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Transcript of Adrian Reid’s Interview On The Crypto Leviathan Podcast

Mindset needed to succeed as a Crypto Trader

Dalibor:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to this episode of the Crypto Leviathan Podcast. I’m your host, Dalibor, and today, we have a very special guest. He is a traitor, has been so for many years. He’s recently started dabbling, not recently. That’s a mistake of I. He’s been in this space for quite a while, crypto trading. I’ll let you to introduce yourself.

Adrian Reid:

Thanks. Cool. Great to be here. Thanks so much for having me. My name’s Adrian Reid. I’m the founder of Enlightened Stock Trading. Like you said, I’ve been trading for a long time. I started trading stocks about 20 years ago and my approach is systematic. So, a lot of people try fundamental analysis, discretionary technical, looking at charts, and combining those two things. I found pretty early on that any discretion in my trading basically just caused me to make losses. I discovered systematic trading after a couple of years of making losses, and then basically, everything just clicked and turned around on a dime. That’s the way I’ve been doing it ever since.

So, I’ve been trading full-time since 2012 when I left the corporate world and I started sharing my approach through enlightened stock trading 2014 and here we are. So, I trade stocks and crypto now both systematically. My crypto is fully automated. So, just basically, I’m watching the computer over here on the side just doing its thing right now. It’s running through its program and that’s the way it all works. So, it’s pretty relaxed in the trading world nowadays for me because of basically automation and systemizing everything.

Dalibor:

That’s awesome. Yeah, I did say a short time, but then I realized crypto has only been around for a decade. If you got into this space four years ago, that’s a long time in crypto space, but it’s not a long time being a stock trader.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, right. I mean, yeah, I’ve been trading forever. I was actually pretty slow to get into crypto, because at my core, I’m pretty conservative and I looked at it. For many years, it’s just been the Wild West, crazy things going on and scams and fraud and theft and really just resisted it. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am that I did resist it for so long, because the systematic approach in crypto where you have rules to tell you exactly when to get in and when to get out to get you above the emotion, it just works so well and there’s so much emotion in crypto. This week is no different. So, yeah, overlaying a systematic approach to trading in this market has just been really, really good.

Dalibor:

Yeah. So, let’s break down some of those words that you said. You said systematic trading. A lot of people, when you say automated or systematically think you’re using a bot to buy and sell. Can you explain how your system works and are you using a bot to trade?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, good question. Good question. So, there’s a couple of words that mean more or less the same thing. Systematic trading, trading system, algo trading, quant trading, bot trading, a lot of it is very, very similar in just different phraseology. At the core of all of them is a set of trading rules that are absolute. If this and this and this happened, you buy. If this or this happens, you sell. So, that’s the entry and exit. Then you’ve also got position sizing rules. How much should I risk on this? Where should I get out if I’m wrong, the stop loss, and where should I go out if I’m right, profit target? You don’t always need a profit target, but you generally need everything else. So, that’s an objective set of trading rules that tell you everything that you’re going to do in the market.

I call it a trading system. Others might call it an algo. The difference I guess between algo trading and systematic trading is you don’t have to automate system trading. You can just have the rules on your computer. You press the button to run the test and it tells you buy this today, sell this today. Algo trading implies fully automated. So, you basically put the algo into the software. It runs day in, day out, and you just monitor it. So, that’s the distinction. When you say bot, particularly in the crypto space, there’s a couple of really common bots out there which are quite different to what I do. For example, one of them is like a grid bot that trades as the price moves up and down and takes dozens and dozens of trades within a certain range. That’s not really the way I work.

I’m more of a trend follower. So, if a token is going up and the market is going up, then I’ll buy it and I’ll hold it until it starts going down, aiming to make massive gains, so several hundred percent gains. I also have systems which are mean reverting in nature. So, if something is going up and it dips, chances are it’s going to bounce, because the trend is still in place. So, buy the dip and then sell the bounce. That’s quite different to the typical crypto buy the dip, which is it’s down 30%, 40%, 60%, buy the dip. That’s not what I’m talking about. It’s just like little blips in a strong proven uptrend.

So, you could call it a bot, you could call it an algo. It’s really just terminology. Really it’s trend following in crypto and mean reversion trading in crypto. I have those rules automated so that my software and the exchange are linked through an API and that just runs the rules each day and places the trades for me.

Dalibor:

Awesome. Yeah, I was thinking a lot about this. So, essentially, you mentioned two main strategies, mean reversion, which is basically if things go down, they must eventually balance themselves out, or if things go up, they must eventually fall them down. Same thing with trends. So, how does it compare to just holding long-term? Let’s say buying at this dip at negative 60% versus using your product or doing what you do. How do the returns compare?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, good question. The first thing I’d want to talk about is drawdown and long-term chance of success and then we’ll talk about the actual returns if that’s okay. So, in crypto especially, the drawdown that you experienced through buy and hold is gut-wrenching. Let’s face it. I mean in a bear market, you could be down 60, 70, 80% and you could be waiting quite a couple of years before the next rally. Most people don’t have the stomach for that. It’s an inefficient use of your capital as well, because you can make all of this money, but then you lose 90%, 80% of it. Then in the next bull market, you’ve got to start from there and go back up.

So, it’s tempting to look back at the last couple of years and say, “Oh, look, the returns from buy and hold have been phenomenal. If you bought Bitcoin at the beginning, well, look where you would be now.” Yes, that’s right, you would probably be a billionaire if you bought Bitcoin at the beginning. I didn’t. I was very slow to the game. But the trouble is that’s past and from where they all started, down at the 0.0000 something of a dollar to now, we don’t have that again, particularly for the large caps. So, relying on historical buy and hold returns in the future could be risky. We also don’t know which tokens are going to win. If you think about the beginning of any industry, whereas a world changing technology, which this is right, let’s face it. I don’t want to hype it up.

I’m not that person, but it changes things. So, did the automobile and so did the airplane. If you look at those two industries, at the beginning, there was a massive proliferation of companies that did it. How many survived? Handful, right? Couple of handfuls. If you buy and hold forever the wrong horse, you end up with nothing. My belief is that most of the crypto tokens are inherently worthless and will disappear just like most of the airplane manufacturers disappeared. We basically have two now. I mean maybe there’s some others. I don’t know. Just like most of the auto manufacturers disappear, most of the cryptos that we’ve got currently will also disappear.

