Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Insliico Terminal Podcast Episode 4 - DocXBT
57 Plays15 days ago
In this episode, Doc shares his journey from medicine to trading, how discipline from tennis shaped his approach, and the evolution of his strategies from trend trading to intraday mean reversion. He dives into mentors, CT culture, execution with Insilico Terminal, on-chain opportunities, work-life balance, and his long-term outlook on markets and trading as both a craft and a lifestyle.
00:00:00 Intro, Doc’s path from medicine to trading, early obsession during the bear market
00:13:21 Tennis mindset applied to trading, discipline, handling losses and setbacks
00:26:36 Transition from trend trading to intraday mean reversion, adapting to new styles
00:33:24 Mentors, CT culture shifts, and Doc’s move into education
00:42:58 Execution focus, Insilico Terminal, order types, and the importance of fees
00:47:52 On-chain opportunities, Hyperliquid, and choosing to focus on Bitcoin intraday
00:53:14 Work-life balance, cashing out, lifestyle changes, and future trading goals
01:00:11 Market cycles vs narrative-driven rallies, macro shifts, ETFs, and liquidity
01:08:21 Long-term outlook, trading as joy vs job, when to step away, closing thoughts
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction of Docxpt and Their Journey
00:00:12
Speaker
Okay, welcome everyone to a new episode of the InSilico Terminal podcast. Today we have with us as guests docxpt and um I like to ask people how they would introduce themselves at the beginning. so How would you introduce yourself? What do you do to someone that doesn't really know who you are?
00:00:34
Speaker
What are you doing? Yeah. So I'm a trader. I've been in this market for coming up on five years now. Got introduced to markets pretty much around the Covid crash. um Picked up from where I left off with medicine so that the doc name isn't really just you know a funny meme online name. I actually you know went to med school, pass boards and all of that um somewhere in the middle of the the bear market.
00:00:59
Speaker
um I was actually you call it like the top of the last cycle bear market. I got hyper obsessed. um I couldn't see myself going back to medicine. And I really you know i just really wanted to lock in because I thought that the the bear market would be the best time for me to level up.
00:01:14
Speaker
um and prepare myself for what I believed at the time was these crypto four year cycles. I don't really you know if I believe in that that much anymore. But back then I was like, well, if there's any time to grind, it's going to be in the bear market. So it led me to just being hyper obsessed with markets and lived and breathed and and ate this this game since then. um And yeah, man, I love it. That's pretty much the TLDR and what you need to know for me, I think, for the sake of the podcast. But yeah, i need any questions, shoot them my way.
00:01:43
Speaker
What made you interested in in crypto from a medicine background? That's quite a different. Yeah, it was. ah I think it's a pretty similar story for everyone is that you know the Covid crash. Everyone heard about stock markets crashing back then.
00:01:56
Speaker
um And I just had a friend that was like, hey, man, i you know I've always wanted to own stocks. This is probably a good time to buy. was like, you know what? I think you're on to something. and You're probably right. I didn't have that much money back then, but I was like, you know what? I'll i'll throw some chips in there.
00:02:09
Speaker
um And you know just with volatility and and Trump and all the news headlines and the V shape recovery we got the next month, it was exciting. Right. So it was just this big dopamine rush of checking your accounts and you're up a little bit and oh, this is moving and that's moving and this is moving. And it felt like a game.
00:02:27
Speaker
And obviously when you come into something new and markets are going up only, you get a false sense of security. You're very left side Dunning Krueger. um And I was just kind of chasing everything under the sun, trying new things. was very excited. i was watching a lot of YouTube videos back then. and um I just felt for me as someone who grew up playing tennis, it felt more exciting than medicine, where medicine is just this game where or not game. Excuse me.
00:02:52
Speaker
um It's this profession where everything is taught through a book and you either know something or you don't know something. um Athletics or markets are very different in that regard, where there's multiple ways to skin a cat.
00:03:05
Speaker
They're the correct way to do things, but you can get there in multiple different routes. um And it was more exciting and more thrilling and and more challenging. um And yes, I had many stumbles along the way, but but man, i this the joy and then and then the desire to wake up every morning and look at markets far exceeded anything that I was doing when I was in med school or during my internship or anything like that. so Yeah, man, when the biggest turning point for me was that December 4th, 2021 Bitcoin
Learning from Market Challenges
00:03:38
Speaker
nuke. It was you know it was like 58K or something.
00:03:41
Speaker
And at the time, I really felt like we were going higher. I was following a lot of really smart people back then that were calling tops very strongly. And I didn't know that I believed that. um So I did one smart thing. I took a bunch of money out of the alts, basically liquidated all the alts, and I just went heavy into Bitcoin because I thought there was one more leg.
00:03:58
Speaker
And I got humbled couple you know days or weeks later. ah December 4th, woke up. Bitcoin is like 42 is waking down to 42. And that was my big moment of, oh, wait, you you don't actually know anything.
00:04:09
Speaker
You know, you're you're you're you're pretty dumb in this game. So um I took that and I went through the classic depression of I couldn't believe this in and a couple of weeks. You know, my brain was just thinking about that. And I just decided at that moment, like I have something to prove. I'm not going to leave this game a loser.
00:04:26
Speaker
I'm sticking around and, you know, I'm going to learn things the right way. So. I couldn't I couldn't fathom at that moment kind of going back to medicine. I stuck with it for another like six months, eight months. But yeah throughout the 2022 year, i was like, that's, you know, um I'm moving on. um um I'm going to really I'm going to really I'm going to really try this out for a year or two.
00:04:47
Speaker
Very interesting. I kind of remember like back in 2021, even though you said like many people were bearish, I felt like maybe the thing I only joined in 2021 on CT. um So I followed like all the bigger accounts and I feel like many were like caught off guard. I remember all the calls for 100K by end of year back then and then the market completely turning around. and I find that you know through some universal luck, I was following the right people at that time because I saw Light Crypto, his tweet you know talking about you know pigs getting slaughtered. or I forget the exact tweet that he had at the time. Everyone is fat and and complacent.
00:05:28
Speaker
Um, Magus also called top, um, ah XO was calling top. Um, I forget who there was Pentoshi, you know, was talking about it. So was following a lot of the accounts that were echoing the same thing. And I ended up fading all of that and just going, no, these guys are, you know, like, I don't think they know what they're talking about. We're going so much higher.
00:05:48
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, you know, the The fortunate thing is once that event happened and they were proven to be correct, i was like, who are these guys? Do they have anything you know to offer me? Can I learn from them? How do they call this? Right. And luckily for me, XO had a bunch of streams out there that I could watch.
00:06:03
Speaker
Magus had a bunch of streams and and educational content on youtube on his YouTube that I could watch. so I was like, let me humble myself at this moment and and go into the minds of these traders. I got this correct and see why they got it correct.
00:06:14
Speaker
Mm hmm. How did you get the conviction to stick around in 2022? Because I remember that was like a very dark time, ah down only year pretty much. And you you left your old profession and went to do crypto full time, I guess. how did you How did you come to do that?
00:06:31
Speaker
So ah when when you know ah the start of 2022 started, I basically wiped everything clean for myself. I started a new trading system. I was like, I'm going to trade around ranges and that's pretty much all i'm going to do. I'm gonna use price action, I'm going to use ranges.
00:06:46
Speaker
And I'm going to build this thing up. and And I was still doing medicine in early 2022. This was I was studying for boards and I had my last USM like step two um CK at the time. So I was like, I have to submit application for residency. Let me just get this out of the way. So that was early 2022. But then had a little bit of period before, you know, you ah do interviews and stuff like that. So all I had was trading that year.
00:07:08
Speaker
um And I challenged myself somewhere, i think in May, it was right around um three AC. yeah I felt that I had pretty good stance on direction of market, you know whether coming into the week I'm looking for higher prices or lower prices. had a good idea of the trades that I wanted to take, um but i wasn't I wasn't profitable. I was kind of a break even trader. right I had a good idea of where I thought the market was going, but there was a lot of mistakes that I was making.
00:07:37
Speaker
And there was a turning point here where I just said, is there anything in this market that I do well? Is there anything? Right. And through coin market manager, some other data out there that I was like, okay, well, there's one setup that I'm profitable on.
00:07:50
Speaker
Right. If I just remove everything else and just do this one thing, um I think I can do okay. So that was a big turning point for me. There is like, I'm just going to do this one thing. I'm just going to take this one setup again and again and again and again.
00:08:02
Speaker
Um, and I challenged myself. i was like, okay, you have until, uh, the end of the year, like, let's see if you can be profitable. And that was around the time where my, um, interviews were gonna start. It was gonna start around, you know, fall to winter.
00:08:15
Speaker
So was like, by then, can I, can I turn a profit? And I think it took the first account was, uh, 300 something trades, which seems like a lot of effort, but I did end up to X in the account over those like six months.
