Successful Trading Champion ONLY Spends 45 Minutes a Day Trading!

0:00your time box yourself to your trading to be 45 minutes a day, forces you to be quite focused and it also means you don't get glued to the screen watching bars move all day or all night. If all you needed was 45 minutes a day to trade successfully, wherever you are in the world, then you have the rest of the day to do whatever you want, whatever you passions, wherever they lead you. I craft the 45 minute trade assistant with really wide safety margins so you don't have to be so precise on every entry and you definitely don't need to be glued to the screen. Originally from Auckland, New Zealand, Daniel Lee has been trading for over 20 years across a variety of techniques and instruments. He retired from a successful corporate career in 2024 and became a full-time trader, specializing in options. In 2025, he placed seventh in the 1 million-plus enhanced growth category in the US Investing Championship, delivering a verified return of 65.7%. What is even more remarkable is that it was

1:06done with only 45 minutes a day or less of trading. I'm super stoked to have Daniel here. Now we're going to be actually doing a sort of call and answer version of our interview. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the time zones to work out but I think we're still going to make this work. So first question as Daniel, how did you get interested in trading? I first got into trading around 2005 and I was actually looking at different opportunities to create some additional income. By then I was running as pretty senior role in advertising agency but I always knew that working for a living, working in a job wasn't going to get me to where I wanted to go so it was looking for something else. I ended up buying a DVD and it was about selling corporate calls but it was very super high level, not a lot of detail and so I requested a refund from the company. The company said, hey instead of a refund, why don't you take a look at one of these other courses that we have and it was a course from an Australian trader called Kim Riley

2:10and that became my introduction to options trading and technical analysis focused on the Australian market. So you started with cover calls which weren't your bag of tea and that's totally fine. You know, not everybody's going to trade the same way and I think it's really important that that all traders develop their own trading plans. So what led you to develop your style of trading, right? Because your style is going to be different than my style. Of course, it's evolved over the year. How was it different than when you originally started trading? The Kim Riley system was a short-term momentum system. It traded the last 30 minutes of the Australian market. Now I was in New Zealand at that time so that worked great for my day job because it was about 5.30 pm New Zealand time so it was a great trading window. Then after an entry, the typical exit was typically one to five days and a target profit of 30% and a stock was of minus 20 to 10. So from a technical analysis standpoint, it used supporter resistance,

3:15moving averages, volunteer bands and some price action confirmation. So it was excellent. So I just want to back up here real quick. If Daniel were here, I would ask him questions. I want to hear the breakdown here again. Five days and a target profit of the day job because it was about 5.30 pm New Zealand time so it was a great trading window. I mean, after an entry, the typical exit was typically one to five days and a target profit of 30% and so when you sell an option, you have a credit. That is your equivalent 100% max when that you could do, right? So round numbers here. If you sold an option for $1, he's saying that his profit target was 30% of that. Now granted, when you buy options and you have a profit target of 30%, that may never

4:15happen. It very well may never happen. When you sell options, as long as it doesn't come against your option that you sold stays out of the money, it's going to happen, right? Two different two different mechanisms here, but that's why I want to check. So 30% profit target. Stop loss of minus 20 to see. 20% stop loss. Okay, that's actually great. If you think of it right that. So if you were to flip a coin and if the coin landed on heads, you would win $30 in this case. Or if it landed on tails, you would lose $20 and I assume that it has a decently high win rate, which is great. The expectancy here would be off the charts. I'm tracking, I'm liking it. So from a technical analysis standpoint, it used supporter resistance, moving averages, volunteer bands and some price action confirmation. So it was actually a pretty solid system as far as systems go. Now I was pretty successful with that, but I actually wanted more and I'd heard

5:19about full-time day training e-minis. So I quit my day job somewhat prematurely and went down a deep rabbit hole of indicators, system sellers, exotic maths and coding via trade stations, easy language, which I taught myself. It turned out this was a really, really bad decision overall and the net result was me losing almost $100,000, blowing the account massive amounts of s**t. I wish that it happened to me only losing $100,000 because in my personal experience, clearly, he's a lot smarter than I am. I'll definitely give him that. I've lost $200,000 by selling options. So only losing $100,000, I think he's doing great. I ended up moving to Singapore and took some time away from the market for slowly getting back into the Kimberly system, trading the Australian market, which coincided with lunchtime in Singapore. I was profitable, but not really consistent enough that I would actually quit my full-time job.

