Podcast 54. Day Trading Ins and Outs with Rick Mazur

Rick Mazur:
0:00

If you have a plan and you know the statistical probabilities that I'm going to take these trades and I'm going to these are the exalt results I expect. It's not gambling, it's, you know, it's there. But if you're just going in blindly which unfortunately, it's sad to say, but many people do, then you're gambling, and you're just gonna lose your money.

Average Joe Finances:
0:58

If you're watching this on YouTube, make sure you smash that like button and click subscribe. For those of you listening on a podcast platform, be sure to subscribe on whatever platform that is, and leave us a rating if you can. The more likes ratings and subscriptions that we get, the more we can spread the message and grow our community. So we also have a free Facebook group. It's called the Average Joe Finances network. Check us out, join the group, join the community, ask questions, and become a part of the team. All of our other social media accounts are listed in our flow page, and we have them in the video or podcast description below. Hey, how's it going, everybody? So today, our guest is Rick maser, and he's a financial trader, investor, podcast, host and mentor. He also helps people become better and more knowledgeable in the trading space. Rick is an entrepreneur owning his first business as a teenager, and then starting a tech company focusing on internet solutions back in the mid 90s. Basically, before the internet was a thing, so Rick is also a real estate investor, a husband and a father to two children. He started investing almost 25 years ago first with stocks. He then experimented with options in forex all part time as more of a hobby. When he founded the proper trading mentors combined with a replicable processes that work day in and day out. With a high probability of success, he turned the trading dream into reality. Rick currently has a mix of long term stock stocks consisting of directional plays, dividends, staples, and multi sector index funds. On the option side, he utilizes medium term options positions capitalizing on index volatility. For short term day trading, Rick trades the futures market, which are typically closed by the end of the day. So he grew up and spent most of his life on or around the Chicagoland area in Illinois. He currently resides in Naples, Florida, opting, opting to be closer to family warmer weather and the beach. So Rick, that's awesome. I also prefer warmer weather, which is why I live in Hawaii. But hey, welcome to the show. Absolutely. Happy to have you on. How you doing Mike? Graham. I'm doing good. I'm doing good. So I gave a little bit of a background on you. But the first thing I'd like to talk about on every episode is to have you maybe share a little bit about your story. If you can get a little more detailed about what I just discussed about your background,

Rick Mazur:
3:20

like, like I said, I grew up in like the BIOS that I grew up in the Chicagoland area, a middle class, solid middle class family, and it was pretty good. I had no real complaints. We weren't rich. We weren't poor, three meals on the table every day. But, you know, I got what I needed. That, you know, I didn't have a whole lot but I got what I needed. parents got divorced when I was around eight, and it's just me and my mom. And you know, we just you know, went for it didn't have a lot of money. So I knew I kind of had to make something of myself it was kind of like a no one's gonna, no one's gonna give it to me, I got to kind of earn it. And I discovered technology back back in the early to mid 90s bulletin board systems and things like that started an internet company. And basically, like I said, before the internet was, was there American line if some folks might remember that was around and we started an ISP, and it just kind of grew from there. So I did that for a long time. But I was always interested in trading. I always did stocks and different different forms of trading didn't really know what I was doing. But you know, you don't know what you don't know. And I just decided that once once I sold the tech company, I just decided, Hey, I'm gonna go for this and try to not make it a hobby anymore. Make it kind of a full time thing. And here Here we are. Awesome. Thank

Average Joe Finances:
4:50

you for that. That's uh, that's that's pretty cool man. You know, especially starting up an ISP back in the 90s back when you know, you had to have the dial up. The internet and you got all excited once it did all that weird loading noise. And you heard the famous line, you've got mail. Now I wish the mail would just slow down.

Rick Mazur:
5:09

Oh, yeah, we had bank, some modems, banks, the servers. I can't even remember so so long ago, but it was it was definitely you know, you had a, you had a modem ratio of people that would dial in because it was different. Now it's broadband, it's completely different thing, because it's just one big fat pipe. But you had to literally monitor, especially during primetime, who was logging in and stuff like that. And what we found out really was and the same thing held true for America Online, the money was never really in the access part piece. It was in the it was in the media piece in the in the advertising piece. So America Online, I think at one point had, I could be wrong, but around 20 million subscribers, and they literally I think we're losing money or breaking even on their dial up access. But they had 20 million eyeballs, or whatever the number was, so they were making a killing on the advertising side. And when I kind of saw that, I was like, Well, I'm not going to get to that many subscribers. So you know, we just kind of ditched the we did stitch the dial of access and all that and went more into the web hosting and consulting and things like that. But no, it was fun times. And nobody knew anything back then there was no college, there was no books and Barnes and Noble about it. It was just kind of like, you get a machine and you start digging in and you know, geeking out on it a little bit and go into town. And you know, it worked out like I said, so I have no regrets. I like technology anyway. So

Average Joe Finances:
6:35

yeah, all that stuff was brand new, a whole lot of firsts happening back then. So correct. Yeah. All for sure. Okay, so from there, you got into into investing, right? So I want to talk a little bit about that. But the first thing I want to ask you is about you, you personally, like what are you doing right now in your journey to or in financial freedom.

Rick Mazur:
6:57

I do believe in diversity. But I want to preface that, I think that if you if you have an edge in something, and I want to, we have to distinguish between active investing and kind of passive investing, if you're doing just, you know, I'm gonna buy Amazon and I'm gonna hold it for 10 years, or Bitcoin or whatever you're doing, where you're just fine and leaving it. I think you need to diversify longer term things. If you're short term trading, I think you just have to have an edge with something that works and don't try to spread it around. So I do have a lot of different things. I have real estate I have, like I said, long term stocks, I do medium term options. I do day trading. You know, everything in that regard. I own another business. So yeah, just kind of trying to spread it out where it makes sense. And, you know, build a nice little nest egg for the future retirement stuff. So I do believe that everything should be kind of spread

Average Joe Finances:
7:55

out. Right on that's, that's great. Yeah, diversification is key. Especially if it's, you know, if you put all your eggs into one basket, and then you drop the basket, you got a whole lot of cracked eggs, and you got to use it like right now. So right when you got it, you got to pick all the shells out, it gets pretty rough.

