Escaping the Drift with John Gafford - Depth Over Distance: Artur Merabian's Life Lessons on Perseverance and Wisdom

Episode Date: April 24, 2024

Welcome to a new episode of Escaping the Drift. In this episode, I’m joined by Artur Merabian, Founder of Stock Unlocked.! This crypto rockstar got in the game early, buying his first Bitcoin back in 2012. After some business adventures in Vegas, he turned his passion for trading into a full-time hustle in 2019. He's got tons of cool stories from his life that teach us about never giving up, dealing with change, and learning from the past. Artur's journey is wild - it'll make you think about your own life and the things you've learned. Stuck or need a boost? Artur's got your back with great advice and a reason to keep going! Tune in - it's gonna be awesome!Highlights:"It's not about how many times you fall, but how you pick yourself up that truly defines you.""Change is the only constant, and adapting to it is not an option but a necessity for growth.""Reflection is the lamp of the heart. If it departs, the heart will have no light."Timestamps:02:10 - The Early Years: Foundations of Resilience04:50 - Facing Life's Challenges Head-On08:30 - The Role of Adaptability in Personal Growth12:15 - Major Turning Points: Learning from Change15:40 - Overcoming Setbacks with Grace19:20 - The Importance of Lifelong Learning22:35 - Artur's Most Valuable Life Lessons26:50 - How Reflection Shapes Our Future30:00 - Artur's Advice for the Next Generation💬 Did you enjoy this podcast episode? Tell us all about it in the comment section below! ☑️  If you liked this video, consider subscribing to Escaping The Drift with John Gafford using this Link! ⤵️     / johngafford.  💯 About John Gafford: After appearing on NBC's "The Apprentice", John relocated to the Las Vegas Valley and founded several successful companies in the real estate space.➡️ The Gafford Group at Simply Vegas, top 1% of all REALTORS nationwide in terms of production. Simply Vegas, a 500 agent brokerage with billions in annual sales Clear Title, a 7-figure full service title and escrow company.➡️ Streamline Home Loans - An independent mortgage bank with more than 100 loan officers. The Simply Group, A national expansion vehicle partnering with large brokers across the country to vertically integrate their real estate brokerages.✅ Follow John Gafford on social media:Instagram ▶️ / thejohngaffordFacebook ▶️ / gafford2🎧 Stream The Escaping The Drift Podcast with John Gafford Episode here:Listen On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7cWN80g...Listen On Apple:https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... *************#EscapingTheDrift

You shouldn't do it. Your son should do it because this is all a bunch of 16 year olds in here killing the game, getting rich, making millions. So forget you, you're too old for this. Get your son involved in it. That was number one. And number two, he said, if you want to learn the game, you should learn it from this cat, Arthur Moravian. And I said, well, if you're telling me you're a dude that I know is crushing and you're telling me if I want to learn how to do something, I should learn how to do it from this guy. I'm not just going to keep that guy to myself. And now escaping the drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to

be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, escape the drift, and it's time to start right now. Back again, back again with another episode of Escaping the Drift, a show that like the title says, man, gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And I got to tell you, there's a lot of people swimming pretty fast right now, making some serious dollars in the current crypto market. And I know nothing about this. Like I'm the guy, it's funny, Cody Sperber posted something up not too long ago that said every single time he buys Bitcoin, the shit goes down the next day. Like every single time he does it, I'm the same guy. That's my same thing. And I have a friend of mine.

We may talk about him shortly, but for right now, I'll leave him unknown. But he is kind of a guru in the high risk world of meme coins. And I watch him on Instagram just posting win and win and win and win and big gains after what it is. And I randomly made a joke to him on Instagram where I said, I'm going to have to give up selling real estate and learn how to trade this stuff with you. To which he replied two things, right? He replied, you shouldn't do it. Your son should do it. Cause this is all a bunch of 16 year olds in here killing the game, getting rich, making millions.

So forget you, you're too old for this. Get your son involved in it. That was number one. And number two, he said, if you want to learn the game, you should learn it from this cat, Arthur Moravian. And I said, well, if you're telling me you're a dude that I know is crushing and you're telling me if I want to learn how to do something, I should learn how to do it from this guy. I'm not just going to keep that guy to myself because that's not what the generosity of the podcast is all about. I'm going

to track him down and I'm going to drag him into studio to give some of this knowledge to all of you guys. So here we are. If you're a crypto, if you're a high trader of super knowledge of all of these things, great. You'll hope you'll get something out of this. If you are an idiot to it as I am, and you seem to lose money every time you invest in any cryptocurrency, hopefully this will prevent that from happening again, because I'm hoping it happens with me. So welcome to the show, ladies and gentlemen. This is Arthur Barabian. Arthur, welcome, buddy. John, thank you for having me. You bet, man. So let's start with a little bit about you, because obviously, you know, look, man, Ari's a guy that knows how to make money. And for him to recommend you, that means you've got some serious chops behind you.

