Self-Taught day trader turns $3k into $100k

that's when i started moving to scalping options and then after about two and a half years in three years that's when everything changed and then that's when i started that small account and brought it from 3 000 to over 100 000 in 18 months which is crazy welcome back everybody to be the trader today i have a very very special guest and i am very interested in bringing this man on the show today because you listeners pointed me in his direction and you you always know i listen to all of you guys and i went to check out matt diamond and checked out his instagram check his youtube and following for a while and i really really love what this guy is about because it seems like he's someone who wants to share and give back and just be open and i've already talked to him for just a couple of minutes here before the show started and it's exactly what i thought so i love it and matt welcome to the show my man thanks man appreciate you having me absolutely absolutely whoa there goes my voice so i yeah so you know let's get started by if you could tell me a little bit about you know what got you into because you focus on options what got you into trading first and then focus on the options okay so just to kind of go way back so i went to florida state university graduated did the whole college thing got out of gra got out of college and then kind of did the thing where you just don't really know what you want to do and i just i quickly realized that going the traditional route was just not for me right so i was always exploring like what are businesses to start side hustles to start and i was just so lost to trying to figure out what to do and then funny enough my dad actually brought up the stock market to me he goes why don't you look into the market just to see if it interests you and that sparked everything and then i just went on youtube watched thousands of hours of videos and then eventually just said you know what i want to give this a shot i think this is something that i like and then just kind of jumped all in so that was that was the start and that was like the first kind of getting me interested in the market and what it even was when was this give me a time frame so this was this was probably five and a half years ago okay okay cool and so that's like 2014 2014 2015 right around there and so you you started studying youtube videos free content sounds like did you pay for any services or so you don't have to name if you did but did you end up paying for courses so i paid for nothing i went down the road of just let's google like google and youtube google and youtube university i'm just gonna dig and and watch every single video i possibly can and then try to do my best to figure out what seems like it's legit what isn't and then just watch those videos like crazy and learn and then ultimately i knew that there's only so much you can learn by watching right you want to take a little bit about what you you know what you gravitate towards and then eventually you have to apply it on your own so but before i took my first trade i was watching youtube every second of every day every single video trading related that i could was just that's what i was doing pretty much full time that's wild so so first off before we go further i want everyone to know one of the things that interests me about you and i might butcher this so you need to correct me right now it's like you turned a small account into like 100k in like 18 months did i get that right yeah but there there's definitely a backstory that was sure that was after that was years into my journey yeah no worries no worries but it's great that you did that and that's and i want people to hear that because this is someone who at the what you just said is you've learned from youtube university and google university which which is awesome because my next question is how the hell did you determine what was trash and what wasn't because i know people are always asking that question so i'm just curious so i i don't even i'm not even sure i just kind of had this gut feeling in a weird way and i was watching the you know i was watching videos and anything that was geared towards getting rich quick i just knew that there's marketing behind that and that's probably not the way to go and that was just from having an understanding of what people like to do people like to sell stuff a lot of the times it may not be truthful so anything that was that or you can make a lot of money really quick i stepped away from but then there were youtube videos like just for example like bulls on wall street just like channels like that where i gravitated towards canal i never paid for anything but just watching he put so much content out for free and when i realized that people are putting good content out they're not asking for your debit card or your credit card that those are the people i started to gravitate towards and then i quickly realized just by doing some you know google research and reviews that anything penny stock related just wasn't for me so i was lucky enough to avoid the whole penny stock world not that it's good or bad it's just not for me and then you know kind of up you know stepping up to you know more of the the big cap options and then just slowly kind of learning about those kind of stocks which is now what i trade every single day now and and so let's go back to 2014-15 start study how long did it take you like two years a year six months three years