Chat With Traders

Sam Gaer’s career spans several major shifts in market structure — from the open-outcry pits of COMEX to high-frequency trading and now crypto derivatives.

Sam began his career as a teenage runner on the COMEX floor during the gold boom of the early 1980s before becoming a copper pit trader himself. While most traders relied purely on instinct, Sam was already experimenting with technology — building early pricing tools that helped identify inefficiencies in spread markets.

His path eventually led beyond the trading floor into exchange technology and market infrastructure, including building trading software that was later acquired by the New York Mercantile Exchange. In recent years, Sam has focused on crypto markets, where he applies traditional derivatives frameworks to volatility, options, and digital asset trading.

In this episode, Sam shares insights from decades of experience across multiple market regimes and discusses how trading edge evolves as markets and technology continue to change.

In this episode, we explore:

· Getting introduced to markets as a teenager

· Life inside the COMEX copper trading pits

· Early use of computers to price commodity spreads

· Inefficiencies in open-outcry markets

· Building exchange technology and selling Trading Gear to NYMEX

· The transition from pit trading to electronic markets

· Market structure lessons from traditional derivatives markets

· Why Sam shifted his focus to crypto markets

· Opportunities in crypto options and derivatives

· Convexity, volatility, and institutional trading frameworks in digital assets

About the guest:

Sam Gaer, Chief Investment Officer of the Directional Strategy at Monarq Asset Management, has more than three decades of experience across derivatives trading, exchange technology, and quantitative strategy development.

He previously served as Chief Information Officer of the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX), where he helped modernize the exchange’s trading infrastructure. Earlier in his career, he was a floor trader on the COMEX commodities exchange and later founded
Trading Gear, a technology firm whose trading software was acquired by NYMEX. Sam has also launched and managed quantitative trading strategies focused on derivatives and volatility markets, and today works on institutional trading approaches within digital asset markets.

Links + Resources:

· Website:  https://www.monarq-am.com

· Email:  [email protected]

Sponsor of Chat With Traders Podcast:

 Trade The Pool:  ⁠http://www.tradethepool.com

Time Stamps:

Please note: Exact times will vary depending on current ads.

00:00   Intro and Background

01:48   Early career: COMEX runner to copper pit trader06:40   Programming background and early trading automation16:19   TradingGear: pivot to exchange software and NYMEX sale / CIO role21:09   Trading style evolution: scalping to event-driven and electronic trading23:42   High frequency trading, FINRA experience and entrepreneurship25:09   Transition into crypto: Katana Financial and early crypto market making28:01   Crypto derivatives focus: options, convexity and strategies34:19   Recent crypto market decline: causes, liquidations and regulatory uncertainty39:51   Institutional adoption, ETFs (IBIT) and market-structure impacts42:57   Tokenization, real-world assets and digital asset treasuries (DATs)

56:17   Reflections on markets, challenges and use of AI

58:36   Closing remarks and contact information

 

Trading Disclaimer:

 Trading in the financial markets involves a risk of loss. Podcast episodes and other content produced by Chat With Traders are for informational or educational purposes only and do not constitute trading or investment recommendations or advice.

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When Dave Mabe backtested his strategy, it outperformed his own discretionary trading — and changed how he approached everything. In this episode, we discuss gapping breakouts, expectancy, systematic trading, drawdowns, and the reality gap between backtests and live execution. A practical conversation for traders serious about building durable edge.

In this episode, we explore:

·        How Dave got introduced to markets: From early exposure to investing through his family to actively seeking more control over his capital and moving from swing trading into day trading.

·        Why rules matter: The transition from discretionary decisions to systematic frameworks — and why trading without a process is a fast path to inconsistency.

·        Backtesting as a “superpower”: What backtesting really does for strategy development and confidence in your edge.

·        Reconciling backtests with real life: Practical realities of execution, slippage, and market structure — and how to build a feedback loop so your live results get closer to your simulations.

·        Drawdowns and mindset: How to handle periods where a strategy doesn’t behave as expected, and why many traders quit in drawdowns rather than at all-time highs.

·        Scaling a trading business: The difference between scaling size versus scaling breadth — and why uncorrelated strategies matter.

·        Practical first step for systematic traders: How to start adding structure to your trading with backtesting, even if you’re not a programmer.