So how did you get into this and what is it that you do? Right. So first and foremost, I'm the founder of Stock Unlocked. We're an education company. We teach people technical analysis, how to trade the charts. And that can be applied whether you're in stocks or crypto or even the Forex markets. I think I got started probably the same way as everyone else. Like, oh, you know, I heard about it from my best friend and my roommate. At the time we were buying Monero, which no one ever

buys anymore now. But every check I got, I was throwing 50 bucks, 100 bucks a ETH. I was buying one or two ETH. It was $40 to $45 then. This was 2016. How old were you then doing this? Let's see. I'm 32 now. Okay. It makes me feel a little better.

You look younger than 32. Yeah, thank you. It makes me feel better, a little better. So about eight years ago? Eight years ago. Eight years ago. All right. So you didn't start out as a 16-year-old.

You actually started out as a little bit older. I wish I did. Now all these kids are so early in it you know just buying doge early just because it's doge and you know it's cheap i wish i was that early but now i'm seeing more and more uh you know uh kids who were 18 to 20 who started in e-com drop shipping and now they're eating up the trading game and they're smart at it too what makes someone good at this i think it's the desire to want to learn things naturally or or kind of for yourself like the urge of wanting to learn and test something out and be very hands-on with something um that's from the thousands of people that have gone through my program that's kind of the niche that i see that really excels and they excel quickly when they're really just hungry

for the info so is this something that like for example i know that when when the when the when the meme coins start running and start going like crazy are is like i'll see in three months right like i'm gonna be married to these charts and married to my computer. This is not a passive game, trading crypto, I'm guessing. So trading crypto is a passive game. Trading meme coins is not a passive game. They say meme coin season and shit coin season,

if I can say that. Sure, yeah, that's what it is. But they come in phases right it always starts with the heavy hitters bitcoin and ethereum that trickles down to the altcoin market and then that trickles down into the meme coin market and there is that three four month window when you can really take advantage of it and then it kind of dies out so when bitcoin starts booming that everything like that raises all the say that the tide raises, it rises all ships,

right? Everything starts when that, when that starts moving. So Bitcoin starts moving heavy, then you can assume that eventually it's going to get to the weird, wacky. Right. Um,

I always say this probably might be a good example of once all the money is out there and it's like, quote unquote out in the hands of the dumb money who have reaped the benefit of the last six months of Bitcoin, Ethereum and all the altcoins pumping, then starts the frenzy of the meme coin market. And then all of a sudden you see this dumb money get sucked all back up from the meme coins. They lose it all in these meme coin gambles and it goes right back and it goes right back up to the top. And I give the example, it was kind of like the pandemic, right? They gave everyone all this money. Everyone had all this extra money. Everyone was trading stocks in 2020, 2020. Everybody, right? Well, now look at the state of America. Everyone's in credit card debt. No one has money, all that money, but who's doing crazy earnings reports, Apple,

BlackRock, but all that money is just going right back up to the chain. And you can see it in the earnings reports of the stock market. And that's what happens in the crypto market is all these meme coins start to pump out. A lot of them are scams. A lot of the stories that you hear too, oh, this person put $100 in this wallet, they made 8 million. 80 to 90% of those stories, they're fabricated and they're pushed out into the market to make people want to gamble in the meme market.

And I can tell you firsthand, I've seen hundreds of people who gave up all their profits in the last six months just throwing it at memes. Just chasing that stuff. Because that's a zero-sum game. I mean, for you to win, someone else has to lose. And when you lose, someone else is winning. And it's probably the person that pumped out the story that somebody put a hundred bucks in and turned it into eight million. All right. Let's assume, all right, and I do trade stocks. So stocks is something that I've always traded. But let's assume for the sake of today's process, and we're going to walk this through.

Let's assume that I know nothing about nothing, right? Which hopefully somebody who's listening to this that knows nothing about nothing, hopefully. Yeah. Let's try to educate them as much as we can going through this. So let's assume that I know nothing. Okay. What should I start? Where should I start? You tell me. You've got 500 bucks. Where should you start? My first recommendation is just go to YouTube automatically. Don't try to learn about

strategies or find out what stock or coin is going to do the next 20X. Go find out what the basic fundamentals are. What's a limit order? What's a market order? What's a stop loss to make sure that you're not risking all of your capital? Just learn the basics, learn the mechanics of the platforms. A lot of these platforms are different. They have a ton of features. Some are very complex, some are very easy. So just learning the basic fundamentals of how the market works and then start to dive into looking at one strategy, two strategy and stick to those strategies. You can be a very profitable trader by just knowing one strategy.

And then the next step up is find someone who's been there. Who doesn't go from that route. So are we talking about stocks? Are we talking about crypto? What are we talking about? Both. So funny thing is I started in crypto 2016. 2017, I was in the high life. I just made my first million ever.

