my teachers ask for trading tips with @bystevenr | Ep 90

0:00What is up everybody? Welcome to another episode of In the Trenches presented by FOMO. Hope everybody had a great weekend. This is episode number 90. Holy [ __ ] we're at episode number 90. I can't believe it. And we are here with a young man who's absolutely [ __ ] crushing right now on FOMO. Stephen R.

0:17What's up, bro? How are you? What's good, everybody? Yeah, I'm by Stephen R. Stephen. Um, I trade on FOMO, do a bunch of other things, and yeah, I'm super excited to be on here. Thank you guys for having me. Yeah, man. I'm stoked to chat with you. Let's get the uh rundown. You know, for anybody who's tuning in who doesn't know who you are yet, tell us tell us about yourself. Tell us about how you actually

0:37got into trading. Yeah, so I've pretty much been like just an online money kid pretty much my whole life. Started trading about five or six years ago. So, I was like 13 years old. Super super young. 2021 cycle. Crazy. Um pretty much the main thing that got me into trading was an NFT called Mechaverse. I don't know if you know that, but it was a super super popular NFT. I ultimately got whitel listed for them and I got two of them and yeah, I was super stoked. I was a young kid. I was like, "Holy [ __ ] I

1:09just I I I just made a bunch of money. Like, this is absolutely crazy." And then of course, I didn't sell it and I roundted everything and I like cried for days. That was like probably like the worst event that ever happened to me. I thought like everything was over. So, I ultimately like quit crypto for a little bit, went into sneaker reselling, did that for like three-ish years till I was about 16, and then got back into crypto pretty seriously. Started off trading pers and doing a lot of higher time frame swing trading. And then obviously as like the market conditions get better, onchain trading emerges and

1:44obviously I took advantage of that and started trading onchain too. How much did you uh how much were you up on the NFTs? How much did you round? I was up like it was like 60 to like a 100red grand at peak. I think I could have sold them for like 20 or 30 ETH

1:59together. Yeah. Damn. Brutal. How did you get whitelisted? Um, you just had to like enter one of those raffles where you just connect your wallet and you just check if you're whitelisted like a couple of days later. Crazy. Okay. So, you started with NFTTS, you round trip, you give up, you come back, you start trading per high time

2:18frame, and then you get into onchain. I had like a mentor who who taught me like just more of technical analysis, not really anything fundamental with crypto. It was more just about the technicals, the setup, and proper risk management. And I was like doing that on like a maxi account, risking like $1 because I didn't have a lot of money.

2:36Yeah. Yeah. But I think that was like a really good foundation. And I actually think it's like one of the best things you can do in crypto is just understand technical analysis. Okay. Interesting. Say more on this because like I I talked to a lot of people about TA. I have a TA background myself and I you know when I came into the meme world and and onchain generally speaking I wanted to apply all of my technical analysis stuff that I knew to it. And I found that like in a lot of cases I can't. I there are specific things that I can use but I can't do all

3:07of it. like where does technical analysis start actually working? I mean I think really the only way to trade memes with technical analysis is like if they're getting listed on exchanges they have market makers like things like whiff Doge like those work for technical analysis but all the lower caps on chain are just mostly narrative driven. Yeah. And I mean there could be something that happens in an hour that fully destroys the chart which like I mean TA has no effect on. And I think that I think of memecoins as like levered exposure to crypto upside as like assuming you know how to correctly

3:43trade them. Explain what that means really quick for anybody who's tuned in that doesn't know. Explain what levered exposure means. I pretty much like tell a lot of people like you don't have to own spot crypto or have a lot of money in the market to capture upside on crypto. as in like if I'm have the ability to trade meme coins and the market is going up, the memecoin market is probably going to be in a good

4:07spot for me to be able to make money. Like I know I will be able to make money if Bitcoin is up 20 to 30% on the month guaranteed in the memecoin market. So it kind of helps me not FOMO into higher time frame spot trades and also leverage trades. And I just understand that the memecoin market is there. For example, like this big move, I was pretty sidelined on altcoins, but the memecoin market was absolutely very good. So, I was just able to take advantage of that and not like FOMO into like Zcash at the

4:36top. How are you can you explain the difference between spot and leverage and kind of win? Yeah. So, I mean, spot is pretty much you just own the tokens outright in your spot wallet, something like a ledger or meta mask, phantom. And then leverage trading is on pers. That is something on like lighter hyperlquid. Um FOMO has per

4:55as well that I kind of mess around with. So yeah. Do you think young people like people your age should be trading pers or like um I actually don't think so. I'm I think just building a higher time frame spot portfolio is like always going to outperform especially at somebody as young as me. Um I do think though bucketing your capital is really important. Like I have my intraday trades where it's like memecoin trades, some leverage trades in one portfolio and then the next portfolio I have my swing trades, the higher time frame altcoin plays and then I have my high time frame spot plays that I don't like

5:30to touch necessarily and the goal should be always to deploy capital into the higher time frame buckets from your lower time frame. Can you give me examples of the different tokens that would live in those different buckets? Yeah. So, the lower time frame trades are going to be obviously probably like my FOMO account. That's where I'm generating a lot of money in there and then rotating that into things like some spot plays I took was on an altcoin called chip, pump fun, hyperlid. Those are sort of my more meat of my portfolio in active managing my swing trades. And then my higher time frame bags are just things like Salana,

6:07Bitcoin, and Zcash. That's literally it. What is active managing? active managing just mean like I'm checking the charts every day. I might alter this position, rotate my bag into a a new coin, but the higher time frame plays. I don't really look at technical analysis too much. I just like leave it there. Okay. So, tell me about higher time frame plays. Like what is a higher time frame? What is higher time frame even mean? And and what is the time frame for

6:31you? So, usually this is just on spot and I will use technical analysis. So, I'll wait for like my strategies. I'll wait for a draw down like or a like reversal and I pretty much just enter spot trade and it'll probably be like a one to two month hold. But you know crypto like literally sometimes I've entered trades I'm like yo I'm going to hold this token for 100% gain over the next year and

