I Made $1M From Trading, Here Are My Top 6 Lessons

I've been trading for 6 years at this point, and in that time I've made well over $1 million from trading. I've also publicly called over 200 trades on Bitcoin since the start of 2025 with around a 78% win rate. Every single call is documented in public, so you don't have to take my word for any of this. And it's not just my own trading. So far, I've taken 60 students through my flagship program, and 28 of them are now funded traders. That's nearly half of all students that come through. Together, they've secured over $5 million in funded capital, which works out to roughly $200,000 of funded capital per student. But here's what most people also don't know about my story. I managed to turn $20K into a million all before I turned 21, but then I proceeded to lose most of it over the next 3 years. Not necessarily because my strategy stopped working, but simply because I had the wrong beliefs. Wrong beliefs are dangerous because you don't know they're wrong until they've started costing you. So in this video, I'm I'm going to share the six beliefs that cost me the most time and money, and to simply share some lessons that I wish someone had taught me straight when I was starting out, so that I could have saved all this time and money. And these are not going to be your average all six very basic lessons that is super shallow and means absolutely nothing for trading. Like it's actually going to be genuine alpha. Let's get into it. Lesson one: sample size. So here's a scenario that's going to sound awfully familiar to any traders that are actually watching, like actual traders, which is. You know, after you take 3 losses in a row, your brain immediately goes like, is my system broken? Do I need to change something? Uh, maybe I should add an indicator or some new fancy concept. Now, here's the only problem with that question. Most of the time, you don't have nearly enough data to answer that accurately. Because in trading, 1 trade tells you nothing. 10 trades tells you almost nothing. Because at the end of the day, a meaningful sample size in trading is 100 trades minimum. And yet most traders are abandoning their system after just 1 bad week. This includes myself back in But the problem when you do that is that you're essentially making a long-term decision based on a short-term data point, which I don't even have to tell you, it's not a very smart move. Just to give you an idea, now even with a 78% win rate across 200+ calls over the last year and a half, I've still had multiple periods where I've lost 5 trades in a row, and even a 3 or 4 month period where I've had like a 10 or 20% win rate. It doesn't mean that the system sucks. This is just variance, right? It's just statistics. Market doesn't deliver results. in like a straight line, and it never will. So before you start messing with your system again, just ask yourself one question: do I have enough data proof that this system works or that it doesn't work? Now, if the answer is no and you don't have enough data, then the system isn't the problem. You simply haven't given it enough time to prove itself. Lesson 2: the goal is to never become a skilled trader. Now, let me tell you a story for this one, because in my early years, I was obsessed about being right when it came to the markets. Like, I would scour through YouTube and spend hundreds of hours looking for, like, the next magic concept or indicator that would allow me to see moves coming more often and also more accurately. Now, I actually managed to succeed at that goal because at the end of the day, I managed to call a bunch of market tops and bottoms and ended up being right most of the time as to where price was going. But you know what the problem was? I was right, but I wasn't making any money as a result. So essentially, I ended up becoming a very skilled analyst, which is also what most traders tend to optimize their efforts towards. And I get it, it feels like the obvious thing to work on. But here's why it's definitely the wrong goal. Skill is inconsistent. Depending on the day and how your last few trades went, or how you're feeling, your skill level on Monday could be totally different from your skill level on Friday. Essentially, using your trading skill on the markets is just a sophisticated way of saying that you're winging it. But you know what's actually consistent? A system. So instead of trying to get better at trading, I simply wrote all of my rules and criteria into like a system with exact entry and exit criteria, and I just executed that instead consistently. So no more trying to predict tops or bottoms to enter from. I simply changed my mindset to If all of the criteria in my system were met, I enter. And if not, then I don't. No more trying to also predict, you know, tops and bottoms to exit from either. Like, I just exit from a liquidity point that makes sense on a 1-hourly chart. And when I relied on system rather than skill, I started making money. More ironically than that, my win rate actually also went up because good things happen when you finally get a proven, consistent framework. And by the way, if you'd like to learn mine, feel free to click the first link in the description box below. Essentially, the real goal isn't to become a better trader, right? It's to simply build rules that are so clear, so specific, that the system makes the decisions for you. Because when you are the one making decisions in the heat of the moment, emotions will always find a way in. And we already know emotional trading is rarely a profitable strategy. Lesson 3, closing your trades early is not risk management. Let me ask you something. Let's say that currently, right, a trade is going in your direction. You're in profits, and the trade is slowly but surely moving its way towards the target. Now, how do you feel? Are you anxious? Now, if you get anxious, and if you've ever closed a trade early as a result of that before, that's a problem. Like, think about it, right? If price is moving exactly the way that you said it would, like your analysis is playing out and the setup is working, and if your response is to close early, does that make any sense? And worse, like when you're closing these trades early, it's not because like your target was hit. It's not even because like the idea of the trade changed. And it's not even because like the rules of your system told you to exit the trade. You're doing it because you're simply afraid that the market's going to reverse and take back your unrealized profits. And here's why that's a problem. Like, let's say that your system targets 3R, but you always cut it at 1R. Let's say you have a 60% win rate, right? Across 10 trades, cutting at 1R nets you +2R over 10 trades. Now let's assume that holding to your full target actually drops your win rate to, let's say, 40%, because, well, some trades are going to reverse before they hit, you know, the target. You're still netting 6R after the math is, you know, all said and done. It's triple the profit even though the win rate is lower. So like lower win rate, but you're actually making more money. The worst part about, you know, closing trades early out of like this false anxiety is that you're building bad habits. Because every time you cut your trades early, you're essentially telling your brain that, hey man, cutting trades early, yeah, this is smart