to say, okay, you know, we buy a name, it starts to move. We're going to lean on that a bit to take some more exposure.
And that's the whole concept of feedback that we were talking about before. When I was saying, if you think of your own trading as the most important of echo chambers, if you will, that's what you want to stay in sync with one of the biggest mistakes people make is they go, well, and the question I get, well, what do you own and how invested are you? Why is that as important as what do you own and how's your trading going? What's going to drive my trading and my exposure is how the positions I'm in are doing.
It's not, as Mark has often said, if you're 50% invested, it's going horrible. It doesn't make any sense to double up. That's how you get yourself into a disaster. You know, and the whole, you know, start with the end in mind, the whole goal of progressive exposure is to be trading your largest when things are really humming when they're really working. Well, the only way you can do that is to stay in sync with how things are going.
So the goal to do really well in the market is to get to whatever strategy you're using is to develop a method or a mechanism that you are trading your largest when you're trading your best and your smallest when you're trading your worst. That is a huge enormous statement that everybody should listen to over and over and over, right? And on the wall and live it every day as a goal because that's how you make the big money in the good markets and you keep it.
All right, so now there's a couple things to talk about here. One is, and this, these are the questions. Mark said, we lean, we're going to lean on those on those profits. Well, now there's open profits, right? And there's closed profits. Those are two completely different things. If you close up trade, well, that now that risk is out of the portfolio. Now you add a new trade. Right. So let's equate it to the crap table.
Right. You've got a bet out there and you have a bet on the six and you hit a six, you make some money. It's still out there. So you say, you know what, I'm doing pretty good. I'll take the eight now and I'm going to buy the four and the 10. Now you've got more exposure. Right. So now if they roll a seven, you lose on all those bets. Right. So you're going to have you have a much bigger draw down. So now you didn't close those out yet. If you close them all out and then you put one bet. Well, now you're financing that new risk.
So you got to think closed versus open. If they're open. Well, you got to watch those carefully because those open trades can move at the same time as those new trades. But if it's closed, you've got a little more leverage, a little more, you know, you have profit in the tank. It's going to be a combination of that. It's never going to be one or the other for very long. And at some point, you know, you've got to make a decision whether I've got the traction that I feel comfortable to push harder.
And that's where we got to look at your worst case scenario. We're always talking about our worst case scenario. What is the worst case scenario? If I get knocked out of everything here, what am I down? And that has to be managed. All this has to be managed. So one thing is what I call the two for one rule. So you're in a stock. Whether it's doing good or bad. Let's just say it's doing bad. It's not doing very good, but it hasn't hit your stock yet.
And you got, you got another stock that that's setting up or you have a, you know, even a couple stocks that are not performing too well. So you want to, you want to participate, but you don't want to lever up because why would you add money as Mark said, you're going to add money when things aren't working. So you sell a half of the two positions and you buy a full position in the new stock. So now the stock that's looking the best at the time is getting the most money.
The stocks that aren't doing too well are getting reduced and you haven't raised your exposure at all. So that's one technique. There's lots of different techniques that we that we use. They're just permutations or permutations of that concept. Well, and I'll just add, you know, progressive exposure is, you know, one of these topics like, well, we're going to talk about this forever, right.
And Mark and myself are continuing to try to get better at this. And I think a lot of people get hung up on. Well, I, I, I got more exposure on. I thought I was being progressive. And, you know, I, I did it wrong. I got stopped out. It's like, well, that happens. That's what's going to happen. Right. And I think what Mark is saying to as far as what is the risk factor that you are willing to take. And as for Mark and myself, as we're seeing getting the feedback and this is taking a long time to get good at this as we get the feedback, we are willing to take that risk number up. So if we're getting the feedback we want to see, we will increase the amount of risk we were willing to take. And I think a lot of people get hung up on that.
And we have to be okay with that, that if we do up the risk and we get our hands slapped when we were wrong, that we're going to take a lot that loss. And so, you know, I think a lot of people think like a progressive exposure, I should just do it when it's only working. It's like, well, it doesn't work every time. Yeah, and in a perfect, what you said was, you know, people get hung up. On a specific answer, they want to know if I'm if it goes to, you know, I take 25% and this stock goes up 10%. I add X percentage. It doesn't really work that way because it's just like poker. It's a texture of the game.
