Put one verified eight figure trader in the middle of a room. Surround him with 15 traders who lose money. Let them ask anything they want for over two hours.
That was the setup for a recent Words of Wisdom episode featuring our co-founder Alex Temiz, who has over $16 million in verified profits on Kinfo. Fifteen traders showed up thinking they had fifteen different problems. Frozen at a $25,000 red position. Chasing red candles. Revenge trading futures. Cutting winners short. Blowing through max loss limits.
By the end of the session, it was obvious they were mostly carrying the same handful of problems wearing different costumes. Here’s what Alex told them, grouped into the themes that kept coming up.
The Problem Isn’t Making Money. It’s Losing It
The most repeated moment of the whole session happened when traders pulled up their actual stats. One trader was making $200 on his green days and losing $1,200 on his red days. Six times the loss. Another was running close to a coin flip, 71 winning days against 72 losing days, and still sat deep in the red because his average losing day outweighed his average green day.
Alex’s read was the same every time: these traders could already make money.
The data proved it.
What they couldn’t do was stop losing it.
In his words, anyone can make money in the markets; the traders who survive are the ones who control their risk. There are plenty of reasons day traders lose money, but oversized losses sat underneath almost every account he reviewed that day.
His fix is almost insultingly simple.
Your max loss should be no more than two days worth of work.
If you average +$1,000 a day, your worst day is capped at -$2,000.
Make $1,500 a day? Max loss is $3,000.
Same Trader, Different Loss Rules
Many of the traders in the circle only win about 50% of the time. So, let’s run the numbers on two types of traders.
Both traders in this scenario will have 10 winning days and 10 losing days. The only difference: Trader B caps oversized losses at two average winning days.
Here are the rest of the assumptions:
- 10 winning days
- 10 losing days
- Average winning day: +$1,000
- Max loss rule: 2 days of average gains = -$2,000
- Two days hit the max loss
- Other losses range from small to almost max loss
The only difference is their max loss.
| Day | Trader A: No Max Loss | Trader B: Max Loss | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | +$900 | +$900 | $0 |
| 2 | -$450 | -$450 | $0 |
| 3 | +$1,200 | +$1,200 | $0 |
| 4 | +$850 | +$850 | $0 |
| 5 | -$1,100 | -$1,100 | $0 |
| 6 | -$5,000 | -$2,000 | +$3,000 |
| 7 | +$1,050 | +$1,050 | $0 |
| 8 | -$700 | -$700 | $0 |
| 9 | +$950 | +$950 | $0 |
| 10 | -$1,850 | -$1,850 | $0 |
| 11 | +$1,300 | +$1,300 | $0 |
| 12 | -$300 | -$300 | $0 |
| 13 | +$800 | +$800 | $0 |
| 14 | -$1,400 | -$1,400 | $0 |
| 15 | +$1,100 | +$1,100 | $0 |
| 16 | -$900 | -$900 | $0 |
| 17 | +$1,150 | +$1,150 | $0 |
| 18 | -$4,500 | -$2,000 | +$2,500 |
| 19 | +$700 | +$700 | $0 |
| 20 | -$600 | -$600 | $0 |
| Total | -$6,800 | -$1,300 | +$5,500 |
Run the math on your own losses with that cap applied. From the interview, one trader’s $2,000 losing days would have been $300 days, and the month he was reviewing would have flipped green.
What Percentage of My Account Should I Risk?
One trader asked what percentage of a $100K account he should risk daily, and Alex refused to frame it that way.
It’s not about the account size.
It’s about how many days of work you’re willing to give back, and the answer should never be more than two.
Your Stop Order Is Your Risk Manager
One trader admitted she had sat through open positions down $25,000, completely frozen. Most of the time the stock came back to her average. The other times, she blew up her account. She’d done it three or four times.
Alex’s diagnosis: she was using mental stops, not hard stops. And his confession surprised the room. He can’t click the stop button either. When he started out, he’d freeze like a deer in headlights, watch -$5,000 become -$10,000, tell himself he’d get out at break even, and then blow up. So he stopped relying on himself. The second he hits the entry button, the next button he hits is the stop order. Every trade, no exceptions.
Professional traders on Wall Street have a risk manager whose entire job is to tap them on the shoulder and ask what the plan is. Retail traders don’t get one, so the stop order has to play that role.
Understanding how stop loss orders actually work, and using them on every single entry, removes the discipline problem from the equation entirely. Let the computer do what your brain can’t.
| With Stop | Without Stop |
|---|---|
| Planned Loss: -$2/share | Loss keeps growing |
| Computer exits position | Trader must make decision |
| Risk known before entry | Risk unknown |
| Trade survives | Account may not |
The same trader admitted she had called her broker several times to remove the max loss setting on her account. Alex compared it to an alcoholic who tells the bartender never to serve him, then keeps walking up and ordering one drink, then two. You have to cut yourself off completely. Some traders sign a document instructing their broker never to adjust the stop no matter what they say later. If that’s the level of extreme it takes, so be it. It’s better than losing money.
