Just finished The Market Wizards: The Next Generation. Incredible read. Here are the top lessons that stuck with me. -Take the first small loss. The first loss is almost always the cheapest one. The longer you wait, the more it costs you, both in money and in the mental energy spent hoping it turns around. -Any stock can do anything. No matter how strong your thesis is, the market does not care. A stock can defy logic, fundamentals, and every chart pattern you know. Respect that uncertainty and never bet like you have it figured out. -Being early is being wrong. You can have the right idea and still lose if your timing is off. The market can stay irrational longer than your account can stay solvent, so wait for confirmation instead of trying to predict the turn. -Stop out quickly. When the trade goes against your plan, exit fast. Hesitation turns a small, manageable loss into a damaging one. The stop is there to protect you, so honor it. -Try to get green as fast as possible to prove you are in the right trade. -Focus on defense more than offense. Protecting your capital matters more than chasing big wins. You cannot make money if you blow up your account, so survival comes first and the gains follow. -Don’t hope, just get out. Hope is not a strategy. The moment you find yourself praying a trade comes back, that is your signal to close it. Hope keeps you in losers far too long. -Size based on how attractive the trade is. Not every setup deserves the same size. Push hard when the odds are clearly in your favor and stay small or pass when they are not. Your best ideas should carry the most weight. -Scale back once you have made it. A common pattern among the Market Wizards: after achieving real success, many traders deliberately pull back the time and energy they pour into the markets so they can live more balanced lives. The goal was never to trade forever. It was to win and then enjoy it. I was especially mesmerized by Simon Russo’s story. @jackschwager @gfc4

Major cheat code for life: Master the art of the fresh start. From a bad morning. From a bad interaction. From a missed workout. From a poor decision. The goal isn't to avoid the fall. It's to shorten the time between the fall and the reset. Fast recovery compounds.

I spent over two decades as a full time futures trader and scalper, and I learned your edge isn’t just your strategy. It’s your focus. It’s the amount of hyperfocus it takes every single day. Blocking everything out, slowing your heart rate down, staying calm, believing in your homework, executing at a high level. Trading has to be your number one focus each day. So if you’re learning to become a successful trader, here are three things you may be focusing on that are working against you. First, other people’s money. Stop looking at how much everyone else is making. That’s the number one thing you have to look away from. I was around thousands of traders on the floor and I barely remember us talking about money. It was private. The goal was to build a life. It felt blue collar. Today everyone talks about what they make, trying to prove someone wrong about the market. It’s a different place, and a lot harder for a new trader to block the noise out. Second, the access. Overnight used to just be overnight, where you managed a position if you had one. Set time to start, set time to break, set time to come back. We traded mornings, skipped midday, came back for the close. Now the access never stops, and it’s spread everyone’s focus too thin to stay locked in. Third, understanding the market environment. We move between environments at a very rapid rate. We go from trending higher with no signs of a pullback, buy the dip and hold on, straight into sell off mode. Trying to guess what those days will be like going into them is very difficult. You have to stay open minded and understand how quickly the tape can change. Last Friday was the perfect example. A market runs higher a lot further than most thought, then unravels all at once. It’s the same psychology we see in traders. They stay in their own trend for only so long, then unravel all at once. If you’re not focused, or you’re clinging too hard to one market environment as you move into the next, you aren’t allowing things to be what they are. You’re fighting them for what they were. So here’s the simple part. Slow everything down. Survive a game where you pay your bills and stay in long enough to make a living. There will be moments this business really pays you, and you won’t choose them. They choose you. The rest is grinding, surviving, enjoying the process. Arguing with people on social media is a time waster, and the people who do it are usually unhappy in their own lives. Spend your time wisely. Focus is the whole game. Protect it like your account depends on it, because it does. Enjoy your life. Have fun. This is the greatest business in the world if you let it be. And it’ll be the worst, and destroy your life, if you let it. Cheers, DELI