00:08:27
Speaker
Um, and at that moment I said, well, if I can do it in these conditions, very uncertain, very, you know, lacking narrative and and all these things, then I should be able to do it in a market that trends up.
00:08:38
Speaker
yeah That was my brain. That was my mindset at the time. And I said, you know what, let me give this one year, right? If I could do this now, let me just push this whole thing back one year. So that's how I did it. And 2023, we all know the markets went up and it's lot easier. And I can, I can go through the journey step by step, but I'm going to stop there.
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah. I'm curious what what kind of setup was that, if you don't mind sharing. Yeah, it was, so we were in ah we were in a clean downtrend, right? And the volatility was dying off. ah But ah through just shorting the market a lot, I was like, well, these, you know, the shorts are working much better than longs, right? Countertrend trading is not working for me. So, okay, let me focus on the short side of the market, right? that I have a higher hit rate there.
00:09:18
Speaker
And number two, since we are in a downtrend, what we would do is we would gap down. We would range. We would gap down. we would range on all coins on um Bitcoin, whatever. So I said, okay, anytime we extend down, we put this extension candle down. All I'm looking for is a retracement of some of that extension.
00:09:35
Speaker
um for it to build the new range. Right. And I would say this is a range high and all I would be looking for is triggers around that local range high. Right. Like I mentioned, my my focus was on ranges. So anything that was driving up, there's a three drive and break in market structure at that range highs. If it's an SMP up that range highs, if it's a tag of the point of breakdown at that range highs, I'm looking for these um short triggers.
00:09:54
Speaker
And my favorite one, the most profitable one one was just simple price action, three drives up, break in market structure, um retrace, put in a lower high short that invalidation at the, at the highest high.
00:10:06
Speaker
Um, and that was the one that got me over the hub. It's very simple. Right. But ah it it teaches you a lot that like there, you know, if you could just find one thing and have the discipline to just execute that and not be distracted by everything else and also have the patience like, okay, if it's not setting up, it's not setting up. i can't take a trade.
00:10:23
Speaker
Um, but it taught me a lot at that, at that moment. I feel like the best setups are always kind of simple. They are. Yeah, they are. it really doesn't matter how me and you trade, like we could have completely polar opposite systems, but we intuitively know what works for us better than the rest.
00:10:41
Speaker
And we, as traders all self-sabotage in some form. Cause we get bored. Right. And we were like, okay, well we know this was not going to work out as good, but it could still. Right. And it takes maybe three seconds to click a button.
00:10:54
Speaker
Um, so it's very hard to, you know, stay out of your own way and and prevent that self-sabotage, but we all have the capability of doing it. I believe.
Psychological Aspects of Trading and Personal Growth
00:11:02
Speaker
did it come naturally to you during that year or was there also times where you were struggling a bit more maybe even thinking about giving up or how did that go for you Yeah. So the thing with trading, man, and I think everyone can relate to this is when it's good, it's great.
00:11:19
Speaker
You know, when you win, nothing, nothing beats that feeling of getting a trade correctly or making money in markets. So even in the bad times, even when you're you know on a losing streak or things feel bad, it it takes one win to shift your mind.
00:11:32
Speaker
So definitely multiple times through that year, i was like, what's the issue here, right? If I feel going into the week that I know we're going bounce from, or there's one trade that I'll never forget. That was, um, the day that Russia invaded Ukraine.
00:11:45
Speaker
um Bitcoin was, you know, it was, it was chopping. it was after I forget what the the exact prices were, but it was maybe 35 to 40 range or something like that before ah Luna.
00:11:56
Speaker
And I wanted along that low. And I actually set a limit order and I got filled and it was up. But then I saw the news. This is before I even like, you know, I looked at the accounts first and I looked at the news later and I was like, oh my God, this is war. Like, what do I do with this?
00:12:10
Speaker
And I got terrified and I closed my position. Um, cause I was like, I don't know how to trade this. And guess what happened a couple of days later that, you know, it bounced really high. Yeah. And, and, and these are just all learning lessons for me of like, I think I know what I'm doing. I have enough evidence to know that I think I can do this. It's just, how do I iron out these little issues here and there?
00:12:29
Speaker
Um, and I think the the lucky thing for me is just, I would, you know, rest my mindset ah on playing tennis that you can lose a bunch, but you can still want to match. You can lose a set six. So the first set you could be down three, zero, four, zero. You can still find a way to win the match.
00:12:43
Speaker
You can actually win a match by loot winning less points than your opponent. Your opponent can win more total points than you, but you can end up winning the match. So I thought about all these things and and and just remembered, you know, um as long as I stick with it, I have these this these months.
00:12:57
Speaker
I'm not doing anything. All I'm doing is waiting for interviews. Right. So I have this time. What else am I going to do? You know, so even in those dark down moments, it was it was there was there was time, you know, there was time to kind of prove it to myself.
00:13:11
Speaker
Mm hmm. I find the tennis background quite interesting. That's like the first time i've I've heard anyone say that. I feel like many people have ah either like a gaming background or a poker background coming into trading.
00:13:23
Speaker
But a sport like tennis is also pretty pretty interesting. Is there any like particular lessons that ah that are like particular to tennis that helped you in trading? There's one that I've kind of echoed a bunch. So, um, Roger Federer had a commencement speech recently, um at Dartmouth and, it, his clips went viral. You may have seen it yourself. Um, he said something about, you know, in his career, he played 1200 matches and he won 83 or 84% of those matches.
00:13:54
Speaker
But throughout the course of his career, he only won 52% of all the points he played. So you know he he went on to talk about how painful it is to lose every other point, you know yeah but then to shift your mentality of it doesn't matter if I double faulted, it doesn't matter if I you know had the ugliest point of all time.
00:14:14
Speaker
It doesn't matter if I hit an yeah ESPN top 10 highlight and everyone watches the highlight on social media the next day, it's still one point. It's just one point. It's just one point. And you have to reframe after each point to think about the next one. Right. You have to let it go very quickly and and start focusing and preparing for the very next point. And I think trading is very similar to that, where no no one trade is more important than the next.
00:14:36
Speaker
And we have to continue looking forward to the next one and the next one and the next one. And I think the reason why a lot of people fail is they get they dwell on the the prior trades. Right. If you're on a very hot streak, what what naturally happens, your preparation and your discipline start fading. You start risking more money. You start taking more aberrant trades. You feel like you can't lose.
00:14:55
Speaker
You trade assets you may not trade. You think about house money. And when you're losing streak, you do the opposite. You withdraw, you, you, um you know, size down, you get scared to take your, your quality setups. You know, this one works for you, but because you're losing, you say, i don't want to trade.
00:15:11
Speaker
Right. So I think there's a lot of similarities between the two 20s and tennis and trading in that regard. I could probably go on, but I think that's one of the best examples that we have. I think there is a great quote from Insilico himself.
00:15:24
Speaker
ah but I don't know if it's the first one that that said it, but I know it from him. ah The next trade isn't going to change your life, but the next 1000 trades will. Yeah. Great way to look at it.
00:15:35
Speaker
Yeah, because like the it's easy. I feel like many people on CTE or many people in crypto general have like this mindset of getting rich quick and wanting to like hit it big, their money, their money.
00:15:46
Speaker
But that's just like mostly based on luck and not really replicable. Even if you do that, like you're aware on some level that you could always lose it again. But if you do it over a long enough time frame and you do the the thousand trades and you have like the 60% win rate or whatever, you still have the same pain that you talked about from from losing many maybe 40% of the trades.
00:16:08
Speaker
But overall, you can still make money out of that. But you just like have to stick at it and keep ah great going. And um you know one of the core lessons I learned and in 2022, so I was on that account path. you know I told you like 300 trades, a double a account.
00:16:24
Speaker
I was on a good good run. um I think over the course of ah about a month and a half, I was up 35 to 40% on my account. And i was just doing the thing that I told you, just keep it very simple. Take those trades. i was losing a bunch, i was winning a bunch, but the count was going up and I saw a trader. I'm not gonna name names, but he was very popular in the 2021 cycle and he posted some setup, right? And he posted it on CT. And I looked at that and I said, this guy was been on fire. He did so well, he did well around the top. He didn't lose all his money.
00:16:54
Speaker
He's posting this man. Maybe I should take this. I guess what I did, I copy traded him. And I didn't size the way that was normally sized. I sized up. I was like, this looks like a surefire thing. And when the trade got invalidated, guess what I did? Instead of taking the L, I added more to it. and i was like, it'll turn around.
00:17:10
Speaker
I don't want to lose this much of my account. And in one trade, I reset the account from 35, 40% up to 20% down. And mentally, now I'm sitting in this hole of I did all this work over the past one or two months or three months, and it's all wiped out.
