Welcome Welcome Lance I'm very excited for this conversation. I Truly appreciate you making the time to speak with me and the audience today. I Think we're going to have a Beyond excellent conversation not only what it's like to be a top tier Trader such as yourself, but also some of the new aspects of what I'm going to refer to as the retail trading industry. Some of the positives and obviously I want get your thoughts and insights and opinions onto some of the negatives.

but before we get into all that, how are you doing today? The market is looking great. What is up? Matt It's so great to be here. and yeah I think if you're a long investor or if you are a long biased Trader then yes we are approaching all-time highs and the sun is shining and people are quite happy this Christmas No one's getting cold this this stocking year despite uh, last year probably couple guys got got cold. that's a fact Yep This year it feels like 2023 is ending on good know I mean obviously fingers crossed.

let's see how it actually goes, but 2024, let's see if the party continues I like it's so funny cuz I think about a year ago of where we were at and all these analysts, the people with the pedigrees on the wall have all the right education. They were comically wrong I Just saw someone pointing out the percentage discrepancy of like a Goldman Sachs analyst like year over year over year. Most of the time they're wrong by double digits and that just kind of tells you I guess a certain nature of the market and its predictability and even the people who are paid to make these very big important predictions just commonly wrong. And then don't even get me started on the Fed, their prediction of inflation? transitory, not transitory.

It just feels like it's Whiplash day in and day out. Are those the types of things that you consider like in your trading right now in the current environment or what? What do you take in on a daily basis? Well, so first, I was hoping that I could just quickly spit out like 30 forecasts of of equally absurd measure I can I can throw out. Then we can just run with whichever one proved right and just edit out. The rest is love that.

Yeah, No, we'll cut it and we'll just run it, Run it, run it. and like, obviously, we'll forget about the bad ones. We'll hide those. We'll delete them from the internet forever.

I I Love that plan. You heard it here. First, Bitcoin's going to the Moon. You heard it here.

First, Bitcoin's not going to the Moon We're good. Uh, But to get to the topic, uh, as far as my actual ways for trading I tend to be the exact opposite of a forecaster I've never really had any meaningful price targets I've never really had any biases long vers short to me, minus some micro structure differences that's associated with shorting I Really try to be a total vacuum and just listen to the chart and the technicals I Don't want to be an expert I don't want to be an analyst I am here to day trade I Here to trade the setups and whatever those setups are telling me based on the chart and the data and everything else. that's what I want to follow and I want to actually be immune to all those outside opinions because as you touched on so often, those opinions, if anything I would argue have Negative Edge I wholeheartedly agree. Is that how your trading always has been? Uh folks.

for those of you who don't know, Lance Uh, please tell us this whole story. but I believe you started out at Trillium a Prop Fund and since there you kind of came up the ranks and now obviously you're kind of doing your own thing and obviously exceeding at a high level folks. check out his Twitter The numbers are there like there's a lot of stories. a lot of great interviews.

Was it good for you from the start I guess is my question and more so to drive into it. Do you think you had a natural talent and I feel like some people look at the markets and they just they have a good feel of where it's going to go I Do not have that superpower without a doubt I have to rely on exact math and Edge and scenarios because I I just don't have that. what camp do you fall into? Look, we all have our superpowers. mine.

I was cursed with just humor and good looks which have done me okay but I did not have the ability to forecast the market um and so from my background Yep, I started out at Trillium trading, I did over a decade there and I eventually was running their Chicago office for a bunch of years. I was training uh, trained probably dozens of of Traders over the years and I eventually became their number one. Trader and I set alltime P&l records for the firm which being one of the longest trading firms uh, the longest standing day trading firms out there. That that is an impressive record to set um, but was I a natural uh I would say I was an unnatural in that I was awful in the first couple years.

Whatever the base human emotional biases are as far as okay. If this is the the resistance level I want to buy the break of it I would be the person where it breaks out. it goes then I buy the top where I'm like oh my God I missed it I missed it I need to buy I need to buy you buy the top then Boop down it goes and so I would say there was no natural Talent there whatsoever. In fact I was so on the ropes due to my lack of talent that I had many conversations where where it was.

hey Lance like you know we're giving you all the resources. You have one of the best trainers out there in existence training you. uh what? what can we be doing more to help you? Because right now it is not happening and I was interviewing for other firms. One of the greatest blessings that ever happened to me is De Shaw and some of those other more technical firms said you sir, polite politely.

Now they say you sir are A and you There's a reason why you're day trading and you're not at De Shaw or Jane Street Capital and I have many friends at those at some of those firms now and I agree I do not belong at those firms I do not have the same level of intelligence. So after not making any of the jobs I interviewed for it was uh oh I better. Kind of figure this out and very luckily things started to click after that. but it was only because of an immense amount of work ethic and what I would consider a real Mastery of meta learning which is how do you develop uh and accelerate learning and and skill set building and so that thinking and deep thought that I put into how can I get better at this job faster I think that's what ended up saving my career and it's some of those lessons That I were then able to relay to some of the others I Trained and mentored with and continue to do so today.