6:27Then by about 2018, started looking at ways to generate a flatter but more consistent equity with the listress. I still use support and resistance, still use moving averages, but the biggest change was the move from being an option buyer to an option seller. Okay, I was mistaken. So he was buying options at that time. Okay. A 30% profit target sounds great, but it's really difficult to achieve that when you're buying options. Okay, so now he's shifted to selling options. Cool, I'm following. And that really set me up for greater consistency. I also switched from the Australian market to the US market, so that trading didn't interfere with my day job in Singapore. That meant trading window was around 9.30 or 10.30 pm market open, depending on download, so I think it's from Singapore. I was always really clear. I didn't want to

7:28sit in front of a computer all day, particularly if I had a day job in the day, and I didn't want to sit in front of a computer all night. That was exactly how I felt, and still feel that way, right? There are lots of people who want to sit there in front of screens and just they get the excitement of trading right there all day every day, but that's not for me. And it may be for you, dear viewer, who's watching, but it certainly wasn't for Daniel, and it certainly wasn't for myself, and that's why you need to develop a trading plan that fits your lifestyle. And for Daniel and I, both, professional investors, we've come to the conclusion if we don't want to be in front of screens all day. As well. I still had the corporate day job, which is great. So what they've made is that I needed to continue with a swing trading focus system, which ultimately lead to the 45-minute trader systems that I had developed. So what does it mean to be a 45-minute trader? And just for a little bit of context, my first

8:29company was 10minutestocktrader.com, and I sold that to Outlar to become a partner. So I think it's great that you have a time-based, constrained trading plan, but what does that mean to be a 45-minute trader? The original idea was based on the literal book title, the 4-hour work week buy. No way. I love the 4-hour work week. That is one of my, the 4-hour work week changed my life. Absolutely changed my life. That is so great. Okay, okay. We'll keep you out. Tim Fenerys. So if you take the 45 minutes a day, you multiply that by 5. You end it with 225 minutes, which is 3.75 hours per week. So the idea was if you timebox yourself to your trading to be 45 minutes a day, it forces you to be quite focused, and it also means you don't get glued to the screen watching bars move all day or all night. Then if all you needed was 45 minutes a day to trade successfully, wherever you are in the world, then you have the rest of the day to do whatever

9:33you want, whatever your passions, wherever they lead you. This speaks to me. This speaks to me bigly. I love it. So for my 45 minute trade system, it actually doesn't matter whether it's the first 45 minutes or the last 45 minutes, as long as you're taking 45 minute blocks somewhere during the day. I grabbed the 45 minute trade system with really wide safety margins, so you don't have to be so precise on every entry, and you definitely don't need to be glued to the screen. I think that's really important for robust trading plan, is that you don't have to hit it at exactly $100.00, right? If you get in, and it's going in your direction, right? For example, you could get in in a trend any time that the stock is trending. You don't have to get in at the very moment that the trend changes, and you don't have to get out the very moment that trend tops. You can get in and capture tons of money in that 80% in the middle, and that is what it takes to

10:34have a robust trading plan, like Daniel Lee is talking about here. At the end of the day, being a 45 minute trader means you can keep your day job, and then build a second income on the side, then ultimately you build it up to a point where you can trade for living as your primary source of income, and then you literally have the rest of the day to follow your passions. Okay, so you figured out how to trade in 45 minutes a day, but how did you get the courage to join the US Investing Championship, right? The entire world is watching the US Investing Championship, and I don't know why they call it the US Investing Championship. We have traders from all over the world who participate. How did you get the courage to join it, and how did you know you would do so well? I've noticed about the US Investing Championship for a number of years from having read Mark Meenivini's books, so a prior winner of the US Investing Championships. I always thought to myself, well, why maybe one day I would take part, and I decided to set the goal in 2025 to do it, and 2025 also coincided with why first full-time year retired from corporate

