Hey everybody. It’s Michael Martin. Thank you for being here from time to time, which means a few times per week, I get a email from usually more than one person saying, Hey, I see hogs are inverted. How should I trade this? Or I’m thinking about getting long gold here. What do you think? Or any other ticker doesn’t have to be commodities or futures? And I typically don’t respond to those emails, not to be a jerk, but because I feel like what I advocate here is, is helping people stand on their own two feet without any outside assistance, because my psychology and emotional intelligence cannot help you manage risk with your own positions in trades or nor in, in investments.

And so I’m, my advocacy is to help you become an independent thinker and not rely on anybody, which is kind of why I say to bring a few episodes into sharp relief, stay off of social media, even though it’s fun. Just train yourself to stay off it. Right? Same thing with television. I try, I don’t make fun of Kramer. I use Jim Kramer because he’s a very well known guy. He’s also terribly brilliant. All right, you have to do your own research, but he’s super smart. He knows information on some three, 4,000 stocks off top of his head. That’s not something that a stupid person would be able to do. So when I mention him, it’s not to throw shade at him. It’s just to use him as an example. Cause I think most everybody who’s in this business is aware of who he is.

And so I can’t buy or sell anything because of what he’s doing. And if I do have an idea because I’m following a certain type of chart pattern or setup, right? I, I don’t want to put you in a spot where you should go looking for emotional support to see what everybody else is doing. That’s irrelevant. So if you feel insecure about what you’re about to endeavor, you might want to take a step back and say, okay, where’s this feeling coming from? Why do I need emotional support from people? I don’t even know because everything under the sun can be tested, right? And I don’t want think about it this way. Why would anyone delegate their research to me? It’s not the business that I’m in. So you can go get your own back testing software. It’s very, very affordable. The professional ones are whatever, maybe a thousand or more, but you know, you get what you pay for.

And if it’s important enough to you, then make the investment in the time of the money and the effort because it is a business and you ought love yourself enough to make that investment. You see? So this is where the coaching comes in because if you can’t find yourself to be able to do that, there’s probably some type of psychological issue or habit that you picked up over the years. That’s stopping you from being an independent thinker. So that can be fixed. It takes a while to do, but any of those types of psychological issues we’re pretty good at, in terms of the coaching, all that notwithstanding though, you really have to go out and plant the seeds, harvest your own names and put the trades on. You also need to know where to get out, right? That’s that’s how you start to have enormous success is to be an independent thinker.

Everybody that I know whether they coached or mentored me, or I read about them in books or met them over the years, they’re all very, very independent. They have their own thoughts. Now they might feed their brains. Some of them, if they’re into like global macro or this and that, and they might know about economics around the world, but ultimately that’s not what compels people. I don’t think to make, buy and sell decisions. because ultimately fundamentals can look okay on paper. But if something’s in a down trend, it’s awfully difficult to make money as a long-only investor or trader when things are in a down trend. And that goes for people who dollar cost average. Dollar cost averaging only works if the thing eventually resumes some type of an uptrend, otherwise yes, it’s true that your, if you put in the same amount of money, mathematically speaking, for example, your average cost will always be below the average price, which is kind of the point of it.

But again, if it doesn’t resume an uptrend, you’re not going to make any money. There’s not a panacea out there. Right? So I would like to just say that opinions don’t matter. Not mine, not anybody else’s when you put on risk, it’s between you and your higher power and there’s no better way to do it than to just do it. And then also calibrate the feelings. That’s why you put the trades on and don’t paper, trade paper, trade doesn’t mean anything. It helps you understand how to work the platform maybe with a dummy account. But if you’re not making and losing real money, you don’t feel the burn. And that’s the whole point of just doing it is so that you can feel the feelings and feel what you feel like when you’re managing real money. because that’s a huge part of being able to calibrate your system. Meaning you, you are the system, right? Your trading rules are just things that you adopt to accelerate the feelings that you want to feel or not feel. Some people like to put themselves in tough spots. So they reach out and bond with other people over boohooing. That’s not what I do. I don’t commiserate with people cause I know it can be fixed. So anyway, if you’re struggling with all of that, take some time out and figure out what you want to do or go to a back tester

And kind of see what the behavior would do over time because that can all be tested. You want to test monthly highs. Perfect. You can test that. You want to test multi-year highs. You could test that too. So just dig in and do the homework, the math and the, and the results will set you free. They’ll either tell you that this trade is not a profitable trade or yes, even though you’ll lose 4, 5, 6, 7 times out of 10, it’s a profitable trade. So at least, you know what the expected outcome is of that particular trade. And then you can calibrate that with your emotional constitution when you put it on and not everything will seem like a flyer because you don’t know what you’re doing. Right. So if you have the data, not the chart pattern, the data sets you free. Okay. So again, I appreciate everyone reaching out and it’s kind of flattering that anyone would care, but ultimately it’s a disservice to talk to you about opinions, about being bullish or bearish or otherwise. So anyway, thanks very much for being here. I will see you tomorrow.

