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Insilico Terminal Podcast Episode 25 - Trader Mercury
90 Plays24 days ago
In this episode, Mercury shares his journey from early crypto curiosity to becoming a systematic trader focused on momentum, carry, and volatility strategies. We dive into the differences between discretionary and systematic trading, how he builds and tests models, and why many edges in crypto are really risk premia rather than pure alpha. Mercury explains infrastructure for running strategies across perp DEXs, volatility targeting, portfolio construction, and the realities of scaling capital. The conversation also touches on prediction markets, the role of AI in research, and how traders can survive in a market where edges constantly decay.
00:00 Intro, Mercury’s background, 2017 mania, early gains and 90% drawdown lessons
06:03 College dropout, going all-in on trading, March 2020 liquidation and ego reset
16:49 Rebuilding the system, scrapping indicators, trend-following foundation
23:24 Social media vs reality, engagement farming, why most traders sabotage themselves
30:12 Revenge trading, respecting trends, curing causes instead of treating symptoms
41:11 Discretion vs quants debate, adapting to ranges, why signals aren’t equal
52:15 The “free money” mindset, Trump coin trade, opportunity vs FOMO psychology
01:02:58 Bull market myths, skill evolution, why every cycle feels underwhelming in hindsight
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Transcript
Introduction to Mercury's Trading Journey
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to a new episode of the InSilico Terminal podcast. Today my guest is trader Mercury and I would like to ask you to introduce yourself in case people might not know you.
Early Trading Experiences and Challenges
00:00:30
Speaker
Who are you? What do you do? Yeah. So I've been trading crypto since late 2017. I am primarily a swing trader.
00:00:43
Speaker
i got absolutely humbled in March 2020. Previously, I was very arrogant, egotistical, and I was what I thought to be very good at trading because I managed to like five or six X my portfolio.
00:00:57
Speaker
And then March 2020 happened and I pretty much lost everything. um And ever since then, I've just taken a much more passive balance kind of approach to markets with a very level-headed philosophy and I'm, you know, I'm kind of known as like the objective TA a guy.
00:01:15
Speaker
I'm always going to tell you what, what the truth is and not what you want to hear. And, um, and yeah, I've done incredibly well, just kind of, you know, submitting to the market and following trends, knowing when to pick and choose my battles wisely. And yeah, I've managed to create a lot of good things for myself and the people around me in the past six years.
00:01:39
Speaker
How did you get started in crypto? You know what, man? It's really funny. I was scrolling Twitter one day and I saw an ad for Ripple for XRP. Really? Yeah. And I was like, oh, what's this? um But yeah, so in that 2017 market, man, it was very much mania. um I actually got interested in like October and I registered for like a Binance account, but they were so backlogged with all the people that were registering that You had to wait two weeks just to even get your actual account. yeah So I didn't actually get access to trade crypto until November.
00:02:17
Speaker
Um, but yeah.
00:02:20
Speaker
So you just like bought XRP? Oh man, I bought XRP, I bought Verge, I bought a lot of coins that don't exist anymore, bought Stratus, I bought Dragon Chain, bought, I mean, I bought everything. um I still have some of those bags today, ironically, if I like go log into that Binance account. um But yeah, and I watched everything pretty much do like four or five, six X in the span of like two weeks, because I joined like right at the pinnacle of like acceleration of the mania so um it was just very you know bonkers uh for lack of a better term and then everything just went negative 90 percent lower and like i said i still have some of those bags today like that verge bag and it's worth like not even half a penny today or whatever
00:03:07
Speaker
um But yeah, I still, ah I just watched everything go down negative 90%. And that's actually what drew me into crypto was I figured that if somebody was able to, if I was able to run up a big balance, then that means that somebody was able to run up a big balance, but actually keep it. And I was like, I could be that person.
Personal Sacrifices for Trading Mastery
00:03:29
Speaker
And so I just kind of put my head down and grinded um through all of like 2018 2019 i spent 12 to 14 hours a day staring at charts uh that gcr advice like sacrifice your weekends man i was doing that before he made it cool and uh yeah um yeah but but really though i um maybe this is a good topic, especially in today's market. I really drew down my mental state.
00:03:56
Speaker
I pretty much ah capitulated every single, you know, social life aspect. All my friends, you know, eventually at some point, your your friends ask you to come out on the weekend to go to the bar, like whatever, right? And, or just go hang out, party, whatever. And you keep telling them, no, they're going stop asking you, you know, at some point after two years. so um,
00:04:19
Speaker
But no, man, I was incredibly like I was in great shape. i was an athlete. I'm only 26 years old. So 2018, I was like 18. Yeah. yeah ah But I was coming out of high school. I was a really, um you know, good athlete.
00:04:33
Speaker
And I just lost all of that. I didn't get fat, but I got the opposite. I got skinny. So I just lost all my muscles. I mean, I was down bad, man. I was down horrendous, but my portfolio looked good. And, you know, ah I think there's something to say about that. You know, that ah that experience really did exponentially accelerate the learning curve phase for me because I was able to pick up on a lot of like trading skills um very quickly.
00:05:01
Speaker
You know, I basically compressed like two decades worth of trading experience into the 15 minute chart on, you know, over the span of two years. So that was, you know, something very valuable that I was able to extract from that and just getting familiar with clicking the buttons and, you know, taking losses, flipping bias, et cetera. But, you know, at the end of the day, if if you had to ask me, was it worth it? I would tell you, no, I don't think it was worth it.
00:05:29
Speaker
I think there was better ways to do, message to to still achieve, to still accomplish, um, you know, the same kind of goal, maybe not to exactly the same extent, but, for the most part.
00:05:40
Speaker
Yeah. And not nearly as many sacrifices.
College Dropout and Mental Breakdown
00:05:44
Speaker
So you came like straight out of school into full-time trading basically. Yeah, i um I went to college for like, I don't know, six weeks, eight weeks, like two months maybe. And I i dropped out. i I was like, this isn't for me. And, you know, there just wasn't anything that could really grab my attention for a long period of time.
00:06:04
Speaker
It's not that I thought that I was too smart or anything. It's just, I just wasn't interested. And I just felt like, you know, I was going into it in like a finance kind of career, like background. and with that in mind and then i was doing these classes that had absolutely nothing to do with that and i was like this is really stupid so i just it just wasn't for me um that's actually why march 2020 was so like mentally breaking for me because it it really set in this idea that i had just wasted the past like two and a half years of my life yeah man it it really that that does something to you you know even when you're 20 years old at the time or whatever yeah for sure um you know and you still have your whole life ahead of you it's still a massive setback and that was rock bottom and ironically what i can tell you today is that was the best thing that's ever happened to me is getting humbled in march 2020.
Strategy Evolution Post-COVID Crash
00:06:57
Speaker
yeah what What did your trading look like ah in these years from 2018 and 2019 when you spend all your time on it, when when it made you think you're like the best trader in the world or whatever? what you you you mentioned you looked at a 15 minute time frame.
00:07:11
Speaker
What kind of setups were you looking for? Yeah, the 15 minute time frame was like my best friend. um I was primarily looking for like range setups, ironically. um Nowadays, i primarily trade trends and I typically avoid ranges. And back then it was the opposite. I was only doing well in the market because i knew how to trade the chop back and forth.
00:07:31
Speaker
And then every now and then I would get lucky in the sense that I would allow a trade to run beyond the range. And then that trend would persist for you know a prolonged period of time, especially like 2019. There are a lot of like 15 minute ranges in that 2019 rally where Bitcoin goes from like 3000 to 13 in the span of like four or five months. um But every single one of those 15 minute ranges, you know i would trade it back and forth, back and forth. And then i would just hold that long into like the range high breakout.
00:08:01
Speaker
And then that was the only way that I would actually be able to find myself long throughout any kind of trend because I i wasn't familiar with trends. I was so fixated on trading those lower time frames that I had gotten really used to getting in and out of positions.
