Investing Through Volatility - Scott Sheridan

What is discussed, and when

1. 0:00 – 5:00: Options, Charles Schwab, Equity Options, Futures
2. 5:00 – 10:00: Expense Ratio, Options, NASDAQ
3. 10:00 – 15:00: Options, Blockchain, Fiat Currency, Fractional Shares
4. 15:00 – 20:00: Ethereum, Options, S&P 100, Silver
5. 20:00 – 25:00: Ethereum, Market Maker
6. 25:00 – 30:00: Volatility, Tastylive, Tastylive, Trade Small, Trade Often
7. 30:00 – 35:00: Volatility, Options, Ethereum, Market Exposure
8. 35:00 – 40:00: Thinkorswim, Demo Account, Options, Trade Small, Trade Often
9. 40:00 – 45:00: Minimum Viable Product
10. 45:00 – 50:00: Risk Tolerance
11. 50:00 – 55:00: Volatility, NASDAQ
12. 55:00 – 57:44: Velvet Taco

Notable quotes from "Investing Through Volatility - Scott Sheridan"

• Sure when we started Thinker Swim, we were focusing on derivatives. So, options, equity options was really our sweet spot. that's still the case today. So, of course, we do…

  about Options · at 1:24

• Are not going to buy into this one. you saw literally, 20 plus% selloff fast and the volatility that we saw both up and down because we had some crazy updates, was all of a sudden tariffs on, tariffs off, right?

  about Volatility · at 3:35

• But they do have the money, your comment about just buying the S&P or QQQ, something like that. So, you have NASDAQ exposure, S&P 500 exposure works. Low expense ratio. So…

  about NASDAQ · at 8:13

• Chance of that working. So, the odds are in my favor. So, everybody, going back to everybody's risk tolerance, everybody has to figure out their own size. So, they're going to…

  about Risk Tolerance · at 11:37

• It's hard for me to think that the United States is going to leave a fiat currency, which is the dollar, and go over to a cryptocurrency. when you looked at the entire crypto world, what.

  about United States (states) · at 13:18

• What do I need a stable coin for? At least with Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of the other coins, I've got risk. I've got upside. So, I could make some money at stable coins tied to the dollar.

  about Ethereum · at 15:40

• Large numbers, but their mantra is trade small, trade often. Trade small, trade often.

  about Trade Small, Trade Often · at 29:00

• Company and you're going to that environment, what are the things that, you sold Thinkorswim and then you get invited back into Tasty.

  about Thinkorswim · at 36:56

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

• Scott Sheridan — Person · 1 mention · first at 0:06
  You can prove. People say you can't beat Wall Street. They're wrong. Today's guest, Scott Sheridan, co-founded Thinkerswim, sold it to TDI Trade, and went on to build Tasty…
• Melvin Simon — Person · 1 mention · first at 12:47
  I'm I am not buying virtual stuff. And I've had a rule, I learned this from Melvin Simon, which was don't invest in things you don't understand.
• Casey Woody — Person · 1 mention
• Tom Sosnoff — Person · 1 mention

Companies & orgs

• NASDAQ — Company · 2 mentions · first at 8:17
• Proven Podcast — Company · 1 mention · first at 0:00
  Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. People say you can't beat Wall Street. They're wrong. Today's guest, Scott Sheridan, co-founded.
• Charles Schwab — Company · 1 mention · first at 1:01
  Which was our first brokerage firm. We sold that to TDI trade. It is now part of Charles Schwab and 10 years ago I actually just had my 10 year anniversary. we started another…
• Velvet Taco — Company · 1 mention · first at 56:47
  So if someone wanted to embrace you, if someone wanted to track you down and do all that other than going to Velvet Taco, if someone want to embrace you and connect with you, how do people track you down? How do they connect with you?
• CBOE — Company · 1 mention
• Kmart — Company · 1 mention
• S&P — Company · 1 mention
• Sears Roebuck — Company · 1 mention
• Tastytrade — Company · 1 mention
• TD Ameritrade — Company · 1 mention

Products & tech

• Ethereum — Product · 3 mentions · first at 15:43
• Thinkorswim — Product · 2 mentions · first at 36:59
• World of Warcraft — Product · 1 mention · first at 12:41
  Came to me and they're Hey, there's this weird thing. It's like World of Warcraft money. It's like a hundred bucks. We should buy some. And I'm I am not buying virtual stuff.…
• Silver — Product · 1 mention · first at 16:22
  Talk about is gold. There's all these people out there for years. buy gold, buy silver, buy gold. And my narrative to that's always been, if we get to the point where you're at…
• Tastylive — Product · 1 mention · first at 29:29
  Game. Got to constantly be trading and all the information again, free available tastylive.com. Go check out the content. So, from my perspective, and let's go back to the…
• Demo Account — Product · 1 mention · first at 35:06
  I'm going to learn Forex. I'm going to trade forex and be great. And I made fortunes in Forex in a demo account. And then I went live like I was Oh, okay. This is a different…
• OEX — Product · 1 mention
• QQQ — Product · 1 mention
• Tastytrade Education — Product · 1 mention
• Tastyworks — Product · 1 mention

Concepts & topics

• Options — Concept · 13 mentions · first at 1:28
• Volatility — Concept · 10 mentions · first at 3:40
• Expense Ratio — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 8:23
  Something like that. So, you have NASDAQ exposure, S&P 500 exposure works. Low expense ratio. So, you're not paying somebody 2 3 4%. Because to me, you just don't need to do…
• Risk Tolerance — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 11:42
• Trade Small, Trade Often — Concept · 2 mentions · first at 29:06
• Fractional Trading — Concept · 2 mentions
• Equity Options — Concept · 1 mention · first at 1:28
  Sure when we started Thinker Swim, we were focusing on derivatives. So, options, equity options was really our sweet spot. that's still the case today. So, of course, we do…
• Futures — Concept · 1 mention · first at 1:38
  Today. So, of course, we do offer stock trading, but we specialize in options and futures crypto. So, it's a full platform. You trade whatever you want to trade. The big…
• Fractional Shares — Concept · 1 mention · first at 10:07
  Could trade tiny and now you could even trade under one share. Most firms have fractional shares. So if you wanted to go in and buy $10 or $20 or $50 of Apple, you could go do…
• Blockchain — Concept · 1 mention · first at 13:00
  The idea of it. I understand the technology behind I understand the blockchain of it. But when you look at governments who control their currencies and how, take China for…
• Fiat Currency — Concept · 1 mention · first at 13:19
  It's hard for me to think that the United States is going to leave a fiat currency, which is the dollar, and go over to a cryptocurrency. when you looked at the entire crypto world, what are you seeing and where do you see it.
• S&P 100 — Concept · 1 mention · first at 19:23
  Floor of this Chicago Board Options Exchange CBOE. we traded in the OEX, which was the S&P 100 versus the S&P, which is the S&P 500. I think it exists, but I think there's one…
• Market Maker — Concept · 1 mention · first at 20:47
  And I saw that things on the floor were changing that it just didn't seem like the local the individual market maker or also known as locals that there was going to be a future…
• Market Exposure — Concept · 1 mention · first at 30:17
  One of the approaches that I am taking right now because I do want market exposure. I do want to buy some of these stocks that have been beat up, some of the big names. So, for anybody that has traded options, you will.
• Minimum Viable Product — Concept · 1 mention · first at 40:17
  You've got to be able to move it. You have to be liquid in that envir minimum viable product. Get it out.
• Basis Point — Concept · 1 mention
• Culture (organizational culture) — Concept · 1 mention
• Delta — Concept · 1 mention
• Dot-com Bubble — Concept · 1 mention
• ETF — Concept · 1 mention
• Flood Insurance Analogy — Concept · 1 mention
• Forex — Concept · 1 mention
• Fundamental Analysis — Concept · 1 mention
• Housing Bubble (2008-2009) — Concept · 1 mention
• IPO — Concept · 1 mention
• Law of Large Numbers — Concept · 1 mention
• Market Crash of 1987 — Concept · 1 mention
• NASDAQ 100 — Concept · 1 mention
• Probability-based Trading — Concept · 1 mention
• Put Option — Concept · 1 mention
• Risk Management — Concept · 1 mention
• Risk-Reward — Concept · 1 mention
• Spread (Options Trading) — Concept · 1 mention
• Stablecoin — Concept · 1 mention
• Stop Order — Concept · 1 mention
• Technical Analysis — Concept · 1 mention