I'm very, very impressed by the duration of it because I think a lot of people you could hit a lucky streak, but it's rare to see someone uh, like you decade plus like now you've been doing it. So it kind of shows that you found some sort of repeatable methodology because if you didn't you wouldn't be a Trader anymore Just by the fact of time itself, you found some sort of and we'll get into more detail in this later. but like a true positive. Edge Before we get there though, I'm curious.

was it always stock trading? Uh, did you get into the world of options? Did you get into the world of Futures binary options crypto or is it stock exclusively I mostly started trading stocks now if you want and this this this could be uh a little exclusive for you because I don't think I've got into this too much. but post this was probably around 2011 or 2012 with with a friend of mine we started to get into crypto trading and this was way before any sophisticated players were out there and so I was with with with a Budd we've since Gone Gone very far separate ways. um but we had developed one of the first uh, just automated programs I was making markets and arbitraging different exchanges across crypto, as well as trading it discretionarily using what I was learning on the job. And so I'm very much a crypto naysayer like I think crypto is actually one of the dumbest things ever created I think it's been one of the biggest wastes of of resources both intellectual and mental capacity and and time and and environmental.

Um, but that doesn't mean that isn't a good trading product. In fact, I often rant about how shitty Forex and Futures can be to trade vers equities. but I would argue that Crypto is actually a fantastic trading product simply due to its volatility, simply due to the Momentum factors. Uh, simply due to how inefficient some of these markets are like.

I would much rather trade a cryptocurrency with huge ranges and it's followed by Momentum Traders and everything else, then trade something like the US dollar, right? with extremely tight ranges and some of the most liquid, most efficient, most analyzed markets ever. Um, So despite my fundamental bias against crypto and I know that's going to be like so many people out there like oh, you just don't understand, It's like okay, look, you have your your views I have mine. Uh, but it is a great trading product But that ended. Um, we actually got caught up super bad in the Bitfinex hack of of 2018 and so uh, for those that don't know, essentially Bitfinex was hacked and uh, they socialized losses.

Across The Exchange So even though we weren't in any crypto that was taken or in crypto at all at the time, Um, we lost I think over a third of our account overnight, which was brutal because we had compounded for like I mean five years we were. We were putting up some ridiculous ridiculous like six figure a month numbers which is like we were yeah, we were in our mid I mean maybe mid late 20s at that point and and it was just like a couple of us and that was producing six figures a month. And you know that getting caught in that hack was on such a higher base. Where to then lose a third of it? You were losing like years and years of work.

Um, and that then kind of shook our confidence in and our ability to like. who who the hell wants millions of dollars like still on an exchange after that and what sad is had we probably kept with that, that would have been um, incredible for the years to come. So despite my bias against crypto, it is incredible Market To trade with inefficiencies like that? I mean I know I Know hedge fund players. uh, these days that will be doing certain Arbs like that and they're just returning 20% a year like clockwork.

Um, very, very minimal minimal risk. And then you get people you know obsessed with with with trading the US dollar or this or that currency pair and it's like come on man, that's you're in the worst game on on the street. Um so I was mostly equities, but yes, that is the crypto backstory. Um nowadays I I fool around with with I mean so I don't I don't super actively trade at all anymore.

Um, just with with nonprofit work Trader advisory work the free content I put out um, you know I mostly retired from Trading uh, fulltime? Uh, probably that was the end of late late, 22 or sorry, late into 22. So nowadays I dabble with Futures options equities I I' I've done everything under the Sun including Forex So I've definitely dabbled with with with everything man I appreciate you sharing that story and you kind of glossed over it. but I think that's actually more fascinating than anything is the psychology I Can only imagine the high highs you were at in your late 20s seemingly having your own money printer and then for that to be ripped away from you. and this is one thing I Always say to my audience I Truly believe the makeup of a perfect Trad is like only about 7 is% skill, about 3% is luck, and the other 90 90% I truly believe is psychology and discipline.

So if we could just like I guess get into that a little bit not only from just the crypto story, but obviously I'm sure you've clearly had massive wins, but I'm sure you've taken some big hits as well. Tell us about the psychology and what you do to keep yourself grounded when on the line. You're talking about numbers that literally people make or lose in multiple years and that might be for you in a singular day. What is how do you keep yourself? I Always kind of joke and I say monk-like discipline.

But truly Trader Psychology I think is the Paramount virtue to be successful? Just my own opinion, you might agree. might disagree. but for you in your psychology, how do you keep the Train on the tracks? Especially back when you were more so actively trading? I I Don't think there's any way around the fact that it hurts. um, we are human.

Um, and that's part of the Beauty and the ugliness of discretionary trading. it's it's so much more emotionally detached. if you're kind of running an algo, or if you're Arbing, or if you're kind of playing the house in the casino. it is a whole different story when you're making those split-second decisions.

And so at Trillium we really were pretty much the next step over from algorithmic. Trading We were the fastest humans in the world in my opinion and I think the data would backed that up. Uh, you know, like having being a manager there I had access to all sorts of internal data and and and we we would know what percent of executions and this and that. and like we we were definitely some of the fastest humans out there.

and when you're operating on that time frame, the margin of error is so incredibly small and so what would end up happening is, especially with breaking news headlines, it wouldn't be a matter of losing huge amounts of money in a day, it would be Oh my. God I made a split-second mistake and I was ethically wrong in a matter of seconds or minutes? I Remember when I was starting to kind of hit my stride? Um, there was this one Biotech M&a headline and it was right. So we've got Bloomberg Reuters all this stuff and so there would be all these multiple headlines coming through and the first headline was something to the effect of like oh, we're exploring sale which for an early stage biotech is a huge deal but then one of the later headlines if I'm recalling this accurate which is it's probably a little bit off, but it was something to the effect of oh, rather than sale, might also just look to partner for the next stage of the drug which is like oh wait, no that's not, that's not what you want to hear at all. And with the limit up limit down bands I was buying at the limit up thinking oh my God this is a home run um but then the much faster and pretty much the number one news guy at the time he had bought all of his stock he would.