00:08:15
Speaker
But I also had people in my ear telling me like, you need to make sure that you're not over trading and that you're making the most out of these trends because you're probably going to extract more by doing less. And I did take that to some degree, but that was the only way that I was actually able to apply that kind of mantra was just like allowing trades to run beyond the range breakout.
00:08:38
Speaker
But yeah, back then, dude, I was using name and the indicator. I was using it like I was using relative strength. I was using stochastic RSI. I was using moving averages, but I wasn't just using exclusively like 200 MA, 200 EMA like I was or like I am now. I was using every moving average 11 21 50 55 100 200 I mean yeah it was it was like all at all at once or you like cycle through all at once man it like you know those like memes that people post on Twitter and it's like a chart and it's all scribbles you can't even see the price action that was how I traded yeah
00:09:17
Speaker
Interesting. So that's a what what when did you move away from
Learning from the COVID Crash
00:09:21
Speaker
that? Did it take like the the COVID crash to to bring you back to your your senses and remove the indicators or Yeah, it it absolutely did. um The COVID crash is what humbled me. And so the COVID crash is a myriad of things for me because it was a humbling, but it was also like a revelation.
00:09:41
Speaker
At the same time, it was, i was so egotistical because I had actually done incredibly well. I had managed to pretty much like long every single bottom, short, every single top to like an uncanny precision. And, you know, I just thought i was,
00:09:57
Speaker
the GOAT, like greatest of all time. And um so when you're coming off of like a 15 win streak in terms of like major trades, not not to say that i had 100% win streak, but like the trades that mattered, right? These like high conviction, you know, big balls, kind of the bets. um When that's what you've gotten used to, it's really hard to ever kind of fathom that you might be wrong.
00:10:20
Speaker
So heading into March, 2020, my idea was to sell 10,000 I think I might have actually shorted it. I'm not sure. um But then to buy back around 8.2 ish and just like right off into the sunset for like the next three year bull market. I was like, I've made enough and, you know, we're going to bottom right here, right now. And for the next, you know, a couple years, Bitcoin going to go to 100,000, blah, blah, blah. And, you know, I'm just going to make a ah ton of money and now I can just ride off into the sunset. It'll pass like two and a half years of my hard work. And I was ready to essentially like retire. Right.
00:10:58
Speaker
I was like, you know, ready to take the more passive approach and stop grinding. And yeah. And then I watched the trade go against me. And that's the thing about it is like.
00:11:10
Speaker
A lot of people will tell you that you know clo COVID was a black swan event and it wasn't. It wasn't a black swan. I actually know a lot of people that were able to predict the kind of effect that that was going to have on the market before yeah the market actually priced it in. So...
00:11:25
Speaker
Not only did I watch people, um you know, contradict that in real time, but I also watched myself in hindsight, obviously, I was able to look back and say, it's not like this thing ripped off on Band-Aid all in one hourly candlestick, like October 10th, right? That's genuinely a black swan that just came out of nowhere. yeah Nobody can possibly predict something like that's going to happen. um Whereas, you know, March 2020 was more of I watched myself wake up the next day, look at my positions and I would be underwater.
00:11:56
Speaker
And then I went, I would go to bed. I wake up the next day and the same thing. Wake up the next day. Same thing. Wake up the next day. Same thing. It wasn't something the market did. It was skill issue.
00:12:07
Speaker
her You know, it was I couldn't cut a position. So after that humbling, um essentially i got liquidated for a portion of my account and a lot of it was just spot drawdown because you have to remember like 2019, 2020 USDT's ah perpetuals are not popular at all. And even if they are, you know, created on most exchanges at this time, they're incredibly illiquid. There's not really much incentive to actually go and trade them.
00:12:33
Speaker
So everything that I had was pretty much denominated in Bitcoins. I was, you know, at at times I would be, you know, 150% exposed. By the way, i was also 19, 20 years old at this time.
00:12:45
Speaker
So people would tell me, hey, you're young, take lots of risk. And I would say, okay, I'm going to go trade with 100% of my net worth then. So 100% of my portfolio was 100% of my net worth. And so, yeah, I got liquidated for a portion of it. Most of it was just spot drawdown.
00:13:02
Speaker
But I mean, it has the same effect. And after that happens, man, I looked back and I reflected and I said, how do I make sure that this
Adopting Simplified Trading Indicators
00:13:09
Speaker
doesn't happen ever again? And that was like, like, I need to cure causes and stop trying to remedy symptoms because, um, you know, I went on this like crazy sun run basically for like two and a half years straight. I'm coming off of, you know, 15 trades in a row, 20 trades in a row where like the big banger trades, you know, I'm, I'm,
00:13:30
Speaker
impeccable, like a 100% hit rate. And then one trade causes me to lose it all. So clearly, if that has the ability to happen once, then that could possibly happen again. and how do I make sure that I don't allow the next two and a half years to go to waste? Because I know that I can run it back. I know that I can get it back. And um my dad came into my room.
00:13:52
Speaker
at the time, and he goes background story by my dad. He's an immigrant, moved to a new place with absolutely nothing and built you know several businesses, was a serial entrepreneur, built a ton of businesses, most of them unsuccessful, but some of them successful.
00:14:10
Speaker
And at some point when I was about 13, 14 years old, He had a bunch of successful businesses that were like, you know, multimillion dollars. um Previously, prior to that, we grew up incredibly poor, but my dad had finally made it.
00:14:25
Speaker
And and then we lost everything and he had declared bankruptcy. So well this guy, I mean, he you know, ran it up way more than I ever could have possibly imagined, you know, at that age. And he walked into my room and he said, you're crying over money.
00:14:44
Speaker
Whoa, wait a minute. Hold on. You might be on to something, you know, you like, dude, I was ah when I tell you I was a corpse like version of myself, I was a corpse like version. Like yeah I did not get out of bed. i you know, this might sound gross, but like maybe I would brush my teeth at like 6 p.m. You know, like Like, dude, it was bad. it was really, really bad. I was down horrendous. I was depressed. I feel like, you know, it it wasn't just ah a portfolio thing. It was a life thing, right? Like I had put all my eggs into this basket.
00:15:13
Speaker
I didn't have the ability to go in and get more eggs and create a new basket. Like I didn't have that ability. My uncle who hates Bitcoin, then to rub salt in my wound tells me that he bought Bitcoin at 4000 just because I'm like, dude, my my uncle who hates Bitcoin bought my capitulation if it won't if it weren't already bad enough. um But yeah, so my dad came into my room and he goes, wait a minute. why What's going on? Like, why are you, you know,
00:15:40
Speaker
not you. Why are you so depressed? Like I haven't seen you in two days. And he's like, and I'm like, you know, I tell him what happened. He's like, you're crying over money. So I figured, man, if he has the ability to say that, you know, and he lost way more than I kind of could have possibly imagined. And he lost it, you know, middle age, and I'm still incredibly young, right? i have the ability to run it back.
00:16:04
Speaker
then surely I can run it back, right? Like surely there there's not actually a reason to, you know, be able to justify crying about money, but I had to be able to develop a new approach, a new style, a new strategy to make sure that I can embody that like mantra of I will never be allowed to cry about money again. The only way that I'm not gonna be allowed It's not like i' Marcus Aurelius, right? I'm not just like crazy stoic like dude. Um, the only way that I'm not going to be allowed to not cry about money is to ensure that I don't take a big hit like that ever again.
00:16:36
Speaker
Yeah. And so curing those causes instead of trying to treat the symptoms. And that's where I basically just started from complete scratch. got rid of all the indicators, um basically just said, you know what?
00:16:47
Speaker
ah Ironically, like people ask me, how did you start using 200 MA, 200 EMA? I'm not gonna take any credit for this, but I'm just saying, man, when I started using both moving averages, EMA and MA, 200,
00:17:01
Speaker
I was told that it's incredibly obscure. It's weird. It's odd. And now I see a bunch of people using it. Mm Just saying, just saying. um But no, I started doing that because i wanted to figure out which one would I actually use. And so when I asked people Which one should I use? Should i use m MA or should I use EMA?