Places & events

• United States (states) — Place · 2 mentions · first at 13:18
• China — Place · 1 mention
• Mali — Place · 1 mention

Sponsors

• Proven Podcast — Sponsor · 1 mention · first at 0:00
  Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. People say you can't beat Wall Street. They're wrong. Today's guest, Scott Sheridan, co-founded.
• Tastylive — Sponsor · 1 mention · first at 29:29
  Game. Got to constantly be trading and all the information again, free available tastylive.com. Go check out the content. So, from my perspective, and let's go back to the…
• Tastytrade — Sponsor · 1 mention

Full transcript with timestamps

0:00 Welcome to the Proven Podcast, where it doesn't matter what you think, only what you can prove. People say you can't beat Wall Street. They're wrong. Today's guest, Scott Sheridan, co-founded Thinkerswim, sold it to TDI Trade, and went on to build Tasty Trade, proving you can disrupt an entire industry with education, innovation, and relentless execution. The show starts now. All right, everybody, welcome back to the show. I am excited to have Scott on with us. Scott, thank you for joining us.

0:23 Happy to be here. For the two or three people on the planet who don't actually know who you are, let's get a couple updates and share kind of what your story is, what you've done, the success you've had.

0:33 Well, I'm sure there's more than a few, but my whole career outside of the first my first year out of school. Um, my whole career has been spent in the market. So, I traded the floor of the CBOE from I went down uh the summer of 86. I left in 2003 officially. Uh but my partner and I had already started before I left. Uh we had started thinker swim which was our first brokerage firm. We sold that to TDI trade. It is now part of Charles Schwab and 10 years ago I actually just had my 10 year anniversary. Uh we started another brokerage firm to compete. It's called Tasty Trade and that is currently where I am. I am the CEO of Tasty Trade which is another online brokerage firm.

1:16 Gotcha. Just because I'm curious, what is the massive difference between Thinker Swim and Tasty?

1:21 Great question. both firms. Well, for sure when we started Thinker Swim, uh we were focusing on derivatives. So, options, equity options was really our our sweet spot. Uh that's still the case today. So, of course, we do offer stock trading, but we specialize in options and futures crypto. So, it's a full platform. You trade whatever you want to trade. The big difference is how thin or how light our platform is today compared to what we built at Thinkers. And the way I describe Thinker Swim, I say it's my baby. Love my baby. But we moved on and we've come up with what we believe is a cleaner, simpler, faster way for people to trade.

2:02 Gotcha. All right. You talked about options and we're not talking about puts and calls at this point. We're talking about options with the world, where things are going. And you know, you've had an immense amount of success. You've had multiple exits and create immense amount of wealth. For some people, the world seems very volatile right now. and we're gonna try and leave all the politics on the sideline, which is not easy for you and I to do, but the camera's rolling, so we get to do that. And talk about where the market's going.

2:23 And there's a lot of people who are terrified. You know, you mentioned before the cameras started rolling for the people in their early 20s into their their mid-30s, they've never seen a collapse before. They've never seen a pullback. They've never seen a downturn. For those people are going into this, what are some of the things that you're seeing and how the market's changing and then more importantly, how to survive it? Well, I'm taking a deep breath right now because having done this for as long as I've done this, I can say without question what we went through in April, we've never seen before. That was an absolutely insane period. Um, you know, somebody could talk about, you could go back and say 089. You could go back and say talk about the dot bubble, you know, in 2000. You could go back to the crash in in '87. The big difference from my perspective, this one was 100% self-induced. So the other ones, there

3:13 were reasons and maybe some of you would argue that 0809 was a housing bubble and you could say that was self-induced because we allowed it to happen. Um, I could go with that argument, but for sure with this one, this was President Trump making a decision on tariffs that he believes in or did believe in. I don't know if he still does, but did believe in it. and the market said we are not going to buy into this one. you saw literally, you know, 20 plus% selloff fast and the volatility that we saw both up and down because we had some crazy updates, you know, was all of a sudden tariffs on, tariffs off,

3:49 right? So, one of the comments when I I talk to a lot of younger people. One of the comments that, you know, that I make is you need to learn, especially at a young age, you need to learn how to take risk. Take a lot of risk. Now, what does that mean for you? Everybody has a different tolerance for risk. So, people have to understand what that means because what might be super risky for one person might be just run-of-the-mill for another. But if somebody is just getting going in their career, they have some investable assets. You need to be engaged with the markets. I know it seems crazy right now to say, "Why would I want to be in the market when it literally just sold off 20% and just snapped back?" You know, today we're back not at not at highs, but we're not far off. I think were 4 or 500 points.

4:37 So, in the S&P, so it's not that far away. Um, but the markets, as crazy as they are right now, one thing I will say with certainty, and I will preface this with nobody has any idea where the markets are going on a given day.

4:51 But unless another world war breaks out and something happens that would be an oh my god situation, the markets are going to be significantly higher in 10, 15, 20, 30 years. So, if somebody's just starting their career and they're in their 20s and they think they have a 40-year horizon before they want to retire, you need to have exposure to the market. Now, having said that, exposure needs to be controlled. So, don't go crazy and take all of your money and just put it in today because all of a sudden, you might need some of the money and the market could go lower. So, people have to take a, you know, a reasonable approach. Again, what does that mean? Maybe somebody decides, I'm going to put X number of dollars in every week or every month. But whatever that number is, make sure that it's money that you don't need for the foreseeable future. So when when you're talking about there's a lot of different

5:41 ways of investing. You know, you talked about you were on the floor in ' 87 when things went kaboom. There's a lot more things in here. We got crypto in here. You know, you've got, you know, a lot of different things for options and you've got a different type of trading, be it, you know, fundamental or technical. When you have this varied amount, a lot of people say if you want to be really conservative, you go with the S&P 500, you put it in there, you invest, and you call it a day. What are things that people should be looking at? How involved should they be? Should they go to brokers? You know, because there's all these different ideas, and now we have AI as well.

6:10 Another really good question. The answer to using a broker, what you mean, let's just be careful because you need to go through a broker to make your trade. So if you're coming to Tasty Trade or you're going to any of our competitors, whether it's Schwab, Fidelity, Robin, it doesn't make a difference. They're all brokers.

6:28 So you need to have a broker technically for the trades. I think you're referring to what our parents had where our parents had somebody that would help manage the account. That's a dying breed. Everybody, you know, you could do whatever you need to right now, right here. It does. You could do it from the train. You could do it from your desk. You could do it from an airplane. It doesn't make a difference where you are.

