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James 0:01
Hey, what’s up guys, we are back with another episode of the after hours Podcast. Today we have a very special guest, Tyler. He is one of the junior moderators in MIC So Tyler. Thank you for coming on.

Tyler 0:13
Yeah, thanks for having me, Harry and James.

James 0:16
Of course, of course. So we always got to follow like a very similar structure. And like, I guess the first question is, how did you get into trading? And how did you kind of get to where you are now?

Tyler 0:27
Yeah. So I’ll bring us back to I guess, junior year in college. This was the spring of 2016. I was a finance and business analytics major at the University of New Hampshire. I was in a few finance groups. And so I always kind of loved analytics and finance and business. What have you, but I think I came across a YouTube ad for another chat room. And that’s what sparked my interest. I was in a, an investment group that was just kind of like holding a long term portfolio. And I was like, There’s got to be a different type of investment. Yes. And the YouTube ad just came out a perfect time for that. And so I ended up joining that group, I was in that group for, I think, three years. But originally, once I was in that group, I bought a few DVDs I learned, you know, just kind of what day trading was about, which I’m super grateful for. And probably within the first two months, I knew that that was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life, despite not even trading, not even making money. It just the love and the joy I felt for it was great. So that’s how I got into it. And then I guess I’ll just kind of carry on.

James 1:26
Are you having any success at that time? Or was it kind of just like, losing money? Or like really just still trying to figure like, even starting Yeah,

Tyler 1:35
Yeah, so within the first few months, I wasn’t even trading at all. I had an internship over the summer. So going into senior year at college, I took pretty much all the money I made from my internship. And I opened up a TD Ameritrade account. And it was just like longing breakouts for like, what felt like, I wasn’t making any money. I think I lost like 75% of the money I made on my internship. And then, towards the end of my senior year in college, though, I knew that I wanted to take trading more seriously because it was tough. Honestly, for me senior year, like I wanted to enjoy myself, I took school very seriously. I don’t think I balanced things as well as you did, Harry.

Harry 2:10
I dont know about that!

Tyler 2:14
Upon graduation, I was like, alright, like if I want to take trading seriously, I got to find a way to do it more full time while I still have another job. And so I kind of had the idea to move from New Hampshire on the east coast to California and the west coast. So I could actually wake up early for the market open before I did my normal job. And right now I’m gonna hang that sick thing. Yeah.

James 2:35
Because that’s a that’s dedication, man. I mean, California traders I have so much respect for because waking up that early is not easy. And especially for trading where it’s a job where like, you never know if we’re gonna get paid if you’re gonna lose money. So it’s it’s tough. So I respect the hell out of that. It’s cool.

Tyler 2:50
Thank you. Yeah, it was it was crazy, because I didn’t know anyone else that was in San Francisco at the time, didn’t know anyone wasn’t making money trading. And at the time, I was filming in the chat room. So I was waking up 10 minutes before the bell. And obviously that time the process evolved to wait now I’m waking up at like 330 in the morning. Which is which I absolutely want surprisingly. Yeah. Yeah, I guess cool. That’s how I got into it. And then I can touch on more like when I joined them by see and how things started to change if you want but that’s kind of how I got into it.

Harry 3:17
Maybe going to kind of so you were part of that kind of room, whatever it is, I’m sure people listening can decipher like it’s one of the one of the main usual. So um, you know, you kind of break away from that room, you get into MIC. Yeah. How did you find out about MIC in the first place? And then how did you kind of see your trading, maybe change a little bit once you joined?