00:17:20
Speaker
you know Some people would go, oh use MA, it's the more popular one. And some people would go, no, use EMA because this is crypto, so it's going to catch up faster, so it's going to more reliable. And I was like, okay, this is pointless. So I'm just going to throw both of them on the chart and see you know which one i like more ah through forward testing. And what I found is i kind of really, really enjoy the ability to express something more generally and more broadly. And I kind of use them as a cloud now to represent something of which I already understand.
00:17:53
Speaker
So this is where people kind of like get me wrong. And when you look at my charts nowadays, you see a bunch of black and white and gray, and then you see something that sticks out like a sore thumb. It's this green and blue moving averages and you know, people automatically assume that I'm a moving average trader, but I don't look at it like I'm a moving average trader. i look at it as I'm a trend trader.
00:18:16
Speaker
I'm a momentum trader. And moving averages just so happen to represent the momentum of which I already understood because a four-year-old understands which way the market is headed at any given time, right? You can look at the chart and we can make more detailed kind of breakdowns of that chart and of that general direction through things like market structure.
00:18:35
Speaker
So if you were to ask me, what's the foundation of your system i wouldn't tell you moving averages i would actually
Objectivity in Trading Philosophy
00:18:40
Speaker
tell you market structure and it's just this like embracing this idea that you know you do know what's happening on the chart at any given time because a four-year-old does and so you need to be able to express that and just kind of do your best to trade the market objectively and and you know respect trends essentially that is the uh the foundation to the entire trading principles that I built off of since then.
00:19:03
Speaker
Just respect. I feel like ah you might offend a lot of people by saying a four year olds can. If it's the if it's the hard truth, then it's the hard truth. But the reality is, man, if I were to ask my little cousin who's five years old, which way is this market headed at any given time?
00:19:19
Speaker
If I circle out and it goes by time frame to write like if I circle out the hourly for him, he's gonna be able to tell me if i circle if i zoom out a little bit and circle out the four hour he's gonna be able to tell me and same thing so it's that like expression of the market is always right it's so ironic to me you know people i still get projections oh you're so egotistical you're so arrogant blah blah but i'm over here like dude i'm the the person that is saying i don't know what the hell the market wants to do The market's going to do whatever the hell it wants to do. So I should probably just subscribe to that. And to me, that is the epitome of humility.
00:19:54
Speaker
That is like, you know, screw what I think. The market is always right. And so ironic to me that people same person will tell you the market is always right is the same person that will tell you, you know, after we break out of a range. No, it's not a breakout.
00:20:07
Speaker
No, it's not a higher high. It's a sweep of the highest. It's a fluke. It's a fake out. It's a bull trap. It's this, it's that. It's like a lot of the times if you just end up, um, you know, respecting whatever the market's doing, you find yourself better off long-term.
00:20:20
Speaker
Yeah. Now this is where, you know, something like social media and the best way to attract like engagement and following and stuff like that.
Social Media Influence on Trading
00:20:27
Speaker
on social media is totally inverse from how you should think about trading philosophy, because you're like in terms of engagement, right? if If we break out of a range, let's say if we break down below a range, this is genuinely how you engagement farm. We break down below a range.
00:20:44
Speaker
The best way to attract engagement is by creating hope in people's minds. So when you break down, ah i'm being real, man. When you break down below a two month range, right? and And the obvious analysis is, okay, that was fuel, right? So two months of fuel and now we're reversing the trend. So we're probably going to continue lower thanks to, you know, two months of consolidation. And now sellers are probably going to be more persistent.
00:21:10
Speaker
The best way to attract engagement though is by so creating hopium and saying, no no no, this is a sweep of the lows. This is a fluke. This is a fake out. It's going to be a deviation brev. and we're going to reclaim that range low, we're going to skyrocket to new all-time highs. right The um the like risk reward in terms of your trading portfolio for actually trading it that way is pretty low. like It's really, really bad because you're more than likely over time, you're going to be proven wrong. and The few and far between times where you are actually correct on that idea is not going to be enough to overcompensate for the times that you were wrong.
00:21:50
Speaker
But if you do that from like a social media standpoint, if you just so happen to be right about that specific event, one out of 10 times, now you fooled everybody into thinking that you're a genius.
00:22:03
Speaker
So it's like, there's a direct inverse correlation between, you know, if you are going to prioritize trying to, um engage in people's like initial biases and instincts, because the reality is nobody wants to log into crypto every single day.
00:22:20
Speaker
and hear about how crypto is dying and how the market's going lower. Nobody wants to hear that. I don't even want to hear that. Right. But that's the truth. And it has been the truth for four months now. Like it's just been, you know, that's the trend. So the way that you want to actually approach trading is just very, very different between, you know, how you're going to farm engagement or something like that.
00:22:46
Speaker
I was just laughing about it because I kind of like sometimes to to stir the the pot a bit, I guess, by um posting exaggerated market opinion. I think that's kind of like one of the the funniest things about being on Twitter is just like um the the sentiment mirrors the chart the charts. So the most interesting days are always when there's like a big red candle or a big green candle.
00:23:08
Speaker
and everyone is like extrapolating from that and then either you're euphoric or you're like all doom and everything is going to zero and it's just funny to like exaggerate and then participate a bit in that yeah in my opinion at least maybe i'm like mentally ill but it's no no i mean we all drew crypto so Yeah. ah No, it actually it works in the inverse direction too, though. And it's pretty funny um because like people don't see the hypocrisy in like that exact same example. But then that same person will go, oh
00:23:42
Speaker
Here's this grifter scammer LARP that is always bullish all the time, every time. Now we're breaking out of a range, but guess what? They're bullish. So this can't possibly continue higher.
00:23:53
Speaker
And it doesn't make any sense, right? It's not just like other influencers or like peers or friends. It's like people that I talk to just like on a day to day basis. They come into my discord chat, stuff like that. We can be in a raging bull market and, you know, in the middle of price discovery and somebody will go, oh yeah, but bla blah, bla blah, person is you know bull posting at the you know top of their lungs and screaming about how this market is going to how bitcoin's going to a million bull bla blah, will be at like eighty thousand dollars bitcoin at the time it's like you're contradicting yourself you are overcomplicating the market you are giving too much merit to something like social media where directly the best way to farm engagement is to constantly post, you know, hopeful thoughts where you're telling people that their bags are going to go higher, that they're going to make it, that they're going to be able to afford a private island, right? That's always going to be that, you know, incentive that it's that incentive is there, whether we're going up or down regardless. So if you're always going to use that as a counter trade signal, then what you're doing is ensuring that when those few and far between periods in the market that are incredibly lucrative and actually resemble a bull market and what we're here for when we come to trade crypto.
00:25:05
Speaker
you're making sure that you handicap your gains for when those periods come. But you're still gonna have to endure the eight months of chop. You're still gonna have to endure the five or six months of underperformance severely to every other market.
00:25:19
Speaker
You're still gonna have to endure the bear. youre still You still have to endure all the same hardships, but you're not actually yielding anything from the good times, which are 2080, right?
00:25:31
Speaker
right If you look back at the past three and a half years, man, there are maybe seven rallies that actually matter. Everything else is bullshit.
00:25:41
Speaker
yeah Everything else is, is a three month range and eight month range, a seven month range, three month downtrend, you know, eight months of underperformance, to the stock market. It's, it's absolute garbage. That's what it is.
00:25:55
Speaker
80% of the time. The reality is it's always been that way. People just don't want to look back at history. So you have to make the most of those opportunities and you know, you can't really give too much merit to social media.
00:26:09
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I think ah you you definitely noticed that over time. that is it's just a I love it. i like I like looking at it, but it's also just like very distracting. I want to ask something because I but i want to better understand um when you talked about losing a lot during COVID crash um and then taking away from that how you improved your risk management so that it wouldn't happen again.
