Episode. The Financial Advice That’s Keeping You Broke with Anmol Singh
Transcript
Anmol Singh - 00:00.098
I think the biggest mistake is listening to other people and listening to your emotions. Because a lot of people say, you know, I have a gut feel about this stock. But what is really gut feel? Gut feel is basically our experience talking and telling us, hey, you've seen this before, right? You know how this ends. But if you're completely new, you don't have experience, you don't have gut feel. Now you're just trading on a whim. You're investing on a whim, right? So don't trade on emotions. Especially when people watch something coming up on news. my God, GameStop, everybody's buying it. And then let me buy it and they buy it. They have no plan, they're just gambling. So if you're gonna gamble, you might as well go to a casino. At least you get free drinks, at least they take care of you, at least you have a good time. And then if you lose your money in the casino, it's alright. But there's no fun losing money in your computer by yourself at home. So if you're gonna gamble, go to a casino, at least have a good time. But if you're gonna trade, then you wanna learn how to do it the right way.
Theme Music - 00:55.246
Welcome to the ownership game with Gary Montalvo. What would it take to get into the driver's seat of your life and leave your mark? The ownership game starts now.
Gary Montalvo - 01:13:00
Most of us are chasing financial independence in some way, shape, form. We want the freedom. We want options. We want the ability to live life on our own terms. But the truth is, most of us were never really taught how to attain that wealth.
The traditional blueprint that most of us were given looks something like go to college, get a degree, build a career, save what you can, buy a house, and hope that your 401k grows enough to retire someday. And maybe that?
worked at some point, but today that traditional path is failing rapidly. Wages aren't keeping up, debt is higher than ever, and with the rate of inflation, saving and hoping for the best just isn't going to cut it. The reality is, real wealth isn't built by following an outdated script that someone else handed you. Real wealth is built through ownership, through learning how to take calculated risks, through developing skills that most people never even think to build.
And one of the ways that wealth is built is through investing. And that's what today's conversation is about. My guest today, Amal Singh, is a professional trader, investor, and entrepreneur who has spent the last decade helping people move through the myth and start approaching investing like a skill to be learned, not a gamble to be won. In this episode, we break down some of the emotional traps that sabotage most people's financial futures and more importantly how to start taking ownership of yours. Let's get into it.
Hey Anmol, thank you so much for joining me. I would imagine that given everything that's going on in the world right now, you must be a busy guy. Just for context, we are recording this episode on March 18th. The stock market is going bananas right now because of all of the changes and all the fears of trade wars, of tariff wars and...all the madness is happening. So, yeah, so how are you doing with all this?
Anmol Singh - 03:33.589
I'm doing good, know, actually, for me, this is actually a very exciting time because these are the volatile times which create opportunities for the next few years. Just like, you know, we similarly had this happen in 2020. The markets, you know, after COVID, you know, drop like 30, 40 percent and then we go back up.
So yeah, but it's definitely a busy time, definitely an interesting time, more volatile time than we've seen in the past. But I do think that it's gonna create a lot of great opportunities for the next few years.
Yeah, so let's break that down. And I really want to have this conversation with you from almost like a, mean, I know this is what you do. You actually teach this stuff, you know, and you, and you, and, but I think my experience is that a lot of people, this is mysterious for a lot of people. They don't really understand this. So really want to have this conversation from like a basic level place, right? Because I think a lot of people need to feel more confident with this, right? If that makes sense. So let's even start with that. How does a moment like this create more opportunities for the future?
Yeah, definitely. So I think what this creates, the volatility, what it creates is it creates uncertainty.
Anmol Singh - 04:53.102
It creates doubts in people's mind and that's what causes them to sell a lot of the stocks, sell a lot of the assets causing the prices to go down. And then that's what creates the opportunities for traders and investors like me to be able to buy things on the cheap so that we can sell them on the way up as we recover. Because markets move in cycles. Cycles always repeat themselves, whether there's news, whether there's not news. And what I've found is people who always keep looking at what's happening in the world, which again, it's good to be aware of what's happening in the world, but at the same time, the markets to what the market's going to do, it's going to move in cycles. And if you take a look, the market is always higher than where it was every 10 years ago, every single time, right? Market's always going to be higher matter what happens, no matter what's happening, no matter what dips, 10 years later is always.
Yeah, every single time it's always been higher than where it was 10 years ago. same thing here, right? 2020, every world was panicking, know, the stock market is crashing. Then there was like, the Russia-Ukraine war, the market's coming in. There's the Ukraine, the Israel-Palestine. So there's always going to be something to create doubt in people's minds so that they don't end up investing. And then what happens? Things get good and the stock prices start to go up, then people feel comfortable and then they start buying. And then there's the hedge funds start selling it to them. And then the prices come right back down. They get scared. They sell all their stocks and then hedge funds buy it back cheap again. And then we get the same cycles over and over because you the simple fact of the matter is, know, inflation, six, 7 % and in the stock market, typically over a 10 year average, you're going to earn about 10%. And if you do that, then your money is going to double every six or seven years.
Anmol Singh - 06:28.814
You're always going to be ahead of inflation. I always tell people, don't worry about what's happening now, right? What's markets always been higher. So based on just that fact, where do think the market is going to be in 2032, 2042, right? The most reasonable answer is higher. So the most reasonable answer is higher than shouldn't we use these opportunities to buy things on the cheap. So that's kind of how I look at it. But again, markets have been in a bull run for so long. So this was completely not unexpected.
