Scott Pulcini: A Card-Counting Master of the Universe Now Teaches Day Trading

Scott Pulcini learned to trade the old school way, battle-tested on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade where he got so fast and so good at electronic trading that he once accounted for ten percent of the entire S&P e-mini futures market's daily volume. By 2002, he was the top trader at his firm, until only three years and roughly fifteen million dollars later, algorithms took over the market and knocked him out of the business. He spent almost a decade outside before finding his way back.

The tool that actually brought Scott back is Bookmap, a real-time order flow visualization platform that shows him what institutional "big money" is doing in the market as it happens, including iceberg orders, large trades that exchanges reveal to keep algorithms from front-running them. He walks through live examples on screen, showing how spotting these signals lets a trader recognize a rally is about to stall before the price actually turns. Where he used to be the guy with the fastest mouse click, he's now the guy who reads what the fast money is doing, the same instinct that once got his card-counting privileges revoked at half the casinos in Las Vegas.

Scott is candid about the dangers of ignoring stop-loss limits while riding high on ego, a state he calls "full tilt." The hardest-won lesson he offers to his students isn't a trading technique at all: respect your limits before you're under pressure, because once you're in the moment, you won't have the self-control you think you have. Mookie backs that up with a story of his own, about his father's childhood friend who built a successful career as a CPA and real estate investor, then wiped out his entire life savings in a single undisciplined month of day trading in the 1990s. Scott ties it back to a line from Mike Tyson: everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

Today Scott runs a live trading room and education platform teaching retail traders to exert discipline as they see an unprecedented reveal of order flow information, giving them an edge against trading blind against machines and money they'll never otherwise see. If you're already knee-deep or just interested in day-trading, this is the podcast for you! 

The Guest

Scott Pulcini is a professional futures trader with over two decades of experience, including nearly a decade trading on and off the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade. Featured in Dr. Brett Steenbarger's book Enhancing Trader Performance, he now runs a live trading room and education platform teaching retail traders to read institutional order flow using the Bookmap platform.

Scott's Website: https://www.scottpulcinitrader.com
Join his free weekly webinar: Bookmap.com, Thursdays

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to Bald Ambition. I'm your still very bald host, Mookie Spitz, and the one with tons of ambition. Today is Mr. Scott Bulsini. Welcome to the pod, Scott. You are a traitor. And by traitor, I mean T-R-A-D-E-R, a trader. And uh you've been in the game for quite some time. And you use some new technology, and you bring a combination of what I see as your experience in the trenches with some of the data made available to folks to uh to maximize their efficiency and and returns. You've got a live room that you give every day, and you offer your services to investors to share some of your insights and knowledge and help people invest better. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Scott, in terms of where you're at in the game, how you got here, and how you're different.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Uh definitely different, but um in many ways. Yeah, so I trade futures. I'm a I'm I'm a day trader, so it's not it's not longer-term investing, so it's you know, more in and out during the day. Um I've always been that way. That's how my mind works, um, as far as how I teach as well. So um, you know, going back to early 1990s, I got introduced to the game by my grandfather, and that's before internet and everything else. And when he, you know, we would start to follow stocks in the newspaper. Uh, and then he, you know, and then we check the next day, I like pick a stock and check the next day, see what it did. And then uh I entered this uh thing in high school called the AT ⁇ T investment challenge. Uh, and I got like I was top like one-tenth of one percent in the in the uh standings there. Complete luck, but it got me hooked, right? So it's like I I I wanted to do that going forward. And when I went to college, I you know, I studied business finance, and I was gonna be a, you know, I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I was gonna be a financial advisor and I did uh you know an internship with Smith Barney at the time at the Sears Tower in Chicago when it was the Sears Tower and figured out very quickly it was a little too boring for me, and I wanted to be, you know, where the action was. So got a job at the Chicago Board of Trade. One of my buddies got me a job down there. I was an art clerk uh doing the hand signals. Like I don't know if you remember trading places in the pits where they're going doing the hand stuff. Uh so I got battle tested down there because that was a very, very stressful environment where you're, you know, you're working for a broker and you make a mistake, you can blow them out, and two seconds blowing out, meaning you know, it cost the millions of dollars and he's done. So that was very, very stressful. Uh went from there and I started trading electronically. It's right when the all the markets moved to the screen and or started to move to the screen, which they're almost 100% now. But um, and I I begged my buddy, a guy from the floor, actually. He's he kind of saw saw the writing on the wall and he started his own trading firm. He knew the pits were dying. Uh and uh and apologize if you hear stuff in the background. I am I am do have trades on while we're talking. Um hopefully it'll be uh a dead period while we're talking here.

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Hopefully, this podcast isn't gonna cost you a lot of money.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Uh it'll probably help me because when I when I stare at trades, I get a little antsy, even even after 25 years in the business. So it'll probably help me by not looking at it. But um, so this guy started this trading firm, electronic. It was the wild west. There was no education, right? Like there, like there is today. I mean, you can there's there's a dime a dozen educators out there, but um literally put me in front of a screen and said, figure something out, uh, pick your market and figure something out. And there's some guys at the firm at the time that were just, you know, I don't want to say they were dumb, but I just knew that I if they were making money, I could make money, and they were doing very well. I mean, they were making like $5,000 a day, things like that. I'm like, okay, let's go time, I can do this. So I came in all gung ho and uh lost every day from my first two months. Didn't have one winning day in two months, about to get fired. Uh the 9-11 happened and uh they closed the markets down, the US markets down for a week. And I just wanted to figure something out because I knew I was about to get fired, so I started trading overnight the German DAX, the stock market for the German for Germany, uh, and started seeing some patterns there. And then when the markets reopened after 9-11, I started to apply some of the things I learned in the German DAX into the E mini SP futures. Uh, it's just the futures uh product for the SP 500, and uh just literally just got it. Like it just clicked, and then I started making money every day, uh, you know, relatively small at the time, but I was so I was so confident I'd figure it out. And I've always been like this, like, you know, I'm always like terrible at something when I first started, but then when I, you know, I put my mind to it, I master it, right? So I was so confident I'd figured it out. And mind you, I was about to get fired, and I wasn't even making that big the big trader of the year before had made 2.8 million bucks. And so I had the gall to go in the owner's office and tell him, make him a bet that I would be the number one trader the following year. That was 2002. Uh, and he was he was more than happy to take that wager. We bet a we bet a golf trip on it, and I ended up uh winning the bet, made so I'm sorry, the the the top trader of the year before was 2.4. So 2000, I ended up making 2.8. So I beat him, I was a top trader, won the bet, and then uh over the next three years made about $15 million for my trading firm and myself. Um, and you know, thought I had made it, right? So that this is why my story is you know resonates with traders because so many traders went through the same thing, not on the same scale, but relatively, you know, the same type of thing where you know they're doing well, and all of a sudden the algos took over. So it's it's kind of like repeating, like, you know, business cycles and life repeat, right? So it's like what's happening now with AI. Back then it was just the algos. There was no algos in there, and I was just clicking a mouse. I was just one of the fastest clickers in the world. At the time, I was 10% of the world volume uh every day. That's how active I was, and then it just disappeared because the algos took over, it knocked me out. So um literally spent next six, seven years trying to reinvent my trading style to be to be elite, and I just could do nothing to become elite. I had to leave the business in 2013 and go into medical sales. So then I was sitting in doctors' offices, you know, going to their office, kissing their ass, having them treat me like a peon sales guy. Little did I know it. Over a three-year period, I probably made more money than they're gonna make their entire career. So that was that was a tough pill to swallow, right? I had a bit of humble pie there, you know. So um, so then I, you know, I was just I was out of the business and fast forward to 2018-ish, 2019, uh Dr. Britt Brett Steambarger wrote enhancing training performance. He's wrote a bunch of psychiatric psychology books, and he's a psychiatrist as well. He was at my firm when I was making all the money, and he wrote a book and asked if he can sit behind me to see what made me elite. Um, so he had put me in his book. So he knew I was out of trading, so he contacted me and said, uh, hey, you want to take a look at this program, the software called Bookmap.com. He goes, it reminds me of how he used to visualize the market with because they display the orders on a heat map and it's just easier to visualize, and I can show you it if you want to. Uh so the minute I saw that that view of the markets, I'm like, okay, I'm back. This is how I need to visualize the markets to compete with these algos at the time, right? So um got back in it, started making my way back, and then uh I was doing then I started doing webinars, trading like trading webinars for Bookmap because I knew my story. Uh, and then from there I got a lot of requests to start my own trade room to teach traders how to trade and teach them what I was seeing in the market. So that's where I'm at today. Uh, you know, I trade my own accounts, but then I also have a trade room where I educate traders on how to read the futures markets, uh kind of like how I how I visualize with the order flow and so forth.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

So it's a bit of a masters of the universe story. So if if if I heard you, if I heard you right, it took you a while to figure out your skill set, which is the day trade, which is futures. And as you point out, that's very, very different than even short, medium, long-term investment. It's sometimes on the minute, on the hour. It's being responsive in real time to a very kinetic, sometimes chaotic trading environment. And you just have the personality, your brain is built to be locked into that, and you excelled at it. And then you started kicking ass until the algorithms took over, until the machines were out clicking your ass in terms of being responsive in that real-time dynamic environment, and then you're like, oh, fuck it. I'm just gonna sell medical equipment, I'm done.

SPEAKER_01 8:30

It wasn't that easy, trust me. It wasn't that easy for me to give up, right? I mean, because a trader's mentality, you have to wake up every morning saying, okay, you let the day go behind, and this is for life, too, right? It's like you I had a bad day yesterday, I'll figure it out today, right? You have to have that mentality in trading and in life, or you're not gonna make it, right? So I I did that for six, seven years, and all of a sudden it was like, uh, okay, I have no money left because when we have a certain lifestyle, there's a saying out there, there's nothing worse than having money um and then losing it versus never having it at all, because when you had it and lost it, you know what it felt like to have the money, right? When you you never had it, you don't know what you're missing, right?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

And of course, we spend what we earn and then some.

SPEAKER_01 9:09

Well, exactly. I had a lifestyle. I was buying, you know, at a $1.6 million condo in Chicago. I had multiple thoroughbred racehorses. I'm a race horse racing degenerate, right? So it was like I I had racehorses, condos. I bought a I bought a Jaguar XKR back then. It was like the top car. I paid $85,000 cash for it. So it was like, you know, as quick it was as coming, and it was all relative. So I don't beat myself up about that these days because back then I was, you know, 2003 I made 10 million bucks. So to make 10 million dollars, you have to average $50,000 every trading day, 200 trading days, right? So I literally would, you know, buy a horse or whatever, and then you know, it cost me 50 grand, and I'd be like, no big deal, I'll make that by Monday morning, 10 a.m. Right. So it's like it was all relative. It sounds crazy nowadays, like and I've had two couple really, really big losing days that I wish I could get back. Um, you know, when I look back now as a as a more mature person, I mean this was before age 30, you know. I bet my grandpa at the time, uh even before I started training, I bet I might be a millionaire before I was age 30, right? And I did it. I walked in with a firm check. I was age 29, and they keep they framed it, put it on the wall, you know. So I I I had made it, but then, but you know, looking back, there's so many things I could have done to protect myself for I just didn't think it was gonna end, right? I thought I had a gift, which I did, but it disappeared. So this goes for anything in life, right? Like any business, anything. Like, yeah, you have a gift or you have a great business, but it could, it could end in a heartbeat. Um, you know, a great example just for the business sector, like that. I live in Arizona, the salad and go. It's it was an awesome franchise. Like it's every time I've gone there, I've been sitting in the in the in the drive-thru, you know, for 10 minutes to get they looked like they were flourishing out of nowhere. Closing every, they close all their all their businesses in Texas, all in Arizona. I'm talking like three, four hundred of them. It's like that's how quickly things can change. So you always got to be ready to adapt to the new thing, you know, AI and everything else. But it's uh so my story resonates whether you're a trader or not, is what I'm what I'm trying to say.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

And people people love a comeback story. Right. So it's it's cool that that you ceilinged out, you got your ass kicked, but then you came back. And the way you came back is also complementary to how you got your ass kicked, which is the technology.

unknown 11:21

Right.

SPEAKER_00 11:22

So when the algos took over, then you were knocked out, and then you get this opportunity through book map, and I checked it out, and I can put some visuals on the uh screen for YouTube. Um, I've got a link below for people to go check it out if you're on the audio only. But it's a creative data visualization tool in real time for complex day to day trading. So the technology got you out, the technology brought you back, and now we've got another tier of technology, which is the AI stuff as well. And can you share how you're how you're different from some of the bot traders? I've had a few of those guys on the podcast too. And it sounds to me that you're more hands-on, you're more human, you're experienced, and when you're coupled with this tech, you bring everything that you've just described in terms of just decades of human-lived experience.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

Right. Well, I mean, I learned the hard way, and this went for remember, I was saying like all these floor traders, like once this once the stuff went to the screen, they were done, right? They knew how to trade in the pits with the noise and and and watching people's reactions. Once it went to the screen, they had they had no chance because that edge was gone, right? Um, so for and you can there, there's a couple of documentaries out there on the border trade, like all these bitter floor traders that are so pissed off that it went electronic, it's not fair, blah, blah, blah. And I was like that too. It was like, this is impossible. You know, when I got knocked out of the game with the algorithms, like, this is impossible, you can't do it. So I've learned over, you know, once I got back in the business, instead of fighting the algos, recognize what they're doing and and join them. So again, it's if you can't beat them, join them, right? So uh there's certain things I look for, and I'd be happy to show you like how you can, and this could this could work for longer-term traders too. Don't get me wrong, like for instance, I'll show you an example of gold today, right? Like it raced to the highs, everyone's piling in, and a bunch of cell icebergs came in. So icebergs are orders that the big money uses, they have to hide their orders because the algos. If they put a huge order in the order book, these algos run front run them and meaning they run the order away from them and trying to make them chase the price. So the CME has this special type of order where you can they only have to display 10% of their order in the order book, and then when it gets traded into the rest of it populates, so it's called an iceberg. It's it's not technical, right? So the point is if you see something like I'll show you here, like in gold. So say right now, say you're long gold and you're you're trying to figure out a place you wanted to get out for now because it's been it's had a nice rally in the last month or so. This is a perfect example of what I'll show you. It's like you see all these cell icebergs coming in. I don't care what the algos are doing right now, like if you know, even if they're trying to push the market higher, these sell icebergs keep coming in, the market's not going to go any higher, right? It's gonna at least relent a little bit. This is information that the average retail, most actual day traders, don't even know about this or don't use it, which is astonishing to me. But knowing this information can help you make better decisions, even if you're a longer-term trader.

SPEAKER_00 14:16

Sounds cool. Do you want to use the share tech here in the app? It's uh the little button down there to share your screen. You're the man. And just as a favor to those who are on audio only, not everyone is gonna be watching us on YouTube or the other video platforms. Can you can you talk us through, give us a little extra descriptor context so so we track people who are just listening?

SPEAKER_01 14:44

Right. So let me uh so there's a lot of people are see this for the first time, they they almost have a seizure because there's so much on my chart, but it's not it's not a lot of indicators per se. I'm not gonna get into the whole uh what what everything is here, but I'm gonna I'm gonna cover the most important stuff here, right? So if I turn off the liquidity, so that so this is showing you, first of all, this is what got me back in the game. Don't don't mind out this. I'm gonna show you this was the cell icebergs that I was talking about. But all you're seeing here, like right now, you can see the Av was playing games here, pulling and putting orders. That's just showing right there that order book. So they're playing games, and you can see these orders represented on the heat map. And by the size, the bigger they are, the darker orange it is, right? So you can see the games that are being played right now. This is the crap that knocked me out of the game in the first place, right? So, and I could turn that on and off. So, just for visual, so this is my what I was trying to explain here as this market came up to the ties. Like, if you're if you're looking at a chart here, like this is what most investors or traders that know what they're doing, they're looking at, right? And this was earlier this morning. This thing is ripping off the page. You're like, yeah, right, I'm long. I I knew it, I knew this was going higher, and then it does this. So people are sitting here, well, what happened? What why did this thing pull back? You know, $20 or $30. Well, the reason it pulled back is because it ran into a block of cell icebergs here, right? So you can see, so this is the subchart. So this is what Bookmap had right when you know, right when I started, and they still have it. I have it, I had a trader in my trade room figure out how to put this stuff on the heat map. So it actually draws the exact prices that this information came in. But my point being is here, this is right after so there was a big uh economic number today with CPI this morning. So that's what this rip was, right? So all the longs thought they had it, and then they run into a mouthful, I like like say mouthful of icebergs. So someone someone big came in here and they kept selling it. You can see all these all these blips of sell sell icebergs here, right? On the subchart. So you had you know 150, you had another 250, you had another 150. That's a lot of size. I mean, if you look at the order book, there's not a lot, you know, each each each price is like seven, five, six, seven, eight, eight lots up. Now you're talking like 500, then that's gonna stop the market at least temporarily, right? The big money is not always right, but they're right more often than they're wrong because they're the big money. And if they keep putting in sell sell orders here, it's gonna relent. And that's exactly what happened. They tried to sell, it came back, someone kept, they kept buying it, and they just kept putting in more sell ice, more sell ice, and the market finally relented. So the point is, I have I have strategies from watching literally hundreds of thousands of these over the last nine years, and my experience as you know, being a uh trading millions of contracts uh on how this stuff reacts and and the edge in this. But my point is, even if you're long longer term, you're sitting here and you have this program and you see, okay, this has been a great run up the last month. You can see here this thing has been basically vertical for a while now, right? So it gapped out, it broke out of this big balance area here. So this was what uh this was August 5th. So this thing's basically gone straight up for um you know 15 days or whatever, what or not even seven days a week, it's gone straight up. So my point is it you're like riding it, you're like, where should I get out? Well, when you start seeing the big money playing, you'll be like, okay, I'm gonna get out and wait for a pullback and maybe look for buy ice. So this is my point. You don't have to be a short-term trader, but I am, and there's ways to take advantage of this information and and play the game. This isn't even the algo game, let's just play the big money game. And I'll show you the algo game too, where you can play, you know, in and out. And that's for hyperactive traders that want to play play with the algos. I don't really like playing with the algos um per se, but I don't fight them, is what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_00 18:20

Let me summarize real quick, put a pin in it, uh, both for people listening and also just people watching you do your magic. What we're seeing is amazing transparency over time for value and volume. So when you see value and volume across time, it could be five minutes or five days, you get a macro view of a decision you're gonna make in the moment. So ultimately it's buy or sell, right? So if you're seeing the value of what you're tracking starting to spike, that's what you call the iceberg, right? It's starting to cook up. If you pull back a little bit and you look at longer-term trends, and here we're talking really a matter of hours or days, right? Then you could see overall activity and you see where the big guns come in and go out. And instead of operating in the dark, just in that moment and trying to figure out high how high the ceiling might be, you could see prior ceilings through the chart that's there in front of your face, and then you can make a really informed decision on when to get out or whether to stay in. Am I right?

SPEAKER_01 19:38

Correct. You put it on the head pretty good for a non-trader trader. It sounds like you actually have a little experience trading, so I'm not gonna buy that. You're not a trader.

SPEAKER_00 19:47

Well, I got I got bald ambition. So it's good we've summarized it right, and I can see the power of your tool as well, which is uh transparency. And when you combine it to your point, which I think is extremely significant, that data is just data, but if you bring a weltering of experience to your point, you know, decade plus, one all the way back to the floor, then you're combining the best of data with the humans to make the right decision. And that's where you come in. That's where you come in. You you teach people how to recognize when to buy, when to sell, based on looking at this tool and how to evaluate it. Is that right? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 20:32

Right. And the the way the markets react to these orders, they follow a certain pattern, right? So, you know, if if the market moves, so I have again rules, so if the market moves a certain way amount away from this activity, that means it has a much better chance of doing this, like it is doing, versus going higher, right? So again, the big money is not always right, at least not right away, uh, but they're right more than the wrong. So you want to identify these areas, and if it follows a uh process uh pattern, then that's where I'll take, like for instance, I'll take a short. Or if I was long here, meaning I was banking it was going to go up, and then I see this and it fails out of here, and I know it's time to get out. Um, and then the other thing is, you know, these algos, so this is this is what I was talking about, the algo game. You can see here this thing's at full force here. So what you're seeing down here, when nothing's going on in the market, these things it they just run the market. So any trader, and if you go to my uh X account, I posted something on NASDAQ uh a couple weeks ago, the same exact thing, because when nothing's happening, that's when these algos take take control. So this is called the price change algo. This is on bookmap as well as uh their add-on market pulse add-on. So this is when this thing's colors, this is just telling you when the price has moved too too far too fast, and these algos come in and snap it the other way. So when nothing's going on in here, usually around this time of day, when you know New York goes to lunch, Chicago goes to lunch, then it's then it's game game time, right? So for any trader that's even day trader or even day trader, um, you know, you can set this up for a day too, this price change game. That's what I call it. You always wonder, like, why, like, for instance, I'm short right now. You can see my buy orders. I'm still I'm getting tortured here as I'm waiting. You can see it came down price change. That's the that's the uh sell price change, and it rips back up. Now it's price changing this way. See how it's ripping back down. So this explains many, many times why you're getting whip sauce. So like I was saying, if you can't beat them, join them, you could trade this on its own, right? Every time this thing, this thing colors, you this one you sell. When it colors this way, you buy, you sell. So you can play this. I'm too old for that game. I that's what all I did basically back in the day trading off this. But the point is, at least you can know what's going on. And again, you can join them versus getting getting upset and letting them throw you off your game, because that's what they're here to do. They're here to take your money and whipsaw you, right? And another thing this thing does too. I don't know how many times you've heard traders that you had on, or you know, day traders or or or you know, longer-term traders, they they get they get a trade that's moving in their way and they go, say they got in right here at this price, say 4480, right? They sold it. And they're like, okay, well, now I got a profit, so I'm gonna move my stop to break even. So the worst that happens is I break even. These algos know exactly that's what traders do. This is a zero-sum game. They're trying to take your money. They know traders trailer to stop. That's why they do this. They stop you out, they take your order, and then it goes, it goes the way that you thought it was gonna go, right? So again, instead of getting frustrated, you can see the games in here, and that's the key.

SPEAKER_00 23:24

The house always wins, right? When you go to Vegas. So if you're just you know hanging out and having fun, you're gonna get your ass kicked. But if you know what you're doing and you know basic strategy, then uh then the odds shift into your favor. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

That's a good segue into my card counting story. If you can do that on another webinar, but I'm actually banned from Vegas from counting cards, right? So I I turn I turn the tape. This is the same thing, right? You're not right, you're not gonna get banned from the from the from trading if you know what the big money's doing. But I you know, I I got I because a big card card, again, it's a really good story. It's kind of lengthy. So if you want me to tell it at the end of it, I will. But the point is uh I don't do anything that that involving money unless I think I have an edge at it. So I got sick of losing money when I went to Vegas. I literally bought a card counting book, learned how to count cards, went and practiced it, and then I got so good at it, I got banned, right? So yeah, it's like it's like you're playing against the house, but if you have an edge, you you can compete.

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah, you got rain man shit going on.

SPEAKER_01 24:25

I wouldn't I wouldn't go that far. It's all learned, but uh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

But it's a similar skill set, so so I would consider you a savant without being the idiot. You're an everyday Chicago kind of guy. I'm from Chicago too. I was uh born on the South Side, raised on the north. Where Southside where? Southside in the Park Forest. Well, guess what? I grew up five minutes from there. No kidding. I was born in St. James Hospital. So was I.

SPEAKER_01 24:52

South Chicago.

SPEAKER_00 24:59

Wow. I'm I I ended up a North Sider. I graduated a few years uh before you, but uh it's that Chicago vibe that uh we go, we're gonna take a Portello's Itrillian beef over uh any kind of hot cuisine we could find anywhere else.

SPEAKER_01 25:15

Absolutely. And you better not tell me you're a Cubs fan either, because now you're gonna get my get get my ass kicked that way.

SPEAKER_00 25:22

That all said, I love the Vegas analogy. I I love the fact, and it's really a proof of concept that you're banned from the casinos because there's a lot of the same operating principles here of really understanding the system and you're you're gaming the system in terms of transparency and your knowledge that you bring to bear. So I think I think this resonates. I do want to bring up one thing that I'm sure our listeners and viewers are thinking about. We understand that this is futures, this is day trading, and you've you've got these trends that are becoming visible that are on screen right now and that you've described. But we're living in some crazy times right now. For example, the Iran War, Strait of Hormuz, oil, that kind of future, commodities, helium, fertilizer. A lot of people are playing around with that stuff too on a day trading basis, of course. And a lot of this is contingent on almost random factors that are now punching people in the face. So, how do you how do you square off on trends that you see on screen right now with this lack of predictability that we're seeing literally on the front page of the newspaper?

SPEAKER_01 26:34

Well, it's not only on the front page of the newspaper. I actually turned off the squat box. I had it on you every five minutes, you're gonna, there's another headline. It's it's the most trying period I've ever mind you, I I got knocked out of the game. It's more trying than when I got knocked out of the game the first time, as far as for a year and a half, like literally a year and a half, there has been a headline basically every five to ten minutes. Before at first it was the tariffs, right? Every again, 10 minutes. Uh, we're putting a tariff on China, market tanks. Trump comes out the next day. No, we're not, goes back up, right? So now with the Iran stuff, I call it headline ping-pong. It is all day, every single day. And and what's even more egregious with it is the the Trump Foundation came out and said uh they're offering trading firm, it's already started, they're doing it. They offer trading firms a hundred for a hundred thousand dollars a month, they can get the true social posts before they before they hit the wire, right? So it just shows you how manipulated this is. So, you know, as a trader, a retail trader, even if you're trading for a firm, if you don't have this information, you're you're just you're just flying blind. I I can't tell you how many times my trade room can tell you because all I do is bitch about it, but how many times have I had a great trade on, like right now? I'm sure you're looking at I'm short gold. If the heat comes out and says something or a rant says something, this trade could potentially get blown out in in three seconds, right? So it's like you you don't have any control over that, right? So for a longer-term trader, the best you can do is you know, put your put your orders, you know, above above structure type stuff, right? Like so, you know, markets are in one of two states. They're either balancing, they're balancing, or they're trending, right? So this is a definition of a big balance area where it's just buyers and sellers, and when it breaks out of here, somebody's right, something's wrong. So the point is, if you're gonna, you know, say you were a short area at the cell ice, well, I would probably just put my stop above there, above that structure, and just hope you don't get headline, right? And that's all you can do. But this has been the most trying period I've ever I tell my traders, and you know, and I do webinars for bookmap and other uh trading entities, it's like if you're even breaking even right now, you that is a testament. You're doing well because it's again, you you don't know when the headlines are coming. So there's nothing you can do about it.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

Is one potential fix to adjust the granularity, if you will, what I would call the altitude of your activity. If you're responding in real time, then it's gonna get crazy, just like you described, because of the unpredictability of it. But if you trend a little bit backward, you shift focus, let's say, from minute to minute, hour to hour, even day to day, and look at this maybe week to week, and then figure even strategically that frankly Iran has us in a vice grip now as far as the straight goes. Uh maybe look at at what would be considered a medium-term trend and then adjust accordingly. Is that is that feasible or is that already out of your range, your wheelhouse of being more responsive in the moment?

SPEAKER_01 29:34

Yeah, it's out of my range, and I don't think it's possible anyway, because again, it's literally, I call it Groundhog Day, every day. Like it's the same exact headlines every single day. And you don't know, are we real, is there a deal coming? Is the deal real? I mean, literally the same headlines, and it doesn't matter. These, these, this is this is why you get crushed because it's the same headline for literally five months, right? We made it, we have a deal, we don't have a deal. They can't have nuclear weapons, blah, blah, blah. Right. So it's like these algo reading headlines, they don't they don't decipher. They see certain keywords, they fire in orders, you're done, right? So yeah, I mean, I I don't know what trend what trend you see, right? So it's like, yeah, here's crew, right? So yeah, when when we had the deal for the 88th time here, right? It went from crew went from went from you know 95 all the way down here to 75. And then now, you know, I you know the war was gonna be done within a month, and then it wasn't, and then it was, and then now it's not, and now here again. So I don't know how I don't know how you predict what's gonna happen next. You know, I don't care. So yeah, this is in the downtrend, and guys love to draw you know channels and stuff, but again, if they come out and say there's no deal, and say Iran bombs a ship or something, the thing's gonna go like that. So yeah, that's not predictable. You just got to put in your trades. What you can do, and I'm not not an options expert, I'm getting better at it because the uh that we haven't talked about the options flow in these markets. That's the number one game. Talk about uh we talked about AI, the options flow, the zero date dexpiration game is by far the biggest driver of the markets now. 90% of the trade is is these uh these guys that come in and load up the options dealers, and and the options dealers have to come in the market, whether it be individual stocks or futures, and that's how they have to hedge themselves. But I digress. What I was saying is you can there are option strategies. You if you you know, say you have a uh stock position on a portfolio line, you can put on certain options to protect yourself if you get the rips, where you won't get stopped out, right? You can buy like an option four months from now to protect yourself, where if it does rip up, you're not just stopped out of the trade, and then eventually it will come back, you're hoping. But yeah, you can protect yourself. But you know, me as a day trader, I'm trading futures, I don't I don't play the options game yet. I'm trusting, I'm looking at it because it's it's it's been so ridiculous with the headlines and stuff, but you can protect yourself is what I'm getting at.

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Yeah, and I'm assuming the options game, you could ride the wave up and down and down and up. And then when you smack AI into it and you got agentic technology, which is basically pre-programming your ceiling and your bottom, then uh I'm sure a lot of people are making a lot of money by basically just putting a prompt into their ClaudeBot and go going having a lunch in the Bahamas because it's just kind of cranking along. Right.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Yeah, or or saying please read the headline, next headline, and throw the order in for me. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

I I I want to bring up just a couple points. One is I'm sensing that the markets are getting a little bit inured to this. So when we had the liberation day for the tariffs, the markets went absolutely batshit crazy. 10% up 10%. Literally like $2 trillion in volatility over a week. It was unbelievable. There's no precedent for that, not even COVID. But then with the tariffs, like he was just making it up as he went along. He's like popping an Adderall and having a cheeseburger in this country, that country, this business, that business, that percentage, that percentage. The markets were like, this is just crazy time. And then they were just operating as if you know we're getting hit with these daily headlines, but the overall macro state is uncertainty, and then let's just go with it.

SPEAKER_01 33:25

Yeah, again, I mean that you know, you hear all these uh you know, money managers uh or you know, people that are that trade longer term, a lot of them will say, you know, just go into cash, right? It's like just don't even don't even put yourself in front of this stuff, just wait. But it's like, well, how long do you wait? Right? It's like if you go back to the tariffs, we're talking almost two years now, it's been in incessant headlines every single day. So it's like all I need to put to stay in cash. I mean, and if you stay in cash, you've miss this entire rally. I mean, we and this is bizarre world too, right? It's like you'd think the market wouldn't rip to new highs like this, right? This is the mini SP, uh, during a war, right? So it's like, how do you right? So if you're on the sideline, you're like, damn it, why did I why did I get on the sideline? So it's like, I I don't know the answer, you know, but it's been brutal, put it that way.

SPEAKER_00 34:14

The wave, either short-term, medium, or long. And one other thing you brought up that just seems to be kind of a scoop for me, and I just want to dig in at least for a few seconds, is you're mentioning that truth social, you could get a heads up if you pay up on uh on a tweet. I have not read that or seen that. Could you share what that experience is like from your end?

SPEAKER_01 34:38

Well, I I don't have the experience because I'm not paying for it, but I'll uh let me see if I can find here. Um let's see.

SPEAKER_00 34:46

Because this this is big this would be big news, and I'm assuming you know it's happening, but but this is scandalous.

SPEAKER_01 34:54

This is right, this is right out of CNBC. You're like you're looking at Rogue Media pitched a hundred thousand monthly feed for the fastest feed for U.S. presidents' post sources say, and it's our it's already.

SPEAKER_00 35:05

I haven't seen this. This is this is amazing.

SPEAKER_01 35:08

Yeah, so it's amazing and it's beyond maddening, right? So listen, somebody always has the information. For instance, right before the number came out today, right before the uh CPI came out, the market starts ripping off the page. Somebody, or like when we're talking about icebergs, I can't tell you how many times that literally three minutes before a number, you'll see like this this happened the last uh, I think it was uh the Fed the Fed hike. All of a sudden, 3,000 e-mini SP buy i buy icebergs came into market. And I always call it the lucky guess, right? Lo and behold, you can look at my XV. I actually I actually posted it on my XV, go look at it before this last time. The market rips off the page, right? So somebody always has it. Um, so at least at least they're being transparent, like, hey, we'll we'll we'll give you the information. You gotta pay us. At least it's transparent because somebody always always has the information.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

But yeah, this is egregious. It's egregious conflict of interest that that goes into overt corruption because it's complete market manipulation uh to be had for for the money, right? Just we'll we'll give you a heads up with the guy who's calling the shots. Many of these shots completely ad hoc, completely chaotic. And at this point, what the hell's the strategy? I in no in no way do I mean to be political, we're just talking about the nuts and bolts of investment, finance, and overall fintech strategy, right?

SPEAKER_01 36:27

Yeah, I mean, again, it it's hard to explain, um, especially because it's the most powerful man in the world that whatever comes out of his mouth is gonna it's gonna affect the market, right? So it's like you know, I don't want to be political either. Um, but yeah, it's it's it's ridiculous that this is even again, at least they're transparent. I mean, most of the time it's somebody knows and and they're they're jumping in the market anyway, that and they're not broadcasting. At least they're letting you know, hey, here we'll give you the information, you gotta pay us 100 grand. So yeah, I mean, that doesn't, it's still it's still ridiculous. I mean, again, it just shows you how the the small, the little guy just has, you know, unless you're like you actually have informed information like I'm trying to show people, like you have no chance. Like unless you got 100 grand a month to pay for these tweets. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_00 37:15

So tell tell us a little bit about what you offer, how you offer, how you share your expertise in terms of doing what you do. You gave us a nice demo here using Bookmap. I'm assuming you use it hands-on in your live rooms that you give twice a day, if I got that right. And you got your your website where you've got uh services, seminars, you got your YouTube channel. Can you give us a world tour of Scott Pulsini? I was always gonna say Pulcini. Remember Poochies? We had Poochies, hot dogs. Pulcini is the right way to say it in uh Italian.

SPEAKER_01 37:54

In the real Italian, but anyway, uh which you know many of them from Park Forest, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

For sure. Give us a world tour, Scott, for people who who who like what they're hearing and seeing and and want some of your expertise.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Yeah, so uh, you know, I I do this every day for myself and I also teach people. So again, I was you know, when I was doing these webinars for Bookmap, I kept getting these calls to start my own trade room because people want to learn how I visualize the markets and traded it. So I have my own live trade room, it's on Discord, and then I get on, do a Zoom call twice a day, hour and a half in the morning, and usually an hour in the afternoon. If there's something going on, I'll get on and trade live, just exactly like I was showing with the gold trade, right? So that's that's what I show and teach traders how to do it. Um, but it does get chaotic. I mean, and I do a live uh 3-1 on for bookmap.com on Thursdays at 9 a.m. Central, if you want to go check it out, it's exactly what I do for my room, right? So even when people get on there, if they don't know what I'm showing, they're it they they say it's like drinking from a fire hose, right? So because I'm trading multiple markets live, multiple strategies. So if you don't know what you're looking at, it's gonna the learning curve is pretty steep, right? So that's why I made these courses. So I have three distinct courses, the stopped iceberg indicator course, and I have the trading strategies, and this is just where I'm looking for my my important areas where I'm looking for these iceberg events. Then we have another trade, it's more of a scalp trade where you're in and out where the markets come back to these volume events, like I was showing you. Uh, and then I have mentoring, I do one-on-one mentoring for for traders there, and then um obviously YouTube and testimonials and stuff like that. But yeah, I do this, uh, I do this every day, and I'm sitting here all day trading anyway. It's why not share my wealth. I take pride in it one because I like educating, because one, it keeps me grounded because I lose my mind if I'm just sitting here by myself. I already talked to myself as it is, so I might as well talk talk to it talk to the to a room and and teach them what I'm doing. Um but I like educating because I like because it's maddening, right? Like showing you the $100,000 a month for the tweets or watching this buy ice coming right for the number. So I I I thoroughly enjoy because you gotta remember, I got knocked out of the game. So I I buy the big money, right? So it's like with that that have these algos, these big firms. So I thoroughly enjoy teaching traders the game and teaching them you can compete with the with these manipulators that are trying to take your money. So that that that's that's you know my main driver of the education. I just love teaching people what you know kind of knocked me out of the game and how to compete.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

I like your uh individualistic, almost GameStop kind of approach, which is empower the individual. We've got these institutional players, many as we've seen are we could fairly say are corrupt in the sense of throwing their muscle around, throwing their weight around, right? And if you're an individual trader, you've got minimal influence in a macro sense. But if you're smart and if you use the right tool and if you've got the right insights, then you can gain an advantage to maximize your own self-interest in a world where the big heavies are just increasingly dominating and influencing the playing field.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

Right, exactly. And that that's the other thing, too. Like you may wonder, well, these icebergs are are hidden orders in the order book. Well, then how can we see them? Well, I'm a firm believer. Uh so the CME, that's the largest uh exchange in the world, uh futures exchange in the world. They they came out with this information in 2017, 2016. You can go out, you can just Google CME MBO data, that's this enhanced data. You may be, like I said, you may be saying, well, why would they why would the CME show the big money? Because the big money is their main driver, right? That's their they're making their income from the all the orders the big monies are you know off the commission. So it's like, why would they show the orders? I'm this is just my opinion. I've had extensive dealing with the CME back in the day with some other manipulation games that I thought was going on with one of the firms. But the point is, I kind of know how they think. Um, and I I'm convinced that they started to show this information to give the retail trader a chance because if the retail trader is not in here, it's shark versus shark. It's big firm versus big firm, right? There's no fish in here. So the retail trader are the fish. So I've I because I can guarantee you that the big the big banks and stuff went to the CME and said, Why are you showing our where our orders are transacting? And I and that again, this is all my opinion, I don't know for sure, but I can imagine CME saying, well, you know, you got to make a decision. Do you want to do you want the traders, the retail traders to see this, but you get to take their money, or do you want to go firm versus firm and have a much slimmer chance to make money, right? So that's what I think happened. Regardless, I don't care why they're showing it. It's been around for nine years, and it's an edge that's literally been working for nine years. So remember, like I said, my edge lasted for three years, right? And I was done. This it's a testament to how powerful this is. It works as well today as it did nine years ago.

SPEAKER_00 42:39

And it was supercharged by COVID because you had unprecedented retail investment hit hit the boards, right? You had trillions coming in from the private investor, and then you've got these added layers of technology, including book map that you use, and now we're rolling into AI as well. So this idea of the retail investor, the individual, and their clout in aggregate is significant. And to your point also, it's a counterforce to get some equilibrium with the huge institutional players that'll basically just knuckle each other out if given given what they want.

SPEAKER_01 43:20

Right. Yeah, I think you're referring more to the stock stock side, the GameStop uh you know, push the market up against all the short that you know, the those lot there's a Netflix special on it, right? How the how they cost so many hedge funds, they blew them out, the retail traders join forces. Well, this is a way for the retail traders to join forces on in the future on the future side. Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 43:40

That that's that's the analogy that I was drawing between between the between the equity side and then this.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

Right. It feels good though, right? It feels good to see what they're doing. It feels good to see the games. I mean, like, I know what you're doing. All right, I'm I'm I'm in, I'll join you. Or if you're big enough, you can push it against them, things like that, like the GameStop game. But um, but yeah, it it it it Was awesome to see that you you know you started the webinar, the podcast talking about the little guy, right? Or our comeback, right? It's good to see the little guy making a comeback and figuring out a way to gain the system to kind of shove it up. The big money's you know what.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

What's next for you? Because, like you mentioned, you you've been going through your own career cycle. So you were you were a newbie, you got your ass kicked. You learned learned the tools of the trade within a specialty that you were particularly adept at, which is the futures and the day trading. You became a superstar, the technology changed out from under you, you were out on the street, then the technology changed again, and now you're back. So, what lessons have you learned? What are you applying for your own future in futures? And what do you see coming in a way that you're aware of and that you want to tap into and you want to really alert people like us uh to be to be cautious of and also to be hopeful for?

SPEAKER_01 45:04

Yeah, well, I mean, what I'm showing you here is any trader should be hopeful when they they see that this kind of information is available, right? I mean, that that's first and foremost. Um, you know, what I've learned over the years is one, like we talked about, no edge is always so I I was just mentioning a little bit ago, like these this option game is taking over. So I had I've had to learn to monitor this options flow, and I teach that as well now, that I didn't even I didn't even pay attention to it three, four years ago, right? So now the zero day to expiration game is taking over. So you've got to be ready to adapt your trading, uh, just like in real life, like I was talking about. So that the number one thing is I don't care how well I do at this, it it can change in a heartbeat. Be ready to, and again, the AI is taking over. Who knows what what I'm gonna start seeing there? And you gotta be ready to change. Two is you've gotta you gotta respect your your loss limits for the day or for the month or whatever you decide and and not violate them. So I like I was talking about before, I had back when I was printing money, you know, I was making 50 grand a day, my loss limit was 100 grand with my trading firm. I had two different days where I allowed myself and my firm allowed me to lose $700,000 in minutes, right? And this was two days a month apart, which is even more embarrassing, though it happened twice. But the point is, it's like I wasn't respecting my loss limit because I thought you know I was bigger than the game. And if I just my if I just were to stop myself with the hundred grand both of those days, I have an I would have an extra 1.2 million dollars to my name, right? So you've got to, you've got to, as a trader, long-term or short term, you've got to be able to say, this is not working, there's always another day, right? And you if you can't, you're you're in the wrong business. But um those are the main lessons I learned. Just never take anything for granted, never think you figured it out. Always be willing to adapt and learn new things that that are coming because these markets are adapting and they're gonna adapt without you if you don't.

SPEAKER_00 46:47

Risk mitigation is a tough one because your perspective keeps changing. If you're if you're cranking and your ceiling gets higher, then there's a natural tendency for your for your loss to get lower as well. And then you lose perspective. And this is true for for a lot of the players. I mean, even FTX, Bankman Fried. It was really a problem in overextension. He's sitting there in the clink right now, shaking his head, because the entire crypto market is flipped on its head. It's now legit. And then, frankly, again, going back to our fearless leader in the White House, you've got crypto crossover there with uh with the Liberty folks. So it's really a matter of self-control at the end of the day, right? Which is which is knowing when to stop. Just just hold yourself back, stick to your limits, cut your losses, and not be so frankly excited and even greedy in a market that's so kinetic.

SPEAKER_01 47:49

Right. I mean, the best way to do that, again, I always love the quote from Mike Tyson, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth, right? So it's like you can't wait till until you're under the gun and you're you're we call it going on tilt, right? Those days that I lost all that money, I was full tilt. I I woke up the next day and I I literally said two different times, by the way, which is even more, like I said, more embarrassing. But I wake up and say, Who was that person? Like, I don't even know who that was. Like, why would I let that happen? When you're you know in any kind of emotional anyone could attest to this, whether you've been in an argument or in a sporting event or whatever, when you get mad, like just things change. So you have to protect yourself because you're you're gonna have a day or a time period where you're on tilt. So you got to set it up with your trading firm. You cut me off if I hit this amount for a day or for you know, if you're longer term for whatever time period or whatever amount you say, they they liquidate you, and that's it. You can't you cannot make decisions, rational decisions, when you're on tilt. You just cannot do it. You may think you're gonna be able to do it, but again, when you get punched in the mouth, the plan goes out the window. So uh that's the best advice I can, that's the only advice I can get in that because you other than that, you know, you may think you have ultimate self-control, but I'm telling you, if you lose a money that's outside your comfort range, you you're not gonna have self-control. I can almost guarantee it.

SPEAKER_00 49:06

The unforced error, you double, you triple down when you fuck up because your ego is at stake. And it's also one more trade, one more bet, and it'll all be right. And that's how you sink yourself all the way deep.

SPEAKER_01 49:21

Right. Well, a lot of times it's what they call negative reinforcement, too. So that's why I got to that point where I lost that money because there were many, many, many days that I lost 100 grand. I was down 150, 200, and they let me go and I make it all back, right? Same with traders, right? There's times where they just keep doubling down, doubling up, market flips. Oh, look at that. I thought I was gonna lose, lose five grand today, and I made 10, right? So you it's called negative reinforcement. And then one of the times you do it, you lose 50, right? So it's like you just gotta realize that's what happens in markets, and there's things that you're not gonna foresee. Just stop trading. There's always another day.

SPEAKER_00 49:54

My father's originally from Budapest, and he had a childhood friend who did well for himself. They independently emigrated, and that's how I got my ass to Chicago through my father's friend, who then created a bridgehead, you know, in Chicago. And he was a successful CPA, accountant, real estate. He he really did well for himself, and he pretty much blew his entire nut within uh within a month or so doing futures, doing day trading back in the the 90s. So it's a lesson that's hard to learn. It it goes all the way back to humans in the cave. When when you're winning, you got an attitude, you feel invincible, but you gotta be cautious and you gotta hold back your own ego because you know you're gonna take the punch and how you react to it is is important. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 50:50

That that's the name of the game. And again, it goes for life as well. So you gotta, when things are going well. I just you know, I just heard a quote the other day, it couldn't be more true. It's like people only only change when things are are going terrible for them. No one changes when things are going great, right? So it's like because you think you got it, right? So it's like, yeah, you gotta you gotta keep in perspective in trading and in life. Like, you know, always be ready to adapt and don't ever think that you're there because it could be the rug could be pulled at any minute.

SPEAKER_00 51:17

None of us are invincible. And another great quote is that your point of greatest vulnerability corresponds to the moment of your greatest victory. Like you're on top of the hill, and then you feel like you can do no wrong, and then boom. So thanks for these words of wisdom, Mr. Scott Pool Seney. Sure, fellow Chicago dude, turning us on to bookmap.com. I'm gonna have your website URL in the description as well. You're you're live twice a day, you give classes, you're on YouTube, and you make uh the tools of the trade and decades of experience available to individual retail, we call them retail investors in the futures day trading market. And thank you, sir, for your service to uh to people who just want to do their thing and and and provide that hedge against the machine, right? The huge institutions who are out just to line their own pockets, usually at our expense.

SPEAKER_02 52:25

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 52:26

Thanks so much. Take care. And I'd love to follow up in six months a year, uh, see if the dust settles or if it gets even more insane out there with headline news, you know, laying waste to the markets.

SPEAKER_01 52:42

Yeah, we get back on, I'll tell my uh blackjack car counting story too.

SPEAKER_00 52:46

Oh no, tell us now, actually. We got time. This would be a great uh, you know, like you know, outtake moments. Go for it.