Where Has All Of The Liquidity Gone? Everyone keeps asking why crypto feels dead. I don’t think crypto is dead. I think crypto is being diluted by the same entities who once called it home. For years, crypto was one of the only places on earth where you could find 24/7 markets, insane leverage, endless volatility, and a permissionless casino where anyone with enough courage or stupidity could sit down at a table. That was the product. Not decentralization, vibes, whitepapers, or "the future of finance" The product was opportunity. But now crypto no longer has a monopoly on that feeling. Prediction markets are exploding because they offer traders something crypto used to offer better than anyone else: the ability to bet on almost anything, instantly. Politics. Sports. Weather. Economic data. Elections. Pop culture. Geopolitics. Whatever the internet is arguing about that day. That liquidity used to rotate into coins. Now some of it rotates into “Will this happen by Friday?” And once someone gets addicted to trading probability itself, a random mid-cap crypto chart starts to look a lot less special. Why ape another recycled L1 narrative when you can trade the actual event everyone is talking about? Then you have the TradFi invasion of crypto-style perps. This is the part I think people are still underestimating. Until recently, no person could wake up at 2AM and use 50x leverage to long or short the S&P 500. Now that world is here. The same mechanics that made crypto perps so addictive are being applied to the largest, most liquid, most culturally relevant markets on earth. Stocks. Indices. Commodities. Maybe eventually everything. That changes the game. Right this very second on Hyperliquid alone there's over 2.6 Billion in Open Interest on all things Tradfi. That is liquidity that could have been chasing BTC, SOL, ETH, privacy coins, AI coins, or whatever other narrative CT wanted to pretend was inevitable this week. Instead, it is sitting in a leveraged TradFi market using crypto rails. And it probably is not going away. That is the unfortunate reality. Some of this is not cyclical. Some of this is permanent. Prediction markets are not a fad. Tokenized equities are not a fad. 24/7 TradFi perps are not a fad. The ability to trade everything, everywhere, all the time is not a fad. It is the natural evolution of markets. Crypto gave the world the architecture. Now the world is plugging other assets into it. That means crypto assets are competing for attention against a much larger universe than they were before. The total crypto market cap is no longer just competing with itself. It is competing with the stock market. And the stock market is enormous. Once you let people trade pieces of a $ 60T U.S. equity market through crypto-style infrastructure, you have massively expanded the surface area for speculation. That sounds bullish for rails. It is not bullish for most tokens. There is a difference. A perp DEX doing billions in S&P 500 volume may be great for the exchange. It does not mean your favorite altcoin will attract the liquidity it used to. This is the liquidity problem. Crypto used to be the casino. Now crypto is becoming the casino building, and no longer the game itself. And the games on that casino floor are multiplying. So no, crypto is not dead. But the old model is dying. The days where liquidity had nowhere else to go except BTC, ETH, SOL, and whatever narrative CT was farming are fading. The pie is getting bigger, but the number of slices is growing even faster. That means weaker tokens bleed harder. It is liquidity dilution. The casino expanded. The question is whether your token is still one of the main tables or just another dusty slot machine sitting in the corner. 🫡 From the depths — The White Whale 🐋

