Andrew Diaz - The Journey To Becoming "The Stock Market Wolf"

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What is going on, everyone? Casey Adams here. Welcome back to the Rise of the Young podcast. Today we have Andrew Diaz here with us, better known as Style Stock Market Wolf. Thanks so much for coming on, Andrew.

Hey, thanks a lot for having me, Casey. It's been a long time coming.

Oh man, I know we originally connected back in 2017, 2018 in San Diego and reconnect with you here recently, man. And for those that may not know who you are, your background, I know that obviously you go by Stock Market Wolf on Instagram, you have a large following on there, but when did you get into stock trading? And overall, if people don't know you, I'd love a quick intro so that they can get familiar.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. So it really starts back when I was 19 years old. At the age of 19, I was a single dad.

So.

Essentially right after high school, I had a kid and so I was a kid with a kid and I was working at the mall for 7:25 an hour and I was driving an expedition. So and now at the mall I was only working 20 hours every two weeks. So my paychecks were barely $140 in two weeks. My life completely changed the day that on the way home I had to get gas because I had to go to school the following day. And on the way home after paying for that gas, I wasn't able to afford diapers in which my son needed diapers. And it was the most down I've ever felt in my entire life of like here I am, I had this, all this potential coming out of high school to go and do stuff. And here I am now with a kid working at the mall and I can barely afford freaking diapers. And you know, I had my very fortunate to have my parents house us and you know, provide us with food and stuff. But as a man and somebody that has a kid, you have to step up and take care of responsibilities. So that was a down part part for me. So I've Always been like a book nerd, so to speak. So I was like, something has to change, right? And the definition of insanity is trying to do the same thing over and over and expect different results. And so I buckled down in school and what I also did in addition to that is I went to Barnes and Noble and it's everyone's book that literally changes their life. Dude, I have it right here. It's freaking Rich Dad, Poor Dad. And this, it made sense to me because I saw it in it. The title was exactly where I was at. I was a poor dad and I wanted to be financially set for my kid. And so I read the book and it talked about three main concepts. One business, one real estate, and one investing. Right. Well, I didn't really know too much about business. I didn't have the funds I felt for real estate and but with investing, you know, I, I know it's done on the computer and I was really into gaming and stuff as well. So I was like, you know what, this will be a nice transition to just kind of get into it and you could start with a little bit of amount. So what did I do? I went and got all the books that I can get and I couldn't pay for them. So I would stay at Barnes and Noble and read them. Long story short, and today, since 2009, I have two master's degrees. I have a Master of Science in biotechnology, I have an MBA with an emphasis in Finance Management, and I have a bachelor's in biology. And then in addition to that, I work. In 2014, I started working at Amgen, which is a Fortune 500 biotech company. It's a huge biotech company here in Southern California. And my life completely changed in order to make that happen. My days would consist of literally waking up at 6 and not going to bed until 1am every single day for three years. And today I'm a manager. I have about six people, six to 10 people that report to me. We're a team of 10 and it's divided by two managers. And in addition to that from trading, once I did start trading and how that account started to grow is I would go, since I worked for Champs Foot Locker and I'll probably get in trouble for this, but I used to sling shoes and so we would get employee discounts and I would put them up on ebay or whatever, especially like high priced Jordans and then started making extra money. And with that extra money I was just throwing into the market. I'm really big on science and tech and so 2016, from just investing into some of those companies, especially once I got my job at Amgen, I was making, right, My very first check was like my salary was starting out was like 75,000. So going from making only 120 every two weeks to now a check that is paying me, you know, 75,000 for the year. All that extra money was going into the trading account, into my long term investing. And, and 2016, I made my first meal and I read the book by Grant Cardone, the 10x rule, and I was like, okay, how can I now 10x this and start to grow this and where this it took me from 2009 to 2016 to make that profit. I was like, okay, well how can I expedite this a little bit? And so I started to dive in heavy into the day trading and started to break it down scientifically of being able to just average somewhere between 1 and 2000 per day, only using 10% of my account, essentially. And I would only fund my account with a hundred thousand. Well, since 2016, in 2019, I made a mill on that year alone in 2020, which was last year, was north of 2.5 million. And in 2016, going back, I started a business teaching people. And how that started was I had a friend, she was a single mom of three, and I just came back from being a single single parent, right? And it was like, okay, let me help this person. So I taught her everything that I could. And long story short, she is now a, an accountant, personal accountant at home. And she averages about $500 a day in trading. She was working three jobs at the time, and now she's just fully at home. And once that happened, my wife, now not my friend that I helped, but I had my, my wife and she was like, you need to make this business, you just help this person. There's a lot of other people that can use this help. So we started the business 2017. It went live, started very small, just posting on Instagram, getting people familiar with me and just posting results and just being honest and real and telling my story, like how I'm telling you, you know, being a student, being a single dad, going through the grind, being somebody that's working and corporate America and still being able to find time to trade. And it relates to a lot of people. And now we went from having zero people to a following of like 45,000 on Instagram to over 5,000 members in the, in the trading room, which is, I mean, it's just a blessing, dude. So that's A quick little bit about us.

