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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In this episode, we are back at the rents' house to get out of NYC while this pandemic is happening. Instead of reviewing how people are losing their jobs left and right and all of the other horribleness we are collectively hearing every day, we decided to dive into how this pandemic is affecting companies that are essential businesses. We review t…

On this episode we dive into just how long we think this pandemic is going to happen by outlining the three most popular scenarios presented in most articles these days, and explaining which one we think is most likely to occur. We also break down how this is going to affect common occurrences like going to bars and other social gatherings moving f…

In this episode, we dive into one of the secondary problems that have arisen since the outbreak of COVID-19 which is the unexpected strain on internet bandwidth around the world that internet service providers are currently enduring due to everyone staying home. Of course, the biggest bandwidth hogs, video streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, …

On this episode, we continue to discuss the business impact of the current coronavirus pandemic and how it will particularly hit the world of social media influencing harder then ever. Without the ability to book photographers, travel and take high-quality pics of drinking coconuts under a waterfall in Costa Rica, we speculate how “influencers” on …

On this episode, we dig into how the entire world has been currently flipped upside down with this COVID-19 outbreak. This episode is dedicated to providing both general thoughts to how it has directly affected New York City so far and whether residents are taking the spread seriously or not. In addition, I provide a little more insight in how it i…

On this episode, we address the impacts and implications that the novel coronavirus COVID-19 is setting on the business and technology industries along with society in general. Instead of discussing every little topic that folds into the very complicated issue, we talk about personal work experiences and how it has affected our day-to-day, office p…

On this episode, we are on a mission to dispel a popular “bro-science” belief that has become widespread on social media in the entrepreneurship niche which is the idea of having to wake up ridiculously early in order to be productive. We see Mark Wahlberg working out at 4:30AM and several articles about CEOs waking up at the crack of dawn but this…

On this episode, we are back it putting the professional hiring world on blast with our episode completely dedicated to the cringiest buzzwords you tend to see on job descriptions that can be a potential sign for huge red flags at a given company. Inspired by a viral tweet by @mgoldst on Twitter, we give our take on the most ridiculously out of tou…

On this episode, we reflect on the current state of podcasting and how companies have been utilizing them as a marketing tool for the business and determine how you can tell whether or not podcasting is an effective asset for a business because not all podcasts are made the same! We also dive into some technical aspects of the production process an…

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, on this episode we decide to get all types of historical by divulging into the pretty intriguing history of Valentine’s Day marketing. These days every store has 800 different forms of chocolate heart-shaped boxes and every TV has mediocre jewelry companies vying to get your attention, this episode expl…

On this episode, we dive look back on the history of the Super Bowl and the aspects of the game itself and how the NFL has structured their league and business initiatives that all led to the Super Bowl being the biggest event in the U.S. We look at how since the late 1950’s the NFL and Super Bowl has captured America’s attention and how it was suc…

On this episode, we use a real-life occurrence at work to share our thoughts on how to approach designing packaging for your products. If you’re gonna try to do the private-labelling E-commerce grind then packaging and overall branding of your products could potentially make or break your business. So with all of that being said, we provide some de…

On this episode, we dive into a side hobby of mine, analyzing the business of fighting. If you have followed the show for awhile, you may have noticed that I have used MMA fighting as an analogy multiple times when discussing varies aspects of business and personal growth so I figured since Conor McGregor, the biggest star in the sport, is fresh of…

In this episode, we break down the recent news of Casper (a mattress company, yup) recently announcing that they are planning on going public. We dig into why based on their current P&L statement, how they are trying to persuade investors, the $350+ billion dollar "Sleep Economy"they are going all in on, and their future plans to build products fro…

On this episode, we jumpstart the new month, year, decade etc. by talking a little bit about the year ahead and some high-level opinions about the next ten years as a whole in how technology will shape business and culture. We will also dive into the hottest social media app at the end of the past decade, TikTok and give our thoughts on it as a dri…

To wrap up the year and decade, on this episode we look back at the 2010’s and pinpoint aspects of technology and business that were once giants in tech at the beginning or middle of the decade and are now completely irrelevant. We recap what went wrong and how culture and society influenced these mega busts. From the Amazon Fire phone to Fyre Fest…

In this Holiday edition of NRS we dive into a topic based on panic that settled in while trying to order a White Claw-themed Christmas gift on Prime (true story ugh). The pure disgust of this moment inspired to do an episode all about why there’s no laws when drinking Claws and how White Claw has exactly cornered the alcoholic seltzer market so eff…

On this episode of Not Rocket Science, we get our history lesson on by deep diving into the past to piece together how the holiday season (and in particular Christmas) has become the commercialized juggernaut that it is today’s. While we are hitting crunch time when it comes to holiday shopping, we recap department stores or the 20th century’s infl…