Reflections on Risk Management
00:26:34
Speaker
i also wanted to ask a question if there's like what did your risk management look like before then or were you just like so lucky all the time in a row that you that you didn't really lose a lot at once or like the market didn't move that much that it made you lose that much or yeah how did it not happen before you know even though i was a degenerate in the sense that i was trading with 100 of my net worth um and i was always pretty much
00:27:01
Speaker
Pretty much always like 100% exposed to the market because I was always holding like Bitcoin or maybe like Ethereum and yeah and always trading inverse perpetuals. So I'd have to hold the underlying asset as collateral. um Even though that was the case, I didn't really use leverage that much. So I didn't really have the ability to get liquidated because I would find myself on incredibly low timeframes, but I was not the person that was trading like 20 X leverage, 50 X leverage, a hundred X leverage. Like I wasn't doing that. Um, I would maybe use like two or three X and, you know, most of my trades were incredibly low timeframe. So I would be in and out, um, around those times. So yeah, it, it wasn't like I had never actually been liquidated until March, 2020. That was my first like real liquidation.
00:27:49
Speaker
Yeah. So it was just like the the size of that move or like the the outsized volatility that kind fucked you over. Oh yeah. And it was also the ego, right? The ego was inflated. the The ego was parallel to my P&L. So as you know I made more and more money and I continued to prove to myself that I was the greatest of all time, then thought, well, shoot, I'm the greatest of all time. And when I look at my P&L, it doesn't disagree. So it was like, not only like, i mean, I was genuinely hell bent that I was going to be able to buy $8,000 Bitcoin
00:28:26
Speaker
Yeah. At the time, I don't know if you remember, if you were here, ah Willy Wu was like screaming about how Bitcoin would never go below 6000 ever again. and ah and his fund that he made with Murad, ironically, and and all that. And they blew up because of, you know, Willy Wu's analysis and whatever.
00:28:46
Speaker
It's funny, I actually have a friend that worked for that that fund and was warning them that you know they were going to get liquidated and they all just wrote him off and ended up firing him, obviously, because the fund blew up. yeah um But yeah, man, it was it was just like this crazy conviction that I knew everything that the market was going to do before the market was going to do it.
00:29:09
Speaker
It was because i had proved that to myself up until that point. So... that was a humbling man and yeah that was severely needed because that is not the right mindset to take with you into markets you know that is essentially like like even though i was able to compress you know a ton of trading experience in the span of you know a relatively short period of time that is essentially the equivalent of me getting into the ring with mike tyson and i've never thrown a punch before and being like i'm gonna knock this guy out yeah it's like yeah it's just crazy
00:29:42
Speaker
So how did you change your your system
Reevaluating Trading Indicators
00:29:44
Speaker
afterwards? How did you, like you removed all the indicators, you've practiced better risk management, you you started to look at the market differently. how did your trading evolve from that?
00:29:53
Speaker
um Yeah, so i I started using indicators again. i would slowly re-add them into my system. So like something like RSI. and um But what I would find is it's very contradictory to the principles that I was trying to instill within myself. It was very contradictory to the premise of I'm never going to be allowed to cry about money ever again, because I was actually coming ah out of um that March 2020 COVID event. I then had a vendetta against the market. So I was I was actually revenge shorting around like four or five thousand or you know six thousand dollar Bitcoin.
00:30:30
Speaker
um And thankfully, I had people around me at that time to tell me like, dude, your revenge shorting like this was the generational bottom like it doesn't get worse than this if you're thinking that the market's gonna be like crazy doomer from here you're wrong look back at history you know these are the emotions you're experiencing trust me i've been there before like and and they were right and i was like shit they're right so i had to get out of that and um and start to like embrace this idea of like how can I make sure that if anything happens, whether it's the market, you know Bitcoin going to a million or the market going to zero, how do I make sure that I'm not caught off guard? And the only way to not be caught off guard is to be um very adamant that that is what's happening and potentially going to happen on the way into it happening.
00:31:23
Speaker
So respecting trends. So I'm like, okay, I need to be a trend respecter. I need to just follow wherever the market's going. I need to be very objective. I'm not allowed to counter trade. I'm not allowed to continue revenge shorting, right? In aggressively ah grinding upwards kind of market that's just like eager to to find its way to higher highs um coming off of a major capitulation event. I don't wanna do that anymore. So I would, you know, I started bare bones again.
00:31:51
Speaker
implement something like RSI, but then what you realize is like bear divs on RSI are totally contradictory to momentum trading strategies. it doesn't really make any sense. If you ever see a ah bearish divergence on the weekly RSI, what that means is we failed to hold a bearish divergence on the three day.
00:32:13
Speaker
if you ever see a bearish divergence on the three day it's because we failed to hold or express or play out a bearish divergence on the on the daily if you ever see a bearish divergence on the daily and you can keep fucking going dude Like, so it starts on 15 minute, then it goes to an hourly and then it goes to a four hour and then it goes to a daily and then it's three day and then it's weekly and then it's one month. And it's like, dude, at this point, a whole bull market's passed me by I've been making the same argument from before we went 500% higher. It doesn't really make any sense. So I scrapped that. And that was the same kind of thing that I did with every indicator.
00:32:49
Speaker
So but what what exactly do you mean by that? i don't know if I if I follow. So like the only way to actually express um or so or trigger a signal on like a weekly bearish divergence is to not have is to have false positive a signal on the three day chart.
00:33:09
Speaker
And the only way for that to have developed is to have created a false positive on the daily. and then a false positive on the four hour. And so it's so it's false positive, false positive, false positive, false positive, false positive until eventually it works until eventually that divergence kicks in and plays out. And the market sees that more aggressive sell off from like a more extreme point like and you can you know throw RSI on the chart.
00:33:36
Speaker
It's so easy to throw RSI on the chart and say, here are all these bearish divergences that played out. But then every time that you do that, you are overlooking all of the ones that didn't on the way into the one trigger that actually played out. So like it's the exact same thing if you're using RSI, but you're not using divergences necessarily and you're explicitly using something like like overbought and oversold more traditionally, more like, you know, linearly in terms of, you know, instead of divergences, um you go look at any bull market period or any bearish period in the market, you'll notice that the signal fires overbought.
00:34:18
Speaker
for an extended period of time. Because it's always overbought relative to the previous market that we were trading within. So it's like, you know, we're trading in a range, let's say, then the RSI indicator is going to be gauging relative strength based off of the default is 14. it's going to be going based off of the past 14 candlesticks. So for trading a two week range and you're looking at the daily, you're going to be seeing, you know, the RSI is going be flat lined because it's always gauging relative strength relative to the range, right? Because we're in a compressed range. As soon as we break out of that range, now that RSI signal is calculating that day's strength relative to the range.
00:35:00
Speaker
But then maybe the range breakout adds fuel and then we you know fuel a greater move and blah, blah, blah. So immediately RSI is now firing the signal that we are overbought.
00:35:11
Speaker
But go back and look at history and see how many times we've broken out of a multi-month range. and then continued another 50, 80, 100, 300% higher, especially on these altcoins, right? So what that means is inherently it is destined to be so. it is statistically calculated so that every time that that happens, it is always going to be firing overbought the entire way through for that entire trend.
00:35:36
Speaker
And at some point, there's going to be divergences that develop because let's say like momentum stalls, right? after 50% range high breakout. So now RSI has peaked because it's gauging relative strength relative to the range and then we stall sideways. So now the relative strength based off of the previous 14 candlesticks that were incredibly vertical is going to be lower.
00:36:01
Speaker
But price is simply consolidating. So now there's a divergence that fires on the hourly chart, right? And then price continues making another higher high, but the relative strength throughout that tiny little bit of consolidation, which is acted as a rocket pad for the next leg higher is now a lower high in ah RSI. So now there's a divergence. And then that same thing happens on the four hour chart because the market stalls for a week and then it just keeps going and it keeps firing these false positives. If you use a signal like that to like you see the divergence and then you would short, for example, if you see like the bear death and you would say, hey, this is a going, the market is going to go down now.
00:36:45
Speaker
I'm sorry, say it again? like the you You're saying that um you're seeing the bearish divergence on the RSI, and then you take that as a signal that you should basically short because the market is like losing seam and you should go down.
00:36:59
Speaker
That is the signal. That is the implication of the signal. It's weakness. It is reversal. So it's like, you know, if you go look at like, uh, the spy chart is probably a good example right now.
00:37:10
Speaker
You go look at spy. i guarantee you there's a divergence on the RSI because it's a parabolic chart, but as of the past few months, it's gone sideways. But what you don't realize is if you zoom inwards to lower timeframes, you're going to see a bunch of signals or bearish divergences that developed on the way.
00:37:27
Speaker
up before that sideways even got created and and they never actually came to fruition so now they've just kind of expanded and gotten magnified so they've gotten carried over into the daily and a lot of the times rsi is ah is a tricky indicator especially because a lot of the times it actually covers its own false positives so it'll print a false positive and it'll be a lower high in the rsi at the time And then it'll eventually find its way into a higher high and the RSI to be in agreement with the the higher high, the price action also made.
00:38:05
Speaker
So then it it kind of like, you know, brushes its own false positive under the rug. And this is why, like, again, this is an indicator that if you actually were to like back test and it's again, because it has that kind of like dynamic where it has the ability to brush its own false positive under under the rug. You can't really back test it. But even if you back tested it, you would see that it's incredibly poor.
00:38:29
Speaker
I mean, it's terrible. Pretty much any and aggressive uptrend. Go look at the stock market, that move that Nvidia had, you know, um aerospace as of recently, silver, metals, right?
00:38:41
Speaker
it's always going to fail tremendously and then it's going to signal that one signal and of course that signal is destined to be at the exact pico top so it's an incredible engagement bait it's a great way for people to post about you know here's this indicator here's how you could have had a crystal ball and then it acts as bait and you have to figure it out for yourself in real time as to how that indicator actually doesn't work so that you can actually start to attribute you know some kind of
Importance of Trader Discretion
00:39:11
Speaker
way that it works. The people that- feel like in that specific case, it's kind of because RSI is a bit mis misunderstood as far as like I understand it, like at least for like how it's ah used for this engagement bait things because um
00:39:24
Speaker
I think I used to understand it that way as well at first, but it's kind of, if it's a momentum indicator, like if it's overbought, that actually just means the momentum is like very, very strong. So there's like no reason that you should, that you should fake that just because it's like overbought statistically or whatever. And also like the same with the, if with the divergence, it basically just means that momentum is fading, but that doesn't have to mean that the market is going to go down from there. Maybe it's just going to consolidate and then go back up again. I guess that's kind of what you've been explaining anyway, but,
00:39:54
Speaker
Yeah, and it's probably a much more appropriate way to use it. But in my experience, talking with traders throughout, you know, eight years now, that's not how it's used at all. And it's it's like, it can't possibly be interpreted that way initially because it's called overbought, oversold when those signals are firing. So it's like, you have to, and this is the the case with every indicator, right? You have to actually use it and not just back test, but also forward test.
00:40:23
Speaker
Forward testing is the only thing that's actually gonna provide any real value to you because you know every indicator has this like ability to um create like short sample sizes where it fools you into thinking that the indicator itself is is alpha. But if the indicator itself were ever going to be alpha, then I wouldn't be talking to you right now. I would be on a private island.
00:40:43
Speaker
and on my mega yacht, right? Like the I would be somewhere else, you know, drinking something out of a coconut and enjoying life on a beach. um The indicator is not alpha. It's the discretion of the user using the indicator. And the only way that you're going to be able to actually figure out what kind of signals to give merit to is by reverse engineering that process and figuring out what signals not to give merit to.
00:41:09
Speaker
So a key part when people ask me, like, how are you going to trade trends? Ironically, it's not very difficult to say, hey, this market's going up. I think it's going to keep going up. That's not the kind of expression of like skill set or ability or like the epitome, the the pinnacle of my abilities. Right.
00:41:27
Speaker
It's actually the ability to adapt to ranges before they continue to range. So like in November of 2025, I was able to say relatively early that we were probably just going to chop sideways before it became incredibly obvious to the four-year-old. And I was able to do that with acknowledging how my trend trading system, which had previously worked Beautifully and systematically in the sense that I could have presented it to you and and and uploaded it to investopedia and Used it as you know trend trading 101 just do this for the rest of your life and you're going to make a shit ton of money And it would have worked it would have acted as that example because it was very fluid is very linear is very straightforward There weren't any false positives that I had to really worry about there weren't much nuance there wasn't any discretion that was necessary And then November 2025 hits and then we start to chop sideways before it becomes um you know incredibly obvious to a kindergartner. I'm able to say, you know what, this is probably going to chop sideways because I'm now seeing my my same system that just previously worked as alpha with not any discretion necessary at all. I've now watched it give two false positives it back-to back to back.
00:42:40
Speaker
Hey, this is going to be a reversal. We're getting a nice rally. And then we didn't. and then we lose that trend, what that typically means is the rally failed, so we're just gonna continue the downtrend amongst all timeframes. And then we didn't. We found a high low on a very low timeframe, and then we got back above those same moving averages. So it's like, okay, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna keep going, oh, I'm bullish again, oh, I'm bearish again, I'm bullish again, I'm bearish again.
00:43:04
Speaker
That's silly. That's how you, no matter how much money you make in a trend, that's how you ensure that you always give it back. a all the time. And this is why on one hand, it's so funny to me because on one hand I have incredibly naive people that are like, no, you're not good. All you do is trade moving averages. That's so easy. And on the other hand, I have quants that are like, no, you're not good because moving averages statistically lose. You are trading an unprofitable system and here's the results to prove that I can backtest it. I've backtested it. have all the statistics.
00:43:38
Speaker
So which one is it right? Like, is it, I'm so like, I'm not worthy of any you know, um, praise because, you know, the moving averages so are so easy or is it, is it that I'm unprofitable because moving averages don't actually work?
00:43:53
Speaker
I can't tell you. So it's always going to be discretion of the user. You have to make sure that you're essentially the main goal is to not lose.
00:44:05
Speaker
It's if you can mitigate drawdown more than what that does for you is it exponentially increases the like leaps and bounds that your portfolio makes when fruitful environments come where your system is actually rewarded to an uncanny degree.
00:44:19
Speaker
And then you get that projection tied onto you. Oh, no, that's so easy. All you did was trade moving averages. You know, you throw the four hour 200 MA on the chart and there you go. And you make a shit ton of money.
00:44:30
Speaker
Those periods don't matter if you don't know how to turn off that mindset. It ensures unprofitability long term. And that's probably the case with any indicators, not just moving averages. If you have an indicator that's available to you, you have to remind yourself that it's available to you and it's free.
Caution Against Trading Algorithms
00:44:51
Speaker
And so why would it ever possibly be free? you know, like, uh, it's so funny to me that, um, in the previous bull market, people were selling algorithms. That was the like grift of the last bull market was here's this algorithm.
00:45:05
Speaker
Copy the API, upload it to your exchange, right? Connect the API and it'll fire a signal and give me $2,000 and you can have this algorithm that's going to print money for you for the rest of your life. And use my ref link.
00:45:18
Speaker
Yeah. And use my ref link while you're out. Yeah, absolutely. That was the grift, man. What a fucking grift because yeah, nobody thought to themselves, wait a minute.
00:45:29
Speaker
Why are you selling me this algorithm for $2,000 instead of using it for yourself? The reality is it's not profitable. It's gonna, it's very reliant on variants and you know, it's just, yeah.
00:45:44
Speaker
That's the case with anything though. So your system now basically is just some you you look at the moving averages, you look at the market structure, you do trend following trading, and then you just like trade with that until the signals basically don't work because we're in a ranging environment and then you just like sit it out until we're in a trend again.
High Timeframe Analysis Strategy
00:46:03
Speaker
Pretty much, man. And the, you know, it's very fragmented. I look at the market like ah like a puzzle. So think about the way that you build a puzzle, right? You don't just start grabbing two pieces and asking if they go together. You start with the border because it's obvious.
