The IDEAL Investor Show: The Path to Early Retirement

Ep 84 A Deep Dive on Trading with Simon Ree

• Season 2 • Episode 7

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Who is the Guest?

We have our guest for today, Simon Ree, who can give us the answers we need. He’s going to explain the hows and the whys of trading.

Simon Ree has worked as a professional in the financial markets since 1992 when he started his career as a futures broker. He loves studying the markets, trading the markets and he loves traders, too. During his 28-year career, Simon worked at Goldman Sachs where he founded and headed up the Markets Desk in Sydney.

 He subsequently held senior positions at Citibank in Singapore. During this time, he developed considerable expertise in financial markets, with a particular emphasis on stocks and options.

Simon is the author of the #1 Amazon Best Seller, The Tao Of Trading: How To Build Abundant Wealth In Any Market Condition. Simon's passion extends beyond trading the markets, to analyzing the markets, talking and writing about the markets, and teaching others how to trade the markets. 

Since 2017, Simon has successfully mentored hundreds of aspiring traders on the simple techniques he uses to generate consistent cash flow from the stock market.


Visit Him at:

Website:https://taooftrading.com 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/simon_ree

Linkedin:https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonree/

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https://taooftrading.com/IDEAL

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BOOK IS OUT! Grab Your Copy and learn how to get your feet wet in real estate investing


Hello, have you ever like I have been fascinated by the yin and yang, the Asian culture and the Western culture and those kinds of things. So we have a real treat for you. In this particular episode, we're going to talk to Simon Ray, who is the expert. And he has a term that he calls the Tao of trading. And he's specializing in options. And I really want you to kind of listen a little bit to this because even though we are real estate investors, they're obviously a bunch of other ways on how you can actually generate cash flow and income. And Simon has a really great way and a great approach that I wasn't aware of, and you might not have either, so let's learn together. Hello, and welcome to another episode of The IDEAL Investor Show where we bring you interesting guests. And now that we are in season two, we also want to touch on two things. That's the one side the diversity of investing that you all can do. And the other side is how does it actually relate to cash flow, because the overall thing that we do at Idea wealth grow, as you know, is try to help people to generate cash flow, or some people call it passive income, so that you can either retire early or retire with more money, or at least have the freedom to do with your time what you want to do. And today we have a great guest, Simon Ray is with us. And he will tell us a little bit about the Tao of trading Simon, welcome to the show. Hi Axel, Thanks for having me. Yeah. Wonderful. And thanks for making the time now, Simon, for our audience. Can you tell us a little bit? How did you get to the point where you add now that you have this style of trading organization and probably in a prominent role, you wrote the book? And so tell us a little bit? How did you get to that point? Yeah, sure. So I spent the better part of 25 years in the corporate world working for large investment banks, like Goldman Sachs, where I was there for 14 years, spent six and a half years at Citibank. And I guess I, you know, I got to middle age, and started asking myself some tough questions. What are you doing with your life? What's your legacy gonna be? What footprints? Are you leaving behind? What is your marginal contribution to society? And I didn't really like the answers I was coming up with, because really, what I'd spent most of my corporate career doing was working with people who were already incredibly wealthy, and effectively helping really wealthy people stay that way, or get even wealthier. And I just felt pretty empty about that. And, you know, I spoke with a couple of mentors and a couple of friends. And I'd realized that I'd built a really good skill set through the functions and the roles that I'd performed at some senior levels in these organizations. And it was really a question of, well, how do I bring that skill set to people who could really benefit from it rather than serving people who were already in the 1%. And so I left the corporate world behind, and decided to teach what I know, to people who are interested in committed to building their wealth more quickly, and certainly looking to outperform what traditional Wall Street wealth generation methods would allow. And so I wrote a book, I built an online education company, which services people from all over the world. And I was able to, I guess, married two passions that I have one being financial markets, and the other being teaching. I've been interested in financial markets ever since I was a teenager, I was in my, my second last year of high school during the 1987, stock market crash, and I didn't have any money invested at the time, I was too young. But the whole story just kind of captivated me fascinated me. And I kind of got hooked on stocks and the stock market way back then in high school. And I thought, yeah, I want to have a career in the stock market there. And then, and then I guess my second passion has been teaching. In addition to being a trader, I'm also a G KUNDO. Instructor. And I've always found whether it's G KUNDO, whether it's trading, I've always enjoyed teaching, and some of the most rewarding moments in my life have been helping somebody have that light bulb go off in their head, the penny drops, they get the aha moment, I find that incredibly gratifying. And so being able to marry I guess those two passions has been great for me personally, as well. Yeah, that's wonderful. The first thing I want to ask because I'm asked this all the time. So in this case, I think it makes sense to ask that back. You don't sound like an American of any area that I've been in. So I'm not where's the origin for the accent. So I was born in England moved to Australia when I was 13. And I went to a bit of a rough High School and literally had the English accent beat anatomy. But yeah, I sort of finished high school in University in Perth in Western Australia, and in sort of built my career in Sydney and moved to Singapore in 2010, which is where I've been ever since. Yeah, very cool. And Singapore doesn't have any kind of it's all Little twang a twist or what you say it's just coming together from all kinds of places in the world. Yeah, Singapore has got a strong local tradition and a strong local accent then is Singlish. Very, very distinctive local twang. But yeah, it's very multicultural as well. Yeah, that's when I first came to the US with my wife, we call it a day English for de for German, and English. And it's literally in a way it's to this day, every so often you miss a word, which then triggers the brain to switch into the other language. And then for like, three minutes, we speak German with each other. And then we break into sort of, it's still in English in this. Interesting. Yeah. So the other thing by two other things, the first I want to ask is, I think you're the first person honestly, the first person who said, I was still in high school, I got interested in trading and finance in the stock market. And you said it was a stock market crash wasn't really that literal? Or is there maybe something in the Australian school system that is better than everywhere else in the world with at least some something about finance and how to handle money? Or other than happened? No, I don't think so. I mean, I studied economics is one of my, you know, high school examinations, subjects. And I had, I was lucky enough to have an economics teacher who has written a book. And, you know, he was very passionate about not just economics, but also finance. And he would come into class in the morning and say, Oh, do you see the news about the stock