One more rule: your max loss is your airbag, and your airbag should not be going off every day. If you’re hitting your stop constantly, you’re in too big. Set the stop where the trade thesis is no longer valid, not at the level where you blow up.
No Plan, No Trade
A trader with six years of experience described jumping into trades impulsively whenever price moved in his favor, even when his plan said nothing.
Alex’s response: that isn’t a trading problem, it’s a planning problem.
Every trade needs:
- an entry,
- an exit,
- a stop,
- and a target before you’re in.
If you’re missing any of these, you’re not trading. You’re gambling.
When Alex started, he wrote those four numbers on a post-it note and stuck it on his screen in front of the chart. If the stock hit his entry, he took it. If it hit his stop, he was out. Anything else didn’t exist. And when the trader pushed back, asking about adapting when price action doesn’t quite match the plan but the edge still feels there, Alex shut it down. If you allow yourself to adapt, you’ll find an excuse to adapt every single time.
The plan also tells you when to do nothing. In one October, nothing hit Alex’s plan for ten trading days, so he didn’t trade for ten days. On the eleventh day his setup finally showed up, he went aggressive, and he made his entire month in one session.
Trading is like fishing. You throw the line in the water and wait. If the fish doesn’t come, you don’t jump in and swim after it.
One caveat he kept repeating: it’s okay to be wrong, it’s not okay to stay wrong.
Stopping out doesn’t mean the trade is dead. If the move starts confirming again, get back in. He’s stopped out at the exact high of day plenty of times and re-entered seconds later when the reversal candle showed up.
Find Your Window and Master One Market
Another described feeling opportunity everywhere, especially now that PDT is gone.
This trader tries to trade pre-market, the open, the afternoon, and the close.
Alex’s answer came straight from his own stats.
When he uploaded all his trades, the data showed he lost money pre-market, lost money after hours, and lost money after 11 AM EST. His edge lived between 9:30 AM and 10:30 AM EST.
So that became his entire trading day, and he’s made a career trading one hour a day.
The mistake, he explained, is treating trading like a day job, where more hours clocked means more money earned. Trading works the other way. It’s like the casino: you make more money when you walk away from the table. If you make $1,000 in your best window and $100 pre-market, the answer isn’t to grind every window. It’s to scale up the window that already works and cut everything else.
The same logic applies across markets.
One trader was bouncing between forex, indices, and futures. Alex compared it to soccer and basketball; both use a ball, but one uses your feet and one uses your hands.
Another trader admitted he’s the type to order five plates at a restaurant just to try everything. Alex’s reply: he loves trying every dish too, but trading doesn’t work like a menu. In the trading world you have to be the master of one, not the jack of all. Alex shorts small cap stocks priced between $2-$10 between 9:30 AM and 10:30 AM EST and made his fortune on that narrow lane.
Finding your niche and refusing to leave it is the whole game.
His challenge to the room: pick your best window, trade only that window for a full month, and watch what the numbers do. Not two days. Not a week. A month.
Size by the Setup, and Only Add to Winners
When a trader asked how to scale a $35K account, Alex laid out what he calls exponential bet sizing. You can’t wake up on a random Wednesday and decide to size up because you feel like it. Size is determined by the setup, and setups get graded.
A C-grade setup shows up every day and wins about half the time (50%), something like a basic rejection off the volume weighted average price. That gets 1,000 shares.
A B-grade setup wins maybe 75-80% of the time, like a stock that fails pre-market, pops into resistance after the open, and fails again. That gets 5,000 shares.
An A+ setup like a first red day after multiple green days wins 90-95% of the time and might only come around once a quarter. That gets 25,000 shares.
The higher the win rate, the more aggressive the size. And if you can’t grade your setups because you don’t know your numbers, you’re not ready to size up at all.
The Other Half Of The Sizing Equation Is Trend
Never be in your largest size while the stock moves against you.
Alex uses a rule he came up after being coached by Dr. Brett Steenbarger: only use 30% of your max size on the frontside and the remaining 70% on the backside. He calls it his 30/70 size rule.
While a stock is still frontside, Alex will only short up to 30% of his max size, and gets aggressive by adding the remaining 70% of his max size when there is a confirmation of backside, like a high-volume reversal candle, or in other words, a death candle as we call it. If you’ve ever wondered what a death candle means for a trade, that’s it: the signal that says longs are trapped and it’s time to press the sell button (or short in Alex’s case).
Here is how it works:
Alex learned the hard way what happens when you ignore this. His worst day ever was a -$450,000 loss, built by stubbornly adding to a loser over and over. He calls it tuition.
These days he only adds to winners, and there’s a proper way to scale into stocks that doesn’t leave you max size at the worst possible moment.
A futures trader in the room was turning three contracts into nine as trades moved his way, then getting wiped out by one candle. Too big, Alex told him. Stocks need fudge factor, room to wiggle. Use less size and take a bigger portion of the move.