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Hi everybody. It’s Michael Martin. Thanks for being here. So I like to end the week on goals and stuff like that when I can. If you’re struggling, I got this I got an email about struggling and not having a, a clear picture. And so what we’re talking about here is, is you don’t have a vision for yourself. And my whole take is this is that if, if you can envision yourself succeeding in something, you really increase the odds of you actually getting that.

You just go to that spot. That’s your point B, right? So you can create, what’s called the vision board. Some of you have strong enough mental capacity to create those visions in your brain and then go act accordingly, but not everyone is built that way. So what you can do is go to staples and buy some poster board or some court board and buy some glue, like an Elmer’s glue stick whatever they call it anymore.

All right. And then I would go to wherever you would go like a Barnes & Noble or wherever your news stand and I’d buy whatever, a $100, $150 worth of magazines of the things that you’re interested in. It could be, cars could be sailing, could be vacations, could be real estate, could be haute couture, fancy clothes, that stuff, pictures of pretty people. And then also cut out pictures that you have on your phone with all those damn selfies that you have that show you the happiest as you’ve ever been. Now, print all that stuff out, cut it up with a, with an Exacto knife or scissors and glue it all up on your vision board and start to associate the finer things in life or the things that you have to experience life to the fullest and keep it in front of you.

So this way, every action that you take, you have to look at the judge and jury on your vision board, looking back at you saying, “are you really going to put on this idiot trade of 30,000 shares of this dog shit stock? Is that really how you’re going to meet your financial goals so that all these things on your vision board are going to come true?” And for those of you with big money, 8, 9, 10 figures, maybe it’s all the phone calls that you’re not making. That’s stunting your growth. You’re not asking prospects for the business because you’re big enough and your quality of life, isn’t going to change all that much. So you don’t ask them the tough questions. I would never let someone make that decision for me. It’s just not going to work. I’d always pick up the phone and force them to answer the question, because I don’t want maybes.

I don’t want these open ended questions, right? So maybe for you, it’s your own private jet, maybe it’s six vacations a year of several weeks where you’re traveling the world, maybe it’s buying and selling other companies. In addition to what it is that you’re doing or joining your clients side by side in private equity deals in, in operating companies, this and that, maybe it’s putting up a family tree with yourself, your kids, your grandkids, and then their kids who aren’t even born yet. Of course. And you set up and you’re thinking in terms of a dynasty, when you can visualize it, it becomes that much more real. And if it’s that much more real, it can have that much more of an emotional impact on your behavior. Day after day. Now I did this 30 something years ago and people thought I was insane.

But to a name I hit all my goals. Doesn’t mean you have to do it that way, but whatever it takes to motivate you to stick to the plan so that every day you’re making best practices. Even if you lose money, your goal is to follow a set of rules with which you’re compatible that have positive, expected value. That means there are days you’re going to walk away where you lose money, but if you followed your rules and you lost money, are you a loser? Because my take is when you’re shooting from the hip, that’s not winning behavior. That’s just feeling like you need to participate because there’s action. And there’s something moving somewhere. Well, my take is you should have known that ahead of time. You should have an idea of what’s going to go. And if there’s a surprise announcement, that’s not your trade anyway. So don’t worry about it.

I think so much of trading failure can be avoided because if you don’t have clarity and they don’t have a vision for what it is that they want. The answers for you are not searching social media or being in chat rooms or whatever these new things are. Discords, it’s not the way to do it. The trading techniques out there are so simple and they’re so easy. What you need to do is spend time focusing on who you are, who you are as a person. What is it that you want for your life? How do you want that to evolve? When you have that much more clarity on stuff, you have big emotional motivation to pull you in the right direction. When you sit there and say like, oh, it’s gotta be a magic formula, magic chart pattern.