Rick Mazur:
8:10

And I think it's different for different people to you know, some people have, you know, you can have, you can have a 401k you can have a Roth, there's different things you can do with those instruments, those different instruments as well. So that might not apply for different things apply for different people, you know,

Average Joe Finances:
8:28

so how long have you been doing this? I know you had the the the tech company back in the mid 90s. So how long have you been investing? Well, I

Rick Mazur:
8:36

started investing actually, again, just playing around, uh, right around 99. Again, just here in there, because I was running the business and I didn't have time to sit there and three, four hours a day and mess around with it. I just started buying stocks. And you know, I didn't know what I didn't know, like I said, I bought a year 2000 stock, the y2k stocks. And that was back in 99. Thinking that there was a y2k problem and you know, everybody was going to be a millionaire off buying my first stock and it went to zero basically when there was no problem. So I've been doing the stocks off and on, but I didn't seriously get into it probably until probably about 1110 1112 years ago, that's when I really started getting into it. And I started more with I didn't really like stocks as much just for longer term things. I like stocks, but I wouldn't I didn't really like the idea of day trading stock. And I didn't really know much about futures at the time. So I went into options and did options and didn't do good at that either, because I again, didn't know what I was doing. And it wasn't until I met my futures mentor for futures trading, who really taught me about trading. And then I applied those same skills to the other the other things like options and stuff like that, and you That's when I kind of just started putting it all together. So I would say 1012 years ago,

Average Joe Finances:
10:04

seriously, okay, right on. So for me personally, like I kind of just dabble a little bit. And in the stock market, I have like some play money that I have in there. It's, you know, minus my retirement account, my Roth the Thrift Savings Plan that I have. And then I have my separate brokerage account that I just I, like I said, I play around with it. I'm pretty happy with it. Right now it's sitting at two, it's up 20% for the year. So I think I'm doing something right. But I've always been interested in in the folks that really sat down and got into day trading. Because that's one of those things, you really got to sit there and really pay attention. There's a lot of variables you have to look at. And keep in mind. So I want to talk a little bit about that. So if you could, if somebody was interested in day trading, where should they start?

Rick Mazur:
10:52

There's two main factors that are that people need to consider. Number one, you have to know what you're doing, which is, you know, we could talk for three hours on that. And really, it depends on what your bank role is, how much do you How much are we talking about, you know, do I have$5,000, in money lying around? Do I have $20,000 of money lying around. And the reason I say that is, is because if you have a $5,000 account, and I'm just throwing numbers out, for example, you're not going to do too much with options. It be at least I wouldn't anyway, because you're just buying calls or buying puts, which is just kind of a leveraged way to buy stock. And, you know, you just is there's too many variables with options to make money. There's and there's and there's rules to with a small account, there's pattern day trading rules, and different things like that. So if I had a $5,000 account, I would start with futures for sure. If I had a bigger account, and I didn't have a lot of time to spend, because it was day trading, where you have to literally stare at the screen, like every minute, every second, you know, you're staring at it for 234 hours. And then there's day trading where you might have multiple positions on, but you're setting alerts, and you're not really looking at things until they occur and you can be doing other stuff. In the meantime, options work typically better with that. So start with a good education and determine what your what your vehicles will be that you'll trade based on the dollar amount that you have. That would be you know, my and there's things places that you can go to get resources like that we have some some community where you can kind of, you know, get information and help on that as well and just kind of points you in the right direction. Awesome. Awesome.

Average Joe Finances:
12:32

So speaking of vehicles, right, so if you were more into like longer term duration type of investing, what what vehicles for, you know, what you use to structure a portfolio and learn how to manage it yourself.

Rick Mazur:
12:45

When you say long term? How what, what kind of timeframe are you talking about?

Average Joe Finances:
12:50

Well, you know, not day trading, like something, something you want to hold for maybe a couple months, maybe a year, maybe

Rick Mazur:
12:57

I would look at selling time premium and options. Because those are trades that you can put on, you know, anywhere from 15 to 3045 days, you'll be in them don't have to stare at the screen all the time, you can set alerts, if you have rules, and you have a methodology, you can literally say, hey, okay, markets moving big today, if it gets to this price, trigger off this adjustment to the trade, you know, depending on how you want to measure, you don't have to be there, you can have a deck, a lot of people that we work with have have day jobs, and they go at lunch and they log in and they manage them that way. Or their stock, you know, your stock is another option that you can use for that, again, requires a little bit more capital less time to, you know, be involved, but

Average Joe Finances:
13:44

that's what I would recommend. If you're buying like these different options, what what kind of variables are you looking at? Like, for the for the person that's not sitting here staring at the screen all day? Right? Like you said, you have, for example, the guys that go and do it at lunchtime, they'll go log in and see where the markets heading. What what kind of variables are they looking at, to make that decision whether they're going to, you know, make a change, or or stay.

Rick Mazur:
14:08

So it depends on what strategies you're using. I use the various strategies in AI and options, things like iron condors, butterflies, calendars, different strategies like that. And it depends on the duration, it depends on the vehicle that you're using. I like to trade a lot of index options, primarily because you get a tax break. There's something called a 1256 exchange contract. And you can, it's basically a blended tax rate, so 60% of your earnings, and it depends on your accounting and things like that what tax bracket you're in, but 60% of your earnings are taxed at long term, your long term capital gains rate which is 15%. And then 40% of your earnings are at your normal tax rate, which is what you would pay you know for your particular tax rate that you're in so blended rate you're paying about 25% Let's say if you're in the highest tax bracket, you're paying 37, whatever the percent is, and then you're paying 15 on 60% of it, your peers, you're saving about 10 15% in taxes on that. Those two pretty significant, it's pretty significant money. Yeah, right. And that does not apply for things like stock, like if you want them to sell or I'm sorry, stock options. Like if you wanted to buy or sell options on Amazon or whatever, you would not get that break. It's specific indexes, like the SPX index, and the NASDAQ and different things like that. And by the way, that applies to futures as well. So any futures, any futures day trading? You get that? So?

Average Joe Finances:
15:40

Yeah, okay. Yeah. 1256 exchange tax? I didn't know about that. That's, that's pretty awesome.

Rick Mazur:
15:46

Yeah, only an index option. So the strategies really depend on it. There's, there's a bunch of them out there, right? It just depends on again, how much money do you have involved? How much time do you have, you need a little consulting and need a little help. If you're somebody who, for example, can get, the longer the time duration, the more time you typically have, if you're going to make an adjustment. Some people don't believe in adjusting some people just put the trade on say, hey, if I'm down 15%, or whatever the number is, I'm just out of the trade. And they have those cell stop losses already set. If you've got time where you're at work, and you have a desk job, and you're like, hey, the market goes here, you can set these alerts in the morning, if it really goes big in one direction, you can say, Okay, I'm going to log into my, you know, my my account my brokerage account, and I'm going to, you know, do something, if I need to do something, if you've got that kind of job where you can do that, that allows you have a little bit more different positions on and a little shorter duration positions, you can do weekly options, positions where they expire in 14 days out, you might be in the trade three, four days. The issue with that is, is that if the markets jumping in a particular day, then you need to be you need to be on it. And if you don't have that type of situation, then you have to save to select your strategies based on again, your account balance, your knowledge of the strategies and your time available to actually do it. And that's anything short of day trading, where you're obviously sitting there all day, for sure. Yeah.