11:42life. So I'd left my corporate job in early 2024, and everyone thought I was crazy, right? But I knew my numbers, I knew what my expenses were, I know what my burn rate was, and I knew what my burn rate was based on my stats of my trading system. So that's really important is knowing what your edge looks like in the markets, because there's going to be plenty of times where you've set up your trades, and they're not working, and then you realize, wait a minute, now is not the time to be getting aggressive, and then you step out of the market. And what Daniel's talking about here is super important, is knowing when your your edge is at its best, and knowing when your edge is not, and getting out of the way when it's not working, but you only will know that if you have the numbers and the data to support it, and how much capital I had deployed. So typically my system jitter writes 25 to 40 percent return per year, which is honestly a solid decent.

12:43Dude, those are great numbers, but the reddit haters have no idea whenever they're like, oh, I wouldn't even get out of bed for that kind of money. They've never traded before, and certainly not successfully ever traded an entire year before. So those are respectful numbers. Those are great. I mean, Jim Simon's annual return, one of the greatest shares of all time, is like 44 percent. So you're right in line with him. Good return, not fantastic or outstanding compared to some of the other competitors and other traders in the US investing championship, but a decent return. But it is consistent, and because of this consistency, I was reasonably confident that I could least put in a positive result into the 2025 trading championship. It's never about winning. It was more about transparency and public accountability for me. In the end, I just want to jump into that. And that is one of the main reasons that I entered for 2026 is there's so many fake gurus on YouTube. There's so many people who claim to

13:47be such brilliant traders, brilliant investors, invest, invest with X, invest with Y, financial education, all this other hogwash. But how many of them actually have audited results that the entire world can watch as they produce those results throughout the year? Zero. And now there's one. Right. Now there's one. So that is the exact reason why. The accountability is the exact reason why I wanted to do it as well, Daniel. In doubt to be a really strong year, and I delivered almost 66 percent return. How long have you been competing in the US investing championship? This is my first year. And I planned to probably do it forever, honestly. I don't see why I wouldn't. What were some memorable trees that you took in 2025 that contributed to your success in the competition? 2025 was actually my first year taking part in the US investing championship. And I've actually decided to take part in 2026. So this year and 2027 next year as well. So I have a three year run, and I'll probably finish there. The most memorable thing,

14:50about 2025 is of course the tariff announcements. And of course they triggered massive market volatility around March timeframe and followed by massive subsequent rally in April. Now because most of my positions are cash secured puts, I ended up willingly being assigned on about seven positions. So I became long on stock. And I was able to write covered calls, then I was able to exit most of those positions by July, anywhere from plus five to plus 20 percent profit. So it sounds like Daniel was running the wheel strategy, which very difficult for me to conceptualize how how that works favorably. However, clearly it works for Daniel. So I'm not going to I'm not going to tear him down at all. In fact, I would build him up. He's obviously way smarter than me because he figured out how even when he got assigned in those parts to sell enough covered calls to still come

15:51out ahead, I think that's amazing. That was a good trades. I'm actually a pretty terrible stock holder in hindsight. If I just how it onto those stocks, which I purchased at a low assigned price, I probably would have made over a hundred percent return that year. But the most memorable trade is actually not a good one. I'd been assigned Google late March for about 165. And then in April, I just returned a little bit groggy from an overseas hiking trip. And I was in front of the computer, 1030 at night. And I was supposed to set a limit order to get out of that position at break even at 165. But I had accidentally submitted a market order and I got closed out losing $16,000 in the process. So note to self, do not trade when jet lagged. And of course, the real stinger is that the Google then went on to almost double in value in later 2025. But hey, that's trading.