6:53then the next day it's up 100%. Right. Yeah. Of course. Of course. Okay. So time frame is kind of relative, but you're you are usually trying at least on these kind of like the the longer term holds, you're trying to hold for weeks, months if you can. Yeah. Okay. Got you. And so for your day trading or for your your FOMO port, you're kind of thinking more shorter

7:17term, an hour, couple hours. Yeah. I I'm like after what happened to pawns, I just like can't have size in a token anymore. like pawns had the best narrative in the world. Co of like Vlad was showing it like everything and then it's like down like what 70 80% right now. So yeah, do do you think that's in part because Robin Hood is like kind of stopped talking about it so much? Um, I mean I think that does play some factor in it, but also I'm just like I'm not the trader to hold 80% draw downs because every single memecoin that's ever came out, whiff, ship, like literally everything has had

7:58multiple 70 to 80% corrections and I personally just can't hold that. That's just not my trading style. I would much rather be positioned in something like Hyperlquid or Chip or Zcash or something like that where they still have 70% corrections but I can justify holding that. Yeah. Do you Okay, so you you trade on chain. Do you trade stocks? Do you trade forex? Do you trade any of the other

8:21assets? Since I like I literally just turned 18 a couple weeks ago, everything was like super gray. Like I had my parents obviously create like a stock account for me. But now I'm going to get pretty deep into equities as well because the technical analysis on there is pretty much the same exact strategy I use.

8:36Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Who who taught you? Who was your mentor? So yeah. So I had a mentor. He's not like he's like some dude who lives in Utah. He like fishes. He's not like the classic like he had a Lambo and I saw his video. I just like sort of stumbled upon um Purps trading. It wasn't as popular back then and he really taught me like a lot of just like key fundamental and technical analysis. So talk to me through about like kind of the key things the key things he taught you. What did he what did you Yeah. So like pretty much just I guess

9:07the risk is in my opinion the most important thing especially in leverage trading like you see people go up on crazy runs because the market just isn't aggressive trends and then they end up losing it all due to one like liquidation event or one flush. And I think risk management is very important. And then obviously the setup and then obviously on crypto it actually matters about the asset you're trading now. Like for example, you can't just long like you used to be able to just long any altcoin and they would all go up the same. But we're seeing a pretty big um we're just seeing a pretty big like

9:43basically change in the altcoin market where a lot of different alts will go up and then a lot of different alts will go down. So you need to also select the the like right ones pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And how do you make that determination? Yeah. So it's like a lot of research on I think X is really good for this actually like following Ansom, following a lot of the top traders and seeing what they're talking about. I mean a lot of them caught like wormhole recently, Backpack, Chip, like those were the main three. And then you can also just kind of see it in the chart like what is

10:13showing strength and what is showing weakness. Like for example, like the chip chart and the wormhole chart in my opinion look a lot better than something like the BMBB chart like a week ago. So you just kind of have to like just I think you have to be 247 in crypto looking at everything. You can't kind of just like take one gander at a chart and

10:31be like, "Okay, this is good." When you say that the chart is showing strength, what specifically are you looking for? Outside of just like green candles up and to the right, are there specific? So I mean a lot of the time I just look at like are we in a higher time frame trend? I look at the weekly candles. Um, a lot of the things I use for strength as well is we can look at the yearly open. Um, see what alts are trading above the yearly open and which ones are trading below. I know I spoke about wormhole and backpack. Those were all

10:57tokens actually that were down like 99%. So, it's usually not the strategy that I will trade, but recently those have been the trades. You wait for a token to go down 99%. You wait for like a base to form out on the weekly and then you enter that. But usually I'll be trading tokens with a lot of strength like Hyperliquid and Zcash are all trading well above the yearly open. So that's

11:19like kind of like my metric. Talk to me about the yearly open. Why is this important? So the yearly open uh it's just like a very key level. You'll notice that every time you mark it out, even like prior yearly levels just are really high time frame areas where there's just a lot of support, a lot of resistance, a lot of deviations happen. So like price will shoot above the early open and then come sharply down and then sort of like teeter off down or the same thing on the way up. So I just use that as like a

11:48very very key technical level. Okay. And this is the this is the price of the asset the moment that the that like the first day of the year that is the yearly open. There's monthly opens, there's daily opens, there's weekly opens and they're actually very very strong levels that I feel like a lot of people don't really talk about. So, what about for a token that got launched yesterday? Obviously, it doesn't have a yearly open, right? Like, yeah, I I honestly stay away from new tokens. Um, yeah. Yeah. I don't really touch new especially like new altcoins that just like always ends up as a disaster, especially to the upside. I

12:24mean, like XPL, that thing launched, went up a couple percent, and then just down 99%. it's my bad. Um, of course, if you're short on them, but being in the crypto market, I like to like have a positive view on the market and not like want to short every single token. So, I just kind of stay away from that. Same thing with like Pump Fun even. Um, they had their ICO price went up like 2x and then down 99% pretty much. So, you notice that I mean that's the strategy I've kind of been pushing. Same thing on meme coins is that almost every good token has a 70%

12:56draw down. Yeah. And if you're capitalizing off of that and not getting FOMO, you're going to have such better risk-to-rewards. You're going to have more free capital to deploy when tokens are down. And I think that's why the majority of people end up losing in crypto is just because they're not patient enough. Like there's always

13:13another correction. There's always another correction. And you mention you mentioned something just a moment ago. You talked about a basing out, right? So explain what basing out is and how you Yeah. So I mean there's like aggressive trends in crypto. We could be trending down aggressively or trending up. And then basing out is just kind of we are trading in a range. So a smaller percentage um of moves up and down like

13:38we're not going down 90% or up 90%. We're kind of trading within like a 5% price range. So it's kind of like sideways. Yeah. Sideways price action. And so [clears throat] when you talk about this idea of a 70% draw down, you're talking about where are you measuring from? How are you determining that a 70% draw down

13:55has occurred? So you pretty much just go from the all-time highs of the token and you would just drag it down to like a 70%ish correction. Um, a lot of them do bottom out around like 80% as well, but I think 70% is just like a great baseline for people. Yeah. So why why do these tokens do that? Why do they why do they hit a high

14:17and then pull back 70%. Yeah. Well, I I think it has a bunch of different factors depending on if it's an onchain token or depending if it's on a new altcoin that launched. But a lot of it just comes down to there's like a really strong trend or a really strong catalyst pushing this token. We've seen it on Cash Cat, we've seen it on ponds for onchain tokens. Even Cash Cat went from like 150 mil all the way down to 33 mil and then all the way back to 210 mil. So, I think it has to do with just a bunch of buyers getting super bullish,

14:47fomoing into tokens and just the right market conditions and then the second any sort of fear comes in, there's a small sell-off and then ultimately on these onchain tokens, people realize once they get listed on things like Hyperliquid, they can sell their bag and also short the token at the same exact time. So that creates a lot of sell pressure and then there's not really that much of buyers stepping in because they know the token's not going to just correct 20 30% on an onchain token. It's

15:16going to go down 70 80%. Yeah. And so once that's happened, once the token has hit its high, it's pulled back 70%. And you start thinking about it forming a base, right? That you're you're looking for it to form a base. How long does it tend how long does a token tend to like form that base before it finds buyers again before it starts going back

15:38up? Usually the most like most of the time I'm always too early. Um you'll think the base is forming a lot earlier than it actually does. You're like okay it's down 70%. This is perfect and then you'll realize it could take two three more weeks or the worst is like it's down 70% it goes back up 50% and then it hits new lows. So I think that part of the judgment comes down to just time in the markets and also depending on how

16:04quickly can this narrative recover. Yeah. For example, things like buybacks and flywheels are a lot more difficult to regain that initial spark. For example, a lot of people were launching on ponds or a lot of buybacks on Aster, things like that. And once the hype dies down, a lot of people stop using that and it's a lot harder to regain that momentum rather than something just like an Elon narrative and he tweets about it again and it just

16:29goes up. But we've been seeing a lot in a lot of cases lately that th those types of drivers in Elon tweet that would that used to cause a token to go to 200 300 500 million doesn't have the same effect anymore. So, if the buyback if the buybacks are kind of losing their luster and the Elon tweet is kind of losing its luster, what is going to push a token from down 70% back

16:55to its previous all-time highs? I really think it's going to come down to also the overall crypto market. Like, if Bitcoin goes back to 100K, a lot of these tokens are going to get really big bids just because of like how the capital [snorts] flows down uh the risk curve pretty much. So, I think yeah, the overall crypto market and I do think like if Robin Hood tweeted again or or they keep pushing it, but ultimately there will still be value in these type of tokens and there will always be biders in my opinion. So, what about for a token that goes to a high, it's super popular,

17:30everybody's paying attention, it retraces 70% and I buy it at 70% and then it goes down to 80% and then down 90% and then basically to zero. What happened with a token like that? So, I talk about this a lot. I posted a video actually on when a token's down 70%, you shouldn't just automatically buy it. I like to look for is the narrative or whatever fueled this token still the same strength if not even stronger. Like for example, one of my best FOMO trades was on Zipcoin. I made 250 grand on it and that's absolutely

18:06crazy. And it was a Vitalic narrative. He came out, he wrote about Zipcoin in some book and it went all the way up to 1 mil market cap and then it went all the way down to like 200K. But in that period of time, the narrative didn't change like at all. the market conditions didn't change, tokens were still running, and I'm like, okay, the narrative is exactly the same, if not even stronger, like why would you not bid this token? But if it's something where it's like, let's

18:31say an animal dies at the zoo, right? And like a lot of people want to trade that token because obviously like they tokenize it um and it goes down 70%, but then they're like, "Okay, the animal didn't die." Like why would you still bid the token? There's no reason. It's just like a very black and white example, but it's a lot harder to depict

18:49it on something like Super Enu as well. Like I'm still trying to figure that out, but I think it's a really really good buy down here. And do you think it's a bit good buy? Why? Um, I really think that like the crypto market and the memecoin space in general loves these type of narratives. I mean, we saw artificial enu go to like 400 mil and I guess that was like encapsulating the AI narrative, but I think something like C is just like the perfect thing for like people in crypto. Um, like changing AI to super intelligence is like a big deal. I feel like especially

19:22in the meme coin space. I mean, in 2024, this token would already be at like 250 mil in my opinion. Yeah, I don't disagree with you on that. I think AI had pawns, right? Like yeah, I had pawns as the uh determiner of like where this thing could go since AI was kind of representing or does kind of represent long and long being you know

19:43the competitor to pawns. Um what do you think like I run our our discord for FOMO and there are hundred questions a day, a thousand questions like there are so many questions day what token do I buy? How do you decide what token is going to have is is going to go up versus a token that's going to go down like the the explanation or the example token that you just gave, Zipcoin. You kind of have to be a kind

20:10of cryptonative to know who Vitalic is. You have to like that's kind of like some lore that [snorts] somebody who's finding onchain trading today through one of your videos would never know. So like how does that person go about identifying what tokens they should be buying? Yeah. So I think there's like really two parts to the question. The first part I

20:31would say is only take your own trades. Like I'm in a bunch of groups with a bunch of the best traders and I look at their trades and I look at their thesises as well, but ultimately the best trades come from my own conviction and what I found. And I think a lot of people don't know what tokens to buy because they're only buying tokens that people tell them to buy or people are scanning. I think that's the first problem. And then the second thing is like there's a lot of tips I could give you on to like which tokens to buy. Um sort of the basics are like okay just