Revenge Trading Ends When You Do the Math
The second half of the session turned into a revenge trading clinic. Several traders pulled up journals showing the same shape: small controlled losses, then one emotional session that wiped out weeks of progress.
Alex’s first tool is physical.
The instant you take a loss, your brain spends exactly one nanosecond before asking how to make it back. So get up and walk away for five minutes. Clear your head before the impulse becomes an order.
His second tool is a hard rule: three strikes and you’re out.
Three losing trades in a day, and the day is over, no mental accounting about winners in between. If you’re wrong three times, something is off with you that day, and the fourth trade isn’t going to fix it.
His third tool is arithmetic.
He walked one trader through a week where an acceptable $110 loss turned into $250 because of revenge entries. That’s $140 of pure self-inflicted damage. Multiply it across weeks and you’re looking at hundreds of dollars a month donated to the market for nothing. Another trader’s revenge days were costing him $5,000 a month; without them he would have been green. When you frame revenge trading as a number instead of a feeling, it gets a lot harder to justify.
And whatever happens, it ends at 4 p.m.
Alex has made six figures in a day and eaten Chick-fil-A that night, because he refuses to let his P&L dictate his life. Good day or disaster, you reset at the close, or it bleeds into the whole week. A loss is never just a loss if there’s a lesson attached.
If you lose $10,000 and learn nothing, the money was wasted. If you learn the lesson, it was tuition.
Take the Money
A surprising amount of the session was about exits, and Alex’s exit philosophy runs against most of what these traders had been taught. He takes a piece off whenever a trade goes in his favor, because a realized profit cushion is what buys him patience for the rest of the move. He scales out at obvious support and resistance levels instead of arbitrary price targets, because the market doesn’t care about the target in your head. By the time a trade fully plays out, he’s often taken 75 percent off along the way.
He also doesn’t leave runners anymore, and his reasoning had nothing to do with charts. He got into trading for freedom, both financial and time. Babysitting 100 leftover shares chains you to the desk. The couple extra dollars aren’t worth more than walking out the door at 10:30 to enjoy your life. His default assumption is that every stock is going to trap him, so he takes the money, and if it keeps going without him, so what. He still made money.
Greed got the harshest treatment.
Traders make $1,000 and torture themselves about the $2,000 they didn’t make. It never ends.
Alex’s counter is a number he repeats to himself: $1,000 a day is a quarter million dollars a year. Small consistent wins compound into a career. He also pulls profits out of his trading account constantly, sometimes daily during hot streaks, because a bloated account is just more exposure on the one day you go on tilt. Money in the bank buys patience; money in the account is risk.
Speaking of streaks: he hates them. He doesn’t track them and doesn’t want to know. A win streak is when you’re most vulnerable, not most invincible, because confidence turns into looseness right before the market slaps you.
Know Your Numbers, Then Build Guard Rails
Every piece of advice in the room eventually routed back to data. Alex knows he wins about 75 percent of the time, that his average winner is around $4,000, that Mondays are his worst day, that April is his worst month, and that his money is made on $2 to $10 stocks in one specific hour. He compared it to founders on Shark Tank: when they don’t know their numbers, they get roasted. Trading is the same business. If you don’t track your trades and journal every single one, you’re not running a business. You’re guessing.
Then comes the part most traders skip: building guard rails around your known weaknesses. The room was full of examples. One trader changed her candle colors from red to pink because she’d realized chasing red candles was muscle memory, and it worked. Another set a daily phone alarm and a recurring calendar popup telling him to stop trading at his cutoff time. Alex silences his phone from 9:30 to 10:30 and tells his wife those sixty minutes are off limits. He doesn’t eat until he’s done trading. None of this is sophisticated, and that’s the point. If you know what your problem is and you build a physical barrier in front of it, you don’t need willpower in the moment.
The Long Game
Alex closed the session with his own timeline, because he thinks unrealistic expectations quietly kill more traders than bad setups do. Eleven and a half years ago he was a Starbucks barista clearing about $150 a week. His first year trading, he lost money. Second year, break even. Third year, $100 a day. It took until year four to feel consistently profitable, and mentorship shortened the road; his mentor Bao handed him the first red day setup that he later scaled into his biggest weapon.
His framing: a doctor goes to school for eight years, a lawyer for six, an engineer for five, and all of them accept that upfront. If you want to out-earn all of them combined, you go to trader school, and it takes years, not months. We’ve written before about how long it takes to become a consistently profitable trader, and Alex’s honest answer hasn’t changed: longer than you want, shorter than forever, and entirely dependent on what you’re willing to sacrifice while you learn.
The last thing he told the room is the one line worth taping to your monitor. You don’t make money trading by making money. You make money trading by controlling your losses.
So start there. Cap your max loss at two days worth of work and set the stop order one second after every entry. Run it for a full month. Then pull up your numbers and see what changed.