You know, we actually expected that. mean, I sold a lot of my stocks beginning of this year because my plan was very simple. This is going to be a disruption, right? Because it was very clear the type of, you mandate, the election that we had that there's going to be some disruption and disruption is similar to kind of when, you know, we take a drug, right? Our body creates antibodies and it fights back against all of that. And then our body recovers and it heals and it gets better. So same thing with the markets when you're causing all this disruption with tariffs with what's going on with the government spending, all of that stuff, there's gonna be a little bit of a reaction time, because people freak out, right? So hedge funds have to lower their risk if they're using leverage or margin, which a lot of companies use. So they start to unwind that down, which creates opportunities for retail investors like you and I to be able to accumulate stocks at a much cheaper price and then get ready for the run-up. So my opinion has always been the same, first year or so of any administration is always volatile, because nobody knows what's gonna happen.
But then things start to calm down, people see like it's business as usual and things recover back up. I mean, think about how many things we've gone through. Greek desk crisis, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Palestine. We've gone through the wars, we've gone through the elections, we've gone through everything. But guess what? The market's pretty much still higher than where it was two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, five years ago. So the short-term generation shouldn't be dissuading somebody from investing. These are the times where they should be looking to invest.
The thing that, as you're speaking, the thing that becomes very apparent is that if you're going to play this game, get involved in this, you have to have a lot of constitution, right? Like you cannot be, you can't approach this from emotions. You can't really, like, cause you're playing the long game and you have to have the emotional maturity, emotional intelligence.
Gary Montalvo - 08:50.688
To ride this out, right? How are your students doing with that?
Yeah, they do pretty good because we focus with starting with like my biggest purple I'm the biggest proponent of saying control what you can control and things that you don't have control over try not to control them because there's no point me spending tons of hours online looking at what's happening in the world where I have no control over it. Yeah. I can talk about it. Sure, I can discuss it. But literally, there's no control. There's no way can impact what's going to happen. It's going to happen anyway. So as traders, we need to control what we actually have control over, which is our own decisions, which our own money, which our own accounts, managing our own portfolio, and then looking at data, like statistical approach rather than emotional based approach or I love this company or I don't love this company or the world's going through a mess. But looking at data, okay, we've gone through so many things in the past, The stock market is always gonna be higher because it's part of how the markets are designed, right? The stock markets are designed in a way to always naturally go up in the long run, A, because A, the dollar's losing value, right? So the stock market is gonna gradually go up because asset prices go up. But then on the other side, it's part of the American culture which is take a percentage of your income and automatically keep investing it, 401k, IRA. So if everybody constantly just keeps investing in the long run, and more and more people are investing nowadays than there were many, many years ago. Back in the day, your mom and dad maybe would have invested. Now everybody has access to investing. There's so many apps online that people invest on. So I think just the money that's going to come in regularly into the markets is going to cause it to naturally go up in the long run. But on the flip side is,
Anmol Singh - 10:33.89
The market's also designed in a way to go up because the S &P 500 is just a collection of 500 stocks. So what happens every few years, they'll look at, which companies are not doing well, which are not performing well, and then they remove them from the 500 list. And then they add all the companies that are doing well. So if they kept all the companies the same yeah, markets would have crashed a long time ago, but they remove the bad ones, they add all the good ones. So again, naturally it's just designed in a way to go up in the long run. But yes, there's going to be short-term fluctuations because people have to take profits.
People have to wind down their leverage or margin if they're taking extra risks. And some people just taking profits. So I think those opportunities happen over and over. If you look at the market cycles, they always go up in stages of bull runs and then a bear run and then a bull run and then a bear run. So if you never sell, if you always invested, mean, I think if you invested in like 1970, since now, you would have earned 64,890 % on your money since the 1970s. and look at how much we've gone through geopolitics. So yeah, and that's the thing, like, you know, in the future, maybe our kids ask us like, hey, you know, why didn't you? So based on that I'm dad.
Anmol Singh - 11:45.742
That actually brings me to a question I want to ask you. How did you get into this and where, like, yeah, how did this become a passion for you? Yeah, for me, it started in college. You know, I was in my dorm room, a complete typical introvert, you know, always spending time just on my Xbox or something like that. So all I really did is just substitute the Xbox for my computer, which I'm still on right now. So there's not much has changed. So for me, you know, I was always looking at, okay, what can I do from home? What can I do where I don't have to talk to people? Yeah, what can I do where I don't have to get stuck in traffic, drive to work?
What can I do so that I don't have to leave?
Anmol Singh - 12:21.698
And then, know, deal with office politics. Yeah. And then also in like in that kind of setting, there's other people who can control my results. I could be the best in my business, but if the company that I'm working for is not the best, then I'm not going to be the best. Right. So there's other people who control my result. We're trading. It's me and the computer. There's the greatest meritocracy out there. There's nobody going to control my results. It's just me and what I do and my actions. So for me, I really like that. That, okay, if I do the things the right way, I'm going to get the result. If I mess up, then I'm going to own the results.
So that level of responsibility I really loved. So in college, I spent a whole year, know, typical intro where sitting in my dorm room, just like reading as much as I could get my hands on on this subject. And then the more I read, the more curious I became. I wanted to know, okay, why do stocks go up? Why do they go down? Who decides that? Like what causes all of that? Like I just found myself really fascinated by it. So I just surrounded myself with the people in that business, reading books on the subject, attending online courses, just really like absorbing as much information as I could.
