Focusing On THIS Changed Everything to Get Wealthy with Stocks

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:00]They say it takes money to make money.

[00:00:01]Your first 100,000 is the most difficult. So, how do we achieve that first 100,000? There is long-term investing, which I truly believe everybody should take part in. And and then there's day trading. That's difficult. You can actually make money investing in things that you know, and you don't necessarily need insider information. Don't try to guess or break into an industry that you don't know.

[00:00:24]Fortune favors the brave. You have to be willing to take risks. Ultimately, the name of the game is capital preservation and risk management. If you don't have money, you can't participate. A lot of people want the quick gains, the big wins, and they do exist, but at the same time, long-term investing offers that as well.

[00:00:42]>> Before we get to today's chat, just a quick disclaimer. This content is for educational andformational purposes only, and by no means financial advice.

[00:00:51]All investors are encouraged to do their own due diligence and are responsible for their own investment decisions.

[00:00:57]Welcome back to Masters of the Market this week. I am joined by Mr. Joel Benjamin. I could not be more excited to have Joel on with us. Joel is a full-time day trader, but he is absolutely killing it in the space and I had to invite him on to share his story.

[00:01:15]So Joel, first question for you. What's your story and how did you get to where you are today? Well, thank you, Ari, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

[00:01:23]Um, true story, we did meet at a Mets game and that was really fun. We had a good conversation then and we're continuing that here now. So, to get into my background, I actually went to school briefly for business administration. That's not really what I continued in. From college after college, I got into solar, the solar industry, and I worked as a project manager for about four or five years.

[00:01:48]the entire time as a young single man just coming out of college working as a project manager. I had a little bit of money. I didn't have kids at the time, no wife, just as a young single man finding his way. I had a little bit of money and I wanted to find a way to increase that wealth and kind of build more capital. So, I invested and that's kind of the foundation for me of how I got into the stock market, into the financial game. My dad was a retail investor. He bought stocks and mutual funds over time and I kind of went to that same route. So I said, you know what, let me buy stock. Um, it started very just innocuously just kind of looking around. What can I buy? What do I think will be good? Not really understanding how to do any sort of fundamental analysis. Eventually, I saw a clip of Warren Buffett and this was ch life-changing for me. He said, "Invest in products that you know and use, things that you're familiar with.

[00:02:49]Don't try to guess or break into an industry that you don't know." For me, I grew up as a gamer. I played PlayStation, Xbox, that sort of thing.

[00:02:57]This was around the time that Sony was dropping the new PlayStation, PS5, I think. And I had bought stocks and held uh for years, but I never really had a big winner that really kind of indicated to me that, okay, this is something I can do full-time. So, I bought a bulk amount of shares of Sony because I knew that PlayStation 5 was coming. Now, there weren't many press releases. They weren't talking about it on Fox Business or CNBC, but I knew in the back of my mind, this is going to be huge. So, I don't remember the exact numbers, but the stock basically went from maybe like 65 bucks to north of 100. And it it ultimately had a 4 for one split. But that was one of the big wins for me that built some good capital and and showed me that, okay, you can actually make money investing in things that you know, and you don't necessarily need insider information. You just have to be familiar with the industry or a product.

[00:03:56]And that kind of gave me an inn. Uh just to fast forward a little bit, you know, through the COVID situation, I was actually living on the west coast in San Diego and I had moved back home to be closer to my father and family. So I got out of the solar industry and I was kind of thinking, do I want to bring solar back to Philly? It's not as prevalent on the East Coast. And in the back of my head was day trading. I wanted to be a day trader and I wanted to learn how to day trade. after COVID happened and we were on lockdown, I kind of just said, you know what, let's learn this. Let's teach myself. And if I could go back again and do it over, I would probably start with paper trading because it would save me a lot of heartache and money. But, um, I liquidated shares from my long-term portfolio and gave it a try. So, that's kind of the short story to from college to where I am now. Um, I didn't go to school for finance. I didn't go to school for uh you know investment banking or anything like that. So I am a bit of a autodidact in that way that I self-taught myself a lot of these things. But yeah and now fast forward to 2026 and I am a full-time day trader. So that's the end. I'll let you ask whatever else you like from there.

[00:05:11]Joe, what I like about your story and and I liked it when we spoke at the Mets game and I liked how you just explained it now. It's so simple and and the way that you broke things down at the game and the way that you're sharing things now. I mean it you really make it sound like anybody can get into the game of investing and there's so many people out there who are full of fear especially if we just take like right now there's a lot going on in the market you know energy war this that the other >> how simple is it to get into the game of investing these days? Is it just as simple as you made it sound when you first started?

[00:05:48]>> There are two different types of ways to get involved. There is long-term investing, which I truly believe everybody should take part in and have some sort of understanding of how to invest your money and how to recoup returns. And then there's day trading, which is actively trading, buying and selling on intraday markets. That's difficult, right? Learning how to day trade and especially day trading full-time can be very tough. It can be daunting. The barrier to entry is a little tough. But day trading or but investing is much easier. I think that it is it's tough because we don't have much financial literacy. They don't really teach you these things in school uh in public school and there aren't really many people out there showing you how to get started. And one of the most difficult aspects is initial capital.

[00:06:42]They say it takes money to make money.

[00:06:43]Your first 100,000 is the most difficult, right? So, how do we achieve that first 100,000? You got to take We have a phrase we like to say, no risk it, no biscuit. It's funny, but there's some truth to it. Fortune favors the brave. You have to be willing to take risks. Ultimately, the name of the game is capital preservation and risk management. If you don't have money, you can't participate. For the first one, for investing, I would say open a portfolio like Mumu or a Weeble or any of these guys and just put a hundred bucks in there and buy small into a company, follow it for a couple of weeks and just see how it fluctuates. You know, you don't have to. I I know that there are some assumptions that you need a lot of money to get started, but you really don't. Um, again, I wish I had started with a paper portfolio in the beginning when I switched from investing to trading because it would have saved me a lot of money and heartache in the beginning. Um, but you you don't need as much capital as as one would think. And again, just getting started is the hardest part because looking at charts and price action, it can be a little daunting. It can can be a lot for somebody who's new to this industry. If you start buying shares, if you watch a couple videos, get involved with a Discord server with a group of like-minded people, I it's it's actually easier than than you would think. And then on the other hand, you have day trading, right? Where I think prop firms make it easier for people with less capital to kind of get into the industry because a lot of prop firms are maybe, you know, they're they're not all built the same. Some are better than others, but with $100, you can get a eval and understand the functions of placing orders, moving your stop-loss, take profit, um intraday price action, how news affects the market in real time, and then you can kind of learn those lessons without risking large amounts of capital. So, it you got to be willing to to to do it, right? But ultimately, it's not as hard as people think. And you don't need as much capital as people think you would to get started.