market? You know, this is generally in the aftermath of the crash. So I found that very engaging, I don't know that it was anything particular about the school system. I mean, my school, you know, turned out it's fair number of roof tiles, and welders and so forth. And we certainly didn't become investment bankers or anything like that. But yeah, it was just something that I found fascinating. Even as a younger kid, I was flipping through the newspaper. And I'd always turn to the back pages where they had the stock market prices, the tables there, and for No, for no reason that I can really explain. I used to love pouring down them. And yeah, I just found it really interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, there's stories, how we can get fascinated or triggered, or whatever you want to call it. Really individual, I think, you know, like, so I'm glad to hear that Australian High Schools have economics because that's also not common necessarily all around the world. In my case, just so you know, is my grandpa. Well, I for one, I was raised by my grandparents, because both my parents basically had to live the lifestyle that we were living, they both had to go to work, even, you know, in their generation, which at the time was very unusual that both parents would go to work, it was more common that typically the mother stayed home. But my and my sister's life was basically being dropped off somewhere around 7am at grandma's and then they went to work. And somewhere between five and 530, we were picked up again. And my grandpa was a patent lawyer working for a large corporation, one of the largest of its kind at the time. I don't know if you ever heard about Olympia typewriters, that was pretty much the global leader of typewriters and electronic typewriters. And then when computers came out, they went away, but he worked for them. And when he came home, he had kind of like this, this habitual thing to come home, my grandma made him a cup of coffee and some the sweet tart thing or stuff like that. And then he took the newspaper, threw, like three quarters of it away and pulled out the economic section, and then took a pencil and highlighted stuff or underlying stuff. And I must have watched this for years until I finally said, Hey, Grandpa, what are you doing? And he was then starting to explain to me what bonds and what are stocks? Not really, that I could comprehend it in any way. But I think that was something that made me interested in money and in school, just to finish that story. I got fascinated in biology topics. And I think to some extent, after my military career, why did I end up doing a lot of consulting in the pharmaceutical industry is also connected to some teachers, like you said, Simon, who can some of them not very many, I believe, but some can transport that topic in a way that it really sticks and, you know, kind of carries on through life. And as you said earlier, I had some skills that allowed me to do some things in the upper levels of the company that would also transfer to my business. Can you tell the audience a little bit what some of those skills are? Well, these are skills that were, I guess, honed, not less a result of my job and more of a result of my ambition. And it's just my proximity to the markets that enabled me to hone these skills. I'm talking about the ability to identify, analyze and read trends, the ability to manage financial risk and the ability to decide, you know, which risks are worth taking. And I think that that is such a valuable skill in life. And it's one of the things that people who learn how to trade they become good at that skill of learning which risks are worth taking, if that's something that you can translate to your everyday life as well. Well, it's a very powerful skill. Yeah, absolutely. Now, you wrote the book when you call the company or the website, The Tao of trading. Yeah. And to me when I first heard that when my little LF Nadine said, Okay, we want, your next choice is going to be with Simon. And she sent me the link to prepare, and like, okay, so stock market trading. And on your website, you also talked about options and stuff like that. And I'm like, okay, when I look at what I can find about how, without going very deep, admittedly talks about how the universe works, and harmony and kind of philosophical things, and so forth. And I always thought this trading stuff, especially in the stock market, and Option Market is pretty brutal. So can you set my head straight? Yeah, yeah. That's a great question. Actually, there's a Yeah, that's very cool. And thanks for explaining that. I little bit to unpack there. So why don't I write a book on options? Trading is probably a good place to start. I mean, that there are already hundreds of books that have been written on options trading, why does the world need another one. And I thought the world needs a book on options trading that is both simple and engaging. Because pretty much all of the other books on options trading are both difficult, and frankly, quite boring. They're hard to get through. They're the sorts of books you'd only read. If you had a boss making you read them. All right, then they kind of read like textbooks quite often. So I wanted to write a book that was simple, engaging, fun, easy for people to get through. And from the feedback that I've received from readers, I feel confident, I've ticked those two boxes. So many people have written to me and said they've read the book in a weekend, they couldn't put it down. And it's 342 pages. It's not a booklet, in terms of the name that the Tao of trading I mean, the Tao roughly translates to the way, as I said earlier, in addition to being a trader, I'm also a certified G KUNDO. Instructor, and G KUNDO, is the martial art that Bruce Lee developed. And Bruce Lee wrote a wonderful book called The Tao of Jeet KUNDO. That's my favorite book. And so the title of my book, it's an homage to Bruce Lee, who's been a great mentor to me through my life, and the book, the way it's written. It's not just a bunch of trading setups and technical jargon and lingo, it really takes the reader through what it takes to be successful in this game, looking at psychology, mindset, risk management, yes, we do cover setups, and you know, what options are and how to trade them all the way through to how to actually put it all together and make it happen for you. So it's a holistic book. And yeah, I mean, you're right, the world of trading can be very aggressive, very testosterone, a very, you know, dog