SPEAKER_01 52:52

It's I'll try to I'll try to squeeze it in. So again, I was um, you know, I had gone to to Vegas for the umpteen time back when I was in college. Um, I just graduated and went with a bunch of buddies. I brought like a thousand bucks, right? Which was like 10,000 back then. Of course, lose all my money the very first night, literally the very first night. Betting on roulette, like, because there was like 15 blacks in a row thinking a red should come, and I kept doubling down, talking about double down, lost all my money, right? So borrowing money from my buddies the rest of the trip, coming home, coming flying back to Chicago, and literally didn't have a one dollar in my pocket. There were no debit cards back then. I didn't have a credit card, I didn't have a dollar. So my buddy, I'm I'm sitting in the gift shop and I see this uh this book. I'm walking through the gift shop and I see this book called Knockout Blackjack. It looked like a joke. There's blacks and gloves on the on the on the cover of it. So I started thumbing through and it's how to count cards. So I walk up, I'm like, you know what? I'm not coming back to the city unless I have an ad. I'm so sick of throwing my money away and feeling like this every time I leave, right? So I go up to the counter. My buddy that lent me lent me like 800 bucks on the trip. Throw the book on the counter. Will you buy me that just 13 bucks? He's like, he's like, I'm not, I'm not buying you that book. I'm like, dude, just buy me. I already owe you 800. What's another 13 bucks, right? So he's like, he tells the cashier, he's like, just yeah, put the book in my dad. So he so he pays for it. I read it on the way home on the on the flight home. And I start, you know, I start going to the casino back then, if you remember, it was just on the river, right? We call it the river boats. It was uh, it was the or it had to be on a waterway, so it was the Illinois-Indiana border. So I started going and practicing bare metal, the tiniest amount, the uh table minimum. So I would go with play the $10 tables, and the increments would go if the car card counting or the count got in your favor, you'd go up to 10 times your normal bet. So people don't understand with card counting. One, uh, it's not like this just free money fest. It's like a grind, right? And there's actually a Netflix special on that. Watch that thing. That is exactly 100% accurate. This guy went across the country going to all these all these little casinos. It's it's it's very it's a grind, right? But the story actually wasn't a grind. So the thing is when you learn to do it, it's not just counting cards. You got to deal with the all all the uh all the extra things that are going on, right? So you're dealing with the idiots at the table, you're dealing with the the dealer, you're dealing with the pit boss, the waitress, you got all the and you got to play the correct hands too, and count the cards. So it takes practice, right? So I started again, I'm not a savant. I just I just worked at it, right? So started making money doing it relatively tiny, but I knew it worked, right? So then fast forward, this was like right when I started trading too. I wasn't making any money. So I finally started making a little money, and the guy, remember, I said I bet that I was gonna be a better trader than him or the top trader. I didn't really know him at the time. His name was the big cheese, right? And he had just he was the top trader the year before. Uh this was 2002-ish. So I and he it was before I took off. So he's walking out one summer day. I was just like a day like today, the markets were dead, just like they are right now. And he's like, uh, hey, he's like, uh, I heard you know how to count cards. I didn't really know this guy, but it got around the firm that I, you know, I was making money relatively uh big money, you know, decent amount of money. So he goes, uh he goes, I heard you how you you know how to count cards. I'm like, yeah, I've been doing it. I go, I've been doing it tiny, but it works. He's like, all right, let's go to the boat. I'm like, all right, I like the markets are dead. He goes, how much should we bring each? I'm like, I don't know. I oh, you know, works when I bring a thousand. He's like, Let's see, bring 10,000. So I knew it worked, right? It works for it for works with a thousand, it worked with 10,000. I'm like, okay. So then we stop on a at a bar on the way to the Indiana Casino. There's the horseshoe at the time, and uh, we worked out a plan on how you know wherever I put my chip in the circle would signify to him. So I would sit at first base. We didn't know each other. He was at he was at shortstop. And wherever I put my chip in the in the in the circle would signify the increments to bet, right? So we went there, he's playing two hands at $200 a piece, and then if the count got high, we go up 10 up to 10 times that. Uh when I say high, meaning a lot of face cards are coming out, that's where he graduates, right? So we were going from 200 to 2,000. So we go the very first day, we go, and he was a perfect candidate for it too, because he was a loose cannon. He was always there anyway. He was always at the at the casino gambling. They would never think he was counting cards, right? So it was perfect. We go the very first day, uh, made $91,000 the very first time we went, right? So of course we're walking out three in the morning. He's like, this is incredible. We got to come back tomorrow. So I'm like, sure, let's go. So we go back the very next day, same exact table. I'm at first, he's at shortstop, we don't know each other. Take him for $112,000 the next day. So, you know, take him for over $200,000 in two days, and we thought it was just the greatest thing, you know, like this is easy money, right? So then we started going all the time. Then we're like, well, we got we gotta start going to other casinos so they don't figure it out, right? So we started going, we never had that kind of success. Like we make 20 grand, lose 30 grand, make 20, lose 20. So then one day we're sitting at Harrow's, it was when they were in the little what they were little back then in uh Gary, Indiana. And we're sitting there playing the same game. Pit boss comes up to me, and again, I'm afraid I'm playing flat hands, I'm not up at my best, so they don't they're not alerted that I'm counting cards. And the guy comes up to me, the pit boss comes up to me and goes, You can't play blackjack here anymore. I'm like, and I play dumb. I'm like, what are you talking about? He's like, sir, can't play blackjack. And I just continue to play dumb. His exact words to me were, sir, you're welcome to play the other carnival games here, but you can't play blackjack. And I'm like, okay, fine. I grab my chips to get up and he goes, Oh, you can take your friend with you too. So they knew, right? They knew the game. So then that jackass puts my name in the system. So I go to Mirage. Three months later, I'm at the Mirage in uh in uh Vegas. Pip off here I'm down three grand. So remember I told you it's like a grind, it does, it's not just free money. Like you gotta you gotta withstand the bad streaks and stuff. Pip boss comes this time. I'm by myself. He comes up to me, he goes, uh, can't play at blackjack anymore, sir. And I'm like, what do you? I played down there too. He's like, his exact words there. Your play's too strong for us. I said, I'm down $3,000. Like, what are you talking about? He's like, sir, can't play in Vegas, you don't mess around, right? It's like I don't think they do the backrooms anymore where they give the beatings, but I don't want to find out, right? So I'm like, all right, I'm out of here. I go straight to the hard rock. I'm down 700. I'm there for like 10 minutes. Pit boss comes up to me. If you ever set foot in this casino again, we'll have you arrested. So after that, because it's a private establishment. If they don't like the shirt you're wearing, they can kick you out, right? So after that, no matter where I would go, I'd be sitting there for 10 minutes, you're out, you're out, you're out. Um, so you know, I nowadays I'm not, you know, back then I was a big trader, big player, but nowadays I can usually get away with going to a casino and not being flagged, especially if I don't show my ID. But nowadays, you know, they have the facial recognition and they count right with you. If they have any inkling you're counting, they just turn on the computer. If you up your bet, when the computer says you should up your bet, they know you're counting, right? So that's another example of the the fix, right? So it's like it's okay for them to do it to you, they know they have the odds against you, but the minute you turn the table on them, oh you can't play here anymore, right? So it's like so another great story, though. And I I at least am up money in my lifetime at the casinos.

SPEAKER_00 59:50

I love it. I love it. It's like the Scorsese movie come to life as well.

SPEAKER_01 59:56

Right.

SPEAKER_00 59:56

And all those movies came out after that, the blackjack movies, like the 21st movies, the card counting uh movies, books, uh plays. I find it fascinating. Also, what's interesting is that the casinos are ostensibly competing with each other. It's a zero-sum game, but they obviously pool their lists of the counters. Oh, yeah. Right before the tech. Yeah, they had they had the list, the 86 card counter lists. You were on it. So it didn't matter if you're at one casino, one city, they knew who the hell you were. Didn't even matter if you had your partner with you or not. You were just dead meat walking in the door. Didn't matter if you just lost a grand out of here.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:39

Yeah, you're out. They know. They know if you sit there long enough, you're gonna take them. So we don't we don't want to see that. We we can't have you beat us like we do to everybody else, right? So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:48

And the other point you make is AI. The casinos are plugged in, they're monitoring the games and they're running a statistical analysis based on how you're doing, and then they could evaluate that the statistical analysis is revealing, well, hey, you got an edge. And to your point, the the edge is always ours, the house always wins.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

Yep, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:11

They do not let the clients though is badass, though. That's great, and now you're putting it to good use in a way where you can not just get away with it, but be successful at it, just by looking at the markets with with tools that can give you some of that same level of transparency and analytics.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:28

Exactly. Exactly. So I'm just I'm doing the same thing I do at the card cutting table.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:33

Only now they they they let you do it. And uh and and that, ladies and gentlemen, is is a good thing. Thanks again, Scott. It was wonderful. And uh best wishes and good luck to you in this crazy, crazy environment. Let's just hope it chills out a little bit because we're all going nuts.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:52

Please.