Yeah, thank you so much for the rundown, man. And you said something earlier. So you grew up in California, is that right?

Yeah, I grew up in Oxnard, California. It's South Oxnard, which is essentially like a low income area. You know, parents didn't go to college and all that stuff. But yeah, Southern California raised and where we, where we are, where we live now. And so Southern California, that's incredible, man.

Well, thank you so much for the story. I would say just hearing all that, man, it's not only inspiring, but just seeing. And I'm sure anyone can relate to this, right? It's like you have this moment. And I'll say one thing as well, just one of my brother, he had a kid when he was 21 and you know, changed his life. And I've been able to see him grow through that and you know, step up to the plate and he has taken accountability. And I think one of the biggest things that, you know, hearing your story is like it changes you or someone like me who had a bad neck injury and I'm in a neck brace for nine months. Like it. Things only really change when you, excuse me, when your back's against the wall. So I mean, for you, I would say like coming out of that 2009-2016, you're getting into trading. Like obviously if people are watching this right now, you see your screens in the background, you have like 10 monitors in front of you. Explain it to me, like, where were you when you got started? What was date? Like, what were you doing day trading? And like how do you operate now with all of the knowledge and experience that you have now? And what's changed?

Yeah, so when I started it was, it was like trial and error, man. And it started just with books and I was just kind of throwing money also in terms of the day trading aspect, just kind of throwing money into things I thought would do well, just trying to figure it out on my own and didn't really work well. So when I started day trading, I actually blew up a whole account. And when blowing up an account means you funded it with, you know, close to 25,000 and lost it all. And dude, it sucked asked for that to happen. I was fortunate that my long term investments were still doing well. So it's not like at that point it killed me, but it was still like a shot to the, you know, the whole, the whole morale and drive. Right. So what I did was start is kind of use my background having the science and a little bit More math and broke it down statistically. But when I started, dude, I just had a laptop and just a small little MacBook Air 13 inch screen. And I used it from when I was at school, taking all my notes and stuff on it and it was an ideal. So what I got was a bigger screen laptop, a little bit more into it. I started getting mentors. And that was another thing that's really important and you know, I want people to understand is there's no, there's nothing wrong with asking for help from the right people. You know, there's, everyone has helped someone. You know what I mean? So I started asking people that I knew and would find that were doing really well and, and just like how I started the social media thing with you back in the day, going through Tai Lopez with everyone started to do that and then like meeting people through that. And so I started networking with people that were into the space and started learning different aspects. I started reading more books and from each of them I started building what works for me, right. I started getting all these different viewpoints and from those viewpoints I only kept what was important and what stuck. Um, and then from there it just started to grow. And now as you can see, I have a 49 inch ultra wide gaming screen, a 27 to 27 inches and I'm literally before I used to be looking at the markets all day. I could be done within 15 minutes if I find a good stock. And it's literally just a matter of hitting my profit target where my profit target. You know, I'm trying to make at least 1,000 to 5,000 on the day and then just going and enjoying the rest of the time with my family. Some of these stocks that we find. And now that I've been in doing this since 2009, it's very easy for me to determine what shit and what's not shit. And also since I have the biotech background, I can know what's what looks really good. An example is last year it was a stock, it was GSLI or glbi. It was one of those, it was some. It's on my, it's on my, my feed within the Instagram. The stock went from $5 to $158 in one day per trade. I normally put somewhere north between 10 to 20,000. So you could do the math of how much I ended up making on that. It ended up being north of a $323,000 day just on that one day. So going from 725 an hour at 19 to being able to make 323,000 in one one day, it's, it's mind boggling. So the way that, the way that the group works is I'll come in here every single morning, I'll do all the homework for all my members. So I'll go through a list. We have scanners and the scanners help me filter through stocks that meet my criteria based off of what I, what I look for from that criteria. I then filter it down to a list of about 15. I'll then send that list along with where I think to enter to all the members. And then what I'll do is host a live stream where I'll share my top nine stocks that I'm looking at and literally talk to people as things are going on real time and it helps people, especially new people. I didn't have that help right from the get. I, you know, I joined different programs and, and learn, but I didn't have this type of help right out the get where I mean all this information is right there. So to be able to walk someone that's new and show them how it is real time, it's a unique experience for them.

Totally. I want to ask as well, over the past 12 months, obviously there's been a lot of ups and downs in the stock market and you know, as a day trader, you hear about Robinhood and all these things going on that went down with GameStop and all these memes. Yeah. How have you thought about that? Did you capitalize on that? Did you not touch it? As a trader that is obviously doing things and yet you have a real strategy here that's completely different than any day trader that's on Robinhood. What have you seen and how have you reacted to the craziness in the stock market over the past 12 months?

Yeah, so that's actually a great, great question. I was actually just having a conversation with that, with, with actually my neighbor the other day. And you know, it's, it's, I think it's great to see in the fact that, you know, a lot of young people are now getting involved in it, you know, but it's also very concerning because all these people are joining forums such as Wall Street Bets and I don't have, I never have anything negative to say about anyone or whatever. It's the, it's the individual's. At the end of the day, it's the individual's job to make their decision. But you know, when you have forums such as like a WallStreetBets or other forums that are out there and you have people that are just saying, hey, buy this stock or whatever, especially to a young kid. Like, if I was in that back in the day at 19 years old and I needed money quick, I would have felt victim to the same thing where, you know, some of these people are just buying things that they don't understand, don't know, and some people are getting screwed. I was in that chat room and I saw somebody down $400,000 and they were like, they were like, hold the line. And I was like, hold the line. I was like, this thing is freaking done, dude. What are you talking about? So, but on the flip side, it's good to see a lot of people starting to get into it because of news that comes out there, such as the AMC, the GameStop and those meme stocks where it shows people the capabilities of what you can make, which is very, very possible. And so it's just a matter of reaching them and trying to educate them the right way or what you think is right. You know, I'm not 100% right, but, you know, giving them some solid, some solid education that then they can use that to help determine what to get into going on. To your question of did you capitalize on it? Oh, yeah, we capitalized on it. Where some of those, some people in the room made a killing on that stock alone. We just had a stock last week, not GameStop, but it was Nuro, which was related to Fibromyalgia, that went from $3 to $41 in three days. Wow. I had a member in my room say, dude, I made 25,000 last week. And completely, you know, money like that for a lot of people is completely life changing. So when people got into GameStop and AMC, they saw life changing things. Right. And so, yeah, but in terms of the overall market, 2020 was a unique experience because of COVID and having that background in biotech and understanding, hey, there's going to be a lot of biotechs that are going to capitalize on this and are going to make moves. One example, which is a larger cap stock, which is MRNA Moderna, obviously made a huge killing. It went from, I think the low within the past two years was 40 bucks and now it's at what, 350 or something like that. So that was a huge one. Uh, and Vax, which was another one that back in the day was related to like the bird flu. And that one took off to. Once Covid happened, that one took off as well. It went from like a Dollar to like a hundred bucks or some shit. It was ridiculous. Um, so there was a lot of capitalization last. Last year. This year is a little bit more choppy with everything that's going on. Um, a lot of people are scared and a lot of people are also realizing as they're starting to go back to work, it's not as easy. Where last year you could kind of just close your eyes, pick anything, and ultimately may go up right here, it's not the case. And I think that's where a lot of people, the ones that really want to try to make it work are seeing. You know what? I need some education to help me out.

Yeah, absolutely. When you talk about biotech, what was your intention with getting a master's in biotech? And ultimately, I know you're talking about how you can tap into that and utilize that knowledge with trading, but where does your interest for biotech come from? And what made you want to go get a master's degree in that?

Yeah, so my initial, my initial goal when I was young is I wanted to be an anesthesiologist and. Oh, sorry, hang on, let me get the dog out. Hey, here, have a Chairman Shepherd.

So.

My initial interest, I wanted to be an anesthesiologist. But once I had my son young, it was like, dude, there's no way I'm going to do eight years of med school or four years of med school, then four years to specialize, then two years of residency. Like it makes no sense. So the next best thing was biotech. And then here in where we're located in Ventura County, Amgen was a big one. And so I made shifted my gear to be like, you know what if I can. Now as I started reading these books, I was like, you know what, I don't need to be an anesthesiologist to make anesthesiologist money. If I can get a good paying job and then invest my money, then I can get there. Right. So that's, that's kind of where that whole, that biotech came from. And then as I started going to school, I was always into science. So having the bachelor's in bio, getting the master of science in biotech, all that just kind of strayed me towards it. And it's been great. Especially now with the markets being able to understand when something's a phase two versus something that's commercial, and whether or not something meets an unmet need, like a certain cancer versus something that's just generic and maybe not going to move that whole whole Lot.

Yeah, that makes sense, man. I have a couple more questions before we wrap up and let's just talking about the importance of mentorship and education. You talked about how you were asking questions to mentors early on. But I mean, trading, it's one of those things where, as you said, there's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of things that you see online where, you know, people are just telling you to buy stocks, which is not the best way to do this. Like, you need to really understand what you're buying, how you're buying it. I'm not the expert in any sense, and, you know, I think everyone can continue to learn. But what was the early experiences of you getting over that hump of saying, wow, I think I actually get it now. Like, who were you learning from? What was the process? And then obviously, I know that you also help people as you've talked about. So whatever you want to talk about and however people can learn more about what you have going on, I'd love for you to just let the people know today.

Yeah. So as I started getting mentors, what I did was like, many people today joined courses, right. So I took courses from Warrior Trading. Ross Cameron, Timothy Sykes at the time, who was the very kind of father. Father of nature. Yeah. And he was the first person I went through. Then through him, I met Cameron Froose through Inktrader, and then Ross Cameron and then all these different people. And then once I started, once I did the Ty Lopez thing and try to start networking with different people I actually met. And these are the guys that really kind of changed my whole perspective, Mike and Tom. And what they did was show me strategically how to be break it down statistically and break it down mathematically. Where all the other mentors, they taught me everything on what to look for and how to find it. But in terms of the risk management piece, it wasn't quite there. Where when talking with these other guys that actually traded back in the day on the Wall street floor and were like in it since like the early 80s, 90s, they broke it down to a science. And from there what I started to do was just practice with practice money. And that's one of the one things I can say to people that are listening and that will listen to this is don't start with real money right away. There's a lot of simulators out there, such as thinkorswim, and it mimics the actual real time as trading goes on. Practice with that. The worst thing you could do is just kind of jump in with your own money and lose it, get discouraged and not want to do it anymore. Where with the simulator, you can practice your strategy, you can practice your risk management, you can get all of these cobwebs, so to speak, out of the way. And then once you can show consistency there, then start to take it to a live account because there's a difference when it's your money versus not your money. So when you start going live, there's also a thing of psychology where it's like, you know, I want it to keep going up and then that's greed, right? Or it's going down, I'm going to sell right away. That's fear. Or I'm not even going to buy because I don't know whether or not it's a good stock or time to buy. So fear and greed is the other thing in terms of psychology that you got to master and when you can, the way to master that is having a good strategy and trusting in the process. And that is something that we do here is help teach you that process. Literally walking you from a fucking tadpole to all the way to, you know, a freaking adult at this point of learning A through Z, step by step and learning from mistakes that I have made. But what we focus majority of the stuff on is risk management and being able to minimize your risk so that when you do have long term and big term moves, you can capitalize on those. And we have strategy on how to take profit along the way, how to find the stocks, all that stuff. And as I was mentioning before, we do all the homework for you as well in the chat. So I'll go through the pre market watch list, send out a list before the market even opens. So then you can kind of go through it. You can see where I'm looking, where I think we should enter at. And from there we'll do the live stream and I'll kind of coach you real time as the trades are happening. We have educational courses that will help you out and then a chat room, the community with people that you that are educated. It's not just a room of people that are uneducated. The first thing you have to do is go through the courses to be in the chat. So it's a different experience than just kind of joining some, some chat out there that has no education.

I love that man. Well, I know that you got to run here in a second and I got to as well. But before we run I would just like to say, where's Number one, the best place, place for people to follow you, to stay connected with you, to learn more about what you have going on. And then last thing is just I know you talked about being a bookworm and, you know, loving books. I'd love to just get a book recommendation from you for the people that are listening today as well as for myself because I think I, with a lot of respect to someone that was sitting in the Barnes and Noble picking up reading. Oh yeah, we can wrap it up there. Yeah.

So to follow me, stock market woof on Instagram. My website is stock marketwolf.com you could go through Casey and get my personal number if you need it. And then book recommendation. There's actually two that I would recommend to kind of start out with the first one, I have it here. It's the Or I'll give you three. Is the advanced day trading techniques. Start off with that one. Then you want to get into mastering the trade. This is a really, really good book. It's thick as shit. It's almost, it's quite a bit of pages. And then as we were talking about psychology, the essence of trading psychology. It's a small read, but it's, you know, some very good detail in that. So I will start there. And dude, Casey, man, I hope your, your viewers enjoy this and I hope you enjoyed it. And you know, again, dude, thank you so much for having me.

Of course. And Andrew, again, thank you so much for coming on the show, for taking the time. I'm excited to, you know, continue building and growing with you. I know that we just reconnecting with you, man, has been incredible. I know that. Again, like we talked about at the beginning, since 2017. So take a hear about your journey that I wasn't aware about and also to hear about your growth was phenomenal. So thank you so much for coming on. I'm looking forward to doing it again.

Yeah, thanks, Casey. Have a good one, man.

Peace out.

Monarch Legacy of Monsters An Apple Original Series the world is on fire. I decided to do something about it on November 17th. This place, it's not ours. Believe me. The most massive event of the year arrives. If you come with me, you'll know everything I promised.

My God. Go, go, go.

Monarch Legacy of monsters streaming November 17th only on Apple TV. Plus.