And I just became passionate about it. So it wasn't a passion in the beginning. mean, trading was the last thing I thought I'd ever do because I was horrible with numbers and horrible with math growing up. But it was just something that I took a liking to because I realized that trading is not about numbers. Investing is not about numbers. It's all about pattern recognition. You're recognizing a pattern almost like a movie. Like if you've seen the movie, you know how it ends. know, OK, I've seen this movie before. I know how it plays out. So as you do that over time, you start seeing these patterns in the markets and you're like, OK, I've seen how this goes.
I've seen how this movie ends. So then you're able to better make educated decisions based on that.
What kind of patterns are you, well, first of all, wanna come back to that question, but I wanna just point out a couple of great things you said. So I love the idea that you.
Anmol Singh - 14:07.982
are not good at numbers and you don't have to be good at numbers to do this because I think the misconception is that you do, right? And that you have to have that type of head. And so I love that. And I also love that you were not afraid to dive into a subject that you knew nothing about, right? Did you grow up with like this type of language or conversation around you.
No, not at all. I came from an Indian family and my parents believe stock market is gambling. You know, like, but I did come from an entrepreneurial background. My dad was a business owner. So what I think of what I did learn is the concept of managing risk, right? Like how do you manage your portfolio? Don't put your eggs in one basket. Make sure you monitor them. Make sure you are able to take a small loss when you need to get out. If you're wrong on a stock, don't just keep holding it, hoping it'll come back.
Wow, fascinating.
Anmol Singh - 15:06.734
Or losing a lot more money, whereas just getting out for quick losses. So got comfortable with, okay, this trade investment is not working. I would get out for a quick loss. So I will try to make more on my winning investments than I would on the losing ones. But I think that was kind of the thing. But also, I just loved it because it's kind of like me for it's just a video game, right? There's numbers on the screens. I got these amount of soldiers, right? And now I got to go out, send my soldiers to go and capture more soldiers and keep going in the army.
So I think about investment in that way. My money, my soldiers, I go out and send them to different places to go out and battle, capture more enemy soldiers and build my army. So it's kind of like a video game approach that I used to trading. But the most important aspect is emotional control. It doesn't help in relationships, but I'm very robotic when it comes to my investments. Like there's not a lot of emotion. following my odds and my statistics just like a casino would. And I'm just executing on that.
That's so fascinating. So, you know, because I think that the, you know, if you grow up, I think for those of us that do not grow up around these types of conversations, like we're both, you know, you know, my parents are Dominican, they immigrated here. So, you know, we're both immigrants, right? So it's this we didn't grow up with these things being talked about in the dinner table per se. So I think when, I think that when you don't grow up that way, it makes it harder to access these types of systems that we don't know anything about necessarily, right? And so I really love that you were willing to dive into something that was foreign in that way and that wasn't natural in that way. And I think that's a really valuable lesson that I wanna just... highlight because where most of us may avoid it because it's intimidating and scary or overwhelming or whatever your word is, the willingness to do the work of pushing through that, I think it's really powerful and I think there's a really great lesson in taking ownership.
Anmol Singh - 17:29.868
there. So I'm glad and that you didn't have and that you are not good naturally in numbers. I think that's also remarkable. Okay. I think it's fascinating that you're approaching this as a video game. And do you think you... Is that a key? Do you have to be... I want to talk about this emotional detachment that you have about it because I, for example, I hate to gamble because I don't want to lose money like that. Right? Like I'm like, and the one or two times that I have that I have gambled, I'm like, okay. Made $18. Okay. I'm gone. Thank you. I'm like, I'm not losing it. And it almost seems like you have to be willing to lose.
Something to play this game, right? Like I think that there's something in the mindset where you've got to be willing to, I mean, obviously you don't want to lose your shirt, right? We're not talking about, but you've got to be willing to lose some stuff because you just talked about it in that way. Can you talk a little bit about the mindset behind that?
Yeah, definitely. by the way, I'm the same way. I don't really love casinos, right? Like I don't play there because with a casino, I know that they have an edge, right? They have a point seven percent or something edge. So the longer I play, the more they're going to end up winning in the end of it. Right. So that's why, you know, casinos, if you ever go to casino, even if you win a million dollars, they're not going to mind. They're going to give you the money. In fact, they're going to say, here's a free stay, stay an extra week. Here's some free drinks. Keep playing. Yeah. Right. Because the longer you play in the end, they're going to come out ahead because they are they have a 0.7 percent edge over you so I never play I never love the casino I go there just you know have fun But like I rarely you know play anything at the casino because I know that they're come out ahead in the long run So we're trading what we're trying to do is we try to be the casino So we know we have a certain percentage edge So it's not about like one trade or one investment is that okay if I take a hundred of them? Hundred of these trades a hundred of these investments at the end of a hundred ones. This is my hedge This is what I'm gonna come out ahead. So basic rule of thumb is very simple. Let's say
Anmol Singh - 19:46.446
If I'm on my winning investments, let's say I make $1,000 each on all the winning trades. And all the losing ones, let's say I lose $500. So now, automatically, if I lose $500, I get out of the investment or the trade and I lost $500. And on the winning ones, I put it at $1,000. If I hit $1,000, I'm out. So now I have a 2 to 1 ratio. So by that ratio, I could are you sure you're not good at math?