to start to be find somewhat of a consistency for yourself okay so it took a while yeah just like everybody else i saw youtube videos like man these they make it look really easy i think i can do this so i was funny enough i was actually paper trading at work saw a little bit of success at the with the day job and i went okay i think i could figure this out and then had some money saved up took the leap and then i went let me let me see if i can do this and i had absolutely no idea how tough it was gonna be and i say it it took two and a half years for me to finally turn the corner and a lot of that came from just me sticking to strategies that didn't work and rather being like able to identify very quickly hey this doesn't work for me i just stubbornly stuck with it for a really long time yeah and then the moment that i started to realize that okay the data is now telling me that this just cleared like this really doesn't work let's try something else that's when i started moving to scalping options and then after about two and a half years in three years that's when everything changed and then that's when i started that small account and brought it from 3000 to over a hundred thousand in 18 months which is crazy it was also a benefit of the market because the market was going straight up in 2020 as well oh yeah it was ridiculous it's crazy the market's dumb right now it just yeah fyi if you look on his screen on the left-hand side he's watching game stop i'm watching game seven almost six years go up it's already yeah it's literally at like 2 48 90 it's just a company that was going bankrupt the company that hasn't done anything different all of a sudden has all-time highs records like it makes zero sense that's the market we're in though um so that's interesting so it took you about three about two and a half three years which is which is really cool to hear because you also just kind of taught yourself over time what was it though that kind of you said it was a data like you were you're trading so long you kept strategies that weren't really working and over time if you're like hey this doesn't work so was it a matter of just eliminating something that didn't work and then you became successful or was it as simple as that or was there something else in there it was really as simple as that so i used to focus on the gap and go yeah wake up in the morning find the biggest movers that were over 50 because i didn't want to trade the cheap stocks and i got nowhere with that for a long time and then it wasn't until i realized okay it's i'm two and a half years in this is this is clearly not working let's look at some other things and then that's where i came across i was already educating myself on you know options and then i started to trade options a little bit and i go okay this is pretty cool i don't have to put as much capital up front for some reason the risk to me just feels a little better and then i realize that okay i like to trade the same group of names i really like to trade the big movers tesla amazon netflix facebook like let's just stick to a core group of names and then i also realize that my personality i think one of the most important things with trading is you have to figure out a style that matches your personality right so i'm very type a um i'm stubborn so i can hold losers like a lot of people and i want instant gratification so that's why i came across scalping just by doing some research going back on youtube seeing just some other random channels talking about it and then that's where i started to try that and very quickly started to see success and then rather than overthink it i just committed a hundred percent i said this is exactly what i'm gonna do moving forward let's focus on this big group of names or the group of names that are big movers and then i'm going to scalp and then i'll see and then i'll listen to the results and go from there and the results are really good so i just it was it was 100 committing and accepting that that's my style and that's kind of the you know the trader that i am so whenever you left your job and started to trade i don't know if you left did you leave it to start trading without that success and started studying was that what happened okay so that it took about three years what were you did you just live off the income you saved for those three years like i'm very curious so i had money saved up and i also started an ebay business so because i knew that you know i probably about six months in i realized that i you know making a full-time income from trading is pretty ridiculously hard so i started searching some other ways to make money and i actually documented a little bit of this on my instagram oh cool where i started flipping stuff on ebay so i would go to goodwill i'd go to burlington coat factory and i'd find you know like nike cleats that 25 bucks would sell for like 80 to 100. go to go to goodwill i'd find all sorts of athletic apparel nike shirts nike shorts all sorts of things like that and then i'd flip them on ebay so i was doing that and also trading so that allowed me to stay in the game because i didn't when i started to feel the pressure i added the ebay which allowed the pressure to you know to ease off a little bit instead of feeling like i have to make money every single day every single month because that's that's brutal i mean we all know how tough that is absolutely i'm glad that you shared that because it's it's hard to not have income coming in and i think