Average Joe Finances:
17:17

So again, like, I think one of the big things, and you mentioned it near the beginning was education, right. So you don't want to just jump into something like this without knowing what you're doing. So making sure that you really understand the strategy that you're going to use is super important. It's nice to know that you can kind of day trade even if you're working a day job, if you've got like that time, like during the lunch break or, you know, you could set the alerts and you know that you'll be able to make yourself available to you know, get in there and do what you have to do at those particular times. So

Rick Mazur:
17:48

correct. And there's again, there's a lot of services out there, we have something and it's in private beta right now where people can follow along, they can actually follow along with with trades. And they can get alerts, text alerts and things if there's going to be an adjustment made. So they don't really have to have the strategy they can follow along with somebody else's strategy, if they want to. And that can help people while they're kind of learn in their own way and their own their own methodologies. And however, wherever they're going to learn it from.

Average Joe Finances:
18:19

Right, yeah, I've heard a lot of people doing something similar like that. And they they get like a discord group and, and they'll set it up that way. And one of the alerts come out the you know, the message go out to the group saying, hey, this what we're doing, and you can either choose to go with them or not. So

Rick Mazur:
18:34

the issue with a lot of those is just, there's a lot of, there's a lot of them out there, and you would be surprised a lot of them, I don't want to say a lot of them don't even really know how to trade themselves. I mean, we go in forums, we see people who are literally taking tests trying to get funded with like a prop firm, they can't you know, they fail the test 10 times and they got a discord group, you know, all it's free go into discord group. And, you know, it's just a bunch of people. And I don't mean to knock anybody, it's just really a bunch of people that really don't know what they're doing themselves. And it's like the blind following the blind, you really have to have a proven system and you have to really watch if this person is saying, Hey, we're doing this, don't just start firing off trades. I mean, you know, take it out a paper system first and make sure that for a good couple months, at least, you know, make sure that this person sound solid, and the results are solid and things like that, hey, I said to do this, this and this and here's the result. And over a few dozen trades, at least depending on you know what type of trades they are. Because people can get really burned that way. I mean, I did when I first started that's what I did. And I you know, it looks good. And then it starts out good. And then boom, you know, you end up making a little money and then you end up giving it all back. So selecting the person to go with is really

Average Joe Finances:
19:51

important. Yeah, absolutely. You got to make sure that whoever whoever you're going into this with, you know that they have the proper education and credentials if you can be fine. And what they're doing for sure. Okay, so speaking of that, speaking of like, you know, getting involved and following somebody and you don't really know what you're doing. And it turns out they don't either. What are some of the biggest pitfalls that you see people fall into when trying to trade, the financial markets,

Rick Mazur:
20:17

the biggest pitfalls is really kind of going in. And just thinking, what I've seen a lot of people do, and I don't understand this really, in trading, I really don't except for I do, anything I can relate it to is that a lot of people treat trading as gambling. They just think if, for example, if you were going to go to become a doctor, you wouldn't you want to be a doctor, you're not going to walk into an operating room, never go into school, never doing it, you know, and there's, there's a brain surgeon operating in someone's brain, and you're going to just take a scalpel and start kicking around in someone's brain, you're going to you're going to need years and years of education. And it holds true for anything, whether you're a lawyer, whatever it is, the thing with trading is, for some reason, people think they don't have to do that. They think, Well, you know, I'll just go on YouTube, and I'll watch some videos. And I'll do it trading is one of the hardest things anybody's going to do successfully. And pack some of the pros can't even know quote, unquote, pros don't even do it and get great returns. But for some reason, the mentality of traders is I'm just going to jump in. And we get calls all the time, we get calls from people, they've lost five grand, 20, grand, 50, grand, 100 grand, and this is over a period of time, you know, 10 510 years, 15 years, I think the highest I've ever heard was 225 grand they lost or something like that. And they're still at it banging away, like just taking trades and doing stuff. And I'm like, you gotta what education have you had? And then they're like, Well, you know, I went on YouTube, and I bought this book, and I bought this. And it's like, well, that's not going to, it's just not going to get you there day in and day out. And the biggest pitfall is I think people just don't realize how hard it is. They see these people on YouTube with the, oh, I bought Bitcoin at seven grand and it's 60 grand that I'm a millionaire now, and I'm 30 years old, and they just think they're going to jump in. And a lot of people have lost a lot of money doing that, unfortunately. So really good educated. Yeah, you

Average Joe Finances:
22:16

see that a lot now, especially, and I hate I hate seeing this. But there's a lot of scammers out there now. And you see him in all those financial groups, they'll start soliciting members, you know, tried to say, hey, come sign up for my forex and crypto this and that or whatever, I can't stand I still get them every now and then I'll get a message from somebody saying, Hey, have you ever thought about starting a side business? Like, let me guess crypto or Forex, right?

Rick Mazur:
22:43

marketers are selling? Yeah, they're marketers. They're selling a lifestyle. They're not selling the actual act act of actual trading real. Most, you know, you see the things that you see movies about day trading. And you see TV shows about day trading with the mega yachts and the mansions and all that kind of stuff. But there's a lot of guys out there that are making a good living. And you know, they don't have the fancy Ferrari's and the Lamborghinis and all that kind of stuff. It's just, you know, it's about lifestyle. You know, for me, I want to be able to if I want to, I want to be able to go trade a couple hours in the morning and decide, alright, I'm clearing my calendar for the afternoon, I'm going to go to the beach. I mean, you know, I don't need now could I could I work on that day and extra five hours, if I had to make a much bigger not every month or whatever? Sure, I could do that. But that's not I did that, you know, I did that in my tech business for, you know, 20 years or whatever. I don't want to I don't want that grind anymore. You know, so I'd rather trade my accounts help people when they need to give them advice, and, you know, point them in the right direction. And, you know, I'm happy. Yeah, right. I mean, so I mean, you you paid your dues, right? Usually you did that you did the grind already. Now you're at a point where you can, you know, if you want to put in the extra work to make a little more money you can, or if you want to just take the afternoon off and go hang out at the beach, you can also do that, as well. So, but the thing is, I think the key point is that people need to understand is, that didn't just happen overnight. Like you said, you were grinding for 20 years, to get to that point, right, you know, and yeah, and our sold it and then invested that money and then hours and hours. I mean, when I first really got serious into it, I had had my first child, I had my other business, which was I had sold but I kind of was on a contract. So I was kind of working with them on a consulting thing. And, you know, it was like, do that do some trading deal with my newborns come home 10 o'clock at night, you know, I'm looking at charts, you know, until one two o'clock in the morning, seven days a week, you know, I mean, and now everybody doesn't have to do that if they've got a free or schedule. You know, it doesn't require that but you still have to put the work in it. Definitely. doesn't happen overnight, even if you have an education, you still are going to make mistakes, you're just going to make a lot less of them. So you do have to have a little bit of of money, just prove that you're prepared to lose. And I know people say that that's kind of a cliche, but you're never going to come right out of the gate. I mean, if you started stock trading, March 22 of last year, when COVID started, you know, and the market dropped 30%, or 40%, or whatever it was, a lot of people made a lot of money. And yet the same, the same thing happened in 2008, when the market crashed, everybody was gonna be a day trader, they made a bunch of money. And they gave it all back a year or two later, and, you know, now they're not trading anymore, you know, so, you know, if you're buying Disney at 79 bucks, you know, a year ago, or whatever it was, or Boeing at 100? Or, you know, if Yeah, you could just throw a dart at anything. And you know, it was, but the thing is about that is that if you ask any serious day trader, including the big money day traders, and big financial institutions, if you asked anybody in April of last year, did they think the market was going to be back up this high, 100% of them said it was going lower. So, you know, nobody was right. The only guys that were right, were the guys to dip their toe in and held it. Some of them just started, you know, new to trading. And, you know, they made a lot of money. And that's great. And