I did not sell anything in 2018. It dropped all the way down to like 200. And then at that point I was like, well, let me trade it back up. Like I did so great long-term. I must be a good trader i destroyed it i lost it all so you lost a million in 2018 yeah yeah ouch to be fair though it was like 45 000 of my own money right that had gone up to that much i was buying 88 when it first came out at two cents, like it was epic. Um, but when could you have liquidated that at his height? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I could have didn't didn't. Yeah. Um, but I didn't know

anything. It was my first time for a cycle. And then it wasn't until I met my teacher and he actually taught me in the stock market. That's why our business name is stock unlocked it. That's where I learned how to trade was the stock market. And that's how we started a business. But crypto was always a part of the business and a part of me. Do you think it's easier to learn trading in the stock market than you do with crypto? It seems like you're not going to get rugged by Nivea. So if you're just trading Bitcoin and Ethereum and your, like a vaccine Solana is like coins that are high liquid, very reputable coins, learning the charts are going to be the same now learning meme coins.

And that, that's a completely new book. Yeah. Yeah. Cause now you're, you're really just, it's all you're buying hype. You're buying hype,

but there's like strategic hype and if there's a strategic rollout on the mean coin process like how it all works like uh like it pumps every time it gets listed on a certain crypto exchange and that's when more and more people hear about it and they buy that hype but that's when the smart money is selling off of those stories because they're the ones who pay to get listed on the exchange and then they pay to promote the story that they got listed on the exchange. So they bring in new liquidity and then they quote unquote rug and exit out. And that's it. So let's talk about, let's, okay, let's talk about that specifically. Let's break that down a little more. So let's say that I'm looking for the next big crypto thing. Okay. Based on, I'm trying to buy on the hype train.

Okay. How would you find one early? Right. And what are the leading indicators you're looking for that this is going to go somewhere? Okay. So leading indicators to one, find something. You got to be on X. X is where all the quote unquote degens are.

That's like the finance social media. People who are actively in finance or very active in crypto, X is the main platform. I keep trying to say Twitter, but it's X. But that's the main platform. So you have to find any meme that can maybe be relatable to current memes that have done well in the past, like Pepe. There's all these spinoffs on Pepe. There's all these spinoffs on Sheba. There's all these spinoffs of all these other memes. So that's the first one.

Find something that is done well. See if there's a good spinoff. And then you have to find the cult-like following on it. And how do you do all that? How do you find it? Right. So you just go on their page, you see their page and you just go on the comments, see their reach and see the comments. If you see genuine comments from people that are making their own memes of the meme and new memes, and they keep making more and more memes, that's kind of

a cult-like following. So that's step one on how to find something that has potential. Next, you want to see, okay, do they have their liquidity pool locked? Because they have to put together liquidity to launch the token. And then there's a feature that you can check to see if that liquidity is actually locked. Okay, real quick, for those of you that are not following this and we're talking over your head, what he means is like all of these meme coins shit coins whatever you can just create your own currency but you've got to have who's regulating this now so you then the drop in a coin anyone can do it mean you anybody can we could go start a currency right now we could do one with an hour we just got to call the right people and we'll launch it in an hour in an hour yeah launch our currency okay our own currency. Okay. But how do you know that the liquidity is locked,

meaning the original? Right. How do you know that? So there are several tools to do it. One is literally called PoopScan. Okay. So there's a few tools out there that you can go and you copy and paste the token contract into the tool

and it'll just give you all the stats and now they've made it even easier uh there's a website called uh deck screener uh there's a website called dex tools and you just go on there and you can just click it and you see like all the details about it uh how many coins are out in the market if the liquidity is locked if they plan to burn any tokens to dilute the supply all the stuff you kind of need and the liquidity lock means they can't just pull the plug on it right is it locked for a certain amount of time or locked forever what what's does the lock expire so the locks do expire and it just depends on the launch they can

lock can you see how long the lock is you can You can, because it's all in the smart contract. So- Okay. Same thing. If you go on DexScreener, you can see that it'll have an icon that the liquidity is locked. It'll say it. And then if you're a little bit more knowledgeable, you can click view on EtherScan or if you're trading in a Solana meme coin, view on SolScan. And then you can actually see the smart contract on how the coin was launched and you can see uh the period uh you can see the time period that the coin has the liquidity locked for so when the liquidity unlocks how many of these coins just implode the second after that happens it's like musical chairs when the music stops who's who's the first one on the seat and

last one out man so what percentage of people do you think that are trading this stuff know to look for this stuff um because the people who've been in it first right the people who've done a cycle before if you're coming new in this game but unless like you're talking or you or you're in in the right group chats or in the right discords the right chats like people are helping out telling you hey like uh this this um this coin is uh their liquidity is unlocked or it's a honeypot which is even worse uh what does that mean so a honeypot is a coin that you can only buy and not sell that's literally in the

contract so only the creator of the coin is just reaping money so why was it because they don't look because they don't know they don't even look to see if and it says right there on the on the websites that i need right if it's a hunt if it's a honeypot or not and and people just they just don't see it on a discord see it on twitter and they just run x yeah or they just buy it yeah yeah oh man real estate's seen better and better by the second it's easy it's making it easier look it's not like that in the other markets right so let's talk about that because i think it's probably easier and better to learn to learn this stuff trading stocks i mean that's how you learn right yeah okay so anybody can open up a

