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James 0:02
Hey, what’s going on everyone, we’re back with another episode of the After Hours Podcast. Today we have a very special guest and very much everybody’s been asking for him to come on. We have Oren, who was one of the moderators at MIC. And he’s one of the rare primarily, like trades, mostly large caps, which is pretty cool. So everybody always thinks that my sees only shorting small caps are longing. But we have a nice large cap room. So Oren, thank you for coming on, man.

Oren 0:27
Absolutely. So glad to be here with you guys. It’s been long overdue.

James 0:32
Yeah, for sure. For sure. So what’s so if you could run yourself through introduce yourself, kind of talk a little bit about your trading and how you found him? I see.

Oren 0:41
Absolutely, yeah. So I grew up in the New England area, go patriots. And ended up moving out to the West Coast for college, I went to Cal Poly studied business there. And I concentrated in, in computer information systems. So it’s the data side of business, essentially. So I’m really into data analytics. And that’s what I do now, as a full time career. So trading, I just do part time. But for my full time career, I work for the Los Angeles Metro. So it’s a transit agency here in LA. Yeah. And essentially, I, I use all of the data we collect and do analysis on it.

How Did You Get Into Trading?

Oren 1:24
So actually, a lot of my trading does revolve around this, you know, looking at the charts and doing the analysis and, and reading into the fundamentals. That’s, that’s what got me first interested in trading. Like, even though I studied business, in college, I was not at all interested in finance, or accounting, or really stock trading at all, I didn’t really start diving into stock trading until Robin Hood came out, actually. Yeah, so I can thank Robin Hood for getting me into trading. Because yeah, before that, you know, it’s just like, throw stuff in the 401k. Or, you know, whatever. Retirement funds, buy some ETFs. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s, like 2014. Yeah, Robin Hood. You know, I felt like free stock trading. Might as well just hop on, I do a little bit of swing trading, and some investing like by AMD, but just essentially buying companies I knew, to moderate success here and there. Yeah. So probably by the end of that, I was how old? Are you at this point? At that point, I was 2425. Okay, so just out of college. Really? Yeah. And I just turned 30 this year. But I didn’t really big fan. Yeah, I didn’t really dive deep into trading and being like, Hey, this is actually a great way to make a supplemental income, probably till 2019. And of 2019. At that point, you know, I’ve been working for Metro for a while and I’m like, I want some sort of side gig, you know, I want multiple streams of income. That’s how you build wealth. And you can’t do it just doing a nine to five. So I was looking at alternatives like working on the side or, you know, trying trying all these different side hustles. And then I just kind of put it all together. I’m like, Well, you know, even though I haven’t been that successful, casually doing this trading on Robin Hood, clearly, tonnes of people are very successful.

How He Started Following Traders on Twitter

Oren 3:28
And I saw that on Twitter. You know, I started following people on Twitter to get ideas, you know, and I started seeing the success people were having, you know, obviously, some of it’s fake, but a lot of it’s real. And I you know, I found MIC I found Alex, and Bao. And pretty much like a lot of people and I’m I see from their tweets is how I heard about it. Oh, that’s cool. It is cool. Yeah. And so then I started diving in the YouTube videos, and I just really liked that. A lot of what MIC was teaching was about like, Trader psychology. Yeah, I’m like, that was my biggest issue. And I recognize it. I’m like, I get too emotional, like stocks go against me. I sell, you know, I buy high sell low. I’m chasing all of the things that you learned not to do once you start getting an education. Course. Do you say that? Oh, sorry.

Harry 4:22
Would you say that? Like everything you’re doing is like, like, did you have like a certain strategy? Or were you just kind of like, diving in and just like logging random things? And yeah, and so where are you? Like, like, like, how would you like, because this is what I’m always like, kind of wondering when people start. It’s like, what type of stocks did you kind of like to buy or like, how would you even find out about a stock or like a particular ticker name? Because like, I always find that super interesting because, you know, I’m looking at like, maybe like a long swing strategy just to have in my back pocket and stuff. And you know, I always wonder like, Where does this You know volume come from of all these people like AMC and GME and those things that catch on. So I was just kind of wondering like, what was your process towards kind of finding a stock?

Oren 5:11
Yeah, for me, I would say I was mostly focused on stocks, I knew your big tech companies, I wasn’t really into, like finding the small caps. And yeah, and trying to, you know, take a stock from $2 to $20. Like, I was buying the names you you’re familiar with Apple, AMD, Tesla. But like I said, it wasn’t, I was falling into the traps of FOMO. You know, I would see the stock rallying over multiple days, and then buy into it, and then not have the patience to hold through the drawdown.