eat dog zero sum game, I encourage people not to approach trading with that mindset, because I just don't think it's particularly helpful. The fact is, the financial markets turn over trillions of dollars every day, they are a river of opportunity. And all I'm trying to do as a trader, and all any of us really want to do as traders is just kind of dip their hands in that river and scoop out a tiny little bit. You know, there's, there's plenty for everyone else. We're just trying to scoop out a little bit from this enormous river of financial abundance that transacts around the world every day. mean, certain terms that you use resonate with me partly because of my own studies. But I also always find when you speak a language like we're doing with each other, where it's not my native language, when I had to learn it and was ambitious to learn as good as possible, there is an extra sensitivity to even normal words, an example being you just said in this game. And I wonder, do you use that term in this game consciously in the sense of I know that some people win in some people lose, or one team wins? And when one team wins, the other one loses? Did you mean it consciously like that? No, no, it's not. It's not it's not as conscious as that. I mean, we kind of refer to trading as a game, there are sort of loosely slip stipulated rules that some people understand others don't. But really, and truly, I think you could use the word business industry just as easily. Yeah and I didn't mean it in any way as a critique. But for me, you know, sometimes there's a at least for stock and option trading, it fears because I'm uninformed. Obviously, like we mentioned earlier, you know, you're probably fully aware and normally sighted and I'm the blind. But it fits to me sometimes more like a casino, then, you know, something unless you are really the bank, you know, then it's a little different from that perspective. Now, the other thing is, you said, and I don't want to get too philosophical. But one of the things when I did my PhD studies, was a really good book talking about Whitewater. So would you say the Tao of trading is avoiding the whitewater and working in other parts of the river or what you would describe it? I think it's more a case of just being respectful of which way the river is flowing and not trying to rub against it. Not be so yeah. Okay, all right, cool. That's good. Now that we have a little bit of a frame, can you give us maybe an example for an audience that is not everyday teaching or being involved in options trading? How that could look like for somebody? If somebody came to you and say, Okay, I have$10,000 Last year, wasn't that great? I don't really want to put it in my 401 K and let somebody else deal with it again, how could you help me to learn what I can do and how I can do it, you know, besides reading a book, obviously, you know, to do it maybe your way and see if that resonates with me. So I think getting a quality education in trading, and particularly in options trading is really, really important. Nobody makes you get a license or pass a test to open an options brokerage account. Alright. Now, if you were to jump behind the wheels of a car, having never taken a driving lesson, you know, might be great fun for the first little while, but it's probably going to result in an accident. And the same is true with options trading. If you open an options trading account without first learning how to trade. It's yeah, it might be good fun for a little while, but it's almost certainly going to end up in an accident. So getting a proper education is really important. I always say to people who have read my book, I mean, it costs$8.99. I mean, I make nothing from book sales, right? It's almost like a tribe try before you buy or buy. And if you like my style, you like my approach, and you want to take it to the next level, that's when you could look at joining options Academy, which is my my online learning programs. And what we offer is over 25 hours of online tuition, it's broken up over about 70 different videos. So it's all fairly bite sized chunks, I have had members go through the entire program within a weekend, they are the exception, most people would take a few weeks to go through it. And once you've been through it probably twice, it's time to start trading, by all means do some paper trading while you're learning. But you want to start trading real money once you've really digested the information. And what I always say to people is your first 100 trades are really like your apprenticeship, alright, and your goal isn't to make money, your first 100 trades, your goal is only to not lose money, you want to come out of those first 100 trades and your account should be no smaller than it was when you started. Now if you make a bit of money, that's fine. But we're not trying to make money. We're trying to refine the process, we're trying to respect the process, practice the process, apply consistency, and just get into the habit of showing up every day. And becoming really diligent and treating trading like a job like a real job. Unfortunately, a lot of people approach trading with this, you know, casino mentality, or this this lotto ticket mentality. And they feel as though they're going to turn their $1,000 into a million dollars in six months. And these are the people that end up blowing up their account, usually fairly quickly. Whereas if you take a more responsible approach, and you say, Well, I just over the long term will grow my wealth or add to my income, or do both, as you said at the beginning of your introduction, these are the people that the sort of mindset that will enable success. The thing is with trading, so long as you've got a probabilistic edge, and a probabilistic edge just means you've got a system that puts the probabilities in your favor. If you learn how to lock not lose money, making money almost becomes inevitable over time, once you've honed the practice, okay, and I say to people, once you've gone through your first 100 trades, if you're trading options, you should be targeting returns of around 5% per month. So it's not get rich quick, all right. And it's not passive income, but it is it's get rich, certainly time efficiently. It does require time it does require effort. It does require consistency, but we're probably only talking on average half an hour a day or there abouts again, once you've gone through the learning process. right? Well, I know I mean, 5% a month or 60%. Right. And so that's pretty steep acceleration. Now, one