it's do you still do that now by the way or some kind of ebay thing so when all this stuff happened yeah as far as you know virus and all that stuff my ebay business got crushed so that's when i started move i pivoted and i went into youtube um okay that's when you started okay that because it it was unfortunate and i couldn't control it so i went let me go more into youtube and let's see what happens yeah and you're freaking killing it man it's awesome it's awesome i think you just crossed 9 000. wasn't that 9 000 subscribers that's awesome my hat's off to you there i i definitely know it's not easy to grow youtube so no um you're killing it but now what's awesome i want everyone to hear this if you didn't if you if you did hear i want you to rewind it anyway because he just said that he had income coming in while he was trading so that we didn't have that pressure to make money because that's the only reason i found the consistency is because i have multiple sources coming in and i don't rely only on trading because it can be very difficult to do yeah now to get focus on you found what worked for you you eliminated what didn't you said i'm going to focus on options give me an idea of what what is it that really clicked for you on options that was like hey this is like super easy compared to just trading the stocks does that make sense yeah so i think for me it was just it was the risk factor and i know that options can be riskier than trading shares but being that i'm a scalper and i'm taking very quick short-term moves around the technical levels that i talk about all the time in my videos it just for some reason and it's just a mental thing it may it may be as simple as this i don't even know you know how far i can go into the details of why but i feel better taking five contracts on tesla than i do trading 500 shares but five contracts is the equivalent to 500 shares so it could just it could just be a mental thing and i just feel a little bit comfortable and knowing that there is a set amount that is in that trade when it comes to the options and even though i will never let this happen like there's a max risk there the most that i can risk on that trade if i let things get absolutely terrible i was super stubborn i decided to hold just because it was a bad day that's going to be my max loss whereas the shares if you do that let's say you're short of gme you get caught in something like that there's no max risk but if you took puts on gme and you decided to hold and you were wrong the amount that you had in that trade is your max risk so i think just mentally it makes me feel a little bit better even though they can be a little bit more complicated to trade once you get past that it was just a risk thing for me interesting and you also mentioned at the beginning that you know you're very type a yeah you like instant gratification and you know sometimes you know you you might have that habit of back in the day where you might hold it a little against you you could could happen where you might hold it against you but with options i guess you kind of solve that right i mean you can get that instant gratification the way you trade you buy it or buy or short is the terms i use yeah yeah key technical levels and for some reason it makes you more comfortable because i know if you short a stock like tesla it can go away against you and you lose your whole account so i love that you said that because it does control your risk that way in terms of you only lose what you put in yeah regardless if you're long or short so that's cool now what was something that you feel that people probably i know you get dms i definitely know you get all the time so what is something that you feel like people dm you about that they feel hey you know what man matt if you would if you just answered this one question i'd be successful and what question do you think that is that people think will make them successful but really won't so i think there's a couple of things a lot of people think that there is some sort of holy grail that like i'm having these issues and it may not even be around a certain thing they're just saying i'm not yet consistently profitable like what it what can i possibly do and there really is no real answer because at the end of the day what works for me does not work for everybody else so in any answer or any question that somebody gives me i always say you got to use the data you know and just to throw an example out there if somebody were to ask me a question and say i keep losing money during the lunch time trading session simple answer stop trading during the lunch hour right yep i i can't i hold my losers way too long it will just cut them quicker trade a little smaller so like it's i think when a lot of people see somebody that's trading and they're doing well and they have experience they think there is some crazy reason as to why when in all reality it's just taking those things that you realize you're not good at and totally getting rid of them and then just focusing on what works for you so i think people always think that there is this magical thing and it's really the only thing is just looking at the data itself i mean it will scream at you and a lot of times you won't listen to it it took me a long time to really start listening to it and then start coming up with a process of um i feel really good comfortably when i trade options i'm really good within the first hour anything after that i'm horrible so i stopped doing everything