So, if you buy and hold without an exit plan apart from hold forever until it goes to the moon, you better be prepared to end up with nothing. So, that’s my starting premise for this. The drawdown from buy and hold is terrible, awful. It’s painful, it’s gut-wrenching, it’s long, and it’s unnecessary if you just have a good exit plan. Buy and hold long-term return is very speculative because you don’t know which is going to win the game. You’re going to say, “Well, I’ll just buy the big ones.” Okay, but is Bitcoin really going to win in 10 years’ time? Is it going to be the best technology? I don’t know. You don’t know either, but we don’t know. So, it’s speculative at best. So, that’s where I’m starting from.

If you add a systematic approach to crypto and just think about trend following, buying things that are going up, sell them when they start going down, you can make better than buy and hold returns with dramatically less drawdown. So, you can beat the market and you have much less risk and you have much less time in the market. To me, that’s pretty attractive. So, instead of an 80% drawdown from buy and hold forever, you might have a 30 or 40% drawdown, which is much more tolerable, still gut-wrenching but much more tolerable.

Over the long run, what happens is in the bull market, you make a ton of money. You give back a little bit instead of a lot, and then you go to cash. At the next bull market, you’re starting from a higher base and so you grow better from there. So, your long-term compound return is much better.

Dalibor:

So my question around that is, at least in Canada, I know you’re in Australia, when you’re a day trader, the taxes are crazy, right? The actual trading is income tax. So, the argument from long-term holders is I avoid paying the gains because they’re now capital gains. So, when you take the tax consideration from trading, how does the return compare?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, look, this is something that differs across every jurisdiction. It depends on how-

Dalibor:

Of course.

Adrian Reid:

… you’re taxed. I’m not a tax advisor so I can’t really talk to how do you get this level of tax versus that level of tax. In Australia, you could be a trader where it’s income tax or you could be an investor where it’s more like a capital gain and the taxes are more reasonable. Look, after tax, the returns are clearly lower, but you’ve still got the massive benefit of much less drawdown. I also think you eliminate or at least largely mitigate that long-term risk of you don’t know what’s going to win. If you don’t know what’s going to win and you’re holding just so that you don’t pay taxes on your gains and the thing that you’re holding ends up the loser, then the after-tax return of trading is way better.

Dalibor:

Yeah. My rationale for it is I’m willing to take steady cash flow that’s a little bit less than speculating on something long term. That’s basically the rationale you’re trying to get, right?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, absolutely. To be honest, I haven’t got the returns to hand to say, “Okay, on an after tax basis with this level of trading tax, this is where you’d be versus if you were buy and hold forever.” I don’t do that. I don’t like to talk about it.

Dalibor:

But everyone’s different in this case. Because if you live in Dubai, there’s no taxes. I’m making way more money day trading, right?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, exactly right. But to me, the biggest thing is protecting your capital. This is really, really important, because it doesn’t matter how much money you make this year or next year or the next five years. If you lose it all, you’ve still got nothing. So, you have to protect your capital. So, even if you have to pay a little bit of tax, having a strategy that will get you out when the thing starts going down or when the market turns is going to put you in a place of safety and you’re not going to give up all the gains that you’ve made.

A lot of traders think too much or spend too much time early on focusing on, “How much am I going to make? How much can I make?” Rather than how much could I lose and how do I protect from that? You protect the downside first. As long as you’ve got pretty good sensible rules, you get some upside. But if you don’t protect the downside, then it doesn’t matter how much upside you get.

Dalibor:

That’s absolutely the case, right? I’m going through that right now, what you just said, the drawdown and the suffering, because this is my first bear market I’ve been. Because if you aren’t older than 30 years old, you’ve only seen a bull market. So, everyone who’s young right now is experiencing this and you’re totally right. Preserving capital right now is the best, because all these buying opportunities, if you have no capital available, you can’t make any money right now. You can’t capitalize on anything.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, exactly right. The other advantage of being a trader is that you can make money on the way down. If you’re nimble, you can still make money from rallies, but you can also short sell and profit from the big downtrend. That’s what I’ve been doing.

So actually, I had a conversation with my son the other day, because I manage his savings. I tried to teach him to do it. I explained all the concepts and everything. He’s like, “That’s great. Awesome, you do it for me.” I was like, “Okay, fine.” He’s only 15, that’s good. I just love the fact that he’s saving, he is investing, and he expects it to grow. So, he said, “Oh, how’s our crypto doing?” So, I showed him the chart of Bitcoin, which he entered pretty much [inaudible 00:14:19] right at the top. He’s like, “Dad, I’ve got this money. Can you put it in crypto for me and manage it, whatever?” I was like, “Okay, cool. Yeah, we’ll do that. I didn’t know it was the top. He didn’t know it was the top.”

Then it started to drop and we had a few discussions early on where he was like, “We’re still down. Oh, we’re still down.” But then my short side system kicked in and started making money. He lost interest for a little while and came to me the other day and asked, “How’s it going?” I said, “Okay, cool. So, remember you started here. This is what Bitcoin did. This is where it is now. You’re up 26% and Bitcoin is down, whatever it was, 60%.” He’s like, “Cool. Wait, what? How does that work?” So I explained to him short selling in basic terms. You basically borrow something from someone else. You sell it.

Then when it drops, you buy it back and you give it back to the person. They’ve got what they had and you made money because of the decline. He’s like, “Whoa, cool. All right, thanks. See you.” He walked, and he’s out. So, this is one of the advantages I guess of trading. You don’t have to just buy and hold. You can make money from the way down. The great thing about crypto is it’s a very momentum driven market. So, if you short the weak tokens when the market is declining, it’s hard not to make money. Just like if you buy strong tokens when the market is rallying, it’s hard not to make money.

Dalibor:

The hardest part is the exit points when the market turns? No one knows where the top is. No one knows where the bottom is. I assume also when the market is flat, that’s a problem because you’re not really making much because there’s not much swings in the market. So, those are the three areas in trading where you can get caught. Am I right?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely, 100%. The sideways volatile markets are pretty tough. I have some main revision strategies that will make a few trades here and there and will generate some profit, but in sideways markets, I’m much more in cash than I am invested. In stocks as well, same thing. It’s just to try and catch tiny little moves. It’s hard work, and it’s challenging. So, I stand aside a lot more unless there’s a clear trend. Big problem that many traders have is trying to pick the tops and the bottoms, trying to be right and say, “Oh, I got in and yes, I was right. It went up and I got out at the top.” It’s a mindset trap because you don’t actually have to pick the bottoms and the tops to make money. You’ve got to find a trend and you’ve got to get in.