 

About the guest:

 

Dave has been a professional trader and technologist for over two decades. As a former CTO of Trade-Ideas, he has unique experience at the intersection of algorithm design, real-time market data, and automated execution. Outside trading, he writes a popular daily newsletter on backtesting and systematic strategy development, and hosts the Line
Your Own Pockets podcast focused on systematic approaches to markets.

Links + Resources:

· Link to Better Backtesting —Dave’s free multi-day email course on building strategies and improving them over time.

· Trade-Ideas, Amibroker, RealTest — examples of backtesting and strategy development platforms discussed in context.

 

Sponsor of Chat With Traders Podcast:

 Trade The Pool:  http://www.tradethepool.com

Time Stamps:

Please note: Exact times will vary depending on current ads.

00:00 Intro and Background

08:29 Stock Selection and Systematic Trading Rules 11:32   Position Sizing, Expectancy and Risk Management 16:50   Discovering Backtesting and First Backtests 18:40   Backtesting Principles, Sample Size and Common Pitfalls 20:34   Gradual Automation and Live Trading Implementation 22:17   Trading Journal and Reconciling Backtest vs Live 27:27   Scaling through Automation: More Trades, Better Results 29:26   Drawdowns, Psychology and Handling Setbacks 34:14   Tools, AI and Software for Backtesting and Coding 39:56   Common Trading Myths Debunked (Partials, Stops) 48:01   Getting Started: Practical Steps, Resources and Closing

 

Trading Disclaimer:

 

Trading in the financial markets involves a risk of loss. Podcast episodes and other content produced by Chat With Traders are for informational or educational purposes only and do not constitute trading or investment recommendations or advice.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Ian sits down with John Assaraf, entrepreneur, behavioral neuroscience educator, and founder of NeuroGym, for a conversation about the invisible forces that shape performance — long after planning, analysis, and good intentions are in place.

John shares his personal journey from a turbulent upbringing to building multiple multimillion-dollar businesses, and the pivotal moment at age 19 that reframed how he thought about success, identity, and commitment. From there, the discussion moves into the neuroscience behind habits, automatic behavior, fear, and why people often snap back to familiar results — even when they know what to do.

This is not a trading tactics episode. It’s a conversation about execution, follow-through, and the human side of performance — in trading, business, health, and life.

About the guest:

John Assaraf is a serial entrepreneur who has built multiple multimillion-dollar companies, including helping scale a real estate organization to over $4 billion in annual sales and co-founding a technology company that later went public on the NASDAQ. He is the founder
and CEO of NeuroGym, where he focuses on applying neuroscience to
performance, habits, and behavior change. John is also the author of several New York Times bestselling books, translated into dozens of languages, and has been featured in films such as The Secret, where many people were first introduced to his work.

 

Links + Resources:

 Free eBook: The
Power of Visualization

 

 Sponsor of Chat With Traders Podcast:

 Trade The Pool:  http://www.tradethepool.com

 

Time Stamps:

Please note: Exact times will vary depending
on current ads.

 

00:00   Intro and Background

11:16   Mindset Shift: Interested vs. Committed

11:46   Behavioral Neuroscience and Goal Achievement

16:17   Conscious vs. Subconscious Mind

17:12   Creating Permanent Behavioral Changes

21:22   Emotional Regulation and Decision Making

25:30   Overcoming Self-Sabotage

35:20   AddressingFear in Decision Making

42:37   Inner Size: Exercising the Mind

44:27   Self-Sabotage and Financial Set Points

48:21   The Science of Goal Setting

50:17   Visualizing and Embodying Goals

54:40   How to reach John

 

Trading Disclaimer:

Trading in the financial markets involves a risk of loss. Podcast episodes and other content produced by Chat With Traders are for informational or educational purposes only and do not constitute trading or investment recommendations or advice.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Over the years, we’ve recorded hundreds of conversations with traders across different markets, strategies, and generations. And while no two
trading paths look the same, certain moments tend to repeat — not moments of big wins or dramatic calls, but quieter turning points. The moments where something shifts internally. Where progress depends less on the market… and more on how the trader evolves. In this special
episode of Chat With Traders, we revisit excerpts from past
conversations with traders who reached those inflection points — moments that reshaped how they thought about risk, discipline, accountability, and longevity. It’s a collection of turning points — the decisions, realizations, and hard lessons that changed the trajectory of a trading career.