thing, and maybe I'm naive about that, but to what extent do the underlying assets play a role? Let's say you could say, Okay, I do options trading with Procter and Gamble. And in that industry, then I do Pfizer, and I don't know toyota? I mean, there are probably there's probably 120 stocks that I would trade on a regular basis. And they tend to be your large liquid blue chip, large cap US stocks that they would mostly will be household names. Right. So that's what I meant by underlying assets. So to me, we do our work in our investments in real estate, which doesn't mean there's you know, everybody should have diversification as part of why we why we brought you in and obviously, if people can live up to that 50 to 60% per year in diligent following half hour a day in that process that you develop, then that accelerates the growth of money, especially if Anything that needs to accumulate to be come a down payment in our system for four hours. But what I was getting at, you know, sometimes you have times like last year, where suddenly the word says the growth industry is dead, and therefore they're nothing worth anymore. And so let's just kill him by at least 50% of war, right? And I'm seeing it kind of like this a little bit over the top way, because it felt to me as a again, blind, you know, among the one and two is irrational, completely irrational completely, especially not in the context of is really everybody in this particular part of the market the same? Or are there some that do better and some lead to worse? And then that should actually reflect somehow, in both the stock price and probably associated the option contract price? Does that make a difference? Or is it really mainly mathematics that applied? Well, the way my approach to trading is technical, I'm looking for trends, and I'm following price action, I'm never trading what I think should happen. All right, I'm not trading my thoughts and my feelings. I'm trading the chart in front of me, there's a very popular saying trade what you see not what you think a lot of people thought after Russia invaded Ukraine that oil prices should go much, much higher. And oil price basically fell from the week after the invasion until the end of the year, a lot of people thought gold should have gone much, much higher. We had inflation, we had war, we had geopolitical conflict. And gold did nothing last year. A lot of people thought they should buy bonds, because bonds perform well in a recession. And the US had a technical recession in the first half bonds had the basically their worst calendar year on record. Alright, so trading narratives and trading, what you think should happen can really lead you into a trap. Whereas if you follow price, and you learn how to identify trends and identify high probability moments in time to join a trend, you don't have to worry about those stories that you read in the newspaper or see on TV or, or even the stories going around around in your head. Okay. Yeah, that's very good. And I think it's very important. Well, let me just start by saying trend following has got I mean, I know some people even though I don't understand the underlying thing, but I think one of the things they use is called people Nachi curves, and trend analysis and stuff like that. What has always fascinated me about that is to what extent something like a little bit like the lemmings approach, right? Like certain people, or certain organizations do certain things that develops a trend that has a more or less higher or lower probability of continuing to a certain point, is there something where you would say, Okay, if you learn how the math and the technical aspects and trends work, that that is what makes it work, I've been meaning to ask somebody who does this kind of stuff, what makes liabilities in the trend is actually worked with if you say, you can almost kind of remove yourself and I know a German guy who has a financial management company, and he literally almost to the point of breaching says, You have to like you just said, divorce yourself from what 200 years of data backing it up, it is by far the most researched should be or you love this company, and you hate this company at all? Nothing to do with it. We're doing basically in slightly different words, what you just said, Simon, do you have some explanation why the trends work? the most tested style of trading. So it's certainly got the data and the academic rigor to back it up trends, one of the most significant anomalies that occur in the financial markets, and it's all based around herd instinct, alright hurting, hurting, it's the old safety in numbers. It's something human beings, just evolutionary primed to do. We don't like to stand out from the crowd, we feel safety in numbers, and this herding instinct that occurs in the basal ganglia in the brain. And these instincts occur very much more quickly. And they're very much more powerful than sort of cognitive thought. And that is a large part of the reason why trends form and B can become remarkably consistent because human beings latch on to this hurting behavior. And not only that, human beings are hard wired to project the recent past into the future. We always expect the past is going to continue into the future. even though they always put it in the fine print that is supposedly not the case. I meen it's true that past performance is no guarantee of future performance. But you think about it, right? If you're, if you're going to hire somebody for a job, you're going to want to see references and their curriculum vitae, right, because you're going to assume that what they've done in the past is going to continue on into the future. If you're watching a ballgame, a sports game, and Team A has just kicked the last three scoring shots in a row. What happens the commentators start saying things like teammate who's got all of the momentum teammate looks to have this game in the bag. You can even see the bookmakers shortened the odds on team A in real time. No absolutely. Even applies I mean, there are a couple of components. But It even applies on my end with real estate investing, because it would be really, really inefficient to constantly try to find new providers, right. So you obviously say, Okay, I'm looking for good providers when you first start out, then as you establish good providers, or you might call them good focus in the market, or whatever you name or label you put on it, and they do what you expect them to do, you stick with them for one because they do what