You’ve got to get out and make the difference. So, you’re just basically taking a chunk out of the middle of the trend, or you are capturing a bit of a swing. You don’t have to capture the whole thing. What you need to make that work is objective rules that you can test on past data to validate that yes, those rules will actually capture some of the trend and give me a profit. When you’re trying to think, “Okay, where should I buy XYZ token and where should I sell XYZ token?”, you’re trying to [inaudible 00:17:24] your decision to that one instrument this one moment of time. You’re trying to subjectively pull information together to predict, but we can’t predict. The market is not predictable, otherwise computers would’ve won the game already. It’s somewhat predictable.

You can have a positive expected outcome from your rules, but you can’t predict the highs and lows of a particular token. So, you need to stop trying. This really helps. When I stopped trying to predict the highs and lows, the tops and the bottoms, and just said, “Okay, here’s a set of rules. If I apply it to a whole big universe of tokens or of stocks and I just run those rules day after day and keep taking entries and exits, it has a positive expectation of making profit, then the game changes.” You don’t have to predict anymore. You just follow the rules.

Dalibor:

That’s a very good point, predicting tops and bottoms. No one can, even the experts in the industry. There’s maybe less than 1% of 1% that actually can make tons of money predicting the tops and bottoms, but most people aren’t that special.

Adrian Reid:

No. Look, the people who really happen to get tops and bottoms, most of the time it’s luck. Maybe sometimes it’s inside knowledge, which in crypto is probably legal. In stocks, it’s not legal, but generally, it’s a healthy dose of luck. If someone says, “Look, I predicted the top and the bottom,” great, how many things did you predict that weren’t right? If you go back and you look at everyone’s predictions, every single prediction that they made, you’ll realize that most of the time it’s random. Someone who claims to have predicted the top of this and the crash of that and whatever, they probably made 5,000 other predictions, but they’re just hammering on that one because that was the one that was right.

Dalibor:

I always say that when people are calling for a recession, because there’s people that have been calling a recession for a decade. Now, you’re right. For the last 10 years, you’re wrong. So, a broken clock is right twice a day in this scenario.

Adrian Reid:

Exactly right. Exactly right. I mean, it’s very easy to make predictions. It’s very easy to try and call tops and bottoms. Making money is much harder. To make money, you need to have a strategy which you can follow consistently over time, which keeps you alive, which keeps the risk low, the drawdown potential low and captures some of the upside and have the discipline to follow it.

Dalibor:

So how often do you need to adjust your system? Is it something that you adjust it once a year and put it away, or is it something that you have to adjust weekly or daily in order to optimize it?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, good question. Depends on the system. For a very short term system, they generally have a shorter shelf life. It’s just when the edge is small, they can quickly be eroded away. But if it was a trend following system that has a really big edge, then they last longer. I will check in on what my systems are doing, how they’re performing very regularly. Once a week I’ll have a look at the back test and say, “Okay, well, is it behaving as it should, as I expect?”

I won’t adjust that thing that regularly. I’ll watch it over time. If something is starting to shift in the market, like the edges start to decay or there’s been a shift from bear to a bull or vice versa at big transition points, I’ll start to look. Or if the stats start to erode, I’ll have a look. Typically, three to six monthly, I would have a good look at a system and see if it’s really working.

Dalibor:

Awesome. So, what does your typical day look like as a day trader? Because I know a lot of people say it’s glorified, you just put it away. But in reality, I have a friend of mine who’s in Dubai. He is on the computer 24/7 monitoring these portfolios. So, walk me through how it looks like.

Adrian Reid:

It’s way more boring than you would think for me, because it’s not day trading in the traditional sense of watching the screen and finding the buys and the sells and all of that. My trading is dead simple. I have all of the rules coded into the computer, into the software. I just use off-the-shelf software. There’s a few different softwares you can use. My preference is AmiBroker, but there’s several others. Each day, I download the data. In crypto, that’s automated. So, I’m downloading daily bars. I’m not trading on 5-minute charts or 30-minute charts or anything like that. So, once a day at the turnover to the new daily bar, the computer opens up, downloads the last day’s bar, adds that to the database. Then I run the back test to see what new trades have been made.

So, new entries and new exits. My job as the trader is to replicate the back test. I want my account to match what the back test is doing. So, if I was doing it manually each day, I would run the back test, look at the new trades, the entries and exits, and then go place them in the account. That whole thing takes about 25 to 30 minutes, depending on how many systems you’ve got, if you’re doing it manually. My computer just did it. It’s automated in crypto that took about 10 minutes. I’ve got a few things I need to speed up. It was running at about five minutes a month or so ago, but I’ve changed a few things. I’ve added a few extra systems. So, my trading crypto is done. I don’t have to do anything else now. All of the trade is already done. All of the record keeping is done.

My job as the trader is to come up with new system ideas to continue to diversify my account and to monitor the systems. I’ve got to make sure that they’re still solid. So, most of my time is spent drawing up new system ideas, testing them, looking at my existing systems, trying to come up with ways of making them better, looking at the portfolio mix. Okay, well, what would happen to my portfolio in this type of market conditions or in that type of market conditions and coming up with ideas to improve it? Much less time trading than you would think.

Dalibor:

Yeah, that’s great, because I know your strategy’s a little bit different than what day traders are. That’s why I think more people would be open to something that you offer versus sitting in front of a computer staring at charts all day. Many people don’t want to be doing that.

Adrian Reid:

Plus, it’s really hard. I’ve tried it and it’s stressful. It’s very, very hard to make money. You can’t do it if you’ve got a full-time job. So, what do you do? Do you quit your job and hope you succeed at being a day trader when 1% of people maybe succeed at day trading? Probably less. So, that’s a high risk proposition. Most people can’t do it. But systemized trading on daily charts like what I’m doing, you can do that while you’ve got a full-time job and then just scale out of the workforce as the account grows.

So, that’s compelling. It’s a side gig or a hobby that makes money that can eventually become your main thing. That’s what it was for me. I traded for a long time before I left the corporate world. I had a pretty well paid corporate career. I was enjoying it, but then eventually, it just got to the point my trading was making so much money and my job was so stressful. I was like, “Well, okay, time to just give the job away and I’ll just focus on trading. It’s more interesting.”

Dalibor:

So let’s talk a little bit about that. So, let’s talk about someone who’s fresh out of university or fresh out of high school. They have maybe $5,000 in savings. How can they get started in something like this or how long can they realistically expect to pivot what you did? Obviously, everyone’s different, but walk me through what they can do.