Average Joe Finances:
26:33

they were right, it was more of a, you know, they just got started got lucky, they got into the perfect time,

Rick Mazur:
26:38

right. And there's a lot of guys that are still riding off of that. And if they are smart about it, and they get serious about what they're doing, it realized, Hey, I got an opportunity, I made a lot of money, let me put some of that money to work to actually kind of make this thing a business because trading is a business. And again, I again, it goes back to the whole doctor lawyer example I gave before people just don't treat it like a business, they treat it like gambling, they don't treat it like a business, they treat it as an afterthought A lot of times, and you really have to really have to be serious about what you're doing. And a lot of people try, it's just they don't have the right resources to get them where they need to go, I went through probably, geez, I went through probably 20 or 30 stock guys, I went through probably four or five options, guys, like serious options, guys, where I where I thought, like, Hey, I'm learning this. And you know that this is the holy grail, you know, and invested a lot of time and my story is no different than a lot of guys. A lot of people have done that. And three or four or five futures guys, before I finally kind of got that mix, and it was a lot of time wasn't a ton of money. Because I traded, I traded not a lot, I didn't really risk a whole lot. In the beginning, I was fine just doing it for the sport and kind of just paper trading and things like that. But a lot of guys get bored with that. And they just start throwing money at it. And you know, it doesn't work out so good. So I consider myself lucky in that regard that I never got beat up horribly, contrary to some of the stories I've heard now. Right on.

Average Joe Finances:
28:17

Yeah. So speaking of, you know, capital, and you know what, what you have to put into get started. So how much? How much capital does someone need to begin trading? If they don't have a lot? Are there other options?

Rick Mazur:
28:30

There are options. For example, if you, let's say, for example, you have just have$500, there's something now in futures called micro futures, they used to be the minis, now they're coming out with micros. So there's people you can open up an account for 500 bucks. The problem with that is, is you still got to know how to trade and you're not getting an education for 500 bucks. It's just it's there's too much involved. I mean, it's like it's like a school, you know, like if you want to learn everything you need to know. And so there's things called prop firm companies, and people have heard the old school prop firm companies, it's a little bit different. Now it's all online, you go online, you take a test, you prove that you can trade you pay, you know, 100 bucks, a couple 100 bucks, and you meet some profitable targets and they'll give you the money, they'll use their money to trade but you'll make you know, 80 90% depending on the company, and you know, they have rules, you got to trade by their rules and things like that. So you don't need a whole lot of capital. When I started there was no funding companies like that there was there was traditional prop firms, but you really kind of they wanted you to have skin in the game. They know if they were giving you $100,000 account, you had to put 25 50,000 of your own money, they would meet you with half of it, things like that, or a quarter of it. Now, it's like you can literally pay a couple 100 bucks and they'll let you trade multiple contracts and you can make a decent, you know, a decent amount of money key You have to know what you're doing. So what happens is a lot of guys go to these companies figuring Oh, a couple 100 bucks, I'll go take it and they let you rebuy, they'll let you try as many times as you want. And what happens is people go down that rabbit hole. And you know, they, it's the same thing. If you either you have an edge and you don't, you have a methodology where you have positive expectancy at the end of the week, in the month and the quarter in the year or you don't. So you don't need a whole lot of money providing you think that you have a system that works, you can get in for very cheap. But those don't exist so much with options or stock. It's mostly futures right now. And there's regulatory reasons for that, and things like that. But it's very plugged prevalent in the futures community. Now, there are several companies that offer that that have been around for quite some time.

Average Joe Finances:
30:49

Yeah. Okay. Right on so. So let's say you get involved with one of these prop firm companies. And now are you making like a certain commission based off of how much they put into it? Like, let's say they gave you 100,000? you'd mentioned something about Oh, yeah, you get like 80 to 90%. Like, what did you mean by that

Rick Mazur:
31:08

is what you make, so what they do is they make you they make you pass a test. So they say, okay, and I'm just giving you an example, because they're all different. And each firm has their own, there are multiple plans that you can choose from, let's say, for example, I'm going to let you trade up to eight futures contracts, and you have to make$3,000, I'm not going to give you a time limit to how long you gotta take, but you're paying a monthly fee, if you do it in a month, boom, you're funded, and you've got the account, you can take three months to do it, there's no rush, you're just gonna pay him every month. So you're gonna pay him 150 bucks, or whatever the amount is, every month, if you fail, they will let you reset your account and start all over again. And you know, and then when, when you get funded, then they'll make you feel you leave a little bit of cushion, you have to build up a little cushion in your in your Live account, because it's live in the market, the test is usually on simulator, it's not in the live markets. And then once you fill up a cushion, they'll let you withdraw, you know, and they take a percentage, so they only make money when you withdraw. So if you're gonna withdraw two grand, they take their cut off of the two grand, you know, if it's 20%, you know, two grand is 400 bucks, they send you 1600. And, and, again, the one thing with the with the funding companies that I should mention also, is there is no 1256 contract with that, which we talked about for the tax break, you're getting 1099. So as a 1099, and, you know, company, for like a contractor, you're treated like the contractor. So you don't get the tax free, you're being taxed on that money, which again, don't worry about the tax the taxes, you know, if you can make money, your customer says it's because I've made money, but you know what I used to, I used to yell at my accountant and scream at my accountant for years. And he looked at me and he said, Rick, you wish that you had to pay the government $2 million in taxes every year? He goes, because that's means you made four. And I'm like, Yeah, I guess when you look at it that way, I guess it's not, you know, we don't look at it that way. Unfortunately, most people don't but, but you're right, I say, you know, don't worry about the tax, the tax break is an added perk. But you know, you first kind of prove to yourself month over month that you can make money. And, you know, again, some of these companies, they'll pay you 80, then after a year for your loyalty, if you stick with them, they'll give they'll go up to 90. So it's not a bad deal, you're risking none of your own capital, you know, you're trading, some of them will let you trade up to 30 contracts, which 30, futures contracts, you know, you could do a lot of you could do a lot, you could lose a lot of money, but you could do a lot of damage. I mean, you make a lot of money with that, and you're keeping 80% of it, and you're risking nothing. So you don't have to have 100 200. I mean, if you're gonna trade 30, let's say s&p futures contracts, in the ETS, which is the symbol for the s&p, you know, you're talking about, you know, I mean, you know, you gotta have $100,000 to it, you know, you gotta have a big account to trade that. So if you don't want to have that capital tied up, it's not a bad thing to do. Even if you had the money, you know, to give somebody that the Commission if you wanted to go that route, so it can be done. You don't need a ton of capital to do it. It's just it starts with having a proven methodology that works. That's what you have to work on first.

