Transcript

Clay: This is a Stock Trading Reality Podcast, episode 257.
Announcer: This is the stock trading reality podcast where you get to see the realistic side of a trader’s journey. Get inspired and stay motivated by every day normal people who are currently on their journey to trading six S, and this is your host. He said it has taken him this long to discover ramen noodles, ClayTrader.
Clay: It all started out in San Jose, Silicon Valley. My brother in law, Mark was talking about these [inaudible 00:00:37]. What is it? Is it Raymond or ramen? It’s ramen noodles. I get made fun of for calling them Raymond noodles, but I think they’re ramen. Yeah, ramen. So ramen noodles, he’s like, Oh, you got to have them. There’s this place, it’s authentic, it is so good. And I’m like, all right, whatever. I’m out in California, why not try some ramen noodles?
Clay: So he took me to this place. Oh, what is it called? I can’t even remember. I can’t remember. But long story short, it was good. We had it for lunch. No, I lied. He recommended it. So my wife and I, Abby, we went there for lunch. And it was so good that that night I’m like, hey Mark, you want to go on like brother-in-law bro date back to the ramen noodle place? And we did. So, I had ramen noodles twice in one day. It is fantastic. My only problem is I don’t know if I set the bar too high, because there’s a lot of authentic food out there in California, Silicon Valley and all that. But I need to find, I need to do some homework to see if there’s anything good here around the Grand Rapids area. But I had some spicy stuff added in, fantastic.
Clay: So if you are somebody that has never had ramen noodles, give them a try. But it’s not like the stuff in college. That’s, I think what screwed me up is I remember my roommates, they would have those plastic packs that come in the form of a brick, and we could build a castle out of those things. You could build a good solid fortified wall and/or just throw them at people. So, I always thought that what that was. And it is, but it’s a very bootleg version of what ramen noodles actually are. So, I would highly recommend them. And if you’re out in… Well, like I said, I should probably remember. How can I not remember that? [Orenchi 00:02:16]. I think Orenchi. Orenchi, that’s it. Orenchi Raymond noodle, ramen noodles, so I can’t even say it right. But they’re good, and I would highly recommend them.
Clay: We have an awesome guest here today, Roger. He is a part of the community. He more so just lurks in the shadows. He’s not active in the chat room, but he is part of the community and he’s doing a great job. He got started back in, essentially 1998 and with the first computer and all that with dial up internet, and he’s been on a long journey. But as he tells us, he’s doing well. He’s mainly trading options, but he has some experience with stocks and some other things. But he’s doing well as he discloses it. It’s not that it’s been a perfect journey, but he’s… And as I end the interview talking about this, but there’s people where you’re like, you can listen to them and then you just know that they’re full of it. Roger is not that guy. I will attest upfront that what he talks about is true and what he… Not that I’m saying you have to use this exact strategy, but just a little comments he makes is absolutely true.
Clay: One little thing is, it’s amazing how if you just focus on position size and size of your account, that can’t really help out when it comes to the whole risk management department. And just making ease of taking losses that much better, because you don’t have to sit there and think, Oh great, I have a ton of money on the line. So there’s just little things peppered throughout his journey that, I mean are great bits of information. Really, whether I was going to say if you’re a new trader. But even for veterans like me, I mean, it’s always good to have a friendly reminder of some things to keep the wheels on the bus as firmly as possible. So, I had a great time. Roger is a great individual. He was a fantastic guest, so let’s hear about Roger and his journey. Roger, welcome to the show.
Roger: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Clay: Now I must ask, although I realize it’s none of my business. But where in the continental… I’m assuming you’re in the United States, but I’m liking the Southern accent. So I’m assuming you’re down South somewhere, or is that a safe assumption?
Roger: That’s, it’s pretty accurate [crosstalk 00:04:25].
Clay: Let me guess so. It sounds, if I had to guess, I’m going to go with Tennessee.
Roger: You are spot on.
Clay: Is it? All right. So I’m getting to know the Tennessee accent, because just a few episodes ago I talked to somebody from Tennessee, and I was like, you sound kind of quite a bit. But yeah, I think that Tennessee people actually have a little bit different accent than other people. I mean, is this… I’m not committing blasphemy right now. Am I? Is this like some sort of Southern… Like, am I breaking any rules by saying that Tennessee people talk different than other people in other locations in the South?
Roger: Not at all. Not at all. There are different dialects and different things that you hear all around the South, and you can pick up on them just like you are picking up on mine and it is different. So you’re… That you’re not causing anybody any holiday.
Clay: All right, good. I just don’t want… People from the South are very friendly, so I’m not trying to get anybody knocking on my door saying, hey, you insulted. Insulted me and my mom or something like that. So I just, honest question from an ignorant Northerner. All right, Roger, well, you said you’ve listened to a lot of these past episodes, so you know what’s coming here. But to just start things off, where did you first hear about the markets? And what sort of things played out? What sort of maybe events or whatever have that occurred that brought you to the point where you decided to make the decision that you wanted to get a little bit more hands on with all of this?
Roger: Yeah. So long question and a lot of history there, and it goes back really to the time that I was seven, eight, nine years old. I had an uncle living with us at the time, and a hardworking guy. Got up every morning and went to work with his lunchbox, and came home late in the evening. And he always read the newspaper, and he always looked at stocks. And I wouldn’t say that he was obsessed with Rockefeller, but he would talk about Rockefeller a lot. And when he talked about all that, you could see that it was not necessarily about the money, but it was about the freedom. And he talked about, what would you do with this much money? Or what could you do with this much money? And it was just simply about the freedom.
Roger: And even at a young age, I picked up on that. And then one day he was looking at these paper, and he’s looking at stocks and he started talking about… And he was always one of those left of the screen traders. Like if I had bought this and talking about it, and he’d say, if I’d bought this back when it would have split three times by now and I would have had X dollars. And I was like, wait a minute, stocks do things? So, it was really interesting, and so, yeah.
Clay: How old were you at the time, out of curiosity?
Roger: Seven, eight, nine years old. And he talked about, so really, that started my interest. But…
Clay: And I just, I meant to cut you off. I just asked, because as a father of four, my oldest is seven right now. So it’s one of these situations where I’m kind of treading lightly, I was like, well, is it worth my time right now? Is she at the age where she’s going to remember? Or is it… But it sounds like for you, if you’re a seven, eight and nine, it’d be a good time to start to talk about stuff and just kind of plant those seeds, because very clearly that’s something that you remember as way back when you were seven or eight. So that’s an interesting bit of data, that your first recollection was right around the time where I’m wondering myself personally, I don’t know, should I bring this up to my daughter Joy yet or not? But it sounds like it might be worth it.