16:59Yeah, that's. I mean, we've all been there. We've all made trading mistakes. And it's interesting that he had a trading. I mean, the fact that he clicked market order versus limit order, it's such an easy thing to do. Anybody could do it. And yeah, it's stinks that it definitely worked against them. You know, it's one of those things where it's like, how many times have you made a mistake and then you look back and you're like, man, if I'd only done X, Y or Z, things would be so much better. But at the same time, right, we can't change the past. We have to just accept what happened. So how are you managing trading from the other side of the world with the market hours being so different? Are you trading any US stocks at all? I mean, you just talked about trading Google. So maybe so. So it was actually a pretty good time zone for trading, especially if you have a day job as it's either 9.30 pm or 10.30 pm Singapore time to catch the New York market open. So my assistant, oh my gosh, I am, I am in bed by 8.30. Chris, absolutely like 8.30 comes, boom,

18:01dead. I'm like, I am dead to the world by 8.30. I couldn't imagine. So you're staying up till 9.30 or 10.30 o'clock local time to make your trades. For me, that would result in the catastrophic amount of of training hours. Doesn't actually care. As I mentioned, which 45 minutes you trade, you can trade the open, you can trade the close as long as you know, the entry criteria are being met. So you know, it means I can do my thing and call it a day when I'm traveling. I just find a time slot that works. So if I'm in New Zealand, I'll be trading generally at EM to 9.00 pm for the market close of the US market. If I'm in traveling in Europe, I'll usually trade the afternoon to catch the market open or early evening, just after dinner to catch the market close. And of course, when I'm in the US, I'll just pick any time there works. Usually I take the morning, so the market open. So that leaves me free to have the rest of the day and do whatever one. So yeah,

19:06it's actually pretty flexible from a time zone, train of perspective. As long as entry criteria be met in as long as the market is open, of course, it's pretty works and it's pretty flexible in that sense. Okay, so how have you built your trading style around your lifestyle, right? We're trying to to maximize the amount of gains and minimize the amount of screen time. So we're trading it at 45 minutes at any time during the day and depending on where you are in the world, that can be super flexible, which is really cool. I like that. But how have you built your trading style around your lifestyle? The 4L work people actually talks about lifestyle design and that's exactly what I did. I wanted to create a system that was consistent enough that I could trade for 45 minutes a day or less from anywhere in the world and actually enjoy life. I'd work very long hours in the corporate world. And the truth is when most people retire from corporate life, they usually take a pretty massive hit in their lifestyle because they don't have a substantial

20:07alternative income. And it's often because they're asset rich, but cash flow poor. I built my capital to the point where the 45-minute trade system generates a fairly consistent monthly return. Or be it somewhat kept, but it allows me and it frees me up to do my various hobby. So travel, training, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, reading tons of books, gaming, photography, art tree, the list goes on. And yes, even trading, coaching. Okay, if you could start all over again, what would you study to learn the market faster? I know for me, I have five trading books that I recommend to everybody. I actually have them right here. First is Trin following. I really like the 2012 edition. I find that that one is a super easy read. Next is Trading in the Zone, which is the Bible of Trading Psychology. Third is how I made $2 million in the stock market. I find this super fascinating because he was trading

21:09on opposite ends of the world from New York, yet he was taking all of his trades by telegram. I don't even understand, I've never even seen a telegram, but I think that's super cool. It's kind of like trading by text message. Then new trader, rich trader. Now Steve Burns, the author of this book, he's the one that helps me probably most of all. And a lot of people think that I was a new trader in this book. So I think that's kind of fun. And then the complete turtle trader. Those are my top five favorite trading books. So what are some resources that you would recommend in order to get up to speed faster? I'm a huge believer in finding someone with long-term proven success and modeling them, copying them. If I was studying again, I'd probably look into Mark Minivini and Stan Onestein methods. So they look for high potential stocks and specific America leads the world in medicine development. It matters. We get new medicines first, nearly three years faster. Five million Americans go to work because we make medicines here at home,