21:02like how to spot a rug etc. But then it goes down into like what token is actually going to run. And I think it's just time in the market and you really need to be just you have to basically have that dog in you and you have to just want it to be scanning 24/7 to understand narratives to see a bunch of runners every single day and then in your head you'll just get a sort of just view on the market and start to understand which tokens are going to run. Like if I tell somebody I'm super

21:28convicted in this token zipcoin buy it. They're like it's down 80%. I don't really know what it is. I'm just going to fade it. Like a lot of people will see scans and they just fade it or they just buy it depending on like if you're a better trader you usually just fade other people's scans and then if you're like a newer trader you'll just buy people's scans as well. So I think you need to figure out your own trades and

21:49then also just have time in the market. What is fading somebody else's trade? What does that mean? So I think one problem that I had in my own trading was like when other people would scan tokens I would just never look into them. And obviously this depends on your group that you're in. But if you have a good group of solid traders that you trade with, you should be looking into every single token they scan and just not putting it aside because you're up on another token. You should just be looking at absolutely everything and trusting the people that

22:19you trade with. So fading means to not look at fading means just like somebody will post a token and you just literally don't look at it and you're just ignoring it because you're in another trade or because you're busy somewhere else. So then kind of another question here is like you have a group of traders that you trust and that you pay attention to and that you feel comfortable sharing ideas with and also kind of learning from. How does somebody what's like the fasttrack way for somebody who's new to the space to find

22:48a group of traders that they can trust? Yeah. So, I think it's actually very very difficult. Um, especially on like Tik Tok and Instagram is where the majority of you guys are probably onboarded into the memecoin space and you'll see like I mean there's bots ring thousands of comments. I have free insider like all this stuff and that's really not the right way to go. I mean I've been trying to build my own group personally where it's just very simple for new traders to like come in uh learn about the markets. I post educational content. Obviously, I'm showing my face because I think that builds a lot of

23:20trust in the memecoin space. And um yeah, I think you have to just do trial and error, but once you find a good group, you should stick with it, double down on it, and really interact with the people in there because ultimately 10 people looking at the memecoin charts are going to be better than one person. Got it. Okay. So, talk to me about like uh how did you find these people? How

23:42did you find your group of patients? So, actually, well, it like my FOMO clan that I'm in, it's called money. Um, I met a lot of people through the FOMO app actually. So, I think like that's like really cool part about social trading is like you'll meet people no matter who you are as long as you're a good trader. Like there's a bunch of Koss who came on from crypto Twitter onto FOMO and we're seeing that they're not profitable. They don't really know what they're doing and they're just essentially like farming people. So, if you come on to FOMO and or really any trading platform in

24:14general that is public and you're doing good, you're going to connect with the best people. I mean, if I wasn't on FOMO, I wouldn't be on this interview, right? It's like I met my whole entire FOMO clan and we're just all trading together now just because of my own performance. Not content, like not anything else, just strict P&L, trading

24:31good, catching everything. Do you know these people in real life or are they just friends on the internet? Um, no. They're just friends, but like eventually we'll probably link up and stuff like that, but I'm not really like I don't I keep my IRL life separate from crypto. I don't really like hang out with crypto people. I don't really find

24:47it interesting to be honest. Huh. Okay. So, like other kids your age in school, nobody else is trading or are they trading? Like what's I mean like people come up to me all the time now like, "Yo, put me on to FOMO." Like I got the FOMO app. Like even my teachers are like, "You got to give us some tips." And I'm just over it. Like I don't find it interesting to connect with people on

25:07trading. Um especially cuz they just like they just want me to help. They just want me to do it for them. Like if you were serious about it, you would just go learn on your own. Obviously I'm here to help you and I'm here to help other people, but I like helping random people than people IRL just because I like to keep that

25:23separate. Okay. Interesting. Um there are a lot of people your age that found find trading through like day trading whe like you know funded courses and those sorts of things. How Okay. Yeah. So talk to me tell what is the difference between like day trading and onchain trading and why do you think onchain trading or why do you gravitate

25:47to onchain trading? Yeah. So I've been posting on social media for like over a year now. And one of the main things that caught me traction was that every single person was pushing the day trading route. You you got to buy a prop firm, you got to trade the NASDAQ, you got to do a bunch of [ __ ] that's like it's just not real. And I was always the one posting like get away from day trading. It's not asymmetric at all. Meaning like you trading the NASDAQ is not going to exponentially give you value in the future. Like if you're 15, 16, 17, 18, why would you trade not it's not a

26:24boring it's not boring, but like why would you trade the NASDAQ when you could be looking into things like crypto, things like individual stocks and really getting exponential growth within your portfolio and also finding a skill that's like more valuable than just day trading. It's just it's like I just hate it. Why what is the skill that's more valuable there? I think anything but day trading because what people do is they'll find their favorite creator. Um they'll sign up to their prop firm link and they'll basically be trading on prop firms which just gets you addicted to it and then they'll be like learning a

27:01strategy. It's usually some combination. It's mostly technical analysis on the very very low time frames which I hate. It's like you're trading on the one minute time frame but you're 18. Like do you understand like how much you can compound knowledge, compound other assets that will propel you like an insane amount when you're 28 in 10 years compared to gambling on the one minute time frame. It's just not it. And if you do want to go on a really low time frame, trade meme coins. Like you're doom scrolling anyways. You know these narratives a lot better than quants trading on the floor like stealing your

27:35money. Is there something there about like I mean you talk about the NASDAQ. These are the people that are running the books for the NASDAQ for futures and these sorts of things. These are the smartest people in the world. The most the most complex algorithms in the world. [snorts] What is the edge that somebody your age brings to onchain trading that they don't have

27:58with equities? One of the main things is just belief. You talk to anybody. I've talked to a lot of successful people who run funds like in traditional finance and they sort of bash on crypto a lot and I think the newer generation of people will have a better view and a more of a belief in the crypto market which will allow them to propel a lot more and be a lot more successful. And I also think just how this market moves so quickly. you talk to anybody and they don't they can't comprehend the crypto market and I think the way how fast everything is moving is