Yeah, you got to feel the texture of the game. You're playing poker. And there's a guy on there. That's a really good player. There's a couple fish on the table. And you see how things are going, how aggressive the betting is, and you feel that and is an art to it. And there's the science of the pot odds and the actual percentage of the hand, you have to know that that's the basics, but then there's that feel there's the bluffing factor. There's the factor of of your stack size versus, you know, there's all these things. It's the same thing with trading.
So that's why it's beautiful. This is why it's a beautiful business. And the reason why I want to point this out, the reason why there's this awesome opportunity is because they can't all be figured out into a spreadsheet. People want to put this into a spreadsheet. Want to put it into a program. They think AI is going to put everybody out of business. It's nonsense. Absolutely ridiculous. Okay. This is an art. This is no different than you learning how to be a great baseball player. You can learn all about the physics and be in the right angle and in the box and have the bat in the right spot. But the bottom line is you got to you got to have experience.
You have to experience is an art to it as well. If it could all be put into a spreadsheet and everything could be figured out. And some algorithm could just run it. Guess what? No return. The market will be 100% efficient and random and the random walk hypothesis would be right. But it's wrong. It's wrong because guys like myself Brandon, Mark, David Ryan, Jesse Livermore, Nicholas Darvis, you name it, David Ryan, it couldn't exist. William O'Neill. We couldn't exist. And it goes on every generation all the way back to the 1800s that there's people that outperformed the market.
And the real thing is it's not like a lot of the names don't change. Stanley Druck on Miller's been doing it for 10 decades and decades and decades. I used to advise the Soros group. You know, these guys I, I, I, a young guy that was, I advise back in the 1990s. He became a multi billionaire. Okay. So, so the names don't change. Matter of fact, they seem to get with the guys that are good at this. They have long careers. Excellent. Yeah. I think I think that provides a lot of clarity in terms of progressive exposure. Hopefully that answered a lot of your guys questions.
One last question on. It's going to raise questions to a rich. Yeah. We're, we're definitely believe a lot of thought provoking things here that are going to raise a lot of questions. Yeah. But there's resources for that, which is fantastic. What's right? One last chart question. That's why our master trader program is five days now. It started off one day. It just keeps getting longer and longer and longer. But go ahead. I'm sorry.
Yeah. No worries. Could you go back to the I bit chart? Because I want to ask about, because I know people are wondering this for the reduced labels. How much are you typically reducing into strength? Is it always 50%? I know you talked about that in your books or does it depend on the situation? So I can speak from me generally speaking and generally what we put on the platform and Mark and Brandon, you guys could speak from your own personal trading, but I tend to operate in like quarter positions and half positions. It's just the way I've done it.
I tried it different ways and it doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference if I do thirds, halves and quarters. But certainly, I'm not taking off like 5% 10%. That's more of a mutual fund type strategy. Usually what happens is the stock moves up. I'm taking off enough to either cushion all my risk or cushion half my risk. So, and again, if the stock was up 20% and you got an 8% stop, you could sell a lot less than half to cushion the entire position. Right. So depending on how much it goes up depends how much I'm going to sell versus where my stop is. So if I want to finance risk, so I'm generally in quarter position, half positions and full positions and overweight are usually, you know, one and a quarter, one and a half, two times.
But when I go overweight, I usually go heavy. I usually go pretty heavy on an overweight. Like I'll double my position. If I've got, let's just say it's a 20% and I go to a 40% position, I'm probably not going to hold overnight or at least I'm going to take some off. If I'm just looking for that thing to get some gas and give me a little return, take a little off finance a little that'll finance me overnight. And if I get a little more, take a little more off and that'll finance my risk for the whole full position. So always look into to finance my risk finance my risk.
I'm trying to get into this is again, this is really. This has been my whole life's work and Paul Tudor Jones is really one of the main people responsible responsible for me being so stickler on my risk, but Larry height really took it like to another level, not with giving me any techniques, but just with his absolute discipline and passion for improving that worst case scenario and creating asymmetric leverage. We had so many discussions. I'm so fortunate to be friends with these market wizards who I idolized when I was your age. And now they're my stand wide stands a good friend of mine Larry Heights, a great friend of mine. I talked to him all the time. We talk regularly. And just it's just wonderful because I we I learn, you know, I learn and I get these these great insights from guys that have been doing it even, you know, 20, 30 years longer than me and I've been doing it for 40.