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23:12Plus get up to 35% off select major appliances for world pool, Maytag and more. Get the job done right. Keep more in your pocket. That's pro savings days. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's. Valor through 327 selection various allocation. Ross applies last. It's like cup and sauce of patents, bases and minibini's volatility contraction pattern. So these methods stood the test of time and their capable producing triple digit returns was in a year. And in fact, several of Mark Minibini students have gone on to do really well in the USIC. And most importantly, it's not based on some, you know, head and arcane knowledge. It's based on reproducible principles in action. Nowadays, there's tons of books, tons of books and information on YouTube. While YouTube is a great resource, there's a lot of forces out there. You know, the people who claim to be profitable, claim to be successful,

24:14they'll show you the Lamborghini. But actually, they're just not profitable traders in the often peddling cycle. So you almost have to assume that the So I just want to add into here, I have a character that I like to, I mean, it's not me. Me and this other guy have never been seen in the same room at the same time. Chris Chains, you may have heard of him. But Chris Chains is exactly that guy, right? He sells the course for $84,000 a year. He's got his gold lambo that he hasn't made any money in the market. He just buys every dip and just watches his stocks blow up. And just trust him, bro, things are going to come back. So I totally, totally, totally see what you're saying. I try and make fun of the fact that, yeah, that's super prevalent out in all of YouTube. This is actually not being completely truthful. And this is where there's something like the US investing championship does help, you know, especially in the $1 million plus credit group, because then you know, the trade here is serious and not taking excessive risk.

25:18All right. So could you share some of your trading strategies? So feel free to go into as much depth as you feel comfortable with sharing of and our audience's advanced investors. And they're going to be able to follow along. So I'm really curious to see what what you're comfortable with sharing for your trading trading strategy. Sure. My strategy is remarkably simple. And being simple means that I can execute it without too much thinking. And also means I can teach it other students and they can reproduce those results. At a high level, I'm selling cash secure puts, so well known strategy. But I'm ideally looking for uptrending stocks or a stock that may be heavier, temporary price correction, but would be a good value purchase. Okay. So just trying to tracking your buying stocks, I'm sorry, your selling puts, which is equivalent to buying stocks, if you want to think of that way, because you're taking a bullish position here on stocks that are already in an uptrend. I wish I could ask Daniel the question, why sell the puts versus by

26:22the calls, but hopefully he'll explain a little bit more. Those are the top things I'm focused on. The first step is actually the stock selection. And I maintain a watch list of about 70 to 90 stocks that I review, refresh two to three times a year. I want a stock with elevated and pride volatility. As they pay the most premium being an option seller, I want to get the most premium I can't. I look for a market cap of at least 10 billion US dollars. So it tends to weed out a lot of the smaller, slightly more influential companies that can be influenced. So once you get above 10 billion dollars, they tend to be a lot more substantial and less lucky to manipulation. And lastly, I want to see price patterns and the stock that shows it tends to trend either up or down, but trend in a direction instead of somewhat very erratic up, down movement. So I want to see

27:23somewhat moderate trending behavior. So I like to use what we call the Allied trend template, where the 10 EMA is over the 20 EMA and prices over the 50 EMA. Maybe Daniel will go into a little bit more detail on that. But I totally agree with him, right? You're looking to go along on stocks that are already trending up higher. That makes life so much easier. Let's keep from a fundamental perspective. I like to see stocks with positive quarterly earnings momentum. So I like to see stocks that are generating increasing earnings. They still can be making a loss, but if the trend is moving upwards direction, that's good. And ideally, they're in the top one to three of the respective market niche. So all of this helps to set up a long-term upwards bias, which is what you want when you're going to be selling puts. So once I've got my stocks, I then start to go through my watch list and apply my indicators and filters. So the first