Adrian Reid:

Look, the most important thing is rather than just jumping in and trying to trade is to learn intensely. If you only have $5,000 worth of savings, it’s hard to pay for a course and have capital left over and make it work. If you have more money, then the cost of the education of getting guidance and mentoring is a lower percentage, then that’s the way to go because that’s so much quicker. I take students into my program, the Crypto Success System. In two weeks, they’re trading systematically with confidence. It’s pretty quick because I’ve just taken all of the rubbish out, given a very clear path of what has to be done, and then they do that and it works. But if you’re going to teach yourself, you need to learn pretty intensively.

I read dozens and dozens of books before I even had a remote chance of being profitable. There’s not that many books on crypto, but I would read books on systematic trading, on technical trading, and back testing, because the quickest way to know you’re going to be profitable is to find a set of rules that work. The only way to really know quickly if your rules work is to back test them. Most people will just pick up a book on technical analysis or read some blogs on technical analysis or pick up some software that does TA and go, “Oh, cool, there’s this indicator and there’s that indicator and there’s this indicator. I put them all in my chart and I’ll make my trading decisions and I’ll get rich.” It’s not going to happen.

You’re not, because all of those different indicators contradict each other. You’ve got subjective decision making. It’s going to be inconsistent. So, you need to combine those indicators into objective rules, test them, and validate they actually worked in the past, because if they didn’t work in the past, they’re absolutely not going to work in the future. Most people skip that step. They go, “Well, that’s just past data, so I want to trade with real money now. So, this is what X, Y, Z guru says works, so I’m just going to do that because they’re rich.” Well, take a little bit of personal responsibility, validate they actually have worked before. If they have, then you’ve got a chance of them working in the future. But if they never worked in the past, they’re absolutely not going to work in the future.

Dalibor:

I always say to people, if you think you can beat the market, if you think you can be a day trader, just open up a practice account, see what your returns would be. I can guarantee you will be losing money, but that’s a great way to get started.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, you start that, but don’t do it with real money. Most people are so scared of missing out. They’re just jumping with this savings, whatever their savings are, and they blow up their first account. It’s like, “Oh, okay. Well, let’s just put that down to tuition and I’ll save some more money.” Then they blow up their second account. It’s like, “Okay, well, this tuition’s getting expensive, but I’ll try again.” They save up some more money and then they blow up their third account. Eventually, you might get profitable once you learn the lessons, but what’s the cost? The cost is you’ve gone through three blown up accounts or more. You’ve wasted all that time and you don’t have that capital that you saved up. That’s gone.

Whereas if you’d have invested in your learning first and really thrown yourself into the learning and step back from trying to trade and just started to become a trader as in mentally, then you can save all that money while you are learning and reading and understanding and back testing. You start with a bigger account and you go up from there and you don’t blow it up. That’s really, really critical. So, many people come to me and I say, “Well, how’s your trading been?”

They say, “Well, not great. I blew up this account. I saved 20 grand and I lost that. Then I got scans and this and this and this and this.” It’s like, “Man, so much money. If you’d have just learned first and been conservative, not trying to get rich next week, you would have this big account to start with and you’d be making great money.”

Dalibor:

I find that a huge problem. Everyone’s just looking for get rich quick, but I find that most people who have gone wealthy and have serious money, it’s been taking a while, right? It took you probably longer than 10 years, right? I imagine.

Adrian Reid:

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was trading longer than 10 years before I left the corporate world. The thing is you need capital to support yourself. $5,000 or $50,000 or $100,000 is not enough.

Dalibor:

I would argue that a million bucks now is questionable. Let’s be honest.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah. It depends on how much drawdown your strategies are likely to have and how diversified you are, whether you can make money in bull markets and bear markets and so on. But it’s more money than you think. It’s definitely high six figures before I would even consider stepping out of a corporate job and into trading for a living. But most people are coming to the market going, “Oh, wow. All these people got rich and 10X their account and I’ve got five grand. Can I trade for a living?” You can’t yet. But if you learn, eventually, you will be able to. So, you’ve got to be patient.

So, if you’re listening to this discussion and you’re thinking, “I want to be a trader,” you should do it, but don’t expect to be rich next week. Expect it to be a lifelong pursuit that you gradually master. Over time, you build your capital, you build your wealth, and eventually you become free. But it doesn’t happen overnight. That’s fairy tales and rainbows. It’s just not that way.

Dalibor:

You might see, I call them, whiz kids or wonder kids, 25 to 30, you become multimillionaires. That’s not normal.

Adrian Reid:

No, it’s not normal.

Dalibor:

Most people, it takes 10, 15, 20 years. I think it’s been a whole lifetime becoming wealthy, and that’s what happens. You can’t race to the top. That’s not normal. To me, it’s like the same success as being a professional athlete. If you’re not exceptional, you won’t get there.

Adrian Reid:

You really have to commit to being exceptional. I love your approach to this because the challenge with the modern world, particularly in finance trading, with social media, is that one person who got lucky, they happened to buy XYZ token and it happened to go to the moon in a very short space of time. Now, wow, look, I’m a millionaire or a billionaire or whatever. How many people try to do that and win bust? It’s like when you start in a corporate career and you think, “I want to be the CEO of Johnson and Johnson,” or “I want to be the head of an investment bank and I’m going to make tens of millions of dollars a year in salary.” Great goal. How many people actually get there?

So the people who have become uber successful very quickly are very visible because everyone loves that story. So, they have massive YouTube subscribers and they have a big following and everyone listens to them, but they could have been just lucky and we don’t know. If you step back from that and you look at the whole ecosystem, all of the traders, the number of people that actually got rich quick is minuscule. The number of people who blew up trying, enormous. So, my philosophy and I think we’re pretty well aligned, which is probably why we’re having this chat. My philosophy is that I want a high degree of certainty that I’m going to get and stay wealthy. I don’t want a very small chance of getting rich and a very high chance of going broke. That doesn’t do it for me.

It’s not what I want for my life. If you want that, go buy lottery tickets, go to the casino, or buy penny stocks or new ICOs or something. Maybe you’ll get lucky, but probably you won’t. I want certainty that I’m going to get and stay rich. So, therefore, I have rules that I follow and I limit my risk and I make sure my account’s not going to blow up. Over time, it just builds.

Dalibor:

Absolutely. That’s the way to do it, right? Because at some point, you’ve built all this wealth up and then you’re like, “I want to maintain it more than I want to grow it,” right? Because that becomes more important, right?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, absolutely. Objective is really key here. One of the most underrated steps to becoming a professional or a full-time trader is having clear objectives written down that suit you, right? Your personality, objectives, your lifestyle, all of those things are important. My objectives now are very different than when I started trading. When I started trading, I started with $7,500 20 odd years ago. My objective was just to grow it. I didn’t want to lose it, but I wasn’t really fussed about the fluctuations. I just wanted to grow it. I wanted to find a way that I knew that I wasn’t going to have to work in the corporate world forever and grow my money. Now I’m much more precise about how much drawdown I’m willing to tolerate and in a catastrophic event, what I’m willing to accept.