Roger: Yeah, I think that if it’s in your DNA to be interested that it is what it is regardless of your age, as long as you’re walking and talking. So, it was interesting to me, but I didn’t know what to do with it. That was before online trading, and you had to have a broker, and to have X number of dollars, and there was big minimums for accounts and trading. I think if he traded a stock, if he made a trade, it was like 30, or 40, or $50 to even make a trade. So definitely at that time out of my league, and so fast forward all the way into 1998, online trading came along. And I bought my first real computer. That [wooden00:08:45] Texas instruments keyboard, computer, but a real computer you could connect online, dial up with and opened up an account.
Roger: And I can’t remember, but I believe it was a Scott trade account. But it was quite a long time ago. And I dialed up, and I remember how little I actually knew. And I started making trades, and I bought stocks. And my methodology was, is, I would find something that was down and buy it because it had to go back up. And that was… That’s a good overview of how little I knew, but I knew I wanted to trade. So that’s what got me started, and that’s how I started. I think I lost a $60 in about a week. And $60 at that time might’ve been, it could have been as easily as 600 or 6,000 to me. So I didn’t really have it to lose at the time, so I backed out of it and decided that I need to regroup, and learn some more and do some different things. So that was serious.
Clay: I have to ask out of just pure curiosity. 1998, I think that was still the dial up, or was a high speed internet around at that point?
Roger: At my home it was dial up.
Clay: Okay. So you could still do online trades then, or it would just… And clearly, this was no like high speed frequency trading. But I mean, that’s, we take so much granted in this day and age to have the speed, and all the platforms at our fingertips. So I would assume this was a very just, there was no day trading going on. Was there? There was just I want to buy and then it should go up within the next few days, so I’ll have plenty of time to enter in my sell order and wait for that to connect and all that sort of stuff. Is that pretty much how it worked back then? There was no such thing as necessarily day trading or maybe it was there?
Roger: It was right on the cusp of that. But now that you bring it up, my screen looked more like an [inaudible] sketch gone bad. Then today’s tools that we’ve got available to us. So it was right on the cusp, and I could see what was going on with my stock. But it was at least, for me in dial up, and where I was in part of the country, Tennessee’s not New York city. So you know my relativity to that, I was a little bit behind the times, probably also.
Clay: [inaudible] 1998 though, I mean, that’s the thing, that’s 21 years ago. So I do fully understand that you can’t quite remember if it was Scott trade or not, because 20 years, that’s a long time ago. I can barely remember two days ago, let alone 20 years. But, well, all right, well, you start trading. Well, we’ll put trading in air quotes. I like how you kind of summarize your knowledge of the market, Oh it’s gone down. It’s got to go back up and you lost a $60. Now, $60 total that you lost, or is that just what you lost in a single trade?
Roger: Now that was the total that I lost, and that was at the time all that I could stand.
Clay: And you’ve lost that, and you’ve decided you’re not… Well, I need to know, kind of sounds like tap the brakes a little bit. So, where did things head from that point?
Roger: In about 2003, I got with a friend of mine that had equal interest in trading and developed a trading group, and actually put a business together. And we went through some self education, and we would assign each of us in the group… I think there were eight of us in the group at the time, and we would assign each of us in the group different tasks to learn about different things and bring it back to the group each month. And through that group, there was a lot of learning. There’s a lot of value in teamwork [inaudible 00:12:38]. And we had identified, and we were doing what I would consider fundamental trading because we were identifying things like solid companies, low P/E ratios, good cash flow. And we would talk through those things and then we would vote on whether or not we were going to make the purchase, and we did really good. And that lasted until the market crashed, which I remember like yesterday. When the market [crosstalk 00:13:10].
Clay: Now, are you talking about the.com crash or the real estate induced crash from ’08?
Roger: The real estate induced crash.
Clay: Okay.
Roger: And it was interesting because I was traveling, and the group had, had a meeting and I had looked at a lot of different things, and I had access to some pretty good charts and things at the time. And everything looked very hoppy there. There were more stocks than not at all times high. The P/E ratios were through the roof. Things were… It was like the party’s never going to end. And I had cautioned everybody, I said, I said, guys, we’re in this together but we need to be careful because something doesn’t look right. And they said, we’ll be fine.
Roger: And so we did get out, exit with a profit, but we had a draw down trying to get out with all that going on. And interestingly enough, I called my broker at the time and I said, something doesn’t look right and something doesn’t feel right, can you… And I’m thinking about moving to cash, can you elaborate on this and have you got any thoughts on it? And the recommendation was, this is about dollar cost averaging. You’re looking at retirement funds type of things, you’re going to be continuing to buy in. If it goes down, you’ll just be buying at a lower rate. You really don’t need to cash anything out of the market. That’d be unproductive, and I don’t recommend it. So, I thought about it some more. And about an hour later, I went and got on computer and moved everything to cash.
Roger: It was the best thing that I had ever done because right after that, I mean, things skyrocketed down pretty hard. People were living on [hopium 00:15:06]. It would drop down, a big drop and then everybody would think, well, it’s going to bounce back up. They kept bouncing and dropped down again. And it just, it didn’t come back for a while and down until it got so low that my thoughts were, if this goes any lower, we’re not going to have a monetary system or a country. And that’s when I got back in thinking, I’m only going to have something or nothing based on what’s going on in the financial system.
Clay: And that’s a great rationale. And that’s kind of my little, I guess we’ll call it a conspiracy theory. But really the, markets can’t go down to zero. And I say that because people in power, the government wants to stay in power, and the quickest way to fall out of power is have riots in the street and mass chaos. And the quickest way to have riots in the street in mass chaos is for everybody to lose all their money because the stock market goes to zero. So in the background, I believe there’s the incentive for the government to bail things out, for the government to just keep things moving. Because to your point, what made me think about that was you’re right, at that point where it got to those lows, it was really reaching the tipping point of, things are need to start to at least level out. Not necessarily skyrocket back up, but at least level out or there is going to be some chaos in the streets. Things are going to get out of hand in a hurry.
Clay: So I do fully agree with that logic that at some point the market reaches that spot where it’s, well, I can put in $100 and I might lose all the $100 because it keeps going down. But if that keeps going down, then that $100 probably wasn’t worth anything any longer anyhow because that would just imply that, like you said, the monetary system, the economy has completely and utterly collapsed. So, it’s kind of a good risk reverse reward at that point in time. How long after you decided to go back in? I mean, I’m assuming you didn’t nail the perfect bottom. But did it start to turn around within a couple of weeks, within a couple months? Where were… How close were you to actually getting in at before this thing started to, at least level out and go back upwards?
Roger: That’s a good question, and I don’t ever recommend anybody trying to pick perfect tops are perfect bottoms. But as look what happened, I’ll call it luck because there wasn’t anything in a wish in all in this. But I almost was at the very bottom when it turned up.