he was already like a headline ahead of me processing and was like oh my God this isn't so good. So the number one guy in The Firm at the time pretty much was long sold to me at the limit up, flipped short and boom and just cracked the thing because he was. he was a you know big Traer and I remember like that must have been like a $100,000 plus loss in a matter of like seconds where you're just like your jaw drops the floor and you're like oh my God like like what just happened and uh my boss was at the dentist at the time and uh I I remember I remember calling I'm like hey um no, you're at the dentist I just want to let you know I had a little bit of oopsie um I'm sorry, uh you know I'll figure out how to fix this uh later sorry and that it's kind of like my voicemail and uh so you're right and like you take those hits and like I I really love what what my my boss would say about some of that stuff where he had this big loss on like Google earnings um way back I I think it was like I don't know 2005 2006 I don't really remember and he was super upset over that loss and he told his dad about it and his dad gave the response something to the effect of you know what may may this loss only be like the next one onto even bigger losses because you just keep growing and growing and growing. And so what my boss said to me is like look Lance like that, that sucks it it it happens and may this just be one loss on to bigger ones.

And so now when I look back in my career I can laugh at that because that big loss became that's just a normal trade. The bigger loss is tacked on another zero over time and like that's kind of like the Trader's blessing is to kind of have that growth and just still be in the game. And I think psychologically, the best thing you can do as cliche as it is is you focus on the process and you have a process of what to do when things go wrong. You have a process that you trust.

And there's this concept that I call the Bobblehead concept. We're rather than focusing on your P&l that that oscillates all the time, right? especially as a Trad green, red, green, red. And in fact, the bigger the trader you become and the better you become, your losses don't become smaller as you become bigger and better. Counterintuitively, of course, your losses become bigger any day at at Trillium when I was taking a loss I was the bottom of the firm those days, right? If if I'm down 100 Grand no one else is down 100 Grand that day or if I'm down 200, 300, 400, nobody else is down that.

So any day I was red I was the bottom of the firm. But the nice point was on the good days, I was also the top and um, and so like, rather than focusing on that oscillation of P&l you really want to just think about yourself on a chart and that chart is what's your expected value over time. and anytime I do something that makes me better I move up on that chart. So let's say I take a really big loss my P&l plummets.

but if I learn why I took that loss and if I propose and Implement a solution of safeguards to help me avoid that loss in the future, my expected value as a Trader it didn't take an L my expected value as a Trader fixing those vulnerabilities actually went up. And so the key is to really focus on that process and just say what can I do to increase my expected value as a Trader each day and do that over time and have faith that over time you're getting better and better and better. And so what? I used to do early on and really throughout my whole career is every Sunday I would go in and do a Sunday review and even the first year or two when I was losing money and making nothing I was on a $25,000 a year salary sorry $26,000 a year salary and I would go in every Sunday and I would tell myself Lance you're not going to see the paycheck today, but you coming into the office that just made you $1,000 do which is absurd right? I was literally making zero money I I had no money and I would just tell you tell myself that because I knew this is helping my expected value as a Trader and having that mindset really drilled into you and truly believing it. that allows you to get through the losses.

The other thing I think too and I think it's almost like David Gogin that also talks about this is the more difficult things you do. You build up this repertoire of past experiences that you can pull on. So when you get into a $50 hole draw down that lasts a week and you get out from it, you have that item you can pull on. You can say okay, I've been here before.

Yes, it was full of uncertainty. Yes, it was full of Doubt but I've done this before and I can do it again and the more times you do that, when that $500 hole, th000 hole, $5,000 hole hits or $50,000 hole hits, you start to say look, I've been here before Yes, this is scary. Yes, this seemed hopeless. Yes I was worried I wouldn't be able to do it.

but I've always done it in the past and you start to build that database where you say look okay I know this sucks emotionally I know I'm going to be depressed for a day or two but like look I've been here, just focus on the bobblehead and keep doing it and so that's those were the two things that really helped drive me through those tough periods which always happen no matter how good you get. Even at my best like it would still be totally normal for me to get totally wrecked in some trade each year and have like you know, a negative month, two negative months. It it just happens. It's part of the game and that's a a crazy thing that I see going on.

First of all, I appreciate you sharing that. but what's weird is your person who I guess for lack of a better phrase has been in the trenches. Not were you trading hardcore yourself. You've taught many people and you've been around all levels of different Traders and what's crazy about it? and like I think you could attest to this is that is real trading.

but then yet the current I guess face or the facade of retail trading are magic. Holy Grill strategies of people winning every single day. They've never taken a loss ever and I've always found that to be like confusing because you have retail trading and like I guess my favorite thing is when it's a teenager I'm like like hey man like you, you can't even actually trade yet and you're an expert but then I read books of some of the best Traders ever and their accuracy I mean Jim Simons who I look up to as one of the best Quant Traders ever his accuracy was just below 51% Most of the time he was flipping a coin and I was like okay so the best Trader ever is right half the time and then some random Guru marketer is right all of the time like something just didn't add up there. So for a person who's been in the Trenes and then also taught a lot of people what is going on I guess in the current state of retail trading and specifically retail I guess like trading, marketing, education and the only reason I bring this up is because I was looking at some of your Twitter feed and a couple months ago uh, you put out a challenge to I guess quote unquote gurus furus of like kind of hey, prove yourself and uh, did anyone ever take you up on that offer ever I don't want to speak out of term But Did anyone say hey actually I could show you here or did that not happen? Yeah! so the backstory for that was I do Trader dinners and happy hours around the country like if I'm ever visiting a place and and have some time I kind of just put put this stuff on for people.