28:28folder I'm looking for is an uptrendy stock that's pulled back at least 10% and that has become oversold on the stochastic arasai. So I use the stochastic arasai as a forced timer. I only enter or only do things when it's at overport for calls or oversold for puts. Of course, there's no perfect indicators. It's things are, you know, bulletproof 100% indicator. But I've found the stochastic arasai to be reliable for my needs and does what I need. I also want to make sure that the stock is not overextended. Like if something has been overextended, it's surging in a particular rally. I'll wait for it to come back into a regular trading zone. I've also got a custom-coded version of Williams R. So another momentum indicator and I use it to paint the bars. So what I'm looking for is a red color, which is when it's oversold. And price action wise, and this is the counter

29:33intuitive part. I'm actually looking for a close lower than the previous day. Now it sounds okay. All right. That actually used to be one of my trade exit rules. Was it close lower than the previous days closed? Because that's what lower lows are indicative of a downtrend. Okay. So I'm curious to hear where he's going here. Like that I'm trying to catch falling knife instead of waiting for any sort of confirmation and breaking off previous day highs. But my testing has shown that trends usually hold up and I'm mixing those in my premium by entering on a down day. Then it's into the second phase of my filters where I open the option chain. And I'm looking for strikes at a spot zone for puts that is between 15 to 20% away from the current price and an expiry date, which is 35 to 40 days away. And that's the sweet spot for my

30:36system. Usually, downtrend can be anywhere from 0.07 to 0.15. And I'm looking to get a minimum of 1% of the strike price as premium. Okay. So to break that down, he's saying that he's going very far out of the money, but the delta being between 7 and 15, meaning that in theory, because of how delta works, I give you the approximation of it being in the money at expiration or out of the money. So a 7 delta means that there's only a 7% quote probability of it being in the money to expiration and same would apply to the 15. So these are these are very conservative puts a length to reduce here. So for a hundred dollar strike price, I want at least one dollar pack. Now I treat delta as the probability to expire in the money. So I'll say that you know, treat delta as the probability to expire in the money. So generally, I'm actually looking for

31:4285% to 93% of not expiry in the money. So that way, it's highly likely that most of my trades will not expire in the money. Strike price selection, of course, is quite critical. Ideally, I want it to be at a price that the chart is already shown that there is support. So I want to look at the chart and say, okay, I can see support there in the last 12 months. So in a worst case scenario, if price does approach the strike, hopefully the overall trend is still intact and then it should bounce, but not always, and bounce off of support and stay out of the money. Now there are times, of course, when I can't find a combination of strike price, delta, and premium combination, that works. And at that case, I move on, I just pass and wait for another day. I do use limit orders. So I submit all limit orders at the price I want, at the strike price I want, and sometimes they

32:46do get filled during my 45 minutes on the market. And other times, they get filled while I'm sleeping. In other times, of course, they just expire at the end of the day without being filled. So the objective of what I'm doing is to set up a pipeline of expires on every Friday, so that ultimately I've got between two and six positions expiring every Friday, like clockwork. Trading of this method means having a pretty high six straight. So on average, 90% of my trades expire out of the money, but the real trading work happens with the 10% of trades that do not conform. So this can mean taking your loss, closing the position, or being assigned and going along on the stock. So if the strike price was a good buying price to begin with, and ideally institutional investors might also agree, remember it was a minimum of a 10%

33:48pullback and at least a 15% away strike price. So the stock has already declined 25% at least before going in the money, ideally even more 30 or 40% if you can pull it off in the right combination. So being assigned is not necessarily a bad thing. As long as I have an overall bullish sentiment on the stock, there's reasonable earnings potential and also nothing fundamentally has changed in the company itself. So I always ask myself the golden question, would I be okay to purchase the stock at the strike price? If I am, then I'm okay to use that strike price. And lastly, I need to manage my buying power. So I do have portfolio margin with interactive brokers, and I need branches so that I'm not overextending by creating too many positions if I was to be assigned.

34:48But at the same time, I'm creating enough positions that my returns are actually worthwhile. As we're doing cash secured puts, the cash value itself and the margin is not used. It's not touched unless I get a sign. So while my cash is sitting there, I'm actually earning interest on that cash balance. And usually I don't hold stock at all. I prefer to be in cash most of the time to avoid stock portfolio volatility. And I just, wait, wait, wait, wait, he prefers Daniel prefers to be in cash most of the time. Me too, me too. In fact, we have a saying around here called, where do you go? It's down here. Called sit and cash and don't have a phone. A lot of people want to be busy in the markets. A lot of people feel like they got to do something. What we have found is that the best thing to do a lot of the time is nothing. Now, I understand that can be super frustrating. I actually got to work with Mark Mervini multiple times. In fact,

35:51we're going to be doing a collaboration show here in the near future. But one of his key trading rules is the SIM cash as long as it takes until your trade is set up. In the meantime, don't have up your account. That's why we say SIM cash and don't have up. She's by cash secured puts to generate two to three percent every month. Now, it does mean that my upside is somewhat capped because once you've sold an option, you obviously can't earn any more than that. But the big advantage is that the regular, realised returns are every Friday. I'm choosing to have a regular return over an open-ended upside. That works for me. Lastly, if it's a downtrend, I flip what I've just said and sell and make a call. Make a call. They do sound a lot more scary than what they are. It's just I just take a lot more active risk management,

36:55carefully closing positions or downsizing positions, which are not reverting back into the downtrend. Really, in summary, what I'm doing is selling puts an uptrend on a pullback and an attractive strike price that I'd be happy to own stock in the first place. If I set that up really well, every Friday becomes a payday. Daniel, I get to say you're obviously way smarter than me. I would love to have been in the same situation that you're talking about because when I was selling options, the first trading part for me was that I had 84% win rate, yet I blew up $200,000. They're just evaporated. It was all about managing losers. Now, unfortunately, Daniel's not here for me to follow up on those questions, but clearly, his system of trading has a bias built-in where he's not taking those big losers like I was. I was definitely a big loser back in the day.

37:58What's a recent change that you've made to your trading plan? Why did you make it? The last change to my trading plan was January 2025. It's where I formalized something that I already was doing, but I was a bit more subjective about it. I created my own zone indicator. It's similar to a counter-channel. If prices were outside of the zone, it meant that they were prone to mend reversion and being pulled back into the zone. It essentially means I avoid trade at least in the correct zone. I formalized this because I intuitively knew to avoid certain stocks that won't be overextended, but I found that concept quite difficult to explain to some of my students. I coded it up, backtested, and it worked pretty well. Of course, nothing's perfect and I do miss some trades, but on the balance or probabilities, it actually was quite successful. Will you feel that it takes to be a champion trader? There's people who trade from all over the

39:02world, but what separates a normal trader to a champion trader like yourself? I go back to one of the first books I read on trading in my early days. It's called Trading for a Living by Alexander Outer. I have that book right here, Trading for a Living by Dr. Alexander Outer. I got to meet him, or Steve Burns introduced me to Dr. Alexander. That book right here. It's a classic book, highly recommend it to a new trader. In the book, Outer talks about the three ends you need to succeed. Mind, method, and money. Mind was about your self-discipline and emotional control. Traders who have been trading for a while, you will know that this is actually the most important factor because when real money is on the line, you're often your own worst enemy. The second one,

40:03method is having a systematic approach with positive expectancy. In other words, in the long run, the trading method you're using needs to make a profit even though there may be a series of losses along the way. This is not easy to do. If your method is bad to begin with, nothing is going to save you from statistically losing money. It's death by a thousand cuts. Now, the easiest way to find a system that's got positive expectancy is to grab a system that's being proven and you backtest it yourself and validate it yourself. Lastly, money is risk management and your capital. Most traders really simply take too much risk for the amount of capital that they have. I've been there. I've learnt the hard way. I've lost millions of dollars before, so I know