28:35evolving with social media it's just a much better place for younger traders. I mean we're seeing a lot of people make the comparison Fortnite players bunch of esports players move into crypto and I think it just has to do with speed and just being young. I think crypto is a really young market and a lot of younger traders will succeed in it. Especially like day trading, it's like they're not necessarily taking money from you, but you really have no edge. And you can say that you don't need an edge to make money. And that is true, but at the end

29:05of the day, it's like, okay, now what? It's like now like you don't really have anywhere else to go. What is your edge? Your personal edge. I I would say my edge is my age. I think that compounding spot portfolio at my age is going to be very very helpful. And I think that the memecoin market is very great and I think I do have an edge in getting narratives and finding these tokens before everybody else. I think that's just due to like experience and also just being very tapped in with that. But I really do think time is my edge and I think that's the edge for a

29:40lot of these traders, but they'll ultimately not be in the space long enough to reap those rewards of their edge. Why won't they be in the space long enough? Most people just want quick money and like I am making quick money every single day in the memecoin market, but people don't see that it's actually going to take a lot longer than you think to make money. It took me like I mean I know I was a lot younger so you could probably do it quicker when you have like when you're older. But I didn't really make money till I was 16

30:08and I started trading at 13. Three years. Three years. But not serious money, right? like couple thousand dollars, then I would lose it all and then I would like it's it's very very difficult, but once it clicks in trading, you'll see that it just goes up. I think that's a big difference between trading and like working a job or scaling a business, you see the growth very um it's very like easy to see, but when you're trading, it's just it feels really terrible. You're like, why am I still doing this? I'm losing a bunch of money. And then all of a sudden, it just clicks and you're

30:41rolling. What does it take for it to just click? I think persistence, just not giving up. I mean, in my FOMO portfolio, it's a perfect example of just you want to always be able to take opportunity in the crypto market. And usually the main thing that enables you to do that is just having capital, just having liquidity ready to go to deploy into anything at any given time and not being fully allocated to something or fully basically just having no money because there are opportunities that present themselves in the most random times and you need to be able to capitalize off that. For example, my FOMO portfolio, I

31:19think I put in like 250 grand. We can look at my equity curve and I went all the way down to like 30K. I was down like 250K, but I like obviously that's just kind of like it's just one of my accounts, but I'm like, okay, I need to like change things and the market conditions suddenly get better right at my bottom and I make like 500K in like

31:40couple of weeks and now I'm chilling. You're chilling because you had 250k to start with. for somebody for somebody who doesn't have that or doesn't have anything near that like what what is a actual reasonable amount of money to start with and how do you think about allocating I know you said like you need to have money to to buy things you can't be all in on one position so like how much do you start with minimum and how do you allocate it from trade to trade I think you can definitely start with $1,000 I think that is a perfect starting point and that's relatively obtainable for most people. Um, getting

32:18income from a side hustle, a job. I think $1,000 is is a very good place to start. The next thing is you want to have knowledge before you put in money. A lot of people will deposit right when they download the app, and that's not a bad thing necessarily, but you want to make sure you have some understanding. So, that money that you end up, you'll ultimately probably end up losing a good amount of it in the beginning, unless you get very, very lucky. um you want to be comfortable with losing that. So you want to put in a number of dollars that you are comfortable with losing. But I

32:51do think that $1,000 is a great starting point. Risk like 50 bucks a trade. Thousand bucks 50 bucks a trade. So five% or so of your port. Yeah. And are you risk like when you're buying when you're putting $50 on a trade, are you kind of saying like if this goes to zero, it's fine. I'm just willing to

33:08take that risk. Yeah. You have to fully be willing to take that loss. And I think the upside, you shouldn't be buying a 20k market cap token to be scalping it at 40K. You should be finding tokens that have really good narratives or just something that other people don't see and getting in before other traders see it. Cuz ultimately the memecoin market is just attention and visibility. Like if there's a good narrative that is catching a lot of attention, it might not necessarily get a lot of visibility at first. So a lot of these bigger traders will obviously give visibility to these tokens, but I know personally a

33:42lot of smaller traders who are just starting out and they really really want it. They are finding these narratives before everybody else. Yeah. And where are they finding them? So I think where's the best places? Yeah. So I think on FOMO is perfect. Um you can really just look at every single token that comes out on the graduated tab trending and just see these types of tokens. Also, if you're just like doom scrolling on Tik Tok, on Instagram, you'll find that a lot of these narratives that present themselves are

34:11on social media as well. Yeah. So, like in FOMO, where are you like you mentioned the graduated and trending tabs, but like there's lots of tokens in those tabs. How are you determining of the tokens that are there which is the right ones to be buying? So, honestly, like I'm just glued to my screen. I'm looking at every single token, going through every single post link to them, and there really is no easy way to do it. I think it's just you have to scan everything. Like I said before, don't fade anything. Um, you just want to look into everything and really make sure that you're doing due

34:44diligence. A lot of people call it DD. You can have other people also help you with it. You know, you find a token, you send it in a group. Like in my group, a lot of people will just ping me. They'll be like, "Yo, is this token good?" I'll take a look at it and I'll be like, "Yo, okay, I think this is good. I think this

34:58is bad, etc. Got it. Okay. So, for somebody who is your age, in high school, try, you know, like still going to class every day, doing the thing. Talk me through like a standard day, your process as a trader in high school. What does it look like for you? What is Super difficult. Super difficult. I mean, I was close to dropping out at least three times. Once when I was 16,

35:21once last year, and then once this year. Um, I'm sort of just doing it for my parents. They really want me to have a high school degree. Everybody that I talk to is like, "You won't regret it and like you should get a high school degree." I honestly I'm so ready to leave. Like I don't care about it. But for the a like a a regular day in my life goes like I wake up, I check the charts, um check my trades, check my positions, eat some breakfast because like I'm trying to bulk up. Like I have other things in my life that I'm doing like I want to go to the gym, I want to

