The trading industry sold people the dream of Lamborghinis, 1,000x gains, and turning $400 into a penthouse by Friday…
The real edge is usually just:
- taking small losses
- scratching trades at breakeven
...and not doing anything catastrophically stupid for long enough so that you can catch opportunities like what's currently in front of us.
The “secret” most newer traders are searching for is often just surviving 47 breakeven trades and 13 paper cuts in a row while keeping your confidence, discipline, and account intact.
Unfortunately, nobody on YouTube thumbnails that part.
A tight area on a chart is not automatically worth trading. The setup needs to pass a checklist first.
Richard breaks it down into four filters: a compelling fundamental story, relative strength during the base, confluence with a key technical level, and inside days compressing volatility to a decision point.
All four together is a high-conviction entry. Missing pieces means cutting size — not skipping the trade, but respecting the difference in quality.
Most traders spend 90% of their time on entries. Linda Raschke says that's the wrong 90%.
She ranked 17th out of 4,500 hedge funds. Built a career spanning 35 years on the trading floor and running her own fund.
And when I spoke with her about what actually drives results, she kept coming back to the same thing: trade management.
Not entries...
Not signals...
What happens after you're in the trade.
"Trade management is the most neglected area in system development. Most traders are focused on getting in. But the exit determines your outcome."
Her view: a mediocre entry with excellent trade management outperforms a perfect entry managed poorly.
Most systematic traders can tell you exactly why they enter a trade. Fewer can explain their exit logic with the same precision.
Even fewer have tested it against actual data.
The irony is that entries are the most studied, most competed-for part of the market. Everyone's looking for a better signal.
Trade management is where the edge still lives, largely untouched.
The traders who last longest aren't the ones with the best entry signals. They're the ones who figured out what to do after the signal fires.
You gain 100% and lose 50% 10 times, you break even. You gain 10% and lose 5% 10 times, you make 71.64%. The key to big returns is optimal math, not the biggest wins.
The market doesn’t pay you for being right.
It pays you for executing a probabilistic framework over a large enough sample size.
Every time you interfere with that process, you’re collapsing your edge.
I like this stock market description by William O'Neil so much as it is simply so true and fitting. Always keep this in mind the next time you think you know the next move of "the beast".
Mark Douglas said the quiet part out loud:
"there is no way of knowing if our next trade will work out"
The job is not prediction.
The job is building a process you can execute without needing certainty.
"If all you ever did was buy high-quality stocks on the 200-week moving average, you would beat the S&P 500 by a large margin over time."
— Charlie Munger
Anyone with a functioning brain can trade stocks successfully—so then, why do few succeed on a big level?
Because few are willing to admit one simple truth: you suck!
Your head is full—sucky opinions, sucky assumptions, and “logic” that feels right but produces the wrong results.
As long as your cup is full, there’s no room for anything that actually works.
Empty it!!!
Strip away the ego. Discard everything you think you know.
Then find someone who’s already done it—at a high level—and shut up long enough to learn.
And finally, the hardest part: commit.
Commit to a strategy. Commit to your coach. Commit to the process. Commit to the belief that you can do it.
No dabbling. No second-guessing. No halfway effort.
Because success in this game doesn’t come from intelligence—it comes from discipline, humility, and coachability.
And most people fail because they lack all three.
You don't know shit! If you did, you would already be worth tens of millions of dollars. But I'm here to tell you that you CAN do it. Because I did. Anyone who tells you can't, never did it themselves. That's the final peace of the puzzle. Stop listening to losers and self proclaimed gurus. If they are so smart and they know how to teach you. Why haven't they done it for themselves. Do you really think someone who hasn't made 100 million dollars can teach you how to do it? If you do, then, that's why you'll never achieve it.
Jesse Livermore said: The game taught me the game!
That means: Practice is the best teacher. You cannot learn trading out of a book or in a video course. Trading is 99% practice!
I've worked so hard to get to this point. It feels absolutely surreal. Knowledge is powerful and best part is no one can take it away from you. Never stop learning and never give up your day is coming. 💯
UNFORTUNATELY, the formula to a healthy life is...
1. 8 hours of sleep.
2. Drink a healthy amount of water.
3. Eat real food.
4. Lifting heavy.
5. Going outside.
6. Walk or move your body every day.
7. Reducing alcohol.
8. Taking care of your hygiene.
9. Minding your business.
10. Consume the right content.
11. Learning something new.
12. Showing up even on bad days.
13. Building healthy relationships.
14. Help where you can help.
15. Save and spend in a healthy manner.
16. Practice daily gratitude or mindfulness.
17. Cultivate a sense of purpose.
Fear doesn't shrink when you wait it out. It grows. Every time I've walked towards the thing that scared me, it got smaller. Every time I avoided it, it grew bigger. Move towards it. Even an inch at a time.