In fact I'm currently in California and I did one in in San Diego a couple weeks ago I'm gon to be doing one in in Los Angeles um and I had done a Chicago Trader dinner and one of the and these are really good people. Most of these people I've never met before and I'm so lucky because everyone always ends up being awesome like super kind, super grateful everyone's there to meet new people Network learn and one of the Traders was I think he was maybe 30 years old. Um has has a career, he's working, he's working really hard and a lot of these people have full-time jobs and they're putting their money towards some of these courses and subscriptions. and so he told me what he was doing to learn and I'm like dude, how' you like find this guy like this This guy doesn't look legit at all and I'm like dude like odds are like this person has zero Edge and the only money this person is making is purely from marketing and so I felt bad for this person because this guy had other bills, he had a family who was supporting and everything else and it's like that to me, it just doesn't ethically feel right like if you're marketing and snake Oil, that is an unethical thing to do and it's not all the responsibility of the marketer of course right now with zero regulation in this industry or near zero pretty much it's a lot of buyer beware as well.

And so what I wanted to do was kind of create a call out post to separate the the the twet from the chap as they say like who's who's real and who's not and that Saturday morning the next morning I recorded this video and especially for the the S&P 500 gurus because there were a couple things that surprised me once: I left the prop side and like I had never even had a Twitter account for any of this stuff I had never been exposed to it and so so many things surprised me. like first of all, retail Traders all trading alone rather than in pods and grouping up and and building little teams to help you better that that was something I've really helped the retail World Um, change their mind on because in the prop world, you're on teams, you've got co-workers, you've got different sets of eyes, you're all operating to try and help each other get better rather than what was a very lonely, isolated game for most retail. Traders The other big thing that that surprised me was there is this massive ecosystem around Uh S&P 500 and the Es levels and everything. which was super odd to me because I had access to essentially firm level data and we're Trillum is an incredible trading firm They are one of the best, you know they they.

They are a lot of very talented, great good-hearted people. And I remember a firm email going out at one point and this was this was possibly pre 2020 maybe like 201 18ish and the reality was that most people of our talented Traders had been losing in in trading SPY and that was always funny to us because most people are like what no way I don't I don't lose an spy and this is a Trillium Trader say that then they would go through and we would have internal data software that could crunch all the numbers for us. and I remember being in the Chicago office and one dude's like dude, no way like blah blah blah BL blah I make money trading SPY then he ran the numbers and was like awkwardly quiet and we all are like hey man like so what's what's the number and he's like uh well and we hear him grumbling and I think it was like he traded like a zillion zillion shares of it and over Like all these years he was like plus 10K or something something like laughable. he was like negative 10K and we're all dying and um, and so that's separate though.

From when you do have breaking news on the S&P or potentially on the huge imbalanced days, or during 2020 when the Market's oversold, there are times when the market has imense Edge But there was like this ecosystem on Twitter of people trading it every single day with these magic levels and just this huge amount where it was so disproportional to what I've seen at any prop from out there unless of course you're the house market makers is collecting the spreads right or the Hfts And so that was odd to me. Then the more I investigated this and looked into it, it seemed like oh my. God what these people are doing. Not that it's impossible to make money, but it it was just pretty clear to me that all these people were making money off the subscriptions rather than their actual strategies.

And even crazier to me was people were giving them money. But these people were verifying nothing they didn't say or they L trading. they aren't posting P&l they aren't providing any confidence that there's actual Edge in this other than greater fool. Theory Oh, this person subscribes and I have these people doing it yada y y when it's like oh wait, what percent and again most Traders will fail right? Of course it's a hard game.

Not everyone needs to make money, but is there proof that even you Mr Guru furu that I'm paying? Is there proof that you're even making money with these? Have you ever made money with these? Are you even trading these? Or are you just making your income off that? and like you say, it's the same people with with with the Lamborghinis in their profile picture the the private jets which is why my my Twitter Avatar is is kind of like a little crayoned in you know little hyper car and private jet just to mock it all and um so that was like the big red flag and when I called everyone out it wasn't like people are like oh my God Lance like that was that was so dumb dude like people people are gonna like smoke you you're gonna end up paying like 30 40 50 Grand and I'm like no like you're missing the point like I expect to pay 20 30 40 50 Grand like I think I think like I totally think there's people out there that are legit and I'm happy to pay the money so that people can finally have like some form of of system like okay these people are real and verified and these people are not. Let all the people move away from the unverified to the verified and so it's not that I expected to not pay a single dime and so that post went incredibly viral. um I think it's it's I don't know 800,000 900,000 views. Every single person was tagging their favorite Guru like oh my white knight You're Gonna Save Me hey XYZ come show Lance how wrong he is then it would just be crickets crickets crickets and like a couple people uh a couple people were like oh no I don't why would I ever do that I make so much money trading I don't need the 10K but they're missing the point.

It's not about the 10K even, it's about all the credibility. If anyone came forward doing that, they would get so much extra business and be so validated in the face because I said anybody that does it I will do a follow-up video saying this person meets the criteria and that is huge business for them and nobody Nobody managed to do it. There is one person who actually raised the atie and called me out and said hey I'll donate because I'm I'm into the nonprofit work I'm not. For the most part he's like I will donate 100K to the charity of your choice if if I can verify a million of of my own P&l each year and and my my bar that I set was way lower than a million.

it was like 250k a year which is not a crazy bar if someone's a self-professed guru. marketing of course and so this guy calls me out I say You're On Let's Do It um he tells me a little bit of his background but I can't get a name out of him. he's not giving me a real name. Oh my lawyers will reach out to yada yada yada.