Yeah, excellent. Mark Richie or Brandon, did you have anything to add with regards to selling a restraint? How much you guys typically do it or also the concept of going a little bit overweight in the position as well. Not much differently, you know, honestly, we sort of cut from the same cloth, but yeah, as a general rule, sort of thirds or halves. You know, if we're if it's a position we want to play for a bigger move. We generally don't sell more than half. And then, you know, as Mark was saying, the most important thing, you know, in terms of even going overweight or getting more aggressively long like he said, if you the more concentrated you are the more overnight risk you're carrying so you have to be thinking in terms of like, how do you, you know, manage that worst case scenario.
What do you come for with holding overnight. So if we're going to get really aggressive in one name, we're going to be really cognizant of that. And then, you know, be more likely to reduce a little bit faster because we're not going to carry. You know, for us, anything over a 20, 25% position would be considered overweight or not usually carrying more than say 30% overnight in any one name. Yeah, notice did you notice the entire time that we've all been talking that we almost exclusively have been talking about risk. And no matter what question you ask it all roads lead back to risk management. And that that's the yeah, that's the bottom line and that's what we just work at becoming better and better and better and better at.
And if you read the market wizards books, everything comes back to risk they all mentioned risk management as one of the keys. Yeah, I said it in my book I don't know I don't remember what book or where I said it but I remember I said it but Jack swagger when he had interviewed me for market wizards he came in and he threw his tape recorder on and we talked for hours and hours and hours and he sighed and he took his record he turned it off and he said Mark this is all great but this is what they all say he's like this is what. Everybody says all I've already written several market wizards book and they all say the same thing I said Jack I hate to tell you but there's a reason why this is what they say and I'm sorry but this is what I this is how I do it too you know there's that's right.
There's a reason why and why it while it may be boring. You know I remember Jack telling me that day he said you know I really. My market wizards books have been really successful but I'd like to write one that people would like to sit on the beach and read it like almost like a novel I said I said I said Jack that's not going to happen. People are reading these books to read about the masters and how they did it and they want tools and yeah they want stories too but yeah it was it was a fun conversation that we had. I went right back to talking about risk and cutting losses. Only the most committed traders are reading that at the beach and I think there's definitely a lot in the audience who do that.
Brandon did you have anything to add as well or cut from the same cloth. Yeah no definitely but you know I was always taught early on in life that risk is bad and I think when you really calculate risk risk is an opportunity. I think when you you know I like what Mark just said my job what I'm trying to do is understand all the risks and get better at it. And I think you know if you do that there's a lot of opportunity out in the world. Perfect. You said you had nothing to add and then there's that gem that you just provided so thank you so much for that. Mark Richie did you have something to add on that or. Oh you disagree cool.
Mark did did you have any other charge to share or should we. No I didn't even know I was sharing charts until the last minute so sorry about that but. Well I think everybody really value you walking through that I know I got something out of it so they're all going to look very similar you know that's the thing we rinse and repeat you know. Certainly people will show the losses. The losses are really the most absolute most boring because basically we just buy the stock and if it goes down we sell it real quick. You know it's really this not a whole lot to show.
Sometimes we sell them before they hit the stop if there's a lot of what I call violations that's what you have up here actually this is this is what's called model that we have a module in our platform that monitors the stock and looks at confirmations versus violations which are basically programmed by me what I would look at and with my own eyes and then tells you. Where you're getting with this one set on what we call no nose. No nose after you buy so once you buy we don't want to see many of these red lines and you'll see there's very little here after the buy and then there starts to be a bunch of them and that's where we want to we want to lay off.
So then after the buy you know I could even right here you see there's very few it's acting right but then as it starts to not act right you start to see the no nose coming in here. So these are just basically a sort of like you know a gauge of that would be looking at it like I look with my own eyes. Sort of a shortcut function and then you could you could hover over them. It'll tell you which ones are triggering. So you know again this is what we call the fab for a panel here that has the the indicators that will tell you sort of what I'm looking at just to get you in the right direction.
So you're looking at a small track if if these this panel is in line it's hard to get too far of track unless you're arguing with the market. Excellent and I'll point I'll ask you guys kind of key resources and tools like that. And just a second that people can take advantage of. But first I want to ask this question I thought it was a pretty good one hopefully you guys agree as well. But for everybody watching if you had to give them one exercise to help them improve their trading one assignment exercise.
And we talked very very early on about post analysis how important that is to go through all their trades and maybe it's something in that vein. But maybe starting with Brandon if you had to give them one exercise that you think would help them improve their trading improve their chart I risk management whatever it is. What would it kind of be do you think. That's a good question. Which I was more prepared to answer it. You know, obviously, you know, tracking your trades. If you're not doing that I just don't know how you're going to get better.