[00:09:00]>> You know, it's it's funny because you threw out, you know, you need money to make money and which I actually just shared with someone the other day. I was just like, yeah, it totally makes you need money to make more money and and then on the other end, you really don't need that much money to start. So that question that becomes like which strategy do I run with? And a lot of people, I want to say like 90% of the people that I speak to, they have shared that they started off with day trading, lost boatloads of money.

[00:09:29]I'm not I'm not meant to be a day trader. Let me go the investing route.

[00:09:33]You started the actually the opposite.

[00:09:35]And oddly enough, you know, after our conversation at the Mets game, I have another good friend, uh, the humble trader, Shay. She she also crushes it in day trading. And I'm like, you know what? I built a portfolio that everybody, you know, in the YouTube community can see where that's north of now half a million and I feel comfortable at this level to get started actually testing the waters in day trading quite like and I'm not going to go full-time but like testing those waters. In your opinion, based on your experience, where you got to now, is it safer to start off as an investor and then become a day trader, like the route that I took, or is it maybe better to start off as the trader, throw money in and see what you can make, and then switch into investing?

[00:10:21]>> Start as an investor. And I'll tell you why. the the day-to-day fluctuations of an asset like like a stock like a share holding a share will fluctuate a lot less than buying futures you know on the futures market trading with a prop firm that moves much more it's much more volatile volatility is is it's a lot um so the type of capital you're starting with does matter but I think that if you start as an investor It kind of gives you that foundation that you need to understand how to place orders. You understand, you know, the markets uh from a macro perspective. You understand what a share is. You understand what a IPO is or what ETFs and mutual funds are. Investing is a good way to break into this industry.

[00:11:13]And then if you want to get a little more in depth, then I think trading is would be the next step. I think going from trading to investing, I think you would have a bit of an edge because trading is much more difficult in my mind. Fortunately, there are a million ways to trade and that's why what I love about day trading. Some people love penny stocks, the lowflat stocks where they look for breakouts or whatever it is. Some people love trading options.

[00:11:39]That's why I think the foundation of knowing how to invest ideally I think it should come first because let's say if you understand how to do fundamental analysis and look at balance sheets and determine if a country a company is overvalued or undervalued then you could say I like this let me buy into it or let me buy an option and the good thing about options are you can swing them so you don't have to get a contract that expires at the end of the day you can take a flyer and say where do I think this price will be in 3 months, 6 months and it gives you uh more cushion to kind of sit back and and watch the fluctuations. Uh whereas day trading it it's more precise. You're doing technical analysis where you're doing a lot of charting and Fibonacci sequences and a lot of things you know whatever indicator you like. Um, so I would definitely say investing is a better way to enter and give you that foundation. Um, and then ideally from there you would go to day trading. Not saying you can't do it the other way, but in my humble opinion, I would say invest first and then that'll give you kind of open the door for more complex trading. I now finally feel comfortable enough because I built up the foundation to get started with even looking in the direction of trading and and I've had a lot of fear around it.

[00:13:03]But rightfully so. I mean, you hear a lot of people lose money with day trading. You hear about, you know, these stories where it's like nine out of 10 are always negative, you know. So, I put it there. And I'm like, okay, well, and then and then you get the terminology is is it all it seems more complex, you know, and then you get a guy like yourself who teaches it and shares it with the community and even you say it's complex. So, what do you think is the biggest attraction with with day trading? And why do people rush to day trade before they actually understand investing?

[00:13:36]>> Social media is a huge factor in our day and age. And you see a lot of these gurus, these trading guys who say, "Look, buy my course." And you could be like me in the Ferrari with the chicks running around. You know, it's there's an allore there that kind of draws people in. And everybody wants fast money. You know, nobody wants to really put in the time and effort to understand how the market works or how to make money consistently. Something people ask me frequently is, "Is day trading gambling?" No, but it can be. You can trade the stock market in a way that's gambling, but with proper risk management in a good strategy, I don't believe it is gambling. Some people say anything you're doing where you don't completely know the outcome is gambling.

[00:14:21]I don't completely agree with that. I think it depends on how you trade the stock market. A lot of people want the quick gains, the big wins, and and they do exist, but at the same time, long-term investing offers that as well.

[00:14:35]So when people put in $100 today and in three or four months they see $150, that's not impressive. But over time, interest compounds. These small gains turn to big gains over the course of time because generally the stock market is going to inflate over time. It's going to build capital. People are going to invest more money into it. Um and then it takes more time, but you will ultimately see those returns. A lot of people need money now. And just like in that YouTube seminar we went to together, they said the biggest industry on YouTube or what was it the most searched uh topic is financial literacy.

[00:15:16]People want to understand money. People want to know how to make money. Of course, there's so much clickbait going around and people flash these big wins.

[00:15:24]So people say, "Oh, wow. I can make $1,000 in a day. Let's day trade." and but they don't consider the riskto-reward ratio or how much you're risking to make that $1,000, what type of initial capital you're putting into it. It's due to a lot of social media and a lot of influencers. Um, not all bad. You know, there are a lot of great guys like yourself. There's also a lot of people out there who flex profits and the lifestyle and that kind of brings people in and makes them think that, oh, maybe this is easy. If this guy can do it, I can do it without understanding the full picture. Day trading to me is like seemingly the quickest win, but in the spectrum of all strategies, like the max potential for max loss, like if you're not careful and you're following perhaps the wrong quote unquote guru.