Tyler 3:43
Yeah, great question. So I joined MIC, I think two or three months after it was it was created. I think it was in the I joined probably early winter of 2018, maybe towards the end of the year, and I found out about it just through Twitter. I think that’s how Alex & Bao posts about it. And I knew about them on and off for the years prior being in that other chat room. I just was exposed to other names. So really grateful that I was on Twitter at the time when I saw that. I joined immediately I was a monthly member for probably a year and a half and then I transitioned to annual but for the first year in MIC, I was still under PDT and I was still just like longing thoughts. I think I was trying to break all the bad habits that I was that I created. And it wasn’t till the spring of 2019 When I opened up a venom account to start shorting under PDT still, I think over the last two or three years of longing I realised that there was so many ways to leave money long, but might as well like just kind of flip it and see if I’m comfortable shorting and doing the same thing. And I spent a year under PDT just shorting with venom, and it was so difficult because you don’t have the shares available to locate any of the stocks that are typically on the watch list and it was really difficult. I was trading probably once or twice a week like no On net setups just to like, force myself to short and it was really difficult and I wasn’t consistent whatsoever. And then, during that time, I was just saving up a tonne of money from my my full time job. And then in the spring of 2020, so I guess almost a year ago, as of last month, I opened up an account with Cobra to short and it was above PDT, and then it took me probably six months with that account, to start to find some consistency. I was probably trading like three or four different setups at a time, like I had a pretty refined process. But the one big thing that I was doing wrong was just trading so many different setups and not sticking to one.

The One Thing He Was Doing Wrong in Trading

James 5:40
Yeah, I mean, your story is cool, because I feel like I’ve I don’t know if anyone knows but me Tyler and I met up last spring actually is right around the time he probably got over PDT it was he came into Boston, we went out and got lunch together. And at that time, you were still kind of inconsistent like you were still fear piecing it. It was cool to watch because every day, I get something now I get a little another like little golden nugget, like I started to understand. But yeah, you’re right. Like at that time you were trying to trade every every little strategy, right? Every bounce. You’re trying to learn how to scale do this that the other thing? And I think your your biggest killer at that time was just overthinking. You wanted to hit everything and like be perfect on everything. And you’re good at it. But it was just it was such a killer. But then what made the bigger change for you? Right? Was you just started focusing on one setup.

Tyler 6:28
I’m really glad you said that too. Because I’m actually looking back at that lunch we had. And I remember I was like starting to feel some consistency. But I wrote the two word doc and I may have actually sent it to you. And I called it unsustainable consistency, where I was using the level two and the time in sales too much. So hyper focused on overthinking totally so much size on risking, like 5 10 cents. And I already knew better from years prior like, I don’t know why I’m doing it. But like, I would have some big wins. And then I would have some huge losses. And so it was funny. When we met up for lunch, I remember being like, Oh, I’m starting to get it. I’m figuring out. And now looking back to that I’m like, I don’t even know what I was doing back then.

James 7:04
Six months ago, but I think pretty common.

Tyler 7:07
What’s cool now is like, I think, like I’ve been meditating for the last like two years or so. And I think over that time, I’ve become really self aware and conscious of my thoughts and what makes me feel certain ways. And I think throughout the last six months, I’ve been able to take that into trading. And I’ve started to really learn on like, what just makes me feel good. Like, where am I stressed? Where do I find myself overthinking? Where am I like, you can feel it in your body. I know James and Harry, you both talked about it in your video, like you can use your body as a tool to understand if you’re oversized or undersized that you’re trading non match. And over time through I think this kind of self awareness and meditative process, I started to kind of shift my focus to just trading things that just made me feel good. And I know we always say like you want to, you want to make the most amount of money with the least amount of stress. And I never really took that to heart until I guess the last six months. And so I guess make a relatively long story shorter, started to just focus on these stocks that would fade and I wasn’t trading like the specific all day faders with a set criteria. I just noticed that whenever I screenshot prior runners, they’d always end up just fading. And it was different times throughout the day. And I kind of liked the idea of you know, setting a few orders, you have your Ric and stuff in place, there’s a place to add, and then you just kind of let it go. Because for me, I didn’t even I didn’t want to look at the level two, I don’t want to look at sales. And finding a strategy that would force me to not do that, I think was the most beneficial thing. And then over time, I started to ask, you know, there are a lot of questions about about his strategy. And I think it’s been probably four or five months now where I’ve been just specific to all the theatres. And what’s been so great about that is that it’s so systematic that I actually don’t think at all, but I think was the biggest thing for me. Because once a tarp is set, I know where my stop is, I can get on the size I want I have a clear spot where I know I will add and then I lower my risk and it’s the same dollar amount that to me was the light bulb going off that I can add as much as I can risk the same amount.