Never heard from anyone to this day. All these months later, not a single person has met that criteria and again this is mostly towards just the marketers. I'm sure there's Traders out there that are making that kind of money, but the people marketing these these courses not a single person has stepped up and that is a statement and that should make people think buyer beware. Yeah, that is a truly truly fascinating story.

and like I don't know. It pulls on a little bit of my heartstring because like I always like trading and then when you become an upper teen younger 20 you start to see all this advertising. and what's weird is I mean we've probably both met these kind of people who in all of life they might be very conservative and yet when it comes to the world of money, they somehow ignore all the red flags and I think has this idea with like you want it to be true, like you want this idea of financial salvation if I learned from this person all of my financial jams would be met. so like I think we have this like almost like like this: Shield this psychologic Shield where you ignore all the red flags when I I don't know I've spent thousands of dollars and I didn't get anything from those people in fact I probably learned bad things and then I bought just some books from verified traders who they're just like hey, here's my story how I figure things out.

So for 20 30 bucks per book I learned far more than I did for thousands of dollars of education and it was just like kind of that aha moment to me I'm like oh, these are people who make all the money off marketing and are not legitimate Traders Now just to be clear folks, neither of us are saying that all gurus and furus out there are bad I'm just saying and I don't want to put words in Lance's mouth is just ask him for their P&l Ask them for some sort of consistent thing. That's it. That's all I'm saying I'm not saying they're bad I'm just saying ask for proof and if they are unwilling to give you proof, the red flags where I'm just talking right now of like oh, that's your Blinder that's a massive red flag like something is going on there. If anything, I would be like I would find that teacher more honorable if they were honest and like yeah, I had some bad patches I have some good patches.

Great, that's a teachable moment Teach the World of how you got out of the bad patch and how you made the good patches even better like it's so much more human. it's so much more real cuz I remember one of the first things I didn't get I was like I I think I'm somewhat of a smart guy and I would study and study and study and my account would go down and down and down and then I would hear all these other people all the time were like green green Green every single day, every single week, every single month always green I was like what am I missing and then all of a sudden you like I thought it was a da task to realize like oh I'm just not good enough and then I came to the realization I'm like oh, that's easy if they're lying like that's one way to always be perfectly greenage just to completely lie about it and not to name names but eventually that came out of some of the people I paid for courses with they were on Sim accounts they were always blowing up accounts or it was just continually refunding. refunding refunding I was like oh, that's the world of this So uh, I'm very happy that you shareed your insights there. so obviously that was my opinion on it Beyond asking for the person P&l or daily trades or monthly trades.

Is there any other key things you would look for in a good teacher? Yeah. so I really thought a lot about this and at some point I'm probably going to make a video detailing it. and like, like you were saying, there's two things that are just I think so psychologically charged by us as just humans in modern society. like the desire for for money and security and kind of like wealth and success.

and then of course for love and the amount of just snake oil salesman in both those fields is extremely extremely high. And it's again, there's so much amazing education out there we are at the Advent of like twit like Twitter itself even offers so much free content and there's so many people out there that freely share. and I'm going to try to avoid Um citing specific people on either sides. but there are Traders where, um, due to where they live, their tax records or public records and they're offering free content out there on exactly how they execute their strategy.

and there are people out there that have provided published documents that show their P&l and they're offering free content out there and so it's not that like you even necessarily need to pay for this. And if you do pay for this, there are some amazing courses out there. I'm not going to say the good people either, it's for you, the audience to do your own due diligence and find out what you're comfortable. I Do not want to endorse or start B with anyone.

but the things that I think you should be looking for is. for starters, um, as basic as this sounds, do I know the face and the person and the name behind this. There are a lot of people out there with total Elias's There's no repercussions behind anything they do. Um, so first I think like a name and a face is A good start.

The other thing is, yeah, we like it would be great to know your background. like where did you learn your Edge um why have you found success? What success do you claim to have learned? Um and ideally the gold standard of course is posting statements. Um, there's so many ways to verify P&l so you can post your own statements. There's even uh, this website kinfo uh which allows you to link up your trading account to this website that pretty much verifies all your trading.

and I think what people need to recognize is those that are verifying real P&l You don't need to be the best. Trader You're still going to be light years above all these people that are total fakes. and when you start to show that transparency, your business will grow. There's also other things right.

Like um, like for me: I Do not actively trade anymore. Nowhere do I say that I actively trade. But that doesn't mean my information that I offer out there doesn't have value right? It's just a matter of do you? What you see is that what you get are people being transparent or are people totally bullshitting you and like it's fine if if it's fine if your favorite Guru doesn't trade every single day. But like did he in the past did these strategies have Edge that he can prove Or are there people or students that endorse his work that have learned from him? For example, if take Warren Buffett who I don't mind naming because uh you know I don't think I'm going to get in trouble with this one.

but Warren Buffett had a school of thinking with with fundamental analysis and and margin of safety and all these different things and he pretty much sprouted all these disciples that ended up having Edge as well. and so I don't think you need to be the best Traer ever but have have you um, mentees or people that have learned from from you that you can also use as as sources of like Okay, these people have found success. Um, are those people transparent? Do do the strategies, um, make sense and all that other stuff. So I think it's just about not.

Does this person post P&l which of course is great but is there reason to believe their credibility? Um and I think that's kind of like the first step and I think if these people are authentic, they should have nothing to hide right? Like people know my name. um people know my background people that if I was lying about stuff Trillian probably would have sued the out of me uh, years ago and and so pretty much when I've done podcasts with people um, whether it's chat with Traders whether it's humble Trader uh Trader lion even and of course I now advise for SMB and and do my Trader education there. All those people have seen my P&l right? All those people, they're not. They're not hiring me uh you know SMB which is extremely reputable Prof for they're not blindly hiring me to pay me as to just to teach garbage you know to their Traders um and so it's like anything that can help you provide legitimacy should help your business.