they do. But also because it is making it easier for lack of a better description to have, you know, like a certain frame into which you can look and see what's actually moving rather than having pedelec, the whole universe to kind of constantly be aware of and try to decipher what's going on. So I get that now, that kind of begs a little bit of a question to actually to question. The first one is, and tell me if I'm wrong about this. But over the years, I've heard more and more and more claims that especially on the ETF side, and a mutual fund side and stuff like that, even though we're still talking about financial managers and advisors and stuff like that a lot of the things are basically programmed into trading programs, who just observe movements, and then act accordingly. The question that came to my mind when you were describing it is, is the reason that they're following the trend, because they will be programmed by the same kind of people who would otherwise have to do it themselves manually? Well, I mean, at the end of the day, any Algo, or any trend following system is programmed by humans. So they are specifically designed by humans to take advantage of the behavior of other humans effectively. And do you think there is a chance in the future that machine learning and subsequent AI could overcome that bias? You know, I think it's unlikely. I don't know if you've used chat GPT at all. years away from anything seriously impressive on that front? I would think, look, people have been talking about computers and the bots taking over trading, you know, ever since the tech boom, it certainly hasn't happened. Maybe it will one day, worry about it if and when it does. But you know, people have been talking about this for more than two decades. And trading hasn't gotten any harder. In fact, my trading has improved in that time. Yeah, I mean, I, in my recollection over the years, and you said yourself that you've been doing it for quite a while, the introduction and use of any level of automation, to me look very much focused on speed, and basically benefit from the tiniest variations. Because I have the fiber optic cable that's only like 100 meters long, versus like 500 meters long. And that milli micro second that I can get to the trade early, I can give me maybe like one one hundredths of 1%, lower or higher, and I can make money in that margin. That's at least my observation. I'm not an expert. But it seems like most of the organizations and institutions that wanted to automate things were mainly trying to increase the speed. And I only know this to some extent with the US market that the regulatory environment is completely nuts in my view about that, right? Because if there were a fee for every trade, like it used to be for you and me, when we traded, we used to have to pay a fee, then nobody would do like 100 billion trades in an hour one, something like that would be completely prohibitive, the balance between how much you could make and how much it will cost. So for me, this is more a regulatory thing that you know, the technology was available, at least to some extent, it's not really so much. What do I trade? I think like you said, the trade the what is being traded is influenced by what people put into the program, the technology aspect, it's just that a computer can trade faster than a human can type it into some screen or whatever, or into a spreadsheet or what have you. But I'm not I'm not so sure. I mean, it's very hard to predict where AI goes. I also don't think it's anything to do with chit chat GPT, even though I played around with it, and I thought it's pretty fascinating. I think we right now just in the very early stages of discovering what the computer can learn, and I mean, this really in the literal sense of drawing conclusions from a mass of information that not pre programmed. I think that's kind of like the step that we adjust very slowly starting to make. And I'm actually optimistic to say there might be a lot of questions that we just haven't gotten around to answer because we haven't really looked at all the potential variables but a computer that has no limitations or almost no limitations on speed can go to all these things in attempt to learn and discover things that yeah, we would potentially discover ourselves if we had enough time and energy when in nearly the same kind of speed. So you know, I think that generalized into diligence is, at some point maybe coming around. And when that is, then some of those unanswered questions we may be answered. Until then I'm with you. I don't think we have to worry. So I think you know, this is a fascinating field. And, before we go to the to the final few questions, you said, Okay, 5% per month after having done the 100 trades and getting familiar and stuff like that, can you give a little bit for our audience an idea what regular people would put either by percentage, or by a nominal number into this kind of activity, and how much they can generate, in your experience, the members that went to your program? Yeah, I mean, that's, I usually recommend people start with$5,000. That's, I think, a good starting level to test the waters, but test them properly. So that you can have, you can make a couple of mistakes, you can have more than one position open, you can have a little bit of diversification in your portfolio. I have had people start with much less than that. I had one lady Katia. She, she started with $700. And she turned that into $1,200 in her first month, and it has gone from strength to strength. And she's very grateful, because she says inflation is no longer a fear in her life. Our most successful member at all he made 717% last year, and this is where the student becomes the master. I'll tell you how. I didn't do that. Well, but yeah, it's just it's very gratifying. Is there a linear relationship between success and time spent? No, I don't think so. But I think that there would be a loose correlation there. Okay, so I mean, the number of trades probably makes a little bit of a difference, right? The number of trades look, actually, interestingly, at all, who's our most successful member, he tends to hold positions for longer, so he's actually a little bit less active than than I am and most of the other members. So maybe, maybe he's onto something there. But look, in terms of number of trades, I would probably do, you know, 180 a year, I guess, on average, so read reasonably high frequency, not day trading, but I was just about to say people would probably assume you know, 