You’re really way off base. Because it’s so not about charts and it’s not lower time frames that don’t measure up with monthly’s and weekly’s so spend some time this weekend and next week or however long it takes you. There’s no rules here on figuring out what it is that you want. What do you think that you want the money to do for you? If you had a monetary goal, what is that money going to do for you? Because the money, if you say, oh, I want to make a thousand a day, a thousand week thousand a month. Doesn’t matter to me what the number is. It’s not relevant. How’s that money going to serve you because to me, I’m going to call you on it. I think it’s a bullshit way to go setting goals.

It’s just like saying in January that you want to lose 15 pounds, why do you want to lose 15? Why limit that? Why? Why not say 30? Why not say that you want to get to 7% body fat because the numbers are number irrelevant.

It’s what it’s going to do for you emotionally and psychologically. That’s what’s compelling. All right, folks, please consider subscribing. We’re all over the place. YouTube, Spotify, Stitcher, Apple, and Google podcast. We’re on Audible.com as well. So you can listen to us through your Alexa. And if you haven’t already gotten a copy of the audio book, version of my book, the Inner Voice of Trading, you can get it for free at the site MartinKronicle for free top right corner. Have a great weekend folks. I will see you on Monday.

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Hey everybody. It’s Michael Martin. Thanks for being here. So today I want to talk about what I mean by not sitting in front of the screen all day. And that is the pros have a plan. They know exactly what they’re going to do and how they’re going to execute. Doesn’t mean they’re going to get ’em all right. That’s for damn sure. But you have to go into the day with the confidence of knowing what you’re going to execute. You can’t figure that out on the fly. That’s why so many people lose money, I think is because they’re going on gut shots when they really don’t have that muscle really evolved yet. They’re too new. Now, if you listen to folks who are trying to run these day trading chat rooms, they’d make it sound like everything that you’re doing is wrong.

If you’re new to the game, I don’t think you should be spending the day sitting in front of the computer. I think you should work after hours when the market’s closed and it will reduce your urge to do stupid things. Have a plan, know what you want to try, even if you don’t have any experience, put the trades on and then go away. Also with that is this other thing that’s drives me nuts. And that is don’t put in your stops because they’re going to get run market makers, this and that. That’s a fallacy market makers. Aren’t looking if your stock is going down and you’re long only, and you put a protective sales stop below the market. Why in the name of God’s green earth would a market maker want to buy something that’s going down? Think about that for a minute. So that whole like, “oh, they’re going to run the stops…” What, who, who wants to have inventory of a stock that’s going down?

So again, you listen to these people and I think you’re getting bad advice. Hopefully I can hit enough of these issues here so you can hear the truth. Yeah, sure. If you are new to the business and you have to keep your computer on some people and they have enough orders, put an alert in when the security is like whatever 50 cents within 50 cents of where the stop is. But man, if you have a $5 stop in and the thing is down $4.50 against you, what are you waiting for? Right? Because the good trades make you money right away. That’s my experience. You’re buying with the buying momentum. Other buyers are jumping in. Then over time they tend to support their positions. If you buy something and you start losing money, you’ve got bad timing. That’s what that’s called. And after a few ticks get out, but it’s, it’s not logical to not want to put in protective stops because you think someone wants to run you and force you to take a loss.

I look at this two ways. One, if the thing’s going down and you have a stop, that’s good thing. You should celebrate that because limiting your losses is the name of the game. You’re going to be wrong 6, 7 times out of 10. And so you’re going to want to make sure those, those stops get hit. And when they do you celebrate them, you love those stops. You really should fall in love with them because they’re the sentry to your equity. They’re standing guard saying “Once the security goes past this price, we’re getting out” and that’s it. There’s no negotiating. So I would encourage you to do that more than enter alerts, right? If you do phone executions, maybe you put in alerts, right? Cause you have 10,000 shares and you don’t want to put that up on the screen. So you’re picking up the phone and you’re calling your trades that way, asking someone to work in order. My guess is the newer folks aren’t doing that.

And the newer folks with less than $10k, shouldn’t be having thousands of shares of an order, because that means you’re buying dog shit, penny stocks, which you shouldn’t be doing either. So I, I don’t know who started these types of rules, but they’re not based on anything that’s smart from a business standpoint. And those rules don’t really serve you if you’re overseas and you’re not looking and regular trading hours for you is nighttime or 3:00 PM where you are living. And they run into the, to the late evening. I would still put in your protective stops, because this way, if you fall asleep or the day doesn’t unfold the way you want it to, the last thing you want to do is be stuck in a situation in your personal life with young kids and know that you don’t have protective stops in.

