Chat With Traders

This week I thought I’d change things up a little bit, and reverse the interview. So instead of firing questions at the guests like I normally do, I’m on the receiving end and giving the answers.If you’ve had the chance to listen to EP 001, then you may recall I gave a brief overview right at the beginning, explaining where I was at with my trading. Well things have gradually progressed since then, so I thought this would be a good milestone to update anyone who is curious to know.So to keep things interesting I brought on Zach Hurwtiz, who I’m sure you’ll remember from EP 011 of the podcast, and he’ll be the one asking questions. Zach’s a great friend of mine, and is continually guiding me along to becoming a better trader through regular coaching and mentoring, so I couldn’t think of anyone better for the job.Plus, Zach also expands on many of my responses with additional insight, so all in all I hope you find this episode to be valuable in its own unique way.And just before we get into it, if you have any questions or comments for either Zach or myself, just go to chatwithtraders.com/25, scroll to the bottom of the page and leave a comment. Both Zach and I will be monitoring this closely to respond and answer.Alright team, enjoy and lets talk soon. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

On the show this week, my guest is Ivan Hoff!An equities trader of 10 years, who tackles the market with a swing trading approach to capture powerful, short-term gainers that may run anywhere between 3 - 10 days.While swing trading is his bread and butter, Ivan also allocates a portion of his capital to position trading, when he has reason to believe a trend will continue for the longer term.He's written several books including 'The 5 Secrets to Highly Profitable Swing Trading' and 'The Next Apple' which was a collaboration with Howard Lindzon (the co-founder and CEO of Stocktwits).Plus, Ivan is regularly featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Yahoo Finance, Traders Magazine and he's a familiar face amongst the Stocktwits community.Now, continue listening to learn about Ivan's trading methodology, one of his high probability swing setups, the importance of following industry momentum, and a whole lot more... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I was fortunate enough to speak with David Bush, an extraordinary, seasoned trader with 20 years experience in financial markets.David comes from a non-traditional background, and what I mean by this; he has no formal education in the field of finance. In fact, he is a music graduate and performed as a professional musician for many years.But as you’re about to hear, David changed paths during his twenties to become a trader. After overcoming the initial challenges that all new market participants endure, David did well for himself as a discretionary trader for many years.But with an urge to optimize his trading approach he gradually transitioned into a quantitative trader and went searching for new ways to exploit opportunities within the market. From there David has gone on to take out the number one spot of BattleFin’s ‘Sharpe Ratio Shootout’ (an international quantitative finance tournament), with over 3000 competitors.During our interview David brings a really insightful take to topics such as the transition from discretionary to quantitative trading, how to eliminate a single point of failure by trading multiple systems, and how the Monte Carlo tool can teach you a lot about how robust your strategy really is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week I have great pleasure in saying, my guest on the show is Mike Bellafiore.Mike is the co-founder of SMB Capital, a proprietary trading firm in New York City, as well as SMB University which is the arm for trader education. He’s also the author of two very popular trading books ‘One Good Trade’ and ‘The Playbook’.Additionally, Mike is a regular contributor to Yahoo Finance, and often appears on CNBC’s Fast Money, CNN Money, Bloomberg, and Fox Business. But even with all of this going on Mike is still a very active, very successful trader.During our interview, Mike delivers some great insight about traders often confusing psychology for a lack of edge, and an overview for one of his favorite setups which has been labeled ‘The Money Trade’. Plus, he shares the development program new traders go through when joining SMB Capital, and a few top-level pointers on how to achieve a sustainable trading style.And I just want to point out this interview was recorded on the 20th of May, only reason I say this is because Mike mentions a few market events during this interview. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to episode 21, with a very special guest; Adam Grimes.Adam is author of the very popular book titled, The Art and Science of Technical Analysis, which covers market structure, price action and trading strategies. He is also the Chief Investment Officer of Waverly Advisors, and host of the Market Life podcast.Adam’s career dates back almost 20 years, during that time he has traded a wide range of asset classes, both independently and along side a well-respected prop firm. Plus, he also did a stint on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).Over the next hour or so Adam shares his interesting outlook on the market, and many aspects of trading. So as you could imagine this include plenty of discussion around technical analysis, but you’ll also pick up a number of great psychology tips to help you with the mental aspect.Enjoy team! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week I was thrilled to speak with a well respected, high-energy, and incredibly insightful trader. And who many of you probably already know as the head honcho at Bulls on Wall Street, his name is Kunal Desai.I’ve been trying to bring him on as a guest for quite sometime now, but it’s finally happened, so I’m glad to be sharing this with you!If you’re unfamiliar with Kunal, I’m gonna give you the super condensed intro, because we discuss his journey in great detail for the first part of our interview.So Kunal is essentially an intraday momentum trader. He’s been trading since his teens, and just like many of us, he really struggled for many years going into his twenties. Eventually persuading one of the few profitable traders he knew at the time to show him the ropes. This profitable trader was Paul Singh, who taught him how to actually work the market like a trader. From there, overall it’s been onwards and upwards.During our discussion we cover quite a range of topics, lost of interesting stuff, and a ton of great pointers. Read below for the breakdown, or better yet – hit play! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I’m not sure how it happened, but this interview somehow slipped through the cracks. I actually had the conversation with this weeks guest around November last year (2014), and it’s been tucked away in a folder ever since.But let me introduce you to this weeks guest – Stuart McPhee from Melbourne (Australia), he’s an equities and forex trader who has been involved with the markets for around about 20 years. And he is also the Author of ‘Trading in a Nutshell’.Our discussion was heavily based around trading plans, covering things like, what exactly is a trading plan, how to create one, and then the trickiest part of all – how to actually follow it with discipline. Actually, Stuart shares a very simple discipline hack that will help you to follow your plan for the long term, not just the next week or so.Even though it’s taken a while to surface, I’m pleased to finally share this interview with you. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This weeks guest is a little different to many of the guests I’ve had on in the past. Instead of giving very little weight to fundamentals and news releases, these two things actually form the foundation for his trading approach. In fact, he almost disregards charts altogether, and he relates the reason for this to his background in accounting and finance.John Welsh has been a full time trader for over 10 years and he’s racked up millions of dollars in profits along the way.His trading consists of both intraday and swing trading, and he concentrates mainly on Biotech stocks, making roughly 90% of his trades within this sector.Now that I’ve given you the 1,000 ft view on John’s trading journey, here he is to fill in the blanks, and give us a lot more depth around his approach. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Like many who get into trading, Jason had no formal education in the field. Actually, prior to trading full time he was waiting tables in a restaurant and bartending.This is where he began swing trading and to this day, Jason is still primarily a swing trader. Riding trends anywhere from a few days or a few weeks, sometimes it's even a matter of months when his aim is to take out a large chunk of the move. Ultimately the market environment dictates his holding time.This is somewhat similar to the way I like to trade, so I found many of the answers Jason gives out during this interview to be particularly interesting, and I'm sure you will too. Regardless of the time-frame you trade.Also, in the later part of this interview, Jason shares a story about the wildly successful independent traders he's met, and the one standout trait they all have in common. Which is again, really insightful.Q + A: If you would like to ask Jason a question and get a few pointers - drop a comment at the bottom of chatwithtraders.com/jason and he'll respond to you with an answer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It’s almost unfathomable to think that there was a time when it would take a couple minutes to execute an order. And now days we have traders taking extreme measures, just to get filled a nanosecond quicker than the next participant.But for this weeks guest Tim Biggam, that was the reality when he first entered the world of trading during 1985. And that entrance was straight onto the floor of the CBOE.Just a couple years into his journey, Tim experienced the full force of the infamous 1987 crash. While he survived, and was still in good shape to trade the following day, this gave him a true appreciation for the importance of correct position sizing, after seeing so many traders get wiped out. Tim really goes into the topic of position sizing and why it is absolutely vital to get it right during the later part of this interview, so make sure to stay tuned in.Additionally, Tim does a great job of explaining some of the terminology associated with options, how he uses scanning technology to generate trade ideas, and a whole lot more.TAKE NOTE: Tim will be keeping a close eye on the comments at http://chatwithtrader.com/tim – so be sure to leave a question you would like him to answer! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices