u/OptionStalker

Everything that you learn about trading doesn't matter if you blow up your account. The countless hours spent reading and studying are wasted and most people never recover from this humbling experience. This business is a revolving door and it's been that way since I started more than thirty years ago. That's why I decided to dedicate the first quarter of my book to this important topic.

There are so many things we can do to avoid this. Before the first trade, prepare for the journey. The goal is to survive the first year because that is when most new traders fail. It's devastating and they never gave themselves a chance.

The vast majority of traders start out thinking they will be the exception. They've heard the horror stories of people blowing up their accounts, but they will be different. They're smarter than the rest of us and they will avoid the traps. "If it takes everyone three years to learn this, I'll be the one who does it in one." Not only have I witnessed this mentality thousands of times, I suffered from the same syndrome.

When I went pro, I had a dozen years of industry experience. I worked on the trading floors and executed options trades for large institutions. I talked to traders and learned as much about the craft as I could knowing that one day I would take my shot. I witnessed the carnage of retail traders first hand and there was no way that I would repeat those mistakes.

I planned for my new career a year in advance. I remember rushing downstairs to my new office and turning on my computer screens full of excitement. Little did I know, this would be my happiest moment for many months. Throughout the book I weave in personal experiences that served as building blocks. Each one got me one step closer to success.

I describe how these mistakes can derail our trading before it even starts. Here is a top 10 list of the topics I cover in detail.

1. Unrealistic expectations. Most people believe that trading is going to be easy. No matter how much you study, you have to live through various market conditions. You can't read about trading bear markets, you have to experience them and learn from them.

2. Following someone else. Many new traders fall victim to a "guru". These experts seem knowledgeable and mirroring their trades is a short cut. Most of them are fake and even if they are legitimate, there are perils. Their risk tolerance is different from yours. If the method stops working, you don't know the decision making inputs so you don't know what to adjust. Most importantly, you are not learning and refining your own process.

3. Overconfidence. The "can't miss trade" that no one else has identified yet. Others haven't spotted this opportunity, but these traders know more than everyone else. They take a starter position and they keep adding to a losing position.

4. Looking for absolutes. "When the market does this and the stock does that, I always do this." Conditions are dynamic and your thinking has to be fluid. Odds dictate our trading, but nothing is 100%. There are general conditions and set-ups that we look for, but we always have to be ready to adjust and admit when something that normally works, isn't working this time. The market will always try to deceive us.

5. Shinny new objects. The new indicator that will "make you profitable" doesn't exist. If it was that good, the creator wouldn't sell it, they would trade it themselves. Trading is about waiting for great opportunities to set-up and properly managing risk. It takes years to develop this skill, but once you master it, all you need is a simple candlestick chart with volume.

6. Over-trading. This is such a common mistake. New traders dive right in with full positions. They don't know what they are doing and when the position "heads south" they are emotional train wrecks. The WIKI hits this topic hard and it suggests paper trading or starting with 1 share. Hari and I are both aligned on this and it might be the next article I write. This one hits close to home because it is a mistake I made.

7. Which markets to trade and when to trade them. When you are starting out, you don't know what to trade. I discuss the dangers of trading futures, currencies, bitcoin and small cap stocks. Medium to large cap stocks provide the best odds for the individual trader and I explain why. I also explain the importance of knowing when to trade and when not to trade. Market conditions drive our activity and they impact our odds for success. There are times when you trade small size and times when sitting on your hands is best. There are also times when you can swing for the fence.

8. Complicating your business model. It's human nature to over-complicate things. I explain why I don't hedge positions and why I limit my position count. Cash is king. If you are scared, take some of the position off. I explain why I stick to very basic options strategies. When the #$%^ hits the fan, adjusting risk might be painful, but it is straight forward when you keep it simple. You'll know exactly what to do, but you still have to act. When you trade complex option spreads, you are at the mercy of market makers.

9. Repeating mistakes. Those who fail to learn from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them. Keeping detailed trade journals (not just automated logs) is the key and this will cut your learning curve in half. After thirty years, I still do it and I cover the various methods I use. My system would not exist if I didn't journal. All of those tidbits of knowledge were gained through journaling. Committing your thoughts to paper is very powerful and it is an audit trail you can learn from. Unfortunately, most traders won't do it.

10. Trading options too soon. This is absolutely the fastest way to blow up an account and options are at the very end of my book. Before you leverage, you need to master stock trading and get to a 75% win rate consistently. Then you can learn about time decay, volatility expansion/contraction, deltas and navigating wide bid/ask spreads. "But I only have a small account and I have to trade options to make any money." If you can't conquer this mindset, soon you will have no money.

The goal for my book was to give all of you the best fighting chance possible. Avoiding costly mistakes is the first step. I plan to write two more articles on this topic. One on the benefits of starting small and the other on the importance of journaling. Then I will lead you down the path I took. I explore each fork in the road and explain why one was better than the other. Each building block will improve our odds and construct the system I trade. I will try to write an article a week for the rest of the year in advance of the book being published.