Average Joe Finances:
34:25

Right? Right. Okay. So we've kind of talked about this a little bit, right. Whether you know, for folks that are trading without having specific strategies, or having the right education, right, he kind of talked about like, hey, if you if you're not doing it the right way, you're you're you're gambling, so? Is trading gambling, like you know, some people treat it that way, like you said, but how would you answer that if somebody asked you if trading is gambling?

Unknown:
34:51

Let's take a brief moment to hear from our show sponsors. What's going on everybody? So today I want to talk to you about the podcast editing service that we use for the Average Joe Finances Podcast that is editpods.com. And what I really like about them is it's a subscription based service. So the prices are fantastic. And not only do they do the podcast episodes for us, but they also make us videos, audio, Graham's social media caption videos, they do our show notes, thumbnails, it's just fantastic products, go check them out at edit pods.com What's going on everybody. So I know there's a lot of busy individuals out there like myself, I find myself sometimes struggling with time management, when I'm dealing with things with my blog, my podcast, managing my social media accounts, sometimes it can be really taxing and time consuming. So one of the things I started doing recently that has been super helpful is outsourcing some of this work to subcontractors and freelancers. And I'm doing that through a website called Fiverr. I have a link in the podcast description below that will take you to Fiverr and give you a discount up to $100 off your first order with them. Check it out. It's been a lifesaver for me, it's been saving me a lot of time and a lot of stress. And I really think it could do the same for you check out the link below or go to www dot Average Joe finances.com/fiver F I V E R R, let's get back to today's episode.

Rick Mazur:
36:19

The answer is trading is not gambling, if you're actually trading. And what I mean by that is, are you going in just Hey, this because a lot of people do that. They look at the charts, they're trading and they're just like, Oh, this, this feels right, you know, so I'm gonna buy here or this would nothing's by field, everything has to be done with a very, you know, methodical entry points, especially if you're day trading and you're trading on small timeframes. A lot of people will tell you, they throw terms out and say entry entry doesn't matter where you get in, it's how you manage it after you get in. Well, that may be true, if you're trading stocks, and you're holding them for three months, because you can get an average into a position, you know, you can build a position, you can do different things, the entry doesn't matter if you're day trading entries, everything, especially on small timeframes. So if you're going into it without a plan, and it is gambling, I mean, gambling is basically just going in and throwing your money and saying, Now, I hope for the best trading actually, is based off statistical probabilities, you have a statistical chance have, you need to know that you need to know I have a methodology where if I take 100 trades, I expect to win 70 out of 100. And I'm going to break or whatever the number is, it could be 55 out of 100, it depends. And then we start getting into things like win loss ratio doesn't really matter. Because it depends on the dollar amount you're making on a whim versus what you're losing on a loss. So win loss ratio isn't everything. But if you have a plan and you know, the statistical probabilities that I'm going to take these trades, and I'm going to these are the exalt results, I expect it's not gambling, it's you know, it's there. But if you're just going in blindly, which unfortunately, it's sad to say but many people do, then you're gambling and you're just gonna lose your money.

Average Joe Finances:
38:12

It's kind of you know, you can kind of relate this to poker, it's like going all in blind before you even see what two cards you got, like if you playing Texas Hold'em, right when I even talked about preflop, we're talking about, you know, you'd even get dealt your cards that you know, you'd even lift up your cards yet, you're going all in. So by the time you get into that, so can being a good poker player, help you be a better trader, because, you know, a lot of folks that actually played poker are focused on that key word that you said before, and that that was statistics. Right? Right. When you're looking, you know, and you're trying to make decisions, what is that something that might help you? If you're trading options?

Rick Mazur:
38:49

Well, not only can it help you there's actually a lot of big big firms investment firms that are actually send their traders to poker school for the for partially for that reason. A lot of people also ask the question, you know, what was I gonna say? A lot of people will will talk about poker, and they'll say, What's harder? Being a successful poker player, a successful trader? And the answer is Poker is much harder. And the reason why poker is much harder is very simply the whole cards, unknown information. And people will tell you, Well, yeah, but you have unknown information with trading. So you can put a trade out and there's no guarantee if you're going to win or lose. That's not necessarily true. You might not know on that particular trade, but it's a lot easier to tell what's going to happen in the market, intraday than what's going to happen in a poker hand in your hand. Both have easier times and harder times, depending on Poker, who you're playing against or whatever. But if you can have the skill set of a good poker player, meaning you're disciplined, your patience, you understand that it's a mathematical game. You under And that you're not going to win every time. You know, some poker players when they're bad, they lose, they go on tilt, everybody's heard the word, you know, go on, I went on tilt, well, traders go on tilt, too. So you're a bad trader, you're a bad poker player, but if you can master those skills that it takes to be a good poker player. And in fact, a lot of poker players Believe it or not have transitioned into day trading now, because especially with, you know, guys that have been around before the whole for you, for people who aren't familiar with that there was a big crackdown in the United States with poker. They call it Black Friday. And it was illegal to place gambling, gambling and poker in the United States. A lot of those guys that used to make a living went to trading, and because they use those skill sets, so yes, the answer to your question is yes, it can be. So it's a good tool to have as well.

Average Joe Finances:
40:51

Right on Yeah, especially like this past year to right, because a lot a lot of the tournament's and things like that got canceled, you couldn't be in the same room with all these people. You know, you could be you could be at your house with your laptop open. And, and working on sistex. Right, working on what what the equations gonna be. And I'd like to also think that, you know, in poker, yeah, you're, you're at the mercy of the 52 card deck, right. But when you're trading, there's so many other variables that you can you can look at, besides, you know, just one or two things that that could change the probability of what the outcome is going to be at the end.

Rick Mazur:
41:27

Absolutely. I mean, you can really get to the point where you're really understand the markets very well. But like I said, there are there certainly are synergies between the two so that somebody should In other words, if you can go to a poker tournament playing no limit Texas Hold'em, but you can sit there for 5678 hours, and you got to be patient, you can play your game. And you know, you're not overplaying your hands and you're not doing it, what do they say, I think, you know, most hold'em players in the tournament you play about should be playing about 16 18% of your hands, something like that, of course, if you're a more aggressive player, you're gonna play more, whatever. But you got to have that discipline, and some guys just can't do that. So it's a good way to practice, especially if you want to get away from the trading charts, practice playing poker, have your game and practice doing the right thing for hours on end. And that will also help you because you can know what to do in trading, you can even have a winning methodology, but if you don't execute it, because you don't have the patience, you know, you're still gonna lose, you know, so,

Average Joe Finances:
42:32

yeah, so you know, this, this is gonna help me justify, you know, what I've been talking to my wife about, I want to start poker nights back up at my house on Friday nights. So I used to have them I used to have

Rick Mazur:
42:42

to do to used to do too. I moved from to Florida about three years ago, and, uh, two years ago, and then COVID hit but yeah, we used to do a weekly, monthly bi monthly gaming in Chicago. And so it was good times. Good times. I prefer playing live. I don't like the online. I mean, I play poker, sometimes. I don't like the online, it's just not the same feel. It's just not I mean, again, mathematically, theoretically, it's the same thing. But it's for me, it's just not as fun. Yeah. Start those games back up.