So, if the market crashed 50% tomorrow overnight with no chance of getting out, I want to be comfortable that I’m okay, that my family’s going to be okay, and I have boundaries for that. So, therefore, I design my portfolio around those objectives. That to me is more important than my top line return. But if every trader would actually set their objectives clearly, be honest about it, yes, everyone wants to get rich, but really how much are you willing to lose to try and get rich? If everyone set those objectives and then design their trading strategy around those objectives, you have a much high chance at success.

Dalibor:

I think this is important. This is life advice. I would say it’s not limited to just traders. To anyone listening to this, this is great life advice.

Adrian Reid:

Becoming a trader is actually brilliant for the rest of life because the ability to think about probabilities and likely outcomes and risks and returns and all of that in life is really powerful. There’s things that are fun to do in the moment, but they come with a catastrophic risk potential. Sure, you can say, “Don’t be so conservative,” or “Have a bit of fun” or whatever. But to me, the chance of catastrophic risk is important to consider. I don’t drive my car at 150 miles an hour. I don’t jump off cliffs. Base jumping would be super fun. I’m not going to do it because it just doesn’t fit with my objectives for my life long term. I’d like to survive. Trading is similar. Well, let me retract that. There’s lots of trading strategies that look great.

It’s like, “Wow, this makes money so consistently. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. This is amazing.” But you’re picking up pennies in front of a steamroller and picking up pennies in front of a steamroller means you’re picking up small amounts of money and there’s this massive risk looming over you. If you are trading a strategy that is ultra-consistent, very, very smooth returns, you better know what the sting and the tail is. What is that steamroller that’s about to run you over? It’s like a lot of people will make an income trading by selling options. Filling out of the money options for income is a very common way of making smooth, consistent income from the market and replacing your job and quitting and becoming a full-time trader, but it’s ultra-risky.

Because when you’re selling out of the money option, it comes with a massive tail risk. Because if there’s a crash in the market, let’s say you’re selling puts that are 10% out of the money and there’s a crash in the market and you wake up in the morning and the market is 30% down and your puts were only 10% below the market and you sold a whole bunch of them because you wanted to earn more, guess what? You just blew up. So, consistency of returns is not as important as the consideration of the downside risk.

Dalibor:

I think another point to add to this is just because you see people driving around Lamborghini and mansions on social media, that doesn’t mean they own them, that they bought them. A lot of people do this for image. They rent these mansions. So, the people who are truly wealthy, they don’t show off their wealth. They don’t need to.

Adrian Reid:

Why would you buy a Lamborghini when you could have that money in your trading account? It’s just stupid.

Dalibor:

Especially when you’re early on in your career. If you’re like 35 and have $20, $30 million in the bank to buy Lamborghini, it doesn’t affect you at all, then who cares? But most of these people, there’s no way you have that and you’re buying this stuff.

Adrian Reid:

No, that’s right. Social media is very dangerous. When you look at traders on social media and if they’re showy, flashy, Lamborghinis and private planes and all of that, they’re either ultra-risk seeking and they’re going to blow up or they’re scammers and they’ve just rented that stuff for the day to make themselves look amazing so that people will give them money. There are some traders that have private planes. They’re called hedge fund managers. They manage billions of dollars. They’re uber wealthy, but normal people, if you succeed as a trader, you’ve got a certain mindset. Typically, they just don’t do that stuff. No trader who is successful that I know drives really fancy cars or has private planes. It’s just not what you would do once you are of that mold.

Dalibor:

It’s just the mindset of, I call it, the business/financial mindset where you’re like that $300,000, $500,000 spending on a car, I could be investing in a business, making a bigger ROI on it than buying that car. So, yeah, it really needs to be not impacting me at all for me to even consider it.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah. One of the things that holds people back a lot, I think, is having the aspiration for a lifestyle that is Lamborghinis and private planes and all of that, it’s ultra-expensive to have a lifestyle like that. You pay a truckload of depreciation on those things. So, if that’s your goal for financial freedom, you need tens of millions of dollars in your account to support that. But you don’t need that and it won’t keep you happy. Freedom and doing things you love with people that you value and treasure, that will keep you happy. That costs a lot less money, but you still need more money in your trading account than you might think sadly.

Dalibor:

Yeah, this is great. The expectations have to be set. If you want that type of lifestyle, $20, $50 million you’re looking at. It doesn’t matter what currency you choose from basically, but if you want to live in a normal house, do what you love, you still need a lot of money, but not nearly that much.

Adrian Reid:

Right, yeah. Look, there is so much hype in this industry. The thing is I could sell so many more courses if I would just be a bit hypey, but I don’t want to be. I don’t want people to come into this environment thinking they’re going to be rich next week because you’re not. It doesn’t work that way. It’s expertise you’ve got to build. It’s a level of confidence that takes time. If you come in and you have a flash in the pan and you make a lot of money, you’ve got to know how to keep it. You don’t become a brain surgeon and make millions of dollars a year doing surgery by giving it a crack. You go to medical school, you study for years, you do all sorts of training and simulations and all of that. Then eventually, you become a brain surgeon and you master it and you make a ton of money.

In trading, it’s the same thing. You’ve got to learn. You’ve got to practice. You’ve got to survive with a small account so that you can grow to a large account. Here’s one piece of advice, which I think is really, really helpful. Sorry, I know I’m talking a lot, but there’s a lot to get out. I’ve been doing this 20 years and I’ve seen so many people fail, but most people will trade a small account like they’re trying to get rich. In trying to get rich, you’re trying to force the market and the market is bigger than us. We cannot force the market. So, when we try and force it, something bad happens and you lose a lot of money.

But if you trade a small account like it was a big account and you had to protect it because it was worth protecting, instead of gambling with it, if you trade a small account like it was a big account, one day it will be a big account. But if you trade a small account like you’re trying to get rich, it will never be a big account. At least it won’t stay that way. So, if you want to be a trader who supports themself with your trading, you’ve got to trade like that person that you want to be. They’re conservative. They don’t take crazy risks. They don’t put it all on black. They don’t leverage up. I don’t know anyone who has survived trading long term that uses a lot of leverage. But most new traders will go, “Oh, 25 times. Oh, 50 times leverage. What?”

Dalibor:

The only time leverage is acceptable is maybe in real estate, but also not extreme leverage. But in stocks and crypto, you’re just crazy if you use leverage.