[00:16:18]So, question for you. I mean, you are someone, like I said, you've built a strong community. You are full-time day trading, you're teaching trading, you're sharing your trades.

[00:16:28]What in your opinion makes the difference between a winner in this comm in these communities in the day trading communities and those who are really like flexing? Like how do we discern who's the winner? Who are the actual winners and who we should stray away from? How do we know who to trust?

[00:16:46]>> That's a good that's a good question. Um I don't want to see profits. I mean just at face value, I don't care about profits. I want to see win rate, right?

[00:16:55]What is your win rate over a long body of work? Right? Because it's not about the most profitable trader. It's about the most consistently profitable trader.

[00:17:04]Right? If I make 10,000 today and then lose 5,000, you know, every subsequent day of the week, it doesn't matter. I'd rather make 1,000 every day consistently and then when I lose, I lose small, just a couple hundred. I believe ultimately win rate is more of a flex than one uh P&L in a day. But the one skill that makes a good trader and this is something that I say to my community. I say I knew everything I needed to know to be a profitable day trader in year one. Right? Not saying I I knew everything, but I knew enough to be profitable in one year.

[00:17:45]From then it's about emotional regulation, risk management, right? And and how well you are in control of yourself. Discipline, discipline, discipline, discipline. That's it, right? So there are a couple of things that traders do like let's say you have three green days and three days in a row you make money, you have positive P&L, you're happy about it. The fourth day you come on, now you have a red day.

[00:18:11]Well, I don't like how that feels. let me try to continue trading. And I call it breaking out the golden shovel, right? You try to dig yourself out of a hole and you just make it worse. You have to be one okay with taking losses.

[00:18:24]That's a part of the game. Trying to not take red days is the equivalent of playing baseball and saying, "Every time I go up to bat, I'm going to hit the ball. And if I don't, if I strike out once, I can't handle that. I'm just going to keep swinging until I get a home run every time." It's not realistic. In baseball, what's a good batting average? 300. That means less that less than 30%, right, of the time you're hitting the ball. That's still incredible, right? In trading, the sweet spot would be about 68% win rate. 65 to 68% is really great. Anything above 68 is incredible, right? So, you have to one be okay with taking losses because that's a part of the game. And when you do lose, you have to lose small. You have to cut your losers quick. And because people do this, excuse me, they do this thing where they hold in hope where, oh, well, it's - 200. Oh, well, it's minus 300, 400, 500. Well, it'll come back. We'll be all right. And then it never does. You got to cut your losers before they start getting worse.

[00:19:30]And you have to let your winners ride and run. The inverse of that would be if you have a trade that's $1,000 in profit. Well, you're saying $1,000 one trade that that's great. And you take it and you end up selling yourself short and then it continues to run 2,000, 3,000, 4,000. So, you have to be willing to let your winners continue and run and you have to be willing to cut your losers quick and take that loss without trying to make it worse. I always say that discipline is not it it's not like speed. It's not like you're born with it or you're not. It's a muscle and you can literally build it over time. When you build discipline in one area of your life, it's applicable across the other areas. So, if you wake up every morning, you go to the gym, days you don't feel like it, you continue to go. That mentality is going to cross over into your trading. The best traders are not the ones with the biggest profit. It's the ones who are the most consistent, who are willing to stick to their rules over a long body of work. you build those wins and not to equate it to baseball again, but you get the base hits. You know, it doesn't have to be a home run every time. You get the base hits and then you build momentum. You build confidence in your strategy and over the the long course of time. That's how you build a good win rate every day of the week. That's more important to me than just showing uh a Lamborghini or whatever it may be. The consistency and the win rate. I got to ask, how did you personally build the discipline up? Was it by going to the gym and by outside factors that then factored into investing?

[00:21:03]>> So, I was an athlete as you can see my uh this is my high school jersey behind me. Um I played, you know, when I was a kid, my mom made me try everything. Rock climbing, swimming, baseball, basketball, football, soccer, tennis, and I stuck with football cuz that's what I was the best at. But I did learn discipline from that, from having team sports, having that camaraderie.

[00:21:25]Camaraderie is another thing that that really matters. Having like-minded people around you, surrounding yourself with other individuals who want to accomplish similar goals. Initially, yeah, the sports discipline, going to the gym, going to Muay Thai, jiu-jitsu is something else I do. Not to pat myself on the back, but um yes, the discipline did translate from team sports. With that being said, you still have to learn the discipline because this is a different type of discipline.

[00:21:54]Even just showing up every day is not enough, right? Like that's one part of it. But you have to be willing to say if I lost today, it's okay. I'm not going to let it dictate my emotions for the rest of the day. I'm not going to let it ruin my whole day, but I'm also most importantly not going to go back and try to make it better and try to recoup that loss immediately or try to double the size of my trade than I normally do because it's like, oh well, let me dig myself out of the hole and make a little extra on top. So, yes, in a lot of ways it did translate um from playing sports and from going to the gym. It does. It absolutely does. At the same time, you also have to teach yourself that and build it. And that's why like when I have guys in the community, I try not to it's a fine line of trying to not discourage people, but also you have to be realistic because it's not for everybody. Not everybody can be a successful day trader. I truly believe in my heart of hearts, everyone can be a successful investor. Day trading is not the same. Not everybody can be a day trader. You can buy a stock, hold it over a long period of time, set it, forget it, and just let it do its thing regardless of how disciplined you are. But day trading is a whole different beast. Again, I do think the discipline translates from other areas of in your life and um it is a skill that can be honed and and built up over time with training. I would imagine, you know, coupled with the discipline from the gym, I mean, just the way that you speak about the losses even, it's it's just very, you know, even keel balanced.