The Turning Point of His Trading Career

Oren 5:46
Or a stop loss and re enter. And you’re always doing large caps. pretty much always doing large cap. Yeah, so I like so. Yeah, so I guess that was part of my initial hesitancy to join MIC was because I’m like, okay, these guys are mostly focused on small cap. But the more I got the content, and I’m like, it’s all it’s it doesn’t matter, small cap or large cap, it’s the process is the principles and the rules, right, and understanding your emotions while trading. So that’s what convinced me I’m like, Okay, I need to, I need to commit to learning if I really want to be successful in this and actually make it a side gig or a second stream of income.

James 6:31
Of course. So that’s 2019. Right. So you found MIC. And that’s it. Yeah, cool. So and at that point, I guess, what was your turning point for success? And how did you then how did you find your niche? And then what was your turning point for success?

Oren 6:47
Yeah, so that was 2020 2020 was really big year, in terms of my trading career, because a lot happened, you know, we all are very aware of the COVID crash. And I got caught in it in a good way, in a bad way. So I, you know, at this point, I had joined MIC, but I wasn’t really taking advantage of it yet. Yeah, so I was one of those people who had like, sign up for a membership, started watching some videos. But I was still pretty much trading on my own and just lurking on the chat, reading it getting ideas, reading from the large cap room, but not really committing to learning how to trade and, and learning the process. So at that point, I was also starting to dive into options. So I was just really interested in how options worked. Just kind of playing with them here and there. And then, by chance, I had bought some puts on the market. I had been following COVID really closely. So by by January, I’m like, Okay, I kind of think this is not your typical, you know, virus from China scare, it seems like something more serious is coming out. So I was already starting to be a little cautious in January. And then the market kept ripping, ripping, ripping. And kind of by sheer luck, I bought the top with spy puts. Yeah, and then the market collapses. So in a week, I make 40k off like holy shit $3,000 position. Yeah, that’s insane. Insane, you know, without totally understanding what’s going on. Like, yeah, just learning options, like, you know, and I got this like, crazy excitement. I’m like, I just banked so much. And I’m like, but this thing is gonna keep crashing. And it’s like the worst. You know, the say, the most experienced traders say, like, the worst thing that can happen to you is making a lot by luck. Because you build these horrible habits and you build this, this false sense of confidence. So then I’m just gunslinging options overnight, you know, trying to do swing trades, trying to catch these big moves during like, the most volatile period in the market, which is not easy to trade, obviously.

Losing 40K in a Day Trading Session

Oren 9:20
And I lost that 40k within like a month. Yep. And at that point, I was like, I’m paying for MIC I need to learn I need to take advantage of this. I think bow came on one night and he was like, you know, I’m going to be given out like Platinum memberships and may have had a few beers or something. So he was giving Alice like super good deal on the Platinum membership and it’s like, boom, I bought it like I’m joining in.

James 9:54
Actually remember this night that he was hammering? It was just throwing Platinum memberships out the window is like

Oren 9:59
This Yeah, he’s like, you know, the first five people or whatever, you know, that message me. So I was committed to learning at that point, because I’m like the emotional trauma of yeah, that high to that low. It made me recognise that, okay, I need to start working to be consistent. Yeah. And at that point, I didn’t know my niche, you know, like, I didn’t know if I wanted, I knew I wanted to do large cap, because I just have always been more interested in large caps of from even my earlier days of trading. And I liked options, too. So I knew I was committed to that, but it was really like, don’t want to be a day trader, swing trader. And I think the volatility of that time period made me start leaning to towards being a day trader. I thought, okay, you know, MIC is a little bit more specialized in day trading. I Joe’s really successful of it, we have a lot of people in the large cap room that are successful in trading both equity and options for for large cap. So I really started committing to doing that. And I did it from about, I’d say, April 2020. Until about November, maybe, maybe, October, November. And I was about breakeven, you know, in my mind, I actually hadn’t just lost that 40k loss a little more, I lost another 10k On top of that, right. So now in my mind, I’m like, I need to make back this money. Right. And I think that pressure, and like trying to learn how to day trade. Having that pressure and like that feeling like, oh, I need to make this money back is really negative towards your trading and your emotional weight. It’s a way Yeah. And so I think that kind of hampered my day trading. Because I was like, oversizing, I was getting emotional. All of the flaws of a day trader.

