Talk about a crazy start to your journey. You get a mentor and then all of a sudden he's in JAIL! Uh... yikes! Talk about a great way to become jaded towards the trading markets - and understandably so! This is exactly what happened to our fellow member from the community, Chris, as he began his journey over 18 years ago. With such an "odd" event kicking off his journey, how did he deal with it and what path did he end up on? He's been through a lot, and with that comes lots of experiencetial wisdom which he shares with us. There is something, no matter how long you've been trading, that everyone can take away from Chris' journey. Notes: Chris had a buddy who was trading stock options and this piqued his interest. This was back in 1999 and interestingly enough, the person he was studying under ended up going to prison for his shady business practices and tax avoidance. Chris still applied what was taught and was now trading directional options. Chris would focus on tech companies that he knew of. Unfortunately, he dwindled his account down to zero and had to figure out where to go from here. He recognized that options have the power to change your life with powerful gains but at the same time, the magnitude of profits can also translate into losses. After hearing about penny stocks, Chris got into the pot stock boom. To his own misfortune, he entered right at the end of the boom and got caught in the overall collapse of the sector. After running into liquidity issues as the market dried up, he decided to get back into stocks and stock options. Chris saw some of Clay’s free material and decided to join the community. With his current job though, he was unable to login during the day as the site was blocked. After about 6 months, he noticed that he really enjoyed Clay’s teaching style and decided to join Claytrader University. After going through the foundational material, Chris now focuses on a basket of stocks that have high option liquidity. He equates his trading to becoming a sniper and spotting good opportunities to enter versus his old methodology where he would just jump into a trade haphazardly. Quotes: “I put a couple grand in and had some success and thought I was pretty smart. We all know it was more luck than anything.” “I felt options were too complicated for me. I jumped into penny stocks during the marijuana stock boom.” “Penny stocks are great but you have to be in there when they are hot and heavy. You have to get in and out quickly.” “People don’t want to put the time into education and research. They just want people to pick trades for them.” “You can take all the training that’s available but you have to be able to implement it and treat it like a business, not a casino.”