Optimizing Success: A Dive into Adaptive Trading Strategies

In this conversation on today's episode of How To Trade It, Casey and Kyle discuss various aspects of trading, including the influence of Nicholas Darvas' book, avoiding shiny object syndrome, and focusing on execution. They also share their biggest lessons learned and provide insights into their trading journeys. You don’t want to miss it!

Key Takeaways

• The importance of self-discovery and understanding your own tendencies and biases in trading
• The significance of building good trading habits and prioritizing relationships and life balance
• The value of learning from mistakes and celebrating wins in trading
• The need for back testing and sticking to your edge in order to achieve consistent trading success

People & Resources Mentioned

• Phil Muscatello - Shares for Beginners podcast
• How To Trade It - Phil Muscatello episode
• Nicholas Darvis' How I Made $2 Million in the Stock Market
• Simon Severino - business coach
• Eric Smolinski from esInvests

Connect with Kyle Hedman

• Podcast:  Band of Traders
• YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3elVqhNecYCZuy9PPCLJgg  
• Twitter:  https://twitter.com/FinancialInept1
• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/Financialineptitude
• Email:  teaminept@financialineptitude.com

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Transcript

Casey 

Hey Kyle, how you doing man?

Kyle 

Oh, doing great. Thanks for inviting me on.

Casey

Yeah, well, you know, you had me on your show, the Band of Traders. I had such a good time that I thought it would be great for us to get together again.

Kyle 

Who introduced us? Was that Phil Muscatello?

Casey 

It was Phil. Phil, I was on Phil's show. Were you on his show?

Kyle 

He's been on mine a couple times. I haven't been on his yet. I think I need to make an appearance.

Casey 

Yeah, you should you should be on his show. It's a lot of fun. And I have had him over here as well. So if you're everyone listening, go check out Phil's show. We'll put him in the notes. He's great. You know, I like Phil. He's very conservative with his investing approach, which is not me at all. I'm. I'm trying to learn to be conservative in my old age. Yeah. So so, Kyle, tell me a little bit about yourself.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 

Right? Isn't that the fight?

Kyle 

All right, well, let's see. I'm a veteran. Uh, I think we talked about that last time you were on at six years in the Navy. Uh, while I was in there, I kind of got, uh, into investing. I think they stuck us with a bond class to teach us about bonds. And I thought this was stupid. So I immediately went over to the, uh, indexes. I think I set up a TD Ameritrade account and started buying, uh, stuff for the long haul. This was in 2007. So my timing was probably not the best.

Casey 

That's right at the start of the down market, man. Yeah.

Kyle

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But coming out of that, I kind of kept the same mentality kept buying when I had the cash to do it. I think I think my goal at the time was to try to put away about 2000 a month. And I did that for a pretty consistent period of time during that downturn. And about three years ago, we started the two bulls in a China shop podcast, which is now bandit raiders. We just did some name changes.

But that all started with a book because up to that point I was just a buy and hold. I just found stuff that I liked and I was just going to hold it until I retired. My friend Dan sent me Nicholas Darvis' How I Made $2 Million in the Stock Market. Are you familiar with that one?

Casey 

I did an entire podcast episode on that, so I'm going to link to that in the description. I love that book.

Kyle 

Hahahaha

Kyle 

I did too, that was my first introduction into technical analysis. And then it just from there, it kind of turned into a conversation every day with my friend Dan. And then from there we thought, you know, maybe we ought to start documenting this journey, this. I'm sure some people would like to kind of follow us along on this.

Casey

Um, so that's, so that kind of helped you launch the podcast. So I want to ask you, um, what was your biggest takeaway from the book?

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Kyle

From them, I think the biggest takeaway was that there was other ways to make money in the markets that were feasible. I think that was the first time that I thought it was possible to actually be able to trade on a shorter timeframe. Up until that point, I was, I mean, I remember a friend of mine in the Navy talking about options and how amazing they were. And I thought, now you're going to, you're going to go broke. That's that's silly.

Casey

Yeah.

Casey

Yeah, well, speaking of options, I just released an op, or I'm releasing an episode this week. I interviewed a Navy fighter pilot who's an options trader as well. And so I got the veteran connection there. Yeah.

Kyle 

Oh, I have to set you up with.

It's the time of the month to be doing that. I'm gonna have to sit you over there with Eric Smolinski. I think he'd really like him.

Casey

Oh, cool. Yeah. So you know what my big takeaway from Nicholas Darvish's book was? Was the power of compounding. He went in, and when he would do it, he would go all in. His risk was really tight. So he would go in. I think he started with like a $20,000 or $10,000 account, but he would put everything, all 10 grand on one trade. Really tight stop loss. But then on the next trade, he would go all in again.

Kyle

What was that?

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Casey 

And so I think the theme of diversification that we hear about and small trade size with that scenario is you don't necessarily have to have, you can go all in and still manage your risk pretty well.

Kyle 

Yes, yes, I think that's an excellent point. There was another thing that came out of that book that I think really kind of opened my eyes to. I'm trying to remember what it was now, I'm just drawing a blank.

Kyle

It wasn't just the buying the tops like because he was a breakout trader, right? The box theory that he did.

Casey

Yes, he broke, he would do the box, the darvis box. He waited for the top to go out, he would look for consolidation. And as a technical guy, consolidations are beautiful. I love consolidations and I love breakouts.

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Casey 

I'm not so much into the 52 week high breakouts, but I like finding a trade that's maybe either gone down a while consolidates and then breaks up or at least as an uptrend retraces consolidates and then moves, but either way, it doesn't necessarily have to be a 52 week box, but I like to get a box and then a breakout of the box for me that works so good. Yeah.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm. Is that your favorite setup?

Casey

Right now it is. Yeah, it's been working really well. And, you know, in today's market, as we're talking, it's November 15, literally November. I don't think the market has had one down day in the month of November. It's pretty insane. And for traders, I hope you guys are having the same problem that I'm having. I'm having the Nicholas Darvus problem. I went all in on a lot of trades, and they're all going up.

Kyle 

It's fierce.

Casey 

And you know what my problem is, Kyle, is that I literally don't have any more capital to trade, but all my trades are in profit and I'm like, ah, I can't trade. What do I do? But I just watched, watch it make money every day, but I still want to pull the trigger. I don't know. Good problem to have, I guess.

Kyle 

Now you just get to manage, but that's the best part.

Right?

Yeah. You know, that's actually a, it is a interesting struggle, like the, the need to be in a trade and that's something that I've been actually working on this past couple of weeks is trying to fight that urge. That's something that I kind of found creeping into my, my trading is that like the setup's not there. It's not a plus, but you're sitting around for three hours waiting for something to happen. Then you finally just say to yourself, you know what I got to, this looks good enough. I'll try this one.

As soon as I hear the words I try though, I know I'm not making a good decision.

Casey 

Yeah. And that's the thing is, uh, it's just not worth, it's not worth it to just goof off and do it for fun. Right. You just got to be serious and to wait. So what's some of the biggest things in the course of your trading career that a has really helped you and B what are you working on right now to get better?

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 

Uh, so we did a, an amazing, uh, mini series with rich reason is a psychologist and an old pit trader from San Francisco. Uh, it was like a six or seven part, just deep dive into trading psychology. And that's, I think the biggest thing that when you start out in this journey, you don't realize how much self-discovery you have to do. Like how many of your own tendencies and how many of your own like biases and baggage that you have to work through in order to try to. to be able to do this consistently. And I mean, I'm still on that journey. I'm still trying to figure that out. But.

If I can get out of my own way, then that's when the skies really open up. That's when I'm trading well. It's when I start trying to second guess myself or when I let a bad day carry over onto the charts. Like if I'm not doing my morning routines or, you know that feeling, right? You wake up late, you come back to the charts and you think, yeah, I'll just go ahead and make some quick money here in the next 30 minutes and then go do what I gotta do. Anytime I'm coming in with that attitude, it's never good.

I don't think that's ever once worked for me. So it's a lot of the trader psychology is the stuff that I've been really diving into and trying to get a better understanding of myself, why I make the mistakes that I make, what's the underlying reasoning for those mistakes? Like if I move my stops too soon, what am I doing? What's the underlying intent behind that? My subconscious is trying to protect me from giving back gains. Okay, so now how do I, first step is to accept that, right?

We understand it, we're aware of it, we accept it. The next step then is to figure out the underlying intent. And then from that point, then you can try to figure out how to modify that behavior to better serve your trading self. So moving my stops to try to protect losses, if I can actually show data that says like, hey, look, this is actually costing you money in the long run. Like, let's try something else. Let's try just letting the brackets do their job. Let's put the trades on and walk away and come back.

Kyle

And then let's see how that data looks. And then when you build that data set, you can start to modify those behaviors and change them for something that's actually good and actually helps you.

Casey

Yeah, yeah, I think that learning how to learn from your mistakes, and then change your behavior is a big one, right? And so how do you do that? How do you change your behavior?

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Kyle

Like I said, the first step is you got to be aware of it. So you have to really look. It starts with journaling. You have to journal all your trades, even journaling, like your emotions during those trades is another good one. Try to find out where those points are that trigger you, that cause those reactions, that those emotional reactions, if you can start to build awareness around it, that's the first step. Then you accept it. It's not a bad thing. It just is right.

Like, okay, I move my stops prematurely. That's what I do. Okay, okay. Why am I doing that? That's the next step. Figure out the underlying reasoning behind it. What is that behavior trying to protect me from? And then once you can put some understanding behind all that, that's when you can start to make the changes and try to modify that behavior so that the behavior is still there, but it's actually doing something beneficial to you rather than hurting yourself.

Casey

I think trying to understand the underlying reason why we wanna mess things up is a big part of it. Like just when I was mentioning today about myself wanting to get into a trade, why do I wanna get into a trade? If I go back and I look at the Nicholas Darvis book, he would hold trades for like...

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Casey

you know, three months, six months, and he wouldn't get out until it would hit his trailing stop. And yet, I wanna get out now just because I wanna take a trade, because I'm impatient. So understanding like the reason why you wanna do that.

is important and to be fair to myself I'm doing pretty well at having a criteria right now. Now I've developed a criteria, I'm able to follow it, I'm able to only exit when the rules tell me to exit. I'm not making, I do make some decisions but I give myself pretty strong parameters to hold myself inside of those decisions so that I know when I'm going

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 
And do you track the data too, to when you make those decisions to see, so you can have the actual data set to see, do my decisions help or do my decisions hurt?

Casey 

like this big mystery.

Casey

Uh, yeah, well, I know what the different parameters that I have to choose from. And because of years and years of testing and I do, I write it down. I keep track of everything and I analyze the results and refine, right? I refine my entry methods and exit methods based off of what I've learned in the previous trade. Um,

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Kyle

That's another excellent point you just made right there too, the refining. This isn't a field that you can just dive into, learn everything you need to know and then just go and never stop growing after that point. It's a constant evolution. You're always having to adjust things. The markets are constantly changing. If you're not constantly growing and learning as a trader, you're just falling behind.

Casey

Yeah, no, that's a great point, Kyle. And it's not just about trading. It's when you talk about the psychology. I have a coaching group of people that I coach. And

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Casey 

One of the students is actually I had the call today right before this interview and one of the students was like, I think it's my habits. You know, I think it's I've got I need to work on my habits. And so when the student said that I pulled up my chart here. I said, these are my daily habits right I actually have daily habits and I review them every single day right and I'm I review my habits.

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Casey 

And then I go back and I'm like, okay, how did I do today? And trading is, you know, towards the end of the list of the things that was really important to me, right? Because I trade, I like trading, but I do it so that I can have more time to do the things that I think are really important, which is my relationships, right? My life, my family, my kids, doing some of the things that I like to do. So as a trader.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Casey

sometimes we get ahead of ourselves and we're all worried about certain things in our trading when really our own life is disorganized and it's out of order and it doesn't really matter what we do with trading because of our lives being out of order it's gonna throw trading out of order automatically

Kyle 

It's funny too how easily you can get into that disorder. Like how it happens gradually. You don't really notice it unless you're, you have some sort of metric to track as far as like your own emotional state. Like you can, I remember I had something like kind of major happen about a year ago. And that was around the time when I'd started like measuring set scores is what Rich calls them, your sensations, emotions, and thoughts, and you give yourself a scale from minus

5 to positive 5 and your goal is to be in the middle, right? You don't want to be too confident. You want to be too scared. But I started doing those baselines like right around the time when all that turmoil was going on. So I had no idea that I was extremely stressed out until. Two months later, and like I started feeling like actually better, and I'm like, oh, we should like I thought I thought I was feeling normal these days, but no, I was out. I was out of control. These were not. This was not good.

Like I was trading with a lot of baggage that I needed to go and spend some time working on.

Casey

Yeah, that's right. And it's sometimes hidden stuff and it shows up in your trading when you don't even realize it. And it shows up in other areas of your life. And for me, I really lay it all down to habits, right? Because I'm a hard worker. And so I've had a ton of success. I got a big family. I've had a lot of success in the markets. I've had a lot of success in business. And I'm just pushing, pushing.

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Casey 

But then, you know, your whole life becomes this whirlwind of chaos. And because your success got you there, your success, your work ethic and success actually brought chaos into your life, right? Which is kind of crazy. Um, and so now I've got all these things that I can't juggle and my success just comes crashing down. Right. Because I don't have the habits. I don't have the mindset. I don't have the habits.

Kyle 

Huh, interesting, yeah.

Kyle 

Hmm.

Casey 

to hold on to the success that I've had or not only to hold on to it but to get to the next level. Because what you got, what you did to get to level one is not going to get you to level two. You've got to totally change everything.

Kyle 

So what are the big habits that you, like what are your top five that you recommend to people start, like if they want to like build some good habits for their day?

Casey

Well, every person's different based off of their personality and what they like to do. You know, I can't. For me, it's one of my big ones is getting up early. Right. That's really important to me. Getting up early and using my mind to create things. Right. Activity without premeditated thought isn't going to help.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Casey

Right? It's not going to build anything. So people love to get up and just start working. You know, that's me. I, I get up and I start trading or I get up and I start jumping on my desk and just start doing stuff because I think it's going to do something. And really I just am spinning wheels all the time. So it's now I want to get up early, take my time. And with me, you know, my top priority is relationship with God. So I'm going to spend time praying.

Kyle 

Right.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Casey 

I'm going to spend time journaling, and then I'm going to spend time thinking about, okay, what are the important relationships that I want to work on? I want a relationship with my wife. Okay, I want to think about that every day.

write down some things, relationship with my kids, write that down every day. And then I start thinking about trading, start thinking about business, start writing down the tasks. And when I'm thinking about trading, I wanna think big picture, start with big picture stuff, and then go down to daily tasks. Like what's the big goal? You know, how am I gonna organize that? Because with what I'm doing with my trading, I have many different trading,

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Casey

applications, right? Like I've got my long-term investing, I've got my swing trading, I've got my short-term stuff, and so I have different accounts and they're all rolling together to make one big operation. So

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 

I like that. I also like how you prioritize that too. That interesting. I wonder if that helps take some of the pressure off of trading too. If you can put the priorities on the relationships with the people that are important in your life like that, like a, when you, when you treat the day like starting out like, okay, my priority today is to make my wife happy or to do something with my wife. After that is to, then you go down to the trading goals.

Like, does that take some of the pressure off of the trading? Because now you know you've done the important thing, which is to make your wife happy.

Casey

I think it does because your life is not successful based off of your trading. I mean, financial success is part of it, but you know, Kyle, like, you can't just have a great day because your trading was good or bad. You know, you cannot let that go and ruin the rest of your day, right? Like, that's a thing that has happened to me.

Kyle 

Yeah.

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 

No, it's happened to me too. Wife can tell immediately how the trading day when if I come upstairs and I'm quiet and not engaged or if I come up and I'm super happy. No, I make it a point to tell her every day what I did, whether it was good or bad, because I feel like I feel like you have to be, if you can't say it out loud, if you make a mistake, like you're not learning anything from it, right?

Casey 

I'm not telling you what I did today.

Casey 

Yeah.

Casey

Yeah, well, that's a good point is to try to really learn from your mistakes. So two things to Kyle that is, that's really cool is learning from your mistakes. And also celebrating your wins. I think celebrating wins is so big, like in your family, in your personal life, you know, you should celebrate your wins every day.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Kyle

Yeah, don't dwell on them, but take a moment to be appreciative of it.

Casey 

Right, yeah, you don't want to dwell on it and camp there and say I've made it today, but it can be hard because um, you know when you have a bad day and there's so many things going the wrong way But what you focus on is what you reproduce and so if you're going to focus on the good stuff

Kyle 

I've always said to that's been my motto. It's not a loss unless you fail to learn the lesson that opportunity presents.

Casey 

or if you give up. Yeah, yeah, but yeah. So what's working for you right now? Let's talk about some wins. Let's talk about some Kyle wins. What's working for you right now?

Kyle 

That too.

Kyle 

Well, I've been I've been diving headfirst for the last year, I think, into learning how to trade futures. Been working with the boys over at Vonta Trading Baba Yaga. Mr. Banks been mentoring me. So a lot of. A lot of going back and like just doing the data has really been helping a lot. Like my biggest problem, I think, has always been confidence, belief in the ideas that I'm putting out there.

and being able to execute on them without that fear of loss. So going back and building the data sets to prove that there's edge on these strategies has been one of the big ones. I've been diving a lot into quarterly theory, but I haven't been trading that yet. That's just something I've been digging into. As far as other things go, I've been doing an option series with Eric Smolinski over at ES Invests, another great trader. I highly recommend people check out.

Casey

Oh, is that the Navy guy? Yeah, OK. Oh, Marine. Oh, boy. I can't even believe they can trade.

Kyle 

Yeah, he's the other. He's a Marine. He's a Marine. Yeah, don't call him Navy. He'll get mad. I know. I love his style. His strategy is much more long term. He's but been paper trading a lot of the stuff that we've been working on their earnings types plays. That's one of the ones have been really collecting a large data set. I want to be ready to go live and trade those next earnings season.

but basically looking at volatility expansion and trying to capitalize on that. So about two weeks out from an earnings release is when volatility starts to expand. So I've been tracking straddles on a bunch of different products, trying to build a data set to show that there's edge there.

Casey

So what do you mean by that? Like consolidation before earnings, the price isn't going to break out either way.

Kyle 

Not even consolidation, just that I take a look at IV. I've been trying to draw some correlations between IV and historical volatility. And then basically what you're looking at is leading into earnings that unknown is going to be reflected in the price of a straddle. Volatility is gonna expand, Vega is gonna increase, and that should give you some tailwinds to increase the value of your straddle. The extra movement happens because of the uncertainty going into that is just icing on the cake.

I think I priced out one for Nvidia that I think is up probably about 100% now. I think I bought the 410 straddle on that and I think it hit 500 today or close to it. So yeah.

Casey 

Yeah, yeah, I just did a couple earnings trades and they went pretty well. So, but not like that, not like that. No, I don't know anything about straddles. I could learn a lot there. I just will buy stocks or buy calls right before the earnings announcement.

Kyle 

Do you sell the straddles right before?

Kyle 

Yeah, I'm looking at it actually the other way where I'm looking for stocks that historically don't perform to the expected move and then looking to sell those like the minute before close before their earnings come out and then look to cover it the next day. That's again, I'm looking to do that. I'm building the data set. I'm not saying I'm actually doing that yet. One of the other things Eric asked me actually tasked me with is looking at strangles with that. He said he's been having better success with strangles.

Casey

Okay.

Kyle 

So I've got to track point three Delta point two Delta point one Delta along with those at the monies but the whole idea with the straddle is Your Delta neutral so as the price of the stock moves up and down it should cancel each other out In theory, right? We know how that works but

Really, it's the volatility expansion that we're looking to capture with that two weeks up till earnings. I think that's a very well documented phenomenon. I'm pretty sure I could find some papers if I go back and look through my homework.

Casey 

Yeah, that's pretty good training and I love those different options trades. So you're doing a lot of stuff. You're doing options, you're doing futures. And what was that quarter theory? Like, I'm not sure I know what that is.

Kyle

Oh God, are you going to make me sound silly? Because I just really started looking into this. I know banks and Baba have been trying to build some course material out of it. Um, it's something. Okay. So the idea is that you divide the sessions up into quarters. So the week is divided into four quarters. Monday is Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, makes up the four quarters. Friday is its own thing. It's treated differently.

Casey 

Well just give me a definition on what it is.

Kyle 

And then the day can be divided into four quarters, from midnight to six, six to noon, noon to six, and then six to 12. And those also line up with the Euro, Asia, and the New York AM, New York PM sessions. So the first quarter should set the stage for what proceeds. So you're looking for either accumulation or reversal, and then from there you go to a manipulation phase, and then a distribution phase.

I think I'm missing one in there somewhere. Continuation might be one of them also. But basically the idea is that you look and see what the first quarter is doing. And this can, you can zoom this out and go on the monthly if you want and look at it by the weeks. Like the first week is the first quarter, the second week, third week, and so on. It's all based on algorithmics trading. The idea is that if algorithms do exist and are dominating the marketplace, then there should be some sort of structure.

to how those algorithms operate.

And I'm sure I am butchering this. So I'll probably have to get you set up with Mr. Bank so we can come on and explain it. But let me.

Casey 

Yeah, but it sounds very, very technical. And the key thing is hopefully it's very profitable. There's so many different ways to trade in the markets and that can be a temptation of new traders is, and I actually talk about this in my book. I call it the shiny object syndrome.

Kyle

Let me find the...

Kyle 

Reha.

Kyle 

Mm, yes.

Casey 

Uh, well, I didn't create that name, but everybody like I've suffered from that because I love opportunities and. Traders will come to me all the times. Like I need a new strategy. And I have an entire, my website is called trading strategy guides. It's a website full of free trading strategies, like hundreds of them. And people say, I need a strategy. It's like, you don't need a strategy. You just need to execute the one you got.

Kyle 

I think we all have.

Kyle 

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 

No, no, you need to look and figure out how you see the markets, where your strengths are and lean into that. That's that's really the key. That's why so there's so many different strategies out there because people see things differently. Like you may love volume profile and TPO, whereas I may be just strictly candle based chart patterns. Like we can both still exist.

Casey 

Right. And you, and we can both make money if we execute our edge and, you know, you might love fundamentals and I think they're terrible.

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Kyle 

Right, exactly. And no, I don't like fundamentals.

Casey 

Yeah, I mean, I like them with stocks like for love for my long term portfolio. Like I'm trying to find some good growth stocks that basically always go up.

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Kyle

I actually do kind of want to do a series on fundamental analysis because I never really gave it much time a day. I think it might be kind of fun to dig into it and see what's actually there.

Casey

Well, I'll refer you to my last guest. He's a systems guy, and he's got just an insane system on how he does fundamental analysis for entering his stocks. It's really detailed.

Kyle

Hmm, really.

Casey 

Yeah, his name's Simon Severino. And he's not even a trader. He's a business guy. He builds systems. He coaches business people on how to grow their businesses. But since he was taking his money and investing it, he then built out this whole stock trading system on how to invest, because everything he does is systems, and it was really good. Yeah. So well, yeah, you've been, what's the biggest?

Kyle 

Okay, yeah.

Kyle

Mm-hmm.

Kyle

That sounds awesome. Yeah, love to talk to that guy.

Casey

Biggest takeaways right now, like where's your biggest wins coming from?

Kyle 

The biggest wins come from when I sit and I wait for one of my setups to jump out, like to make me actually sit up in my chair. Like those are the trades that do the best. Those are the trades that are easy. The trades that don't take any heat on that. I'm not sitting there pleading with it to go one way or the other. Like, I guess I, it really just comes down to, can I execute the things that I know I have edge on and can I do it faithfully and truly to what I back tested? That's.

That's really, I mean, I don't know if you want like a specific strategy or, or something, but it's not that it's, it's executing the way you test it. Like if I can do that, then I'm doing well. Yes.

Casey 

It's building good trading habits. You're building better trading habits and it's making you become a better trader.

Kyle

Yeah, well said.

Casey

Yeah, no, that's good. That's very good. And so what is some of the biggest lessons that you've learned?

Kyle 

Well, if I am just trying to justify an entry, if I'm saying to myself like, I think that could work, then that is assigned to stand up, turn off the charts and go do something else for 10, 15 minutes, recenter.

Kyle

Let's see what back testing is another huge one. The more I back test, the more confidence I get, the better I perform. So continuously back testing. Like if I'm sitting upstairs in the evening watching TV with the wife and I wanna have a chart up and I wanna just be kind of back testing something, like doesn't matter if it's a specific strategy I'm trying to develop or if I'm just trying to learn something new. As I'm sure you do a lot of back testing, like how many times do you start out with an idea and it's completely changed like within an hour?

Casey

Yeah, the ideas that I think that I have that are so good usually aren't that good.

Kyle

Right? The shower thoughts, I think my wife likes to call them. Like, oh, what if I tried this?

Casey

Yeah, I get them all the time. Like I just like I'll be doing something and it's like, oh, this, this strategy is going to be great. It just pops into my head. Sometimes they're pretty good, though. And I.

Kyle

I think it's funny that I think some people like shy away from doing that because they're afraid of it not working. Like you have an idea and you have a dream that comes with it. But if you go back and you find out that it's not viable, then in your mind, you're losing the dream, right? Like you can just put your head in the sand and keep the dream alive. But but really, like you go and start doing it. It starts. You start seeing other things. You start seeing other patterns. You start getting other ideas that you want to test. You look at ways to improve it. You look at.

Like, okay, that didn't work, but what if I tried this? And then suddenly you've got an idea and you've got something you can develop.

Casey

Yeah, yeah, I'm a big believer that you got to go after your dreams. You know, that's it's not easy, but it's worth it. Yeah. Well, Kyle, I've had a great time talking with you. Thank you for being a guest on the show. Tell us, tell the listeners where they can find out how to find you and learn more about what you're doing.

Kyle 

Hehehe

Kyle

Yes, I'd agree with that.

Kyle

You can go to bandotraderspodcast.com. You can follow me on Twitter at FinancialNept1. I think we have a YouTube channel, but not much on there yet. Hopefully that'll be changing soon now that we've started to get some video capabilities, as you can see.

Casey

Okay, well I'm following you now on Twitter.

Kyle

I better be following you. Let me double check.

Casey 

My Twitter, I just got my Twitter account back after about eight months. I got hacked and I could not get it back and finally Twitter re-released it to me.

Kyle

I love that you still call it Twitter like I do. I refuse to call it X.

Casey 

You know some of these brand changes are so hard like I don't know that's tough. It's a tough one

Kyle 

Oh God, we just went through that. We just changed the name from two bulls in a China shop. We originally landed on like we did a whole episode on the first one. It was going to be true trading like we all agreed on it. And then Kevin James at my forex family, I think he sends me an email. He's like, Oh, I think you guys should consider Band of Traders. God damn it. That is way better. So we just switched the website over. We switched the name. We switched everything. And then 24 hours later, I'm having to switch it all again.

Casey

Hahaha

Casey 

Yeah, well, my show has been on this, How to Trade It has been on for almost six years now. And the first season, it was originally known as the Cash Flow Hacking Podcast. And I, yeah, it wasn't trading specific back then. I actually interviewed anybody who had different cash flow strategies, not just trading, but then I narrowed it down just to traders.

Kyle 

Oh yeah, I like the name you got now. How to Trade is a great name.

Kyle 

Mm.

Kyle 

I think we've kind of gone the same route. I used to talk to a lot of CPAs, EFAs, real estate.

Casey 

Yeah. So, okay. Well, that's the Band of Traders podcast. And Kyle, thank you for being on the show. Everybody check it out. He's got some great guests and some great wisdom and insight. So head on over to the Band of Traders podcast. And that's it for this episode of the How to Trade a Podcast. Thank you all.

Kyle

Thank you for having me.