No basic stuff so if I take a hundred trades right Okay, let's even break that down. When you say a trade, break that down for people.
So a trade is basically, let's say I buy a stock at a certain price, let's say $200. And I say, if it goes down under 150, I'm going to get out, right? I'm going to my loss. I'm going to walk away. Now, if same way, if it goes from 200 to 300, and I'm also going to sell it, I'm going to take my profit. Right? So I've now basically bracketed my investment. I mean, at $200, it goes to 150, I'm out. If it goes to 300, I'm out. So now I just set the bracket order and now there's nothing for me to do.
Anmol Singh - 20:47.406
It's emotional. I can step away. Either it goes to 300 or it goes down to 150. By that, I've basically capped my ratio at two to one. So with that number of level, I could take 100 of these trades and I could lose on 60 of them. So if I lost $500 each, let's say, or let's say if I lost $1,000 each on 60 of them, I lost $60,000. But if on 40 of them, I made $2,000, now I made $80,000. So net net, I'm going to come out $20,000. So now I'm the casino, basically.
So it's not about that one trade or one investment or this one's got to work. It's all about a series of them. So for 100 of them, I only need to be right like 38 % of the time to make money, right? But as a professional trader, you're probably going to be right 50 % of the time, 60 % of the time, sometimes even more. But again, even if I'm right just 40 % of the time, I could lose 60 % of the time, but I'm still going to make money. So we try to be the casino. But in terms of like the risk approach, right? It really comes, it's kind of like any other business, right? If I start a business today.
Any business, I would need to buy some goods to sell. So then I spend my money to buy the product. And then my goal is in my business, we're going to sell the product for a higher price than we bought it. That's what trading really is too. We buy a stock at a certain cheaper price and we hope to sell it at a higher price. Just like if you were running a retail store, you'd buy, let's say the t-shirt at $10, you're going to sell it at $20. So in a business too, you have to be able to take a risk. You got to take an outlet. Maybe your product doesn't sell.
The same thing with trading. the risk is very similar to running a business like entrepreneurship. And I think with risk comes reward, as they say. You got to be in it to win it. And I think that's kind of the mindset approach that I use.
So, is the strategy when you... Like, how do you know when to sell? Like, is the strategy... Because I would imagine that in some cases the strategy is like, no, this is going to come back up, like, write it out. Or this thing isn't done growing yet, right? Like, don't sell it because you're going to maybe miss out on making more.
Gary Montalvo - 22:57.678
How do you, I mean, I imagine that's a bit of a guessing game, but I guess talk a little bit about that.
Yeah, so we use charts for that. So technical analysis is what it's called. So we look at the charts of the stocks, see where the prior history was, where it can go to, where it's been before to make educated decisions based on where we're going to buy, where we're going to sell them. But even if people, know, even if you bought something randomly, right, and then you just say, okay, if it goes down $10 a share, I'm going to get out. But if it goes to $20 a share, I'll take my profit. So our goal is just to make the ratio, right? So it's not about how much higher it went. Maybe I sold the stock at 200 and now it goes to 500. That's okay with me because I already got my profit at 200 and I'll just move on to the next trade and try to do it on that one and I'll just keep doing that. So there's a difference between trading and investing. Investing is where you're buying a stock and you're going to hold it pretty much forever, right? Because you're investing into the company and you're looking at for the long haul what's going to happen 3, 5, 10, 15 years down the line. So those who are never really going to sell, right, as investments.
But trades are something where you have the definite purpose of getting out. And no matter how good you are, how long you've been in the business, you're never going to catch the top. And you're never going to buy it at the bottom. But as long as you can capture the meat in the middle, that's where the money is really made. I sell stocks all the time. They go much higher. But it doesn't bother me at all, because as long as it hit my trading plan or my profit target, then I'm happy with that. And then I just move on to the next position or the next trade.
So it's all like a numbers statistical game. It's not really about one stock or one company or you being really good at picking stocks. It's more about, how much do you make on your winners versus how much do you not lose on your losers? And as long as you have your ratio where your winners are bigger than your losers, then you really only need to be right less than half the time. You could be wrong half the time. mean, you and could be taking a wall and just, you know, drawing symbols on it like Microsoft.
Anmol Singh - 24:54.38
Google, Tesla, we can draw all these symbols and we can throw darts and whatever the dark lands on we can buy the stock, right? So even if we do that, inherently you have a 50-50 % win rate, right? If you throw a dart on Microsoft, you have a 50 % chance Microsoft's gonna go up, 50 % chance it's gonna go down. So you inherently have a 50-50 % chance. Now if you just make sure your winning ones are twice the size of your losers, statistically you're gonna always come out ahead at the end of the month. Now you might have a bad day, you might have a bad trade.
But in a series of them over the course of like three months, six months, 12 months, you're going to come out ahead. And so I that's kind of what we try to do is we don't try to get married to a stock or a company where we're like, I love the CEO. I love the company. I'm just going to keep buying. Then you get into the emotional trading and investing and speculation. Whereas us it's like, it's just a statistical approach. I might love a stock today. I might not like it tomorrow. So a very nimble in our biases, not getting married to like our inherent biases.
I see how this is a video game kind of like I'm starting to see it. How time consuming is this because it kind of sounds time consuming the way that you're talking about it.