35:51skate, I want to do a bunch of other things and school is just really limiting me. But I think for most people who are in high school, I would just say you have to take the longer term approach and the higher time frame approach. And it works perfectly with those busy schedules, but then also with your edge as time. So day trading just doesn't really fit into that. And the most successful day traders that I know who actually profitably day trade, they don't have anything else going on in their life distracting them. So it's like I can't be on the charts day trading and I'm like, "Okay, in 15

36:23minutes I got to go to algebra class." that just doesn't work because you're not in the right mental state to properly take trades. Yeah. But then that also you do deal with a lot of tokens, especially on the meme side, you deal with a lot of tokens that die very quickly. And there are people, a lot of people that are trading these things in and out, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, an hour, two hours, like how do you trade those tokens and also have this longer term kind of philosophy? So, I mean, I've roundt tripped probably hundreds of thousands, if not millions just being in class. Um,

36:56I think on 1010, so pretty much a year ago, I was in Spanish class and I was driving home and I'm just getting blown up, like blown up. And it's just unfortunate. It happens like that in the crypto market, in any single market. And you really have to be fully pretty much being very attentive to whatever you're doing and leaving for school or for class or or whatever option like that. It just doesn't really

37:24it doesn't really work to be honest. Like you need to either be full-time in it or you need to go with the longer term approach. And I do think there is a middle ground but it's a lot more difficult to navigate. Okay. Um I yeah you seem to have like quite a bit of uh contempt for the the day traders. Like how is day trading or how are day traders different from

37:43onchain traders? Yeah, I just think the way they're onboarded is a lot different. Um I think like when we're talking about day traders, I'm talking about people who trade prop firms on the NASDAQ. Like I'm not bashing them, but I've just seen that is the biggest growth sector in day trading. And like I mean you can look at the prop firm statistics, look at the

38:06revenues. Nobody's passing these things. The success rate of getting a payout is less than 1%. And that is what most of these kids are being pushed into. And I'm just kind of like yo like I'm in your shoes. Like I was 17, 16 getting pushed into prop firms and it's just not the correct way

38:26to trade especially as a young person. So I'm like onchain trading there's so much more upside. You could catch a token at 1 mil market cap that goes to billions. And in day trading, sure you could scale up your accounts, etc., but you're not going to really get other experiences in other areas to flow into. Whereas in crypto, like you could start in the onchain part in whatever, and then say you make a lot of money, you could go into spot, you could go into investing in crypto projects. You there's a bunch of other different opportunities in the crypto market besides onchain trading. And I think

39:00it's capped out with day trading prop firms. Got it. What do you think about or what has your experience been like with the public component of your trading? Like on FOMO, everybody can look at your wallet. They could see how much money you've made. They could see what positions you hold. How does that impact the trade you take? How does it impact

39:18your just mindset around your trading? Yeah, I don't really think too much of it to be honest. Um, but of course once you do get a big following, it's like, "Wow, wait." Like I actually have a lot of people following me and a lot of people looking at my trades. Like now I have like I think like 37,000 on FOMO and it's like when I post a thesis like people see it. So it really helps you bring your trades to light on Zipcoin for example. If you have a good strong narrative and you want people to see it, you need to be a profitable trader and

39:49show people that you know what you're talking about. If you're just some kid with like an anime profile picture and you're just spamming a contract address in Discords, but you have no proof of previous trade history or if you're actually even in the token, I think that's very very powerful. But then also, I think it is good to keep some things private as well, meaning like higher time frame positions, higher time frame spots. But I think for intraday trading and things like that, like for example, if there was day trading, if every single day trading guru had a public account, it would be over. It

40:23would be over. Yeah. You think so? You think a lot of the day are fake? I think it would be completely over. Yeah. Huh. Interesting. And that's why you're seeing like even the top creators in the space who make six figures a month off their prop firm referral codes, they can't show million-dollar P&Ls like onchain

40:41traders can. It just doesn't work like that. But top firms in the trady space can definitely show amazing returns, but it's like you're not going to work for them. You want to be your own trader. And that's why people say, "Oh, I'm day trading for the freedom. Like I want to be my own

40:57trader. you should get over to crypto. It's much better. So then what is I if if I'm your age and I stumble into trading through some sort of day trading, you know, ad or whatever, and I then find you and you're telling me check out FOMO or check out onchain trading, like what what am I looking for from an onchain trader to to to assess like how good of a trader they are, whether I should be paying attention to

41:23them or anything like that. Yeah. So, I think obviously the first one is going to be like what trades have they taken, um what their P&L is, but I also think that being in their group or just being around them and seeing how they move and operate will really help you. Like for example, sizing and getting in and out of trades is very very important. And I think I learned that really well from other traders. I didn't necessarily develop that for myself. I think I have the narrative and the ability to find these tokens, but other traders are a lot better than me on getting in and getting out of these

41:57and how much money should you put in, how much money should you take out. So, I think that is also very important. And I think just being around other traders will kind of you'll be able to spot who's lar and who's not. And FOMO really helps people understand that. How um how long are you watching a trader or how much investigation of are you doing on a trader before deciding like I want to I want to follow them and be notified when

42:22they're doing things. So I think it goes down to like what they're buying when they're like how much they're buying and how often they're selling. Like if you just have a trader who buys a token at 50k market cap, they put in 1k goes up to 100k immediately and they sell it. I mean they're probably just farming it. But if you see traders, I think the most powerful thing on FOMO is thesises. I think once you read a trader's thesis and why they're buying the token is very, very important. And if they have good ideas, I continue to follow them and look at what else they're buying and