And so really I Don't fault these marketers because without a doubt marketing is an easier game than trading. It is so easy to get subscribers. It is so easy to just you know, uh, executions and fake everything and and this and that and and trade out a Sim it is easy to do that way easier to fake that than make money. So I Don't blame these people.

Everybody wants to kind of make their make. they're not in everything, it's human behavior I Get it. So really where change needs to come is from the consumer and it needs to come from the consumer through education and higher standards. And really what that post that I made want I wanted to do with it is to spark the conversation, make people think if if I'm tagging my my my my Champion to represent me and take down this Challenge and he says oh T he oh you know this is dumb oh what a dumb challenge or he doesn't respond I I'm telling you right now, every single person that has a marketing subscription thing they saw that post that had 800,000 plus views every Guru was tagged a zillion times like you need to be asking those questions and again, there's a ton of good people out there and there's tons of people that share execution, share their prints um that have been verified through all types of sources.

Um, those are the people where look. It should make people think twice about the Bad actors and ideally from that conversation that debate, it starts to migrate the money to the people that are valuing transparency and this leaves a huge opportunity in the market. If you're someone where you think oh, I don't show my P&l because I only make 250k a year 300K a year. Well guess what? that is gold compared to these people that clearly don't make anything or else would have proven me wrong.

So just be transparent and be real. And yes, like you mentioned, people have losses people have draw Downs I try to always retweet the real Traders I know that are just very public I had this loss. This is how I messed up. Um, there's one Trader out there who's been struggling for years.

He posts his P&l every single day and it's totally known that he struggled and I respect that and it doesn't matter like I'd rather take someone real that has actually succeeded at some point than someone that is just total BS acting like it's easy because it's not and it's not going to help you as a consumer of that content. It's going to just waste your money and these are good people. These are people with families is are people working full-time jobs to try to learn this game and they're being sold. A total sham and so that's what this is all about.

Yeah, 100% agree and you might not say it cuz you are probably too nice of a guy. but I'll say it. There's literally no reason at all that all these tagus and furus that if it were true and they I guess like were doing better than your posted criteria that they wouldn't have responded cuz first of all, free marketing. They could have slammed it back in your face.

and even if they're like no I make too much money, donate it to charity, then you like it's even better marketing for you. You can be like not only am I better than this and here's all my proven trades, but now I'm also donating to charity Like it it's It's a win in literally every single category. Your reputation, your brand awareness, your donation. like every single category, there's no down and honestly even cool like hey I don't want this to be public but they could DM you and you could have shown be like yeah no actually some of these people are like all going to be private exactly CU like that's and people will turn that back on on me but it's like for me I actually don't want my P&l out there.

you know, like if people are well first of all, like people and some people are just super silly. like they don't understand like on the prop side, you don't get like emailed like a PDF State like you don't get like a brokerage statement. you know, on the prop side like oh, it's like it's like you don't really have like statement records I had no actual ownership of account on the prop side, you know. But what I do have is is a zillion trophies and anything else.

and the other thing is like I personally don't want my P&l and my essentially my earnings publicly out there. but what I've done is I've shared privately and so it's like that's totally fine and the other thing is like yeah, if that's if that's what's going to make you skeptical I mean not that I really sell anything I kind of have like a silly charity uh, patreon and stuff but it's like look, if that's going to make you not subscribe, that's actually smart I'm hugely supportive of that. like like it's it's better to have a higher standard and ask for transparency and have skepticism. So I guess that's the big theme is is to have a higher level of skepticism and for the to set a higher bar of what we look like before we start.

Uh, kind of just really pissing our money away because you're losing. You're losing your money, but you're also losing your time learning stuff with no real Edge And that's the real crime is people get sold this dream and then it's there. Their chance of success if if there's no Edge in what they're learning is zero on that note. Okay, so obviously a healthy dose of skepticism, but throughout your own trading career, teaching people, and also now your new developed opinions of the marketing industry.

Hypothetically, if you could create a Trader right now like I give you all this special clay and you mold them. uh, so skepticisms in there. What other attributes would you be there? Cuz you referred to some friends who seem to be highly intellectual. Do you think that's like unnecessary thing? uh, monk likee discipline are they? David gogins taking an ice bath every morning? If you could create a traitor from just what you've seen in your career, what would be some of the Main Stays of that person.

Yeah, that's a really important question. and I think what's so cool about my position is I did recruiting as as part of the office and I saw Trillian would hire a class of I don't know. it was probably like 20 to 25 a year and not that I saw all of them. only some in the Chicago, many were of course in New York but I I Got to see a lot of those people go through the whole me grinder and I think this is what I can say is it's it's You can very quickly tell who's not going to make it or who doesn't have the right traits but then of the people with with the right traits it's still somewhat a crapshoot because there's all these little intangibles and then to tell who's actually going to be a star.

um sometimes that can really surprise you but I'd say um you can say like oh this person they've got good odds of success but then as far as like will this person really really go to the distance and just explode That's like really hard to tell but what makes it so hard is it's not really one characteristic. There's really many ways to skin the cat in this game. And and what I will say is here's what I think are the non-negotiables Um and this kind of came up in a tweet I Had recently with with with a buddy of mine that after five years he he left the industry. Um one of the most important things you need is a really strong why and it's not necessarily going to be any specific thing like you don't need to just die hard.

