Skip to main content
Remote video URL

Enter your name and email address to join the chat or log in to your account.

Off The Charts

Learning How To Grind | Jason Leavitt Is Off The Charts

“I would not give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity, but I would give my life for the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

There’s a profound simplicity that can only be reached by working through complexity. It means that deep understanding is often simple, but achieving it requires grappling with and overcoming complexity.

Jason Leavitt believes this wholeheartedly. And this was his path.

When he first got involved in trading, everything seemed simple: buy low, sell high, make money.

But as he dug into it, his research and experience led him down numerous paths — some fruitful, some not so much — and he, like many of us, reached a point near analysis paralysis. Upon reaching this apex of his learning curve, it was then that he began stripping away the extraneous and superfluous to reach the core of what mattered most to his style and skill set.

“We need to be able to comfortably execute within our comfort zone,” Jason says. And the work of getting his process down to the most simple of data points and execution triggers was, and continues to be, an essential ingredient for him to find success.

And one of the key methods he uses that gets to the core of what works is to use his own trading results and experiences as direct feedback. If or when he stubbornly ignores his own data, this is when trading becomes hard. The lesson is to listen to what your trading stats are telling you.

One of those lessons he learned early on was that to go from bad to good and good to elite he needed to push himself to take bigger positions when the markets aligned best with his skillset. He needed to focus on developing the sense of when conditions are right for him to push.

Please enjoy this conversation with Jason Leavitt.

Air Time:
Fridays @ 10:00 am ET
Host Analyst(s)
Guest(s)

Recent Episodes

Off The Charts

WITHSTAND THE STORM | Anthony Crudele Is Off The Charts

“I don’t need to kill it right now. I need to make sure I’m around for the next cycle that is favorable to my trading style.”

According to Anthony Crudele, most traders struggle because they are too short-sighted. He believes most successful traders think longer term—not about time frames but about how each trade, day, or week fits into the bigger picture of what the trader is looking to accomplish.

Guest(s):

Off The Charts

David Hale Podcast: CASH RULES | David Hale Is Off The Charts

From an early age, David Hale had hustle in his DNA. At just 10 years old, he was sneaking into casinos to play slot machines. By 11, he was betting on horse races. And before long, he was hunting for arbitrage opportunities in baseball card values. Inspired by his bargain-hunting mother, David developed a “value-player” mindset that would eventually spark a deep fascination with trading the markets.

Off The Charts

Andrew Moss is Open to New Perspectives | Off The Charts

Reinventing your career after 20 years is no small feat. Now, imagine trying to do that by becoming an active trader. That’s exactly what Andrew Moss is doing—but he isn’t going in blind.


Andrew’s fascination with the markets began as a teenager when his father introduced him to point-and-figure charts. From there, he pursued a career in brokerage and wealth management at a major Wall Street firm, gaining deep insight into the industry.


“We all have to follow our own path,” Andrew reflects.

Guest(s):

Off The Charts

Matt Kenah is Building Positive Momentum Every Day

Matt Kenah is Building Positive Momentum Every Day.

If we only learn one thing from Matt Kenah, I hope it would be this: “The only goal we should have every day is to live to fight another one.”

Matt has lived this ethos and he has been repeatedly put to the test. And passed.

Starting out on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange trading floor as a runner just out of high school, Matt quickly rose the ranks to Arb Clerk and was earning great money as a young man in his early twenties.

Guest(s):

Off The Charts

Andrew Menaker: Negotiating Bank Robberies and Market Hauls

To say Andrew Menaker took an unusual path to Wall Street would be a severe understatement.

While negotiating with an armed bank robber to de-escalate the situation and ensure the safety of customers and bank employees, he had to let Wells Fargo know he wouldn’t be making it to his first interview that day and, therefore, would have to pass on an opportunity to work with the firm.

Off The Charts

Going Until The Wind Changes | David Lundgren is Off The Charts

Among the many things that stood out during our conversation with David Lundgren, it was this quote: “I want to find a way to listen, and learn, and get a little bit better every day.”
 
This is a mindset that every trader, every human, can benefit from.
 
In his early days, David described himself as a “systematic researcher.” This process of discovery held sway for him, and when striking out on his own, he employed the same systematic philosophy to portfolio management and trend-following trading.
 
David firmly
Guest(s):

Off The Charts

Jared Dillian Learned How To Seek Risk | Off The Charts

For Wall Street veteran Jared Dillian, getting away from Wall Street might have been the best thing he ever did for himself.

Now living in South Carolina, he can’t be further removed from the lifestyle of your typical Wall Streeter. And he’d have it no other way, as he’s convinced Wall Street took at least 10 years off of his life expectancy.

As Jared says, his stress levels are now “basically zero.”

Off The Charts

Trading The News with Milton Marmanides | Off The Charts

Milton Marmanides does the hard work that traders don’t have the time to do. He sifts through the firehose of headlines, news releases, data points, and social media to cut through the noise and deliver only the market-moving information active traders need to make smarter decisions.

And in his nearly 25 years in the business, first as a trader, and now as a market data provider, he’s seen a lot.

Off The Charts

Anne-Marie Baiynd HAS THE FEVER | Off The Charts

If there’s one thing Anne-Marie Baiynd learned after making the transition from a business owner to a trader, it’s that she’s no longer in charge.

The market, unlike her employees, doesn’t do what she asks it to do.

She needed to learn to give up control. And it wasn’t easy.

In fact, it was so hard that she almost lost all of the hard-earned money she had salted away from years of successfully running her business. To say this would be stressful for a family and a marriage would be an understatement.

Guest(s):