[00:23:37]I feel like the only way to get to the level of balance and real true discipline that you have and this is applicable to to life all of life really in my opinion is you must have gone through some real losses you know as a as a day trader to to get to this like oh it's like a massive learning curve this is how that feels but then you also know like you know a good day at the gym incredibly sore this is how that feels and I'm going to show up tomorrow or I'm going to show up in another two is and keep at it. And so, could you talk to us about some of the losses that you've experienced that hit you like nothing else and it was like, should I re-evaluate what I'm doing here? Am I good enough for this? And the flip side of that script, you talked about some of your wins.

[00:24:23]>> Yes, absolutely. So, I have a hole in my, if I turn the camera, there's a hole right here in this wall in my closet door. This is my office, right? And it's it's the second bedroom which I converted to the office. And there's a hole in that door. This door's off the tracks. I mean, I I might as well have a punching bag in here. I have taken some losses. I have sent pictures in the family group text of my knuckles being bloody cuz I've punched something else. It's not always like that, but I've had those exceptional, glorious losses where it's like, ow. It it it's a physical hurt where you can feel it.

[00:25:02]That's why when I say I've put blood, sweat, and tears into trading, I quite literally have in every measure of the sense. Like, yeah. So, I I remember having a Jeez. So, on prop firms, you can trade 50ks, 100ks, 300ks, all this. I mean, I've had maybe like a $24,000 loss in one day. And this is this was early on where I was trading with a really large prop accounts and I had a couple of really big days and I was I was building the account and I had a good amount of capital in there and I was on like a fiveday win streak, right? Just 5,000 here, 7,000 here, 10,000 here and I'm like, "Oh, wow." Like, and this is, mind you, this is not the numbers I'm usually like trading. So then I come in and and because of the size of the account, I'm sizing much larger than I typically would.

[00:25:56]Now I'm like, "Okay, I'm almost getting ready for payout." And then I go in and I lose a couple thousand. So I'm like, "Okay, well, let's make it back. Let's make it back." And then you lose another five. And then you're like, "Well, let's triple our our our sizing so we can make it all back handsome." And then you make it worse. And you watch $24,000 go out of your account. It makes you physically sick. Man, I couldn't believe it. I was like, I had to go outside, walk around the neighborhood, and just touch grass because I was so livid, my friend. I mean, and and the funny thing is like with all of my long-term positions in stock that I have long term, it's fluctuated a whole lot, but I never really have the same amount of anguish or despair over losses because I know ultimately they will recover, which they always have, right? Even in stock market crashes, it always recovers. And when it does, it recovers even stronger.

[00:26:57]Whereas in day trading, never ever have I lost $24,000 in one day. And it's not like I went out and bought a car or went to the Gucci store and bought like whatever. This is just gone. Boom. Nothing to show for it.

[00:27:12]Yes. So, and that takes some I feel like those losses don't make you question if you're in the right place. It just quite makes you like there's a thing called revenge trading as you know where you want to get it all back and you think the market is like this sentient being where you're trying to get revenge and you're trying to get get your get back but there's when you lose that type of money you feel like okay I have to get it back for my own respect for myself like I have to do it because I have to prove the market wrong and I have to prove myself that I can do it. So, I've went through those mental roller coasters, the mental gymnastics where you're like, and of course, everybody questions, is this for me? You know, um, and in those times, those moments of questioning myself or if this is the right thing for me, I just go back to the winds and I say, "Well, geez, what the hell was I doing with $24,000 in that account in the first place?" You know, and if I can lose that much, then I can make it again. And most people aren't making $24,000 in a day. So, as painful as it is to know that you lost that in one sitting, it's that's still pretty not too shabby knowing that, okay, well, I lost 24 grand in a matter of minutes. That's that's still pretty good, especially the fact that I had that capital in there in the first place. Um, to speak to some of my wins, dude. Um, so I know you you work with Defiance, right? Like I I did look at that oil fund, USOY, I believe.

[00:28:51]I do really like that fund. I really do.

[00:28:53]I think it's it's priced fairly. That's another thing. But I love ETFs. I have an ETF called Soxel, right? Soxel I bought and I and I have it here. Um, it's on my phone, but I bought in Sockil maybe around like like $20, $24. It's now at $120. Now, Soxel is a ETF that basically does semiconductors and microprocessors. I just averaged in over time. I mean, this particular portfolio that I have, I I've had the same portfolio with it was TDM trade before I turned to Schwab. Um, and then I sent some of the stocks to Weeble. Now I'm I really like to use mumu more, but that's a different thing. But yeah, I mean, it's north of six figures. I mean, I've been trading or investing since 2016.

[00:29:47]Um, and the cool thing about investing is one day it just hits you and it's so much more money than you initially put in and you're just like, "Wow, like that really compounded over time. That really grew." and it it it just goes up over time. So that's the one thing I do appreciate about investing. You know, every time I got my salary from solar, just buy more shares, buy some Nvidia.

[00:30:12]Everybody hates on Kramer and they have the, you know, the running joke is the inverse Kramer, but Kramer gave me some great picks. You know, I Kramer was the one who showed me Nvidia, who that's, you know, how I first heard of Nvidia and really knew to kind of invest in it.

[00:30:28]and year to date probably made 20 20,000 worth of returns on Nvidia. I sold a bunch of Nvidia last year when there was like a dip but I wish I had held and it would have been a lot more. Sony that Sony play I probably made 12,000 which for me at the time was like unbelievable. I couldn't believe how much it had gained value in such a short amount of time. And you know, not to get too far off topic, but going back to the Warren Buffett quote, when I heard about GTA 6, the new Grand Theft Auto game, they had a trailer maybe two years ago, almost a year and a half ago. What's the first thing I do? Who is the parent company of Rockstar? Take 2 Interactive.