Clay: And did you scale in, or… Let me put it this way, was this retirement funds, was this from an investing standpoint that you’re putting money back in the market, or is this designed to be some sort of trade?
Roger: This specifically was retirement funds and I went all in because again, I mean, two years chaos in the streets point I was thinking, hey, it can’t go much lower. And if it does, it’s not going to matter.
Clay: Okay. So this was an invest… And I mean, thank you for bringing that up because you’re right, the market from a trading perspective is not about nail in the bottom, nail on the top. Because as a trader, I mean, yeah, sure you can do that every now and then. But to think that you’re going to do that on a consistent basis, you’re going to have very disappointed results. But in your defense, it’s not like you were trying to nail the bottom from a training perspective. You just thought, you know what? I’m just going to put it in and let’s see what happens. Let me ride this out. It’s not like, Oh, I’m going to try to nail the bottom, and I have to nail the bottom because I have to. I want to sell a few dollars more. So, it’s literally got to be the bottom. In your case, it just happened to be the bottom. It’s not that you were actually trying to nail the bottom. Is that a fair summary?
Roger: Yeah, that’s exactly the way it went. I just thought, hey, this is it, and there weren’t any technical analysis involved.
Clay: At this point, it was, you were just using pure logic and what? `And as we discussed, I liked the logic quite a bit, and it was a situation where you didn’t need for it to be the bottom in the sense of [inaudible 00:19:02]. This butter bounds from right here because this is some sort of day trader near term swing trade. It was just, let’s put it in. Well, good job on the entry point then. That was quite impressive. And before I forget, man, maybe you mentioned this and I didn’t quite catch it. But these eight guys, where did… Were these all friends? Or how did you actually build the group? Was it just like a group of guys from work, or just people that you knew from your sphere? I mean, where did these eight guys come from, or the seven guys including you?
Roger: We were all acquaintances or friends with one another, and just got to talking. One thing led to another and they said, you know what? Let’s put something together. And they all… It was interesting because we all were synchronized in the sense and the thought process of, we would be better off working together rather as an individual trying to beat the market, or what’s on the other side of the entry point in whatever we’re doing. And it just fell together. It was the easiest formation of a group that probably could ever happen.
Clay: That’s what we need. And like you said, it sounds like everybody kind of had that mindset anyways, and when everybody’s already flowing in the same direction. Not that that’s the perfect recipe. But it’s, I would definitely say probably a big ingredient to the recipe of just having a good cohesive group, which it clearly sounds like you have. So, all right, well, you decide it’s either bust mass chaos in the streets and swinging baseball bats at people, or the market recovers. So the market did start to recover, so I guess where did you go from that point in the journey? So you were back in the market from a retirement fund perspective, from an investment standpoint. But where did the trading… Or, I guess I’ll just let you pick it back up from there. So pick it back up from you made the decision, to put your money back into the market and then take it from there.
Roger: Yeah. I was also doing trading on my own. As a matter of fact, most of the trade in, we had a really solid group and I just want to cover this in the sense that we never had an argument, believe it or not. We all got along, we were all kind of on the same mission, but everybody had kind of grown in their separate ways. They had commitments, family, I mean, everybody said, we’ll, let’s just call it quits and wrap this up. And we did successfully. We went our own ways. We’re still friends, so there was nothing negative involved in the disbandment of the group. But we had all kind of learn what we felt like we needed to learn from a one another perspective of trading and went our own ways.
Roger: So from there, for me personally, I went on to continue to learn trading, made a lot of mistakes to the point where, probably somebody could have made a lot of money just taking the opposite side of my positions and working through that way. But I finally got to a point to where I felt like that I needed some, or technical mentorship and some things, and had made a commitment to a group that I was going to join and follow through on that. Really, to me was a great investment because I don’t think… This is just my opinion… But I don’t think that we pay enough attention to how important it is to make an investment in yourself, because that’s something nobody can ever take away from you. And that’s just monumental.
Roger: Once you learn and you have that knowledge, it’s yours. And so, to me that’s how I had advanced my trading to the point to where today my involvement is stocks, ETFs options, futures, futures options, and things that are really are nice tools in the market. And it takes some mentorship to get there. If somebody gets their own, more power to them. But for me, personally, it took some training
Clay: And I don’t think… I mean, most people, unfortunately they never get there because… And I realize you know this. But the thing when it comes to trading is the way you trade is, well, with money. And if you don’t have any money, then you can’t really trade. Whereas a lot of other things, the only requirement… I don’t know what’s… If you want to get good at shooting a free, throw a basketball. I mean that requires a hoop, a ball and your time, and that’s it. As long as you have those things, you’re good to go. But in trading, I mean, you’re only good to go as long as you have money. And a lot of people, they just run out of it, they get too discouraged and it does… Nobody’s sitting here, Roger nor myself or saying you have to invest into yourself, you have to invest into mentorship or anything like that.
Clay: And I can only speak for myself when it came to real estate investing before I got into that. Because after I did the whole trading thing, I’ll do it on my own. When I got to real estate investing I’m like, nope, I’m definitely not doing it on my own. That was not pleasant. So that’s why I was, I gladly invested. And I use the word invest, not spend. But I’d gladly invested just shy of $5,000 into myself and my understanding of real estate and real estate investing, because I didn’t want to go out there. Because what I learned is a lot of times if you just learn what to avoid in the first place, that you can make a whole lot of money. Because if you just simply avoid losing $1,000, well, a penny saved is a penny earned. So that’s the equivalent of basically making $1,000. If you can just learn little things, yeah, you probably shouldn’t do that. And just a little avoidance bits of knowledge can add up that much quicker, so I fully agree with you there.
Clay: Now, how… I mean, what sort of… So you put your money in the markets or back in the markets in 2008, and then you kind of just brought it. You were struggling, you were struggling, you were struggling. I mean, how long did all of that struggling… And you made the comment, the million dollar idea would have been just taking the exact opposite side of my trade. So, I mean, how long did that whole struggle last for? Are we talking months, or years before you decided to kind of make an… Join that group and invest into yourself?
Roger: Oh, I’m hardheaded, so it took years. And that was costly part of being hardheaded. But once I kind of had self admitted that no, hey, I need help to do this right. I really, it’s a passion of mine. I really want to do it, I want to do it right, I need some help doing it. And once I had admitted that to myself and identified how to get the training, that’s really when it turned around for me. And I’ve been really successful in my trading, and really for about the past five, six years in what I’m doing. And I have to, because of my work lifestyle, my career, I have to trade a particular way. I like several different styles. I don’t get to take advantage of those different styles all the time, but I do like different styles.