risk management. But we've already established that it's not. It's just emotional pain management. Dressed up as being, you know, being smart. And the fix is simple, but it's a little bit uncomfortable. Simply define your target before you enter and don't touch it. Like, just don't let your feelings close out the trade for you or let the system do it. Lesson 4: Win rate is mostly cope. Now, everyone optimizes towards having a high win rate, and I get it. After all, it feels pretty impressive, right? If you tell your friends, hey, I win 80% of my trades, they would think you actually know what you're doing. But let me show you why win rate matters a lot less than you think. Now, let's use, you know, example 1, right? You have an 80% rate at, you know, 1R per win. For every 10 trades, you're going to win 8 and you're going to lose 2. The net result, +6R. Now let's take a look at example 2. You'll have a 40% win rate, but your wins are worth about 3R on average. And so for every 10 trades, you're going to win 4 but lose 6. Yet your net result is also +6R. Half the win rate, and yet you're making the same amount of profits. And one thing's for sure, it is way harder to achieve an 80% win rate and maintain that over time than it is to have a humble 40% win rate. So here's what you need to Win rate only tells you how often you win. It says nothing about how much you make when you win or how much you lose when you do lose. So the metric that actually determines profitability is something known as expectancy, which is win rate times your average win minus loss rate times average loss. And yes, I did mention my own, you know, 78% win rate at the start of this video to impress you, but the thing you need to understand is that the win rate was not what I was optimizing to words. It simply came as a result of me following a solid system. And first and foremost, I'm optimizing for profits. So if there's one thing you take away from this, the question isn't how do I win more trades, it's how do I build a system with positive expectancy and execute that consistently. Chase expectancy, not win rate, and you're going to see your profits go up. Lesson 5, top pickers and bottom pickers usually end up becoming cotton pickers. Now before I get into this one, look, I get it. Catching a top or a bottom feels amazing. It looks great on the chart and it makes for an amazing screenshot. After all, like, like nobody's ever going to post like, hey, I followed the trend kind of entry as like a flex. But here's what happens to most people that are hunting for these tops and bottoms that nobody really talks about or thinks about. 1, they get stopped out on wicks a lot. 2, they get faked out on liquidity sweeps a lot. And 3, they tend to spend a lot of time holding losing positions because eventually It's going to reverse. Now, don't get me wrong, right? Every once in a while, this strategy works, which ironically is just enough reinforcement for these people to keep doing it. And here's how this relates to, you know, the lesson that I ended up learning personally. A big part of my first million dollars was a bull market, right? Yes, I was at the right place at the right time. But one thing I did differently compared to everyone else was that I wasn't catching perfect bottoms or tops. I simply kept buying high and selling higher. And even until today, The system that I'm using right now is a trend-following one, which simply means to buy high and sell higher, or to sell low and then buy back lower. Now, it's not exciting, and it requires you to set your ego aside, but it makes money, and it sure as hell gives me way less anxiety compared to trying to catch a generational bottom. So just remember this: the market, at the end of the day, does not care how early your entry was. It only cares whether you were on the right side. of the move. Lesson 6, complexity equals paralysis. Now, I want you to picture this, right? Let's say you've just spent the last 3 months building the perfect system. All right, you've got, you know, RSI, you've got MACD, you've managed to integrate EMA crosses, order blocks, fair value gaps, volume profile, and more. I could become a rapper at this point. But anyways, right, you think you now have like the god killer system, right? The best strategy under the sun that's equipped for every situation possible. But the moment you actually sit down at the charts, every indicator starts telling you something a little bit different. So what do you do? Of course, you freeze, or you wait for just one more confirmation, and eventually you're going to end up watching a bunch of setups pass without managing to enter. The lesson here is that complexity does not create clarity, it creates paralysis. Simple systems tend to outperform because you can actually use them and execute them under live pressure without second-guessing yourself into, like, complete inaction. Now, if you actually looked at my charts from 5 years ago, You'll see more than like 10 indicators on the chart at the same time. In fact, I'll try to put a screenshot here. To the untrained eye, it does actually look pretty cool. It makes me look like I know what I'm talking about, but it also made me no money at that time. And a simple reason is also part of the reason why our students get funded on average 76 days into the program, where other programs take way longer or generate no results at all. It's not because like our students are better or they're just more talented or the system's better. Because the system is simple enough to learn and master it quick, and also simple enough to execute daily without any sort of confusion. So the TL;DR is that you want to just pick the highest ROI rules within your system that gives you a clear answer and simply execute those and ignore everything else. This is how you find consistency in trading. So just to recap, lesson 1: small sample sizes mean absolutely nothing. Don't touch your system until you have at the very minimum 100 trades worth of data. Lesson 2: The goal isn't to become a better trader. It's to build a system that makes the decisions for you so that you don't have to make it yourself. Lesson 3: Closing early is not risk management. It's simply emotional pain management dressed up as something else. Let your winners run, and you'll be surprised at the results that you see. Lesson 4: Win rate is cope. Chase expectancy instead. Lesson 5: Catching tops and bottoms will eventually cause you to become a cotton picker. Just simply follow the trend, be on the right side, Buy high and sell higher. And lesson 6, complexity creates paralysis. Simple rules you can execute consistently will always beat complex rules you can't. None of these are new concepts, but there is a big difference between knowing them and actually building them into your process. And that second part is what we do inside Bootcamp. It's the same process that's taken 28 of our 60 students to funded accounts. And if you would like help with that, book a call through the link in the description box below. And if you're a good fit, And we're able to genuinely help, then we'll make you an offer. But if not, that's perfectly cool as well. We'll at least leave you with a roadmap of what you can do immediately to improve ASAP. And if this video was useful, like and subscribe. This is the kind of content that I put out every week. See you in the next one.