[00:31:17]I go and buy 10 shares of Take Two Interactive. Now it's only probably 2500 in the profit now because I didn't buy that many shares and it's been hovering around the same price a little consolidated but hopefully when the game drops this year it's going to be a big winner you know so again buy things that you know buy products and goods and services and industries that you know and are familiar with. Um, but I have had all manner of wins and losses in both the stock market and in day trading. But I will say the long-term invest investing losses never hurt quite as much as the intraday losses because those ones you feel in real time that you've made a mistake that you know like this one's on me. If the general bias of the stock market is bearish and you lose money over the course of a week or a month, it's like, okay, I can I can handle that. I can withstand that and I can reasonably assume that it's going to come back. With day trading, when you you do something stupid and you know, it's like you're sitting here telling yourself, "Don't make this trade. It's just going to make it worse." And you still make the trade. That's when you're like, "Shame on me. Shame on you know, like and those ones hurt a lot worse.

[00:32:36]>> What Joel hasn't told us is that that jersey hanging on the wall, there's actually a massive hole behind it.

[00:32:45]>> No. No.

[00:32:45]>> Yeah. Oh, yeah. Everywhere, bro.

[00:32:48]>> He's just covering >> everywhere.

[00:32:50]>> All the holes in the wall. I feel like this episode should have a disclosure, you know, like warning, you know, day trader truths of a day trader. But what's what's interesting is the fact that >> you have these crazy losses with day trading, but the way that you talk about investing is like this this like, you know, love, you know, you're like in love with investing but lustfully day trading. And so I I got to ask like because I even just earlier today I Shane >> that's a really good way to put it.

[00:33:24]>> It's like flirting with day trading but in love with investing, you know? Sheay had posted something earlier today to the likes of like her returns over whatever 10 years and like she kind of did one of those Instagram post the swipes and you could see like year one, year two and and I took a quick glance at that. Year one she lost money, year two she lost money, year three she lost money, year four she made money, year five and six she made money. And it got like the years of making money were progressively like these crazy jumps, progressively more each year. But year one through three, I mean total losses.

[00:34:02]And first of all, kudos to her and kudos to you and all the other day traders who keep at it and keep learning. At the end of her post, she she like shared something along the lines of at first she was using like 14 different strategies and trying to learn who she was as a day trader and you kind of shared something now similar to that where it's like you're trying to learn how to do this whole thing, what works for you and then eventually you start making money once you get into this focus and and then you mentioned discipline and the fact that yes, day trading is hard but the rewards can show up because your account, you know, just watching people day trade and having a couple day traders on even previously to you, they had these crazy days. So, what is it about day trading that keeps you coming back to it? Is it the crazy days that you can have? Is it like because in again investing your your big wins that you mentioned were in investing, but the fun seems to come from the day trading. So, so is that what it is? Is like the the fun factor?

[00:35:07]So, as we spoke a little bit about when we had met, I am a bit of an adrenaline junkie and there is a bit of that.

[00:35:16]>> We still got to go skydiving, man. We still It's on the list.

[00:35:19]>> Racing, dirt biking, UAVs, at all of it.

[00:35:23]We got to do it all, brother.

[00:35:24]>> So, we're going to make a video on that by the everyone. Joel and I are going to do all this is a crazy trip. Hopefully, end of the year. A lot of videos to come. But, but go ahead.

[00:35:34]>> Yeah, we'll be like uh what's that show?

[00:35:36]the British guys, the GT where they go around and drive all the cars in in every country. Yeah, that'll be us.

[00:35:42]>> Menist to society.

[00:35:44]>> Exactly. Exactly. Um, so there's a phrase that's that that we have in trading that says trading is not easy, but it's simple. And that's so true because it's difficult. It it it's complex. It is in all of its complexity and all of its intricacies.

[00:36:04]it can be very simple and the the people who simplify their strategies have the most success. So like another thing and so just to preface this I'm in a discord server team alpha trading I am a moderator I am a coach I go live every day at market open and um you know I have one-on-one students and such and what I found is that when people start trading they go on this crazy witch hunt for indicators for strategies right what indicator is going to make me a better trader let me go on Trading View and look at a thousand indicators, back test them all uh 10 years and see which one's going to make trading the easiest for me. And let me tell you, none of them work. It's like, and here's a great analogy. It's like football players, right? If you are a great wide receiver and you have good hands and you put on the gloves, it's going to it's going to give you a little bit of an edge, but ultimately you have good hands and you're a good receiver. If you're not a good receiver and you can't catch the ball, putting on sticky gloves is not going to make a difference. It's a tool.

[00:37:09]These are tools to be used in conjunction with your strategy, not replacing your strategy. Right? So the VWAP, vertical weighted average price indicator, any type of estimated moving average, MACD, RSI, all these indicators, there's what we call analysis paralysis. If you look at too many indicators and you see too many things, one indicator will tell you, oh well, it'll give you confirmation of your thesis and the other indicator will give you conflicting um thesis, right? It'll say something different. And then you'll be like, wait, what do I do now? Because this indicator says this, this one says this.

[00:37:49]Ultimately, you want to pick for for day trading, pick two assets, two commodities, and get to know them intimately, deeply, really well. For me, it's NASDAQ and ES uh Q's SPY, whatever you want to call them. I trade the future, the NASDAQ, and SPY futures essentially. And I get to know them really well. I've looked at them for years. I know them like the back of my hand. I know um the little type of uh characteristics they have on pullbacks, what they like to do at support, the close and opens of fiveminute candles.

[00:38:31]Sometimes people, and I see this, they get too caught up in looking at a million different uh futures and saying, "I want to trade this. Oh, well, there's a setup here. No, I want to trade that and this." And it's you can't do that.

[00:38:45]You have to get really good at one thing and perfect that because I will see people who use, okay, I use this strategy. I'll do the 15minute orb today. Tomorrow I'll do a break and retest. Now I'm using ICT concepts here.

[00:39:00]And now you have all these different strategies getting convoluted and and the win rates will be all over the place because you might be using the right strategy on the wrong day and the wrong strategy on the right day and then you won't know. So ultimately you have to pick one maybe two good strategies and you have to just repeat it and get good at it and and do it over and over and over. So you know not just the characteristics of the asset you're trading, but you know yourself and your own behaviors and how you react to it when it does that. You know what you're looking for. So once you have your strategy down pat like really well, then the indicators can be an additional tool to help you kind of get the confirmation of what you're looking for. But you don't want to solely rely on any sort of indicator or strategy or you know tool to to trade for you. That's not going to work. And with investing, of course, you can look at more more uh assets, more stocks, more industries because it's good to be diversified. Diversification, I feel like, is much more important in long-term investing in like a long-term portfolio.