00:17:26
Speaker
And you have a decision to make there of like, your your brain goes to if I do the right thing again, just to get back to where I was, just to get back to where i was going to take several months in this one bad decision. Right. And it's a very painful thing to overcome. but ah But I think you know the difference between people that can do this and and and be profitable year in and year out over several years is they have the ability to do that.
00:17:48
Speaker
Right. They don't get distracted here and there. They don't lose their discipline once in a while, um because all it really does is is take one little moment to put you on tilt. and to change your own mindset, to lose your discipline, to trade something you don't normally trade, to trade assets you don't normally trade, to copy trade someone. All of these things are distractions. And like you said, you know it's like the more shortcuts you take, the longer the journey.
00:18:10
Speaker
I feel like many people can relate to. I've definitely also done it myself, like seeing a setup that someone else posted or even just a coin that someone shield or whatever, and then just like jumping in without doing my usual, even if it doesn't fit my usual process, I'm just like, yeah, this person seems smart.
00:18:26
Speaker
This seems like a good idea. and then you you just realize like, yeah, I just didn't I didn't follow my own system. I didn't follow my own ideas. And and I can't like blame the other person either because they they didn't make me take the trade and I still lost like my money.
00:18:40
Speaker
And yeah, I think also what it reminded me of is another good quote that ah just came to my mind from GCR is like, um cleanse yourself of your peak net worth. I recently saw that on a timeline um because that's obviously a very difficult thing to do. As you just said, if you're if you lost money that you have to get into the mindset of, oh, I have to like put in so much more time just to get back to where I was before.
00:19:05
Speaker
yeah But you can only same thing as before. like You can only go for the next trade. like What can the next trade be like? And you can only go from that like step by step and not just be like, yeah, I need to go back to this. I need to make this back or whatever, because then you're always in ah in a kind of victim and then defeatist mindset that will never really like in a scarcity your mindset. like you You feel like, oh, I have to like do so much to get it back. But the market is kind of abundant. Like it gives you opportunities every single day to make money and you just have to stay level headed and then go with that.
00:19:38
Speaker
Yeah, it is really funny about markets because it's like that the winning formula has already been taught. All the wisdoms have been dropped. All the great traders have said all the things, all you know all the tools are out there, all the indicators out there. It is a great game of self mastery, right? it's It's you versus you. Can you do the right things every single day? And it's it's you know a big reflection on who you are in real life.
00:20:02
Speaker
um A lot of people don't have the discipline to do the simple things of that they know they should do. Why do people suffer from anxiety you know this day and age? Because they're they're suppressing the things that they know they should do. right that People lack discipline nowadays because it's so easy to get distracted. It's so easy to ah you know order takeout from Uber right rather than making your own meals. It's so easy to do all these things. And the same thing in markets. right it's it's It's truly just a test of discipline because a bunch of the winning formulas. I'm not saying it's easy, but I'm saying, I think the core reason why so many people fail is because they do lack the discipline to do the things they know they should do.
00:20:37
Speaker
And like we both talked about, right? It takes one little mistake here and there. and And those mistakes can snowball out of control. Yeah. You seem quite ah level-headed and and disciplined to me on on Twitter and in this conversation so far.
00:20:51
Speaker
Is that like something that a characteristic that came to you while you were on your trading journey or is there also something like outside of trading that helped you to to be like that?
00:21:03
Speaker
Um, I think it's okay. Well, first of all, I'm not as young as people may think, right. I'm, I'm already 30, right. So have a little, I've lived a little bit of life. Um, and through that life, I've made a lot of mistakes.
00:21:15
Speaker
Um, I talked about the tennis journey, right. I, there was a, there a time in tennis was pretty good. Um, I was a top 500 in the world in juniors under 18. I was traveling. Um, I was a prospect. I was playing at,
00:21:26
Speaker
IMG academies in Florida. Um, you know, I could have got D one scholarships and all this kind of stuff. And I let it get to my head. Um, I stopped training as hard, right. I started talking to girls more, right. I started slacking off on weekends. I wouldn't sleep on time. i would sneak out and try to go to parties and stuff. Right. So I screwed over my own tennis career because I thought I had this big lead on everyone.
00:21:45
Speaker
Yeah. um In medicine, I kind of did the same thing, right? When I went to med school, um you know, pretty quickly in the first month or so, I realized like I'm not as smart as all the other students here. Right. And I, you know, there's a little little chip on your shoulder when when people, you know, maybe laugh at something that you get wrong.
00:22:01
Speaker
Right. So I made it ah goal for myself. Like they're not going to laugh at me. So I finished that year. Ninth in my class, which I was pretty proud of. But guess what I did again? Let it get to my head and stop working as hard and slip behind.
00:22:14
Speaker
And the the next few years of school, I didn't place that high in class. Right. I slipped to like middle of the pack. Right. I was just average, average class, average, average student. Um, so just with life experience, like when it came to markets, I was like, I know how to do something well, initially, I don't know how to maintain it.
00:22:31
Speaker
Um, and, and that was a real, you know, self challenge for myself is like, can I continue proving this to myself year over year? It's not good enough to do it once. It's not good enough to run up one account. It's not good enough to, uh, sell one top at 30 K and, and be bullish at 25 do it again and again and again. This game's never going to stop. It's never going to last. There's no income. There's no paycheck coming in.
00:22:53
Speaker
You don't get to just show up nine to five. You have to keep on earning it and earning it and earning it. And the other side is, well, you can you can trade this market and try to make eight figures in one cycle. Um, but then you have to take extreme risk, right?
00:23:05
Speaker
But why, why do that? If I can prove to myself again and again, that I can do the simple things correctly over time. Right. And there's going to be times to add stuff. The metas are going to shift, right? The timeframe's going to shift. Volatility is going to change with, know, Bitcoin corrects like one, two, 5% now and people lose their minds versus 25% last summer. Right.
00:23:23
Speaker
yeah Um, metas are going to shift, volatility is going to shift. The drivers of mechanics are going to shift and you, you have to keep on staying on top of those things. Um, but yeah, I think it's just, you know, life experience. Um, I'm not gonna say that I was always this person, but I'm, I'm trying to build towards it.
00:23:39
Speaker
I think in trading, one of the most dangerous things is definitely if you're on a winning streak, as you said, uh, with the tennis and the medicine, if you're like feeling that you're winning already and then it gets to your head and you get some, some ego out of it. And then yeah the the market always very quickly humbles you.
00:23:56
Speaker
Oh yeah, definitely. There was actually ah a funny moment. Um, last year, I was coming off a pretty hot streak. This is around summer. So Pepe had two crazy rallies. Uh, first, you know, um, a 10 X rally going into, I believe March.
00:24:13
Speaker
a big correction. I was lucky enough to sell that top within like 15%. And I actually bought the bottom on that date. It's just one of those perfect times where it's not just you do it, but you actually do it with proper size.
00:24:26
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and I was able to actually sell the top, right. I've never been able to do that with size, again, just because I haven't been that risk on since that one moment, that was a high conviction trade for me. Um, and I played it to perfection.
00:24:39
Speaker
Man, my ego is through the roof. You know, the the money that I made, I'm looking at my accounts. It's one of those times where you every second you get, you open up the portfolio to look at it, you know, because you're just so damn proud of it. yeah And I remember at that moment, you know, i was already friends with Charlie and Magus and working with Paragon. And I asked these guys, i was like, what would you do in my place at this moment? Like, i know that I'm not in the right mindset.
00:25:02
Speaker
What would you do? um and they gave me opposing advice right uh charlie said when you're on a win streak fucking keep gunning it right you got the hot hand keep going right until like it'll blow up eventually but keep going see how much you can press it and magus took the opposite end he's like you know you should do what's best for you and and lock it in at this and this that and the other thing and ultimately i came to the decision of like i'm not in the right mindset i know i'm gonna lose this But i don't want to just slack. So that was a good moment for me to say one of the big problems in my life right now is my work life balance. Right. I am just glued to the screen 18 hours a day. I'm trading for our charts and one hour charts.
00:25:38
Speaker
You know, entries come in Asia hours and they come when I'm sleeping. They come on the grocery store. They come in all these times. So what can I do at this moment to to level up? And I said, let me try trading lower time frames. I was very scared. I was like, I can't do this. I don't have the temperament to do this. And it's gonna take different tooling. And I have to start watching flow and I have to start, you know, doing all these things that feel very difficult to me, but I gave myself time. was like, look, if I'm in this mindset where I can't trade my system right now, I'm coming off a big wind and I'm probably gonna blow it up of doing something stupid. Let me focus on something else. So I took last summer and I was like, I'm just gonna iron out low timeframes.
