Christian Flanders

I have many! I can think of a few off the top of my head. In fencing, I had a big comeback win when down big. It was an important bout because it was the first time I had placed high enough at a national competition to win ranking points. It taught me the importance of never giving up and keeping a clear head even when in a tough spot.

In poker I remember playing a high stakes game very late at night, I was probably around 21 years old at the time. I had a huge loss, probably ⅓ of my account, stopped playing at 3am and had to wake up for work the next day in a few hours. I was really bummed out and thought it would take me a very long time to come back. I was very focused on playing my best going forward and not dwell on the losses. I was able to recover the losses in only two months which surprised me. It makes me think of the quote "how do you devour a whale? One bite at a time."

With trading there are many. Going through two ~60-70% drawdowns which lasted about 1.5 and 3 years was a large one. Those really hammered home several points. Risk management, position sizing and forcing trades. I was way too aggressive once I started losing trying to make the lost money back. I forced a lot of trades in negative environments sizing way too large. Combining those three things is a recipe for large drawdowns. I was very lucky to make it through those negative periods and once the market turned I was able to recover from those drawdowns with very important lessons learned.

The other one I remember from trading was my largest loss where I broke every rule I had and entered a trade emotionally with large size. It was the VIX blow up in early 2018. I lost about 25% of my account in that one trade. That taught me several important lessons about following rules and that ANYTHING can happen in markets.

I remember liquidity disappearing in the treasury market. Order books that used to be very liquid were suddenly sparse. Traders that used to trade 50 to 100 lots were trading 5 lots due to how much more volatility there was. I remember Bear Stearns pre-market tanking. Dropping maybe 30% before the open on bad news.

It definitely made me aware that it doesn't matter how old or famous or reputable a firm is. They can still blow up.

I was thinking about how I'd been in situations like this before and in the past I would size up to try to make it back faster. I resolved not to make that mistake again.

It's both. The game is the same, you have to be more aware of the liquidity and slippage you can incur when entering and exiting. The issue is more how the increased position sizes affect the trader more than anything in my opinion.

I discovered him through his books. His focus on risk, VCPs and discipline were key.

I think that playing poker and actively taking risks every day for years was definitely helpful. I don't think I was this "risk-on" when younger but Poker forces you to be. If you aren't an aggressive player you will never reach a very high level of play. I think a lot of bad habits you can "get away with" in poker are definitely harmful for trading. Chasing losses, playing while tilted, playing bigger to recover losses faster. Those can devastate a trading account.

It's funny because I knew all these things already from poker and from reading many trading books but I had to learn a lot of them first hand. It's one thing to understand something intellectually and another viscerally.

I think it gives more color to the market. I like when he talks about historical market conditions and situations in the present that remind him of past cycles.

I don't think it's AI per say, I think as a bull market goes farther and farther in time, you have more and more traders participating and they anticipate breakouts/patterns forming which makes everything happen "faster". Bear markets "reset" this dynamic because most traders get wiped out in the decline. Yes, I believe VCPs and Code 33 will still work and exist in 30 years. VCP's are a visual representation of supply and demand.

I'm always going to be focused on technology and Nasdaq stocks since most big winners are tech related. I think the future is extremely bright with a lot of new technologies that will come to the stock market soon. Think Anthropic, other AI labs, humanoid robots, etc. They will be the next big winners in the market.

I am in. The goal is to trade my best and take advantage of whatever opportunities arise. I never went in with any expectations. I am disappointed with my performance this year but as long as you keep your drawdowns controlled there is always next year! The game never ends.

Yes, I follow many other participants. Yes, many traders have impressed me, anyone who is consistently profitable has done a lot of work. The traders who have gone through large struggles and still persevered. I think almost all traders have experienced loss, frustration and immense pain but decided to push through it rather than quit.