It's a line I struggle with quite often. Should I cross it or shouldn't I cross it? When it came to this episode's guest, Dave ("SuperDave" in the chat room), I assumed he could handle some tough love, so as he admits to in the interview, I called him out in the chat room. How'd he respond and what did he do from that point? We talk about that and much more in what I believe to be a fantastic discussion. Notes: Dave’s introduction to the market was similar to many others. He started getting interested in watching how his mutual funds were trading in his retirement account. Eventually he was driving himself nuts watching the value fluctuate daily so he went cold turkey for some time before revisiting the market. After seeing a coworker experience success trading short term options, Dave decided to continue his education via books to which he accumulated quite a library. Most of the books written about options are extremely complex and this led him to try to find other avenues to make his money in the market. Dave did invest in his education which is a HUGE step many new traders fail to take. Unfortunately, two of the ‘mentors’ he used ultimately did not help him very much. A majority of their income is from their monthly chat subscriptions. After trying to reverse engineer alerts from the Inner Circle, Dave continued investing in his education and started to get through some courses. While getting through the content, Dave was actively paper trading to see where he was weak in his trading and where he excelled. All of Dave’s paper trading lead him to find a winning system for himself. He has his set criteria that he looks for and after struggling with managing his risk vs reward he has now nailed that down too. He is a shining example of how consistent and deliberate practice can and will pay off in the long run. Quotes: “My general market overview was listening to the talking heads and sort of floundering around and guessing.” tweet this quote “I just bled slowly with small daily losses. Not seeing the patterns, not seeing the trends, not understanding movement of stocks.” tweet this quote “I posted that ‘holy crap that was scary’ and Clay called me out for trading too large and not knowing what I was doing.” tweet this quote “I spent all of last year paper trading and building a trading plan. I then took my live account from 500 to 1200.” tweet this quote