This trader is no stranger to the podcast, but he’s a great trader so why not talk to him again and see where he currently stands in his trading journey? For you members of the community, Dave (or “h00ch” as he is known by in the chat room) is someone who has essentially been around since the start and continues to be a pillar of the community. Although he has been trading for more than a decade, he still continues to make progress and discover new areas of the market that assist him in adding more tools to his trading toolbelt. This isn’t really an interview, more-so just a laid back conversation, so sit back and enjoy!
Notes:
Today we speak to long time community member h00ch. Since we have already interviewed him, we decide to throw some new questions at him. To summarize his background, he worked at a bank for many years and would take some investment advice from friends. He definitely struck some fools gold and then when his job eventually downsized, he was out of a job and decided to make day trading his job.
He was able to capitalize during the dot com boom by putting most of his income into stocks with websites but he did take some significant losses when the bubble burst but he still came out net positive.
H00ch has expanded his trading vehicles to include futures. After paper trading them for 4 months, he did open a margin account and mainly trades futures in the evenings after the regular market session is over.
Even though he is a day trader primarily, he does swing trade as well. That’s the beauty of technical analysis… it applies to all timeframes. He looks for the same setups he would use on a shorter term chart as he would on a longer term chart.
He has slowly ratcheted up his size over the years for his day trading but it is contingent on the market conditions. H00ch is smart enough to realize not to push it when the market is stuck in a tight range and to take advantage of trending markets instead.
Quotes:
“Any company that had any mention of a website would just take off during the dot com boom.”
“At first I wasn’t interested in futures so I paper traded it. I did eventually open a margin account and trade 1 contract at a time.”
“I’ll look at the longer term charts in the evenings. You can make all the plans in the world but a big gap can ruin that.”
“With my swing trading, since I trade smaller size, I am able to use wider stops. You’re looking for the same patterns and setups.”
“My day trading size has increased slightly. It depends on the market if it is trending or in a channel.”