So I, I think that information is a disservice to you because it goes against the grain of really smart people and how they run their money. Right? Again, all these little things add up to why I think you should stay out of chat rooms. You have amateurs out here trying to give professional advice and they don’t know their ass end from a hole in the ground. Anyway, that’s coming from a friend of mine in Southern Spain, wanted to reach out and say hi. That’s all I have for you today. Folks, I’ll see you tomorrow.

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Hey everybody. It’s Michael Martin. So I got an email from someone who suggested I get clear or help them understand why I say you shouldn’t be sitting in front of the screen all day when you’re just starting. And the reason is, is because you don’t know anything and sitting in front of the screen, isn’t how you’re gonna learn. You’re only gonna learn by actually putting on the trade, sitting there, right. For who knows how long? I don’t want to say hours and hours, because I don’t really know. And sitting there might induce you to want to kind of sit there like a slot machine and pull the one arm bandit, when you don’t know what you’re doing. The last thing you want to do is try, try to feel any type of gravitational pull from the market itself as if you have to do something, right?

Another example, if you’re watching one minute bars, right. That data’s not material. So you can line it up. Of course, with like weekly or monthly highs, then it would mean something. But then it’s incidental because it’s the weekly or the monthly high that actually has the statistical significance. But what I don’t like hearing about is folks trying their hand thinking that somehow they’re more in control when they’re looking at things like in the lower timeframes, because that’s not the case. And I get the emails from people like all the time. I only read you the ones where I can kind of help people save themselves. But for a lot of folks, it’s too late. They bought into some marketing pitch that if you have 14 monitors and you’re sitting there with real time quotes, watching things in one minute bars, you can’t possibly lose.

And I’m sorry for that. We as an industry owe you better – you deserve more from us. We’re failing you. And we let that type of marketing happen. I try to call people out without starting fights. But the majority of what you see advertised is garbage. Now my other philosophy is this go to Martin Chronicle and look to sign up for a course to trick course. It’s a trick question. You can’t do it. It’s it’s unethical in my way of thinking to sell a person a how to trade course. Okay. If I don’t know who they are and what their makeup is because that’s, if you don’t know any of that information, how are you gonna know what type of trading system is gonna resonate with you emotionally and psychologically, that you can replicate day after day and hit your goals. Chances are, and I’m gonna say it this way. 97 out of a hundred people don’t have clear goals. And if they do have a goal, it’s probably like, I want to make a thousand dollars a day. I want to make X amount of dollars. That’s not a goal that’s like saying I want to lose 20 pounds as your new year’s resolution.

So maybe if you knew what the money was gonna do for you, and there was a magnetic pull that way. But nonetheless, I don’t want to get off subject. The idea here is that if you sit in front of the screen all day, without having a strategy, you could end up doing stupid things with your money. Now that’s different from what I do recommend, which is trading is your best teacher, but that’s something you would know, like over the weekend, what you’re gonna try to do Monday to gain the experience. Okay? Have that mapped out, open up your thing, put the trade on and then be done with it, steering and watching it. Isn’t gonna make it move in your direction, right? You purchase something long, put in your protective stop and that’s it. You can trust the market mechanisms gonna work for you. And if you’re so scared about losing money, there’s not a lot.

I can help you with there because you’re gonna have to try to figure out what level you are comfortable and willing to lose in order to get where you want to be. But the benefit of listening to this show is that I’m teaching you the stuff that the pros do and that they had to go through before they made it. And no one is exempt from going through this, not a soul one way or another. If you want to dance, you have to pay the Fiddler. And that’s the way that it works. And if you’re underfunded, I would sit and wait then and try to gather some funds and then trade. When it’s not gonna be such a psychological blow to you because you will lose money and you are going to make mistakes. And very rarely do I think in 35 years, I made one mistake that I actually made money on.

And I’ll tell you exactly what it was. I was long gold. I think it was many years ago, 15, something years ago more. I was long February gold, beyond first notice and I got delivered against, so it wasn’t technically a mistake, but it was something that I should have known better. And I didn’t, and I was already a pro and I got delivered gold and I didn’t want it. So I had to unwind the whole thing. And somehow in the end of it, I think I netted two or $300, but the it’s not the money’s insignificant. The thing is, is that’s, that’s not what I wanted to have happen. So I look at that as a mistake.