00:46:18
Speaker
So they have flat lines, they have flat edges. You always go to the border. You build that out first. Then you segregate by color schematics, right? When you're building a puzzle. So I do the same thing in the market. I start with the highest timeframe that I deem relevant and I assess what kind of environment are we in? So that's always going to be how I pertain context on lower timeframes. So like not every four hour 200 Amaze Reclaim is built equally. Right. I made a post about this while we were in that range in like November.
00:46:46
Speaker
So we had reclaimed the four hour two hundreds in like late December. And typically, right, that projection, oh all you do is trade moving averages. That's so easy. But that only works if we're in an incredibly bullish up trending environment.
00:47:00
Speaker
Quants think that I'm so stupid that I can't tell the difference between an incredibly up trending environment where things are favorable and a reclaim of high timeframe moving averages equates to parabola, price discovery, turn my brain off, target the top right corner.
00:47:15
Speaker
Whereas in December, that's not at all what I said. I said, we maybe get a nice 10, 15% relief bounce at most. We're probably going put in a lower high on higher timeframes. We're going to break back down below these moving averages and we're going to continue the trend lower amongst all timeframes.
00:47:31
Speaker
And obviously that's that's how that played out. So it's like not every signal is created equally and it's always fragmented via time frame. So this like local strength that I'm seeing is is relative to what's happening on higher time frame perspectives. So sometimes we reclaim a local trend. And to me, that means we locked in a higher low on all time frames. We front ran all of my entries on you know higher time frame inflection points and the market is going to run it back turbo into price discovery without me.
00:48:03
Speaker
Sometimes we reclaim a local trend and I'm like, okay, cool. We might see a nice 5% relief bounce before we die all over again. Right? How do you gauge the difference between those two signals because they're the same signal? And this is a ah weird analogy, but I want you to think about this.
00:48:20
Speaker
When you have a baby, I don't know if you're a parent or anything, but when you have a baby, uh, like I can attest, cause I have a sibling and I'll go visit them and, uh, my nephew will cry and I, and immediately his parents know what he needs.
00:48:38
Speaker
Hey, he needs a bottle. He needs to be rocked to sleep. He needs, you know, food. He needs this. He needs that. He's overstimulated, whatever. Right. Like he, they know exactly what he needs.
00:48:49
Speaker
And I'm like, how the hell do you know? And they're like, when you're a parent, you'll know. And it doesn't make any sense to me because I'm like, no, it's the same cry every single time. I promise you, I've been here. I'm listening.
00:49:02
Speaker
Sometimes he cries and you guys go, oh, it's because he's tired. Sometimes he cries and you guys go, oh, it's he needs food. Right. So how the hell do you possibly know? Oh, you'll know. No, dude, it's the same fucking cry every single time. It doesn't make any sense to me.
00:49:17
Speaker
And it's that context, right? It's, oh, well, he usually wakes up at 4 a.m. and then we rock him, you know, we give him a bottle, whatever. He does his thing. And then we rock him back to sleep and he falls back to asleep at 6. And then we wake up at 9 and he starts the day. But last night he did this, right? He woke up at this time. He did something different. So it changes things. So immediately as a parent within a split second, your baby cries and you automatically know exactly what they need.
00:49:46
Speaker
Because in your mind, it's not just one signal. It's not just, you know, he's crying. It's he's crying because this happened, because, you know, he just ate 30 minutes ago, so he probably pooped his diaper, right? Like whatever. You're always pertaining it to the context. You're always making sure that that specific cry is a signal relative to the greater story that's being told because you're a parent and you have to raise your kid.
00:50:15
Speaker
It's the same thing. I know it's a weird analogy, but it's the same kind of discretion that you're using to gauge what is this signal that I'm, that I'm seeing and it at face value. It's always going to be the signal all the time. Every time it's the same signal, but it's not always the same outcome and it shouldn't be treated the same. Not every opportunity is created equally. Right. So it's like, it doesn't make any sense to approach the market as if every opportunity is equal.
00:50:41
Speaker
Yeah.
Quantitative vs. Discretionary Trading
00:50:42
Speaker
I think that's a good analogy and I also think that's actually a very good argument for this argument that sometimes pop up, like it popped up a month ago or two months ago, something that's quants versus discretionary traders, which which happens every once in a while where the quant people are like, hey, don't trade discretionary. It's just like you can't do it. it's It can't be done. It's a waste of time, blah, blah, blah. But I think that that's a very good analogy, I guess, because as if you're trading discretionary, because of all the the experience you build up in the market, you kind of have like a better ability to like judge signals. Because as you said, if you just trade the moving averages quantitatively, then the distinct the distinction between the strength of the signal is like way more difficult to do, or it needs like additional variables, or it's just like... you can't Even if you're a discretionary, you probably can't really... like um
00:51:35
Speaker
put into words every single variable that got into your mind that made you think like hey this is just going to be a relief balance and not just like a continuation or whatever and um because it's kind of like an an intuitive unconscious level even that you that you build through all this this time on the charts and the the experience and that's kind of like the art indiscretionary trading i guess yeah Yeah, absolutely. It's seeing seeing the signal not work enough. Eventually your survival instincts kick in and you get tired of, you know, getting baited by the same signal over and over and over again. Your gut wants to find a way to adapt. So you start refining the system. You start finding ways to give less merit to things. And what that inherently produces ah creates is ah a way to give more merit to the signals that you deem more noteworthy.
00:52:26
Speaker
So it's the same thing as like, like I'm not exclusively a trend trader in the sense that I'm unwilling to go against trends at all.
Successful Trade Stories
00:52:36
Speaker
I actually, my only noteworthy trade as of the past four months, I've taken a bunch of trades in the past four months, but there's one trade that has dictated 90, 95% of my profit from the past four months of trading.
00:52:49
Speaker
And it was buying the exact Pico bottom on Bitcoin and selling around 71,000 just recently. But the only way that I was able to actually dabble in that kind of approach was by respecting the trend.
00:53:02
Speaker
So this is what I mean when I say cure causes don't treat symptoms. If I'm going to try to be cutesy and and scalp long or scalp short, you know, on the way down into 60,000, I'm probably going to make it to where when we get to 60,000, I don't have the luxury of asking myself, okay, we're finally accelerated. This is exaggerated. We're probably to see like a more mechanical kind of bounce from the market reaction from this general region.
00:53:27
Speaker
We're at this point we're down, you know, negative 20% in the span of like 12, 16 hours. So do I think that maybe this is noteworthy enough to start probing against it? Yes, I do.
00:53:39
Speaker
Anyone can look at that silver chart at $120 and say, you know what, this is probably getting out of hand, right? But you have to allow yourself the luxury to make that statement. The only way that you're gonna be able to make that statement at $120 80.
00:53:56
Speaker
Right. It's like you have to be able to dwell in a primary mindset. And then what eventually happens is you're allowed to speculate more in a secondary term.
00:54:09
Speaker
So and that's kind of the the like essence of my entire approach to this market, man. I wasn't, you know, in in Solana. like meme coin mania it's not like i was trading every you know 75th iteration of geo bowden and chill guy and mudang and like did i missed out on like pretty much all that stuff like that maybe caught a very very very very small percentage of it but then trump coin got created and i was late to it In the sense that like, uh, by the time that I saw that I had gotten created, i was already two hours late.
00:54:45
Speaker
The coin itself was at $5 billion dollar market cap. I go scroll my Twitter timeline. I'm like, dude, is this real? Like what the hell is happening? And I see that a lot of the FUD that people initially took on like the 80%, you know, ownership of like the, uh, wallet that launched it and this and that, and all this FUD, like people debating whether or not it's even real or whether Trump got hacked or whatever.
00:55:08
Speaker
A lot of that FUD had been mitigated at that point. And so then I'm scrolling my timeline and I'm like, okay, everyone's kind of over-complicating this and is like, you know, hey, this is a scam. I can't believe he did this. This is, you know, extraction, bla blah, blah.