41:04how that feels. Most traders are also not decisive enough in cutting losing trades. If you really put together the line of the method, money, for sure, you're going to be a champion trader. That makes total sense. I completely agree from all those friends. In fact, we talk about this all the time that the hardest part of trading is really the game between your ears and creating the expectancy that you need to be successful. That's really an individualistic thing, because my side of trading clearly is different from Daniels, yet we're both successful traders. You've got to come up with an edge that you feel comfortable with trading. I don't think Daniel will be comfortable trading my trades. I wouldn't be comfortable trading Daniels trades, yet both of us are successful. There's a line in trading in the zone where he says there's an unlimited number of activities that you can do in the market every single day. That really holds true, but you, as the trader, have to figure out what activities you need to do and what activities

42:07you need not to do. Here's my final question for you, my friend. What is the number one piece of advice that you would give someone who's just starting out in trading? If you're starting trading, you have to accept that it's going to take some time to be good at it. Everyone wants to have triple digit returns, quit their job in six months, but realistically, this is not going to happen. Yeah, sure. Some new traders do get lucky and some get a great run for a month and think the natural. But realistically, trading like any other skill takes time to develop. You know, that's interesting, because one of the things that I say, I mean, the statistics are that 90% of traders blow up 90% of their accounts the first 90 days of trading. Those are the people who are trying so hard to double their accounts in the first 90 days of trading. Because they see the lifestyle all over the internet, they see the lambos, the yachts, the girls and bikinis,

43:07the things that you talk about on your website that you're not going to see on your website. I really appreciate that because that is the reality of trading. It's really boring when you're doing it right. It can be super fun sometimes. But if you're doing it right, honestly, it should be really boring a lot at the time. But also, you think about any profession. A lot of professions, you need multiple years of school. Even if you want to be a plumber, you got to go to plumber school. You got to be a electrician. You got to go to a electrician school. You want to be a doctor. You got to go to doctor school. Clearly, my 80-baby baby brain wouldn't take me to any doctor school. But the point that I'm trying to get here is that people come into the markets thinking that this is easy. I took a YouTube course. I know exactly what to do. And yet, they blow up. So my rule of thumb is the first year of trading. Just don't blow up your account. And the first year, if you can just not blow up your account, you've beat 90% of traders. You're too, if you can break even. And I know for a lot of people, hearing this two years just to hit break even, that is actually a monumental success. You're probably in the 95% of traders.

44:12Year three is the first year that you could realistically look at putting up any sort of profitable year. Now, for a lot of people, that reality is something that they don't want to face. For a lot of people, they look and they hear professional investors like myself and Daniel talking about three years just to find profitability. No, that's not for me. I'm going to be different from everybody else. Maybe, maybe not. And then year four, that's when you can really start to make some gains in the market. So that's my personal opinion. Let's keep going here. I would also say avoid day trading if you're starting out. Stick with swing trading. It's a better investment of your time. It's a better investment in your mental health. So day trading is probably one of the hardest trading arenas to get into. So swing trading, slow you down, and there's a lot more likelihood that you will succeed. Practice and simulation, whatever trading method you do, then trade sport before you're

45:14scaling up. Market conditions obviously change over time. So you need to experience different market cycles in different regimes. And you'll only get that if you actually spend a lot of time trading in the markets. Ultimately, it's a journey. Enjoy that journey. It's incredibly difficult. It's incredibly frustrating. But if you can make it work, it is extremely rewarding. And I highly encourage anyone that's wanting to trade to give it a go with the right expectations. And a little bit of luck, you'll make it. Very cool. Daniel, I really appreciate the fact that you send all those videos. I'm sorry that we couldn't connect due to time zones. But dude, I think you delivered a ton of value. And I want you to learn even more value. So popping up on the screen right now is the champion trader playlist where Daniel and all kinds of other traders who have not only one, but a place extremely high, we have already interviewed on the channel. So be sure you

46:16click that that playlist over there. And if you're ready to save time, make money, start winning at last risk. Click one of these two videos. We'll talk soon.