In the beginning when somebody's starting it is time consuming because you're focusing a lot on learning, right? You're learning, you're reading charts, you're looking at the patterns, you you're logging your trades in your journal or your spreadsheets so you can keep a track of what's going on. So in the beginning, in the first year when somebody starts, it's a little bit more time consuming. Now for me, it's not at all. Like I come on, you know, nine o'clock, you know, I come to my trading desk and I trade pretty much from nine till 11. That's it for two hours. So nine till 11, I trade. Maybe I'll stick around till 12. I'm coaching people.
Or I'm answering questions in our community, but most of the time I'm done from 9 to 12. And after 12 is just working on the business side of things, Like making content, getting on podcasts, or contributing to other stuff, writing a book. So the rest of the day is more focused on the business aspect, but the trading portion, 9 till 11, 9 to 12 is pretty much Eastern time is kind of where I focus on.
Gary Montalvo - 26:57.426
And I guess, so if someone is starting out, because you're a pro at this, you've been doing it a long time, you've got your systems and several businesses built all around this, I guess if you're starting out, how much time, once they're learned, once they did this, how much time should somebody expect to put into something like this?
On a daily basis.
I think there's two types of, actually three types of ways people can get involved with the market. So one of them is investing, which is you're investing in it for the long haul. That doesn't take any time, zero time, right? Because you can set up in your brokerage accounts or in your bank accounts that anytime money comes in, take 10 % of that automatically invested in the market, right? So that will happen automatically, but that takes no time at all. Then there's other two styles, which is trading.
So there's two styles of trading. One of them is day trading, where I'm trading every single day, right? In and out, maybe two, three trades every single day in the morning. And the goal of that is to make an income, to live off it, pay your bills, and to generate something coming in. And then the other style is swing trading. Swing trading is where I might buy a stock today, I might sell it next month. I might buy it today, I might sell it a week later, right? So swing trading also doesn't take that much time, maybe five, 10 minutes a day, and you can be able to do that. Now, day trading, that's... the what I do every single day, that's a little bit more time consuming because then you have to be there because you're in and out the same day. So have to be in front of your computer. So but even that nine till 11 is if people can just do that, that's the best hour to trade it, you know, because in the morning is when things are active and things slow down gradually during the day. for me, we only trade from nine till 11, nine to 12, really. So if somebody has those two, three hours in the morning, then they can do the day trading, the short term trading.
Anmol Singh - 28:52.984
But if they don't, maybe they have another business, they have another job, then I always just tell them do the swing trading. It takes like five, 10 minutes a day maximum. So I think once you-
And so the swing trading, difference really is that you're not watching it on a day to day basis. You're kind of watching for a monthly pattern instead of like a daily pattern. Is that right?
Yeah, and even in swing trading, could be like, you know, trades that you might be in it for months, in which case you'll do what you just said, looking at the monthly patterns. But then there's also short term swing trades where I might buy something today, sell it like, at the end of the week, or sell it next week. So in that also, we're not doing anything every day, we're just looking at, okay, where is it today? Okay, still looking good, heading in my right direction. And then, you know, so we're just basically managing that. So example of that would be, let's say I buy a stock at $200, right? And I say, okay, if it goes under 180, I'm going to get out and I take a loss. And then tomorrow you see now it's at 210. Then you're like, okay, you're just looking at it. Okay, where is it at? And let's see your target at 250. So now you come back another day and now it's at 220. Now you can say, okay, I was going to get out if it goes to 180, I bought it at 200 and now it's at 220. So I'll raise my, the exit order from 180 to 200. So now I'm break even.
So now if it comes back from 220 to 200, I get out for no loss, break even trade. And now let's say the next day it's at 240. Then I might raise my exit order from 200 down to 220. So I'll just keep kind of raising my orders up until it goes to my target price. And all of that stuff takes less than two minutes a day, really. You only have to watch when the markets are open. You could go about your day and live your job, do your thing. You come back when the markets are closed 5, 6 PM and you're like, okay, this is where the stock is at. So then you can adjust your orders accordingly.
Gary Montalvo - 30:36.706
Yeah.
And the platform does it automatically. So once you tell the platform, if the stock comes back down to 200, sell my shares. And then you just got to put the order in on your broker. And you can do that even when the markets are closed at night. So when tomorrow morning you're at work, it'll automatically do it for you.
Gary Montalvo - 30:56.482
Let's talk crypto.
How, what are your, I imagine as a day trader, you're probably a fan, I would think.
Yeah, so I personally don't trade crypto, but I have an investment in crypto. For me is like a long term thing. mean, sure, you can trade it the same patterns that we talk about and we teach for stocks that work the same way in the crypto too, because charts are the charts, right? Emotions are the same emotions that people have. There's only two primary emotions that move the market fear and greed, right? So they're the same on everything you can trade oil, you can trade gold, you can trade silver, can trade cryptocurrencies.
The charts are the same exact patterns that work over and over. But personally for me, I only trade stocks. Although I invest in crypto, think crypto is kind of like the early stages of internet, right? Early stages of internet where we had all these companies, right? And even in the dot com bubble in the year 2000, any company that would have the name dot com would go up. There was a company called rock.com to sell rocks. Their stock was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And then everything came crashing down, right? At the 2000 bubble.