Anyway, if you have any questions about this, so you want to get more clear reach out via email and I will help you discover what’s best for you based on what you’re willing to do and what you’re willing to feel. because if you’re unwilling to feel those feelings, it’s going to be very, very difficult for you to succeed in the trading world. And that’s good for anyone. Who’s got a thousand dollars or anyone’s got a hundred million, the feelings that you don’t want to feel have as much control over you as the ones that you think you do want to feel.

Please consider subscribing to the show. We’re all over the place in YouTube now and Spotify and this and that. So there’s plenty of platforms where you can consume the in the content. And if you haven’t already gotten a copy of the audiobook version of the Inner Voice of Trading, you can get it for free at MartinKronicle top right corner. Thanks for being here. Folks. I’ll see you tomorrow.

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I got an email Saturday about “Hey, you know, I find myself forcing trades in these markets.” And I said, wow, that’s great insight on your behavior. When the markets are the way they are, which are super tough, you know, for long, only traders, you can find yourself especially if you are a discretionary chart reader coming to the market, every place doing your due diligence, you know, scaring the world for however, you’re finding your names and then feeling as if as every day comes, you actually have to put on a trade. And I think the big difference between pros and the amateur market is the pros only trade. When they have an absolute edge that they can affect onto the marketplace. Then if they have to, they sit on their hands and let the day go by.

Why do they do that? Well, each day is only like one little speck of sand over at west end two or in Santa Monica bay, the big beach, right? So it’s not that big of a deal. If you sit on your hands for a day, the last thing you want to do is put good money after bad. You see? And so it also helps you keep a good frame of mind because if the market is not amenable to your trading style or vice versa, you’re not forcing things just like in life. I mean, as soon as you start forcing something, you almost know intuitively that it’s not going to work. It’s true in relationships. It’s true in jobs. It’s true in a lot of spots. So why people try to force trades is kind of, I mean, I kind of understand that you feel like the fear of missing out.

There’s gotta be opportunities somewhere. You see this when people downtime into intra day charts, right? When there’s nothing happening on the weekly’s or the dailies or worse they’re in down trends, some brain surgeon out there is going to start looking at intra day charts to find the UPT trend. This is a fool’s errand, so don’t do it, but it does make a lot of sense to run your screens. And if you don’t see anything, turn off the computer, go find something else to do and come back tomorrow, start over. You don’t want to have to feel as if you have to trade every day. I don’t know where it started, probably through all the marketing that’s done to the folks who want a day trade even short term traders, don’t have to put on trades every day. It’s not good for your psyche. It’s not good for your overall well mental wellbeing. And it’s certainly not good for your P and L. So if you find yourself feeling like I need to put a trade on,

Take a look at that and say, where’s that coming from? Whoever made that rule, right? It’s probably the same person who said you can’t possibly take home an E mini contract overnight, right? It’s stupidity who would ever say that makes no sense whatsoever. There’s no generalizations that fit for everybody on planet earth. Now that’s a lot different than having a signal or a trade, and then not putting on that trade and then missing the trade. That’s a different story, right? That’s when something is absolutely clear and abundant, and then you don’t take the action that you should, but the action is only when the setup is there or when your model, if you’re purely systematic fires, a trade, I know purely systematic guys right now who are still in a draw down. So the advice there is to cut your position size take a big haircut.

Meaning if you’re down from a hundred percent, say you’re down 10% so that you have not what I call 90 cent dollars from what you used to have at the highs, cut your equity down to 60, 40, 50, 60% and make your risk units based on a smaller portion of your capital. This way you can still be true to your system. You can still take every trade, but as long as the market, isn’t showing you any love, you’re not taking these bigger risk unit losses sooner or later, it’ll turn like it always does. At which point you can find evidence to increase your position size again. When would that be? I don’t know, one or two months of positive P & L maybe 6 out of 10 winners winning trades. That’s really very subjective. So it’s hard to tell without knowing a person’s particular set of rules, but it’s food for thought.

That’s the main thing here. You have to figure this out yourself. Anyway. Thanks for being here. Please consider subscribing. I’m getting some really good data and the more people who subscribe, I get a much more pluralistic look at what’s going on in the environment and what you like, what resonates with you. And that’s important, because I don’t want to waste my time and I don’t want to waste yours. If you haven’t already gotten a copy of the audiobook version of the inner voice of trading, you can get it for free at Martin Chronicle.

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