Average Joe Finances:
43:13

Yeah, that need to once you know, once, once things start to open up a bit more and more people I guess, are vaccinated and all that good stuff. And, you know, less risk.

Rick Mazur:
43:23

That was a big thing with our game, they tried to get our game back. And everybody's they didn't want the mass. Some people wanted the mass, they didn't want to show up. And it was like, so yeah, it's gonna get better, like you said, and I let the vaccines out. And hopefully life will kind of get back to normal a little bit.

Average Joe Finances:
43:37

I want to talk a little bit about SEO, especially because of that, you know, this, this kind of ties into what you were talking about earlier patients, right? So you got to be patient to things to open back up and bring it back in. But, you know, speaking of patients like not only from poker, but like, you know, many people who think that they would otherwise be a good trader, they have a fear of getting started, because they believe, yeah, like, you must have patience to be a good trader, and they don't believe that they're patient. So can you talk about that a little bit? Like, how does somebody who doesn't feel like their patient? How would they try to change? I guess, their their mindset on that get more patients.

Rick Mazur:
44:15

It's interesting, I hear that all the time. We get that's actually one of the biggest things that we get from people who have been trading for a while and they just say, you know what, Rick, I know what I'm doing. I have a winning methodology they claim but I'm just not patient. I'm not I'm not discipline person. So I'm not going to be able to be a good trader. Well, and I actually spent the time with a couple dozen traders, and actually looked at what they were doing a lot of time and actually looked at what they were doing to find out that in fact, they didn't have a winning methodology at all. They just, you have to know what you're being patient for. It's not that people are not patient. It's that they have to know what they're being with. You can't You can't ask somebody to wait like if you're day trading and you're waiting for Start up to come, for example, to get into the market. If you don't know what you're waiting for, you're not going to be patient, you're going to sit there for a while you're going to see the market move in, it's going to make a big move, you're going to feel like you missed out on something, even though you may have you might not have depending on your rules, and you're going to just jump in, and you're not going to be patient. If you know that by entering that trade, you're going to lose money, because you're doing the wrong thing, you're going to be patient. So it really comes down to, you have to know what you're waiting for, you have to understand what you're doing. And that will cause you to be more patient. And I tell people all the time, this may be I don't know, not politically correct, or whatever it is. But, you know, we've had people that come in, and they say, look, I have ADHD, I can't be a traitor because I I'm too fidgety, I can't sit and I say, Are you taking medication for it? And they say, No, I say you need to go get the medication. I mean, you need to do what you need to do. And that, you know, and I'm not advocating whatever, medically, I'm not saying one way or another, I'm just saying if you want to accomplish something, and something's holding you back, there is medical solutions for that. I mean, you know, you can well, I don't like taking the medication for Okay, well, then you have, you have a dilemma because you have to be able to sit and be able to look for 15 minutes at a time in a screen. And if you can't do that, because of a medical condition, legitimate medical condition, then you know, you're not going to be very good at it. So you have to make a decision on you know, what you want to do. So everybody has the ability to have an understanding of what's going on, if they learn properly, and put in the work. And you have to come in and understand if if I see things where I can capitalize and I have an edge of proven edge in the market, I'm going to sit, I'm going to wait until I get that edge and I'm going to capitalize on it. Otherwise, I'm assuming I'm going to lose. If I do anything other than my methodology I have, I have several different methods for futures, to trigger trades in a given morning or a given day. And all I know is that if I've done anything other than that, I lose money. If I follow that I make money. And once you get that ingrained in your brain, you'll be patient, because who wants to lose money. I mean, no, nobody, nobody goes in to lose money, you don't go into a casino to lose money, you think guys think they go into casino, they think they're gonna make money, they go in and I'm gonna beat the system, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna count the cards in blackjack, or I'm gonna do this, or I'm gonna do that, or I'm gonna find the poker table that has all the drunk people at two o'clock in the morning, and they think they're good. They think that they have an edge, whatever that edge is, they think they have it in trading, I have just found that I were drilling this point home, but I just I really feel that it's a very simple business, either you're making money or you're not making money. You're either green or you're red. And if you're red too much, you're doing something that right. And a lot of people will again, chalk it up to, well, you know, the markets were slow today, or I'm not patients or I'm not this or I'm not that and what I found in 95% to 99% of the times is that they really, they just they wouldn't want anyway, because they don't have a winning, they don't have a winning system. And it's unfortunate. But I was there for a long time, too, you know, for a long time, taking trades, buying stuff without knowing what I'm buying people buy stocks without knowing what they're buying. People are buying AMC and GameStop you know, they have that whole thing going on. And right now people who bought it 80 bucks, even though the stock, you know, it's trading at where it's trading at, it's worth what it's trading at. But, you know, it's it was a$20 stock GameStop before you know, it went up, and now it's wherever it's at 100 200 300. I haven't even looked at it late, I don't trade that stuff. But there's guys that jumped in at 150. And they got a two and a quarter and they made money and they think they're heroes. They don't know what they're doing. They just don't know what they're doing. But the problem is they think no, I'm gonna wait for the next thing to jump and I'm gonna hop on the train and I'm gonna do that's not assist. That's not a, you know, you look at the forums and you see all these guys. There was a guy on the forum the other day, and he's legit. He sold his house literally just calls on his house, and he put like, 100,000 into AMC. Literally, he sold his house to buy the stock. That's why he sold his house. And he's like, well, what am I going to do now? What do I do? How long do I wait, like, he doesn't know what he's doing? He's asking the people in the group, like, how long do I hold it? It's like wow, and there's a lot of guys like that. It's not this is not an isolated incident. That's just kind of the dollar amount is probably a little bit more dramatic than than most because most people aren't doing that but get a good education or follow somebody that has an it's not neither extra easy, but there are resources out there. We have resources that can help people. And really be sure of what you're doing before you. I always say it's it's it's it's a marathon, not a sprint. You know it There's no rush. You know if you're in this to make a quick buck It's you're in the wrong business, because it's not, you know, it's, and again, this is more with day trading stocks is different because you know, the old adage, what stocks people say, Well, your stock is down, but you didn't lose until it lets you sell well, if it never comes back. I mean, you know, it's, you're, you're assuming everybody just assumes everything's gonna come back. And you know, it's just, I hear a lot of crazy things. You know, this, by the way, that's why I don't really invest. I say,

Average Joe Finances:
50:26

I say that a lot, though. people I talked to at work and stuff. They mentioned. Oh, yeah, my, my 401k is down hard. You know, I lost like, $9,000. Yes. Lose $9,000, you lost $9,000 in value. Right? You don't lose anything until you sell it?