else so that i mean i know that was kind of a little all over the place that's just kind of a general when i tell people that they're like oh okay i guess that makes sense no that makes perfect sense and i agree with you there i think um what's interesting is you keep going back to the data so i'm curious on what you mean by do you just track it yourself do you use software to track it or how do you how does it come to data collecting for yourself and and are you trying to track just what you're doing are you trying to forward test just curious so i just i keep it very simple what i do is i take a screenshot of my trades at the end of each day and then on and then i have a little journal just very basic i don't do anything crazy on it and i just talk about maybe some of the things that i was looking at what i did wrong like if i held some losers a little too long and then all i'm doing is looking at that so if i was trading let's just we'll go shares as an example sure let's say i took 10 trades in a row with a thousand shares and i noticed that i'm holding my losers too long the data is telling me that i'm probably better off sizing down a little bit because when i'm wrong i obviously don't want to take that loss because i know it's going to be too big so just very basic stuff like that and then also seeing okay i took two trades during tw at 12 o'clock both of them were losers and then that happened two days in a row okay the data is telling me that during the lunch hour i just i'm not good at taking those trades so after seeing enough of that i just started to eliminate it and then out of nowhere my equity curve started to look really good and i went okay just eliminate the stuff i'm not good at and i and it's it's as easy as that sometimes yeah and so it was if i'm hearing you correctly it was for you personally unless these are just examples it was like not trading after the first hour to making sure that um now i'm just having a brain fog what where what were your challenges what that you had to eliminate yourself so my challenges were avoid the the shiny object of the day like whatever is gapping up the most or down the most and and that's where i would always get into trouble and then when i would try to trade stocks that were outside the group that i like to trade which i have videos on the stuff that i like and every single time because i almost i'm at a point now where i trade the same group i'm familiar with how they move and i'm familiar with how they react around technicals and when they get going how far sometimes those moves can be and whenever i get out of that that's where i noticed issues and also the time thing too trading during the lunch and when i would size up because i felt like something was really good i trade a little too big sometimes i could hold a loser a little long because i don't want to take the loss like everybody else and it was just after seeing enough of that started to tighten up and then focus on the things that i did really well that's when everything changed that's awesome and i love that you said you focus on a group of different you know different big big caps and you just always just you start to learn the characteristics of that stock and you kind of understand their personality when news comes out when technicals hit when certain things happen which is so cool that you said that because there's probably a lot of people out here who are just chasing their tail right they're trying to do so many things and if you just keep it simple it seems like you just made it more simple of like all right i'm gonna watch this group and trade this group and over time you'll just start to know them and you'll start to be able to fit in with that group and know how they act and so forth so i love it she said that because i know there's people out there who are going to definitely benefit from that so thanks matt yeah one thing i want to ask you though you found after you eliminated those setups that sucked for you and then you started focusing on okay this is what i'm gonna do only was there ever a point where there was something that was kind of holding you back still like a little thing that was like the last thing that you had to get over and if there wasn't that's fine but i'm just very curious about this because even there's a lot of traders out there and i'm included where i found my consistency but there's still like a little couple of things i'm working on to really start going so i'm just curious if there was something like that for you ever in your career yeah so this is gonna sound crazy because this goes against what everybody talks about i was i listened to what everybody says which is you gotta hold your winners which is fine i'm not saying you don't have to hold your winners but i'm a scalper so when i get a quick move and i'm trading the large names i trade tesla like 85 of the time so that's mostly what i'm trading when i get a quick move on tesla right if it consolidates for 45 minutes off the open and breaks high of day there's usually a reaction so what i do is i will scalp that move and i'm not even kidding my p l started to change drastically when i just would take that quick move every single time and i stopped trying to constantly hold a winner now i do miss out on certain moves after the fact but that alone single-handedly changed everything when i committed to if i can catch two to three points really quick on tesla so what if it goes another 10 i just want to get a piece of it and