Why a Business Focused on Helping Traders "Rally"?

When Robinhood burst onto the scene in 2015 and offered a brokerage product to retail traders that ended up turning the trading world upside down, leading to major retail brokers like Schwab, TD Ameritrade, E*Trade and Fidelity eventually going to zero commissions, it was clear that the retail trading landscape was changing. This, among other factors like the pandemic of 2020, resulted in a flood of new traders pouring into the industry and, of course, to the “Meme” stock phenomenon of 2021.

It made perfect sense: a significant amount of people suddenly without jobs or working from home seeking a way to increase the wad of new stimulus money in their pockets, temporarily blocked from or given limited access to sports betting for a period of time, needing something to do (preferably something exciting) while trapped at home. How could they not see the markets as the perfect place to put their money? After all, trading was suddenly – and seemingly – free of charge. Any costs now incurred by retail traders like slippage due to payment for order flow stayed mostly out of sight and therefore mostly out of mind.

Add to this a stock market soaring from the Fed’s constant and years-long infusions of liquidity, which had recently been ramped up to a head-spinning level in response to the pandemic, as well as passionate calls on social media platforms like WallStreetBets for a retail movement to right the wrongs of the corrupt financial markets by banding together to squeeze the evil hedge fund shorts. 

Compounding that were advertising slogans like “Don’t Get Mad, Get E*Trade”, seeming to imply that all you really had to do was open a brokerage account to make money, and the financial media’s general unwillingness to warn all of these new market participants that so many of them were seals loudly and blissfully splashing around in shark-infested waters because angering these new market participants could end up squandering an opportunity to get more eyes trained on its paying advertisers. Many of the talking heads chose to call Robinhood’s business model a “democratization” of the markets instead of what it really was, which was a campaign to lure as many unsuspecting consumers into an exciting but complex new world in order to take as much of their money as possible and to get paid for as much order flow as possible.

As traders and investors not necessarily aligned with Wall Street we all wanted to support these new market participants. We rooted for them. But if you’d been in the game long enough you knew there was a very high probability that many of them would end up losing a lot of money, not only because they were now caught up in a fast-moving, ever-changing and complicated financial landscape but also because they were being led around in that world by greedy pied pipers who weren’t in the least bit interested in offering these new participants sufficient education and guidance.

Now, I understand that you can offer all the education and guidance you want but it’s ultimately up to those being offered to accept and to apply themselves. This is not an easy thing in trading; many of us enter the industry with expectations completely out of whack and tend not to take the endeavor seriously enough. And the “Meme” traders openly bristled at any hint or suggestion that they needed guidance or didn’t know what they were doing.

I certainly understand this because I started out this way myself. I just jumped right in and assumed I’d be able to figure it out relatively quickly. I mean, how hard could it really be, right? And if I’d been a part of what appeared to be a wider social media movement determined at that time to right so many perceived wrongs, I would have been even more empowered to storm ahead in the face of any warnings from experts in the industry, no matter who they were or how emphatic they might have been.

But the journey of becoming a profitable trader turned out to be a long and arduous one. It took years for me to understand what I was up against and even longer to realize that the biggest hurdle was actually myself. So I knew that a large portion of these new retail traders were about to get chewed up and spit out.

You see, one of the things you absolutely have to understand about trading is that the second you begin the journey you’re surrounded by opportunists who are constantly trying to figure out ways to make money off of the fact that you don’t yet know what you’re doing and the fact that you assume that you do. They know you’re going to trade the same old tired technical setups and enthusiastically throw your money at all the exciting new strategies. They know you’re going to chase after every market inefficiency that has already been closed and hermetically sealed. The financial markets are full of traps set just for you.

They also know that you want to find that strategy that works all the time in every market environment. They know this doesn’t exist but they also know that you don’t know that yet. They count on the fact that you’ll seek the easiest path to making money in the markets – the one with the least amount of pain – which means you’ll very likely fall for every shiny new object thinking you can just plug it in and play. Fool’s gold is everywhere in trading and is very easy to mistake for the real thing.

The only way to turn this around and use it to your benefit is to force yourself to see every trading alert service, every pre-built strategy, every virtual trading floor as an opportunity to educate yourself instead of something that is there to do all the work for you. But, of course, this is much easier said than done. So I’ve set off on a mission to help people learn how to do this and it’s the main reason why I decided to become a trading coach and mentor.

My main objective is to help aspiring traders learn how to give this overabundance of fool’s gold actual value because I know they’re going to end up buying these products. So instead of discouraging traders from buying new strategies and trading services and virtual trading floor subscriptions, I encourage it. I actually recommend that they purchase, study, test and trade as many of these products as they can, but I strongly recommend that they focus their efforts on the personalization of each trading product so that they can keep moving forward instead of running in place on the trading hamster wheel, perpetually going nowhere as fast as they can.