Roger: But I have learned to trade around what I have to do during the day, so that’s where [inaudible] options come in. And I really, I’ve got a little pet peeve about options. And if anybody’s, I hear all the time. And if I hear people out talking or anything, I don’t jump in and go, I trade stocks and I know about options. I don’t, I’m not that know it all guy, and I’m not going to intervene in those conversations. But I hear people every once in a while, and they’re talking about options. And they’ll just lean back and go, man, they’re so risky. And I just cringe when I hear it, because that’s, to me, that light bulb goes off that there’s a lack of education there and they’re not understanding. Because really and truly in my opinion, if you understand the tools used in options and how you can trade them, it’s one of the safest things you can do. And it’s really my key to success over the past five or six years.
Clay: I mean, you’re preaching to the choir. In fact, you’re getting me a little fired up. I mean, the equivalent is, and I’m sure this probably gets you out of it, I was like, Oh, Oh, you’re in the markets. That’s a gambling. You’re a gambler. It’s like, okay, and to your point, no, that’s just, that’s you having a lack of understanding.
Clay: A hammer is a very risky thing. If you don’t know how to use a hammer, if you don’t have full understanding of a hammer, yes, a hammer is something that could really hurt you bad if you don’t understand what’s going on with that hammer. And I feel like I fully agree. And not only in options, but really anything, oh, that’s risky. But there is definitely options. Some people seem to take that little twist, well, I mean, your money can just go poof just like that in options. Well, I mean, yeah, and a hammer can bash your face in two. That doesn’t mean that the hammer itself is risky. That just means you don’t know how to use the hammer just like in options. And so, yes, I’m trying to keep my composure and I’m doing a good job, but absolutely right. The whole, Oh, it’s gambling, oh that’s risky.
Clay: No, I mean it is, I mean options… I would assume you can fully agree… Options can be super, super risky if you just show up and treat them like a casino. Is that fair? Would you at least agree with that?
Roger: Oh definitely. I mean, it’s as dangerous as you want it to be if you don’t know what you’re doing.
Clay: And they can be very dangerous, but that doesn’t mean they actually are dangerous. I mean, that there’s a big difference there. I mean, you can turn anything dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. Now I guess, I know this ends in options for you, but I mean where did… When you started to learn, did you start in stocks and then branch off into because you mentioned futures and futures output? I mean, did you always know you wanted to do options? Or I guess, walk me through the journey, how did you ultimately land at options? Because I’m assuming when you started and got, put your money back in the market and all that sort of stuff, I’m assuming you’re like, I want to do options, because most people start off in stock. So, I guess walk me through the journey of how you arrived at options in and of themselves.
Roger: Yeah, so that’s interesting story too. So you know the success tours where they have a lot of high powered speakers, so Colin Powell and the motivational speakers that they have, the [inaudible 00:29:42]. They fill up the stadiums with them, and they usually have several different speakers that are at that level and you can get a ticket for $20. And in between speakers, they would do basically what [inaudible] infomercial. And one of the guys came out and he was talking about how he was making a lot of money, and I really was kind of paying a little bit of attention. But then he started talking about, if you own stock, you can rent it and I can show you how, how to make income off of renting your stock. Then I was like, what is he talking about?
Roger: And I started checking into it. And of course, obviously what he was talking about was options, and he was talking about calls.
Clay: Covered calls.
Roger: Right. Correct, he was talking about covered calls. Well, I immediately started digging into it, I’m like, what is this? And I just went hit off into it and investigated it, started doing some kind of offline paper trading on my own. Brightened down some different things about how they move and how the value works. And today, I understand that it’s data, and the decay of the stocks and things is of the value once the time runs out. And so I was like, man, if stock is checkers, this is [inaudible 00:31:16].
Clay: I like that. That’s good analogy.
Roger: And it was on from there. And when I learned… And again, I’m not going to go up an airplane unattended strap on a parachute and jump out and hope for the best. I’m going to get some training. So I did, and went from there. And it’s a nice segment when you don’t have to sit in front of the screen all day, which I can, to try to execute a trade and make a nice income. Again, it’s about the knowledge and taking that risk away.
Clay: Well said, well said, and that is a pretty interesting story and that’s actually true. That’s a good way that they put it in terms of renting your stock out and getting a rental payment. But of course, that the risk always becomes where you could also lose the “house” you could lose this stock potentially, but we won’t go down that rabbit hole of how covered calls work and all that. But yeah, at the core, that is definitely a way to pretty much create an additional dividend for yourself. And it’s definitely a valid way to go about it. So as it sounds like right now you’re… And we can jump to present day unless you want to fill in any other gaps. I mean, have we covered pretty much the background to your satisfaction?
Roger: Yeah, I think you’ve pretty much covered it. It’s, there’s a lot of in-betweens, but I don’t think anything thrilling in between there.
Clay: Okay. All right. Well, so now you’re doing, like you said, options, but you… Well, I guess I’ll maybe side step a little bit. You had mentioned you’re into futures options, futures options. So are you doing all of these things, or are you just right now, presently focused on just options?
Roger: No, I’m engaged in all of those on some level. And it’s because, again, it’s about the tools. It’s, if you go to your toolbox and the first thing you might buy and put in there is to your point earlier, is the hammer. And then you get a wrench, and then you get a screwdriver set. And now I’ve got more tools, and it just gives you, it opens up the world as to the different strategy you can use based on what you’ve got at hand at the point. And it’s really incredible. And I talked to a guy the other day, and he lost. This is just kind of blows my mind, but he lost $1,200 trying to learn how to trade futures. And I said, well, can you tell me what you did?
Roger: And what he did was he opened up a platform, and deposited his money, and started to try to learn how to trade and lost $1,200 in one day. And I said, why would you do that? We’ve got all these tools out here that you can go into any account brokerage right now and you can SIM trade, you can learn what all the buttons mean. And he had lost the money because he couldn’t exit the trade. He didn’t know how in that particular platform. It wasn’t that he necessarily made a bad trade, he couldn’t get out. So there’s the tools out there are just remarkable, but you got to make the conscious decision to use them. And he elected to test out the system with live money. And I just, I can’t get there from here. I can’t do that.
Clay: Did… I mean, what… I’m with you, that’s quite shocking. Did he give you an answer? It sounds like you asked him, wait, why did you put real money on the line when you just… I mean, what was his rationale for doing what he did?
Roger: He just felt like it would give him a greater sense of urgency, and, I mean, everybody is different. But I think if you’re a competitive, if you’re that type A or competitive individual that you want to win, I think you can get 99% of the way there even paper trading. And he just said, hey, I thought it would push my… I thought it would push me and well, it did.
Clay: Yeah, down the hole.
Roger: Yeah.