then i can scale a strategy around that and then i started doing that every single day okay i can get two i can get two three points easy but it's trying to constantly hold the winners and let me go for more and then watch a winning trade come back to break even and then i would be stubborn and it would go red and then that's when i would hold so i fixed everything by the moment i get a move in my direction just take it and there's i do a lot of videos where it's kind of funny i mean i put it you know i want people to obviously click on the video but i'll be like made x amount of dollars in one minute 45 seconds it's the moment it goes my favor i just i'm out i can get a huge move in a short period of time on some of these stocks and that changed my whole world that's interesting i know a buddy of mine who just found his consistency he's just freaking killing it but he's a scalper and he's like he's like as soon as i just like just take the money as soon as i'm right i just i started making money and i was like very interesting i'm not a scalper but it's very intriguing when i hear these things so my question immediately and i know people probably asking this themselves is sure it's easy to say i'm going to take it as soon as the move happens like at key levels that makes sense like we all i mean not all but like over time when you see charts you'll see key levels and you see things react and tesla's a good example i trade tests a lot but on stocks and so it's very good example and what's interesting is like what happens when you buy that key level that break or short that break whatever it may be and then it doesn't quite go like you thought my question is this is as simple as you hear these vague answers sometimes of like well if it doesn't work i'll just get out but you know how i trade i don't know this is wrong from what you're doing and it's okay if it is but i pick at la a level of risk right an area that if it hits past this level i'm out and so is that how you think as a scalper is a different thinking process as a scalper like how do you gauge risk and how do you determine i gotta get out of this is it because you just went against you or is it because like what is it so a lot of times it's if it goes against me i mean if i'm in a trade because i'm scalping and smb capital has a lot of good free videos on scalping they do they're great great videos they're a fantastic youtube channel that's where i've also learned a lot of things but so when i'm scalping i want it to go almost instantly so i know this sounds kind of crazy but my stop-loss is almost time-oriented if i'm in my trades for a minute or two minutes that means that if it doesn't go in my favor in about the same amount of time that i need to do my best to consider just getting out of the trade and of course i'll have an area where okay i'm i'm going long high a day if it falls back a couple points from that i need to just be out and it it can always set up again and believe me i'm far from perfect i posted a video a handful of weeks ago me taking a huge loss because i held some losers a little too long i still got out of them quick but when tesla goes against you quick those losers can be big quick so it just goes to show that even though i've turned the corner and i feel really good about what i'm doing like i'm just like everybody else i still make mistakes but just to go back to your question it's more of a time-oriented stop-loss i want the scalp to work almost instantly and if it doesn't right at that level and it starts to pull back i need to just get out of that trade i love it you said that because that makes perfect sense when you say it's like more of a time oriented because you are scalping you're looking for a quick reaction a quick move if you don't get that reaction or a baby reaction you all know it could be a stuff you know it could be really bad and then the slippage is really hard to account for especially if you're a trader like me like i like to hold like not to hold against me i like to hold for the move right and so it's just different and so like i give it that bigger wiggle room because i think oh you know we might you know consolidate and then continue but it's uh i like that you shared that because there's probably people out there because i've tried scalping myself i i'm terrible because i have the yeah i have the wrong mentality of like if i get in i need to hold it for somewhat of a move you know so and that's not the way at least i know for me it's not um you know you mentioned i still make mistakes you know things still happen can you elaborate on what you mean by or not elaborate but could you explain when you make mistakes how does that make you how do you think about it now compared to 2016-17 okay so when i make a mistake now and i lose money there's also one important aspect my account is bigger than it was back then so i can't tell you how important it is that i think it is to once you have experience when you have a bigger account and you take a little bit of a loss i mean obviously taking a devastating loss is a problem no matter how big your account is but when you take a loss on your account it's a little bit bigger it doesn't affect you as much it still hurts it still does not feel good but so that's that's a huge important factor for me but when i it's it's so funny now because when i take a loss now i i know exactly what i did wrong instantly took a trade too late in the day held a loser so even though i i do not like losing money