THOUGHTS ON RISK MANAGEMENT I started this discussion to make the point that risk management is far more nuanced than most on Twitter makes it seem. Yes, part of great risk management is having rigid rules, discipline, and structure. But trading is also a game of uncertainty, changing context, and asymmetric opportunity. Not every situation cleanly fits inside a pre-defined box. Good risk management isn’t just about protecting yourself. Good risk management also allows you to maximize pnl while minimizing unacceptable outcomes. For many conservative traders, the biggest weakness in their trading is actually NOT taking enough risk. One needs to recognize that risk is inherent in our job. You can’t make money without it. In fact, many overlooked that sometimes even blowup risk should be an acceptable risk. One question I pushed traders on in this discussion: If you had a trade with a 98% chance of retiring your family forever… but it violated your risk rules… would you take it? Many said no. Personally, I think that for anyone out there grinding, you’d have to be out of your fucking mind not to take that trade. Because the reality is: most traders already have some probability of blowup regardless. No matter what you think, you already probably have a .5% or 1% or 2% chance of blowing up over the course of a career. Plus even if you didn’t, for many over the long run, strategies decay and edge disappear. Many traders will NEVER “beat the game” over a long enough horizon. So if you truly had a massively asymmetric opportunity with overwhelming expected value… are you really going to pass on it because a rulebook said so????? Insanity. At the same time, history is FULL of incredible traders who got overconfident, oversized, and eventually lost everything. So we also can’t fool ourselves into believing we are objective when emotions are involved. In fact, the moments where we most NEED risk management are often the exact moments where we are the least capable of accurately handicapping expected value because we’re tilted, euphoric, desperate, exhausted, or emotionally compromised. IMO, inaccurate handicapping of expected value is the biggest danger of any risk management system in practice. Also… Risk management should always be subservient to goals. That’s why it’s personal. If you have a $1,000 account and you’re young, maybe taking aggressive shots and occasionally blowing up is part of the learning curve. If you’re managing 100% of your family’s net worth, the acceptable risk profile becomes completely different. This is also where wiring out money and keep safe stashes of acorns is a whole other important discussion. There is no universal framework. Only tradeoffs. Many asked me my opinion on these topics. The truth is, I’ve broken risk management rules dozens of times. I’ve taken existential risk dozens of times. Sometimes intentionally so, other times not. Should one be willing to violate their rules? Probably? Should one be willing to take on existential risk? Depends the person. I don’t have the answers, but I do think what is most important is recognizing that good risk management is: 1. Iterative 2. Never perfect. 3. Some level of rule-based. 4. Flexible enough to cover the complexity of trading as @Ksidiii mentioned as well. Perhaps a topic for a future video.

When you own the logic under the hood of your edge, managing a live position stops being a guessing game and becomes a process of pure discipline. It’s easy to get caught up in finding the perfect setup, but true consistency comes down to your patience, mental control, and strict risk management once you are actually in the market. Good trading isn’t about being a flawless zen master who never makes mistakes; it’s about how disciplined you are at mentally resetting so you can manage exactly what is right in front of you. Instead of overcomplicating your charts or looking for a crystal ball, focus on letting your trades breathe, tracking how value is migrating using price, time, and volume, and scaling out into strength when your targets (Market Generated Information References) are hit. This session offers a look at that daily discipline in action, showing why managing the trade is just as critical as finding the entry. @merrittblack @NTLiveMedia apterostrading.com

I cannot express the importance of this thought- I would rather miss a move then to lose money……..

This is it. Everything learned spending millions on longevity. From: Your Immortal Unc and Auntie. To: Our Immortal nieces and nephews. 0. Sleep is the world's most powerful drug. 1. Be in your bed for 8 hours 2. Same bedtime every night, any time before midnight 3. Don’t eat right before bed 4. Calm foods for dinner 5. No screens 1 hour before bed 6. Avoid added sugar (be aware it’s in everything) 7. Avoid all things in an American convenience store 8. Avoid fried foods 9. Shoes off at the door 10. Eat whole foods, particularly veggies fruits nuts legumes berries 11. Walk a little after meals or air squats 12. Get your heart rate high routinely 13. Lift heavy things 14. Stretch daily 15. Water pik, floss, brush, tongue scrape, morning and night 16. Make an effort to drink water 17. Get sunlight when you wake up (UV is low) 18. Protect skin in midday sun 19. Stand up straight 20. See at least one friend once a week 21. Avoid plastic where you can (in all things) 22. Circulate air in rooms 23. When stressed, breathe, learn to calm your body 24. Go to the dentist 25. Avoid sitting for long times 26. Protect your hearing, the world is too loud 27. Alcohol is bad for you 28. Finish coffee before noon 29. Avoid bright lights after sunset 30. If obese, look into a GLP 31. Sleep in a cold room 32. Texting while driving is dangerous 33. Turn off all notifications 34. Limit social media use 35. Don’t smoke anything 36. If you struggle to sleep, read a physical book before bed 37. 1 hour before bed have a calm wind down routine: bath, read, light walk, listen to music 38. The body is a clock and loves routine. Have a daily morning and evening schedule. 39. Avoid long distance travel where you can 40. Baby steps first: incorporate new things slowly 41. Do less… most things don’t work. Bonus points if you get your blood checked. Start here, it will change your life.