00:26:10
Speaker
I'm gonna iron out a system that's based around flow when you use different tooling and only see if I find something here. And, and, and, um I'm very happy I did that. So I think there's, there's things that you could, you could always stay focused in markets and not get complacent, but you could shift that energy around, you know, you don't have to have wasted effort. So
Adapting Strategies for Better Trading
00:26:26
Speaker
I was thinking in that moment, I was like, well, this, this reminds me of when I came off, you know, ah wins and and tennis and whatever. And I thought i'm the best and I got complacent. I was like, I can't allow myself to get complacent at this time. I still have to stay engaged.
00:26:37
Speaker
So I just shifted that energy in a different direction, last year. i'm very happy that i did.
00:26:44
Speaker
Is this still something that you're mainly doing? Like, are you mainly focusing on lower timeframes now? Yes. Yeah. So a lot of people that followed me on Twitter over the years know me as, you know, Doc the trend trader, the EMA trader whatever.
00:26:56
Speaker
um But yeah, pretty much this entire year, 2025, I'd say statistically, maybe 98% of my trades have been on Bitcoin on an intraday basis. that' What would you say is the biggest biggest difference between going from trend trading to a more low timeframe focused style?
00:27:13
Speaker
Oh, completely different. So but for intraday trading, for me, it's not momentum based anymore. Now it's a mean version. For trend trading, it's all momentum based. So as a momentum trader, you're comfortable missing the bottom and you're comfortable missing the top as long as you get the middle.
00:27:28
Speaker
ah for um For reversion trading, you you have to kind of dial in those entries and not worry about the overextension. You take the high EV bet if you're trading a fixed range volume profile VWAP, right? And you say, hey, I'm fading this extremity because some so idiot just opened up a position where you shouldn't or someone just closed out a position in aggression here and that aggression is not being rewarded.
00:27:50
Speaker
You're comfortable just taking those profits at the daily VWAP or bounce back to the middle of the range or anything like that. And you don't concern yourself with the overextension. You don't concern yourself with the full reversion of the opposite side of value.
00:28:03
Speaker
You take the highest EV bet, right? It's completely different mentality, completely different system. You're, you're watching different tooling. You're using different tooling. You're not even using, uh, the same things you are in unm medium timeframe, but I enjoy this so much more. It allows me to lock in for the morning.
00:28:20
Speaker
If I get a trade fantastic. If I don't, it's okay. Next day. um and ah you know, have some balance and remember that we're we're human beings and our our lives aren't just glued to the screen 18 hours a day, you know? Yeah.
00:28:33
Speaker
Do you think that shift came kind of easy to you? For me, it has been more the other way around. Like I started out on lower timeframes doing mean reversion and I've gotten more into momentum training on higher timeframes this year, but it's been kind of difficult for me to to like buy higher.
00:28:51
Speaker
if you, if you get what I mean, you know, because I'm very used to like, I want to like buy cheap prices. i want to like buy low and sell high. And I don't want to like buy in a position where it feels like kind of expensive to me.
00:29:03
Speaker
and that has definitely been an adjustment to make. Yeah. I don't know if it came easy to me cause it took me a while. Um, I, I started working on this. uh, in April and I locked in on it in June.
00:29:16
Speaker
June is when I really started locking in on it. And it wasn't until October. Yeah. About October that I started speaking about it with other people like, Hey, this is what I've been doing. that's what I'm focusing on. So it took me that long to even gain the confidence to start speaking about these trades that I was taking.
00:29:31
Speaker
yeah um And there was lot of trial and error. I didn't know um what my you know so-called quiver was. I didn't know how many arrows I had in it i was you know trying a bunch of different things. I was trying to take take momentum trades outside of value. I was trying to take mean reversion trades. I was shorting and longing. right I was taking the trades on Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Solana. right So I didn't really know where the bread and butter was. But just like the origin of 2022, I found one thing that worked better for me.
00:29:59
Speaker
And I was like, okay. This is the rules of this trade, right? These are the five things that I want. As long as I can get three out of the five, it's an acceptable trade. If I get five out of the five, that's where I can size up into that trade.
00:30:12
Speaker
Yeah. Um, and, and yeah, I wouldn't say it was easy, man. was a, it was a long process and this is, you know, years after me proving that I can be profitable, but that system didn't come natural to me. It was, it was difficult and it was a different mentality of catching, catching a knife, right? Being aggressive before confirmation, because as a trend trader, you're trading with confirmation.
00:30:29
Speaker
You already know that there's a trend shift. You already know that there's momentum loss. You already know that the, the opposing party has taken over. Right. But when you're, when you're mean reverting, you're basically trying to in the moment speculate on what a local bottom could look like. yeah Right. And you have to invalidate yourself very quickly. So you're taking these scratches, right. And you have to not let those scratches, you know, uh, hurt your confidence too, because there's times, um, where I'm going to take two scratch trades in a day before I catch the bottom on the third one.
00:30:58
Speaker
Right. But you can't let that mentality get to you on the third trade of I'm going to size down. no I don't want to take this. No, the the bears are too strong in this downtrend momentum. you know Oh, this and that. But you know you you have to take those trades again and again. And and those are lot of obstacles I had to overcome during that period.
00:31:16
Speaker
It's really just ah the chart time of of just watching a chart, watching it play all over and over again. So you really like get a feel for how the market reacts, especially like in lower time frames.
00:31:27
Speaker
the The same things happen over and over again on on all time frames. It's all like fractal, but just ah having a feel of that is very, it it definitely takes a while. But if if you get it, then it's kind of I don't know, not easy, but like simple. It's easier to understand. but you yeah But you also can't really like teach that. You can't teach the principles and stuff, but it definitely takes the the screen time to do it yourself, I feel like, to to properly author it.
00:31:53
Speaker
Yeah, a hundred percent. I think, um, you can teach the setups. Uh, you can teach what you're looking for, but you can't teach someone, the ability to click the button at the right time.
00:32:04
Speaker
That's something they're gonna have to see in the moment because you can, you can see it five minutes later, eight minutes later, and then it makes sense. and you're like, okay, I got the outcome that I was speculating on, but to have the courage to actually click the button at the time is something you need to develop.
00:32:17
Speaker
um, and through reps. Right. And, and even those moments where you enter and price is sitting at your entry for six, seven minutes, and you really want to cut it. Cause you're like, I don't know.
00:32:29
Speaker
Right. Uh, those are things that you learn through experience. Right. And it's, it's not only like you said, chart time, but it's also time in the trade. Um, that's, that's, that's very important as well. Like those pressure, that pressure that you feel your adrenaline going up, um, and to kind of overcome that for a few minutes,
00:32:45
Speaker
Um, I had a student recently, you know, is actually a few months ago. He had the courage to share his live trades with me. So he was recording them and he would send them to me you be like, what do you think? And I saw him doing one of the, the, the errors that I used to make very early is, you know, you would get into the trade, it would move in your favor and you would move your stops immediately.
00:33:05
Speaker
Right. And you would skim a little bit of profit out. immediately, right? Because you're like, oh, that in that early volatility, right? It puts so much pressure on you. Cause you think like, it's not moving all the way. It's not, it's not 20% towards my target right away. It's just five, six, 7%. I'm going to, it's going round trip. It's going stop me out. Right. Those is early pressure moments cannot be taught that's taught through experience.
00:33:28
Speaker
Did you have, ah while you learned how to trade, did you have any mentors or ah what were your sources to learn like market basics? Yeah. So I'm very fortunate. i think I think a lot of people are not so fortunate that um they find the right accounts to follow early on.
00:33:44
Speaker
And I was, you know, I came into CT in an era where people were not as scared not scared to share, right? right They were sharing a lot of things. They weren't scared to be wrong. They weren't ridiculed when they were wrong like they are today.
00:33:55
Speaker
um and And guys like Magus, TraderXO, Pierre were great. I would say not one to one mentors right away, but like distant mentors, right? EXO had this library of streams, right? And he does it on YouTube.
00:34:08
Speaker
um I didn't need to wait for his next stream. I could just go watch his whole library. And I could see how he's forming his ideas, how they're playing out. And the thing that stood out to me a lot about XO versus other traders is he wouldn't trade with these hard stops, right? He wouldn't say, oh, you know, this is where I'm going to place my stop loss. If it comes to this price, I'm out.
00:34:26
Speaker
He would say, this is where I'm wrong. This is how my invalidation is formed. This is the price action that I want to see to be proven. Correct. If this happens, I'm going to be incorrect. And that mindset was very helpful for me. And it helped me, you know, think about markets in a different way. Right.
00:34:40
Speaker
if If I'm speculating on this level to hold or I'm speculating this trade to form, this is the kind of price action on AC to, to, to be proven correct. If I'm not getting that, I don't need to wait for my stop loss to get hit. I know that this trade is not going to work out for me.
00:34:52
Speaker
Right. Magus had so much free education out there that I was very interested in, but I looked at Magus as like an order flow trader. And I was like, this is too complex for me to learn right now. I need, i need very simple, i need very simple market mechanics. Right. So I followed him and I kind of bookmarked all the things he was posting. And I was like, I'm going to come back to this in in a six months or a year you know when I have a better standing.