and it's unfortunate i realized that okay i made a mistake and then just like every other time prior now because i have more experience i realize that i can bounce back from it pretty quick just because i've done it before so and i make sure to do all the other positive things like when i take a big loss go to the gym continue to eat right because it's easy to not work out and want to go you know binge eat and stuff like that need a ton of candy so just making sure that everything else is all right and then get right back into it and then a week later that loss doesn't even matter so i've gone through that so many times that it just doesn't affect me as much even though it's still not fun yeah absolutely and how did you handle it back then oh i i couldn't stand it i mean i still don't like losing money but it bothered me a lot i mean it bothered me in other aspects like maybe my mood would be down the rest of the day and it would almost mess my day up and then at some point i realized i can't do that you can't let this go too far into other areas of your life and then i just kind of accepted that hey i've signed up for this yep so i have to deal with all the outcomes that come with it and then once you take enough punches you just get better at taking the next one right really all it is it's like a boxer the first time a boxer gets in the ring they're probably so nervous they take that first hit and they're freaked out but by their 10th fight it's it's a totally different game even though it's still scary yeah absolutely i love that you compared to boxing because that's that's a good point i mean it's a really good point that like over time it still hurts like you know just not as much anymore because the shock fat value yes isn't there anymore right so like before when you first started trading you lose you're like man that you lost you're wrong and you're like like like oh like i don't know what the hell happened i don't know why it happened i don't know what the issue is but now when you're wrong you're like i know exactly what it was yeah i i didn't dodge this hook i i took a step forward instead of a step back like you you analyze it sounds like more than just being upset it's more of an analyzing training you know process for yourself that's cool man now before we start to wrap this up matt by the way uh by the way it's been awesome to talk to you too man but before we just wrap this up i want to ask a couple things one of the things is if there is if you could just immediately get into a time capsule or i guess more of a uh what is it like a teleportation or go back yeah go back in time okay right if you can go back in time to 2015-16 and sit down with yourself for just like 10 minutes and tell and give yourself a quick word of advice or a little quick pep talk what would you tell yourself to help you get to here quicker i would tell myself to just go all in on tesla and just hold it yeah no but no but seriously this is easy this is very easy i would tell myself and i think anybody who gets in the game of trading i think there's one thing that's more important than everything else and that is building a strategy around your personality period start with that so if you are a little high strung a little type a a little stubborn instant gratification like myself maybe scalping is the way to go if you are completely opposite of that maybe you're more swing trader or almost swing intraday or you will take positions and say i'm gonna hold this for the next four or five hours have my levels and not think too much about it i didn't do that in the beginning and it took me a very long time to turn the corner until i actually started digging on match my personality with a style and then build from there so that would literally be the only thing i would tell myself and then say go and then and then use the data to figure out what you're good at within that tiny circle yep and you'll figure it out pretty quickly awesome man and what is one place for people to find out more about you if they want to reach out to you ask any questions can you tell them where they can find you at yeah so my youtube channel is obviously the main thing i put out videos every single week it's just my name matt diamond with two t's i have an instagram matt underscore diamond and then twitter at the matt diamond and i try to be active on all of them just so that way it's it's easier to interact with me and answer dms cool man cool well look matt it was a pleasure to have you on the show my friend it was very interesting to hear just a different perspective and from an options trader perspective and i'm so appreciative that you put it in the stock trading perspective too so i appreciate that yeah but um thank you so much for being here my man it was a pleasure thanks for having me i appreciate it was awesome absolutely

Channel: B The Story

Views: 229,075

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Keywords: day trading for beginners, day trading strategies, stock market for beginners, how to trade penny stocks, how to trade penny stocks for beginners, learn to trade penny stocks, learn how to day trade penny stocks, stock market, day trading, day trader, self taught day trader, $3k into $100k, stocks, how to day trade, how to trade stocks, stock trading, day trading live, b the trader, bthestory, b the story, matt diamond, matt diamond setup, day trader setup

Id: 4XwWby4OxYA

Length: 31min 6sec (1866 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 22 2021