For those of you who are members of the chat room, you've seen that our guest, Curtis, has been doing extremely well for himself. There have been some days that are flat are crazy (and I mean that in a good way!). Many have wanted to hear from Curtis, so that time has come! Unfortunately though, the "secret sauce" that Curtis shares with us is not going to be something that many people want to hear. While it is 110% honest/good/realistic advice, it is what I call the unpopular key to trading success. Notes: Curtis started trading by doing dollar cost averaging pre-1999. He was able to cash out for a nice gain from these strategies. Curtis knew an in-person pumper that would promote various penny stocks that himself and his coworkers would trade. He was fortunate enough to have a large life event happen that caused him to sell near the top of the run. After a 10 year break, Curtis was following an ex-trader who was able to retire at an early age and travel the world and decided he wanted to try his hand at the market one more time. While he tried to follow various traders and modify their techniques, the strategies they were employing did not fit with his personality and led him to lose money. After blowing up his account during a stock halt, Curtis decided to go back to paper trading and really find his strengths. He bought a good notebook and wrote down his daily trades for over 6 months before applying the same strategies to the live market. Curtis then started at half his paper size and slowly scaled up into the same size he was trading on paper. He now is confident in his methods and able to consistently generate more profits relative to losses. Quotes: “I had those dreams of mansions and everything but I was buying a house so I cashed out.” tweet quote “I would try to trade these ridiculous option spreads and there’s just no way unless it’s a freight train.” tweet quote “If I could automate it and backtest it, I could say ‘ok computer, go do it’ and not be in the way.” tweet quote “Your mind gets in the way all the time. I try not to do two things at once. I lose money when I try to.” tweet quote Links: Video: Stock Trading 101 – How to Paper Trade Video: How To Paper Trade With A Purpose