Clay: And that’s, that goes back to, I mean in my mind at least just, I had this person almost say that, hey, you know what? There is a chance that if you don’t know how to use a platform, you, like you said, you could be in a good trade, you could be in a winning trade. But if you don’t know how to actually get out of the trade, that could present a problem. And I realize that sounds like a very commonsensical type thing, and it sort of is. But that’s just one of those things where… And in this case, it sound like you won’t even have to invest or pay for somebody to tell you that. Just if you think about little things to avoid in this situation, avoid the fact that there could be a situation where you don’t know how to get out of the trade, so therefore let’s learn how to get out of a trade before you use your money. Oh, right there, that’s you’re avoiding a situation that would have saved him $1,200.
Clay: So it’s just those little things where when you learn about what to avoid in the first place, there is so much value in that. Way too many people are like, how do I make money? And I’m like, well, no, no, no, no. Let’s first just figure out how to avoid doing stupid stuff. And once you avoid doing stupid stuff, we’ll worry about the whole making money thing. Because by simply avoiding the dumb stuff in the first place, you’re going to save yourself a ton of money. Which, again, going back to that quote, a penny saved is a penny earned.
Clay: But yeah, this person, that is very bizarre. I agree. Just yeah, put money in, and I… I mean, I suppose I see their logic. I kind of question, maybe that’s just their way of saying, I’m here to have fun, I’m here to make money let’s get to it. So maybe they were masking that with a, well, I was hoping it was push me. I don’t know, but that is a pretty interesting story. So you’re doing… So let me ask this, what is dictating what you’re trading and when? I mean, are you… Let me take a step back. Do you do any day trading at all, or are you doing all swing trading?
Roger: I’m mostly doing swing trading. I do very, very low. I mean, I might take three day trades a year. It’s very [inaudible 00:37:39].
Clay: Oh, okay. So you are…
Roger: I just…
Clay: … You are basically a swing trader then, for…
Roger: Yeah. I can, and I’ll do things. So I’ll focus on, because again, this is my opinion. But I see individual stocks, and individual stocks seem to have a behavior. If you watch a single stock or a single ETF long enough, there’s a behavior there like almost like a person. It will behave a certain way, and it will behave a certain way as it reacts to the market, and reacts to news and different events economically. And you get used to that if you learn that stock. And so that combined with technical analysis and things is what I use. And when I will leverage in and using options, I’ll protect myself on the downside when I do that. And then, I’ll give you a good example of, not quite a day trade, but a real tight swing trade.
Roger: So a couple of weeks ago, Cleveland-Cliffs got absolutely punished for buying AK steel in all stock transaction. And Cleveland-Cliffs is the P/E ratios is sitting three to one or less solid company, and they got obliterated under the announcement that they were going to purchase AK steel. And I saw that, and saw that drop and saw it got down. I think it was in 728, 736, and I was like, really? We’re really going to do this to this stock? And I went in on it. And two days later, I got out and it worked out just fine. And it was just based on the behavior of the stock, and why and the financial stability of the stock, and then why it was being punished.
Clay: So CLF, right? That’s ticker symbol.
Roger: CLF, yes.
Clay: Okay. So this is one that you had been watching quite a bit before this big news thing happened, it sounds like?
Roger: I had and I had been so busy, I had missed the first. It had a dip previous to that announcement. And again, I stay really busy and I missed that first dip, but I saw it afterwards and I said, I’m not going to miss another one if there is another one. I’m not going to miss it, and I’m not going to chase the stock. It went up. Okay, good for the stock, good for everybody that was in, I’m not going to chase it. I’m going to let it come back. And if it does, I’ll purchase it. If not, then I’ll move on. And just so happen it did.
Clay: You had mentioned in passing almost, Oh yeah, I mean it was a great company, or it’s a solid company or something like that. And not that I don’t believe you, but my question is so, because clearly fundamental analysis has crept into the picture here. So how were you defining a good company? What is your definition of good? You had mentioned P/E ratio, but are you using any other fundamental metrics to help you define? Which is as a big of a technical trader I am, I will admit that fundamental analysis is a fascinating, fascinating world, because the word good, the word value is very, very subjective. One person can say good, another person can say garbage based on their definitions and how they form their metrics based on the fundamentals. But for you, how do you define good within your analysis from a fundamental standpoint of… And not necessarily just CLF, but really any company?
Roger: Yeah. And so, I don’t do that very often because that has become not my Creighton style. But if I key in on a stock that sounds like it’s got good financial stability, meaning positive cash flow, solid balance sheet, good P/E ratio, good management, there’s not announcements out there that they’re under investigation for some kind of fraud, that’s never good. Just looking at the company’s financial, you can go website and pull up their financials and look through them. Anybody can. And so given that, given the P/E ratio, it just, to me didn’t make any sense that they were going to get punished two dollars a share for buying a steel company that was itself, that the stock had fallen from. Like AK Steel back two years ago was trading at eight dollars, maybe three years ago. Now it’s trading at three dollars, and something. I think, it was down. I’m like, this is not… This doesn’t align with the stock that’s going to continue downward with the financial stability of the company.
Roger: But I don’t do that very often. Most of what I do is, I’ll watch a particular stock, I’ll learn a little bit about it, but I’ll really watch the technical end of it with the behavior of the stock. I read the Nison’s book, The Candlestick Course, and different things. Larry Williams, and Longterm Secrets to Short Term Trading, and different things about charts and behaviors of stocks. And that’s really what I use more than trying to dig into the fundamentals, because it takes so much time to dig through the fundamentals
Clay: And that’s where I’m at too is, I always, but yeah, call me lazy. But I don’t feel like being buried in piles of paperwork. Now, if you’re like an accountant… Not as even if you’re an accountant or anything like that. But if you just love piles of paperwork, if you love going through and digging deep, that’s awesome. But I am not you, you are not mean, so we’ll just have to agree to disagree on that. That doesn’t make either of us right or wrong. But yeah, I’m with you, that does take a lot of time. Whereas the chart, once you develop, you know what I like to refer to as chart vision. But once you get the chart vision, I mean, it really is just a bit of a glance, maybe looking at some other time frames and you can quickly start to up to form a framework of a plan.
Clay: You had mentioned that you like to look at a stock, observe it. How long does this normally go on before you would ever actually put money into it? Is this something that you’re just talking about for a few hours, or does this require a few days? So, how long is this observation period before you would ever deploy any capital into the stock itself?
Roger: No, I’ll watch one for days or weeks before I do anything with it, because you’ve got to go through the financial cycles. Some of them even have seasonally impact and so, you get cold and hot, and does that make a difference in the behavior of the stock and what’s going on there? So you’ve kind of got to run some cycles. But when I say cycles, I mean more or less the financial reports, and how those financial, the big market reports impact that stocks behavior. Or is there any news that intervened in between there that would affect the stock’s behavior. And if I watch one and it’s very erratic, doesn’t really have any behavior other than bipolar and no pattern to it, I’ll bow out of it pretty quickly. I’ll watch it through four days and maybe not even that long. Look at the past history of the chart and just just go, no thanks. I’m going to move on because I prefer something with a pattern that I can hang on to a trend. I need a solid down trend, or a solid up trend. Sideways doesn’t really suit me well, I need a trend.