a td i mean a td merit trade account whatever it is now another change i guess yeah td is still td merit trade but anybody can open an account like that you can open a trading account pretty simply um i think robin hood's dead now i think weeble is my go-to it's free great ui it's it's my go-to and for trading stocks. Yeah. And they just, uh, Canada was, uh, was restricted, but now they, uh, they allow Canada as well. Okay. So you're trading, you're trading Webull, which is cool. Okay. Um, so I set up my account with my $500 on Webull. Yep. So what should I do? All right. Your account set up and you know, I didn't make this up, but Warren Buffett did right by what you like is

what he says so the first thing i tell people is just start to look at the stocks and the charts of stuff that you like because you're naturally going to keep up with the news right so in my past life i was a diehard gamer so naturally i keep up with the tech sector i keep up with the chip sector right like nvidia amd intel uh tesla right just all the stocks in the tech sector i keep up with the chip sector right like nvidia amd intel uh tesla right just all the stocks in the tech sector that i like because i naturally keep up with the news and i and i tell you to pick four to six stocks to look at or four to six coins to look at and just watch how they move um you know i always like to say every stock or coin has their own personality like We know Apple

doesn't really move more than 2% to 3% per day. It's very rare unless something big is going on. Tesla, on the other hand, can rip your face off out of nowhere for 7% to 10%. Because Elon can open his mouth and say something crazy and crash the stock. Yeah. So everything kind of has their personality on how they move, and they all have the same levels that they trade at so that'll come with time and kind of learning the levels but for example like way back in the day when beyond was trading past uh i'm sorry around the hundreds like i knew uh uh over 117 121 was the next level 124 why did you know that level i had just been watching it either it would go to 121 it couldn't break right back down to 117 if it held 117 it would try to go

back right back over to 121 so you just start to watch it for a while start to watch it for a while um yeah i used to do that with mgm just bounce it up and down yeah because it would just it seemed to do that it just seemed to bounce yep like that forever and never really break through and never really break through the bottom, which it was always go up and down like that. And then my next piece of advice would be to learn some moving average strategies. That's going to be the very most simple way to learn kind of those bouncing areas. How do I learn? So what's a move? Explain that. So you can go on YouTube, type in moving average strategies, see what pops up. The very common ones are like the 100 simple moving average

or the 200 simple moving average. We use the eight and 34 a lot in my group. Which are what? They're a lot quicker moving averages. And is uh the 8 and 34 numbers are as well in the fibonacci cycle and the 144 moving average 144 is also in the fibonacci cycle i didn't know you don't understand any of that because i didn't understand any of that sorry it's outside a tool making a song based on the fibonacci sequence that's about all i got there so that's that's all i got. So back up, back up, back up. Okay.

So what does that mean? What, what does, what does that mean? What you just said? Okay. So in simple terms, a moving average is basically the price that something has been traded at.

So if we talk about the 200 day moving average, so you'll, if you turn on that indicator, you'll see this red line pop up on your screen. And that's the average price that that, uh, stock or coin was trading that for the last 200 days. So if it's trading above that, that's like quote unquote bullish. That's that means it's, uh, it'll continue going up. Right.

If it's trading under that moving average, then that means it's bearish and that it's going down and the trend is down. That would probably be the simplest way to explain. The simplest way to do it. So on the 200, so what were the, what were the ones you trained on the eight and? The eight and the 34. So you're looking at an eight day average? Yeah. And a 34 day average. Right. How do those numbers work together? So the, what you want to do with the moving averages is identify if the trend has started bullish. Like I was saying, the simple way, if it's above the red line,

the trend is going to go up. So what I look for when I'm using the 8 and the 34 is I'm looking for that 8-day line to cross above the green 34 line. So I make my 34 EMA green. Okay, so you have your 34-day line, and if the eight-day line goes over 34, now you're buying. That's my go, and I know the trend has started to go to the upside. Okay. And then whenever the white line, which is the eight, crosses down below the green line, which is the 34,

then I'm out or I'm either shorting it. Okay, because you're trying to get, you're trying, okay. So you're establishing the 34 day per average price and then you're watching it over to eight days to peak that. Okay. So that's how you're using those two numbers together. Okay. So buy stocks you like, figure out moving averages, whether you should be in or out of them. Right. Cause this, you know, most people give the stock advice of like, set it and forget it, just buy stock and forget about it. You find that to be bad advice? No. I mean, if you're in it for the long-term investing, then yeah, set it and forget it. If you're trading or swing trading,

you know, holding for one month, two, three months, there's very technical ways to do it. And even if you are someone who is a set and forget, just use what I was saying in a longer timeframe, like a daily or a weekly chart, you'll find those same things. Like if you just go on your phone right now, or if anyone is you open up the S and P 500 go on indicators, just add that. Let's do it.