6:51 Well, would you recommend still using what our our parents did or for some people grandparents?

6:56 No. Absolutely. Absolutely not. I think there is so much information out there. The platforms have basically been commoditized. Obviously, I'm biased towards ours. I think ours is the best, but it doesn't matter. There all the platforms are at least good, if not very good. Let's say most of them are good, if not very good. So, there's plenty of choices out there. On top of that, one of the things that we have led the charge in for the last 25 years is education. Um, and our education is free. You know, there's no, we don't charge for it. So, somebody can go on online, they could watch live or we record the shows. We do about 15 hours, 5 days a week of live programming.

7:34 Amazing stuff. Everything from a where do I begin to complex math. So, whatever your range is, we've got stuff out there. Other firms have information. They have education. So my ask is that people take time, put effort into this. This is not an easy business, but whatever business somebody is in, it's probably not an easy business. It took time to learn whatever they needed to learn to do whatever their job is. This is the same thing. The stock market is not something in my opinion that you can just put five minutes a week into and say, "Well, I hope I make a lot of money." Now, if somebody doesn't have the time or the interest, but they do have the money, your comment about just buying the S&P or QQQ, something like that. So, you have NASDAQ exposure, S&P 500 exposure works. Low expense ratio. So, you're not paying somebody 2 3 4%. Because to me, you just don't need to do that. And if somebody

8:31 says, well, paying 2% or 3% doesn't really make a difference. It really does. And we've done studies.

8:35 Massive amount of difference. massive amount over time. You could see you could see the returns over time

8:41 and how much they change. You know, if you have an expense ratio, if you're paying 30 40 basis points, 25 basis points.

8:48 So, it's it's there for the taking if somebody wants to put the effort into it.

8:53 But, so there's a lot of issues where people a they don't have the bandwidth. So, either time, intelligence, or whatever it is, it's just not their cup of tea. For example, I'm phenomenal at baseball. I'm horrible at basketball. So, I don't try and I don't try and do it. So, I outsource it. just it is what it is. So if someone's like, "Hey, I I know I need to do this. There's real estate, there's options, there's, you know, all these different things that are coming in." If they don't have the talent and they don't have the bandwidth, is it again, I'm just trying to help people out. Do they go in and just S&P, QQQ, whatever it is, walk away from it, or do they say, "No, this is important and I can make a living from this because there's a bunch of people who, again, they've never seen the pullback." And you've got these crypto bros who think Bitcoin is always going to rise and take off and we're going to

9:31 eliminate our currency by going to a cryptocurrency which drives me nuts. So where do you how do you help those basic people versus the the ola that people are up here who are moving things around or sure when people are starting do not quit your day job. That's that's going to be a huge mistake. So for sure when somebody's starting they need to just put their toe in the water start investing start making some trades. There's no better way to learn anything for sure about anything than to do it

9:58 right. So the great news about trading is you could trade tiny and now you could even trade under one share. Most firms have fractional shares. So if you wanted to go in and buy $10 or $20 or $50 of Apple, you could go do that. So what I say to people is there is a huge psychological aspect to trading and you need to find your comfort zone. One of the first rules, somebody taught me this about gambling. One of the first rules of gambling. If you're playing somebody in a game, not gambling, not a casino game, but if you're betting on yourself in a golf game or in basketball or whatever it is, you're betting your friends, you're doing something, first rule, get your opponent to play for more than they want to play for. Because if you get them out of their comfort zone for the amount of money that they're betting, they're no longer thinking about the action of a golf swing or a putt or a free throw. They're now

10:52 thinking, "Oh, wow. This is a lot of money if I don't make this." Right? Same thing with trading. You will know right away whether you're trading too big. If you're sitting at your computer and you're sweating, you're going, "Oh my god, I don't feel well. Like, I can't believe I just did this." You're trading too big. So with options, you can't trade less than one, but you could do spreads. So you could put a spread on, and a lot of people are fearful of options just because they don't know what they are, but somebody could put a trade on where you're risking, you know, 40 cents to make 60 cents or you're risking 60 cents to make 40 cents, but the probabilities are in your favor.

11:27 When I say cents, that's dollars. So somebody say, "Oh, I could do that. I want to risk $60 to make $40." And somebody say, "Why would you do that?" Well, I have a 75% chance or an 80% chance of that working. So, the odds are in my favor. So, everybody, going back to everybody's risk tolerance, everybody has to figure out their own size. So, they're going to find certain strategies they like, whether it's strictly stock or options. Stock's two-dimensional. So, there's not much you could do. You're either long or you're short or you're out. Whereas with options, because there's puts, there's calls, there's long, there's short, it becomes a 3D puzzle. Um, and for me, part of that puzzle, I felt like every day I got to go to the floor when I was on the floor at the CBOE, I felt like I got to play a game for a living, which was awesome,

12:12 right? Yeah. I adore options. It's one of my favorite things in the world. I remember when I first discovered the puts and the calls and I was like, woo. It was just a lot of fun. But to your point also, you need to be a certain breed and you have to understand your risk levels. And I it was terrifying. I was like, okay, we can't do this anymore because it's I didn't have it and I found other ways to do it. when someone comes into this and I there's a huge question I have about cryptocurrency because I there's only two major business mistakes I've ever done. One of them was was Bitcoin because someone came to me and they're like, "Hey, there's this weird thing. It's like World of Warcraft money. It's like a hundred bucks. We should buy some." And I'm like, "I am not buying virtual stuff." And I've had a rule, I learned this from Melvin Simon, which was don't invest in things you don't understand.

12:51 And I've continually not invested in crypto because I just don't understand it in any way, shape, or form. So, I get the idea of it. I understand the technology behind I understand the blockchain of it. But when you look at governments who control their currencies and how, you know, take China for example, who manipulate their currencies on a constant basis and it's and they use it as a way to I don't want to say weapons of war, but it's almost as close the way that they can change things and trade change trade deficits.

13:18 It's hard for me to think that the United States is going to leave a fiat currency, which is the dollar, and go over to a cryptocurrency. when you looked at the entire crypto world, what are you seeing and where do you see it playing out? Is it a fat or is it here forever?

13:33 I am not a believer right now. It's here, right? It's here for sure. I don't own any and I I have traded a little bit. Um, it's funny because when we started this business, when we started Tasty Trade 10 years ago, we were operating out of a space that the food hall had a an ATM for for Bitcoin.

13:55 Mhm. And it was $275. And I'm like, I should buy some of those and just forget about it.

14:02 And then I remember saying to myself, now I'm going to go off lunch. Like, where's that possibly going to go? Like $275. So now at, you know, $100,000, obviously, talk about making a mistake, but you could have bought it, you could have bought it anywhere along the way and made money, unless you bought it at, I think it traded 10, 115, something is the high, and then it pulled back to 75. So there's a lot of really smart people within the walls of Tasty Trade that know a lot about crypto, and I've had a lot of conversations with them. They have not been able to convince me as to why it's trading where it is and why it's anything other right now anything other than a trading vehicle. So if somebody's looking at it strictly from a speculative standpoint and they want an asset that they can trade that moves great absolutely there's plenty of opportunity there. But when somebody sits down and tries to lecture me about

14:56 how this is going to replace the dollar don't see it. And you know my concern here a couple things. One with Bitcoin there's I believe 23 million that are potentially mined. So that's it's a finite amount and that's one of the arguments for the people that like it. They go exactly right. So you can't just print dollars.