James 9:08
I feel like with you what’s cool to watch is like you might trade like like I fucking trade like 1020 times a day right like Alex or bow or Harry like areolas is a trade that much actually but like you it’s like I’ll see way less trades from you. Like maybe it’s like once a week or once every two weeks. But I know in that one trade you’re making more money than you were trying to trade like 10 different trades in a day. And so so you got to this point just by listening to yourself, right like kind of seeing like when you were trying to scalp like you used to say you were uncomfortable. You always have these questions like I don’t know what to add. I don’t know where to get in that scale. And like it’s cool to watch you grow to this trader now that like you have confidence in your setup and like I don’t really see you taking losses that much I’m gonna knock on wood for you. Even even the losses I’ve seen are so controlled and manageable and then the winds are like Massive compared to the like, you can see it right. Yeah, thanks. So it’s, it’s cool, man, I love to see that. And like, I don’t know, it’s like it’s fun watching traders grow especially like that’s why I love being a Mod I love I love seeing it.

What He Was Looking For on the Tape

Harry 10:12
When you said that you were kind of like using the tape exclusively. Maybe you can like kind of go in a little bit to what you were kind of like looking for or like, what do you even thought in your head? Because I know a lot of people, I get a lot of messages from people who are like, man, like, I know that you just trade off the tape. And I’m like, No, bro, I don’t like you can’t just stare at the level two all day without a chart and then think that’s going to work? Yeah, need to put all the little pieces together. And that’s why like, I’m kind of happy that you did bring that up. Because there are a tonne of people who are looking at, you know, let’s say place like high a day. And they’re like, well, we see a lot of green prints going off on the tape, man, that means I shouldn’t be wrong. And I’m like, oh, that’s just the wrong area. So like, maybe you could dive in a little bit. What you were searching for what you thought was gonna happen? Because, you know, it does sound that like, like, you did try to go a little bit like just off the tape. I mean, coming in, like, if you read Twitter, and you only just read Twitter, that’s a big thing that talked about every single day, whether it’s like big names, or like, you know, even kind of people who are smaller. That is a, you know, something that’s talked about almost 24/7 on Twitter, like, oh, man, do you catch that tape read? Man, that was the tape. So like, maybe you could kind of go in like, what you were kind of looking for?

Tyler 11:38
Yeah, yeah. You know, looking back, because again, it’s probably like, over like, over six months or a year from now, I think what I was looking back, I think I was just I think I was afraid of trusting the line. And so I would look to the tape and level two as confirmation that there was rejection. And so I draw my line out, I wouldn’t place my fantasy orders there. And I was like, I don’t want to put my order there and like see it working. And then at that point, once you do think you see it working, it might get a little stuffy, then I would be reactive. And I know there’s some folks that are reactive when adding and things like that. But for my initial trade shorting, like shorting like broken day one stocks into like those key market resistance lines, I wouldn’t trust my lines, I wouldn’t trust myself. So I was using level two as confirmation and be like, Oh, I think now it’s stuffing. So this line is working anymore.

Harry 12:30
Necessarily looking for like oh hidden buyer, oh, hidden seller, stuff like that. You just want to see if it rejected or?

Tyler 12:37
Yeah, I think it was a little bit of both. Like, it’s funny, because during this time, it was the most inefficient way to trade. Like you should never trade like that. But I didn’t learn a lot about the level two. And so I wouldn’t see it in environments like that, which is great. But I don’t think those should ever be a reason to those shouldn’t make a decision to enter or exit a position like that. It can maybe just add a little confirmation for something that you already have in place, if that makes sense.