Let's do it, man. So where am I going? Where am I going? Which platforms you got? I'm on Apple. Okay. that. Let's do it. Let's do it, man. So where am I going? Where am I going? Which platforms you got? I'm on Apple. Okay. Like what trading platform do I have on here?

Yeah. Do you have like a Webull or TradingView? I think I have TD Ameritrade on here, as we say. Okay. So what am I looking at? I'm going, I'm on Ameritrade. Yeah. Do they have charts, right?

Are you on the Thinkorswim app? Not on Thinkorswim, on my phone. Okay. Is it cool if I show it on my phone? Yeah, totally. Go ahead. Easy. Oh, man.

I got to redo my passwords. I updated my phone, and now none of my apps work. No, it's the worst. It's the worst. So we're just going to go with yours. I'm going to let that down. No problem. No, Thinkorswim is cool, but I don't, yeah, I don't have it on my phone.

Is Thinkorswim a TD Ameritrade app or is it just, it just works well with TD Ameritrade? It is. I don't know, I didn't know if they made it or not. Yeah, and then, what's their face? Charles Schwab actually purchased,

purchased TD. Right. I think that may be why on my phone, I can't get in there. It's my account. Maybe a Charles Schwab now. So let's go to COVID. I always like to show people this drop.

You go. Okay. All right. There you go. So zoom in. All right. There you go. So zoom in and you take a peek. That big drop there that we have, that is the low of the pandemic of 2020s, that big drop down. So you see when the candles are trading above the green line, how the asset is trending upwards. Yes. And then when the candles start to trade below the green line, the assets

start to trend down. And then the move is accelerated when the white line crosses down on the green line. Yeah. And then if you look about two, three months after the drop, when the candles go above the green line and the white line crosses above the green line, the asset starts to go up and that's on a daily timeframe chart. Yep. So if you're someone who's like, you know what? I don't want to trade.

I want to know when I can buy, when I can sell on the longest time. Just watching this one thing. Yeah. Either daily or the weekly charts, even better. What, and what, what chart is this? What would this, what is this? thing yeah either daily or the weekly charts even better what and what what chart is this what would this what is this that's a daily one right now this is the daily s&p 500 correct yep and you can go to right now if you want you just got to go all the to the right just go on the current time here is present day present day trend okay good day today we're uh bouncing on the green

still we're holding support so that's why i was saying if you don't know the levels the easiest way is to watch the white line and see if it goes above the green and then as long as the candles are staying above the green line, the asset's bullish. So this says buy, buy, buy is what this says. Correct. Correct. Okay. And the goal is to buy as close to the green line as possible because that's going to be the best average price to buy.

Because then it should push away from the green line as it goes up when everybody buys. Yep. And then the further away that you're trading above that green 34 the more likely that it's going to pull back to the 34 so just looking at this the green line is what the green line is a 34 ema and then the okay and then the white line is the eight day is the eight ema yep eight day training track and then the candles are just the dailies yeah got it so you're just this this is your main training strategy that's that's like the starting foundation of it okay yeah i got it it's funny i got my tattoo and the fibonacci is all tattooed right here it's like my whole strategy is on my

thigh oh so you're training 100 of the fibonacci strategy yeah yeah fibs moving averages and then supply and demand are my top three is there ai that'll spit this out now for you uh the issue is with ai trading at the moment is they don't get real-time data and real time processing right but you can't so that you know i watch this all the time and i was just jamie dimon who is ceo of of um chase chase yes and um no jamie dimon's to see is it chase he might be chase i'm not sure jamie dimon's but he's one of the ceos one of the big banks and i don't want him to speak because i know somebody's gonna blow me up in the comments and say jamie dimon's the ceo of this company i'm gonna say okay uh jamie diamond is the ceo of chase okay there you go there you go internet haters it was the ceo chase he said the other day that uh ai is going to

profoundly impact jobs in the financial sector because you know my thing is is if i think if you give ai real-time data with this stuff, they can execute trades on your behalf. My thing is, number one, you know, trades in any market, if you're trading Forex or cash or commodities or stocks or whatever else, it's supply and demand. Prices go up, prices come down based on demand. So it's kind of an interesting deal when you put AI out there because like if I have one AI, yes, it has the advantage because it's trading quicker than all of the human traders. Right. But if everybody's implementing this. Right. See what I'm saying?

Like, is it going to go? How's that going to work? So right now there is already algorithms trading massive scales. There's too much money in the stock market to just be controlled by humans. In the stock market, the first half hour, 45 minutes of the most volatile, that's the most human interaction. And then throughout the day,

their algos kick in. And what I've seen is a lot of people market algos as now AI because it's trendy and it's so wrong. But now it's throughout the day, it's algos doing it right. If an asset hits a certain price, the algos kick on, hey, we need to start buying. We need to start buying. If the asset hits a certain price, hey, we need to start selling. How I found out about the 144 moving average was from my mentor. He worked at Goldman Sachs for 16 years. He was a risk, risk analysis for them. The 144 is, is one of their algos. When asset goes above the 144,

their algo starts buying. That's why some of these lines that I show you are so pinpoint because there's some of the like algorithms buying that we know that some of the smarter folks are doing out there in the market. So you just know when A plus B equals C automatically with no human action whatsoever, this is going to start moving because the computer's going to start buying. Correct, correct.