In this all new episode episode, we go in a somewhat different direction than normal shows where we dive into the business of college football. When it comes to college football, many people tend to be in the dark when it comes to how the sausage is made and why the contracts for coaches and facilities have jumped so significantly to the point wher…

In this episode, we discuss why I've officially had enough when it comes to the business of internal recruiters and share some of my experiences that led me to this conclusion. We also breakdown down the difference in experiences between internal vs external recruiters, the copy-cat, start-up model for building "talent pipelines" and how it margina…

In this episode, we break comedian Sacha Baron Cohen's recent speech after accepting an award at the Anti-Defamation League’s summit in NYC where he launched a scathing attack on Mark Zuckerburg and Silicon Valley's lack of ethics when dealing with advertising on their social platforms. Beyond recapping the highlights of his speech, we give our tak…

On this episode, we get real when it comes to one of the hottest topics on Linkedin, Medium and pretty much any other content site these days, suffering from "Imposter Syndrome”. This terrible feeling, that tends makes someone feel inadequate or that they’re "faking the funk" at their job, feels more like a buzzword these days yet in our opinion, m…

On this episode of Not Rocket Science, we deep dive into the recent news of Youtube announcing that they are releasing a new design for their home page. We jump into all of the biggest changes and get our design nerd on when discussing the benefits, reasoning behind certain key changes like having less video thumbnails per row, and speculate over s…

On this episode of Not Rocket Science, we jump into story-time mode by sharing some of the worst jobs ever before any real career path was ever in motion. From bosses with hooker and blow addictions to 18 hour production assistant shifts in Times Square (yuck), this episode more of a change-of-pace in order to look back on some truly terrible work …

On this episode, we distill the deeper value of having "real life" work experience and what those years logged actually mean on a practical level. After a sloppy night out with old colleagues (most of whom have much more experience than me in their profession), I realized that how the benefits of having many experiences at work isn't what you tradi…

On this episode, we give a complete breakdown outlining benefits and drawback of getting into the UX industry and becoming a user experience designer in 2019. Through my 6+ years experience in the industry, I try to fairly give praise and criticism to the many amazing experiences and and the not-so-rosy moments that you may potentially run into in …

In this episode, we discuss approaches when it comes to trying to effectively learn a new skill while navigating through the abyss of the content found on modern web platforms like Youtube. Let's keep it real, there is a decent amount of quality and a tonnnnn of not-so-great content out there so sometimes, despite the amazing access to information …

On this episode, we dig into why businesses sometimes fail to adapt to the times despite their customers’ wishes and how this attitude can be the downfall for companies that were once major brands. We use a case study of a well known music production software company to highlight this point and provide granular insight on why and how this stubbornn…

On this episode, we talk about gut feelings and why they tend to work out over getting feedback from others. We use the example of hip-hop producer YoungKio promoting an obscure beat that he made on his beat store, despite tons of negative feedback from his peers because of a gut feeling he had about the Nine Inch Nails sample he discovered. Eventu…

On this episode of Not Rocket Science, we dive into how the soundbites and content created Instagram and Twitter Business "Influencers" can be dangerously incorrect when presented as a blanket statement and use the "future of retail" as a case study. We talk Food E-commerce as an example of how brick and mortar retail isn't exactly going away at th…

On this episode, we give some quick thoughts on how we're slowly seeing the idea of being a “data-centered company” slowly transforming from a process to create and market products and services more effectively to now being a way to throw money at a box to check off just to look like they are up to date with their tech stack. In other words, this s…

On this episode, I talk about and my youtube binge sessions while hanging out with a sore throat and stuffy nose and the odd connection I made between two separate categories. These included E-commerce best practice videos and videos where British, Australian and New Zealanders tare interviewed to share their perceptions of American slang and cultu…

On this episode, we’re fresh from an end of summer vacation and coming in HOT. On this episode we discuss the takeaways from being somewhat “off the grid” for a week and not checking any personal or work emails, slack messages, DMs etc. and how it can clear up some much needed perspective when it comes to one’s career and life in general. Besides e…

On this episode, we get our design nerd on (hey it is the host’s job for crying out loud) and touch up on a hot topic in design media these days, which is trying to predict what the future of the design industry. This includes how roles within companies and design business’ in general which change along with skillset. We get deep into how design wi…

The big 7-0! On this episode, I dive into a little story time regarding I was recently STOOD UP on a Google Hangout interview from a start-up who shall remain nameless because a recruiter botched the scheduling. This led to me being a creep and finding both parties on Twitter which of course led me to an interesting back and forth on Twitter regard…