42:56what else they're potentially going to be interested in. What has to happen for onchain trading to go more mainstream like day trading is? I mean, I think it actually is right now because I was trading on chain a bit in 2024 when there wasn't FOMO. There wasn't any really social trading apps. And I was doing decently well, but not a

43:19lot of people ever hit me up about it. And I think social trading is really bringing it to light. I can't go to school now without three, four people asking me about FOMO. Um, asked random people on the street. One out of 50, maybe one out of a hundred knew what FOMO was. So, I think social trading is actually one of the best ways to bring

43:39new traders into the space. Interesting. Okay. What's still broken about onchain trading? What does it need? I think it needs more transparency and I think it needs more doc creators in the space and I also think that it needs better ways to solve people getting rugged. Um, a lot of people will just buy into tokens that are just rugs and it needs more sort of I know the whole point of crypto is not to officiate things, but some sort of way of just a little bit more control on what these new traders are buying and how to actually like help

44:13them instead of just take from them. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Um, why why FOMO? There's a bunch of places to trade. Yeah. So, I've been offered a lot of money from a bunch of other people to trade on their platforms. And I think it's just the same thing as like the best example I could give you is Apple, right? There's Android, Google, I don't know, whatever the other phones are, whatever. But I think it's just like it feels like Apple to me. I can't explain it. I really can't. But it just feels like clean, sleek, like I want to trade on here. I keep coming back to it. I keep making money on this

44:50app, so I'm just going to keep trading on it. And I don't know exactly what those components are. Maybe it's the UI, maybe it's the traders on there already. Maybe it's X, Y, and Z, but I just it feels like Apple to me. That's the best example I could give you. Got it. Um I I interviewed a guy not too too long ago who said that your generation is too focused on money. Like

45:13his argument, he wrote a book about it. He said, you know, people your age should care so much less about money. You should be caring about experiences and taking big risks and doing doing fun things with your friends and like going and living your life, going places, you know, trying things. What do you say to

45:30him? I totally agree with that. Um I think I'm I anybody who asks me, hey, should I start trading? I usually just tell them, no, it's not worth it. Like just don't do it. Um, I really do believe in like experiences, taking my friends on trips, doing a bunch of things, and somehow I just got into this space at a very interesting time and it's like the thing

45:53I want to do for the rest of my life. So, I would say for me, I'm going to be focused on it. But I think using that money in a good way and actually being able to create experiences and do things that you wouldn't be able to do is very important. But also, like before this, I was just skating. I used to be a skateboarder. I would skate every single day with my friends. We'd go mess around in a bunch of stores, just do pranks on people, like normal kid stuff. And that

46:18honestly was more fun than right now. But I mean, you grow older, you have to do things. And why would you not do something that you're interested and you love? For sure. I agree with that. What for some you you say that you tell people if people come and ask you whether they should trade or how to get into it, you generally tell them not to. What is the like what does a person who convinces you is like yes I'll I'll help this person I'll teach them whatever what do they have that maybe the average person doesn't have like what do you need to have as a

46:50young person to be a good trader? I think honestly just like a genuine love for the game. I tell most people if you're not genuinely interested in trading and you wouldn't do this like you wouldn't be interested in it if there was no money involved obviously like that's a big play part of it but like you need to genuinely be interested in trading and this space in general especially in crypto if you're not really interested in crypto you're probably going to just you should go trade stocks but also I think if you're not genuinely interested in it there still are ways to capture upside in crypto in stocks ETA by just being like

47:28an occasional investor, which we see a lot of success with people. Like people who have great jobs, getting good salaries, putting money into the stock market, still do make a lot of money and perform extremely well, and they're not doing half as much as the work as somebody who's just like, I want to make money, but I don't care about crypto, so I'm going to spend every single day trying to make money in it. The guy who's just occasionally

47:48investing is going to outperform that. So, I usually tell people, if you're not interested, you can still make money. Don't worry. just occasionally invest and go on the higher time frame. But if you are serious about it, then you are really the only person who can do it for yourself. Tell me about trading for toddlers. Yeah. So, trading for toddlers is like a group that I started a couple years back and we specified in per trading and higher time frame swing trading and then now obviously as the memecoin market is getting very hot in the onchain market is very strong. We are going more into that side of things. So, we're just

48:26helping new traders get on their feet. We're doing giveaways. We're like basically funding people to trade on FOMO and just help them get started. Um, they can ask about tokens in there. They can learn from me. I'm posting a lot of educational content on my strategies, but we don't really believe in like charging people for a course. Um, I kind of think that's like there's just no

48:48point in that. It's like totally free. People just come in there, chill out, but also they have to understand like it's not a one-on-one course. So, a lot of people like ping me all the time, but I'll like do my best to help people, and that's what we're doing. Yeah. What's the You said you're funding

49:03people. Well, like we'll just like I'll basically do something where I just like wake up in the morning. I'm just like, "All right, at here, whoever scans a 10x, I'll give you a hundred bucks in your FOMO." Just things like that to get people scanning, build a community in there. And there's some great people in there who have been scanning really good tokens and learning a lot. Um, we do voice calls as well. We trench and I share my screen and I just basically

49:28show people my process of how I trade. Okay. How often are you on VC? Yeah, so we VC maybe at least once a week. I'm going to try and do it every single day, but again, I have school. If I end up dropping out of school, I mean, I'll be in the VC every single day with you guys. Like, man, don't drop out of school. You're like, you're you're months away from

49:49graduating. Just finish. Yeah. Yeah. I just like I'm so passionate and deep into this that I'm just like I'm like over school and I just want to pursue what I'm doing. Um but it's really hard to run a group at the same time as trading at the same time as going to school. But ideally trading for toddlers is a place where in the name like new people can come into the group, learn about how to trade on chain, learn how to not get rugged, don't pay anything. You don't want to pay anything at first. So, it's completely free and they just come in there, chill out, learn about tokens,