[00:40:14]Even so, you don't want to have too much. I have uh probably 10 stocks in my portfolio, like four ETFs, six stocks, and I'd really like to trim some fat off of that if I could even so because I want to have a couple industries. I have cyber security, I have tech, I have oil and other uh supply chain mechanisms for like AI like data centers and water and cooling plants and that sort of thing.

[00:40:44]So, you really want to and even if you're not buying these shares, you want to look at the company, put them on your watch list, and if you're considering buying it, look at it. Pull it up over every day over the course of the week, see what what's the price. And even if and here's the cool thing about AI, you don't need to understand PE ratios and how to do fundamental analysis. You could just punch it into chat GPT and it'll tell you if it's fairly priced, undervalued, overvalued, whatever. Um, and then you say, "Look, if it's a $100 a share, I like this company, but I'm gonna wait till it goes to $80 a share."

[00:41:19]If it does, boom, buy it when it gets to 80. And if it never hits 80, you don't buy it. It's that simple. I equate it to a bus. If you miss the bus, it's okay.

[00:41:29]There's another one every 15 minutes, right? Let the bus go. Don't go chasing after the bus. We don't chase Price.

[00:41:35]Price chases us.

[00:41:38]>> I like that. I I got to ask, you know, about your overall strategy because you you dabble in both investing and and day trading, full-time day trader, but like again, you get you're an investor as well. So, it it sounds to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds to me like you have a massive um foundation built through investments and then you use some of your capital in day trading.

[00:42:04]So, what exactly like what's your actual portfolio look like? What percentage would you recommend somebody like even I myself as I'm considering as of the LA last week I started thinking about and started talking about getting into day trading just to see what this whole hype is all about. Uh so everyone stay tuned you know for my holes in my wall happens but what would you recommend for somebody you know okay do they take like 10% of their portfolio to day trade with is it all in 100% what what exactly is your strategy there >> well everybody's working with different amounts of capital so I don't want to speak to like a specific percentage of your portfolio what I would say is um The prop firms are really cool. If you're okay with trading futures, I would say 100% start with a prop firm.

[00:42:58]The one thing I would recommend not to do, and it doesn't matter if you have a six-figure portfolio or 50K, I would say don't go into a margin account from the beginning. If you're especially if you're new to trading, you don't want to lose your ass off and then all of a sudden you got a margin call now, right?

[00:43:15]You want to work with a cash account.

[00:43:17]And if you're going to trade with your own money, I would say learn options because options are so great because the option chain gives you a lot of opportunity to be wrong. So let's say if you buy a zero expiration, like a same day expiration option contract, there's something called theta. For those of you out there who don't know uh Greeks and all that, theta eats the value of your contract the closer it gets to the expiration. So let's say it goes down and you buy a call and you want price to go up, but it goes down before it goes up. You still might not make that much because it went it it you know consolidated a bunch before it went in your direction. Whereas if you buy something that expires in 3 weeks now it gives you opport time for the stock to fluctuate for it to go up and down and the the theta burn isn't as significant and then you can ultimately be right.

[00:44:12]Um, so I like options with a cash account because you can trade the same stocks that you've known your whole life. You know, the Teslas, the QQQs, the SPY, the Invidas, and Microsofts, and so on and so forth. Um, and you can buy as many contracts as you want. You can buy one contract, you can buy 20 contracts, and it'll give you an opportunity to learn. Now, how much of your portfolio? That's really up to you.

[00:44:40]How much are you willing to risk? Um, I think the RNR is more important on the trade itself than the, you know, like the size of your portfolio, right? I would say like if you most people, let's say you have a $10,000 portfolio, just something humble, right? I wouldn't I would put maybe $1,000,500 in a cash account because that way if you lose you can lose small and you can always put more funded right. The great thing about prop firms are and not all of them are created equal. So, it does do some due it requires some due diligence to find a good prop firm, but with $100, you buy an Eval and you know, for those of you who aren't familiar with prop firms, you buy a test, you make, you know, 3,000, whatever the profit target is, and then you have an opportunity to make payouts.

[00:45:33]This way, you're only putting out $100 of your own capital, and the upside potential is so much greater. Now, there are people that fail the test and $100, fail it, $100, fail it. That's some degenerate behavior. We we don't want that. If you fail a test, maybe you need a little bit more practice before you you start taking trades. And maybe it would behoove you to open a paper account and learn. But there's so many ways now that you can get into trading without footing a huge bill, right? So, prop firms are one great way. just a h 100red bucks for eval or uh anywhere from 100 to you know 300 depending on the size of the account and you don't have to use the max size if you buy in a 50k account and the max amount of contracts are five just do one play with the stop-loss play with your take profit interact with the software get to know it intimately so that you you can understand what you're getting into right that's the first thing um capital preserv vation is really everything.

[00:46:38]Risk management, right? If you don't have money, you can't participate. So, you have to protect the bank. Um, so prop firms are a great way. Um, you know, day trading stocks really aren't going to make you so much money unless you have large amounts of shares like a hu really huge portfolio.

[00:46:59]But the way to participate in these big companies like the Magna, Mag 7 and others is through options. So, I like options because if you buy a $1,200 contract, that's all you can lose is the value of that contract. It's not on a margin account. It's not going to start eating into your portfolio. You're not going to be on the hook and have to give up shares from your portfolio because you lost too much. Um, most guys I see start with penny stocks. They they Here's the progression I see the most often is penny stocks, options, futures, right? And that's kind of the same progression I took. However, I still trade options, but I trade options a little differently. I swing options. I like to look at a daily chart or a 4hour chart, kind of look at the financials, see how the industry is doing, and then say, you know what, I think by summer the price of this will be here, and then I'll take a swing at it for, you know, like a a three-month play or something a little bit longer term for the futures.