00:55:22
Speaker
And I'm like, I thought about that quote five times a year, there's free money on the floor, just pick it up and do nothing. Right. And I'm like the U S president just made a fucking meme coin. what What is the better example of free money on the floor, pick it up and do nothing.
00:55:36
Speaker
So I was like, okay, I'm going send everything to this, you know, phantom wallet. uh capitulate all the positions that I had whatever stupid meme coin bags that I was holding that were down and whatever and uh consolidated it and just market bought uh Trump coin and by the time it took me like ten fifteen minutes to do that right to like scroll Twitter or whatever and um and by the time that ten fifteen minutes had gone by it was at 7 billion market cap so it was just like continued ripping I was like you know what man
00:56:07
Speaker
It either goes to zero or I think that I'm a genius tomorrow and it does a 10x. You know, I wake up to a 10x and that's what happened. I woke up to a 10x and I sold for 10x. I sold it like 7 billion, 70 billion dollar market cap and ah and never touched it again. And it's like, it's not like I was dwelling. It's not like I was trenching, right? Like I wasn't sitting there and, you know, waiting for these opportunities. It's not like i was praying on Trump to make a meme coin or anything. It's just it fell into my lap.
00:56:37
Speaker
It's you abide by a very hard set philosophy, this primary approach to the market that you know that you have some kind of strength or edge in. And eventually what that allows you to do is dabble in a more secondary state where essentially the market hands you free money and there's not really too much that you need to do with that in order to make the most out of it.
00:56:58
Speaker
That's the beauty of crypto, man. That's the same thing with like NFT cycle. Sorry. Go ahead. how How do you decide which assets to trade? Do you trade like any trade fly assets as well?
Cautious Asset Selection
00:57:10
Speaker
Yeah, I started trading stocks again um in November. i've done I've done sufficiently well, but I can't say that I'm in sync with the stock market just yet because I was coping pretty hard. I watched pretty much every stock, you know, go parabolic in the past like two or three years.
00:57:27
Speaker
Yeah. I think I stopped trading stocks and like I want to like April of 2023, had this like amazing Amazon trade where we broke out of the 200 dailies coming off of those like 2020 lows or 2022 lows.
00:57:40
Speaker
And I held that trade for like four months and I got like a like five R from it. and I was like, OK, this is stupid. And so ironically, like winning a trade on Amazon was what made me want to like not trade stocks anymore because I was like, my capital is probably better, you know, ah put towards like crypto. So I consolidated it more and.
00:58:01
Speaker
that obviously didn't really pay off because you know a lot of tech stocks and whatever went absolutely berserk but um but yeah i started trading stocks again when it comes to like asset selection I'm 26 years old but I typically have the mindset more of like a boomer in the sense that you're not going to find me trading like the shittiest of shit coins um you know if it's too low market cap even if it's like good market cap but like Bitcoin cash for example dude Bitcoin Cash had like a crazy like outperformance relative strength prolonged in the crypto market for like months at a time, not too long ago. And I was like, yeah, I'm not touching this thing.
00:58:39
Speaker
Yeah. You know, Tron, for example, right? Like one of the assets that I probably have like PTSD from because of 2018. Yeah. Tron, for example, i was like, you know,
00:58:51
Speaker
Ironically, Tron has been one of the best performing assets throughout the cycle. You look at that chart, it's mostly just like up only, um but it's because it's being manipulated and we all know that. Right. But it's like, you know, it is what it is. It doesn't mean that you can't jump in and and make money via trend trading systems. It's actually coping and complacency that I'm not doing that. But i accept that, you know, I know damn well that it's coping complacency. And, you know, I'm just going to abide by like like the market is the epitome of freedom.
00:59:23
Speaker
I use that to my advantage. That's the way that I look at it. Is it, is that my way of coping? Absolutely. Uh, that's my way of saying like, no, I'm not an idiot for missing out on an obvious three year uptrend on Tron or like, you know, missing Z cash or Monero or whatever.
00:59:38
Speaker
ah you know, I do that stuff all the time, but I'm very much a boomer
Managing Fear of Missing Out
00:59:43
Speaker
in that sense. And when it comes to asset selection, how do you deal with the, with the FOMO? from missing these ones.
00:59:50
Speaker
Dude, I just remind myself that like, like Zcash or Monero, for example. Okay, I missed out on a multi 100% rally. Add it to the list. Like, of all the multi 100% rallies that I've missed out on, add it to the fucking list at this point. I missed out on Axie Infinity in the last bull market cycle. I missed out on like, I missed out on Shiba. I missed out on Floki. I missed out on, dude, I miss out on stuff all the time. Like, who cares? Like if you're always focused on the opportunities that you missed out on, you're not going to be able to realize the opportunities that are going to come your way.
01:00:25
Speaker
So that's that's the reality of it, man. I just think, you know, it's part of my lore at this point. You know, it's it's I missed out on this so that when this got presented to me and I could catch it, I wouldn't fuck it up.
01:00:39
Speaker
I wouldn't screw it up and I would make the most out of that opportunity because I know that I don't find myself in those situations as as often as I'd like to. And the reality of bull bull markets, man, is that, you know, you're always going to miss out on more than what you catch.
01:00:54
Speaker
That is inherently always going to be the case. You cannot possibly, you know, distribute yourself um across the board to catch every single opportunity, to catch every rotation, every narrative, every sub narrative.
01:01:07
Speaker
every 175th iteration of you know ai meme coin slop on solana you know on chain like you're not gonna catch all of it anyways so who cares like the way that i get it across to crypto people is like one time um People were like asking me because Bitcoin went up like 5% in like an hourly candlestick and people are like, oh my God, this move like this is crazy. What the hell?
01:01:34
Speaker
And, you know, people have, you know, this emotional attachment is biased towards Bitcoin. So when Bitcoin does a 5% move, they feel some kind of way about it. But that same exact day, Tesla had gapped up on the day like 30%. I'm like, wait a minute, you guys are profit maximalists, right? When I go check your Twitter bios, you all have profit maximalist in your bio, but you're freaking out that you missed on a 5% move on Bitcoin, but you're not freaking out that you missed out on a 30% move on Tesla. Yeah.
01:02:05
Speaker
Something ain't right here. Obviously, you're not a profit maximalist, right? Like you're a pansy and you're worried about 5% moves on Bitcoin. It's the same concept, man. But it's like, you know, if you're going to sit here and dwell on.
01:02:17
Speaker
um Oh, I wish that I would have caught that opportunity like. You're just going to add yourself into the list of like perpetual pessimists in markets that lose and that vindicate that exact same mindset constantly in their own heads. And it's, it's not going to do you any good long-term for the next opportunity. Like we talk about, um, I bring this up a lot because I feel very hell bent and adamant on this perspective.
Capitalizing on Bull Markets
01:02:43
Speaker
Uh, this bull market cycle, people will tell me it's underwhelming. It's the worst bull market but we've ever experienced.
01:02:49
Speaker
Dude, I retired my parents this cycle. ah The same way that I had to express humility in 2018 and say, you know what, somebody was able to to capitalize off of my demise. Why can't that be me? yeah I want that person that's thinking this is the worst bull market ever. I want you to think that to yourself, because if you're not, you're not going to make it in markets and you have no business trading. yeah That is the epitome of trading is that I am better than you.
01:03:16
Speaker
If you can do that, then so can I. So express that belief, right? Don't allow yourself the ability to look at this bull market and say it's the worst bull market ever. If you're a trader, you're not allowed to do that. That that goes against every single you know fundamental ah belief that you have when you say I'm a trader and here's what I'm coming into the market to do. someone else was able to capitalize off of your poor experiences. Why can't you do that regarding someone else's poor experiences? Right. And it's like if you want to sit here and bitch and moan about 2023 and how Bitcoin didn't get to $250,000 or altcoins didn't rally across the board or whatever, just remind yourself that in 2021 people said the exact same thing. Mm hmm.