And then emerged a few winners, Amazons, Microsofts, Googles, Apples, but then all the others disappeared. So I think the same thing is going to happen or is already happening with cryptocurrencies. It's like the early stages of internet. Everything with the crypto would just go up, right? And now we're seeing that things are starting to come back down. And then majority of them cryptos will not last, you know, 10 years from now. I would say 90 % of they're going to be gone, nonexistent. And then there's going to be a few winners that are going to emerge that are going to be the next leaders.
Anmol Singh - 32:28.684
Now for me, I think about it like Bitcoin and Ethereum and all these things are kind of like the AOL of the internet. They were the first ones that started it all, revolutionary concepts, but then there's better, faster technology that comes in like Facebook and all of that that wipe away MySpace, wipe away AOL, and then comes the winners. So I think it's still very, very early in crypto. I think people haven't really missed out. It's very early stages of internet, which is eventually, I would say the next three to five years.
Going to start to be more prominent in our day to day life. And I think also with the new administration, their policy is very clear. They're pro crypto, right? It's a very clear policy. So I think, you know, people should definitely do their research and try to pick which cryptos they love. So for me, there's a cryptocurrency called Algorand, ALGO. So that's the one that I'm invested in, but I'm not really looking to trade it or exit and take profits. That's something I'm, you know, just add every month to it. And I'm going to let it ride and, you know, four or five years from now.
If the network grows, then you're basically owning a piece of that network. So that's kind how I look at crypto. But there's a lot of crypto, have to be careful. Because there's a lot of you know, speculation in there too. There's a lot of meme coins, stuff like that, which have no value. They're basically nothing. It's just hype and promotion. And so all of them eventually are going to be worth zero.
Can you break that down what that is for a little bit? Because again, I think that's one of those things that people are like, what is that?
Yeah, so you know when crypto started the whole purpose of crypto was to revolutionize the financial systems of the world or what can actually be used in real-world transactions, right? So the reason why I'm not I don't love Bitcoin or a theory more things of that nature is because you know Let's say if I send you something in a theorem it might take you 15 minutes to get the money, right? But I could just sell you right now, right? I could just pay value right now you get instantly. So why do I need a theorem?
Anmol Singh - 34:22.862
And then on Ethereum, you're to spend so much money in fees that they charge. It's much I can sell it and send it to you for free on other apps, right? So that's why I don't see the purpose of that. But the promise of crypto was always to power the financial system of the world. So I'll give you a couple of examples. So there's a website, TravelX, which runs on the Algorand blockchain. So what they do is, for example, right now, if you are traveling and taking an airline ticket and for whatever reason, let's say you cannot fly, you can't take it.
Now you have to call the airline, you've got to cancel your ticket, right? You can't do anything with the ticket, you have to call the airline to cancel it. Now with the company TravelX, what they do is if you buy an airline ticket, it's basically created in a form of NFT, right? A non-fungible token, which you get. Now let's say if you cannot travel, Gary, you can sell me your ticket, right? As a form of NFT and the name automatically gets transferred over to me, so now I can just fly on that airline ticket. So that's already happening in real time right now.
You can even transfer me your status, your loyalty points, or whatever else you have in the form of dumb all through blockchain. So that's one example. The other example is there's a company called Lofty AI. So they do real estate, but it's tokenized on the Algorand blockchain. So now you don't have to go and buy this whole property for a million dollars. You can buy tokens in that property, like $50 a token, $100 a token. can buy as many tokens as you want. And then what happens is if the property collects rent, right, you get paid.
Instantly into your crypto account and you don't have to wait till the end of the month to get your rent Whatever the ratio is proportion to the rent you get paid that every single day Deposited to your account. There's no middleman involved So all of those things can happen and now if the let's say the tenant in the property is not paying the rent Right now we have to decide. Okay. What are we gonna do with the tenant? Should we get rid of him? Should we get a new one? So then they put out a vote to all the token holders who own the property tokens and you get to vote What should we do with this person?
So it's very decentralized, right? Now you get to vote on what should happen with your property. So all of those are what fulfilling the promise of crypto. Now what meme coins are, they have no utility. They have no use. It's just people promoting it online. Hey, this isn't going to go up. And it's like a casino.
Gary Montalvo - 36:33.902
It's like a made up idea that people want to buy a part of.
It's a casino. It's a Wild West people are just hoping to get rich quick But inherently those tokens have no value because there's no business right there's nothing happening on it It's just you buying it then I buy it then somebody else buys it from you and the price keeps going up But yeah, those are the ones that I think are eventually going to be going to zero mean coin So would say stay away from that always if you ever invest in crypto think about okay How is it actually being used? Where is it actually being used right? What's the purpose of is? Why do I need to own it?
So I think those are the things people need to look at.
So you mean by that you mean the where is it where are the tower the tokens being used that's what you mean of the crypto right
Yeah, what's it powering? What's it actually being used for? And then more importantly, does it have a limited supply? Because a lot of these cryptocurrencies have unlimited supply. So, you know, they have 100 billion tokens and tomorrow they can just come up with more. So now you're they're diluting you right in a way because they just keep creating more and more tokens. So there's no actual scarcity. The only reason Bitcoin is popular because there's only 21 million of it. Right. So that's what causes the same thing with Algorand. There's 10 billion of it.
Anmol Singh - 37:46.904
But that's the maximum supply. There's never going to be more. Whereas with all these meme coins, there's no maximum supply. Tomorrow they can decide, I'm going to create 1 million more of these things. And there's nothing stopping it.