[00:48:04]Yeah, I'm doing that on a sometimes it could even be a scalp. Sometimes my trades are less than a minute, sometimes they're a half an hour depending on the price action. But for new new people, I would say get a paper portfolio for testing strategies and theories. Um, and then try working with a prop firm because if you can understand futures trading and intraday futures, I think it'll make everything else much easier.

[00:48:33]And the options chain is a bit that's a whole different ball of wax. It can be a little daunting, but ultimately the options chain is just different ways to participate in the stock market. So if you know how to do your technical analysis and how to buy and sell on futures, it'll make everything a little bit easier.

[00:48:55]>> I like the approach and and I really respect and appreciate, you know, everything you shared. I just want everyone to know like even for me, someone who who has amassed the portfolio that I did, I'm not throwing in like tens of thousands of dollars because I'm I'm humble enough right now in this moment to say I'm a total newbie. I got to learn from guys like Joel and and uh traders like Shay and and really like understand what I'm getting myself into. So yeah, paper trading is like first on the list from paper trading just a couple thousand dollars, you know, it's like not even a 1% right, of the portfolio. And I feel like it's just what you shared is so important because everybody tries to blitz in with like a whole paycheck.

[00:49:40]And uh I would think that's that would be like one of the most common mistakes that people make across the board. even if you're investing, you you just throw money in without knowing what you're doing. So, I'd love to ask you, uh, Joel, what do you think is is the most common mistake amongst all investors, all day traders? Like, if we had to narrow this down to one common mistake that most people who are going to get into the market in some way, shape, or form make, what would it be?

[00:50:11]>> Okay, this is a great question, but first I just want to touch on something else briefly. Um the trade is the trade and what I mean by that is if you take if you find support at a level and this is like a technical term if you find support at this level and you take a long here and you put your stop loss here and you look for three or four to one odds right whether you're sized in at $5 a tick 50 cents a tick or $500 a tick the trade is the trade right so if you can get good at executing your strategy scale is the easy part, right?

[00:50:47]The same trade that makes you 50 bucks today could make you $50,000 in a year or two. So once you understand how to do your and support and resistance, that's more technical, but support and resistance is the foundation of everything. If you can get that down and then get your strategy down, sizing up is is just the click of a button, right?

[00:51:08]So the difference between a trader who makes millions and a trader who makes thousand really isn't as great as people think, right? Sometimes it's just a matter of taking that risk. And again, the trade is the trade. If you get good at executing your strategy with a $500 portfolio and you get really good at it, then just size up and now you can do the same thing with a $50,000 portfolio. So that's one. two. I think the biggest problem people make, now I'm going to split this into two answers because there's one answer for day trading and one for investing. For investing, they look at the micro perspective as opposed to the macro. People get zeroed in on what's happening today and the 24-hour news cycle is partially to blame.

[00:51:57]Everything is fear-mongering. You know, we got to get viewership, we got to freak people out. So, a lot of people get scared out of their positions. Um, you might see something on YouTube and it's like, "Oh, wow. This is really great." And then a day later, you're like see something different. You're like, "Wait, maybe I should do this."

[00:52:14]And then you keep switching. Sometimes you just got to make a play and live or die by the trade and just let it play out because again, I mean, the the surge we had, I don't know if people were watching the markets on Friday, we hit a bunch of new all-time highs, right? And just four months ago, we were in the toilet. We were, you know, the market was completely flipped. So, a short amount of time can make so much difference. You know, um don't history repeats itself.

[00:52:49]So, there's a lot of times where you see similar things happen and people say, "Look, don't hold, hold, don't sell, don't sell. the market will come back and they get and like it's easy to just sit here and say that sometimes people their livelihoods are attached to their accounts and if you see your account dwindle from six figures to 60 to 20 you don't want to walk away with nothing. So it's easier said than done. I get that.

[00:53:15]But ultimately trying to have a macro perspective um you know other than a micro perspective really is an advantage in investing because people look at the short term but investing is a long-term game. It's not the short term. So that would be the biggest mistake I would say for investing. People kind of get scared out of positions or you know greed can be a factor. they take profits too early, which, you know, I've done both of these mistakes. Um, for day trading, I'd say it's revenge trading, right? Not being able to take losses to incur red days.

[00:53:55]If you take a loss, take it on the chin and live to fight another day because that's just a part of the game, right? I see this time and time again. People take losses and instead of taking a $200 loss, they'll blow their whole account, their entire portfolio because they couldn't handle a $200 red day. So, red days are part of the game. You You have to be willing to take losses and and bounce back from them.

[00:54:23]>> It's solid advice. I I feel like both both pieces of advice, I mean, are applicable to even life in of itself.

[00:54:30]It's like life is going to hit you some days. That's just how it's going to be.

[00:54:33]How do you react? And sometimes the best way to react is just to sit down, you know, like >> Yeah, >> just just the other week, you know, I as someone who's not a day trader, but similar reaction. It was like the market, you know, is going down. I just threw 40 grand into a position of mine, one of my positions, and then like the next day it came down a little bit. My reaction was like, ah, you know, I should have waited and you know, but like there's no way I could have predicted it was going to come down tomorrow, you know. Now it's right back up. So what you shared is so important. It's like that long-term perspective and then just sit down and and even to the people who I think are going to have those like visceral reactions where you you mentioned you wa you're watching your account, you're freaking out, you got to make a move. Perhaps those those investors I hate to say it. I don't even want to say investor. I want to say people shouldn't have so much money in the market until they really learn this discipline we spoke about earlier. This this ability to sit in emotional disarray because that just crushes people. Doesn't matter if you're a day trader or you're an investor. If you can't sit with your emotions, let alone even investing. If you can't sit with your emotions in life, you're done. You know, like you're good luck handling life itself.