And I'm sure they'll find a way to implement AI. It's just a matter of time. And I'm sure they're already doing it. I just really don't know about it. But I'm very curious to see how AI handles the human component of trading because trading on the massive firm level, they play battleship against each other all the time.

You got firms battling firms. Like, you know, for anyone that doesn't know crap about the market, I'm sure everyone heard about GameStop and AMC. I laugh about this all the time. People think, oh, it's retail. No one bothered to go on the AMC website or go on the GameStop website and look at the public investor information at the bottom of the website and see Vanguard, BlackRock, and I want to say Fidelity were buying massive, and I mean massive amounts of shares in both AMC and GameStop months before it was viral, three, four months before the squeeze.

And when the GameStop fiasco happened, I missed it. And my philosophy says never FOMO. So I did not FOMO. Yeah. So I looked at all the other short squeeze potentials. It was BlackBerry, Nokia, AMC. AMC started getting buzz around the higher level traders that I speak with. So what I do, I go on the AMC page and I went on the investor page and that's what I saw. And then I went on GameStop.

I'm like, oh crap, they were buying it too. So if you AMC, BlackRock, Fidelity. So you think the big firms are the ones that caused the short squeeze just to bury their competitor? No, it's without a doubt. Without a doubt they did. Not retail. And then hype was pumped down in the news like crazy, right?

More and more and more, more and more. And then of course retail got into and that added fuel to the flame but this was a battle of firms way before retail do you think the big firms have a marketing arm like a covert marketing arm that's on x in the discords pumping this shit out i would not be surprised whatsoever i mean it, it just seems like if this stuff happens and the magic is in public sentiment on some of this random stuff, it would behoove them to have, I mean, you talk about the Russians are employing bots

to try to change the election. Why would you not? Weren't we just talking about how you go on Instagram and all of a sudden you see like a ton of, oh, thank you, this person, 4X a sudden you see like a ton of oh thank you this person for x thank you this person for x yeah now there's bots literally on instagram that's why it's so toxic like just designed to make a comment to anger one side so dramatically and the same thing they have a bot to make to comment and make that side so angry it's just fuel to the fire so do i think they buy stuff to make people think yeah that's the nature of the game oh my god they've been pumping stocks like that as long as you can think of yeah this goes way way before i was even born they were pumping

penny stocks all right let's talk about jim grow some good old jim cramer because i think what they put his results up i think there's a there's a there's a ton of pages where you can say like this is stuff he said to buy it very rarely works out they uh they made a crypto uh like quote-unquote etf uh that literally bought the opposite of everything jim kramer did and that thing was pumping at 95 accuracy for a year at one point it was hilarious oh my god do you think that that he is bought and paid for in that aspect what's your what's your this is your opinion not we're not we're not slandering jim kramer we're just wondering if that's no i almost wonder i feel like jim kramer is the man of the people because everyone already knows what he says just do the

opposite and you win don't buy what kramer says that's's, that's, that's less. Are there any, are there any TV people that you would watch or shows that you would watch that you would take any of their advice besides doing the opposite? No, no. And I'm such a firm, I actually don't listen to the news. I'm pretty ignorant at times to the news and my own traders in my group, like, Oh, did you hear this happen? I'm like, Oh no, I should research that because everything happens in the chart first. It's in price action first before anyone opens their mouth. And I'll give you a great example of that.

CGC, cannabis stock. Cannabis just flew the last few months. It started getting bullish that 8 and 34 EMA cross. I'm like, it's time to buy. And then I saw crazy EMA cross. I'm like, it's time to buy. And then I saw crazy volume coming in. I'm like, Oh, this is a buy signal. A month later, Germany now legalizes weed. Canada just got crazy tax breaks. And last August, there was the most volume ever in cannabis stocks, even though they were all-time lows. And again, cannabis had a crazy pump. And then two months later, they said, oh,

it's probably going to be illegal on the federal level. So it's always out in the market, in the charts first, because that's the one thing that won't lie, price action. What are people buying and selling for? Yeah. Well, of course, you know, the best stock traders in the world are sitting in the Senate, the house of representatives in Washington. Yeah. Pelosi's best trader in the world. Do you think we'll ever see a time where they'll take that and make that illegal for elected officials to have stock portfolios? They should. I did see something just pop up kind of recently in the news and a little bit last year that, you know, like a vote is getting passed that Congress should not be allowed to trade and the Senate shouldn't be allowed to trade. And we'll see if that gets passed. Yeah, I doubt it. Yeah.

Right after term limits, they'll pass that. And Pelosi's husband is a hedge fund manager. Yeah. Yeah. Might be a little bit of a conflict. Yeah. Might be a little bit of a conflict. Yeah. Might be a little bit of a conflict there, but there you go. So would you recommend people getting into the game, start with stocks over crypto and stuff?

No, not at all. Not at all? Okay. I recommend if you do go into crypto, do not get distracted by the stories of 100 hundred went into a million i've been doing this for eight years i've never done that i have made a million off of memes and most of the stories are baloney so just follow the good coins and just follow the chart and just learn learn some charting so for you it's like the decision is always in the math there's no gut feeling to it there's no hype to it there's no anything else you're just it's all on the charts so for my normal trading yes for meme coins like i said it's kind of a different game yeah in meme coins you're

trading the psychological aspect you're trading to market cap instead of price like in the meme coin the goal is to get to a five million market cap and then a 10 and then 100 and then 500 and then meaning what explain that to people that don't know what that means right so the goal right and what makes the meme coin and the shit coin market so lucrative is the fact that you can make crazy multiples right just the other day i put one solana coin which was valued at 200 in minutes it turned to 44 and I exited. So I made like $8,000 in just minutes because I got in when the market cap was like $300,000. The coin had just launched. Oh, and then it grew and grew and grew and grew and it split. Essentially,

you're splitting is what's happening. Right. So if you find a coin that is good, locked liquidity, you know, a cult-like following uh their telegram chat is popping already you get under five million you're in the sweet spot now you want to get to the 10 million the 50 the 100 but when do you know to jump out though when you jump when you jump off the bus oh that's like are you trying to jump out at 99 are you trying to jump out at 75 i always take profits along the way especially once i've doubled my position, just, just cover costs, rather free money. Um, or as they say, you know, diamond hands hold all the way up if you want, but that rarely works. I recommend unless you like, Hey, like I know I'm putting a thousand in this shit coin. It goes to zero. I'm not going to be upset about it.

I'm okay. Then by all means diamond hand away. But if you put in a thousand bucks, it's up 30%. And if that goes down, you're going to be worried. You got to start taking profits. Well, I think, do you think there's a correlation between all of these meme corn trading and the legalization of gambling online with sports betting? Because this is just what I kind of think, right? I kind of look at this and I look at, they made kind of sports betting because i because this is just what i kind of think right i kind of look at this and i look at they made kind of sports betting legal in most states if not all of them and these you know fraternity bros whatever get their get on their apps and they're betting on a game and this is essentially a casino that's open 24 hours a day seven days a week yeah um you know what ever since they started

doing that and i'm not going to name the names of the influencers because i actually follow a lot of them they're really funny but now you're seeing a lot of the major influencers or old um really good twitch streamers like gaming streamers now that like price picks fan duels and all these other platforms are just giving these influencers millions of dollars to promote online gambling, it's gotten pretty crazy. You could definitely say meme coins is the next step, right? If I'm doing crazy gambling on sports bets, of course I'm going to gamble on meme coins. Yeah. How much of the money in meme coins do you think is dumb money?

What percentage? 95%. 90%. And I'll tell you because... I'm in the 95, so there you go. A lot of these projects are all ran by the same people. It's the same code. I've been in the trenches where I've seen five coins launched in one day.

It's copy and pasted the same contract. They just change name of the coin they've they pay for artwork they pay for memes they pay for a website it gets launched all within an hour boom boom boom boom it's the same teams and there are these basically united states you think or no uh somewhere in the u.s somewhere in asia uh south korea is killing the meme coin rugging game uh but they're a lot of the big players are in the u.s believe it or not a lot of the big players are in the u.s and the top players in this how much do you think they're making a day that are launching these things what do you think they're making six figures easily six figures a day yeah sometimes seven if it's successful like the for example uh the person

that launched pepe now there's it's called andy and it's like pepe's best friend and then there's andy on base and just keeps going right uh shiba came uh i got in shiba wasn't one of the first but made great change on it and then uh kisha inu came out. I saw Kisha Inu first week, jumped on it right away because the hype from Doge trickled to SHIB and then Kishu. And then Akita Inu launched. And I saw Akita like day one we got in that. And then like all these other Inu dog coins just kept popping out. It's mainly the same teams.

So to be clear, there's no real intrinsic value with this stuff other than training it oh no they're garbage yeah that's yeah earlier when i was saying how do i identify something if if it's a spin-off of a successful one already then that's just give it a little bit more attention when you consider it. Just give it a little, a little, a little stop. And how many of these things are launching every day? Thousands. And how many of them are hitting every day? Handful. Handful. Yeah. I raised my hand so I could go one, two, three. Yeah. Yeah. Handful of them. Yeah. But what, but people are looking and then when they find the three, runs summer summer so bad and i'll be the first one to say it uh so right after i turned that one solana into 44 solana i was on the phone with my buddy i was a few shots of mescal deep i was in mexico hence the tan um and he goes yo

charmander coin i was like charmander i was like pokemon i was like freaking love pokemon i was like five soul the second i put the five soul in instant gone coin rugged like they didn't even care to let it wait the second and i was just i was like i just laughed the second i put the five coins in immediately taken some people will just launch a coin if they get one coin they'll sell it boom if they get one buy they'll just rug it and be done with it yeah i don't even think i looked to see if the liquidity was locked or they had a website yeah i was having a good time i said charmander i just made 44 i was like all right let me risk five over here and i was like all right i'm gonna go back to the pool now yeah maybe i shouldn't be drinking and deciding on pokemon characters i like to to do this. Yeah, man.

So if somebody wants to learn more about this and they want to, they want to get more involved with what you're doing, because obviously this is a really, you know, look, stocks is one thing, but if you're going to get into trading these coins, like these guys do, like try, you got to be in the know

and you got to be really detailed in knowing it. So if they want to, if they want to hook up with you and really learn how to learn these charts and learn how to do it, how do they, how do they find you? Uh, just go. It's easier to find my business one than me. Just go on stock unlocked. One word stock unlocked. One word stock unlocked. One word. Uh, my account is it is, it's right there. It says founder A underscore Moravian, which is my last name. It's only there because there's just a lot of fakes.

Just because anyone that's in the crypto scene has a ton of fake accounts that try to scam people out of crypto. So just make sure you don't follow any scam accounts. And if anyone DMs you or if I quote unquote dm you say hey i'll trade for you it's not me it's not you yeah so how much is it to join stock along what am i what am i going to get if i join uh it's 249 a month which is completely reasonable or 2400 for the year okay so you get save about a little bit discount sure yeah um and you get uh stocks you get crypto, you get crypto, and you get Web3, meaning like the meme coins, the NFTs. These are picks.

Yeah. People are still trading NFTs. That's still a thing. That's not coming back, is it? So Ordinal, which are Bitcoin NFTs, are coming back. That's a whole, like. I thought that was dead. I thought that was.

They're back. Oh, was uh they're back oh god they're back so i mean because dude because didn't like what was it logan paul or justin bieber bought one for like 750 grand that's worth like 10 bucks an hour oh you're thinking board apes board apes yeah oh yeah those are way down in the pooper yeah way down they went oh yeah they're hurting they're down like 70 80 eath like because i keep you know it's funny when when they built those everybody's like well they're gonna get one with the utility they're gonna get with the utility and everybody used to when it first started love to attach real estate to nfts we're gonna do smart contracts and we're gonna trade real estate on smart like dude you're missing one major component of that which is

every time a piece of property trades hands u.s government gets paid transfer tax right you think you're going to somehow circumvent that you're nuts like there's no chance that that is going to work until they solve i mean like look i'm not saying that eventually title might not be stored on the blockchain which would be easier but you know the fact that you could just oh Oh, trade this NFT and you'll own that property. Hell no. Right. Hell no.

Right. It's just, yeah. You uncle Sam wants his dollars. Of course. Yeah. Once his dollars. All right.

So cool. So with that and within that, you're going to get a stock picture of that. Are you going to get basic information on how to read these charts? You're going to get, is there a workflow? Yeah. So in the stock section,

if you get obviously just the stock chat floor, but if you get a weekly watch list that we put out, which are two top picks that we think will work out, you get a daily watch list, which is four stock trades a day. And then you get daily option trades. And then we also pay for some software. It's basically a payment for order flow. That's what Robinhood sells to Citadel that was got squeezed by MC. But we're basically able to see what the smart money is buying in stocks and options. So kind of following smart money. Got it. Which is, I mean, anytime you can do that, that's the way to do it. Yeah, big tool.

Or follow dumb money, which is the opposite of what Jim Cramer says. Right. And that's it. All right. Well, dude, dude i appreciate you it was a fascinating conversation i hope if you're listening to this you didn't get too like oh i don't know what this guy's talking about it's a little over your head blah blah we tried to we tried to dumb it down for you today i know it would some of whatever my head so don't feel that dumb but look man this is the new this is the new economy right you're gonna need to like I just genuinely feel those days of having that 401k that you put stocks in and it returns at the S&P 6%, you let it go. You got to

get a handle on your finances and you've got to get some control. So if you don't have a firm understanding of how to take control of your financial stuff, there's so much information available now. And again, I'm not one that pushes products here or pushes people that I don't know, but you came so highly recommended to me by somebody that I respect. And if they say you're the guy to educate people how to do this, then you're the guy. I appreciate that. So congratulations. So look him up and remember, guys, we're going to be back next week with another great episode. But again, dude, if you're at a place where your financial situation is not where you want it to be,

stop drifting along with the current man. You got to escape the drift, stand up, start swimming, do something, take control. We'll see you next week. What's up everybody. Thanks for joining us for another episode of escaping the drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escaping the drift.com. You can join our mailing list,

but do me a favor. If you wouldn't mind, throw up that five star review, give us a share, do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us.

But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.