15:12 Not going to get into all economics discussion about you know printing of dollars but so far it has worked for us. We'll see the bond market's a little bit iffy right now. Hopefully that we get through this. I now have learned of a use case. I'm not saying it's enough of a reason to go in and buy it, but it is a use case which is stable coin and the stable coins and what it's been explained to me and why somebody would want it because I still don't see a value in stable coin. I've got dollars in my pocket. I've got a credit card.

15:40 What do I need a stable coin for? At least with Bitcoin or Ethereum or any of the other coins, I've got risk. I've got upside. So, I could make some money at stable coins tied to the dollar. Quickly, I didn't think about this. you have a lot of people outside the United States that want to own dollars. They can't get dollars. So, buying a stable coin would be a way for somebody outside the United States to get their hands on USD. So, I will offer that up as a reason. Um, but in its current form right now, I don't see crypto as being anything other than speculation and a tradable asset.

16:16 Perfect. Thank you. Makes me feel a little bit better. Next one I want to talk about is gold. There's all these people out there for years. buy gold, buy silver, buy gold. And my narrative to that's always been, if we get to the point where you're at the McDonald's and you got to scrape off gold in order to get a burger, my lead is going to take your gold. If we get to that point, that's always been my narrative. You have people out there who have been preaching about this for 15 years. Like, oh, the economy is going to collapse.

16:40 The government's going to fail. You need to buy gold. You need to buy. And they've been pushing it on certain news channels, which I'm going to watch my mouth for years and years and years and years and years. Walk me through gold. Does this go does investing in gold make sense the way they sell it?

16:55 Not in my mind. And it's another one that does not make sense to me. It didn't make sense to me at 2000. It definitely does not make sense to me over 3,000. Yes. My partner and I, you mentioned we had two huge successes, which we did. We had some losers along the way. And I'm laughing right now. One of them was we bought, not making this up, we bought a gold mine in Mali, Africa. And it was real. It was legitimate.

17:21 Okay, it was it was real. We had the government's backing. We had people over there. And at the time, I want to say gold was 200, 225, 250. This would have been uh mid 90s, late 90s, something like that. Mhm.

17:38 Um, we wound up giving up on it, but we were laughing because we're like, if gold goes to 350, we're going to make so much money off of this, you know. So, you can imagine gold at 30, I think it was 30. It might have ticked 3,400. It's 3,300 for sure. Again, does not make sense to me. Uh, other than nobody you all shorts are out of the way and the natural longs are holding this and they're absolutely gold bugs. My partner was a gold bug for years. for years. He was a gold bug. I'm with you. If you need gold because the dollar has gone in the toilet. I'm not saying it's zero, but whatever. We got hyperinflation and you need gold to go out and buy something. You're going to need guns and ammo. And I'm not a guns and ammo person, but you're going to need that because it's just going to be the biggest, strongest person is going to be taking your gold. So, if somebody wants to own it because it gives them

18:30 comfort, great. That goes back to the psychology of trading. If it feels good to you to own some gold in your portfolio, awesome. But if you're asking me my opinion, is there a reason to own gold other than speculation and a trading vehicle? I don't personally see it. So, we've talked about a lot of things that have gone against what most people are saying, Bitcoin, gold, things of that nature. And people are like, why am I listening to this guy? Let's talk about those two successes you've had and the exits with that because you've done things as an entrepreneur that most people will never do and they want you to understand the concept of it. So can you walk me through a little bit of that so people right now are like who is this guy get more of that going okay this is why I should trust them.

19:11 Sure. And I would just like let's start off where I was on the floor. So I traded my partner I came out of the floor of this Chicago Board Options Exchange CBOE. Uh, we traded in the OEX, which was the S&P 100 versus the S&P, which is the S&P 500. I think it exists, but I think there's one person, it's not a tradeable product anymore. So, please don't go looking to trade the options in there.

19:36 One thing I will say for sure, most market makers, which is what we were, we were market makers. Most market makers are contrarians. Why? Because when the paper is coming in, we're taking the other side of the paper. So, when the paper's coming in and the market's going up, we're taking the other side of it. Now, we're trading and there's always hedges. There's other things you can do against it. But when the market's at all-time highs, we're always looking to get short. And when the market breaks, we're going to be on the other side when people are panicking. So, that's why when you say that it looks like I'm a hater, I'm not a hater. I just don't see the value in it. But again, I want to be perfectly clear. If somebody sees it and it makes them feel good to have it in their portfolio, put it in your portfolio. There's nothing wrong with buying again an amount of gold or amount of crypto that if you said, "Look, if

20:24 this goes to zero, my life's still fine. I just wouldn't take all of your assets and say my friends are in Bitcoin or Ethereum or some other coin and say, I have to be involved because you just don't know where it's going." Nothing wrong with having a piece, but I be careful. So, in the late '9s, my partner and I saw that things on the floor were changing that it just didn't seem like the local the individual market maker or also known as locals that there was going to be a future and we saw things going to a screen and at the time the internet sounds funny now but in the late 90s the internet was really in its infancy. So, one of the things that I will say is that being naive can be really really helpful. So, if you're not really sure what you're walking into, but you have confidence, just keep going and keep going until you just can't go any further. Pivot. If you need to figure out another way to get to your your

21:18 endgame, but don't let people tell you this is, you know, it's never going to work or it's a horrible idea or if it was a good idea, somebody else would have done it. I hate all those answers. So, we came up with the idea of thinkers swim um late 90s. So we hired somebody who to we needed somebody to build a website which sounds funny today because all these things 25 years later you go okay big deal go build a website it's not that hard

21:43 right 25 years ago it was not the easiest thing in the world well that person went on to become our CTO both at Thinker Swim and at Tasty Trade. So he was with us for a long time. He retired about a year ago. Um, but we went on to build to me what was the premier platform at the time. I mean, it really changed it changed the way we didn't create online trading. We changed the way that people were able to access the markets. So, I'm sure you're familiar with Robin Hood. Most people are. The guys that started Robin Hood learned the business by going to my partner's shows and watching him talk about trading. So the impact that we have had on the industry, we when I say we, Think or Swim, we began the revolution of lowering commissions. What we did was we attacked our competitors by saying, you know what, we'll we we really came out with a program that said basically whatever your commission rate is, tell

22:42 us we'll match it. We didn't care so long as we knew you were telling us the truth. So what you saw and a lot of people might not even remember this ticket charges went from9.95 to $8.95 to $7.95 to $6.95 and gone. Right?

22:56 So stock trading now is zero. So my partner likes to say we I don't think we've ever run the numbers to prove this. I don't know how we would get the information, but we have saved the industry. We've saved retail traders billions of dollars in commissions. And we I'm sure we have because we led the charge. When I came back and started Tasty Trade, within the first month, all the big four lowered their ticket charges and I smiled and I said, "Well, I guess they know we're back." And to me, that was the highest compliment that they could have paid us. So, it is what we have done in the industry. And again, our technology today, I love I think it's the best in the business. But there is so much good technology out there that wherever you're trading, you should be able to have you should have a platform that will allow you to do what you need to do whether it's software, web, or mobile. And hopefully the firm

23:48 you're trading with has really good education because most firms do have at least solid if not really good.

23:54 And and when you have these exited because that's what I think people are going to be concerned about. They're like, "Okay, well he's not doing this. He's not doing the IPOs and he's not doing gold. He's not doing all this laundry list." I really want to just give a chance for you to say, "Hey, I've done this type of money. This is I've actually been really, really, really successful." That's what I'm trying to get because there's going to be people who are listening to this going, "All right, well, he how proven is he? He's telling me what not to do. Why should I listen to him?" And I really kind of want to get let you show off for a second.

24:21 Well, it's not really in my wheelhouse to show off, but we have had huge success

24:27 and it's been a tremendous amount of effort that has gone into that success. You can't you can't be successful without putting in crazy amounts of effort. And you can't be successful without a team around you. So it's it's always a we, not a me. It's an us, not a me. And I think when I when I hear people come out and say, "Well, I did this. I did this." I'm like, "Well, you were involved. You might have been leading the charge, but you had a group of people around you." And we've had the really good fortune at both of our companies of having friends or people who have become our friends and it's family really. That's the way we treat people. They've worked here and not big operations. Uh Thinker Swim probably we had about 250 employees when we sold it and same thing we're about 350 people here now with tasting. So for me Thinker Swim was a once in a lifetime. Really truly once in a lifetime. We didn't we

25:24 had no idea when we set out to do this what what it was going to turn into. We just figured that as traders we'd have the ability to create a platform that retail customers might be interested in using. But we built it in a way that was sophisticated enough that as former floor traders were going, we like trading this, but we made it easy enough that retail could do it. And we did the same thing with Tasty. So I took three and a half years off

25:50 when I left in in 2012. three years. I took three years off and I left in 2012. And when I left, people would ask me, "When are you going back to work?" Because my wife had a retirement party for me, but I was laughing. I'm like, "I'm definitely doing something. I'm not stopping now. I I hope to never stop. I want to keep working for the rest of my life because I enjoy it." But I took three and a half years off. I didn't know if I would like it after six months or I'd hate it after a week. I loved it. Loved it. And because I had spent I we went my partner and I spent the first five years. We didn't have a day off. We were working 80hour weeks and it was craziness. My wife, I remember, asked me one day, "Are you sure you're good with this?" And I said, "No, I'm not sure, but I'll tell you when it ends. We'll look back on it.

26:34 We'll see whether it was worth it." So, people would ask me when I was going to go back to work, and I had a simple answer. The when I the day I don't want to have lunch with my wife is the day I'm going back to work. So, my partner called me, said, "You got to come back. We're going to start another brokerage firm." And I agreed to it. My wife and I were in the car going to dinner. She said, "What did you just agree to?" And I started laughing. I said, "I'll tell you at dinner." So, I told her and she looked at me. She's like, "You don't want to have lunch with me anymore?" And I said, "No, I do want to have lunch with you, but to do something like Think or Swim, which again, we didn't create the industry. We changed it."

27:08 But to do that was life-changing and truly once in a lifetime. To try to do it again, I said, "I have to do I love challenges. I have to do it just from the challenge perspective." And it's been an amazing it's really been an amazing ride. So

27:25 you you've talked about, you know, when you first started investing or anyone that you have to put the time in, you know, 80 hours a week. I was like, well, he had a light week. So as entrepreneurs, we know that's that's not a long week in that situation. That's just the beginning of it. And most people who are have entrepreneur like tendencies are like, hey, I don't want to have a 9 to5. I'm like, well, you're going to have a fine to that. Just get get used to it. You're going to be working constantly.

27:43 Yeah. As people start learning these, start investing it. There are different ways of trading and there's different ways of investing. And I'm going to try and get people to understand what it's like to trade in a time of volatility. There's fundamental trading, there's traditional trading, there's different indicators, there's lagging indicators. When you're looking at those type of things and there's all these different robots and all these things that come involved, how do you learn your style of trading that works with all this inundation of information?

28:08 Great question. And my answer is again, whatever works for you, keep doing that. Just keep doing it. doesn't make a difference when people will call me. I can't tell you how many times I've had people tell me, you know, can I share my strategy with you? And I say, nope, don't care. I said, not being disrespectful, but I've got my own. You keep yours. All I care about is that it's working for you. Now, at the network, it's really interesting because technical and fundamental would be the two most common ways for people to to go about making trading decisions.

28:43 Our network is strictly based on math. It's just all math. It's probability based. And to me, and to me, math is math. So, if somebody wants to go spend time, go watch videos. You'll start to pick up on the trading strategies that our honor talent use. And it's allow large numbers, but their mantra is trade small, trade often. Trade small, trade often. So, you're trying to make little pieces along the way rather than hitting that home run. nothing better if you happen to buy a stock and it explodes. I mean, it's amazing, but

29:18 but those are few and far between. So, to have more of a consistent approach, what do you need to do? Got to be in the game. Got to constantly be trading and all the information again, free available tastylive.com. Go check out the content. So, from my perspective, and let's go back to the volatility question because it's perfect for what's going on right now. You and I were talking about before we started, you know, before we started this kind of conversation, you made a comment about, you know, well, a stock's 100, now it's 60. Is this a good time to get in or should I, you know, should I be concerned? You know, maybe it's going to go lower. Nobody knows anything. So, you don't know anything. I don't know anything.

29:56 The quote unquote experts know nothing. They can't know where the market's going. So, all I can tell you for sure is that if a stock was 100 and now it's 60, 60 is definitely less expensive than a 100. So, you know, you're at least better off than you would have been had you bought the stock at 100. Still doesn't mean that it's a good buy.

30:15 One of the approaches that I am taking right now because I do want market exposure. I do want to buy some of these stocks that have been beat up, some of the big names. So, for anybody that has traded options, you will you will understand this. If you haven't, it's going to probably be a little complicated, but volatility has exploded. Obviously, we're doing this now instead of little chops. So, what happens when volatility explodes? Market makers, the firms that are making the markets for all these options, they go, "Wait a minute. I got to get paid for the risk I'm taking because there's so much more volatility now." So, the prices of the options go up because they pump volatility into the options. What does that mean? Well, in simple terms, a put gives somebody the right to sell.

31:03 One put gives somebody the right to sell a 100 shares of stock at a particular price at a particular point in time.

31:11 If you sell that put rather than buying it, if you sell the put, you now have the obligation to buy a 100 shares of stock at that price within the next whatever your period of time is. You know, 45 days, 37 days, whatever it is. So, because volatility has gotten popped up so much, I have not gone out and bought the stocks because in my mind, I'm like, I don't know if they're going higher, they're going lower. I don't need to own the stocks right now, but I'm okay owning the stocks right now. So, I'm selling puts below the market and getting paid. I am selling somebody else insurance. That's the way I explain it. I'm the insurance company and what I think I'm doing right now is I am selling flood insurance after the flood.

31:57 That's the easiest way to do it. If somebody ever, right, if somebody's ever tried to buy flood insurance, if you live in a zone that just got flooded, you're going, you either can't get it or it's prohibitively expensive and you're not going to pay whatever they're asking for it,

32:10 right? When option volatility gets into historically, we're in the upper teens,

32:16 but for years we were in the low teens. We have just gone through a period where we were basically locked in the 25 to 30 range for a while. Now we're back in the 20 range, but imagine what that does to the premium. So now again, I'm selling flood insurance to somebody who just had a flood. I'll take my chances and I'm going to say, you know what, I'm comfortable buying Apple at whatever price or Google at whatever price. So I'm not doing right at the money. I'm going out of the money.

32:48 So I'm giving myself a little bit of room. And for me, these are stocks that I'm comfortable owning and I'd love to own down at those prices.

32:57 So, you know, a lot of people with options don't understand that you put down call up. So, you can sell them at different prices in different ways and get in and out of different axis. There's a lot of different ways. And with the volatility that we're going to see for at least the next two or three years at least, is options is something that you double down in and that's something you feel real comfortable with versus again the cryptos and the other things or where are you putting your assets and your your your um your availability?

33:24 For me, yes, options again, primarily on equities that I am looking to own for a longer period of time, but plenty of really good trading opportunities. Just if somebody's just interested in trying to make some, you know, some passive income. When I say passive, it's active, but I'm not saying you're I'm not saying you're trading every day. You put a trade on and you let it sit for hopefully, you know, a few weeks and you let the premium come out and then you get out of it and move on to the next trade. So from my perspective and in fairness if Ethereum got back down when I traded the one time I traded I bought at 1,000 and I sold it on the way up and got to 4,000 on the way coming down I'm looking I said you know what if it gets down to that $1,000 range again I'll buy some okay so I'm not opposed to trading those products they're just not my go-tos

34:11 right and I think it's also goes back to we said you know being willing to invest only what you're willing to lose and you're going to be uncomfortable we talk about all the time if I ask you to sing happy birthday you can sing it if I put a live hand grenade in your hands and say sing happy birthday, you're probably not going to do it as well. If you're at the point where you're freaking out on that level, don't do it. So,

34:28 and that and that goes again back to my comment of everybody has to figure out what their level is, what their tolerance is for risk. And you will know if you say, "How will I ever know?" You will know. And one of my favorite lines is when somebody said, "I have no idea how to evaluate riskreward, so I don't even know what you're talking about." And I'll say, "Okay, let me ask you a question. When you cross the street, do you look both ways?" And they look at me like, "Of course I look both ways." I said, "Okay, well then you know how to evaluate riskreward

34:55 100%." And and people don't understand that, you know, they they live in their demo trades, which is great and it's fun to play there and you can do it. The minute you get out of your demo trade, remember I did this with Forex. I was like, "I'm going to learn Forex. I'm going to trade forex and be great." And I made fortunes in Forex in a demo account. And then I went live like I was like, "Oh, okay. This is a different ball game." because same thing, same charts, same environment, but since it was real and I had to pin out of the grenade, I couldn't function anymore.

35:19 And there's just it just it is what it is. You're not alone. That's why that's why the mantra of the network is it just rings so true to me.

35:28 Trade small, trade often, but small is the key. Yeah. And and I learned that when my risk came on to your point of looking back, you know, back and forth, if I could understand how a road works of what car was going to hit me or not going to hit me, I could invest in it. So, I only invest in things that I understand. And regrettably, when I look at stocks or options or puts or calls or, you know, forex or any of that, I don't fully understand how much of it is self-fulfilled prophecy, which like people are like, "Oh, it's Fibonacci, so it's going to go here and therefore it's going to go to this and they do that versus how much is actually happening versus what happens when a certain politician says something and then things change radically as well." So, for me, not having that, I only invest in things that I understand. One of the things I understand not nearly as well as you do is growing companies and

36:12 you've done it on a really impressive level and you've walked through and you know you you've done things that are it's it's it's a bit like Gibson hitting the grand slam or hitting the home run. It's just it's wild what you've done. It's really really impressive.

36:25 Thank you. What are some of the things that you've done and you know you talked about it and and I love that you brought this up and as hard as I pushed you on the opposite way, you immediately went back to the truth which is it's not just me. You have to hire a team. You have to be surrounded by people that you, you know, you like working with, that you're connected with, or you're doing something fun where you treat them like family. But there's a lot of people who immediately want to go into systematizing and not understanding that you have to build culture and you have to build all those other things along the way. And they just like, well, we've got AI. I'm just going to systemat systematize it. I'm going to robot it out and shoot it. When you're building a company and you're going to that environment, what are the things that, you know, you you sold Thinkorswim and then you get invited back into Tasty.

37:03 What are the first things you do when you go into this? Okay, I'm going to do this. I'm going to start missing some lunches with the misses. What are some of the first things you do?

37:12 We need a lot more time to really dive into this one. But, you know, at a at a topline level, if you're not truly passionate about the project, it's not going to work. That's for starters. So, you have to truly believe in what you are doing. You have to really enjoy the people you are working with because there can be some really stressful times along the way and we've had plenty. I mean we were close to going out of business early on a couple times and that's really really alarming when you watch all the work that you've done and you're like oh my god it was out of our control and something happened and you're almost out of business.

37:49 So one of the things that my partner that Tom and I are really really good at is pivoting. So, I think where most people get into trouble is they get fixated on a concept and they say, "Here's my concept. It's a widget. It's a gadget. Whatever it is, I have a new idea for a widget. Here's my widget." And they keep running into issues, but they don't modify it. And at the end, it doesn't work. And they say, "Well, you know, the market just was against me. You know, something just didn't happen." versus if they had a widget and the market said, "You know what? If you make gadgets, we'd be interested in gadgets.

38:28 We're not interested in widgets right now." You go, "Great. You know what? I was going to make gadgets. Now I'm making gadgets." Listen, now I want to I'm going to contradict myself.

38:37 So, I'm going to say listen to the marketplace because if you don't have something the marketplace is going to adopt, you're not going to go anywhere. I don't care how much you believe or how passionate you are about the project. Having said that, as you are building it, you need to make sure you are maintaining your vision on what you think this is going to be because if you allow too many forces to come at you, you're going to dilute the product and it's not going to be my guess is it's not going to be what you were hoping it was going to be.

39:08 It's a bit like standing outside the ocean telling the waves when they're supposed to come in or out. You don't tell the market what to do. You listen. So when we launched when we launched Thinkorswim, it was right after the docom bubble.

39:18 And I remember how many people said to us, "Oh my god, we feel so badly for you.

39:22 Couldn't be a worse time to launch a brokerage firm." And my partner and I just looked at each other like, "What are you going to do? This is the cards we got dealt. These are our cards. You got to play them." turned out to be an amazing time because what we quickly realized was people that had accounts, other firms were looking for alternatives because they had issues with their existing firm. When the market's going straight up and everybody's making money, why are you ever going to change? You're like, I love where I'm trading. I'm making money. What do I need to go look at something new for? So, sometimes you turn, you know, lemons into lemonade because you look at it and you say, oh my god, what am I going to do? It's a disaster. Sometimes you take a disaster and you turn it around. You turn it in your favor. You go, "That was the greatest tailwind I've ever had." As opposed to most people would look at it

40:06 as a headwind, right? But you have to pivot your sale. And I think as you're talking before, you've got to be able to move it. You have to be liquid in that envir minimum viable product. Get it out. Right.

40:19 Okay. There is no such thing as perfection. So get it out, make sure it's workable, whatever it is. Get it out there and you modify as need be. But with the understanding that there is a version one, there's a version two, there's probably going to be a version 10, 15, 20. One of the things I'm sorry that I didn't So Woody was our CTO in our our first hire and he had the original build for Thinker Swim and I would love to see what that looks like just because

40:46 just for fun, just for fun because it was probably like this and then, you know, eventually we built it up to this. So just crazy to be able to see something like that. But we just, you know, you need to be able to evolve. You need to be able to adapt. And I think what most people make the mistake, the first problem for most people is they don't know how to put one foot in front of the other and say, "Okay, where do I go?" Right?

41:07 So, how do I actually get this going? Once you get this going, for most people, the blocker is money. Totally get it.