Adrian Reid:

There’s actually one useful reason to have and use leverage in crypto, and it’s to not have all your assets on the exchange. So, let’s say you had 100 grand to trade with. Do you really want to put your 100 grand on one exchange and hope nothing happen? Well, probably nothing will happen particularly now rather than earlier, but you never know. But what if you put some proportion of that cash on the exchange and use leverage to trade up to your 100 grand? Then you’ve got money in the bank like an actual bank, a real bank that has deposit insurance and stuff that’s safe.

You’ve got some of your assets on the exchange and you can trade with it knowing that you’ve got this money, which is also your trading capital, but it’s preserved. You’ve got to be careful not to blow up and lose more money than you’ve got on the exchange. But if something happens to the exchange, you don’t lose everything. So, that’s a sensible use of leverage, I suppose, in crypto. But aside from that, the returns are so great from having a good systematic approach, you don’t need leverage. All leverage does is increase your risk of ruin.

Dalibor:

Absolutely. I think the poor thing to point out is in crypto, there’s specific risks involved why you’re using leverage, because exchanges have known to go bust historically. That’s why he’s using leverage in this case, which I think is important to address. It’s like otherwise, you wouldn’t be using leverage if this wasn’t a risk.

Adrian Reid:

Well, I wouldn’t because I just don’t think you need to. There’s enough volatility in the market that a good set of trading rules that’s thoroughly tested makes a ton of money, way more money than what you would in stocks using the equivalent set of rules. In fact, my stock systems applied to crypto with a couple of minor tweaks to account for some structural differences in the market, they make about 10 times more in return in crypto than they do in stocks, because the magnitude of the moves in crypto is bigger and the duration of the trends is much shorter. They go up much more quickly and they go up further. So, you can make much higher returns. So, you don’t really need the leverage.

Dalibor:

Yeah. I think another point to differentiate the stock market and the crypto market, the government will backstop the stock market if it tanks. They’ll start freeze trading, they’ll do some crazy stuff. We’ve seen what they’ve done during the pandemic, 2008, right? They’ve done some interesting things, but in crypto, those protections don’t really exist.

Adrian Reid:

No, that’s right. I mean there’s nothing to really intervene in the case of mass panic. I mean in stocks, you can still have crashes, but the chance of a 90% crash in a very short space of time in stocks is probably pretty low.

Dalibor:

They’ll halt it.

Adrian Reid:

Well, exchange will cease trading and the government can adjust interest rates and there’s all sorts of policy things they can do. Guess what? There’s real companies that make actual money in the stock market.

Dalibor:

Exactly.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah. They’re not like magic internet tokens that have no real business behind them and no cash flow.

Dalibor:

Banks could go bust, right? Imagine these portfolios that tank 90%. People’s pensions are coming through. There’s a lot of cascading effects that happen with the stock market going that much down.

Adrian Reid:

So the downside in stocks in terms of catastrophic downside is much less than what it would be in crypto, but it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t trade crypto. It just means you have to take that into consideration when you think about how to trade crypto. We started this whole conversation because we’re talking about leverage. I don’t even use much leverage in stocks a little bit, but there’s again no need for me because my objectives dictate that the downside is more important than the upside. So, if I use much leverage, then my downside gets too big and I don’t want that. That doesn’t suit my long-term plans. It doesn’t suit my family.

My wife and I have agreed our trading objectives. I’m the trader, but she’s a stakeholder. Okay, how are we going to manage our money for the best outcome of our life? We’ve agreed this is the level of drawdown we’re willing to tolerate and this is the return we want to go for. I structure everything around that. It’s really important to have your objectives clear and to know what you’re willing to tolerate on the downside. Don’t just think, “Oh, it’ll be okay.”

Dalibor:

So how do you approach someone who comes to you and says, “I don’t know what my objectives are. I’m not sure what I want.”

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, yeah, good question. You’ve got to think through the scenarios. In my stock trading program, the Trader Success System, I have this exercise that you do where it’s a guided walkthrough, not meditation, but a guided exercise. Okay, so you’ve got your account. You’ve started with $50,000 and then this happens. Now, you’ve got this much. Now, this happens. Now, you’ve got that much. Then it talks through some gains and some losses of different sizes. You note your feelings when you are visualizing that happening with your wealth. There’s a point at which you find people are starting to get uncomfortable with the drawdown, and that’s usually about 15% if you can believe it.

That’s way lower drawdown than what most people are going to end up with in real time trading because of being aggressive and leverage and all that. But as soon as your level of panic when you are thinking about these drawdowns starts to rise, that’s your tolerance. Because when your emotion goes up, your intelligence goes down. When your intelligence goes down, you start making dumb decisions, mistakes, and you lose money. So, it’s all about observing yourself and thinking through that and not being too bullish on how much you can tolerate, because all of us pretty much have a lower tolerance for loss of real money than we think.

Dalibor:

Yeah, I mean, I think we’ve talked though before and I’ve said some of my stocks are down 75%. I’m just like, “Eh, whatever.” Because I have so little investment in there that I’m just like, “There’s no point in me selling it now.” I’ll just keep it. If it goes to zero, whatever, I think I put 1,000 bucks in that stock. I know it might sound a lot of money to people, but my current position, it’s not that much. So, yeah, it all depends on your risk and what you’re willing to lose.

Because what I always say is don’t invest what you’re not willing to lose, because everyone could invest. You could have the perfect system. For whatever reason, something happens where you lose 30%, right? It’s very unlikely, but there could be that one anomaly that triggers it. You always have to be prepared for that, but you want to minimize that risk. I wasn’t taking these precautions before when I was investing because I just never seen a bear market before. Now when you go through one, I will be investing totally differently.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, right. Absolutely. Yeah. One of the most powerful exercises a new trader can do is to open up a chart of whatever it is that you’re trading and go all the way back. In stocks, you can go back to 1900 on the Dow and almost that far in the S&P. You can see, “Okay, well, what happened?” Don’t be fooled by the growth over time. You actually want to drill in and look at the dips, look at the bear markets, look how long it took to get back to even, and just really study that, because it’s great for your perspective of what can happen. In crypto, probably even more important. Look at the Bitcoin chart and don’t look at the linear scale.

Put on a logarithmic scale, so that way, this massive hockey stick doesn’t look quite so exciting. You stop salivating and you start looking at the size of the drawdowns. Really study how far from peak to trough did the market fall? How long did it take for the market to get back to where it was? How did it move day to day? Just study that because that perspective will really help. If you start trading now and you haven’t got that historical perspective, it’s pretty hard to make good decisions that’ll keep your account alive. But if you go back and really study that history, it helps a lot and it’ll calm you down from that whole “I’m going to get rich next week,” and maybe put a bit of conservatism into your trading so you can survive.