1999 vs 2026 👀👀 Big if true.

Quote of the Day: "The game is the same. Tickers are different and players are different. If you learn the game you will be set for life." — @Qullamaggie

This long execution by Merritt serves as a Masterclass in Trade Management and Sequencing. By focusing on securing a great trade location, we put ourselves in a "position of strength" which helps us to shift our focus from trail stops or move to break-even as an emotional crutch to avoid discomfort (the noise of the tape) to a process-driven approach where constant analysis of variables takes place, using orderflow and market dynamics to drive conscious decisions rather than emotional reactions. Professionalism lies in rejecting those emotional crutches to instead trust the laws of Auction Market Theory. Mastery in trading isn't found in hyper-fixating on every tick; the real winning is in the waiting.

WHEN SHOULD A TRADER QUIT? The @Qullamaggie chapter of the upcoming Market Wizards book has been making the rounds. In it Kristjan discusses how he blew up multiple times. Many great traders have. But that begs one of the most important question of all: when should a trader quit? When should one persevere? Most traders fail, so how do you avoid sticking around forever if you don’t have what it takes?

Navigating All-Time Highs is less about chasing the extension and more about the discipline of waiting for established zones. When the indices reach uncharted territory, the professional edge lies in resisting FOMO and really focusing on participating only at the extremes of significant rotations - LIS Areas. One of our greatest advantages at Apteros is the universality of our framework. Markets are not limited to a single index; by applying our logic across different assets, volatilities, and price structures, we find opportunity where others only find noise. Mastery is found in the consistency of the process, regardless of the asset. Join a real prop desk: apterostrading.com/

Think of it this way: There are a certain number of quality reps a trader needs to achieve to start to have mastery. The more poor/low quality reps you put in- the more you give in to those demons and fears- the more you stall progress of reaching that magic number of quality reps that get you to the finish line. Don't stall. Move forward one quality rep at a time.

Making a choice to work on the simple.... that's such an advanced trader thing...

If you are a trader, STOP trying to predict markets and stop making calls. Nobody cares. Be prepared for both sides. Have a plan everyday and execute it. That plan needs to be consistent, repeatable and scalable. Start with a myopic view on an intraday basis and look to widen your view when the price action has continuation.

My guest today is Paul Tudor Jones (@ptj_official), one of the greatest macro traders of all time. He correctly predicted the 1987 stock market crash and shorted the Japanese bubble in 1990. For over 40 years, his flagship fund has had a negative correlation to the S&P 500. 100% of his returns are alpha. He says today's market has so many similarities to 2000, "the easiest bear market I've ever seen in my whole life." He makes the case for going long dollar-yen, why Bitcoin beats gold as an inflation hedge, and why he was wrong about Warren Buffett. But what I'll remember most from this conversation is Paul's zest for life. He's 71 and still wakes at 2:30 every morning to trade the London open. He works out for two hours a day. He walks with his wife every evening. He travels the country chasing peak spring and peak fall. He's so excited about the songs picked for his funeral that he wishes he could be there to hear them. Paul has lived five lifetimes in one. He's one of the most entertaining and interesting people I've met, and the conversation will leave you searching to be as passionate about what you do as he is about what he does. Enjoy! Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:00 The Kindest Thing 13:19 Trading vs. Investing 17:33 Lessons from Warren Buffet 22:24 The Existential Risks of AI 29:54 The Nature of Trading 31:46 Bitcoin 35:55 Bubbles 42:08 A Day in the Life of PTJ 46:00 Information Overload 47:07 Passion for Markets 50:49 The Robin Hood Foundation 54:18 The Workless World 56:03 Journalism 1:00:00 Principal Components of a Great Life 1:05:06 Kill Them With Kindness