Love trading. Um some people love trading. Some people love markets, some people love the money, some people love the competition, some people love the free freom, Some people love the environment of of just that activity and everything else. Um, there's there's one Trader that I've had the pleasure of getting to meet.

He's a independent retail Trader and he was working a normal full-time job, started to dabble with this stuff on the side and now his success at trading has enabled him to spend so much of his days with his kids where he's able to get them ready for school. He's able to then trade during the actual day, pick them up at school and for him, that's super Priceless So is why is that no matter what? I'm going to figure out how to succeed at this game because that means more precious moments with my kids. There's Traders out there where they just they just love the game. They love the challenge.

Some people love the scoreboard, some people love just competing. um and so I think for me um, it was a mix of a lot of those like I did love seeing whether can I actually beat the market after reading all those Market Wizards books and it sounded so amazing and ephemeral. Um, the money aspect and the freedom was huge for me and then I Also love the environment of being on a prop desk a bunch of a bunch of young Traders a casual work atmosphere, no bureaucracy Pure Performance uh the Friday lunches each week just fooling around like talking uh about video games, whatever else like it. It was a blast and so you need that.

Why? Because the job is so difficult, you're never going to make it through the couple years of getting beat up. If that, why isn't stronger than the why? Nots The other thing. Um, I Think you really need some innate level of of hunger. Um, because there's opportunity cost in life for most people when you start this job.

like if you're not making money and this is your full-time job, you can't go five years without without making some type of money in progress. So you really need to have that sense of urgency. And that hunger. Um, an an odd one that I think it's overlooked.

Also is coachability. In other words, when the market or your trainer or your Mentor or the people around you give you feedback as far as what you could be doing better. How quick are you able to adapt that? Do you take it personally? Do you argue? Are you stubborn? Uh, do you mentally accept? like okay, I need This person knows more than me I need to trust this person and then incorporate it. And so I had this one trainee.

Um, he was pretty much totally just like you wouldn't. You wouldn't hire him to be a Trader And yeah, and he had. He was A. He was a college football player and he was extremely coachable.

The nicest. The the nicest guy on Earth and I Loved that this guy was a college athlete. Why? Because when I said if X happens, you need to do y when X happened he would do y and if he messed something up I would give him the feedback and he was consistent I Don't think he in no ways was he some genius. In no ways was he like oh my god I've Loved trading all my life I'm day trading out of my dorm room like again this guy was just a college football player.

you know, like it's He's the opposite of like what you would normally recruit for and and but he was so coachable where you would give him you would give the group the class hey hey guys you all messed up this play. um this is why it was good. This is what you needed to do Guys like I said when X happens you need to do y if X do y and he would always be the first person in that class to then incorporate that feedback. He was never arguing, he was um he was never like stubborn, he was never trying to oh Lance like I've already got strategies or oh Lance I'm smarter than you or oh Lance I know more about trading.

it was just okay Coach gave me feedback I'm gonna go do what coach says and and he saw like a lot of early he he couldn't stay the course of the career due to just family. uh you know just just family. issues that he had to take care of back home. Um, but but like people like that, that's a huge trait that goes um, undervalued.

and there's a lot of weird things that make people not succeed. Like a lot lot of limiting beliefs I can't do X or I can't trade that size Or um, people where when they have a red day or they're they're not succeeding. they're not willing to do the hard work, they're not willing to do the introspection. they're not willing to put the review in.

And as I say if you can't do the hard work on the red days, well guess what? that's most of your career is going to be red days, right? And if you're skipping out your review process 50% 60% 70% of the time we going easy, Well guess what? Uh, you're not going to be able to compete with me out there when work harder on the red days. Man that that's super super insightful. Uh I I guess out of my own curiosity. Uh, when you were mentioning that there's multiple ways to skin a cat and be successful within the market? Did you ever have a a coaching moment yourself where someone came in and like what? for whatever reason you're like, this person will end up not doing well.

Kind of like a rocky baloa thing, but then they ended up actually becoming the heavyweight. Just someone that even took you by surprise. You're like this will be a failure. and then they ended up being an All-Star Did that ever happen in your career? Yeah, I mean to some to some degrees like I Think what surprises people is it's definitely not intelligence.

Like there's some type of weird curve going on where it's like you need some level of cognitive intelligence. But if you have too much then you start to get a little scared where generally Trillium doesn't hire grad students. Um, and the data from Ivy league students is no better than the data from state school. And yeah, and like, even when training people much like we started this this conversation off by talking about the the prognostication of like, forecast and being too smart and what's going to happen here or there.

A lot of the people that were really smart and used their brain too much it hurt them. and especially in day trading, right? We're we're not, We're not investing, we're day Traders And there would be so many times in the market where at face value something makes no sense and they would try to rationalize it or analyze it and they'd be like oh, that's dumb. This this stock shouldn't move on that headline and like it's like yeah, you're totally right, this is dumb and it shouldn't move on that headline but based on psychology and just kind of whatever else it is going to right? And it's like like in theory, take reverse splits and micro caps. If you do a reverse split, it just changes the share count.

That should have no real bearing on the company. In micro caps, they always go down because it's a sign of what a turd this company is and that they're just trying to get a higher share price artificially. And there's so many things where it's like it's just totally illogical for the stock to move move. but it's if you actually think about behavioral psychology, the right decision on certain headlines is still to buy it because it's so asymmetric.

If it does catch on and go, and um, people would just way overthink that and um, there would be just be times all the time where you see Traders try to be the analyst and you'd be like hey, hey dummy, stop trying to be the smartass using your head because it ends up making you dumb and just trade the system. like just follow the system because the system is where you have edged. The system is where the data backs it up. and if you're trying to over interpret and overrule that, it ends up generally being for the worse.