So who am I and why do I think I can be of any help at all? I’m a trading coach and mentor first and foremost, money manager and have been a consistently profitable trader since 2014. I registered with FINRA as a Securities Trader in 2017, traded prop (proprietary) for two broker-dealers and have developed a skillset that will allow me to profit in the markets for the rest of my life. 

Becoming a profitable trader isn’t easy but it’s definitely not impossible, even though there are times it may very well seem impossible. The interesting – and probably surprising – thing about learning how to become a profitable trader is that you don’t have to be a math wizard or have an extremely high IQ (I can attest to both). You don’t have to get up at 3 a.m., look at 500 charts, learn all the hotkeys and trade furiously throughout the market day, study 500 more charts after the market close and then go to bed and do it all again the next day. Actually, you can do this if you want to but it’s not required.

You don’t have to have relationships with Wall Street banks or money managers or analysts and you don’t have to live as close to New York as possible to get speedier executions.

What you do have to do is learn as much as possible about the markets, various trading vehicles and strategies, identify what you like and what works for you and your lifestyle, keep working and building on those things, develop an appropriate level of discipline and then BE YOU. Yes, BE YOU.

I know, it sounds way too easy. And I have to admit that I’m oversimplifying it quite a bit here. But my point is that successful trading relies on education, knowledge, practice, discipline and knowing exactly who you are. 

By this I mean you have to know what you’re good at and what you’re not good at, what you like to trade and what you don’t like to trade, what fits your lifestyle and what doesn’t, and you have to be willing to accept these things. This is where purchasing, studying, testing and trading all of those pre-built strategies and trading alert services comes in. You have to pay close attention to the products and styles that appeal to you, become intimately familiar with them and then get better and better at actually applying them in the markets. 

This is customization, which is essential to the gradual development of your own unique and profitable trading approach. And the key is to stay in the game long enough to give yourself a chance at this. Once you gain enough knowledge and experience, have the bravery and confidence to let yourself be exactly who you are and then develop clear strategies and plans of action based on these things and execute them in a disciplined way, the markets will give you that special key and bow as you enter.

It’s neither easy nor quick to accomplish, but it is doable if you stick with it. And my intention by starting this business and establishing this web site is to help you stick with it.

I want Traders Rally to be a place you can keep coming back to during your journey. There are many times you may want to quit trading because you think it’s too hard and that you’ll never become profitable. I know that feeling very well. I quit many times only to find myself back at my trading desk, swallowing my pride and gritting my teeth. Sometimes it was a friend or mentor who helped me regain perspective and determination and sometimes it was just taking some time away from the markets, like a weekend here or there. Many times it was a trading community or web site that helped me get back to business. 

This is what I mean when I say RALLY. How you choose to rally yourself out of a slump or crisis of confidence may be totally unique to you and different every time, and sometimes you may not even realize you’re doing it, but ultimately it’s something that helps you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and keep yourself moving forward during challenging times. It’s how you get yourself unstuck. It’s how you stay in the game, as I like to say. The longer you stay in the game, the higher the probability you’ll eventually learn all you need to learn and get enough of the requisite practice in order to generate consistent profits.

You’ll also have to have very clear goals, which is a big part of the first step on the journey (see Ten Essential Steps in TRADER EDUCATION). You must keep yourself motivated by knowing exactly what you want and why you want it.  A large retirement? Financial independence? A vacation home? A new boat? Ultimately, it’s specific to you. And whatever it is, it has to keep you motivated enough to keep striving for it.

One particularly strong motivator, in my opinion, is to remember that once you reach a certain level in your trading career you’ll have many opportunities available to you. These include proprietary trading, investment advising, money management, successfully building your personal reserve, selling your strategies and systems, providing a trading service, and coaching and mentoring other traders, among many other options. I chose the path of coaching/mentoring and money management. These just happen to be the areas that I’m passionate about and which fit my personality. 

So don’t let strangers on social media boards – especially those who can’t be verified aren’t hedge fund shills – lead you to huge losses by making you think a $50 stock should go to $1,000 at any moment. Don’t let the allure of a trendy new strategy lead you into a hot stock right at the top of its trading range with no clear plan for how and when to get out. And don’t let that E*Trade commercial fool you. It’s highly unlikely you’ll get rich just by opening an account and trading the same old technical setups or all of those exciting but over-subscribed strategies that you don’t completely understand.

Accept that you’ll have to put in the work to become a consistently profitable trader in the long-term. Accept that you’ll have to learn how to keep yourself moving forward – you’ll have to learn how to RALLY – in order to find out who YOU are in the markets and how you’re going to generate profits in your own unique way. 

Accept that trading is a PROFESSION and that it must be respected as such at all times. Keep your expectations realistic and yourself adequately motivated. And know that it can be done.

I very much hope Traders Rally can help you get it done.