How the Tape Confuses Traders

James 13:00
I think the tape so funny. Like, I think the tape confuses traders more than it should I think they use it more than they should like, like for me like I’m one of those guys like honestly, I think I could trade without the tape. And like trade the exact same way I trade now. Just because I just trust my line, like now and stuff like that does use the tape. And he talks about using the tape. But like really all his stuff is fantasy orders. So like in reality, like, I think it’s a misconception and like you fell into it. I think iPhones were to where like you were lying. You’re like there’s a there’s a signal on the tape that I’m missing. Then the tape. And I know Harry’s big on tape. So again, everyone’s different. But the tape is just to me, it’s just a tool that you can use to better your entries or to you know, tell the story of the stock of that day. And yeah, I mean, it’s cool. And like, I feel like those little things probably kept you from growing for so long. Because you were just like searching for this holy grail that didn’t exist, and you didn’t find your holy grail. And so you found a setup that made you comfortable.

Tyler 13:59
Yeah, like it wasn’t until, yeah, until six months ago. I’ve been trading for five years and it sucks. And for the last six months to realise I need to stop focusing on things that would distract me.

Harry 14:07
Yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to jump in for one second. I think for me, I spent a lot of time just purely watching just how stocks move, I think. And like, I would just like lock myself in a room where, you know, I would just watch like these recordings just day after day after day after day until I finally got it. That’s just what I kind of did. I think there’s a lot of ways to go about it. That’s personally how I did like I would look out price kind of reacted around levels and stuff like that. But there is a tonne of different ways to make money. And I mean, I think the route that I chose was definitely the hardest and like I don’t know if it’s the most efficient but I would just sit and watch because I was like shit like I need to get experience. I need to get screen time. How am I going to do that? I’m just going to sit and watch recordings day after day be 230 at forgetting in that turnout. And I’d be like, alright, here comes the open, get my plan ready, you know, just reporting after recording? And that’s what I would kind of do. Yeah, you know, and I would kind of picture myself as like, okay, if I’m a professional basketball player or a hockey player, how many times am I going to shoot the same ball or the same puck every single day until I’m good until I can get it? You know, that’s how I always kind of pictured it. And so that was just kind of my approach. But there are, you know, several different approaches that you can kind of, and do you think that like, if you had have just traded with fantasy orders, it would have been a lot more efficient than trying to sit and try and read the tape and stress yourself out?

Tyler 15:41
Absolutely. I think fantasy orders are just the way to do it. Because it should remove any sort of stress that you have, especially if you have like a premarket hide a risk. This is for shorting at least if you know where you’re stopping out, and you know, your lines, and you just put your fantasy orders and literally step away, it’s the most stress free trading that you can do. For me it like still kind of didn’t work with scaling, and then adding like, something just didn’t click with me. But I think that’s the best way to do it as a new trader or an experienced traders, like if you just set your lines and fantasy orders, it removes so much overthinking. And I’m glad you brought up how it works for you, Harry with reading the tape because everyone’s different. And just for me, it wasn’t comfortable. And I realised I was getting stressed. Actually, it’s kind of funny, I got this Garmin watch struck my track my heart rate and like sleep and everything. And when I would look at the level of on the tape of like, James, when we would go out to lunch, like my average heart rate, and a trade was like 100 to 110. And like when I go searching, it’s at 110. And now when I trade, it’s like 55. It’s like I’m dead. Like that’s how it should be is like you can almost use your body use watches as a way to gauge like, what works for you. Yeah.

James 16:47
So as you were finding your like your setup, like because you are focused on these all day faders. Like you said, what was it that you kind of dove into? To get you to like your present edge? Like what was it that you were looking at, like, and what really got you to the point of being comfortable in these trades?