10 a day or something, but 180 That's just one every other day, basically, you know? Yeah. And look, I would have more than one on at any one time. You know, I might have up to 10 positions open at a time. Normally, it'd be sort of somewhere between four and six. And I would hold the position anywhere from two to three days to two to three weeks. Okay, I was just about to ask how long typically a trade takes. So thanks for answering that. All right. Very cool. I think that gives people an idea. And I think it's important, I was fascinated when we had the chance to invite you to the show that this is one of the areas when you know, I'm always trying to make the connections to our world. And so if somebody has invested in a property, let's say 150 or $200,000 property, and every month after everything is covered, they make $300 Right as cashflow, what typically what we want to get to is that you accumulate besides, you know, I always say pay yourself first 10% of what comes in, you put into your accumulation account, plus your cash flow from your investments. So let's just say that were $1,500 a month, you could basically do some of what you're teaching Simon and accelerate the growth of that accumulation phase to get to your next downpayment, so to speak for your next investment. Right, and kind of combine these things. And indirectly, not only learning a new skill, but also have more diversification in in the different things that that you hold. Yeah, I mean, that would be a great approach. And again, you're using money that is, so to speak house money, you know, it's money that's coming from your investments. It's risk capital. Yeah. So. So I liked the idea more and more in the last few years to see, okay, how can I make that original $1,000 If you want to take that right, like so I made for some crazy reason I made 10 grand, I took $1,000 My 10% invested and now I follow the breadcrumbs that $1,000 made per month $2 Here, those $2 went there and made 20 cents here, and then those two and so forth, right? So that that same original money can get put to work more than once. And that's really where the acceleration comes from. Right? Like typically, I think we have a hard time doing this in our mind, we can pretty easily say, Okay, I do something, yes, the result and a story than I do something else is a result. But to have them connected like that, like a waterfall, basically an avalanche in a sense, right, like the snowflake that ultimately becomes an avalanche. So that's a kind of like a fascinating thing. I'm still looking for somebody who has already made a calculator where you can kind of type that in and see how effective that that first 1000 the first $100 or so actually is. All right, cool. So the Tao of trading Simon when before we went to record, you said you prepare something for our audience. And if anybody is interested to get the book to get the course or then go to the academy, can you tell us a little bit how they would do that? Yeah, sure, if they head over to www.Taooftrading.com/ideal.Yeah, they can download the first chapter of my book for free. They can learn a little bit more about our programs and get a pretty, pretty hefty discount, as well. Awesome. Well, thank you for doing that. So at the end of the show, I always ask the same two questions to everybody. So I'm going to ask them to you two, if you could meet anybody you want past or present. Who would it be? And why? Oh, yeah, easy one for me, it'd be Bruce Lee. I think the guy was, I mean, not only was he a genius in terms of becoming the father of MMA, but he was a he was a real philosopher as well. He's somebody I'd love, love to have hung out with. Okay, yeah, that would be cool. And then the other question is, if you had a time machine, you could go anywhere forward or backward, can change the time space continuum, though. But other than that, you can go anywhere, where would you go in why? property, go back to 2009 and buy as many bitcoins I could? Yeah, well put like a note into your diary. By the time you come back and say buy this, we've got Bitcoin. Okay. I'm not quite sure if that changes the time space continuum, but you know, because you would take some of the 21 million limited number that is out there. For you. Yeah, no, that'd be cool. I would go with you. And we can those make those entries together could it was great fun to have you learn a little bit about an area that we are normally not very much involved with. But I think what came across is that like everything, there is a necessity, I believe, to reach a certain level of mastery before you start risking any kind of assets that you value. And when you're willing to go that route instead of just following the Lemmings, when everybody says you have to do something you probably too late anyways. So one thing I want to always try to do at the end of the show any final words Simon? I think 2023 is likely to be another challenging year in the stock market. I think we're probably in for another volatile year. I don't know that the markets are going to decline like they did last year. But I certainly think a lot of wide ranging, volatile, choppy waters out there, it's unlikely to be a very favorable environment for financial assets. So if you are interested in delving into the waters get a proper education, if not from me from from someone. Yeah, I think that's great advice. And probably the amount of money to be put at risk. Using your approach with options is, like you said, people start with several 100, or maybe a few$1,000 is definitely a better easier way to play, especially when you can do it with money that you don't necessarily need to live for. So thank you, Simon for being here. It's a great pleasure to have somebody who has spent so much time in these markets, wrote the book, and so forth. So I want to recommend everybody go to the website hour of trading slash idea. And take a look at the book and when you like the first chapter and get the repo awesome. So thanks very much for having me. It's been a real Thank you. pleasure. Thanks for listening. And I hope you enjoyed today's episode of The IDEAL Investor Show more info and the links we mentioned during the show in the show notes or you can go to our website at idea where to grow a.com and sign up for the Apple podcast link. And if you'd like to talk to me sign up for a strategy call. Hopefully you want to share what you learned with your network and bring more people in we are really eager to hear your comments and until next time, be well stay safe and chop