Yeah. So if people are now feeling inspired, right? Like after this conversation, they're like, you know what? I feel like I'm getting ready to start figuring this out. Like what strategy do you have for people? First of all, we should just say that you have a school where you teach this stuff, right? And... live traders, excuse me. That's the name of it right live traders calm. So What are the first strategies that people should do like what are the first steps that you give or what's the first sort of like You know investment that you recommend like, know, if somebody's jumping in what are they what's your What do you recommend to get started?
Yeah, so think the first thing that this applies to everybody and everybody should be doing it no matter where you are in your career, business, profession, job. Investing is something everybody should be doing. And when I say investing, I don't really necessarily mean you picking a stock, right? And investing in that stock because most average people are going to pick the stock, you know, the wrong stock or they're going to pick it at the wrong price point, right? Because you and I could be at the exact same time in the exact same stock, right?
But our returns are gonna be vastly different based on where we bought it and where we sold it. So you could be in, let's say, Tesla stock, and I could be in Tesla stock, and let's say we both love it. But let's say if you are in it at 400 and I'm in it at $200 a share, even though we're in the same stock, our returns are gonna be very different. So it's not about individual stock picking, because most people will do it wrong, absolutely, because most people do it on emotion, they do it on feel, or they do it on, you know, I read this something online or somebody told me to buy this stock.
Anmol Singh - 39:45.142
and they rely on other people's opinions, which is the wrong thing to do. Because online, you go, everybody will tell you when to buy a stock. Hey, buy this GME, buy this AMC, right? But nobody tells you when to sell it, right? And then they take the profits and you keep holding onto GME or AMC or GameStop. So I think the key is to just invest in index funds, invest in the overall market, S &P 500, NASDAQ, Vanguard Total Market Index Funds.
And that's something anybody can do from their bank account or any brokerage account. So the best rule of thumb first people need to set up is when the money comes into your bank account, whether from your job, from your income, from your business, take a percentage of that, whatever you feel comfortable with it, whether it be 5%, whether it be 10%, whether it be 15%, whatever you're comfortable with, and automatically just every month, just keep putting it into the stock market. If you do that, your money is typically going to double every six to seven years. So that's a great way to do that because now what happens seven years later?
Not only do your money doubles, but now the next seven years you're to double the money that's already doubled and the compounding happens almost like a snowball. You imagine a snowball rolling down a hill as it keeps rolling down it keeps collecting more and more snow and keeps getting bigger and bigger. That's what compounding is. We start with a small account, know, imagine where it's going to be 20 years from now, right? You're going to be doing really really well. So I think that's something that across the board everybody should be doing. Now when it comes to trading, that's more of a skill, right? You have to learn it. There's a learning curve to it. Just like if I'm a 5 learn how to play golf, I'm not going to compete in the PGA Tour straight away, I'm going to go to the driving range simulator, I'm going to practice and then eventually maybe I'll get good enough to play. So with trading, I always tell people get educated first, learn how to read charts, learn how to read technical analysis, learn how to read patterns, and all of these things can be learned. Like even if you just go on my website, livetraders.com, and you don't need to buy anything, just make a free account.
And once you make a free account in the dashboard, you're going to see a training that I recorded, which is roughly two, three hours of video training that goes to basics of, okay, how do the markets actually work? What are our charts, how to read them, technical analysis, and that's completely free. So I would say people can start there by watching that because then that'll give them a good understanding of whether they want to even get into this. Maybe you watch it and you're like, this is too much for me or I'm not interested in it because if money is the only reason you get into this, you're not going to last very long.
Anmol Singh - 42:03.714
You have to be actually curious about it. You got to be passionate about it. You got to love it. So I think that's where I would tell people to start. Go through that free training first. If you like what we're talking about, if you see yourself doing it, then you can go into and see, how do I develop even further? But that would be the place to start. Focus on learning. And when you start trading, don't risk your real money. Nowadays, there's softwares out there that are like simulator accounts, where everything is real. The stock prices are real. The charts are real. Everything is real. Just the money is not real.
So prove yourself there first, right? Because if you cannot make money on a demo account, you're not really going to make money in a real account. So first get comfortable and start proving yourself first before you start risking your real money.
I love that. I didn't know that was a thing. That's so good. What are some of, mean, I think I know where you're, based on what you said, I think I know what you're gonna say, but what are like some of the biggest mistakes that people make when they start doing this?
I think biggest mistake is listening to other people and listening to your emotions, right? Because a lot of people say, you know, I have a gut feel about this stock. But what is really gut feel? Gut feel is basically our experience talking and telling us, hey, you've seen this before, right? You know how this ends. The gut feel is basically our experience talking. But if you're completely new, you don't have experience, you don't have gut feel. Now you're just trading on a whim. You're investing on a whim, right? So don't trade on emotions.
Right, like especially when people watch something coming up on news. my god GameStop everybody's buying it and then let me buy it and then they buy it They have no plan. They're just gambling So if you're gonna gamble you might as well go to casino at least you get free drinks At least they take care of you at least you have a good time And then if you lose your money in the casino, it's alright, but there's no fun losing money in your computer by yourself at home So you're gonna gamble go to casino at least have a good time But if you're gonna trade then you want to learn how to do it the right way
Gary Montalvo - 43:57.538
That's so funny. Okay, awesome. This was so good. Is there anything that, is there a question that I have not asked you that you feel it's important before we start to wrap things up here?