Rick Mazur:
50:44

Well, and it's different, though. When Yeah, when you're talking that long, right? If you're holding it that long, and and it's a balanced portfolio, then sure, of course, I mean, over time, the market has proven over the last, you know, decades and decades and decades, it will go higher. So depending on what your let's see, what happens to is, is people will equate those terms, like you just said those little buzzwords, they'll take that buzzword that you said which may hold true for long term holdings, and they equate it to short term holdings as well. And it's not the same thing. And they people do a lot of different things. Even Chartists, people who look at charts and they look at a daily or a weekly or a monthly chart for buying stocks. And those charts aren't the same. If you're looking at a five minute chart or a 15 minute chart, they mean totally different things. The candlesticks mean totally different things. So people throw a lot of terms out there that may hold true for one thing, and then they just equate it for everything. And they generalize it and and they run into a lot of trouble that way, too. So it's gotta be careful. And you know what you're doing out there, and it's all you can make money doing it, you can make money doing it for sure.

Average Joe Finances:
51:57

So I think, you know, a lot of this, you know, we're talking about patience and all that other all that other stuff, right? And when you when you put all this together, a lot of it has to do with like psychology, right? So how much does trading psychology come into play? To make a trader successful overall, trading psychology is a very important piece, I'm going to tell you that it's a smaller percentage piece that most people will equate. A lot of people say your trading is easy, it's 80%. In your head,

Rick Mazur:
52:26

I don't think that it's that high. Personally, it's just my personal belief, I do think it's a smaller percentage number, I would say put probably put it into 20 to 30% 40%. tops, significantly lower, but it's significantly lower. And the reason I say that is is because I don't care what your cycle I know you can have the best psychologists think about it logically, you can have the best psychology in the world. But if you don't know where the winning trades are, you're not gonna make any money. I don't care how good your psychology is, I mean, you know, your mindset. So it is very important. And even though a significant drop, I do think that 20 30% of the puzzle does matter. It's a very important piece, such as training, psychology is very important, very, very important. It's just not as high of the number, as most people, you know, they don't want to say write it off to be but you know, it's just not as high of a number as people put on it. But it is very important, you have to be in the right mindset, you have to treat trading like a business, you have to go into it with the right plan, the right allocation, the right pay, if I lose, I just lost, it's one trade, there's going to be 3040 other ones or whatever the number is, the only way you're going to do that is to know your numbers, you have to understand what to expect, you can't get blindsided, you can't get caught off guard, you can't put a trade on and lose five grand, you know, of a $20,000 portfolio, fly off the handle. And you have to position sizing is important. portfolio management is important. And all of that combined is going to give you the proper psychology and the proper mindset to come into the market and do what you're doing. So that is very important. If you don't have that 2030 40% you're a loser. You can have a great methodology with bad psychology. You can know everything what to do, you can have a system that you've proven over a million trades works 80% of the time, if you don't execute it, and you don't come in with the right mindset, you're not going to execute it right and you're going to you're still not going to make any money. So all the pieces of the puzzle are important to being a successful trader and nobody's going to be 100% all the time. You're just not you know, you're going to come in you're going to have your bad days. If you're married, you're going to have a fight with your wife, or whatever the night before something your kids are going to do some knucklehead thing and aggravate you in the morning when you wake up and then you got to sit in front of the computer and although the markets move in and what am I going to do you got to have that focus to be able to, so you're not going to do it 100% of the time, the goal is consistency. consistency is key, the more consistent you can be the more profitable your, your you'll turn your methodology into.

Average Joe Finances:
55:13

Yeah. So you know, like, like you said, it goes back to your mindset, right. So not only having the right psychology for it, but the right mindset to know that, you know, you need education, you need to know what you're doing, you need to have a good plan. And then you need to also make sure that your mind is right when you start. Because again, like you said, like, you can fight with your spouse the night before, or your, your kids did something silly, or just something, something bad happened at work. And now you're sitting down looking at the screen and your mind's in a different place. So to be able to sit down and just focus, and you have to put all these pieces of the puzzle together, to get yourself to, to the right spot to do this,

Rick Mazur:
55:54

will and health, we didn't even talk about how I mean, you have to put them in a lot of people, you know, if you think you're going to come in amped up on a bunch of coffee, again, this is more for day trading, you know, the other stuff, you can have rules, you can have automations, you can have alerts for most of it. But specifically with day trading, I mean, you know, if you think you're going to go and wake up and eat, eat two bagels with cream cheese, and, and, and and then sit in front of the computer, people not off. I mean, we talk to people, you know, on the chat, and in the morning when we're training, and it's like the guy doesn't answer and then it's like, oh, I fell asleep, the guy's falling asleep at his computer. Like, if people just you know, you don't, you have to get proper rest, you have to condition your body properly. And again, this is more specifically for day trading than for for longer term things because you're like an athlete almost. And I don't mean to, I don't mean to, you know, I don't want to say like it's some sort of super thing or whatever. But you really have to be if you're going to sit there for two or three or four hours, and you're going to be laser focused on a screen. It has to be healthy. It's got to be right proper sleep, proper mindset proper, you make one mistake. And you know, a lot of bad things can happen in the in the mind mentally with one or two bad mistakes that didn't need to happen if you were properly conditioned. So and I don't say that to scare people, I don't say that I don't want people to sit there and listen to this and say, Oh, boy, I can't do that like that. That seems like a lot of work. That seems like a lot of saying that. I'm just saying you just have to focus on the right things. You know, you can't mess around with all this stuff that people, people, it's not the amount of information you have. It's the quality of the information that you have. You don't need to know 500 things you need to know 20 or 30 things, but they got to be the right 20 or 30 things. The problem is people go on YouTube, and there's a million things. And then how do you ascertain out of the million pieces of information out there? What are the 20 correct ones out of the million. And this is the game. This is where people spend months and weeks and years and decades, some people trying to be profitable in trading. There's a whole lot of information out there, but you got to put the right pieces together. And you can either spend a shorter period of time to learn from somebody, or you can spend, again, the average person that comes into us has been added a minimum three to six months up to four or five years. But we get people all the time. 10 1520 years, you know, and they're still at it. When I asked him why. And they say I just have the passion. I've always wanted to be a trader, I want to do it. I'm not going to give up I want to be successful. It's like okay, well, and then you ask them, What have they done up to this point? And, you know, it's the same things that I did. You know, I don't blame anybody because no, a lot of people just don't know where to go. That's really, you know, they don't know the right places to go to get the right information you would think with with an Internet that's got a billion web pages or YouTube or whatever's out there, you would think that there's Oh, I'll just go on there. And I'll find somebody. I mean, there's probably a couple 100 people that it's not, it's not a couple 100

Average Joe Finances:
59:05

problem is when you do that there's so much information, it's oversaturation, right, you got to, you got to look for certain things, and you get, you know, overwhelmed with the amount of data, you do a Google search for options trading and, you know, 5 million hits come up for these different websites. And then some of the top ones are people that are really good at SEO might not be good at actually trading, right? Or they have ads at the top. So it's it's, you know, finding the right person is important, which is one of the reasons why I do this podcast right? And I bring people like you on to, you know, get your story out there show, you know what it is you're doing and how you're successful. And then hopefully, you know, some people listen to this and be like, hey, I'd like to start day trading. Maybe I need to talk to this Rick guy that I heard on the Average Joe Finances podcast, right, right. So yeah, that's you know, that's Well, the kind of the point of you know, what it is I'm trying to do here with my mission.