If you've made some of these mistakes, please tell others about them by commenting. I will try to respond to all of the posts.

A challenge for the trolls who have never written an article and who have no followers: Why don't you write an article and share some of your wisdom instead of complaining?

The journey of becoming a successful trader is filled with mistakes and victories. Every obstacle, win and fork in the road shapes our decision making and together they become a part of our personal trading system. I hoped that sharing the lessons I learned would shed light on your journey, so I wrote a book.

I started my career over three decades ago in the Chicago Board of Trade thirty-year bond pit. Since then, I was the senior vice president for a large brokerage firm and the top trader for a firm specializing in options arbitrage. Now I trade my own capital, and I develop trading software for this system. I’ve seen it all and tried it all. These experiences have forged the system I trade.

Early in my career I lost money and I did not sweep that under the carpet. There were lean years filled with stress, anxiety and fear that my dream might never become a reality. Many of you are battling that right now.

We all go through some really rough patches in life and 2019 was one of those for me. It was not trading related, I lost a lot of people I love and I did some soul searching as I celebrated their lives. What would my professional legacy be? I’ve had a great career and made plenty of money, but those accomplishments rang hollow. That’s when I decided to commit fully to helping other traders. This is how I wanted to spend the next ten years of my life. How could I let all of this knowledge go to waste?

I got to work and started recording five YouTube videos per week in 2019. Each would review my previous pick and I would explain what went right or wrong. Then I would conduct market analysis to get my bearings. Next, I would use the system I trade to look for a new trade. I would consider many candidates and explain what I liked or didn’t like about each one and I would highlight one of them. I still do two of these videos every week and they are a great free resource for you. YouTube pays me a whopping $250/month which comes to about $25 per video. Obviously, I am not recording them for the money. You can see how I traded every market condition and see how my picks did.

That same year, I wrote an eBook that describes the system. This took time to plan and write and I had to commit my thoughts to paper. This process helped me create a master outline that was much more detailed. I broke trading down into the logical steps and each one had subtopics. When traders in my chat room asked a question that required a lengthy response, I wrote an article knowing exactly where it would fit into the outline. Gradually, an extensive archive of articles was created. Some of them are in the WIKI.

The interesting part about this is that each article seemed like it would be easy to write. “This should only take me a day or two.” As I began writing them, I realized that there were many components that played a role in my decision making that I was not consciously aware of. The articles were long and, in many cases, took weeks to write. After more than three years of writing for ten hours a week, the outline was filled in and the course was complete.

In 2024 I thought it might be time to write a book. Silly me, I thought the book had already been written because I had the outline and the articles. When I submitted them to an Editor, they told me, “You don’t have a book, you have articles and you have enough content for three or more books.”

First, I had to decide how to divide the content so that if I wrote a three-book series I could build on the previous concepts. The other issue was that the articles did not flow. I had to figure out how to connect the topics.

I finished the book in 2025. It was good, but it jumped around and I introduced topics that had not yet been covered. The lessons overlap and it was difficult to decide what to explain first. I wasn’t happy with it, so I went back to the drawing board. Once again, I had to dissect my decision making and figure out a way to explain the system one “building block” at a time. Each concept builds on the other and increases our odds for success. It took months, but I found the solution. In the last chapters I put all of the pieces together and I explain how to leverage the system with options. I keep the strategies basic, and they are a function of market conditions.

I finished writing the final version of the book this summer. The manuscript has been edited and proofread and now it is going through the publishing process.  I am hoping to release it in January. Initially, it will be hard cover only and I am going top shelf with full color and high quality pages. It has 80 images and it could be over 500 pages long. I have a really cool title for it, but I will save that for another time.

Writing this has been a long and difficult journey just like learning how to trade. I’m proud to put my name on it and I believe this will help a lot of traders.  

I plan to write three articles a month for the rest of the year and I will share some of the lessons. The next article I write will be about the common mistakes most traders make. This is how I start the book and the rest of what I teach doesn’t matter if you blow up your account.

Let me know if there is a topic you would like to learn and I will try to include it.

There are a few events in our lives where we remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the news broke. 911 is one of those moments and it changed my life forever. Time stood still that day and my priorities in life crystalized. This is when I decided to become a professional trader and it is how I start my new book (January release).

I plan to post a few articles a month the rest of the year. I'll tell you more about the lessons in the book and I will share specifics that will help your trading. Today, I want to share the first four paragraphs.

"On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I attended a manager’s meeting when a colleague burst into the conference room with news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We turned on the TV just as a second plane hit the other tower. An hour later our building was evacuated, and I joined the mass exodus from Chicago. Anxiety filled the jam-packed train.  