Dalibor:

Absolutely. That’s a great advice, even for me, considering I’ve never seen that, but I have actually looked into this. It takes an average three to five years from the peak to trough to get back. Worst case scenario, it could take a decade or two decades, because I think the worst was the 1930s crash. Some people haven’t seen returns in 15 to 20 years. So, think about it. If your worst case scenario is 15 to 20 years, average case is three to five years, what can you expect? The pandemic that we had that quick drawdown and quick going back up, that could be anomaly.

Adrian Reid:

Oh, yeah. Major anomaly. Not normal at all. Well, 2008, the global financial crisis, it didn’t take that long to recover, but at the time, it still felt long. This is why an exit strategy is so important, because in crypto, let’s say you were down that 90% in a massive bare market and it took you three years to get back. Down 90% for three years, it’s pretty hard to maintain that discipline of following your rules every day. But if you have a rule that gets you out and you don’t have to sit through the bear market and you just wait till it starts rallying, then your drawdown is way lower. You’ve got much less activity to do. You don’t have that gut-wrenching loss that scars you emotionally and stops you making good decisions in the future.

So, probably another advantage for more active trading of having those rules to get you in and get you out. Actually, I meant to mention earlier, a really cool piece of trading math is if you lose 50% of your account, you’ve got to make 100% return on what’s left to get back to where you were. If you lose 10% of your account, you’ve only got to make a bit over 10%, like 11% to get back to where you were. So, the bigger your drawdown, the harder it is to recover and the lower probability you’ll ever recover. So, keeping those account drawdowns to 20, 30, 40% and no bigger is really important, because it means you can actually recover with a sensible sized rally in the market.

But if you are down 80, 90%, it’s astronomical returns you’ve got to make to get back to where you were. You are gambling that there are going to be astronomical returns in the future and there may not be. What if there’s only mediocre returns in the future? You’re still weighed down. So, keeping that drawdown low is way more important than most traders think.

Dalibor:

That’s the importance of diversification. You don’t want to bet on stock. You don’t want to bet on a company long term, because like you said, how many companies have been around for 100 years? Name me a handful. Coca-Cola, how many others, but no major players.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah. So, yes, diversification is super important. Different stocks or crypto tokens, different strategies, long-term strategies, short-term strategies, trend following strategies, mean reversion strategies, different directions, long side, short side, different markets, stocks, crypto, but not just stocks as in US stocks. What about Australian stocks? What about Hong Kong stocks? What about different markets? The US stock market has been super strong in recent history compared to most others, but it’s not always that way. So, the new investor could be fooled into thinking… I mean, not now.

You’re in a bear market, but up until recently, the new investor could be fooled into thinking, “Well, US stocks is the only way to go. Why would you invest anywhere else?” But it’s not always that way. There’s been plenty of times where the Australian market has way outperformed the US market, just not in recent history until this bear market, when the Australian market is down much less than US market is down. So, shorting US stocks, long Australian stocks is pretty reasonable right now.

Dalibor:

Same thing with Canadian stocks. We’re a commodity based economy, so commodities are going up. I mean they’ve dipped recently, but I think we’re still in a bull market in commodity. So, something’s going to happen.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, absolutely. So, diversifying different strategies, different markets, different timeframes. Again, as you grow as a trader, you don’t have to do all this on day one, but as you grow as a trader, this becomes really important, because it’s about really solidifying your portfolio. So, that it doesn’t matter what the market does, you have something that is making you money.

Dalibor:

The way I describe it is you don’t want to be a one-trick pony. You want to keep adding tools to the toolbox. So, if a tool doesn’t work anymore, you have other tools you can pick up.

Adrian Reid:

Yes. Or if a tool doesn’t work right now for this current job, you’ve got other tools to pick up. That original tool may come back. I’ve got a long side trend following system that I use in the Hong Kong stock market, and it’s a great system. I really, really like it. It hasn’t taken a trade since early 2021. It’s been in cash because the Hong Kong market was in a bear market well before the US market because of China troubles and everything. So, that system made a ton of money into bull market. I then went to cash when the market started falling. I just keep looking at it.

No signal, no signal, no signal, no signal. Eventually, that tool will turn back on and then it’ll make money again, but you need other ones to make up the difference. In crypto alongside trend following, so making money from the rallies worked great until Bitcoin topped, but since then, the only real way to make money is to be short. So, I shorted on the way down again, a dedicated crypto short selling system and that made really great returns. When you look at the returns from the short system versus what Bitcoin did, it’s like wow, it’s amazing.

Dalibor:

Yeah, absolutely. What do you make of the market right now in the current state, right? We’ve been flat for a long time or it seems like we bottomed out. We had a little rally. What do you see happening?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, look, it’s a good question and it’s probably on most people’s minds. The challenge is we just don’t know when it’ll stop. So, it looks like it bottomed out and it’s had a few test rallies. It’s like enough to get everyone hopeful, but I’m a bit skeptical. It could just be another pause before another decline. But the great thing is I don’t have to predict because here’s what’s going to happen. I have 10 different systems that I trade crypto with. Some of them get long pretty quickly. Some of them get long really slowly. They wait for more and more proof as the market goes up. So, on one of those little rallies, I’ll get a bit of long exposure.

Then if the rally fails, it’ll unwind. I’ll lose a small amount of money. If there’s another rally, it’ll get long again just in case it keeps going, but then it’ll unwind if the rally fails. But then if there’s a real rally and it dips and then rallies again and an uptrend has really started, then my other systems will really load up. So, I load up on the long side gradually as there’s evidence that it has turned. See, I’m not trying to predict the bottom. You don’t have to because the moves in this market are huge. All you need to do is wait for real evidence that it has turned and then get in. If it fails, have a stop loss to get you out. So, if it turns and hits your stop loss, you get out. But by trying to predict the bottom, you’re just guessing and you’ve got very little evidence that it’s actually turned.

When you look at the Bitcoin chart, zoom way out and look at the downtrend. It’s still a downtrend, but there’s this sideways and a few upticks, but those upticks don’t look nearly as exciting when you’re looking at a two-year chart. Then compare it to how exciting they look when you look at a three-week chart. So, if you’re looking at a three-week chart, thinking, “Oh, the bull market’s over. It’s time to get in,” zoom way out and your excitement will settle down a little bit. I have no shorts in the market right now, so all my shorts closed out because of this sideways consolidation. Basically, most of them hit their profit targets. A couple closed out with some small losses, but if the market turns down again, the short system will trigger again and I’ll go short.