00:35:15
Speaker
Another trader ah that used to he still shares a lot is Pierre. right He had a very good understanding of trends, momentum, um and he had the the haven. right so It was somewhere late in 2022. Once I had already focused on Exo system, traded range, traded price action, I was like, well, look, it doesn't make sense in an industry like crypto to wait for something to pump 12, 15, 18% it for two r you know it makes more sense to try to extract that 18% move. And I said, well, the best person in I follow at this moment is Pierre.
00:35:50
Speaker
um And he was sharing on the timeline, but he also had the Haven. So I said, well, you know, FTX just happened. Nothing's going on in markets. Like there's no trends to trade. Let me go to the Haven and and see what he's doing in there. And he was trading, I think at the time it was like Litecoin, ah GMX. I can't remember the third coin, but there wasn't really much going on.
00:36:08
Speaker
But fortunate for me, it was library of trades in there. And all I did was go through all the trades, the whole you know channel. And I was just like, okay, this is how he took this. This how he took this. This is how he took this. And after about a month, I gathered that data and I was like, I can't stay in here. Cause if I stay in here, it's gonna, it's gonna make me copy trade him.
00:36:24
Speaker
So I need to go take what I learned and start applying. Um, and then months later, you know, it worked for me 2023, we started an uptrend. I started applying a lot of the things that he was trading, you know, render was in this giga strong uptrend in Q1. It was really fun trade turned on the four hour after that. I was like, okay, well, what else can I add?
00:36:42
Speaker
You know, how can I add to this? And that's when I sought out Magus. remembered was like, okay, this guy's ah too smart, but maybe I could start absorbing some of this. at the time. and And then I went to the Paragon and i started learning from Magus somewhere in early 2023. So I wouldn't say I had these direct one-to-one, you know, I could DM you mentors, but I'm just very fortunate. There was people around me that were teaching the right things. You know, even people that I followed while taught me the, you know, the, the, the,
00:37:10
Speaker
the the necessity to trade the strong assets on the market and not apply your will to things that are not in the narrative. You know, he's notoriously good at, at scoping out the winners and trading the winners and not focusing on everything else.
00:37:23
Speaker
It's a very, very strong lesson at the time. could go on and on and on about all the things I've learned from these people. But like I said, man, I'm, I'm very fortunate that I came into the market and followed the right people at the right time. Yeah, following the correct accounts is definitely very, very, very important and very valuable.
Evolving Role in the Trading Community
00:37:39
Speaker
yeah so Is that also like a reason why you yourself are now quite passionate about education? Man, I think I kind of landed in this role. It wasn't it wasn't something that i wanted to do initially. It wasn't a goal or anything like that. it was It just naturally kind of happened. So what I did do is I made this Twitter account. The reason I made it is just like, let me see if I can respond to some of these accounts and ask them questions. So would reply guide to them.
00:38:04
Speaker
There wasn't much going on in 2022. Sometimes it would respond. Sometimes it wouldn't. And I think what I would do is I would just share my ideas under theirs. I wouldn't, you know, necessarily ah do the exact same trade as them, but I'd be like, what do you think of this? Right. And I built some followers, couple hundred, and I just made a discord. I was like, well, if you guys want to discuss trades, I don't know anyone in this market, you know, come in this open discord and we'll talk about stuff. And we were discussing all the CPIs and FOMCs and all this kind of stuff and talking about where we think Bitcoin's going and,
00:38:32
Speaker
kind of growing together. And I think, you know, out of those group of people, a lot of people look to me for my opinion. So I just kept on sharing more. Um, and the YouTube stuff, uh, one day I was like, look, man, I, I took, I think I took two weeks off in, in 2023 some point.
00:38:48
Speaker
And I was like, i'm I'm going to go through the entire Binance perps chart list. i'm going to go through every single coin and let me just stream this. I'll stream it on YouTube. And if anyone wants to join, I had like two or three people from the discord watching and I went for three hours and just went through everything.
00:39:02
Speaker
was like, you know what? This is, this is good prep because i actually caught a couple of trades this week that I scoped out. It took me three hours to go through like 200 plus coins. But let me do this again next week. So the next Sunday I did it again. And the next Sunday I did it again, the next Sunday I did it again. And eventually it it became its own thing. You know, it it wasn't by, ah you know, plan or anything like that. It just kind of happened. And, you know, you mentioned earlier, I think before the call, um Hey doc, you did some podcasting back in the day. Right. So that's when I was like, Hey, you know, let me maybe ask some traders what they think.
00:39:34
Speaker
And that's kind of how i developed a relationship with Magus. I had him on the podcast and, you know, We had a conversation and somewhere down the line, you know he asked me to join the team on Paragon. yeah So yeah, that's just how it that's just kind of how it came to be. It wasn't wasn't planned or anything.
00:39:51
Speaker
I see. you I think it's definitely good to to still have some accounts that like share stuff because as you said, ah compared to back then, I feel like in 2021, there was a lot more model sharing going on. or People were talking a lot more freely about what they were doing. And now many people have become a bit more jaded and don't really want to share much stuff anymore. So it's kind of nice that there are still ah people around that teach people that have like no knowledge at all, because that's always like a difficult position to to start out from.
00:40:20
Speaker
Yeah, i think I think the turning point on CT is is when CT went after Hasaka. I think that was the big turning point in the culture shift is you know they didn't understand Hasaka the way that he ran his account the last few years. And the way he ran it was he would find the winners and he would just bullpost the winners.
00:40:39
Speaker
That was his thing, right? Whatever the winner was, wherever he was long, he's not sharing his entry, but he's bullposting them. And his kind of edge on how that worked started fading over time as everyone caught on and caught on and go, okay, hasaka is long this, like we have a limited lifespan on this trade.
00:40:56
Speaker
Um, and CT gets smarter and more competitive and traders get smarter and, you know, edges erode and new bettas form. and And people started saying, oh, he's a top signal. Every time he comes on to see the bull post, that's it. The momentum's dead.
00:41:08
Speaker
Cause, cause you kinda knew like if you're in the winter, uh, and you're doing well and you have a good entry, well, if a sock is posting it now, your trade kinda has a deadline, you know, it's not gonna last that long. Maybe you have a couple days to a couple weeks, but it's, it's kinda, you know, everyone's gonna get in.
00:41:23
Speaker
Um, and they, i think undeservedly started calling him the top signal it on paper. Like we can't deny some of those, you know, you could pin them on a chart and they were tops, but I don't think that reflected the actual trades that he was taking.
00:41:35
Speaker
Um, and I think that that started the culture shift around like just flaming people around tweets. I think the problem is with him, his account just became way too big. And then it was kind of like at the beginning, he was just sharing these setups, but after some time they became like self-fulfilling prophecies of him, just posting a ticker. And then afterwards it would go up like five or 10% immediately because people were just,
00:41:57
Speaker
piling in. And at some point, as you said, like people just figure out how the meta works and then you can't be like his account has 500 or 600K followers or something like that. I think it's just very difficult to to do. And then also he did the roll bitch shilling was probably true, true, really like ah nailed him in this world.
00:42:16
Speaker
True. Yeah. I kind of forgot about that one. Yeah. I'm sure that had something to do with it, but yeah, man, there was, there's a big culture shift, right? You know, traders used to post freely, didn't care about being wrong. And now it's like, if you get something wrong, you're, you're the devil. And if you get something right, you're the goat.
00:42:31
Speaker
It's, it's, it's, it's like fantasy football now, you know, it's the people are looking at traders as these kind of like athletes or something, and they're betting on them and they're upset at them when they do bad. And they're, they're, you know,
00:42:44
Speaker
what do you call it? Glazing them when they're doing well. it's It's a weird, it's a weird thing now, but I think it's natural because of how much it's grown. Crypto's grown, CT's grown. have a bunch of people coming into the market looking for free money. They don't really know. They're on their own, you know, left curve Dunning-Kruger arc, right? They'll get humbled eventually and understand how it really works.
00:43:04
Speaker
Mm-hmm.
00:43:06
Speaker
um since we are on the terminal podcast and i sometimes the reason i reach out to you actually is because i sometimes see you sharing screenshots from from the terminal yeah um i was i wanted to ask you how important is execution for your trading and has it like gained in importance since you first started trading what is like some of your favorite execution styles or strategies if you can go a bit into that Yeah, absolutely. So like I mentioned, when I was trading, you know, trends and and higher timeframes, it wasn't that important to me.
00:43:38
Speaker
Um, but when I swapped over to specifically low timeframes intraday, um I felt there was much more necessary. And I, you know, the thing that I think people don't talk about with within silico is the ability to consolidate all your accounts into one place.