Tyler 17:02
Yeah. So I have to give a huge thanks to the the bear and MIC, I’ve asked him a million questions, and he has a few videos that have really helped. I did, there’s a few things, I think the first thing is I did my own back testing. And that testing doesn’t necessarily have to mean that you’re plugging away in Excel, it can simply mean taking screenshots of all of the faders that have worked over the last quarter or a year, and just review them. So I would do that. And that helped give me a lot of confidence that we’re looking at like 60 to 70% of these thoughts that would just fade, if a certain criteria was met just gave me confidence. That was, I think, the first big thing. And then as of recent, I might be going a little over the top here. But I’m trying to create some code and create different things to remove any type of bias or emotion whatsoever. So over the last three or four months, I found out what like what criteria makes sense for all day theatres. And I use things script and Thinkorswim to create a code that’s a custom scan for me. So that all I have to do is focus on those. I don’t even look at anything else. And I use MIC as a scan of the best scanner that we could have. But I was like, if it doesn’t fit this niche, I’m not trading it. And so what also has given me confidence over time is knowing that I’m trading a setup that I know is profitable, if I just stick to my process. And that whole process is the biggest thing. And so if I can create, within my process, do different things to prevent any type of thinking to enter that process, then to me, I’m going to be winning in the long term, if that makes sense. Yeah, it’s something Yeah, when I placed my orders, it’s a conditional order. So once my limit order is hit, it’ll give me my SOP, it’ll give me my profit cover. When I add I’ll just move them around a little bit. And I don’t have to do anything, which is great. And then there’s a few other things I’m doing now to try to like automate a little bit more. But that’s what’s given me confidence is knowing if a strategy is working, and I have the discipline to stick to it.

Harry 18:58
Yeah. I think like with all day fader setup, like, I mean, if you really simplify it down, and you’re you’re, you know, you’re talking about it, it really just means that you have more sellers than buyers for the entire day, if we’re really simplifying it down. So how are you going to get that excess supply? Well, it’s going to come from bag holders, it’s going to come from dilution. And also we’re going to have excess supply throughout the day, whether we know it or not, we’re going to have a big go traders that are stuck. We’re going to have you know, we’re going to have those breakout traders who are stuck, we’re going to have those shorts who are slamming the bids, right? All these things need into that excess supply, which makes the stock go lower. So I mean, you can there are a lot of people who are like oh, this is like setup D 12796. But all that really means at the end of the day is that we have more sellers than buyers for the entire day and that every single person who bought was met with excess supply excess sellers which made us go lower? Right?

Tyler 20:02
I’m glad you say that too, because I think the most important thing on top of just supply for getting the socks to fade is having the range for it to come down. So if you can get excess supply with enough range and meet where you can add, and then continue to see it fade, it’s the most important thing. And

Harry 20:19
Right to be able to have it down, right, we needed to get.

Tyler 20:24
Yeah, exactly.

James 20:26
So I think one of the hardest things for like new traders is that they feel that they have to trade every day, like every time they sit at their desk, if they’re not placing 10 20 30 trades that they’re failing, how did you get to the point now where you’re comfortable going, like a week, two weeks, whatever, without trading without touching the setup or anything, and What gave you that like that kind of like, I don’t wanna say Zen, but that confidence to just sit there, wait, and just be patient.

Tyler 20:53
So I think, you know, with a lot of meditation, you can do this thing where you can start to, like, recondition how your body and mind thinks and at a high level. And if you recognise as an individual that you have certain thoughts that you’re like, oh, I want to trade I need to trade I should get into that and you recognise and are aware of those thoughts. You can you can change the way you’re thinking. And so what I did is every single day that I want to my end present, I would just continuously remind myself that if I don’t trade today, I’m preserving mental capital and real capital to attack when my edge presents itself tomorrow. And I think that friendly reminder that I would tell myself every single morning that if I don’t trade today, I’m better positioned for tomorrow when my edges there. I think it started to just be ingrained in me. Well, now okay, sitting. I went three weeks, I think in April.

Taking Time off to Meditate

James 21:45
Not trade.

Harry 21:49
You get stuck.

James 21:50
Looks like he’s frozen. Tyler? Well, this is just uncomfortable. Let’s see, if he doesn’t Unfreeze. I’ll tell the story.

Tyler 22:07
There you go. Oh, shoot. I don’t know where.

James 22:10
But no, it should. Last thing. Last thing we heard was, you went three weeks in April that trading?

Tyler 22:16
Oh, yeah. And I guess yeah, just to summarise, like, I think it was the reconditioning where I kept reminding myself it’s okay to to not trade because I’ll be in full mental health to capitalise when my edges there, that reminder, daily, has gotten me to a point where now I’m not worried or concerned about not trading for a day?

James 22:33
No, do you? Do you know that?

