It’s been a while since I last posted. I have had a bit of inner conflict as to whether or not I should even continue with this blog or investing for that matter. To be honest, I have felt like a bit of a failure and haven’t really felt qualified to teach…I’m breaking this hiatus with a sort of confession and a roadmap to betterment. 2022 was not a good year for me. I won’t get into the weeds with my investment performance, but it wasn’t good. I have no one to blame but myself.
A lot of people echo this sentiment. I know plenty of people who day trade and invest long term that gave up last year. To be honest, I had thoughts of joining them, but I’m stubborn and I feel like with a lot more effort and deliberation, I can become consistently profitable. I hadn’t felt this frustrated in a while, but I looked back to my first few years as a firefighter to give me some wisdom to move forward as an investor and trader. Spoiler alert…it wasn’t about me, but rather the people I decided to surround myself with.
You should be dialed…
Fresh out of the 72nd fire academy in the winter of 2009, I hit the floor as a probationary firefighter for SDFD. In our department, your first year, you are moving around a lot in assignments. For a few blocked weeks, I would spend time at the training station. There, we’d be grilled on the basics of firefighting, performing evolutions straight out of the academy. The drills were simple, but they were the extra repetition needed to reinforce what we learned in the academy. The extra compensated captains and engineers assigned to the station guided us on every call, all too aware that my probationary partner and I were as green as they come. They did the critical thinking, and we were to follow orders. At times we were allowed to think for ourselves, but most of the time we were quickly steered in a more appropriate direction. Time at the training stations got my confidence up…but that was only a small portion of my shifts during my first year on the floor. The bulk of my probationary shifts were spent out in the cities forty-seven (at the time) fire stations, filling in for permanent vacancies on crews, or sliding into a station for a day when someone took vacation. These were the serious Come to Jesus shifts. These were the humbling calls where I felt completely lost during the emergency despite my training. I felt like as dialed as I was in the academy and during the training shifts, I would completely shit the bed when out in the general ranks. Why was that?
A new firefighter should be dialed….they really should. They have all the latest training the department has to offer. In training, they can don their SCBA faster and beat even the best firefighters to the front door of a burning building. But if they open their eyes from their blinders of a task-oriented academy drill, they are completely and utterly lost. They are looking for someone to give them direction as to what to do, even if it is completely obvious. I was that new guy.
During my first year, I bounced through a lot of stations that had me perform basic drills and left me to my day around the station between calls. Cooking and cleaning anything that needed some elbow grease was pretty much my daily routine. I’d mix in hours of self-study of my gear and the apparatus gear. No matter how hard I worked, I’d do fine on the drills, but would always feel like a dumbass on calls…when it really mattered. Towards the end of my first year, I worked a shift at Fire Station 11. Located in Golden Hill, Station 11 is a pretty busy house known for having professional firefighters that take their job extremely serious. When I filled in for the day, I expected to be humbled to the point of wanting to quit. Miraculously, the opposite occurred.
After checking my rig out and cleaning the station, the senior firefighter called me to the bull pen (TV room). I had a fellow academy mate working at the station that day and the senior guy told us both to sit down in the recliner. This is a strict violation of probationary firefighter conduct. You do not sit down in the recliner on probation….EVER! We hemmed and hawed until the captain barged in the room and barked “Sit down GODDAMMIT! That’s a direct order!” Sheepishly we crept into the recliner. A DVD popped into the player, and we launched into a three hour play by play of fires from across the nation. All sorts of fires, from little shacks in run down neighborhoods to towering high rise infernos in the heart of some distant downtown USA. We got grilled on everything, but it was nothing like we had learned in the academy.
“Tell me about that smoke kid…what’s it doing?” We both shrugged. We had no clue. “Ok let me explain how this fire is burning and how you can tell what door to pull your hose line into because it isn’t so obvious.” He launched into a half hour dissertation of how and why. The information alone overwhelmed us at first, but every extra bit of wisdom we could glean allowed us to make such a crazy irrational act of tackling even the most complex emergency that much clearer. In those few hours, we learned how to think like professional firefighters. We learned how high the bar should be in our critical thinking if we wanted to be successful. That one shift has always stuck out in my memory as the aha moment in my path to being a professional firefighter.