00:43:52
Speaker
You know, you can quickly swap if you're, if you're using by bit, it's so much longer. You buy Znance it's, it's longer to get to between sub accounts and accounts. Yeah, but everything in one place. Right. And I can separate my trades from one another. Right. So I have an account where I'm just intraday trading Bitcoin and I want that one to stay very simple because I know for me, um I have this you know bad habit of crossing two trades together.
00:44:16
Speaker
Right. if If one gets stopped. but one is doing well, I may think about the loss and skim some profits off the winner kind balance it out. So the more separation I have, the better, but, uh, so the, in Silica gives me the ability to kind of like put all those sub accounts in one place, but not see them all at the same time.
00:44:33
Speaker
Right. All the, and all the kind of positions are kind of separated a little bit. And number two is like the, the, you know, I didn't really used to care so much about. um different type of orders between limits and markets i wouldn't think about fees i wouldn't think about all these things um but the more you trade bitcoin intraday the more those fees kind of rack up so when the when the tape is fast i'm still marketing but when the tape is slower like something like a limit chase is super beneficial just to say a little bit on fees here and there right yeah if if i know that hey this is a good place to execute but i don't really need to to market in at this moment because you know we don't have the most volatility i can limit chase there and save a little bit on fees
00:45:09
Speaker
um But yeah, man, I think it's just ah it's a good discipline tool. It keeps everything in one place. It's very clean. Like I wouldn't change it for the world. You know, you guys are, I think, miles ahead of the rest of the industry when it comes to that kind of stuff. And, ah you know, exchanges out there listening, you should you should make your exchanges more like in Silico.
00:45:28
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you very much for the unpaid, unpaid shillier. No, no, no. I'll shill in Silico all the time, man. I'll recommend it all the time.
00:45:39
Speaker
I mean, me too, but it's also kind of my job. But it also, like I think it's just a very good tool. I remember like back when I first started trading lower timeframes and sc scalping and stuff, I messaged like our current um on product manager that like if you had some advice for me how to like better enter and exit because I always did like market orders at the beginning and I just noticed like if you go for these small percentages and market orders just erode so much of your profits that you almost don't make anything even just from like if if your market order in and then you get stopped and you already paid so much in fees that it's like you need quite a high win rate to even yeah break even and the yeah for that it's definitely a very very great tool that i
00:46:22
Speaker
that I gladly use and then chill and yeah. for people For people that don't know kind of how the free structure works, cause I used to be oblivious to this a while. i wouldn't pay attention, but like longing one Bitcoin, I think depending on, you know, where you are in your VIP status or whatever it is, let's call it 50 bucks, right? 50 bucks to market order one Bitcoin and then closing is another 50 bucks, right? a hundred bucks. Just take one trade.
00:46:44
Speaker
If you're not getting more than a hundred dollar move on Bitcoin, you're losing. you know? Uh, so, so for a lot of people that are, you know, intraday trading, they're like, I'm getting out with the profit, but they don't understand why they're, uh, you know, their account is going down. So you have to be very precise with a lot of these entries.
00:47:01
Speaker
Um, you can't be lazy either, right? If you're, if you're not prepared and your entry's gone and, and Bitcoin's bounced $110 from the entry and it still looks good. Your EV on the trade is a eroded immensely, you know?
00:47:14
Speaker
Um, so yeah, I think, uh, you know, if you If you're not focusing on that, and ah you probably should. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Definitely. Even just for your... Not to shield the terminal too much, but just like execution is just a very important part of trading. thats only like Especially if you go for for like and not this home run type of trade, but like the 1,000 trades to to change your life or whatever. it's very like It stacks up over time.
00:47:41
Speaker
yeah And it's very, very important to keep track of.
00:47:46
Speaker
Regarding venues that you trade on, what do you think about Hyperliquid? And also, like do you do you do any other stuff than trading perps majors? i guess like Do you do any on-chain stuff or is there anything that is currently interesting to you? Betting markets, pump-down streaming or anything in that regard?
00:48:06
Speaker
I think, you know, coming into crypto, there's so many ways to make money there's on chain, like you mentioned, perpetrating positional trading, spot trading, um airdrop farming, all these things, DeFi protocols. There's so many opportunities to make money.
00:48:22
Speaker
But I think I know me personally, it's hard for me to focus on multiple things. I prefer just specializing on a few things that I can do well. um Throughout most of the cycle, a lot of it's not a lot. The overwhelming majority of my gains came from medium time frame, high time frame kind of positional trading is what I would call it taking.
00:48:43
Speaker
either spot positions or or low levered positions on on high timeframe trends or medium timeframe trends and riding those. That's where the overwhelming majority of my gains came from. And a lot of you know that has shifted nowadays to intraday trading Bitcoin. Like I mentioned, I used to be specifically an altcoin trader and now a Bitcoin trader. is it's It's very, very, very different.
00:49:02
Speaker
um I actually kind of forgot the the core part of your question. Like, is there anything else I do? Is that what that was? um Yeah, if you're like playing playing around with any other on-chain stuff, I don't know what's currently on-chain. think... scream hyper preview yeah so i think one of the main things that if i have to put any regrets on this cycle i think that one of the big ones would be i didn't focus enough on chain there was a there was an immense opportunity for so many things on chain and i willfully ignored it right it was kind of a goal it's like i don't care i'm not i'm not gonna look at it and i think i think that you know if i could change one thing the cycle would probably be that because i think i had a little bit of effort left in the tank that i could have used
00:49:42
Speaker
to just paying attention to some of the things. And even if it's not me doing all the effort, I know a lot of smart people on chain. Um, and sometimes they catch these runners and I still fade them. Right. But just relying on, on your, you know, network of friends that are, that are proven winners to, you know, execute when, when they give you something, probably something I could have done better, but yeah, I don't diversify too much across the market. Um, the main ways, even to today, like,
00:50:05
Speaker
It hasn't been a big focus in 2025 because I haven't been too bullish on too many things. Like we haven't had so many great trades in the market this year. I mean, hyper liquid's fantastic, but. yeah A lot of the things, a lot of the narratives, I feel like they played out ah into kind of the inauguration day earlier this year.
00:50:24
Speaker
um So that's my focus is really just been on intraday trading Bitcoin, man. I wish I had a better answer for you, but no, there's not too, too much um that i that i that I do. But yeah, like hyperliquid is something i faded because.
00:50:36
Speaker
Yeah. early, early days when it was popular, I was like, man, I'm doing just fine trading on, on, on centralized exchanges. Like, why do i need to go through this effort of doing this? Right. And I didn't realize how much opportunity there was there, right? Had I just done the exact same thing I was doing elsewhere on hyper liquid, you know, I think we all know how much money we we left on the table or I left on the table by not participating.
00:50:56
Speaker
Um, but yeah, I mean, you know, more power to the people that were focused on that, but, uh, you know, you don't cry over spilled milk. That's true. Yeah, I'm kind of similar. I don't I just keep focusing on perhaps centralized exchanges also on hyper liquid, but I don't do too much stuff on chain. But as you said, it's nice if you have like people in your circle or sometimes you you see something, then like I've learned that it's maybe like better not to just completely ignore it and at least like take some look at it, like pay some attention to it. Maybe it's something that could be worthwhile or that could be like a bigger thing in the future. and
00:51:31
Speaker
I feel like for ah for a long time I've been a bit too bearish on most things, just like being like, yeah, i don't this is not sustainable anyway. i don't want to care about this. I don't need to care about this. But sometimes it can still be be worth to do that.
00:51:44
Speaker
Yeah, 100%. I mean, one thing you mentioned earlier ah was there's immense opportunity in crypto, right? Or in trades and markets, right? There's so much opportunity. It's like, why worry about the thing that you missed? Because you're going to have another chance at this in the future. If that's something you're really scoping out, we'll lock into that. you know You're going to have to sacrifice one thing or the other because I don't think any of us can do everything. But yeah you know if your goal is, hey, I'm going to catch the next on-chain runner, well, good
Future Market Conditions and Strategic Planning
00:52:09
Speaker
luck. like go Go lock in.
00:52:10
Speaker
Um, go work on it, right? You're not gonna probably get the first one, but you'll learn something in that process and you'll probably catch one eventually.
00:52:19
Speaker
Regarding you mostly trading Bitcoin nowadays, is it like a size thing or mostly focus thing as well? It is. See, the the the reason I switched this actually was the work life balance argument.
00:52:30
Speaker
um Someone that's trading, you know, four hour charts, which was that was my bread and butter, one hour execution, four hour charts. your so Your average time in trade is multi day, right? Sometimes, you know, two days to four days to five days, you know, holding these trades for a very long time. There's only six four hour candles in a day.
00:52:49
Speaker
And the old meta, I know nowadays, you know, it's very popular. Everyone kind of understands New York session open is pretty bearish, right? But there was a time in this market where it was Asia that was pretty bearish.
