While certainly not the greatest "thing" from a marketing sales pitch perspective, the story of Dave Purnell ("h00ch") is one that is both extremely inspiring AND very humbling in regards to this business not being a "get rich overnight" type deal (as so many portray it to be). In this interview we learn about the 15 year journey that took him from the .com bubble, to penny stocks, to his trading career turning point, to options... where he now truly flourishes. In fact, below you can see a screen shot from the trading in his "small account" (he has 2 accounts he uses) on the day we recorded this podcast. Notes: Hooch had 0 interest in the stock market until he took a job at the bank in 1996. Riding the tech boom up and down by puppet trading and throwing darts. From 1997 to 2004 Hooch was in the market taking huge swings before he decided to hang up his gloves. In 2008 Hooch met a technical trader at work and that sparked his interest to get back in the market. He was trading based off daily and weekly charts, occasionally the 60 minute. Hooch’s job loss was unexpected in 2011 and unfortunately there were not many job opportunities in his field. Hooch discovered iHub message boards and ClayTrader when he was getting involved in penny stocks. After taking a substantial loss, Hooch learned the lesson to never invest in penny stocks. After trading on and off for 12 years, he funded a $1,000 options account just to limit his risk since he was new to them. Hooch discusses the importance of not taking losses personal. If Hooch could go back and give himself one piece of advice it would be to get educated and practice practice practice. Quotes: “You could buy any ticker that had a website and you were pretty much guaranteed a 200% gain” tweet this quote “I turned 5 or 10 thousand into over 100 thousand and of course I didn’t take any profit.” tweet this quote “It was more like a hobby for me. I wasn’t putting too much on the line so that it wouldn't affect my retirement plan or anything like that.” tweet this quote “I just didn't have the discipline to trust the chart and do what I was suppose to do. If it fell through support I’d wait for the next support for it to bounce.” tweet this quote “I did start looking into day trading and basically just taking the same bad habits and doing it on a lower time frame.” tweet this quote “I was finding myself being in the green more often but taking huge swings. I didn’t have the consistency.” tweet this quote “I was involved in more pumps than dumps and then eventually the dumps starting biting me.” tweet this quote “When it comes down to it (trading equities vs. options) you’re just trading the chart, just like anything else.” tweet this quote “You have to find what suits you and what you’re comfortable with and really stick with it. Don’t get overconfident and raise your risk.” tweet this quote “It’s better to start all your good habits up front because it’s a lot easier to learn something correctly right off the bat than to unlearn bad habits.” tweet this quote Links: Risk vs Reward Trading twitter.com/h00ch71