I'd love to give your listeners a free copy of my book. They can just go to go.unmold.net, geo.unmold.net, and they can just cover shipping. that book is more about the mindset beliefs, like things that I learned in my journey. so the book has nothing to do with trading investing, but those concepts will apply to any area of your life, whether business, whether anything that you're involved with. So think those are the key fundamentals, because I wrote this book originally for myself.
As like notes to myself or okay, here's the things that you need to do in your own life to get to the level of success. And then I finally applied all of the things that I wrote about and then my life just got dramatically better. So then I was like, okay, I need to put it in a book format, but it's a very short read, but it's almost like a workbook where every chapter ends with, okay, here's the five things you need to do before you move on to the next chapter. Because the last thing I want is, you know, people buy another book and then just sits there and they never actually finish it. Or maybe they even finish it.
But then they actually do anything with it. So that way every chapter ends with, okay, do this first before you even move on to the next chapter. Because a lot of people get caught in the loop of learning. You know, they keep reading one book to another book and they brag about, I've read 20 books this month. And I'm like, but your life doesn't demonstrate you taking action on any of that. You read 20 books. Well, what good is those books if you don't actually apply any of that and your life only changes when you apply it. True knowledge is applied knowledge. Otherwise you're just hoarding information.
And more information is not gonna change your life.
Gary Montalvo - 45:42.976
I love that. And I think, you know, the, I love the mirroring in all of the mindset lessons and leadership lessons that are also woven into your process for how you do this, you know, the idea of, the learner's mindset.
The idea of the emotional maturity of holding, know, a weather in the storm, the idea that you, you know, not to be emotional in your process. I think that's, those are all, you know, leadership lessons. And I think there's something you said that's worth saying. There, a lot of people, I think, approach this from a get rich quick type of mentality and You know You're very you're very clear. There's a discipline to what you're doing there's a method to what you're doing so this isn't a Place where you're just gonna like you just said like if you want to gamble go to the casino, right? This is not what that is. And if you approach this there's a discipline, you you have to invest. And I don't say that to scare people off. I think anything you approach in life worth having requires discipline. Any business you have is gonna require discipline. But I think this is one of those areas of business that people often think of it as, you get lucky or you just, you and you're really proven that this is.
There is a methodology to this and there's a discipline to this and you have to be willing to put in the work of learning how to do that before you can yield the results. And I really appreciate that you're saying, don't even start with your own money, like go play with an account first, you know.
Gary Montalvo - 47:48.75
because it really tells me that you really have people's best interests in mind and you don't want them to go out and make a mistake that could be detrimental to their lives. So I really appreciate you saying that. Thank you.
Definitely, it's all about singles and doubles rather than like trying to hit home runs. I tell people all the time if you're to trade for a living, invest for a living, don't trade or invest like you're going to retire next week, right? It's not about getting rich quick. It's getting rich for sure.
Right? So it's like, you you give a man a strategy that is sure to make him a millionaire in 10 years, but in the hopes of getting there in one year, the tweaked and optimized it, the mess with the strategy. And in so doing 10 years later, they're still not there yet, but it is stuck to this plan. And then 10 years later, they would have already gotten there, but people always trying to get there quicker. They try to look for shortcuts and that rarely works because you like, you know, who got lucky at some point, maybe they've got a crypto, they made a lot of money, but where are they now? Right? The quicker you make it, the faster it comes down. So I think.
Slow consistent results are built over time.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time and your knowledge. You definitely have given me some clarity around a topic that I've often found intimidating and overwhelming. So I really appreciate you and the way that you break things down. Go get that free book from him. We will put the link to that in the show notes.
Gary Montalvo - 49:11.886
so that you can go get that and definitely go set up for that free account and go get that free training. That's gold right there. So Anol, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me. was great chatting with you.
Alright brother. As I reflect on this conversation with Amal, I keep coming back to one thing. Financial independence isn't something you stumble into. It's not luck. It's not magic. It's not about waiting for the right opportunity to fall on your lap. It's a mindset. It's a skill set. And like any other skill, it has to be learned, practiced, and mastered over time.
As I said in my intro, the original blueprint isn't enough anymore, if it ever really was. Building real wealth, wealth that gives you freedom, options, and ownership over your life requires a different approach. It requires the willingness to learn. It requires emotional discipline. And it requires the courage to start betting on yourself, even when that is uncomfortable. So here's my challenge to you this week.
Where in your financial life have you been outsourcing responsibility? Where have you been hoping instead of learning, waiting instead of leading? What's one small step that you can take this week to start building that new skill set? Maybe it's picking up a new book or investing or signing up for one of those courses from a mall. Maybe it's getting honest about where fear or impatience has been running the show.
Gary Montalvo - 50:50.07
Maybe simply deciding that you're going to treat your financial future as a priority, not a someday project. Because the truth is, no one is coming to rescue you. Ownership of your financial future starts and ends with you. That's the good news and the bad news. That's our show for this week. If this conversation challenged you in any way, spoke to you in any way, don't forget to hit follow or subscribe.
If you haven't already, will let you stay up to date with the episode and it will really do a great deal to help you grow the show. And of course, share this episode with someone who you think needs a reminder that it's never too late to start leading themselves financially or otherwise. Until next time, keep leading, keep learning, and keep playing the ownership game.
Thanks for listening to this episode of The Ownership Game with your host, Gary Montalvo. Make sure to like and comment on your favorite podcast platform, as well as subscribe so that you never miss an episode.