50:19see what I'm buying and yeah, what do you what's like the most important stuff that these people are going to learn? I think the most important thing is just having a group where there's already successful traders, right? There's a good mix of people who have been in trading for toddlers for a couple of months who already know the flow of things and those people are helping the new traders get to their level and then I'm helping those traders get to my level. So, it's like really nice that

50:48people help each other all the time. Like people are asking what is a contract address? What is LAR? Like just classic definitions that people don't really teach you. So, it's very basic stuff. And then we go all the way up to like how to spot this narrative, how to actually trade and place trades, things

51:04like that. How long should somebody who is asking what's a contract address? How long should they anticipate it taking for them to like get educated enough to feel really comfortable and to feel like they can make an educated trade on their own without your suggestion or without, you know, somebody else helping or anything like that? I think it really depends on your background. For example, one of the craziest things I've seen is like Brett Skills, right? He's not in the trading space whatsoever and he comes in like about a month ago and just having that knowledge of just knowing where attention flows and knowing how to

51:45understand narratives, he was able to pick it up super quickly. So, the same thing for any other trader. depending on where you're coming from, what background you have is really going to determine how fast you're going to be able to pick up these things. But I would say on average like one month you could fully get an understanding of like, okay, I know what onchain trading is. I know some of these terms now I'm ready to start maybe putting in some money and scanning tokens. But for a full comprehension of this, I think it would take like two to three months of solid work where you're actually

52:19checking in and working every single day on this. For somebody who hears you say bre scales came in and like was successful as a trader, Brez is a huge personality on the internet, you know, and as you said earlier, at least in the meme side of this, it's an attention game. And in a lot of ways,

52:39all of trading is an attention game. even stocks, all of that stuff. Like everything is attention. But like what is your rebuttal to somebody who says, "Well, he's just successful because he's famous on the internet already." Well, I would say he already h he has the recipe. He made himself successful and those qualities that made him successful transfer over to a bunch of other markets. And if you had those same qualities or you have those same qualities, then just keep working at it every single day and you will find success. That's just my personal opinion. I think it does transfer like if you're a successful memecoin trader,

53:14there's a higher chance you'll be a successful stock trader than just a random person. So, I think building a skill set of just like personal values kind of just in your own way of like how you think of things, how you operate, what limiting beliefs do you have. Like Brez, right? He's seen all this success. He's not doubting anything. He's like actually has an open mind to trading meme coins. So, I think obviously he's in a great position already and a lot of people are still not going to understand that and I totally agree with them. It's going to be a lot harder for you, but it

53:48just that it is what it is. So, how does somebody get into your clan on FOMO? Are you accepting applications? Um, well, that's kind of up to men. You know, men's like really picky about who we have in the clan. Sort of the reputation on FOMO because ultimately we're trying to make money, but we're also trying to keep a good reputation on our clan and how we operate and how we trade because we think that FOMO is basically going to be like the next generation of social traders, right? So, if we have good clean brands on there, like, hey, buy Stephen R. He's a great trader. He's really good. He's really

54:24sharp and he's actually legit. Same thing with everybody else in the clan. We have a good reputation. I think that goes a really, really long way. So, I don't think we're adding anybody anytime soon, but obviously if something presents itself, then we'll probably add somebody in there. Yeah. What would somebody have to have? I think what somebody would have to have is they have to bring something to the

54:46table that we don't already have. Whether that's I mean, I honestly don't know exactly, but I think in the right moment we would know. Okay, that's fair. That was kind of not a good answer, but Well, no, no, no. I get it. I don't think we're adding people anytime soon, to be honest. We're in a good Well, we're in flow state, I would say. So, we don't want to

55:05overcrowd it. Fair enough. We're just we're cruising. What token end of the year, what meme uh like narrative is still super hot? That's maybe maybe it's not super hot right now. Maybe it's been hot before. What narratives are still kind of like front and center attention-wise end of the year? I think a lot I think a lot will die out to be honest. Um I do think the stock pairing and the meme pairing is very cool and I think hooks are very cool which we're seeing right now where you can pretty much have more control over your deploys. You can add really cool things that I think will

55:45still be prominent at the end of the year. So I think hooks and yeah I think hooks is one of them for sure and I also think more utility based things I think we're having a resurgence of utility. Um in 2024 we didn't really care about it. I mean during the AI narrative we did but I think now a lot of people are looking for right we're seeing buybacks we're seeing flywheels those type of things doing good. Same thing with hooks and I think more utility based tokens will start to perform well. Do you think memes ever go back to their, you know, Doge all-time highs? Like, does can that

56:18happen? I think not. I think we will have the same euphoria, but it's almost impossible to predict and not in the way it has before. So, I don't think we're going to get another exact Dogecoin, but I think something will happen. I think a really good example of this was AMC and Bonercoin, right? Those were on Robin Hood. They were stock paired, but if you would have asked anybody one year ago, they would have had no clue that you were going to be able to pair memecoin to a stock and that was going to run to like a hundred million dollar

56:47market cap, right? So, I think it's really hard to predict what that's going to be, but I think there will always be those type of euphoric opportunities showing up within the market. Yeah. Okay. Right on. Well, Stephen, man, what a pleasure to get to chat with you. This has been so much fun. I appreciate you coming on. And uh where

57:04can where can everybody find you? Yeah. by Stephen R and all socials. You can go and trading for toddlers and we're trenching in there every single day finding plays and that's pretty much it. Yeah. Sick. Right on. Well, again, I'm going to encourage you finish high school, graduate. I got you. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to post a photo of the diploma at the end

57:23of the year. Please do. Please do. I want to see it. I'm going to I'm going to demand it. You won't I'll allow you on the show again if you if you graduate. I'm gonna get it done. I'm gonna get it done. Sweet. All right, man. Well, again, thank you for coming uh and hanging out with us this morning. It's been a pleasure. Thank you everybody for tuning in. We will be back tomorrow with James

57:39Rosenthal. Until then, y'all be good. We'll see you later. See you. [music]

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