Rick Mazur:
1:00:04

Well, and to your point with the information, I'll give you 111 more on that is, it's not only going through the information, that's daunting, it's that you don't even know what the proper information you're looking for us. You know what I mean? Like, most people don't know. Well, yeah. Okay. That's, I mean, how are you gauging it? Most people go to a website, and they say, oh, let me see this guy's results. Let me see what he's doing. And that's how I'm gonna gauge it. But that's not the case. Most of the time. I mean, you have to know what you're looking for, you have to know, where you get guys to come in, and they start trading. And then they're like, Oh, I made a plan for myself. Bla, bla, bla, bla, bla, I'm gonna do this, this, this, this, this? I'm like, well, where did you base that plan on? Well, I just made a plan, I mean, him anybody to go to so and the plan is wrong. You know, the guy wants to trade, you know, options, a calls, call options with a $5,000 account, that's not the right plan. He's not gonna you're not gonna make any money that way. I mean, it's just not, it's not, it's not the right thing to do. He doesn't know that. He and he's just doing the best he can. So you also have to talk to somebody, and there's a lot of people that will even give you that information for free. You know, I mean, I mean, not a ton of people, but there's people out there that really want to help people that will say, hey, what, what is because training is very personal, personal, it's, it's, it's not one size fits all, or, you know, it's, it's, some guys come in, and they're like, Hey, I got a couple hours a day, I want to day trade, or some guys with the job during the day, I got a couple hours in the afternoon, I can trade and I got a $10,000 accounts or, or$100,000 account, or you're gonna do different things based on your time that you have your level of knowledge that you're willing to have learning that you're willing to do, because everybody's different. Some people come to us and say, Look, I don't want to learn, I just want to follow somebody, you know, this is like a side thing. I'm looking to make a little extra money. I don't have the time to sit there and you know, you know, and that's fine, then there's options for that. But you've got to pick the right plan based on your situation, and how would you know how to make those determinations unless you talk to somebody who who knows, but that's not their fault, again, because where do you go, you know, people are doing the best job they can they go online, and they search. So I get it. But yeah, there are there are solutions and ways and people you can talk to for sure.

Average Joe Finances:
1:02:24

Yeah, but you make a great point too, for like the busy professional that just doesn't have the time to sit here and learn all this stuff. And, you know, well, you know, your situation is you can go follow the guy that's doing really good and, you know, get get involved in his, you know, their group and, and based off that, like a lot of people do that with real estate as well, a lot of the busy professionals that don't have the time to actively invest themselves will get involved in a syndication and a limited partner and put their money in. And they they're passive, right, so it's more of a passive thing for them. And we talked about that a little bit earlier about, you know, active versus passive. So that's just one of the things that you can look at, you know, if you're, you know, too busy to sit down and actually learn it yourself and, and be active actively involved.

Rick Mazur:
1:03:11

Absolutely, then there's multiple ways things that you could do for that there's, there's services where you can follow somebody there called the trade copy services, where you can actually put your money with a broker, you can mirror somebody else's trades. You know, again, there's different options with that some give you more flexibility, some gives you less flexibility as far as when you can turn them on and off and things like that. So you can be as active or as passive as you want. And there's multiple levels from Hey, I want to do this whole thing myself, I want to take the steering wheel and drive the drive the car, I'm going to spend the time to learn I'm going to do it, I have the time to Yeah, I want to follow a guy and get a text alert to look, I just want to put my money there and just let them take the trades. And I'll just be able to benefit, you know, from you know, based off of you know, if they make money, I make money if they don't make money, and I can follow that I can watch it every day and make sure it's not getting out of hand or whatever, you know, and it's it's consistent. So that involves even less time, you know, so there's there's various different vehicles and ways that you can do to if you want to be involved in the game and you know, get your feet wet

Average Joe Finances:
1:04:22

and stuff like that. Sure, absolutely. So Rick, this has been an absolutely awesome conversation. I got some great notes here from sitting here chatting with you. I really appreciate you taking some time to chat with me. But I want to ask you one more thing before we get out of here right? Because you are definitely a wealth of information when it comes to Options trading day trading and everything right. So if somebody wants to find out more about you, you know, do you have anywhere like a like a website or social media where people can learn more, more about you and actually I think we talked about this before we started recording and we For those listening, you know, this is not something you got to see that we had some technical difficulties in the beginning, but we got past all that. But Rick and I were talking and I believe he just started a

Unknown:
1:05:09

podcast, you can go, it's called the traders life. It's not just it's really just about my life, it's not only about trading, we deal with all things, business, finance, health, life issues, I believe to be a complete trader, you have to be, you know, you have to have a business mindset, again, like we talked about earlier in the podcast, have to have good health, you're dealing with issues, you got to have the right mindset that goes to the life issue. So we have, we're having all different types of people on there. And there is going to be a second either it's going to be a second podcast, or an additional release that we'll have for the one we have called the traders corner, which is actually dealing with more specific trading, cuz not everybody's into trading. So they just want to hear the podcast for the different guests and things. If you're a trader, and you want more in depth, knowledge, you know, charts and things like that, and examples and terms and examples and things like that, we're gonna have that as well. And then we also have the trading community. It's in private beta right now, but it will be out in about a month or two. People can go to the website at Rickmaser.life, R I C K M A Z U R, you are lif, get on the mailing list. We do't spam, we don't send a bunch of unnecessary garbage. B t you'll be alerted, then hen that community comes o t in the trading community, it s called enlightened, it's going to actually be a really ni e thing, because it's going to b a place where people can go to actually get informati n, share information, share tra e ideas, if they want to follow omebody, like we talked about ollowing options trader who is doing stuff, and you k ow, that probably would be a sub cription thing, you know, we ha en't got that all figured out yet. But there's gonna certainly be a lot of free information on there as well, that peop e can be involved with and kin of talk more as a community, as well. So you'll be able to get all that information if you g t on the mailing list when t at comes out. At Awesome. All right. So I'll mak sure I have all those links in the show notes. So everybod, you know, if you didn't just write that down, you can copy an paste it. Go check out what Ri k's doing his project wit his podcasts and I don't think you'll be disappointe. You know, it's, it's it's r ally fun having these conve sations. And specificall, you know, this was a topic tha we haven't really talked to a dive you know, dove too much in o on my podcast yet. So I was re lly excited to have this conver ation with you today. And really appreciate you taking he time to sit out and have a hat with me. Thank you. Apprec ate it. It was fun. Absolutely. Awesome.