So like intelligence is one thing that definitely surprises people. But then I think um, what's cool though as far as the different ways to skin a cat is like I've seen people, um, use programming skills I've seen people use math skills I've seen people, uh, use legal background and knowledge. Uh, we've had experts in kind of Biotech spin-offs um IPOs Like all sorts of stuff, especially as far as game planning for Catalyst and stuff like that. Um, and there's a lot of different personality types too.

where some people want to be the Home Run Trader Some people are good just putting up singles every single day. Um, and so that's where it starts to get really interesting. Um, and as far as like the people that surprise you, it's the people that really just put in the consistent work and don't objectively have. oh, this person isn't coming from Harvard This person didn't have the 4.0 GPA This person isn't the most intellectual, but the person is just willing to put in the work and like.

One commonality we saw a lot of is just people that loved video games. um, computer games console games. like I was a big gamer. one of my best friends at Trillium uh was was a really big gamer and like I would say in general a lot of my friends at the firm played video games because it's like a similar challenge where it's like you're competitive and everything else and I think those people people that viewed it as a video game and I just want to get better each day and have fun kind of competing at this game like that was a really nice uh really really nice trade as well.

Very insightful. uh, super super interesting. Uh, so obviously hyper success for you. uh, coaching, uh, trading yourself and really within the trading sphere.

But it seems now that you've dialed it a little bit back in the world of trading, you've brought it to the next thing of it, seems like you're doing quite a bit of charitable work. Could you tell the audience a little bit bit about that? Yep. So even while I was trading, uh back in 2017 2018 I started What's called the Impact Competition Foundation and so this is a little nonprofit I started where I fund these competitions across the country. We're probably at uh, like eight to 10 schools now and at each competition each year we challenge students in that College Community to solve the issues of a local nonprofit.

So we're at U Chicago and we had students helping Uh, this nonprofit strides for peace to address gun violence and we've had uh, private boarding school students in Culver Indiana helped this nonprofit called Blessings in a Backpack and that was feeding more disadvantaged students over the weekend that that get federally subsidized lunches during the school week, then go hungry up to 65 hours over the weekend. So to get these super privileged students learning about the issues in their community and helping to solve them is incredible. And so we offer prize money then seed money so that the students get to actually implement the winning idea and make it a reality. And so we've helped local chapters of Habitat for Humanity we've done National Alliance for mental illness we're at University of Houston and we've helped the Houston Food Bank which is the largest food bank in the country and that competition was super special because we had students participate in that competition and they got up there to present and they said the reason why I'm participating today is to give back and to say thanks to the Houston Food Bank that helped feed my family when I was a kid growing up.

Wow and that's why I want to participate and give back. There was another student presenting that said um I'm a student here I'm participating in this because the Houston Food Bank currently feeds me and my family and I wouldn't be able to feed my child if it wasn't for this food bank and that's where you listen to those moments and like like even just talking about it like tears still almost well up to my ear to my eyes Like thinking about this because like you're making these impacts in these communities where these students are given a chance to learn about this issue then help improve that food bank which is going to help other people that were in their shoes. And when you really do this concept around the whole country and start to scale this um, our motto is compounding positive change because you're affecting those students, You're affecting that nonprofit, you're making others think so much more about the issues around them. and you're proving to these students at a young age that they can have a positive change in their community.

And so that's been the driving force around a lot of what I do philanthropically and a lot of people call on this. But here's my true life philosophy which is I think the whole world ends up better if we all try to give back a little bit whatever unique way. Whether it's money, whether it's time or wisdom, everybody has some ability to give back. and if we do so, not only will we be happier and feel better about it, but the whole world will Thrive and we'll end up benefiting from that whole just Confluence of of events.

When that when that happens and so many people will be the skeptic and say oh, Lance you're only you. You only feel that way now because you've made it as a Trader and you have the uh, the privilege of being able to wonder about those things and and Tackle those issues and I get that argument. but I would push back and say look, I've been doing this stuff all the time, even even post colle even in college I was trying to give back a little bit. yes it just it just looks different at different stages and everyone has the ability and what you find is when you give good things out to the world.

So much comes back from it. like doing all the free trading content online and helping others. I've met so many incredible friendships, so many incredible relationships from it. um I've I've been so inspired.

Um, it's led to I mean Traders For A Cause in in Vegas which is just just a Keystone event for retail traders to learn to network to educate. We ended up raising over $350,000 this year for an assortment of nonprofits um I mean and I would guess just from private donations that I've raised from some of my work. it's we're talking another 500,000 plus from some of this stuff. and um, so my whole my whole philosophy is like I find enjoyment and happiness doing this and being at these competitions and helping others find fulfillment and succeed at their trading and more I can get others to find that same mindset I Really think when people have that society as a whole wins and there's nothing more powerful man that I I truly applaud you and exceptionally said and if honestly that was so great I think this is a good point where everyone could take home that final message now for someone who is watching and they just want to follow you and just kind of know what you're up to, know what you're doing, what's the best place to kind of monitor that and get connected with you? Yep, love these conversations.

if anybody wants to follow me. Got a a ton of trading tip BS Got a ton of great knowledge on just life, self-improvement and everything in between. It's always on. Twitter The One Lance B All right folks, and if you're listening I'll make sure that's all in the description of the video.

Also tag the charity websites and all that good stuff so you can find it just one click away for everyone watching. Thank you so much for your attendance and obviously to you! Lance Thank you for such a phenomenal conversation. Hopefully we could do it again in the future. I'd love to thank you gang and down with the Furus.