As the years went by, I had a lot of great opportunities to work on some great crews, and I soon recognized what made them great. Even the most casual mornings around the breakfast table had serious conversations about fire strategy and tactics. We trained hard and worked hard. We joked when appropriate and stayed professional when the time came. The crews were led by captains that didn’t lose their cool, no matter the emergency. We could be flying down the road to hell on earth, and they might be sipping their coffee straight out of their mug seemingly without a care in the world. Not spilling a drop or showing any signs of stress, they casually called out their thoughts on what we should do or think about when we arrived at scene. They were calm because they knew setting a calm tone would allow us to think clearly. They took ownership in preparing us for any emergency. They knew their people and our abilities and weaknesses. They let us do our job and gave praise or sometimes brutally honest feedback and remedial training when the incident was over. These leaders, cut from the same cloth as that firefighter I had the pleasure of working with some thirteen years ago at Station 11, navigated the millions of issues at any fire and did everything in their power to enable us to do our jobs well. I wouldn’t be where I am today if not for them, and in turn as a captain, I vow to emulate everything good that they did for me and my career so I can contribute to the next generation.
The Chaotic Trading Ground….
Day trading in an online course is pretty easy. Sift through most online brokerages, and they include a litany of courses on technical and fundamental analysis, options and stock trading, futures markets, etc. Study even a little bit, and the concepts are pretty easy to understand. I got 100%’s on all of my TD Ameritrade online classes, but I still sucked at trading. I realized it’s because, much like the unpredictable nature of the fireground, there are plenty of subtle little indicators and factors that come into play with trading in a real market with real hard-earned money. Human emotions of greed, fear and panic muddle what could be obvious opportunities and pitfalls. Most days in the market, I feel like a probie firefighter, completely and utterly lost despite the glaringly obvious indicators in front of my face. I get flustered. I miss obvious opportunities. I stay in bad trades too long. I lose money.
In my desire to make money to provide for my family, I have failed miserably. I am not proud to say that, but it needs to be said. Full disclosure, I didn’t invest with money I wasn’t fully willing to part with and I am perhaps unreasonably critical of myself in most aspects of my life and especially in wanting to provide for my family. I guess I had envisioned a different path for my money. Needless to say, I still feel the motivation to be a good trader and investor. It reminded me a lot of wanting to be comfortable in the hectic world of firefighting. I reckoned, much like I needed to have good mentors as a firefighter, it was time to surround myself with some successful traders. It was late December 2022 that I found a cool YouTube channel called the Wolves of Wealth.
“Wake Up Early, Get Your Levels Right and Don’t Do Anything Fucking Stupid”
Every night before the trading day, the Wolves of Wealth YouTube channel posts a free look ahead of the S&P Index (SPY). If you only wanted to trade one asset, SPY would be your go to, and therefore the channel focuses heavily on it. In a few quick minutes, host NoRiskNoPremium, gives a synopsis of what he thinks the market will do the next day. Weekdays, this blurb is known as “The Two Minute Drill,” and on Sunday, he delivers a lengthier “Sunday Sermon.” He discusses key price levels to watch as well as key economic news that might lead to volatility in the market. They are quick, down and dirty, often times hilariously commentated nuggets of pure golden information, strategy and tactics. They always end with his signature phrase “Wake up early, get your levels right, and don’t do anything fucking stupid. We’ll see you bright and early. PEACE!”
I started watching those clips every night religiously and would write down all the notes I could for the next day. I started to implement his recommendations. I noticed my success improving somewhat, but it always felt like two steps forward, one step back. Meanwhile, on the Wolves of Wealth Twitter account, every day they would post their online community’s VIP wins. Members, successful from the guidance of the admin’s callouts, recommendations, coaching and education would post their win rates for the day. Staggering percentages and dollar amounts flashed on the screen. Frustrated with my lack of success, I decided it might be worth spending a bit of money to join the online community. I didn’t know what to expect, but I figured a hundred bucks for a few months of a trial run might be enough to unscrew myself.
My first impression of the Wolves of Wealth Discord was overwhelming. I felt like the probie sitting in the recliner at Station 11 some thirteen years ago. A message board allows the community of retail traders to bounce ideas and questions to the admins, one of which replies almost instantly. Before every trading day, the admins host a quick look ahead of various stocks and options contracts on their watchlists, known as The Morning Huddle. They lay out their trigger points for when they want to put trades on and when they want to take profits. They give you a blueprint for success in your trading day AND when the morning bell rings on Wall Street, they spend the first few hours on a live voice chat as they trade their own accounts. The market could be tanking, and like the great captains I worked for, they remain cool, calm and collected. Even in the calamity of a market crash, they keenly find opportunities. Armed with their watchlist, some headphones and a trading app on your phone, you could follow along with their morning and make some serious returns…. the only problem for me is that life is hectic as all get out, whether it’s my crazy kids or the fact that I’m at work…and I can’t do that most days. The good news is that their primary goal isn’t for their members to follow their every move. They want you to learn to fish for yourself so to speak.
