Strap in. When Jeff Macke is driving the conversation, you need to pay attention. The wisdom, wit, and one-liners fly by fast.While other seven-year-olds spent their weekends playing with Lincoln Logs and Wiffle Ball, Jeff was riding around town in a station wagon with his dad, visiting Target stores. He wasn’t just tagging along—he was analyzing e…

We talk to a lot of traders. Not just on this podcast, but across everything we do. And one thing that is common to most of them is some level of stress which must be routinely navigated. And it’s often a real struggle. Many of them are emotionally damaged and scarred by it.In fact, many of our conversations get into discussions about how to best n…

“I don’t need to kill it right now, I just need to make sure I’m around for the next cycle that is favorable to my style of trading.”According to Anthony Crudele, most traders who struggle do so because they are too short-sighted. He believes most successful traders think longer term—not about time frames but about how each individual trade, day, o…

From an early age, David Hale had hustle in his DNA. At just 10 years old, he was sneaking into casinos to play slot machines. By 11, he was betting on horse races. And before long, he was hunting for arbitrage opportunities in baseball card values. Inspired by his bargain-hunting mother, David developed a “value-player” mindset that would eventual…

It’s hard to believe Denise Shull is a product of parents and grandparents who believed in “buy and hold” and wouldn’t even know how to sell a share of stock if asked to.Today, Denise is well known as a Performance Coach to big Wall Street traders, specializing in modern psychoanalysis.Before this, she traded in Chicago and ran a proprietary tradin…

Steven Place has been around the block. He’s been through the ringer. And he has the scars to prove it.A former Rocket Scientist, Steven is a self-taught options trader who’s been plying his craft for nearly two decades.He has spent a lot of time studying options analytics and “hacking” execution strategies to create better outcomes for himself. An…

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” ~ Oliver Wendell HolmesThere’s a profound simplicity that can only be reached by working through complexity. It means that deep understanding is often simple, but achieving it requires grappling with a…

Reinventing your career after 20 years is no small feat. Now, imagine trying to do that by becoming an active trader. That’s exactly what Andrew Moss is doing—but he isn’t going in blind.Andrew’s fascination with the markets began as a teenager when his father introduced him to point-and-figure charts. From there, he pursued a career in brokerage a…

If we only learn one thing from Matt Kenah, I hope it would be this: “The only goal we should have every day is to live to fight another one.”Matt has lived this ethos and he has been repeatedly put to the test. And passed.Starting out on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading floor as a runner just out of high school, Matt quickly rose the ranks …

To say Andrew Menaker took an unusual path to Wall Street would be a severe understatement.While negotiating with an armed bank robber to de-escalate the situation and ensure the safety of customers and bank employees, he had to let Wells Fargo know he wouldn’t be making it to his first interview that day and, therefore, would have to pass on an op…

Among the many things that stood out during our conversation with David Lundgren, it was this quote: “I want to find a way to listen, and learn, and get a little bit better every day.”This is a mindset that every trader, every human, can benefit from.In his early days, David described himself as a “systematic researcher.” This process of discovery …

Milton Marmanides does the hard work that traders don’t have the time to do. He sifts through the firehose of headlines, news releases, data points, and social media to cut through the noise and deliver only the market-moving information active traders need to make smarter decisions.And in his nearly 25 years in the business, first as a trader, and…

They are only losses if we don’t learn something from the experience.When traders woke up on Monday, August 5th to the VIX at 65 and the Nasdaq index down 5% overnight, they didn’t need a cup of coffee to snap into high alert.The easy first question to ask was: “What happened?”Many ideas were tossed around in the media and on the socials that morni…

If there’s one thing Anne-Marie Baiynd learned after making the transition from a business owner to a trader, it’s that she’s no longer in charge.The market, unlike her employees, doesn’t do what she asks it to do.She needed to learn to give up control. And it wasn’t easy.In fact, it was so hard that she almost lost all of the hard-earned money she…

It wasn’t until Nik’s father suggested he get involved in High School Wrestling that he began to learn what drives him: Discipline, Regimen, and Humility.For the first time in his life, wrestling gave Nik recognition. He liked it and knew the only way to maintain it was to go all-in.From high school and into college at the University of Minnesota, …

When Michael Nauss first sat down at a trading desk, his computer had a keyboard and a screen. But no mouse.And his screen displayed an order book. But no charts.Thus began his career as a scalper working the order book, who paid no attention at all to trends or technical analysis. He was simply trying to find spots to buy ahead of large buyers and…

When you are chasing a wave, you can’t be anywhere else. You have to be present. Similarly, you can’t be anywhere else when you are chasing trends. You have to be present. Ian has worked hard to create the right mental and physical environments to increase his odds of presence. The places he’s lived would surely inspire envy in anyone who cherishes…

Michael Martin: A Tribal Inner Game by Sean McLaughlin & Steve StrazzaBy Sean McLaughlin & Steve Strazza

From the Slopes to the Screens: Todd Gordon is hyper-focused.Flying down a mountainside on two skis while negotiating tight turns and ever-changing microclimates would be a terrible time to lose focus.Todd Gordon knows this. If he hadn’t quickly learned this skill in his journey to competitive ski racing, he would’ve likely landed himself onto a st…

Caleb Franzen Can Figure It Out by Sean McLaughlin & Steve StrazzaBy Sean McLaughlin & Steve Strazza

As a Trader with zero to negative correlation to traditional assets, managing money on behalf of institutional investors is exactly where Jason Shapiro is supposed to be.But if you were to ask him, he’d tell you he probably should’ve been a lawyer. And anyone else who comes to him asking about how to break into the world of full-time trading will l…

This episode of Off The Charts may become one of the most important episodes we ever publish. Please give it a watch (or a listen).Jason Perz has grown comfortable with risk. His whole life has manifested risk in every form. From being an adopted child who was teased at school for being "different," to riding BMX bikes and performing "shows" and da…

We've all been there.Think about the time you first got interested in trading. It was exciting thinking about all the potential money we could make.But then we were quickly overwhelmed with the reality of all the things we didn't know. Former aspiring traders never made it past this moment. The mountain they had to climb just looked too daunting.Wh…

If there’s one thing Brian Lund learned about himself over the past 30 years in the markets, he must write. Without a doubt, without even thinking about it, he knows that to express himself and to complete his thoughts into productive trading, he needs to sit down and start writing.And this makes sense. We hear this a lot from our smart friends.Bar…

If there is one thing that stands out from any conversation with Brian Shannon about the trading process, it is this:For discretionary traders, there are no rules. Instead, there are “guidelines.”And because Brian is human, he occasionally breaks his guidelines and suffers the same consequences as anyone else. Everyone gets what they deserve. Even …

Nobody is having more fun than Kenny Glick.He’s found the perfect outlet for combining his myriad passions of risk-taking, education, and entertainment to the benefit of anyone who gets caught in his orbit.Kenny’s unorthodox path to Wall Street is proof.In the early 1990s, Kenny was plying his craft as a fledgling standup comedian when he was spott…

In the first episode of our new podcast interview series, Off the Charts, my co-host Steve Strazza and I interviewed one of our favorite people on Wall Street, Jay Woods.But he’s not just our favorites, he is a favorite of many. I would argue he’s the most popular man on Wall Street!One thing I’ve heard repeatedly over the years is some version of:…