Links + Resources:

Episode039     Tom Dante      Episode236     Lance BreitsteinEpisode249     Jack KelloggEpisode036     Peter BrandtEpisode255     Vincent BruzzeseEpisode212     Kristjan KullamägiEpisode286     Jason ShapiroEpisode260     Patrick PeterssonEpisode259     Lukas Frölich (The Short Bear)Episode163     John “Rambo” MoultonEpisode250     Sunny Harris

Time Stamps:

Please note: Exact times will vary depending on current ads.

 00:00 – Intro and Background

01:10 — Tom Dante - A moment of accountability that forced change — and lit a competitive fire.02:35 — Lance Breitstein - Why the best traders bet exponentially when
the odds are truly skewed.04:00 — Jack Kellogg - The cost of obsession, burnout, and relearning how to live after the grind.05:25 — Peter Brandt - Market tuition, mistakes, and committing fully to a
process (Featured in Jack Schwager’s Market Wizards)06:55 — Vincent Bruzzese - How wealth mindset — not strategy — shapes risk and decision-making08:25 — Kristjan Kullamägi - Scaling up, earning the right to push risk, and
long-term conviction
09:55 — Jason Shapiro - Contrarian trading, positioning over prediction, and embracing discomfort (Featured in Unknown Market Wizards)11:25 — Patrick Petersson - The lesson learned at absolute rock bottom — and the cost of not cutting losses.12:55 — Lukas Frölich (The Short Bear) - Running trading like a business — and how progress compounds quietly.14:25 — John “Rambo” Moulton - Detaching from money to trade with clarity and consistency15:55 — Sunny Harris - Taking control after realizing professionals can lose,
too.17:30 — Closing reflections20:20 — Outro / End

Sponsor of Chat With Traders Podcast:

     Trade The Pool:  http://www.tradethepool.com

Trading Disclaimer: 

Trading in the financial markets involves a risk of loss. Podcast episodes and other content produced by Chat With Traders are for informational or educational purposes only and do not constitute trading or investment recommendations or advice.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We’re joined by Jamaal Ghauri, a trader and fund manager who began his journey unusually early — first exposed to crypto markets as a teenager during Bitcoin’s early adoption phase, before moving into stocks and eventually options.

Jamal walks through the full arc of his development as a trader: early overconfidence, aggressive options bets, a rapid run-up followed by a major drawdown, and the hard lessons that ultimately forced him to rethink risk, position sizing, and process. From there, he explains how he rebuilt by focusing on more structured setups, volatility awareness, and consistency over time.

We discuss the evolution of his core strategies — including swing trades, breakout-style setups, and short-term options structures — and how those approaches are now applied within a multi-strategy fund he launched in 2025. Jamal also shares how he thinks about trade distribution, win rates versus loss severity, and why discipline and risk management ultimately mattered more than finding the “perfect” setup.

As always, this conversation is about understanding how a trader thinks, how strategies evolve over time, and how real-world risk shows up differently than it does on paper.

Links + Resources:


Connect with Jamaal on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamaal-ghauri-282947172/

Time Stamps:

Please note: Exact times will vary depending on current ads.

00:00 – Intro and Background

02:37 – Early Interest in Financial Markets

07:08 – Transition to Stock Trading

08:46 – Early Stock Trading Experiences

09:37 – Shift to Options Trading

10:32 – Learning Options Trading

11:22 – Developing a Trading Strategy

14:51 – First Successful Trades

19:04 – Account Growth and Setbacks

21:00 – Impact of the COVID Crash

32:06 – New Trading Strategies Post-Crash

37:24 – Becoming Profitable

38:22 – Performance in 2022 and 2023

41:07 – Establishing a Hedge Fund

44:40 – Hedge Fund Strategies

50:34 – Current Challenges and Advice

Sponsor of Chat With Traders Podcast:

Trade The Pool:  ⁠http://www.tradethepool.com⁠

Trading Disclaimer:

Trading in the financial markets involves a risk of loss. Podcast episodes and other content produced by Chat With Traders are for informational or educational purposes only and do not constitute trading or investment recommendations or advice.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices