How many times should you blow up your trading account?
Dave once spoke with a prop firm owner who said he actually wanted to see a blown account on a trader’s resume. The logic? If you’ve never blown up, you’re probably not taking enough risk. But if you’ve blown up a ton of times, you’re probably not learning.
There’s a sweet spot in the middle.
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The one-day shift that changed everything
For years, we recorded our podcast on Fridays. Then, out of pure necessity, we moved it to Thursday. Both of us called it “life-changing,” which sounds ridiculous for a one-day shift. But that single change opened up the entire Friday.
It forced an uncomfortable question: what else am I doing this way just because it’s how I started?
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Challenging twenty years of assumptions
Dave took a day-trading strategy he’d run since 2005 and targeted the two most arbitrary pieces: the criteria for choosing long vs. short, and where he placed his stop. Twenty years of assumptions, tossed out. The strategy improved.
I did something similar. I had a strategy filtered to Nasdaq 100 names, convinced the index itself was the edge. Turns out, it wasn’t the index—it was market cap. Same trade, more instruments, roughly 10% more setups on a high win-rate system.
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The exercise
Find the most arbitrary part of what you run. Then ask: what evidence do I actually have for this?
That’s the core of Stats Edge Pro—$149.99/month, with a 30-day money-back guarantee.