The Emotional Weight of Day Trading

James 12:05
Yeah, and oversizing and large caps, dude, you can find yourself like down big. I mean, I’ve done it before, like even trading like Tesla and stuff where like, you just get a little too big too quick. And you’re like, holy shit, I’m down a lot of money.

Oren 12:18
Right? Yeah. Yeah, so so the first like three months of that were probably more negative, you know, I was still digging the hole a little bit deeper, not not bad. But enough that it was like really hurting my morale and my confidence. And like, I don’t know, if I’m ever gonna get the hang of this. And then some, I started to like, get back up. So I was getting like breakeven months. But then after about doing that, for half a year, I was like, I just don’t think day trading fits my personality. And I wanted to start focusing back on swing trading, which is what I was doing prior to him I see. Yeah. And I’m like, I can take the lessons that I’m learning from MIC from the process from controlling your emotions. And not only that, but also like the technical analysis. So many things that apply to day trading also apply to swing trading, being patient, being patient, waiting for your lions, you know, all of that applies. And in my mind, I’m like, I’m getting stressed out doing day trading. So I’m going to I’m going to pivot at this point. And that pivot was really when I became consistently profitable because I’m like, Okay, now I found my niche and pretty quickly felt right.

Advice for New Investors

Oren 13:33
And cool. Yeah, and I just started diving deeper into date into swing trading. And I’ve been doing that since. So almost a year of, I’d say like, 95% swing trading. Wow. Yeah.

James 13:48
Long are your swings? On average? Are you like a one day multiple day? Like, what kind of timeframes? Do you look for?

Oren 13:53
A pretty good mix? So yeah, sometimes they’re just overnight. Other times I’ve been holding for weeks months. A few I’ve almost held a year. So Wow.

James 14:07
I haven’t held the stock within like five minutes.

Oren 14:11
I would say a majority though a majority are under three months.

Harry 14:16
So you kind of you know, I guess you had that insane, you know, drawdown and then you know, just your breakeven for a bit and then you kind of committed and then you know, now you’re on that kind of path on like swing trading and stuff like that. Do you have any like kind of like process advice, someone who’s trying to learn, like, you know, just like you are like, Do you have any like, tips to get started like how’d you start like, what were things do you think that made you consistent and you know, any process tips for anyone who’s kind of new and is kind of looking to get involved in that type of, you know, market as well.

Oren 15:00
Yeah, absolutely. That’s a great question. And I think so much of it goes back to your personality and the cliche that everyone is saying, like, find your niche, find your niche. And yeah, it’s, I think, when people are saying that to you, and you don’t really know what it is yet, it’s kind of frustrating. Like, I don’t know, my niches like, yeah, like, what does that even mean, really. But once you like, finally find that spot, and are starting to be profitable, and you just feel more calm in your trading, like everyone has, personality matches a different type of trading. Yep. And that’s really what you’re finding your niche is, is just finding the type of trading that fits your personality. So I would say, when you’re first starting, it is good to go between multiple things, if you don’t really know right away, you know, check out the small caps check out shorting longing, large cap options, but just keep your size small. And make sure you’re focusing on learning first, instead of diving in headfirst, because otherwise, you’re gonna end up blowing up and account and learning bad habits. So take the time to try different things. But don’t don’t oversize into your positions while you’re learning. And don’t try to do multiple things at once. Like a lot of people I know, in MIC who are still looking for consistency, come and chat me and they’re like, hey, you know, I’m trying to get into swing trading. But right now I’m shorting small caps. And I’m like, That’s great that you want to get into swing trading. But trying to do both at the same time, is really difficult. You know, each one takes a lot of focus and energy. So trying to do trying to spread yourself too thin, is a pretty good way to guarantee you’re going to be like, frustrated, stressed out and probably not trading well.

Do You Recommend Data Tracking or Spreadsheets?

James 17:05
Like the no do you recommend like when you’re new like this, like a lot of people ask the large cap guys, what do you recommend for like data tracking or spreadsheets? Do you even recommend people when they’re new do that? Is it too much? Is it overwhelming? And like kind of what do you do for it?