Clay: And how do you… Maybe you just answered it there, but how do you even arrive at a stock to watch in the first place? So I mean, let’s just say you stumble upon a new stock, how did you arrive at that stock? Is it based on the trends, is you’re specifically searching for downtrends, and then you find a stock that it is in a downtrend and then you start to watch it? Or what is actually dictating you to begin to observe a stock in the first place?
Roger: I’ll get on FINVIZ, and do some scans based on being above the 50-day moving average, 200-day moving average. I’m looking at the P/E ratios, and set some different settings. And you can bring up a lot of charts at one time and scan through them. Some of them, to me just inherently look volatile and to the point to where you can’t pick a direction to take the trade. So back to way back when we first started talking here, to me that would be gambling. And yeah, I’m not a gambler, so I’ll look at something and try to identify, it has a trend. And then I’ll, if it looks feasible, I will go look at the company in the while a little bit. I won’t spend hours doing it, but I might spend 30 minutes doing it, and what does the company do? Do they supply steel pipe for a drilling rig? Do they cover, how many continents? Do they have any big events going on that they’re dealing with labor unions or anything?
Roger: I’ll kind of get a little bit of insight to the stock, and then look at how it’s behaving and then maybe go through a cycle of, is the oil rig count, does it affect? Does their all announcements that come out every Wednesday, is that impacting it? Or even GDP, does that affect it? Maybe, maybe not. But just looking to see if anything’s really going to move the trend that it’s own. And if not, and it was like the trend is going to continue on, it’s your friend until it ends.
Clay: Absolutely, the trend is your friend. So you end at the spot where like, okay, yeah, I’m liking the way it moves, I’ve gone through some cycles and all that. So how, when you’re ready to put money to work… I mean, I know you’re using options. But what kind of options, strategies are you using to take advantage of what have you identified as something that you want to take advantage of in the first place?
Roger: Okay. A couple of different things is, is just depending, again, what the price of the stock is. And it’s harder to do on a low price stock. So you got to get something that’s… Again, this is just my personal strategy. But you’ve got to get something that’s trading 40, 50, $60. It’s got some room to move that can move, and it’s got a little bit of a volatility rank to it, but it’s [inaudible] or trend. I like selling puts against it, and I will even do our [inaudible] but I’ll get wider on my spread at the top from the current price in case it continues that up. It doesn’t take me out on my cell, on the upside with the call and I’d open call.
Roger: But really and truly, I like getting underneath them. And it’s kind of the thought process of I’ve got to spread underneath it, I’m making a credit own the trade to my account. If it goes down, it’s not going to hurt me much. If it goes to zero, it can’t hurt me more than the cost of my spread. And, hey, maybe I want to own it if it goes down there. Because it is a solid company, and if it goes down and triggers, if, let’s say it’s trading at $40 and I put in a 38.50 strike purchase on a put, I sell a put it’s open, and maybe I buy the 35 to protect myself. If it goes down to 38.50, maybe I’ll like it at 38.50 and I want to keep it. Maybe after I own it, maybe I’ll sell calls, and I’ve done that.
Roger: I’ve been triggered into a stock and said, hey, that’s great, that’s fine. I’ll sell calls. And if it gets called away, Oh, that’s fine too, I’m going to make my rent and I’m going to make my money back.
Clay: So when it comes to the risk management side of things, because I know options players, there’s lots of where you just roll, and roll and roll. I mean, as a listener, I assure you the options market is very, very vast in terms of methodologies and philosophies in terms of how you can manage things. I mean, there’s so much you can do like Roger just said is. Well, sometimes I’ll take the stock and then I start calling… Selling covered calls on it. And I mean, so the C is vast, and no way is Roger saying this is how you have to do it. This is just one of the little nooks and crannies.
Clay: So as far as risk management, do you take a traditional loss? Do you ever just say, you know what? I just need to move on, nobody can be right all the time. I’m just going to cut the loss? Or how do you go about the whole risk management department? I mean, I know you can protect yourself from the downside. But are there any situations where you’re just like, you know what, I got to just take my lump and move on?
Roger: There is, and it’s mostly come from individual swing traits instead of options, because I probably knew I need to do a better job of documenting and tracking my trades myself. But I would say my win rate on the option sides is in the high 90s, and I’ll explain why it’s in the high 90s. Because I’m not aggressive, I don’t do real tight spreads up against the current price. I’ll get wide, I’ll get farther away from it. It’s at $40, I’m not going to go 39, 39, 50, or even try to do a 40 strat. Or I don’t do trades that I have to do maintenance on like that. Or I might have to come in the next day, and roll one of the sides of the trade. I can’t do that. I don’t have time to do that, so I stay far away.
Roger: Now that that has an impact in the sense that I don’t make as much on each individual trade because of that, because I don’t get as much premium. But it’s also something I don’t have to walk around biting my fingernails during the day and worry about my trade. And so on individual stocks, I will set a mental stop. And if it dips below that, it’s still painful to me. And that was one of the problems I had trouble with in the very beginning, because I would just keep throwing another coffee cup full of [hopium] in there and saying, it will go back up, and couldn’t bite the bullet on getting out. And once I started learning how to get out, that was really one of the biggest personal successes for me was to being able to get out of a trade when it’s not going the direction you needed to. So I will set a mental stop, and I will definitely exit that trade and do it mechanically with no emotion. I’m out, I’m out. It drops, I’m out.
Clay: And that’s really a huge hurdle. I mean, I can relate very much. So it’s weird how in a bizarre of way, just by taking a loss, it’s actually a good thing because you look at the math and you’re like, hey, I took the loss, which… I mean, yeah I took a loss that doesn’t sound fun to say. And in my mind, oh, I’m a loser because I had to take the loss. But looking at the actual math, I’m glad I took that loss. Now that I look at it in hindsight, because had I not taken the loss, wow, that number, I could add it another decimal place into there. Oh wow, that would have really wiped away a whole lot of things. Oh wow, that would have really set me back. So, you know what? It probably is wise to just take that loss in the first place as much as it may be terrible at the time.
Clay: I mean, it’s actually not that bad when you stop and look at the math and the actual numbers of it all. And a lot of times to your point it’s, you almost just have to take that loss to actually see how the math truly does work out in your favor. Now, of course this does assume that you have a true strategy, and you have actual mechanisms in place that are going to make things shifted in the upwards direction. But a big part of that actually just things shifting in an upward direction is to just take the loss, keep the math in your favor. And it’s weird how… I mean, would you agree with that it’s almost like, as soon as you take a couple of losses and you realize that the math actually still keeps going in your favor, it does make it a whole lot easier to do it?