41:13 Absolutely. So, what you need to do is right, you got to be really careful with whatever money you raise. Typically, it comes from friends and family or your own. And you say, "All right, I have x number of dollars. Whatever you think you're going to need, you're going to need more. whatever you think the amount of time you think it's going to build to take to build it, it's going to be longer. So, when somebody says, "I have x number of dollars and it's going to take me a year to do it." I say, "You better make sure that that amount of money will get you at least one and a halfx, if not 2x, in time because you do the worst thing in the world is to have to go out and raise money when you're desperate for money. So that's the next lesson is if you're fortunate enough to build a business and there are suitors, people want to come out and invest in you, take the money when you don't need it. You get your best valuation from the

42:02 investor when you don't need it. When you need it, you go basically I'll give you whatever I have to give you because otherwise I'm out of business. versus if they come to you and you're fortunate enough to have cash flow and say, "You know what? I don't really need your money, but I'll take it because it's always good to have some extra money in the bank and you hope you never need it." That was our first round of funding. We took the funding, didn't need it, but they were really pushing us. And at the time, it was the largest investment into a private company in Illinois.

42:29 Oh, wow. We took the money. We never touched it. Never needed it. But you know what? Awesome to have. no regrets for having a little bit of delusion because it gave us the peace of mind that said, "Look, if we do have a hiccup, we're going to be more than fine."

42:43 So, when you're going through that and you say, "Okay, I've got the money and I want to hire my first Woody, right? You want to hire that first environment of hiring the employees that become family." That's really a challenge for a lot of people. How do you weed out the people? Is there a process when you're trying to build these type of things and build the team that's going to be with you and be in the foxholes with you to survive the hits because they're going to come. How do you find those individuals? Is there a process that you perfected?

43:08 So, I definitely take a less traditional approach with my hiring and I've hired hundreds if not couple thousand. I've hired a lot of people

43:21 and as I say, I don't it's like in my wheelhouse is not to self-promote. I don't miss on hires

43:28 by bringing in people. I might miss on not hiring somebody, but that I will never know. For me, and you made a comment earlier in the conversation about culture. And I think for most people, culture is a buzzword. They say, "Oh, we have to have a really good culture." I actually do create great cultures within the businesses. And people have asked me, "How do you do it?" And my answer is, I just lead by doing what I do. I'm just myself. I You can't teach culture. You can hopefully get people to adopt the culture. Um but but the culture that we have that we had at Thickerson that we have at Tasty is you try to hire really good people and you really challenge them. Now when I say challenge them my partner the way I describe my partner is he lives to work and I work to live. So to me I want to go out enjoy a lot of other things in life. So I try to be as effective as I can be in the hours that I'm working but

44:25 then when I'm not working then I go on and do the other things that I want to do. So what we do is we challenge people. We push people. But what we also do is we give people enough rope that they can go out and say, "I get to go do this." And I challenge people and I get people to do things that I'll say, "I want you to go do this." They'll say, "I can't." And I'll say, "Why can't you?" They say, "Because I've never done it." And I say, "Okay, well, I'm not going to ask you to do something that I can't fix with time and money." And when I tell somebody that and I say, "I trust you. I believe in you to go do this." All of a sudden, they go like this. Their head explodes. M they become a better employee. They become, you know, just a better better better. And it's it's a winwinwin. Whereas most managers, I think what most managers try to do is keep everybody in a box because they say, "I don't want you showing me up at

45:11 some point in time." So you just stay over here and work in your little world. We're the exact opposite of that. Somebody has an argument or can make a compelling argument for a project that they want to go work on, we'll say, "Go ahead. Go take a shot. Let's see what you can do." when you run into the idea of of risk. I get it on the financial side. I get it when you're investing. How do you handle the risks in business environments when you got to take lose leaps of faith? How do you find that that balance? Because, you know, when I'm risking my money, that's pretty easy. If I start, you know, urinating on myself during a trade, I probably have invested too much money into this one. How do you do it in a business environment? How do you manage those risks? Because sometimes, as you said, you know, you've been business owner before. People don't get that. We're the last people that get

45:53 paid. were the last on the line. We're the last people at the buffet. How do you manage those?

45:58 My mom um she used to say about me that I could win an Academy Award because you can't tell anything about whether you know how my day has been. I have a massive risk tolerance. I don't know if it's good or bad, but it's what it is and it's I am who I am. So, I can take crazy amounts of risk that to me are calculated. So, I'm not like I'm not a big casino player or, you know, sports better. I mean, for fun, you just dabble a little bit here and there, but I'll basically bet everything I have on myself. So, when we see something, my partner and I have had, you know, plenty, we've been together. It's a long time. This is our uh I think our 36th year together, which is crazy. And we've had, you know, some of these, some of these, and obviously some huge successes. But from my perspective, you have to have the stomach. You have to have the internal fortitude to say, I can tolerate not getting paid. I can

46:56 tolerate this, this, this for some period of time. Obviously, you can't go into perpetuity without getting paid. But when we started Thinker Swim, we took basically a bare minimum salary and we just bet on the upside. So, we had stock in the company. We said, you know, if this works, the salary is going to be irrelevant. So, I can't tell you what problems somebody's going to run into, but most problems are solvable. And what I say to my team, I say, "Don't worry about making a mistake." Because typically, if people start panicking about they're going to make a mistake, they make bad decisions because I don't want to do this because even though it might be better in the long run, if it doesn't go well, it's going to look badly on me.

47:37 That's a bad for me, that's a bad mindset. So, my feeling is take a lot of risks, but like in baseball, so long as you only have two strikes, you're still in the batters box. It's when you get your third strike that you're going back to the bench. So, you need to be careful. And again, calculated risk. So, there are things, and one of the comments I've said to my kids since they were little, control the things that you can control because you're going to have to deal with things out of your control that are going to take a lot of your bandwidth. The ones that are going to trip you up are the ones that are out of your control.

48:10 So, you got to make sure that you've got some, you know, some juice left in the tank that you say, "Okay, I can go navigate that problem." Now, my partner and I, it's also really, really important if you do have a partner, pick somebody that has a different skill set. You don't need somebody that you don't need somebody that does is the same as you because you can do what you can do. So, my partner's skill set is very different than my skill set, but we have mad respect for each other to the point where we don't even need to talk. You just go do you. I'll go do me. when we need to talk, we'll come back together.

48:39 We'll figure it out. So, and that's why it's worked for as long as it has worked. So, when looking for first of all, you said when hiring people. So, hiring people is is I will finish with this. Hiring the wrong person is worse than not hiring somebody.

48:53 So, if you are not sure, don't do it. Because when I say it's worse, what happens is it takes a while to figure out that you have the wrong person. Once you have the wrong person, now you got to put time and effort into figure out how you're going to get rid of the person. Then once you do that, then you got to start the process over to backfill that role. So again, hiring the wrong person worse than not hiring somebody. Now, going back to my partner, I can't stress enough about how critical it is that if you do have partners, pick partners that you literally would hand your checkbook or your credit card to and say, "I have total confidence with what you're going to do with this." I think the best advice I've heard about partners is hire the person that if you fell into a coma for three years could make sure that your kids eat. And if that's not your person, you walk away from it. Really, really.

49:43 I totally agree with that. As people are walking into this, if there was one piece of advice when they stop by and obviously I'm going to ask on how they can get a hold of you. if they're looking at in their personal lives to how they move forward and then how to deal with the times right now, which I will be as politically correct as I can are unprecedented is the nicest way I can say what's going on right now. What is the the piece of advice that you would walk in and say, "Hey, this is what's going on. This is what you should do next

50:11 as far as investing goes in also personal life because there's a lot of people right now who haven't seen, you know, you've seen it from 87 all the way up to now."