[00:55:55]Joel, I'd love to know in terms of what you see. I mean, we are literally in the midst, I think, of a really interesting point in time. Uh, because there's going to be a new Fed chair coming in, Kevin Worsh, and he is like gungho about lowering rates. Uh, en the en the entire energy sector is like a whole different animal right now. Um, there's just so much in the air. I've heard a lot of hedge fund managers and people on Wall Street share that the next half of this year being 2026 here is going to be nuts. A lot of them are saying it's going to be like a big end of the year.

[00:56:36]I am I'm bullish as well on on what everything looks like, but I'm curious from your positioning, what do you think's coming up for us at the end of the year, the second half of 2026?

[00:56:48]So, we have the SpaceX IPO, which is a big thing. Everybody's raving about that. Um, I think it's a great company, but I like to look at it like like an advertisement. What are you trying to sell me? Why is the timing now? Why are you having a IPO now? And we look at history when you have the Iraq war, COVID, why does the stock market keep going up, right? despite all of these economic failures, um we are, make no mistake, in the midst of an economic crisis by my standards. Um cost of living is out of control. Um jobs numbers, inflation, that's uh there's a lot going on. Um but timing is really everything. Um, for the first time in a long time, generally there's like a 7030 split on the consensus of where we're going or how the market sentiment is going to flow. Right now, it's 50/50.

[00:57:48]People think, "Oh, it's the end of the world. 2026, everything is going to burn, crash." Other people think, "Oh, we've already corrected and we're just going to keep climbing higher." What I would say is I don't know. Ultimately, I don't know. I don't have a crystal ball, but the best way to insulate yourself from, you know, to recession proof your port portfolio is to get assets that are mandatory. um you know the waters, the oils, the technical components of a lot of these computer softwares uh computers that we use like semiconductors, microprocessors, um coal, um Old Dominion Freight Lines is a stock I've had for years and ultimately sold. Um waste management is one that I have currently. You know, there's always going to be trash and waste management has been one of my top performers over the years. So you have to find try and find a way and this is simple enough. talk with AI, you know, um, compare it to what other AI say, compare it with your buddies, talk to them, say, "How do I recession proof my portfolio?" What are, you can ask a simple question, and I've went through this series of, you know, dialogue before. What are industries that survived COVID that basically uh increased their market cap during past uh pandemics or other crazy situations and how can I position myself now to kind of protect and insulate from that moving forward? And a lot of the answer is just supply chain. You know, if you look at any of the components to getting you whatever it is, your food, uh, fertilizers, uh, precious metals, um, you have to invest in things that are going to survive whatever the fallout may be. Um, so it does take some due diligence, some research. I think that it's it's tough because there's one component. There are a couple components. There's the pro dollar which now is a really big situation going on with the straight of Hormuz and um we basically put Iranian sanctions on Iran and that damaged their ability to buy and sell on the petro dollar to exchange oil via the dollar. So they started selling outside of the dollar and doing it via shadow cryptocurrencies and and such. Um, and you know, some people articulate that's why the war is happening regardless. Um, that's one component. And then you also have tokenization of assets, which is another huge thing where you hear guys like Larry Frink and Jamie Diamond talking about the tokenization of assets. Now, I'm still trying to understand how it's going to affect the market. Would this cause the market to go up? Would it cause it to spike or crash? I don't really know the implications, but what I do know is that assets like um what's the crypto that everybody loves? The um the peer-to-peer transactions um I forget the crypto, but you got to find again the infrastructure that makes these things happen, the supply chain that makes these things happen. You have to find those companies and invest in those and then diversify yourself. And when d I mean diversify, I mean get a couple of companies in the sector, get a Defiance ETF like QM. And it's funny because I've owned QM before I even met you. And that's a Defiance quantum technology uh uh mutual fund or ETF. Um so that's the best way to kind of inflate your portfolio. You really don't want to be holding money, right? You don't want to hold cash. You're going to get a better return. And this goes back to something that's very fundamental.

[01:01:46]You're going to get better returns just keeping your cash in a stock portfolio.

[01:01:51]Even without buying stock, you're going to get a better return than in a high yield savings account, right? So, you don't want to be cash heavy. You want to be diversified. You really want to get buy assets because assets are rapidly increasing in value. Um, and then trading, it doesn't matter as much because you can always short in trading.

[01:02:12]So if everything goes, you know, uh if crap hits the fan, you know what I mean? You can always take a short and make money going short. So it's it's not as bad with trading. But people who are holding long-term stocks, you really want to try to find pinpoint the markets that are recessionp proof and and kind of insulate your portfolio from a potential correction or crash or what have you. But the truth is, you know, I really don't know how 2026 is going to play out. I do foresee another correction. Um because I I'm trying to compare the market movement to COVID and other um kind of equivocal situation. I know the Iran war is not the same as COVID, but you can kind of compare the same market movements and try to anticipate what's going to happen. I think we're going to continue to inflate for another couple months. And I would anticipate um and here's also with the SpaceX IPO, right? Why are they choosing to go public now? I think and you see this with a lot of IPOs, people pour in money in the beginning, it kind of gets a bit rugpulled, you know, it dumps and then that's the rebound and ultimately it climbs back higher. So, personally, my I'm placing my bet on more uh the market will continue to to grow till sometime after the summer. Um sometime around fall, we'll probably see a big correction and then we'll continue to go up. Um but again, there are so many other components and factors that aren't um calculated into this thesis like tokenization of assets, like the pro dollar. So, everything changes very quickly. So we'll we'll we'll have to check in in 6 months and and see how well this prediction did.

[01:04:06]>> So say really build yourself like an all-weather type of portfolio that you can sit comfortably in any storm. Uh it's really what it sounds to me you you were sharing Joel. It's been a powerful hour with you both on the the day trading front and but also the investing front and I think you offer a lot of good insights. Uh if anybody wants to connect with Joel, his community will be linked down in my description in pin comments. So definitely connect with Joel, get into his community. Very insightful guy. It was an honor to meet you at the uh the Mets game. But more importantly, it's just been a pleasure to uh to get to know you on a more personal front now having you on Masters of the Market. I'm sure you'll be back on. So I want to say thank you for joining us for the first time on Masters of the Market. And until next time, investors, Joel and I will catch you in the next