Roger: Yeah, and what you were talking about just then is something that it’s got a lot of satisfaction behind it. Because what I’ve seen is, is that, so you put in a stop or a mental stop, and it’s triggered and you sell out. If you go back and look at it, that trend, again, it’s the direction you were trading, whether you were short in it or you were gone that [inaudible 00:55:09]. It will usually continue, and it’s just like [crosstalk 00:55:14].
Clay: Yeah. A loss has never felt so good.
Roger: Oh yeah, yeah. It’s almost as satisfying as making a win in trade while knowing that you got out of a disaster.
Clay: And it goes back to the almost underlying unintentional theme. If you just avoid certain things, there is a make… There is money to be made and simply knowing what to avoid. And one thing you want to avoid, things that could totally, totally go against you. So, how do you avoid that? Well, you take a loss, which sounds counterintuitive. But take the loss at the right spot and you will avoid a much, much bigger loss. And once more, a penny saved is a penny earned, and there’s definitely power in that.
Clay: Now my question is, you mentioned high 90s, and which is, I 100% believe Roger, because again, in the world of options, if you do things right and if you do things conservative he is, yes, you can do very high win rate type things. But the question is when you’re not winning… So I don’t know what it is. The three percent of times when you take those losses, I mean, because I know that can create some pretty big losses because that implies that the stock has made a pretty crazy move relative to what the market thought what might actually happen.
Clay: So how do those, whatever it is, two, three percent of times were lost where those trades don’t work out? I mean, clearly you said you’ve been doing well for six years, so it doesn’t… I’m not… I’m assuming it doesn’t wipe away all your gains. But how do you handle one those very, very rare circumstances happen from the options trading perspective in that regard?
Roger: Yeah. So one of the things that I focus on that when I first started trading and it was about, how much money could I make? And if this goes, if this stock, if I buy it here and it goes to here, I’ll make $500. And it was about calculating the money. And in hindsight, that was a terrible approach for me because I didn’t really start doing well until I focused on the trade, is it a good trade? And it is, what’s my probability of profit in this trade? And what are my options strategy for… Not necessarily options, but what are my strategy options for exiting this trade if it goes against me. And so what I’ve inherently ended up doing is hitting base hits. Every once in a while, I’ll get thrown a home run. But it’s not for trying. It is because of the trade.
Roger: And so a lot, a lot of base hits hitting singles, hitting singles, hitting singles ill cause a strategy. So when it does go against me, it’s at most, it’s taken out. I’ll just frame it up like this. So let’s say I make five trades during the week, and in two weeks, so 10 trades. And let’s say one of those trades go against me or two of those trades go against me because of the protective position that I have in it, and because of the theta and things involved in the trade and I see it going against me, the value of that loss is no more than one or two of my trades that I’ve previously made at most.
Clay: All right. So that makes sense how it is probably… Not probably, it is very easy for you. And then… Poor choice words [inaudible] very easy. But you know what I mean, to just take the loss because you realize, hey, that’s not fun. It took away a couple of my winning trades. But within the big picture of things, the overall math is still trending in my favor. And it sounds like at this point, you mentioned no emotion, you’re mechanical about it. So my question is, how do you deal with that mentally? Because a lot of people as you have, you would struggle. All the thought of a loss, or maybe even taking a loss way back when. But do you have any sort of mind trick? How do you rationalize? How do you just take the loss and move on where it doesn’t shake you, it doesn’t throw you off your game?
Clay: I mean, what sort of tricks, what sort of mental games are you necessarily playing with yourself to make this possible? Because you do, and I mean this as a compliment. You seem very cold-hearted when it comes to taking losses. Yeah, I take the loss and I’ll move on. So, how do you reach that cold-heartedness? Do you have any tricks that you could share with listeners?
Roger: I don’t know if it’s a trick, but I kind of have, I’ll bend the rules a little bit on the sense that if you hear people talk about the size of their trades and what percentage of their account is in any one given trade, like in money management. So don’t put any more than five percent in any one of your single trades or anything, and don’t get extended and don’t take more than this percentage of a loss on a trade. So, money management. But I’m not trading a high percentage of my account on any individual traits, so I don’t get extended out too far. I hear people doing crazy things, and not realizing the potential cliff that they’re walking towards. So I’ve heard guys talk about, I sold a 40 naked calls of IWM at a $145 strike. And I’m sitting there going, Oh, whoa, boy, I hope, and I don’t call me in on that. But I think, does he realize what could happen to him in the morning when he wakes up?
Roger: And so, I don’t take large positions. I’ll take small positions. I don’t get into a big percentage of my account on any one trade, and I just keep hitting singles with it. And then if it does go against me, I have no reservations about axing that trade and moving on because I look at it like that’s business. You don’t win all the time. In business, you don’t make a profit all the time. Things are not rosy all the time, and you got to move on. You got to persist, and nobody’s going to do it for you. There’s no Calvary. It’s you, it’s your decision. But, for me, that’s the decision I got to make, it’s just business. Take it and move on, there’s another opportunity coming at you.
Clay: I love it. In fact, that is a great one to almost end on as we come upon in an hour here. But well said. That was a great quote. And yeah, that this is good stuff. And you can always sometimes, and not saying this towards really any guests, but to Roger’s point, sometimes you just back and you just listen to people talking, and listen to people talking, and it’s always fascinating. And I know this will sound bad, this will sound arrogant on my part, but I don’t mean for it to. But after you’re in the game long enough, after you just understand how things are going, you can quickly identify people that are like, okay, I’m not going to say anything, but that person is full of a lot of hot air. They’re presenting themselves in one way, that is not actually true because they said that and then they said this, and that’s… I mean, that’s not actually how it is.
Clay: But I will say that from Roger’s point, Roger, I mean, he’s, no red flags. Not that I thought Roger would have red flags. My point is as a listener, Rogers had some Roy good sound bites. He said some really great little bits of comments and wisdom from experience that he shared that is definitely true, and will definitely help you avoid things, it’ll help you structure things in a better way. So, this was definitely some good stuff. But Roger, I got to get you the time machine because I want you to go back to the… I mean, I guess a lot of people always say, well, you can’t go back and say to nail the bottom of something. But you don’t need the time machine to know the bottom of the market considering you did that on your own without a time machine. But if you could take that time machine back to some sort of spot back in your past and give yourself one bit of advice, what would that advice be?
Roger: Oh that one’s easy. That would be, immediately get an education, invest in yourself. Don’t try to trudge it out through the mud by yourself and learn on your own it. If the market’s bigger than you are as an individual, you got to get the right training and invest in yourself.