Oren 17:24
Yeah, I think it’s a little bit overboard to go like deep into the data tracking. Obviously, I love data. And I think it’s, especially in trading where so much of what we do looking at the charts is all it’s all based off data. It’s just visualisations of data. Yeah. But it’s so easy to overload yourself with that. And I think keep it simple, right? Just keep it simple. People often ask me, like, how do you find what tickers you’re trading? I’m like, I’m just trading the big names that we all talk about and what you know about Snapchat, Twitter, Facebook, like all the social media, all the tech companies. You know, just look at the s&p 500 list. And those are the stocks I’m trading really I’m not. I’m not going out and searching for the unknown stock, the holy grail that’s gonna go from like $10 to $300 Even though I did almost catch GME.

James 18:23
I remember the story. Yeah. That’s hilarious. And I guess, I mean, that’s cool, though. I mean, I think a lot of people they struggle with the concept of data, like I’m my brain isn’t wired that way. And I think it’s cool for people to know that, you know, there’s there’s two types two sides of it, you know, if you want to track or do spreadsheets, or charting, like, everyone has their their way of, of back testing, and it’s okay. And I think that’s cool that you are someone who is kind of data driven and, and whatnot. And I’m so I’m actually just really why keep blanking out is because Joe Kelly was just texting me. So he has his large cap webinar tonight. Which, which we can’t be on the Zoom beforehand, but But yeah.

Harry 19:02
He’s on the Zoom.

James 19:03
It’s okay. Well, we got like five minutes. And I guess before we kind of wrap it up, what what would be the most important small piece of advice? I know you gave a good a good little session there on like sizing and focusing in but what was one thing you wish as a new trader you someone told you, and you think that probably would have cut your learning curve, like in half?

Oren 19:27
That’s a good question.

James 19:28
It’s a tough one.

Oren 19:30
Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing, yeah, the biggest thing is just take your time in the world, we’re in this for a lot, hopefully a long time, not a you know, so it’s not a get rich quick type of scheme. Of course, take your time to learn and and this is what everyone preaches. And it’s like the same thing with everything in life. You can’t just jump in and assume that you’re going to be great. You know, like Sure you can get lucky and by and happen to have bought some crazy options and got rich quick. But for every person that does that, so many countless more, lose all their money, essentially like gambling. So just start small start small, you don’t eat unnecessarily paper trade because I think paper trading is a little, it takes away the emotional aspect of it. But just use a size that you’re comfortable with, because so many people view trading as like this way to make money to start paying rent to start buying all these nice things. And it’s like, Don’t quit your job, you know, view trading as a way, first of all, just look at it as a learning process. You know, like, Okay, I’m going to get educated in trading in the stock market, and finance. And then I’m going to incrementally start building it as like a business like I’m gonna start, start small, you know, I might incur some losses in the beginning, but I’ll learn how to do the business better. And then by the time I start adding more capital, I’ll be winning more often. And then all of a sudden, you’re, you know, your account is over PDT, and you’re able to day trade, you’re able to do more strategies, and have more positions. So just start small and build up, start small and build up.

James 21:28
I love that man. I love that. I think that’s really solid, awesome advice, especially for anyone trying to get into trading in general, but especially large caps, because it can be super overwhelming, but I hate I hate having to wrap these things up short. And Joe said he’s gonna fire us both. But it can always be a number two. Yeah. Well, that’s what we’d love to have you back on to and like I know a lot of members would love to hear about large cap strategy and like just overall market sentiment and stuff. So we really do appreciate you coming on and we’d love to get you back on for sure.

Oren 21:58
Yeah, absolutely, guys. Yeah. A lot of fun and we’ll do it again.

James 22:02
Awesome, man. Well, thank you again.

Oren 22:03
All right. Have a good night.

James 22:05
Goodbye, everyone. You too buddy.

 

About the Author
117 posts
James F.

James Freedlender is a driven day trader and entrepreneur hailing from Boston. Since embarking on his trading journey in 2018, James has honed his skills and specialized in trading penny stocks, with a focus on longer time frame moves. His dedication and sharp instincts have contributed to his success in the competitive financial world. In addition to his day trading accomplishments, James is a thriving business owner, running a popular barbershop and collaborating with his family in the design and renovation of homes and businesses. His entrepreneurial spirit and keen eye for detail have paved the way for continued success in his various ventures. Outside of his professional pursuits, James is an avid golfer and hiking enthusiast, always eager to explore new trails and perfect his swing. His love for travel has taken him to many corners of the world, enriching his life experiences and providing inspiration for his work. A firm believer in giving back, James is passionate about helping others achieve their financial goals and guiding them on the path to success. His wealth of knowledge, combined with his dedication to uplifting others, makes James Freedlender a respected and admired figure in both his professional and personal life.