This aspect of the online community is what I am most impressed with. They pump out amazing Masterclasses every week, teaching the community how-to better-read price action of any stock. They provide a road map for how to identify opportunities in any market, whether it is soaring to new heights or plummeting into the ground or stagnating sideways. They provide tips for how to grow small trading accounts like mine. Above all, they share their experiences of failure and what they did to fix it. Everything they speak of in their past is 100% relatable and I am doing my best to learn from them.
Psychology is something they harp on continuously, and it’s something I am realizing I need a ton of improvement on. They encourage you to journal your trades, both good and bad. I started doing that this week and I am immediately noticing some bad patterns that I need to work on. In order to provide some sort of consistency in accounting my progress, I set up a separate day trading account. I put a small amount of money in there to try these newfound trading techniques. Every day, I close all of my positions before the market closes so that I can see the days progress. This week, if I had stayed disciplined in what they preach, I would have grown my account by 70%. With 70% compounding weekly, starting with a hundred dollars, you could become a millionaire in a little over four months (obviously not very doable). Instead, I ended the week down 2%. I logged in my trading journal to document my shortcomings:
-I got greedy and let a winning trade turn into a losing trade. USE STOPLOSSES MORE!
-I picked bad areas of price action to enter trades know jokingly as “Diddling in the Middle,” by the online community.
-In an effort to make up for some losing trades, I bought cheap low probability options contracts, known as Lottos (Tickets), thinking I was going to turn $10 into $500 with one abrupt move in the market. (Revenge Trading). WALK AWAY FROM A LOOSING DAY. TAKE SOME TIME OFF. PAPERTRADE…JUST DONT REVENGE TRADE!
-I didn’t quit while I was ahead by over well over the average yearly return of the S&P in just one day and instead ended the day losing money. YOU DUMBASS! IF YOU’RE UP 30% ON THE DAY JUST WALK AWAY. ENJOY THE DAY, THE MARKET WILL BE THERE TOMORROW.
A Path Forward…
Although painful to my account and ego, this newfound self-awareness in how I trade has been incredibly useful. It’s incredibly valuable to know these online mentors have done the same stupid stuff I am doing. They are candid about their past mistakes, much like any seasoned firefighter would mentor the next generation of probies. I am about a month into a membership with the Wolves of Wealth community, and I no longer see the markets as a threatening entity, hell bent on taking my money and making me feel stupid. I now see the market like a fire. A fire demands respect and attention to detail in order for it to be put out safely. While no two fires are the same, every fire and every trade demand calm thinking and decisive action. The market is no different. Every trade, no matter good or bad deserves an honest after-action review to see what I can improve on. For instance, I now realize I need to control my fear of being wrong. There is nothing wrong with being wrong so long as you keep your crew or trading account safeguarded. You can always exit a losing trade at a small loss, much like we reposition hose lines when we pull out of an aggressive interior attack to switch to defensive tactics. I need to sharpen my process of looking at indicators through careful yet detached observation, much like every good firefighter does while reading a building and smoke in the final seconds before the apparatus creeps into position and the spring-brake sets and it’s time to go to work.
I know I have a lot of work to do, but I am excited to see some inner progress that I feel will help me along the way to being a better trader. This realization is a direct result of finding some high-quality mentors in the Wolves of Wealth community, specifically the founders JG Banks and NoRiskNoPremium, and for that I am incredibly thankful. I apologize for this long break in posting. The original intent of this blog was to document my journey and I should have laid out the failures as well as the successes in this process. My overall goal is to still try to explain economics, investing, and trading in terms firefighters can relate to, but just know that I am on a journey and no journey is complete without a few speedbumps. I look forward to posting more in the future.
As always, stay safe and prosperous.
-thefirefightereconomist
For More Info On The Wolves of Wealth
https://www.youtube.com/@wolvesofwealth
The Firefighter Economist 
Thank you for sharing!!!
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