You know, knowing what you've done is the best teacher like we've talked about prior. So without that I just don't, you know, if you're doing that, great, then develop a process where that's repeatable where you continue to do it. And then, you know, judge the results. Are you getting better. Perfect. Mark Richie, do you have anything to add? Oh, you're in mute, I believe. We covered, you know, a few of those things but the other thing I would add maybe at least seems to be popular is just shut off the noise.
Take the indexes off your screen, take Twitter off your screen, take all that other crap off your screen. Follow your rules. Stay in your lane and don't pay attention to anything else and do it for a year, not a day or a week. And then come back to me or you and tell us how it's gone. And I think most people be shocked. How much better they do if they did that versus, you know, listening to all the, all the noise and nonsense out there. Excellent. And Mark, I know you've got some good, good tasks for everybody, I'm sure.
Yeah, I mean, look, when I first start working with somebody, if I was a work one on one with you and coach you as a trader, particularly back when I was running hedge funds and I had guys come work for me. I would narrow them down to just a very small number of parameters. Like I would only allow them to trade a certain. A certain area of relative strength, a certain price pattern and say, look, you're going to trade this one price pattern in this RS with these characteristics and you can't go outside that until you can trade that you're not going outside those parameters to really get someone focused because there's so much noise.
There's so many things again, indicators, all these indicators. I'm showing you some gauges that we have here. And I was very reluctant to even produce these because I don't use any indicators. I use no indicators whatsoever. But we did indicators in a very different way. If you even want to call them indicators, I call them gauges. We did them where they're really looking at the stocks. They're not like this. They're kind of biased. They're kind of biased indicators. They're built around me and how I look at the stock and it's amazing that we could even program this.
I didn't think we were going to be able to, but we were able to do it very effectively. So this focuses you like these gauges do that. If you're sticking with when they have certain readings and I have those recommendations for our members that you have these certain readings, you're automatically focused in a specific area and you can't trade outside it. So that's sort of what I'm gearing our whole platform around. Now, they're not going to, for a value buyer, these are not going to work.
See, like a stochastic or some of these other indicators are sort of agnostic. You know, you can use them oversold over, but not my gauges. My gauges are built around me and what Mark Minner Vinnie sees through his eyes. These, these things are like looking like me and we're actually using AI now to enhance that and to look at the charts like Mark Minner Vinnie looks at them. So you could use them in all different ways. It's just the way we decided to do it for those who want to trade like I trade and learn my strategy.
So I would narrow down to a very specific, you know, say, whatever the parameters are and really just filter it down. So you're only looking at a very small number of names or screens or people are screening. And all these screens, they got 500 names and there's, you know, wonder why you're confused and you can't do well. You can't buy everything. You know, how many stocks can even buy. You can only buy a couple. So, and you got to get used to letting a lot of pitches go by.
You know, it's, and that's the way you do it. You know, that's the way you do it. You get your narrow your universe down. And you say, Hey, you know, and there's a good, there's a good book. I forget what it's called. It's by Ted Williams, but it talks about it shows a box. I'm going to put this in my next book. But it shows his box and sort of his sweet spot of where he liked the pitches and Mark says this all the time. If I'm seeing the ball that balls coming into my strike zone.
You know, we've got a very narrow strike zone, you know, and we're only swinging at those pitches that come in that at that zone. You've got to condition yourself to do that, or you're never going to have a strategy. You're going to be all over the place buying everything. Listen to every tip that comes on TV and trying all these different things. You got to narrow down. You've got to get focused. And that's the real key.
And then as they said, you know, Mark, Mark said one of the best things you could say advice you can give is to get the indexes, everything off your screen, trade the stocks. And as Brandon said, do the post analysis, go in there, look at the trades, see what you're doing. That's your best teacher, but do it in a very narrow, a very narrow set of parameters to start off with and do that for a while. You have for at least a year or two. You should be able to double your account first.
I mean, you tell me, I could only, you say Mark, you could only trade 98 and 99 relative strength stocks that are 5% from their highs. I won't make money. You give me those, but you give me any parameters. I don't care what they are. You give me any parameters. I'll make money. I'll figure out how to make money in that narrow window.
And there'll be long stretches of time where I won't participate because nothing sets up for me, but that's what you have to get used to because that's precisely what it means to have a strategy. It pairs a time where you got to sit back and you got to let others take their turn and then you get your turn and you may and you make as much as you can when it's your turn.
