Primary Focus: Long and Short-Bias, Contrarian / Countertrending, Mean-Reversion, Momentum Trader on Small and Large Cap Stocks Using Tape Reading and Technical Analysis
Upon graduation from UC Irvine with his Bachelor’s Degree in Civil/Structural Engineering, expectations were high as he was excited to enter the workforce like everyone else and start his career as an engineer, however a little thing called the recession was taking place which meant employers were not hiring.
With no job prospects and buried in student loan debt, he was forced to take up a minimum wage job at a local computer electronics store for 6 months, something he calls the most humbling experience of his life, despite holding an engineering degree.
He finally was able to find a proper office job after the 6 months but with the recession still in full force, it was well below the average engineering salary. Seeing how beggars can’t be choosers, so he had to take it to get his foot in the door. He concurrently attended graduate school at CSU Long Beach to pursue his Master’s Degree in Engineering as well to pad his resume in the hopes of looking more attractive to prospective employers.
At his new workplace, he met a co-worker who somehow despite not having a high salary from his job, drove a Lotus Elise. Intrigued, he inquired this coworker through what means was he able to afford such a luxurious item. His response? Trading stocks, and an idea was born.
Realizing that IPOs weren’t the answer, he started doing some research and discovered penny stocks and the website InvestorsHub. After major losses he slowly, and painfully, learned about the nature of penny stocks but was able to acquire enough knowledge and developed the proper mindset needed to have a winning strategy in trading. He soon was able to take his $6,000 original account to over $43,000. However, his recklessness led him to blow up his account in the summer of 2012 and left him with only $7,000 and considered quitting trading.
After a 3 month hiatus to regather his thoughts, he came back with a stronger mindset. He studied hard and taught himself to control his emotions. He gave it one last shot with his remaining $7,000 in December of 2012 and has since found his stride and developed his winning strategy that has made him one of the most respected traders in the community.
In March of 2014, after years of sneaking trades behind his boss’s back on the job and having his biggest profitable month ever, banking approximately $150,000 in February 2014 during the OTCBB marijuana hype, he decided that he had made enough profits from trading to retire from his day job and drop out of his Master’s Degree program while still in his 20s.
Max’s main approach to trading is taking high percentage scalp setups for fast profits particularly at the opening bell. He popularized strategies such as the washout long, panic pop short, and the halt and resume washout long, of which he has lots of free content demonstrating these strategies at work via his YouTube channel.
Max also believes that psychology is the key to a trader’s success or failure and therefore he prioritizes the minimization of stress and emotions while trading by making it as fun as possible to calm his nerves as well as entertain his fellow traders with catch phrases such as #TraderNap , #TraderLifestyle, #GettingPaid, #TraderProblems and of course, #BigMacs.
He continues to rely on trading as his main source of income to this day, making several times over what he would have made had he remained at his regular day job as an engineer.
Max had a the best year of his trading career in 2020 as he reset his account to $50,000 in May and generated over $4 Million in profits by the end of the year. To see the broker statements verifying these gains, see here.
You can follow Max and his shenanigans on Instagram @madazlifestyle.
“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” – Wayne Gretzky
To learn even
more about me:
Check out my interview with Chat With Traders