00:52:59
Speaker
And being someone that's focused on the long side of the market, a lot of my entries were coming during those midnight hours, right? Living in California, 12 hour difference between, you know, the the time sessions. I was getting entries at two o'clock in the morning, three o'clock in the morning, right? And and if i just let limit orders, I wouldn't be able to sleep.
00:53:17
Speaker
You know, I just, I'm thinking about it and, uh, that's, that's good. You know, everyone needs to grind for a certain period of time, but you can't live your entire life like that. You know, so that, that led me to being like, how do I become a healthier human being, um, and, and, and lower these timeframes.
00:53:33
Speaker
So it came kind of out of necessity. I wouldn't say it's a pure sizing thing, but, um, another background thing for me was, I'm trying to think always six months in advance, one year advanced, two years in advance. Right.
00:53:46
Speaker
And this bull market is been, you know, a lot of people hate it. I think it's been unbelievable. I think it's been just so much opportunity, so many clear trades, so many clear narratives and trends and fantastic um and the goals i set out for myself i actually hit last year right so for me now i i kind of didn't have too much conviction in many coins coming into 2025. yeah and i said well Let's say it's not guaranteed. Let's say we're not going higher. Let's say and we enter a bear market. Let's say we enter another eight month range, 10 month range, whatever, whatever it may be.
00:54:22
Speaker
Where am I going to get the money from? Where is the where's the income coming in? Where where am I extracting value? And I said, well, one of the things I put on the back burner a little bit in favor of positional trading in 2024 is intraday trading or intraweek trading or just active trading. And I said, let me start pushing some size on these trades.
00:54:39
Speaker
Let me see how much I can. And that was kind of a big goal for me this year is is continue sizing up. Use some of that new capital. Don't be so hesitant. Don't risk 0.1% of the account every trade. Try it. Try having the courage to um see how much value you can extract as a trader.
00:54:55
Speaker
um Because if you're thinking about this career over the course of decades, you know these bangers are going to come every once in a while, but they're not going to be every day. Um, so you have a decision to make for yourself, either I'm going to be patient and wait and do nothing for months at a time and wait for these big narrative rotations to come along, or i am going to be someone that is comfortable extracting value from a day in and day out basis. And I felt like I was a little lacking in the, in the latter regard. So that was my focus coming into this year.
00:55:25
Speaker
I think it's quite interesting that it's like that way around for you because I feel like many other people or many other traders go from like intraday focus more to positional longer term focus where they don't have to like pay that much attention time wise to the market, I guess.
00:55:40
Speaker
i think so too but maybe i did things backwards because i felt like i i nailed that right i nailed that i amplified my capital more than i could have imagined you know thank god for all of all the opportunities that have come along um so i know that i have that in the bag right if i if i want to if i want to switch back to being a positional spot trader i know that i could i have confidence in myself that i could do that yeah i was looking at myself as you know, ah a full package, right? Where are the weaknesses?
00:56:06
Speaker
And, and like I said, like last year, I spent a bunch of time in that, in that summer chop focusing on this one thing. And then this year I said, well, that was, that's kind of starting to turn into this well oiled machine. Let's see how far we can take this. So it's, it's not only challenging, it's exciting. It's, it's fun for me, right. To keep pushing something that I once wasn't good at. Now I'm getting good at now i'm getting better at, and and people are seeing, you you know, like these, these executions that I'm hitting,
00:56:30
Speaker
How hard can I push this? Right. And and and that's what really what's been fun for me at this moment. And it's it's given me confidence because it's like whatever whatever happens, let's say crypto goes to zero. Let's say we have no narratives. Let's say we have stagflation like the 70s or whatever it was. And and markets do you know nothing for 10 years.
00:56:47
Speaker
Well, guess what? I can still extract value from this market. I can sleep well at night knowing that I have this skill set that I can rely on. How many other people can say that? Right. Um, so everything that I'm, I'm thinking about in markets always comes from like one step ahead. Where, where are my weaknesses? What, what could, what could prevent me? Right. And building and growing a family as a trader, you know, your next check is not guaranteed. Like I said, like as a trade, it's eat what you kill. So you gotta make sure that you're always able to extract value from markets no matter what.
00:57:18
Speaker
I think that's a very good and and mature way to view it. Definitely one of the better answers I've heard to that question. Has your life like changed a lot? like Have you achieved more of this work-life balance as you've been along the journey now?
00:57:34
Speaker
Yes, yes, yes. So ah there was a time, do you know those like whoop bands that like sleep tracking? Yeah, yeah. So i had one of those. um And in 2023, Q4, I think you'll probably remember how crazy that quarter was specifically 2023.
00:57:52
Speaker
I was getting, according to the whoop band, maybe an hour of sleep at night and then like three hours of disturbed sleep and then one hour of sleep in the day. ah who it was It was tragically bad. and and And I couldn't sleep because I had anxiety and all these adrenaline and palpitations. And I would drink ah drink alcohol because that would calm me down a little bit and help me fall asleep.
00:58:13
Speaker
And was just so unhealthy for a long period of time. its like Like I said, I can't live like this. So yeah, I mean, in 2025, end of 2024, cashed on a lot of my positions in December and going into January and built that capital, moved across the country, got a house and the work life balance is lot better. I enjoy my weekends again. I don't feel stressed to look at charts on the weekend. I just ignore it completely unless there's something like the World War III FUD that happened on a Sunday, right?
00:58:42
Speaker
or, or, or the tariff weekend and like, those are special moments where you can lock in on weekends. But like, I got, I feel like I have my life back for the first time in a long time. Yeah. That sounds very good. I'm glad to hear that for you. Yeah. Thank you.
00:58:55
Speaker
um What do you do with the money that you cash out? If you if you can say something about that, like, do you put it in the stock market or gold or just like leave it in cash or what's your strategy there? in Yeah. So this year I think i've've I've underperformed in that regard. There's just a lot of cash kind of just sitting in the bank without really a plan yet at this moment. um I haven't invested in equities. I don't have like a high interest savings account or anything like that.
00:59:20
Speaker
I don't really have a core plan for what I want to do. One thing I do know is I want more Bitcoin, but I don't really want to start stacking Bitcoin ah right now. Yeah, I think there will be opportunities for me to deploy that capital back into into Bitcoin. I do have a like a long term cold storage Bitcoin account that's not for like trading.
00:59:37
Speaker
um And early on, I would put more cash into there, right? and The 20Ks and 30Ks, right? I'd put it in there. I haven't done that a long time. And I think like i'm very underweight spot Bitcoin at this point.
00:59:49
Speaker
So that's one place I'd like to put it um just because, you know, crypto, that's what what do I know better than this? I don't know anything better than this. I have core conviction in Bitcoin. But yeah, man, I haven't done anything fantastic with it other than, you know, getting a house. I do want to get ah a better house next year. So that's probably where some of the cash is going to go.
01:00:08
Speaker
But that sounds very smart, actually, just having the core core needs met, like having housing and having a bunch of cash. It must feel very secure for sure.
Crypto Market Cycles and External Influences
01:00:17
Speaker
Yeah, i can I can say I sleep better at night for sure.
01:00:23
Speaker
What do you think i since since you since you said at the beginning about that you don't really believe in in cycles anymore? What is like a current outlook for the future of crypto? What do you think about how we will go the next couple of years in Trump's presidency or even like beyond that?
01:00:38
Speaker
you have any thoughts that? Yeah, man. So the way that I've traded this cycle is the the the market has presented a meta to us. And that meta is a narrative fueled rally where Bitcoin leads and risk follows a brief moment of risk on across the market that is narrative fueled and then a reset on everything.
01:00:56
Speaker
We've had multiple of these this cycle, I'd think like four distinct ones. um that were narrative fueled, Bitcoin led, altcoin rotations, risk on rotations. We go all the way to the end of the risk curve and we kind of reset everything.
01:01:08
Speaker
And I think that's the best way to trade crypto, either from a positional standpoint, spot standpoint or whatever, and not rely on the four year cycle theory. Because had I just relied blindly on the four year cycle, all those gains on Pepe,
01:01:19
Speaker
you know, going from whatever was January into April, it's like 85% down, right? And just round tripping all those games. So if I'm thinking, Hey man, the four year cycle doesn't end until Q4, right? That's just not a good reference, in my opinion, to to navigate the market anymore.
01:01:36
Speaker
So will we magically top ah in Q4 or Q1 and go into a one year bear market? Maybe. Um, but I don't think that's the, I don't think that's the best kind of way to structure yourself in crypto anymore.
01:01:49
Speaker
And if it plays out, it plays out, you know, who cares? But, uh, yeah, it's not something that's like something that, that I'm relying on at any point. Like I said, I don't know if we said in the podcast before the podcast, but, um,
01:02:00
Speaker
Coming into crypto, that was really what I thought, right? I was like, oh, 2022 is the bear market. 2023 is the echo bubble. 2024 is the start of the bull market. Like that's how I thought about it back then. But throughout the course of the cycle, I've abandoned that completely.