And when it's not your turn, that's if you got to learn to sit on your hands, what I call sit out power and not lose your money. Not lose what you made. Excellent. A lot of gold and that's like it's there and that focus. Yeah, I'll mention this. I wanted to also talk about one of the, yeah, sorry, I'm sorry. I wanted to not only talk about the Master Trader program, but I want to talk about my birthday bash before I forget.
Yeah, I wanted to give that invite to everybody, but go ahead. I'm sorry. No, I was just going to say one of the key changes I made in my trading was I limited my daily buy list to three stocks. I, you know, three years ago, I would have 15 names in there, which I'm trying to watch and. The talked about the range of alerts and all that and limiting to to three really helped me that focus really helped me execute better, manage risk better get tighter entries all of that.
So I would I would double down on that focus. I think that's a golden nugget so thank you very much for that. And I was going to ask you, which leads into this, what resources, you know, given what people learned today, if they want to learn more where can they go to to learn more and. And yeah, learn more about from you guys.
Let me say a couple of things. First is that there's more resources than ever, and it's an amazing time to be a stock trader. It's an amazing time to be a human being. There's lots of crazy things happening in the world due to technology, but there's a lot of wonderful things. So there's, we didn't have, when I first started, was it a master trader program, although eventually I went to the O'Neill seminar, which was pivotal for me, but we were going to the library.
I was going to the library reading crappy books about strategies that never worked in the first place. So it took me a lot of time. That's why it took me six years. I had to figure this shit out by myself. I was graphing the stocks on graph paper by hand in the beginning, which some people can't believe, but in standing outside a brokerage account to go in and check the quotes, because I didn't have quotes.
So crazy, crazy things that I went through, the commitments, and then of course, Brandon selling his car, we've all made these sacrifices to get to where we need to get here. So the resources are fantastic. The problem is that there's information overload now. There's a lot of self-proclaimed experts that are turkeys in a strong wind, maybe have a good year, and they think they're ready to teach the world.
So you have to be very careful of who you're listening to, because there's so much information and so many people to listen to. Obviously I'm biased to my strategy. I think we've proven ourselves over 40 years of my own results, 15 years, these guys, US investing championships, thousands of people around the world. I've got a very solid platform of based on fundamentals.
O'Neill, his books are homogenous with mine. The Market Wizards books are always great to read for inspiration and to learn about how they're some of the greatest traders, particularly the first Market Wizard book is wonderfully up Walter Jones in there. These are going back to my lineage. So there's tons of information, tons of information, but you got a guard from information overload.
I think that if you read my books and O'Neill's books, you don't really have to go anywhere else. You might add a couple of other books on psychology. You don't really need any more than that. Everything's right there. You're probably going to dilute and start to go outside the strategy. And then there's other strategies that I can't recommend on if you wanted to have value when you're doing a strategy that was more of a maybe a Warren Buffett strategy, a Benjamin Graham strategy. I know nothing about that, so I couldn't give any advice on that, but that's another way to do it.
But my advice is to commit to one of the ways that makes sense to you and matches your goals and your risk tolerance. That's the main thing is your risk tolerance. You could have one strategy that says you got to hold through a 50% decline. Well, you may not be okay with that. That was never okay with me. I tried it and I felt like my stomach was bleeding. I was going to get an ulcer. I said, I'm not doing this to get sick. I'm almost to make money and to have success. I just couldn't go through the drawdown.
So I came to this strategy because of the risk aversion. I think Mark and Brandon are similar in that way, where the risk aversion was the attraction to this strategy. But there's lots of strategies. There's lots of resources out there. Of course, let me just say two things real quick. Master trader program, of course, this is our 14th or 15th year, right? 2010, yeah, 15th year. Going to be online in November. It's five days of curriculum, or actually four days of curriculum, one day of live trading. And then we do Q&A days during the week, I think two this year.
So it's actually seven days. But the thing I wanted to point out to everybody is, for our members, if you're a come to the master trader program or you're an MPA member, we have a gala now. Once a year, you come and we all get together. All the clients from around the world. And we exchange ideas and we have special guests. It's just a wonderful, awesome day that we all get together and have fun together and learn.
Well, this year coming up, my birthday, my 60th birthday, is in January. So we move the gala to January 18th, because on the 19th, I took the house of blues, the entire house of blues in Myrtle Beach. I've got a national band coming, which I'm going to be playing drums with the band. We're going to have, I don't know, five, six, hundred people, maybe even more. Clients are common friends, family. So if you're a client of mine, you're welcome to come to the bash. I want everybody at the birthday bash. I wanted to do this when I was 50 and I didn't, I regretted it.