Clay: There you go. And like I said to bring that full circle, I fully agree and that’s why I decided to go that route with the real estate investing because yeah, the real estate market is definitely bigger than everybody. And when it comes to real estate, those numbers are a whole lot bigger. Oopses in the stock market can be a couple of thousand, oopses in the real estate market add a few more zeros to the couple of thousand, and then you’ll starting to get up in the ballgame of where that’s at. All right, Roger, we’ve got to talk about some fun questions here. So, what is your favorite movie?
Roger: That one’s easy. So this is mine and my wife’s favorite movie, and it is the best movie ever made.
Clay: Oh, I like the confidence, a statement. All right.
Roger: It even says it on the package when you buy the movies.
Clay: Which makes it true of course.
Roger: Talladega Nights.
Clay: With Ricky Bobby?
Roger: Ricky Bobby.
Clay: That, I mean, I’m pretty sure it won Oscars all around the world if I remember right from my movie trivia. I mean, best actor, best cinematography, everything. That is, I mean, I can’t quite say it’s my favorite, but that is a good one. And honestly, I was not… Now are you a NASCAR fan?
Roger: No, but I’ve been living in Tennessee, so you’ve got to give me a little room there.
Clay: And I know, plenty of room. But I will also, I was… I don’t know what I was thinking. I’ll put it this way. I was not thinking you’re going to say Talladega Nights, but that’s awesome. I love when I’m caught off guard like that, but that is a funny movie. I will give you credit there. What about food? What do you like to… Now, how… Let me ask this, how far are you from… Well, I guess just, what is your favorite food? And I’ll just see if I had any right suspicions or not.
Roger: I love all kinds of food and I get… I’m in good shape, and I saw your transformation over the years back. You’ve gone into the Marine style body that you’ve been working on. So I’ve been accused one of these days I’m going to wake up and just explode because I like all kinds of food, but I think probably my most favorite would be just a really, really good steak.
Clay: I was going to say maybe some sort of barbecue given you’re in Tennessee, and I know Tennessee is… Well, actually I don’t know that. Is barbecue a Tennessee thing, or is it just a Memphis thing?
Roger: No, it’s a Tennessee thing. And there’s three, four, at least now, there’s at least four or five barbecue places right here in the little city that I live in. So, we’re inundated with barbecue.
Clay: Have you ever had Kansas city barbecue?
Roger: I have not.
Clay: Okay. I mean, just because I used to live here. I used to live in Kansas city, so I like to just talk barbecue smack. I’ve learned that, that’s actually a thing. It depends. So Memphis or Tennessee, Texas, Kansas city and then… I mean so, but I won’t talk any smack because you don’t have any Kansas city barbecue. So I’m biased, I obviously think Kansas city is the best barbecue. But I realized that could probably be a whole another podcast episode in and of itself. But to your answer, it’s hard to go wrong with a steak. That’s pure America right there. And yeah, there’s just, you can’t really critique that, it’s a steak. It’s a great answer. It’s like a blue chip answer, just, it’s a steak. It’s, that’s a blue chip food right there. And then, what do you like to do for hobbies?
Roger: Well [crosstalk 01:07:30].
Clay: It sounds like you work out quite a bit.
Roger: Well, I do like to exercise quite a bit. Now over the past, I’ve been… I grew up pretty athletic, wrestling, baseball, motocross, a lot of different things and have really never let that go. And my wife is, she’s, she likes being fit, and so we pretty, we match it pretty well on exercise in there. So I like the exercise, I like ride bikes. We’ve got a couple of touring bikes, we like to ride, just different things. At home time, yeah, she does a lot of things. She can cook like just an insane mad woman. She can cook anything, and she does really well with that. And she cooks things for other people, and they’re always amazed.
Roger: But so while she’s doing that, that’s a lot of my market time. And then, of course, family. I got a big family, thankfully locally. We all live on one big Hill up here, like the Walton’s [inaudible 01:08:45]. We have breakfast together on Saturday mornings. And one of these days I’ll appreciate it now, but one of these days I’ll really appreciate that.
Clay: Yeah, no, that sounds… It sounds like you’re just living the life. That’s good stuff. And the older I get, it’s like, yeah, family, that stuff is way better than pretty much anything else. So that’s, it sounds like you’re just, yeah, living on a Hill in Tennessee, eating some steak, staying in shape. That’s good. That’s good stuff, man. All right, well, final question. Three words. These three words need to be what you would associate with a successful trader or what it takes to be successful, so what would those three words be?
Roger: Commitment, discipline, patience.
Clay: We’ve heard all those before. But again, to my point, if you keep hearing the same words over, and over and over again, maybe just maybe there’s some truth to that as a listener. I mean, we’ve only had over like 250 episodes now. So if you’ve heard a word 150 times, like I said, I’m not saying it’s a fact. But I think a logical assumption might be there may be some truth to it. So all blue chip words that we’ve heard, but yeah, probably because there’s some truth to it. Well, Roger, I really enjoyed this. And I wanted to thank you because for as a listener of context, it’s a Friday afternoon, Roger could be doing… I don’t know… Who knows one of the things? A Friday afternoon, Christmas is coming next week, and so I thank you very much for… And also for volunteering to be here, I really appreciate that too. It makes my life easier. So thank you Roger, I had a great time.
Roger: You’re welcome. I enjoyed it, and I enjoy listening to your podcast and watching YouTube. So you are, to me. I described you to my wife is you’re the honest guy on the internet, so.
Clay: Oh, I appreciate that.
Roger: Yeah, thank you.
Clay: And I’ll send the payment after this is over for you saying that, so well said. That was scripted out beautifully. You belong in Hollywood, not Tennessee after that performance. But I know, thank you very much, I do appreciate that and I’ll take it. So, thank you very much. Will you come back at some point to keep us updated on things?
Roger: Oh sure. Just give me a few months and let me get a really skyrocketed on my features, options and we’ll talk.
Clay: Awesome. Awesome. I like that attitude. Well, thank you again, Roger and we’ll be in touch. Now for you listeners out there, final few things. If you’re listing@claytrader.com on the show notes page, there’s a little live chat box in the bottom right hand corner, so feel free to click on that. You reach out to us, comments, questions, all that sort of good stuff. It’s always fun to hear from people that say, hey, I was listening to the podcast, and then we love to hear from us. So, please reach out.
Clay: Now if you’re listening on Spotify, or iTunes or any of the other podcast players, make sure to subscribe. That way you are aware of when new content comes out. And especially on iTunes, if you could leave us a rating and better yet a written review, that really goes a long way and helps us out. And I really do appreciate it. So, thank you in advance if you’re willing to do that. So thank you again to all of you as viewers. Thank you, Roger. We will see you back next week.
Announcer: This has been the Stock Trading Reality Podcast. Thanks for taking the time to hang out. To learn more about Clay and the ClayTrader community, including the trading team, premium training and more visit ClayTrader.com.