01:02:13
Speaker
um And if we do just a little bit of kind of just fun napkin speculation, I think it's more difficult for people if we have continued cycle. I think a lot of people are looking for that.
01:02:26
Speaker
Hey, give us a 70% reset. We messed up this cycle. Give us a reset where we can structure our portfolio a lot better and get these free multiples on Bitcoin and get these distressed assets and amplifier capital again.
01:02:37
Speaker
Yeah. I think the, you know, think about people that are not like me, but think about people that have been in this market since 2013, 2017, they've gotten these cycles multiple times. They've amplified their net worth by multiples, multiple times.
01:02:50
Speaker
How many times is crypto going to grant them the opportunity for a free two X, four X on their money. I don't know if that's going to last forever. Right. And I think a painful way to continue this cycle is.
01:03:03
Speaker
You know, maybe we get 40%, 50% on Bitcoin and all coins continue to get wrecked. And then we get another all coin cycle and other Bitcoin markup. I think that's going to be much harder for people. Even like I mentioned to you, I want to buy Bitcoin, but if Bitcoin puts me in positions where it's not giving me these grandiose,
01:03:19
Speaker
entries on spot, it's going to be difficult to deploy that capital. So it's almost going to be harder. I think for people, if we have a continued sort of super cycle in a way where we don't get this grandiose alt season of everyone makes a million dollars in ah in a week.
01:03:34
Speaker
Um, and we just get these structural risk on risk off risk on risk off, kind of like tradify, you know, based on narratives in the markets. I think that would be harder for people to, to be successful in.
01:03:48
Speaker
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I kind of agree with the with the cycle thing. i guess this could be my is is my my third cycle. I've been around since 2017.
01:03:58
Speaker
And i think the cycles before like made a lot of sense. But as you said, like many people now are just waiting for this alt season that is going to come where you can like offload all of your bags that have gone to zero at like some decent multiple again when some other bigger retards like buy them from you.
01:04:17
Speaker
And also like then that you have the opportunity again afterwards to buy everything at an 80% discount. um Well, I feel like the cycles and the halving may still have like some impact, but I feel like it's so Treadfy correlated now with with the ETFs and all of that stuff going on that like macro environment actually has a lot more to do with the performance of at least Bitcoin, maybe not altcoin so much, but at least Bitcoin uh going forward like i think it will be way more like the the s&p or something where just like going up forever and then as we saw this year basically like it went down in april with like regarding tariffs and everything and then it recovered a bit faster it still like has the beta value but i don't think it will just randomly go down 80 again unless like a very huge world event happens that will also like shake stock markets a lot but then
01:05:11
Speaker
They will also inject liquidity again. And i don't know. I don't i don't really see that happening anymore. There's, you know, if you just look on paper of all the things that are different this cycle versus prior cycles, there's a lot, you know, there's a lot of characteristics that have changed. And I can, I think I have a little list to here. Like first time we ever dropped below all time high, right? In the bear market, we dropped below 20k.
01:05:33
Speaker
People are shocked, right? We lost the 200 week, which people used to think was like this God trend that's going to hold forever. Yeah. Uh, we hit all time high pre-halving. We never did that before. This is the longest sustained uptrend Bitcoin's ever had a thousand days versus 800 days in 2017.
01:05:48
Speaker
First cycle under high rates, you know, each cycle prior was like an easy cycle, right? Uh, first cycle with sustained flows, price agnostic buying from ETF buyers. We never had that before. We never had sustained flows first cycle with very strong trad fi asset correlations.
01:06:03
Speaker
Um, I think the most shocking thing that people should point to is look at the, the tariff FUD. Bitcoin high to low dropped 30%. The stock market dropped 22%.
01:06:14
Speaker
If you told someone from prior cycles that, Hey, ES is going to drop 22% over the course of a few weeks and Bitcoin only dropped 30%, they would tell you you're lying. yeah Right? So we have to kind of put some of these things in, in, in, into place. You know, i could keep going on. There's so many, there's so many new things, We have ah involvement with the sec and IRS that are very tightly correlated with, with crypto. Now they're paying attention to everything we do.
01:06:38
Speaker
tame tamest leverage right we haven't had the the altcoin liquidations we used to have we don't have funding rates going crazy like we used to have those edges are kind of eroding and the market is maturing into a different uh different beast entirely so yeah you know will we get one of those 80 bear markets who knows i just i don't know man i i don't see it but maybe that's just the bull market in me talking you know maybe everyone says that it's at every top I mean, maybe all the the treasury companies will blow up or Saylor will get liquidated at some point. and with like the um I don't know. like who Who knows what will happen? We don't really know, especially with the macro environment and all the debt situation going on. i feel like it's very, ah very hard to to predict the next couple of years because like the the fiat currencies are obviously going to keep being devalued. But like the way that will really play out and what that means is, is I mean, crypto has never been in an environment where it was like that.
01:07:29
Speaker
strongly happening with all the institutional support and everything that happens. So quite hard to to predict. I think it it makes a lot more sense to just like keep going as we yeah as we are. and just like look how much liquidity we have in the market nowadays on Bitcoin compared to before, right? it's It's ridiculous. How much did that guy sell over this past month? i don't know how much Bitcoin he sold. And remember this one weekend when they were distributing through Galaxy, it was, i think, over 10,000 Bitcoin over the course of three hours and price moved down 3%.
01:08:01
Speaker
You know, it's, it's like unfathomable these, these mechanics that have shifted across the market. it's like you said, I think something like drastic needs to happen. Like these treasury companies blowing up or sailor blowing up in order for us to get that yeah or, or a big stock market, you know, you know, annihilation or bear market.
01:08:18
Speaker
Yeah, I guess we we have to find out.
Future in Trading and Personal Fulfillment
01:08:21
Speaker
how do you like My last question is, how do you see your own future in in markets, in trading? you still see your yourself trading in five years, in 10 years? Do you ever want to like retire to something else?
01:08:33
Speaker
What your plans? I think I will be here as long as I am inspired and happy and and and markets bring me joy. I think the minute this starts feeling like a job and not like fun and exciting and for something for me to chase where I can set my own goals and be excited in the morning to be like, oh yeah, you know, mark the New York sessions opening in a few hours. I need to be prepared when when that, when it starts feeling like a chore in a job and no longer like fun, I think I will start branching out into different things into something that you know brings me joy.
01:09:04
Speaker
I've been fortunate because I think I think markets are the first time in my life I got to experience doing something for a living that brings me happiness. um When I played tennis, you know, I was lucky enough to be pretty talented at a young age and I didn't you know, I played for fun, but eventually it became stressful and pressure and When you win, you're expected to win. And when you lose, it's this you know depressing feeling in the household and coaches and everything like that. So yeah it stopped becoming fun. It started becoming like a job and and medicine. I always treat you like a job. I didn't you know I was excited to learn physiology and in year one and and all these things and all these mechanics and and how mind blowing the body is and and the interactions that we have with the world.
01:09:46
Speaker
But then it started feeling like a job too, right? When you start doing internship and rounds and you see all these doctors that are burnt out and kind of hate their lives. And they see the same 12 patients because they specialize and each patient comes in feeling like a snowflake.
01:09:58
Speaker
and And they're like, you know, doc, this is so, you know, unique and interesting. How does that doctor put on the same smile on every patient? He's seeing 14, 15 patients a day, every day 30 years.
01:10:09
Speaker
I think if the market ever starts feeling like that to me, that'll be my moment to say, it's time to pursue something new and thank you know thank the markets for all the opportunity it's given me. And that's probably when I transitioned to being the quote unquote asset allocator or or investor, right?
01:10:27
Speaker
I think that's really the good thing about markets that they're so dynamic and ever changing and that makes it very difficult to ever come to that point. Like maybe it will still happen, but like ah because there is so much change going on and you also have to adapt yourself. it I can't really see you for myself. I haven't traded actively for that long, but I think I'm going to like keep going for a lot longer because it also I can also relate to the excitement and all of that stuff you talked about.
01:10:56
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, nothing nothing beats a bull market, right? Nothing beats those few moments a year where things are going up only and and and you could size into stuff with conviction. We've got great flows and narratives or nothing compares to those few moments a year. It makes all those menial 3% ranges on Bitcoin worth it. Right.
01:11:15
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Um, is there anything else that you want to say at the end, anything that you want to shout out or something like that? Uh, man, no, I think you asked a lot of fantastic questions already today, man. I think you think we, we covered a lot of great topics and i had a lot of fun speaking with you.
01:11:33
Speaker
Yeah, it was a great great conversation. Thank you very much for coming on. Yeah, 100%. Let me know next time if you ever want me back on. I'd be happy to join. Sounds good to me.
01:11:44
Speaker
Yeah, thank you very much. 100%, man.