So now I'm going to do it when I'm 60, because God knows if I'm going to be here when I'm 70. So just wanted to give that invite also. Yeah, fantastic. No, excellent. The last question I want to kind of close things out today, and first of all, I want to, I think, all three of you guys for being here, I think you guys have all shared a lot of gold nuggets, so thank you very much.
My last question is this, what kind of final piece of advice would you give everybody watching this? What kind of, what final piece of wisdom? And this could be trading or also life related, however you'd like to take the question. And Mark Britchee, I'll start with you, not to put you on the spot or anything. Oh, he may be frozen, naturally.
Hey, see? Yeah, Brandon, we'll go to you. Hopefully Mark's able to come back. Yeah, sure. So for me, obviously, this master trader program changed my life. Yeah, it seemed like a lot of money at the time, but man, has it paid many, many, many, many multiples of that? So I can't, obviously, I get to work with Mark every day so that I might be a little biased, but if I wasn't working with Mark, I'd still be a client at MTP, because Mark is such a great coach and I believe in that.
But this idea of everybody overestimates what they can do in two years and underestimates what they can do in 10, like that to me, that's my life. And it takes a while for you to understand that and get that, but that's what I would say. Invest for a decade into learning this approach for us. Like Mark said, there's a bunch of different things out there, but you got to invest the time. You get in what you put out.
And yes, I sacrificed by selling my car, but I also sacrificed many other things to get to where I am today. So there is a cost and sometimes it's friends and leisure time, which I sacrificed, but it's been worth it. So perfect. I was engaged several times in the game. And once I was, how to go from for 14 years, I was engaged for five years. And every one of them said, you love your work more than, more than any, which to a certain extent, at the time was true.
And so I sacrificed a lot too. I delayed having children. I delayed a lot of things to put my full time into trading. And really my whole life went into this. And even to this day, writing books, it's a lot. It's a lot to write a book. And my advice would be the mindset side is really important. I wrote the mindset book because that's really the most important part for a lot of people because, I mean, if you grow up wealthy and you grow up in a family, you're privileged, you know what? You've got a big handicap, you feel entitled. And that's a handicap. And if you grow up poor, you grow up with a handicap, you feel unentitled and you feel, and you have a poverty mentality. Both sides create challenges. And mentally, that's what it comes down to. Because this is a very, very difficult profession. It's even difficult as a hobby. And so I think the mindset is the most important.
And you know, you definitely read my mindset book because that book was written as much from the heart and as much research and as much personal experience that I could ever give. And I think that's the most important element that will get you to where you need to get. Excellent. Thank you very much, Mark and Mark Ritchie. I don't know if you heard the question, you try to duck out. No, I got to go ahead. I'm not sure what happened there. But yeah, I did hear the question. I'll just add, look, you know, look, I think the market still provides a great opportunity, you know, an opportunity for people to have, yeah, life-changing results. But yeah, you've got to find, you know, for lack of a better word, a process, a strategy and possibly even, you know, a coach to get you there.
But yeah, I think, look, we're living proof of that, Mark's living proof of that. And the success stories will continue to be there. And it's a really rewarding business at the end of the day. And so, but you have to treat it like that. So yeah, that would be my piece of advice. Perfect. Well, I just want to thank you guys one more time for being here. I really, really enjoyed this. Thank you guys all for the Golden Nuggets and hopefully everybody watching this thoroughly enjoyed as well. Check out the resources in the Master Trader program. I attended in 2021, really enjoyed it. The workbook, which you guys didn't mention, is just by itself a fantastic, fantastic resource. So many model book charts. If you want to improve your chart, I, that's the place to be.
And I'm considering joining again this year and the Galla tidbit, Mark, may have just tipped the scales. So you have to be very, very good. You have to be at the Galla. So the whole thing. Yeah, it'd be great to see you there. Everybody at Deepview needs to be there. You guys are invited, of course. Awesome. Awesome. Absolutely. You guys are on the close friend list. Awesome. Yeah. Oh, I appreciate it. I hope this has been helpful. That's, you know, we want everybody to benefit and to have a great life. And so, you know, we really hope this has been helpful.
Yeah, for sure. Well, thank you guys again to everybody watching. Thank everybody in the chat. Please check out the resources. And we'll be right back with the next presenter. Cheers. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.