Harry 22:35
You go, or no, you can just talk? And then I think I’ll just do one more question at it. Sure.

James 22:40
Do you do you think that all traders of all levels should try to incorporate some form of meditation? Whatever they call, you know, mental, like focus, like, do you think everyone should do that? And how do you kind of recommend new guys get started into that?

Harry 22:57
I just want to add to James’s question real quick, because mine is similar, because I did have a post about the same sort of thing about taking time off about, you know, really just, I guess my posts was more about just having some balance, being able to take some time off, like feeling good, like taking care of mental health. So I think like, that also adds into James as well. And that’s a good place to end it. So I mean, I guess, as well as James’s question, like, thoughts on time off thoughts on Yeah, we just taking care of yourself?

Tyler 23:26
Yeah, definitely. These are great questions. Thanks for asking us to wrap it up. And let me know if I cut out maybe, yes. I think every single trader and non trader should should meditate. It can be something as simple as one minute every morning, just focusing on the breath to something that’s 30 minutes to an hour. There’s a whole conversation on visualisation that we could get into in another podcast, maybe. But I think every trader would benefit from it. Because in its simplest form, meditation, you’re not removing any thinking, like people think that when you meditate, you have to literally just be so still and nothing’s happening. That’s kind of the ideal state. But when you meditate, you’re just becoming aware of all of your thoughts. And imagine as a trader, at any point, throughout the trading day, you can just be aware of all of those little thoughts and voices in your head saying, you should add more size or you should hold a little bit longer, you should remove your stop, like all of those things that relate to fear and greed. If you can be aware of that before it happens. You can prevent yourself from actually acting on those emotions, if that makes sense. Yeah, so like, I think it’s super important. And if everyone wants to start like I think headspace and calm those apps are great places to start. That’s what I did. And then anyone can shoot me a message and and MIC chat because I have a list of probably 10 to 15 books that I would recommend that relate to just kind of mental health and how to clear those thoughts. But yeah, so James, for your question. I think everyone would benefit, even if it’s as simple as just a few minutes every morning before the market opens. And then Harry, your question on like time off. And as it relates to mental health and, and balancing that, I think it’s super important in February, I took two weeks off to go to Hawaii. And I didn’t even I deleted slack from my phone to deleted the charts, we did everything. And it was one of the best things I could do. It was obviously hard because you’re like removing something well from your life for two weeks. But when I came back, despite the market being a little slow for all day theatres, or it was actually a little choppy. I was just in such a good headspace. Like, I wasn’t overthinking I was like, I’m just going to keep everything pretty slow I size down. So I think that time off is so important, just because I think some of us can get in this, this mode where we’re constantly grinding, working, studying, and you just need those those days away. And then I’ll conclude by saying like my process pre market, used to be looking at three or four MIC videos a day. And now my process from 330, when the market opens at 630, it’s all doing things to just make sure I’m in the best mental state I can be prior to the open. And so it’s talking with my parents and brother on the East Coast, it’s sending them money for a cup of coffee, it’s reading a few books that’s meditating for like 2030 minutes. And hopefully, while I’m meditating, the stock doesn’t pop up. So I don’t, I don’t miss the Locate or something. But I just do things now to just make sure I’m in a good mental state. Because when the market opens, or when the stock hits my criteria pre market, I want to be ready to capitalise. So all that to say meditation is super important, I think and making sure you’re in a good mental state, I think is is what can make a trader successful. And I still have a lot to learn. Like I’m not saying I figured it out. I think it’s helped me start to realise where I want to be as a trader and where I’m going.

Harry 26:44
I like, I love a big that’s for sure. Yeah.

James 26:48
Yeah, that’s awesome. I think. Yeah, I think if any, if anyone wants to reach out to Tyler, you know, reach out to him in chat. And like I said, I’ve talked to him a million times. And he’s very helpful when it comes to that stuff. And always a good person to help remind you to stay kind of in that. Good headspace. And, yeah, thank you for coming on. That was awesome. Yeah.

Tyler 27:09
Thank you both for having me.

Harry 27:11
No problem. All right.

 

 

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.