01:03:59
Speaker
People always, it's so ironic to me because it's like, were you guys here? Because in 2021, the cycle that we compare to, to say that this cycle sucked, the cycle that we compare to, I clearly remember people being underwhelmed that Bitcoin only got to 69,000 and not Yeah. I clearly recall people saying, how come altcoin layer ones are rallying, but not my altcoins?
01:04:24
Speaker
How come defy coins are rallying, but not my defy coins? NFT mania doesn't count because it's so obscure. it's so odd. It's basically gambling. Yeah, right. Like it's the same shit, right? And we're talking about the same. It's the same kind of dynamics that get applied in markets all the time.
01:04:43
Speaker
And so if we want to keep going, I keep clearly recall people saying in 2020, 2021, oh, well, I didn't have a chance to buy Bitcoin at $1,000 like people did in 2017. Well, don't you think that people in 2017 said, oh, I didn't have a chance to buy Bitcoin under 100 like the people in 2014? Like, we can keep going, dude. I didn't have a chance to capitalize off of 2008 recession.
01:05:09
Speaker
I didn't have a chance to capitalize off of the dot-com bubble. I didn't have a chance to capitalize off the 1929 Great Depression. Like, who fucking cares, man? Like, be a man like or a woman and and pick yourself up and and start moving forward instead of looking backward. You're going to sit here and sulk about an opportunity that you missed. That's the exact same kind of mindset that ensures that you're going to miss the next one.
01:05:33
Speaker
Have fun, enjoy, right? Like if you want to keep doing that, it's easier to continue down that pessimistic path than it is to actually do something about it and change it so much easier.
01:05:45
Speaker
Most people aren't actually trading though. Most are just like hanging around and then waiting for it. that That's why people are so addicted to elseism because it's like they just want everything to go up again to be easy. And and also because why why bear markets are so devastating because even though you can make money on the on the downside, most people just like never even comprehend that. they They just want to buy stuff and make lots of money from it. And then when it's like getting less because asset class matures and people are like, hey, this is stupid.
01:06:14
Speaker
Yeah. But yeah, it it takes effort and skill. It doesn't just like fall into your hands, even though it did in the past, like sometimes. But then you also have to like go there and seek out the opportunities and be there at the right time and whatever. Like you you have to do something. It's just so that you're not just going to get rich by doing nothing.
01:06:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely, man. And it's like we also have a poor perception of what all of what 2021 was like Because people look back and and summarize it as alt season equals everything went up at the same time all the time.
01:06:44
Speaker
And that's not at all what happened. It was, it was DeFi summer, because if you weren't holding DeFi coins, you were not having fun. It was altcoin layer ones. It was Solana. It was AVAX. It was Harmony. It was this, it was that.
01:06:55
Speaker
If you weren't holding those assets, you weren't really having a great time. It was Ethereum based narratives because Ethereum was rallying. So any kind of like Ethereum beta, like Ethereum Classic, ENS, et cetera, et cetera, Uni, right, were all doing well. like It was that it was sub narratives within a greater bull market. So when people look at me and say, oh yeah, you only did this. what You only did well in this bull market cycle if you were skilled.
01:07:21
Speaker
Oh, yeah. You mean just like every other bull market ever in existence? yeah Like, yeah, you only did well if you were skilled, if you had some kind of, you know, Ability to ride narratives or foresee narratives or foresee catalysts or adapt to trends or, you know, rotations or whatever. Like, yeah, you're you're only going to do well in markets if you're if you're skilled or if you're investing in assets that historically go up long term and you have some kind of sense about you.
Adapting Skills to Market Evolution
01:07:48
Speaker
Hey, I've been accumulating silver for 15 fucking years as it's underperformed inflation. Now it's dramatically outperforming inflation in the span of four or five months and trading, you know, parabolically. Maybe it's time to cash in on all my hard work from the past decade. Like.
01:08:04
Speaker
yeah Yeah. So unless you're skilled and and good at markets, then, you know, you're not going to do well in markets. You mean just like any other venture, any other endeavor in the world ever? Like, and then people go, oh, yeah, but it was so much easier to make it in crypto in 2017. All that really means is the the skill set, the par level was lower.
01:08:26
Speaker
But what you don't realize is the par level was the par for the industry that it was at the time. So like compare this to, and you know, it doesn't mean it doesn't matter when I say it, but as soon as Kobe comes and says the exact same shit that I'm telling you right now, all of a sudden it makes sense to people. yeah Kobe is like, oh yeah, you know, it was so easy looking back in hindsight, but what you guys don't realize is Bitcoin going from $16 $100
01:08:55
Speaker
Right? Like we, we all thought that was like the craziest thing ever. Everyone's capitulating. Everyone's, you know, it's bull market mania. So you're holding people to a certain standard for what they, the skillset is at the time. And when you compare this and when when you analogize it, I don't know if you know anything about like and NBA basketball, but I've never heard a single fucking and NBA enthusiasts say that Bill Russell is the greatest basketball player of all time.
01:09:21
Speaker
Guy has 11 championships. but he played when you know nba basketball was like first coming up. It was incredibly early. He was basically one of like the um tallest people in the entire league. and you know He was playing against high school janitors, essentially, and he was like this like Goliath of a guy. and he won 11 championships. And when you ask people who's the greatest basketball player of all time,
01:09:47
Speaker
The next player to like, in terms of championships, not even close. they talk They talk about Michael Jordan or or LeBron James. So yeah, it's it's an evolving industry where the skillset gets greater because it's, you know, it's more materialized. It's, you know, more developed. There's now veterans in an industry. Not everybody's playing on an equal playing field in the sense that everyone's just as clueless as each other anymore.
01:10:13
Speaker
yeah People have picked up on things. There's you know algorithms that have been developed and it's just it's innovative. right and You have to adapt. So now it's harder to get into the and NBA than it was 70 years ago. It's like just like any other industry in the world, man. you You're not going to be good unless you're good. it's i don't know why people are shocked by that.
01:10:37
Speaker
I think that's a good good point to to wrap it up on. But yeah, very true. Also, I'm like kind of sitting in the dark here because I forgot to turn my lights on before. So do you have any any final, like did you already dropped a lot of wisdom, some but do you have any final words that you want to share with people before we say goodbye for today?
Closing Advice: Level-headed and Optimistic
01:10:57
Speaker
Um, final words. There's nothing new under the sun, man. There's nothing new. There will be another bull market again at the highs. People ask if, you know, there's ever going to be another bear market. And at the lows, people ask if altcoins will ever see another bounce ever again in existence. And the reality is you need to stay level.
01:11:16
Speaker
You need to remind yourself that even at the highest of the highs, you're not allowed to be in the clouds. And at the lowest of the lows, you're not allowed to you know dwell in that valley. So just stay level, stay grounded, approach the market objectively, do your best.
01:11:30
Speaker
You're not going to catch everything, but there absolutely is. There's more opportunity coming your way than what you've seen thus far. And that is perpetually the case, no matter how old you are, no matter. I mean, seriously, man, like where you're at in your crypto journey, your trading journey, your markets journey.
01:11:46
Speaker
even ah outside of markets, that's the mindset that I would beg people to carry with them into anything in life. yeah So um perpetual optimistic and the the greatest way to express abundance and and yield abundance is to start maximizing your gratitude for what you already have.
01:12:05
Speaker
And then I genuinely believe that the universe finds a way to reward you with abundance thereafter. And you can kind of create that mindset for yourself. It's not really so so much that the universe hands it to you. You kind of manifest your own reality. Right. So yeah, uh, there's nothing new under the sun or there's gonna be better days. You just wait for it and yeah, good luck.
01:12:29
Speaker
I completely agree. I think that's very good a very good statement, um especially considering all the AI doomerism and whatever that we have right now. Absolutely. don't want to get into that too much, but but I think this is a good way to think, and you should use should think more like that, whatever you see on on social media. and Yeah. Thank you very much for for coming on today. This has been a very fun time.
01:12:51
Speaker
Yeah. Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it. It has been fun. Of course. Goodbye, everyone.