Everything that seemed important just hours before suddenly felt meaningless. During that tense train ride home, my priorities crystallized. I wanted to spend more time with my family, and I wanted to pursue my true passion: trading. 

In the months that followed, our brokerage firm recovered, the nation began healing, and I prepared for my career change. In 2002, I resigned as Senior Vice President of a major brokerage firm. My timing could have been better, but despite warnings from colleagues and friends, I started my trading career in a bear market. 

During my 12 years in the industry, I observed thousands of retail customers and seized every opportunity to discuss strategies with institutional traders. I knew learning to trade would be incredibly difficult. Most traders fail during their first year. My decision was final, and I was willing to bet against the odds." 

We will never forget!

Over six years ago, Covid-19 crippled the movie industry and Vincent Bruzzese (aka HariSeldon) pursued his other passion – trading. After exploring many “gurus”, he found my YouTube channel. The method resonated with him, so he explored it further. He took the free trial and discovered that the system I trade has a bona fide edge. He saw the success members were having in the chat room so he subscribed. He didn’t ask many questions, he absorbed all of the information and he incorporated the lessons into his trading. Relative strength and the structure of the system took his trading to new heights.

It was odd because I didn’t know who he was for most of the first year. Once he got his footing, he pulled back the curtains and marched out on stage.

He was so excited by what he had learned that he started writing detailed articles on Reddit to share this knowledge. After being ridiculed and trolled by clueless traders, he lashed out at them. Let’s just say that Hari doesn’t take criticism very well. As you might imagine, he was banned from those subs.

He does not accept failure, and this ousting motivated him to start his own sub. He spent the next two years posting hundreds of articles here. They became “The WIKI” and it is still one of the best free trading resources on the internet.

Teaching wasn’t enough, he had to prove that this system was legitimate. He posted his trades real-time to X (Twitter)… and he still does it today. The underlying, the position size and the price of all entries and exits are posted. If he trades options, he includes the strike price(s) and the expiration date(s). He doesn’t miss any of them and they are posted immediately. I know this because he also posts his trades in my chat room.

Hari has conducted many “Small Account Challenges” where he posts his trade logs in this sub. He answers questions about his trades and his track record speaks for itself. He’s also conducted many free live events on X and he has a podcast.

Hari doesn’t have a book, a service or a software program to sell. He does this because he genuinely cares about the “little guy” who is trying to better himself.

If you think trading is difficult, you should try posting all of your trades real-time on X. I don’t know of anyone else who does it. The scrutiny and criticism are never ending and this takes an incredible amount of effort. He does this so that all of you can dissect his trades and learn from them.

Hari and I have become great friends and he has impacted me as well. I was ready to crawl back under a rock and focus entirely on my own trading five years ago. Life is so much easier when you don’t have to answer questions about every trade and take crap when one of them goes south. He made teaching fun again and that inspired me to keep doing it. I’ll share the last leg of my journey in coming weeks and I plan to start posting more.

Here we are six years later with over 140,000 followers. This sub is worth celebrating! Please let other traders know about this free resource and take a moment to comment. Let Hari know that his efforts have not been in vain. Share how he has improved your trading.

Thank you Hari!

I don't have time for a lengthy post, but I will try to do a video this morning. I only post here when it is important and if you follow me, you know my track record. The market has presented new information. Here are my pre-open market comments from the chat room this morning.

PRE-OPEN MARKET COMMENTS FRIDAY - The selling pressure in the US has been steady for the last two weeks. If buyers were excited we would not have tested the 50-day MA a second or third time and now the SPY has closed below it.

Yesterday the back drop was perfect for a short squeeze. The market had tested the 50-day MA a second time and the expectations for a negative reaction to MU earnings was priced in. The stock rallied to a new high and tech stocks bounced. In the last few months, that would have sparked buying. Support would have been confirmed and we would have seen a nice bounce. That's not what happened. The opening gap higher was smacked down like Chris Rock at the Oscars.

Overnight China was down 2% and the FXI made a new 52-week low yesterday. Japan was down 4% overnight. Korea had a 10% drop two days ago and it is down 5% overnight and poised to test that low. European markets were down 1% on average. This is a global market decline and it has spread to the US.

My market bias has shifted to neutral and it won't take much to shift me to bearish. We have a lower high double top. I expected a decent bid as we head into earnings season and that natural buying has not been enough to support the market.

Gold and and software stocks (10% of the S&P 500) have been very weak.

I am not entering any new bullish put spreads. I will manage what I have on. My bullish put spreads expire in three weeks or less and I won't hesitate to take gains if the market starts to drift lower today.

This is a critical juncture for the market. Be defensive. We have new information and we have to adjust to changing conditions. Until we have that information, we have to run with the information we have. We are data analysts.

If you have recently entered bullish put spreads, I would buy them back. The reward is now smaller than the risk. I am not in panic mode, I am just adjusting.

Software stocks have been great shorts.

Support is $722.60 and resistance is the 50-day MA.