50:19 Yeah. Right. We're walking into this like we get it's unprecedented. Where's the world going? What are we doing survive this?

50:24 As far as investing goes, again, somebody who has some disposable income. Obviously, if you need your money to live, then you don't have disposable income. But hopefully, if you've been working for a few years and you've been able to put a little money away, I can't tell you how important it is to just put money away on a regular basis. Whether it's every couple weeks, whether it's every month, and it could be $50, it could be a $100, it could be $500, whatever. just start getting money to work in the stock market. You know, we talked about earlier talking about the S&Ps. So, you own S&P 500 or the QQQs, that's the NASDAQ. Those are really simple. You can buy fractionals. You could go buy go out and buy $25 worth.

51:04 So, it's critical that people are engaged. If you have a portfolio, if you have more money right now to do something, take a look at what I was just talking about earlier. Might not be the right strategy for you. But for me, selling puts in stocks that have elevated volatility, selling puts that are out of the money, I'm typically looking around 25 delta. So, I've got some cushion in case I'm wrong. But again, do it only if you want to buy the shares. So, don't go do it because, oh, well, the market was down, now it's up again, and it's just going to keep going higher. Nobody knows where the market's going. And you've made the comment that we're in for many years of volatility, and I agree with you. Are we going to be hard in this in the next year or two?

51:46 Maybe. Are we going to be lower in the next year or two at some point in time? Probably. So, don't don't pick one spot and say, "I'm just going allin today because I think today's the day." But also try not to panic, you know. So, the S&Ps went from 60 almost 6,200 down to 4,800. You know, I'm sure there were people that are like, I just want out. They just get me out. Now, we're back up to right to 5,800. you go then you probably have positions that are too big if that's the approach. There's also if we do enter another 15 plus year bull market there's nothing wrong with having mental or actual stops in. So if you do buy stocks and you have a great run you could just keep raising your stops. So if you buy a stock at 100 and you know a handful of years it's now 200 you could say you know what I'm going to let it go but if it gets to 180 I'm out. I want to get out. And that's if you put an actual

52:41 stop in on the stock, your broker will take that order and you just say, you look, set it and forget it. I don't have to think about it.

52:49 Coming back to coming back to the business side, if somebody has the opportunity to go start a business and that has been a dream to do it, I can't stress enough if you have the ability to do it, go do it. Even if it means that you have your regular job and you're doing this on nights and weekends to get going, don't have a regret in your life in 15, 20, 30 years to say, "I really wish I would have done it." What's the worst thing that happens is you fail

53:19 and you go get a job. Worst thing that happens is you have to go work for someone else. I it everyone ignores everything else you just said, Scott, for the last, you know, 30, 40 minutes here. Go do it. Find your own way. Just please for the love of everything.

53:32 There is nothing as scary as it can be. And it can be scary, you know, when when you only eat what you kill. That's very different than getting a paycheck and a corporate credit card. But there is nothing in the business world that is more satisfying than starting a business and watching it grow and develop and build into something. And my last comment to that is if you do get to that point and you do have suitors, you have people that are knocking on your door that want to invest in your company. Somebody told us this early on as a private equity firm with with uh when we were taking money for Thinkers. So, we did not go with this firm, but one of the comments from the partner private equity firm said, "Whoever you go with, make sure you get whatever you want in writing before you sign the deal." It's really easy to fall in love with the concept of, "Oh my god, these people want to invest money in our business."

54:22 Just remember when they do that, you you're going to lose some if not most of the control in your business. And that's something you need to think about because if you don't want to lose control, don't take the money. If you want to take the money, get what you can. I'm not saying they're going to give you everything, but don't say, "I'll wait until I sign the deal and then go back and ask for something else." You're not getting it. with the last thing I want to ask regarding the the change of control. AI is coming in and it's changing the world and there's a lot of different people who have different opinions about it. What is your opinion about AI especially for future business owners and investors in the future?

54:59 From what little I know amazing, awesome. And I think it really is going to change the way that many of us operate going forward. Having said that, I don't see it as going to be the technology or the technological feature that's going to put people out of business and change everybody's lives and nobody's going to have a job anymore. I don't see that happening. Will some jobs go away? Yes. But that's just, you know, that's just technology moving forward. You know, when you hear about people complaining, well, I might lose my job, you go back and look at jobs that we've lost over time due to technological advancements. So, you know, you have name things that When the internet took off, you know, Sears Robuck doesn't exist anymore. Kmart doesn't exist anymore, but now all these other jobs, people are making money from sitting at home on eBay. So, I remember when doss were starting to show up on

55:49 ads on billboards. I was like, it was weird to see ad email, I mean, email addresses and web addresses on billboards. So,

55:56 a lot of jobs were lost, a bazillion more jobs were created. It's going to happen again.

56:00 That's right. So, and that goes back to being flexible. So whatever your job is now, maybe part of that job or all of it modifies, changes, goes away. It doesn't mean that there aren't going to be other opportunities. And you know, for me, I try to learn something every day. I try to pick up some piece of information that's new information for me. And as scary as it can be, I try to try to re I try to recreate or reinvent myself in different ways and say, how can I go do this better or do this better? What can I do to improve? And if we have something that is available and literally you get it on your phone right now. So you could get AI anywhere and the models are just going to become better and better and better. I would try to embrace it. I wouldn't run from it. It's not it's not leaving. That's for sure.

56:44 So if someone wanted to embrace you, if someone wanted to track you down and do all that other than going to Velvet Taco, uh if someone want to embrace you and connect with you, how do people track you down? How do they connect with you?

56:54 Uh email is the best. It's scotttastyrade.com. And if they want to learn more about Tasty Trade and all the education you guys are doing 15 hours a day, where do they go?

57:05 So tastyrade.com is the brokerage side. We do have help and learning center, but if you really want to watch the videos and check out all the on air talent, that would be tasty.com. t- sylve.com. Great stuff,

57:20 Scott. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

57:24 That's a wrap on this episode. From surviving market crashes to building billion-dollar brokerages, Scott proved that success isn't about predicting the future. It's about learning to take risk, staying engaged, and playing the long game. Don't just watch the markets. Get in the game. Because if you're not trading on proven principles, you're just gambling with guesses.

Questions about this episode

What is discussed in "Investing Through Volatility - Scott Sheridan"?

In order: 0:00 Options, Charles Schwab, Equity Options, Futures; 5:00 Expense Ratio, Options, NASDAQ; 10:00 Options, Blockchain, Fiat Currency, Fractional Shares; 15:00 Ethereum, Options, S&P 100, Silver; 20:00 Ethereum, Market Maker; 25:00 Volatility, Tastylive, Tastylive, Trade Small, Trade Often; 30:00 Volatility, Options, Ethereum, Market Exposure; 35:00 Thinkorswim, Demo Account, Options, Trade Small, Trade Often; 40:00 Minimum Viable Product; 45:00 Risk Tolerance; 50:00 Volatility, NASDAQ; 55:00 Velvet Taco.

What is mentioned in this The Proven Podcast episode?

66 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Options, Volatility, Ethereum, NASDAQ, Expense Ratio, Risk Tolerance. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "Investing Through Volatility - Scott Sheridan"?

The episode runs 58 min; the transcript is about 12,457 words in 126 timestamped sections.

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