Dalibor:

If anyone’s trying to time the market right now, you have to bet that the Fed in the US will not keep raising greats. That’s basically what everyone seems to be basing their decisions on. If you’re willing to bet, place a bet on that. I’m not willing to because inflation’s crazy high. Let’s just be honest about that across the world. Are they willing to break the economy to kill inflation? I think they are. I think they’ve clearly shown that. So, I think that’s going to be the least of your worries. Timing the market if they break the economy.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, and timing the market with a subjective decision, it’s really, really hard. I’m going to go on a limb and say impossible to do it consistently in the long term subjectively. There might be a few unicorns who really have a feel for how all of this works and just know. But realistically, for everyday traders, if you are looking at all of the information you are reading and you’re looking at charts and you’re listening to the news and you’re trying to time a decision to get in, that’s a tough gig. But the good news is, like we said before, you don’t have to time the market subjectively to make money.

What you’ve got to do is wait until there’s evidence the market is going up, then buy. If there’s now evidence the market is going down, sell. The great thing is trends happen in crypto and in stocks. If you buy when something is going up, good chance it’ll keep going up. If it keeps going up, you’ll make enough money to offset the losses that you make for the stocks or tokens that don’t keep going up. So, stop trying to time to market subjectively. Just put rules in place that work over the long run, follow the rules, life becomes much easier as a trader.

Dalibor:

All right. So, the last question in order to wrap this up, do you watch the news at all or do you just abstain from it and look at the data because you find that news manipulates how you think?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, the news is not there to inform. It’s there to shock, entertain, and sell advertising. Okay, that’s it, 100%. Shock and emotion and advertising doesn’t help with trading. So, early on, I used to watch the news when I started and this is a long time ago now, so I haven’t picked up a newspaper in 15 years, just to give you an idea. I haven’t turned on news on the TV for probably almost that time as well. I don’t watch CNN. I don’t watch any of that because they’re not giving information that is helpful. They’re giving information to get you to be glued to the screen so that they can sell advertising. They’re getting you to be worried about what’s going on in the world so that you come back the next day and watch again to get an update so that they can sell advertising. That’s all it is.

So, people talk about Cramer for instance, the Mad Money show and that. Those sorts of shows are toxic. If you’re taking guidance about investing from some lunatic on television, I mean, he might be a great guy. I don’t know him, but I don’t watch it. I’ve seen snippets here and there. It’s like, “Oh, my gosh. People watch this and they make investment decisions based on it. Really?” There’s this video of him crying about his Facebook recommendations. Dude, that was a screaming sell months ago. The trend was clearly down. If anyone is taking personal responsibility for their trading, they’d be out. So, if you’ve got a set of rules that you follow that you have confidence in, you don’t need that stuff. When I eliminate it from my life, guess what happened to my trading?

Did it get better or did it get worse? It got better, because all of a sudden, I’m not second guessing my signals anymore. So, when I stopped watching the news, I started sleeping better at night, my trading got better, I made less mistakes, I was more consistent following my rules, I made more money. So, the only news I really look for is news where I need to make a decision about that. If a stock I own is being taken over, then I need to know that. So, I’ll monitor for that thing, but I won’t click in and read news articles unless it’s about something that I need the information, which is very few things.

Dalibor:

That actually brings up a perfect point, which I have a problem with the media too, is by the time the media covers it, it’s already too late.

Adrian Reid:

Oh, totally.

Dalibor:

I’ll give you an example. So, we had rent skyrocket here in Canada, and I picked up on this in February. By the time the media covered it, it was the summertime. So, think about it. If you were an investor, you would’ve picked up stuff in February, March, once you knew what was going on. By The time the summer, now everyone knows, it’s priced in, you’re late.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. This is why systematic trading is so powerful, because everything that is known is somehow priced into the chart. I mean, the markets aren’t efficient. I’m not an efficient market person. That’s garbage. But a lot more is priced in than what you think. So, as the markets start to rally, that’s an indication that participants who know something are expecting things to be good. As the market is starting to fall, they reverse, right? Reading the newspaper and going, “Oh, that sounds bad. I should sell,” that’s not going to be a timely strategy.

Dalibor:

That’s horrible.

Adrian Reid:

It’s a horrible strategy. Absolutely. No question.

Dalibor:

I know we’re going to get criticized for saying that, but it’s true. By the time the media covers it, don’t make any decisions then.

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there’s no decision that we have to make in our daily life that the news is going to inform. I don’t believe. Maybe the weather forecast is useful, but I get that from my app. It’s completely emotion free. It’s like, “Oh, it’s going to rain today. Good, I’ll take a raincoat.” That’s it.

Dalibor:

But even that’s horribly inaccurate.

Adrian Reid:

Right? But I’ll protect from that downside risk, right? 10% chance of rain today, will I drive three hours expecting to sun bathe at the beach all day? Well, yeah, I’ll probably go, but I might have a backup plan. Or 90% chance of rain, will I go for a walk outside without an umbrella? Probably not. Just protect the downside, just like in trading.

Dalibor:

Absolutely. I did lie. There’s one more question I have since you offer this program and course. How can people reach out? How can they find you and give us your details?

Adrian Reid:

Yeah, look, the best way is my website, enlightenedstocktrading.com. We’ll have a link I guess with the show under this video. But if you want to learn more about trading specifically, I’ve got a bundle of resources, free course, and some cheat sheets on how to avoid the worst trading mistakes for crypto, which I put together for your listeners. So, that’s at enlightenedstocktrading.com/cryptoleviathan. So, same spelling as the podcast. Again, link I guess will be below the video somewhere.

Opt in, get that, watch the course. It’ll transform the way you think about trading and read the cheat sheets, particularly around the trading mistakes. Because if you can avoid the most common trading mistakes, you’ve got a fighting chance of actually winning. That’s it. Most people try and win first, but address the downside, the upside will come. I think this will really help. So, I hope that’s useful for everyone listening.

Dalibor:

Awesome. Do you offer any personal mentorship or is it just through the course?

Adrian Reid:

The course has mentorship built in. One-on-one, I don’t do mainly because I can help a handful of people one on one, but I’ve got a great structure set up where I can help much more people in the group course program. That means I can have a bigger impact on the world. I can help more people get free, all of that. Rather than a couple of people do really well, a lot of people do really well.

Dalibor:

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time. I’m sure our listeners will have great insights from this discussion.

Adrian Reid:

I had a ball. Thank you so much for having me on. Appreciate it.

Dalibor:

Absolutely.

 

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