Trading Wisdom From Marty

An interview by
EmperorBTC

@EmperorBTC @Rush_BTC
 Introduction

Welcome to the next edition of the Crypto

Wizards Series.

In this edition, we will interview a high-volume

trader with half a billion in monthly trading
volume.

He managed to turn his life drastically from an

art school dropout to a fund owner that does
billions in maker volume a year, has happy
clients and offers best-in-class returns.

He also makes himself available to the masses

via Twitter and Telegram, responding to
questions, making book recommendations and
sharing resources for free.

This interview is a must-read for everyone who

is part of the Trading Mentorship as well. Please
check the Mentorship Index if you are looking
for a zero-to-expert trading tutorial series. Let’s
get started.

Love,
EmperorBTC

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1. When did you start trading and how did you get into
trading Crypto. Please give us your trading background.

It has been a few cycles for marty. Marty’s friends were buying drugs
online with bitcoin which lead to the reading of the Bitcoin
Whitepaper in 2013ish. The price was around $100. Marty bought a
few coins from his friends from whatever wage cu*k job earnings he
had, not much at the time.

Marty worked in a restaurant at the

time. In the following months bitcoin
did a 10x and there was potential.
This wasn’t trading, this was just
buying and holding. With a basic
understanding and grasp of what this
new technology could be, marty
continued to accumulate coins as
price fell 80%+ over the following
years. Martys first cycle. The trading
really began in 2017 with the break
of $1000.

Marty had a mentor in the bitcoin space, he was a mathematical

genius and was living off bitcoin he mined at the early days, a real OG
in the space who guided marty on how crypto cycles worked, and
why and how bitcoin works. At this point it was more about holding
and accumulating coins, not trading. A little more on background
later.

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2. What is your education and/or
professional background?

Marty = Wage cu*k turned trader. No Harvard

math, no degree... for what it’s worth Marty is
an art school dropout.

3. What was your starting capital and since your position

size is so large right now, can you talk about your current
size and capital? How has your trading evolved as you
moved from smaller to larger capital?

It started with a few hundred dollars

which turned into $30,000 at one point.
It was 2017 pre pump when the trading
journey began, and remember a few
months later that $30,000 going to a
few hundred dollars... Marty’s friend
loaned Marty $5,000 right after this, and
bitcoin price went from $1000 to
$20,000, ICO’s were doing 10x’s in a few
days, XRP was going wild and that
$5,000 flipped into a lot more a lot lot
lot lot more.

Marty knew NOTHING at this point besides flipping shitcoins, it was

the typical TA... lines, levels, support/resistance... whatever you want
to call it... which are defined by options mostly. Call walls and Put
walls are your true support and resistance, in-between is all noise.

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It was at the time of making some good monies flipping shitcoins,
Marty was getting into an exotic car scene with a friend who owned
some fancy ones, and Marty got a job offer to work at a real fund
and leave the wage cu*k life. Pure Luck.

At this fund, Marty learned real trading, and how to make real
monies. Marty now runs his own fund, we do billions in maker
volume a year, have happy clients and return good monies.

4. How long did it take you to get profitable? Are there any
rough patches or losing streaks even now? How to best
deal with them?

Not to repeat the previous section,

but the ride has been from
hundreds of dollars, to thousands,
followed by complete failure to
redemption. Longest losing streak
would be around a whole quarter
when monies was lost.

Do not try to At that point when losses start piling

make it all on, it's best to take time away from
back in one the screen, and LOWER position size.
trade, it Do not try to make it all back in one
trade, it doesn’t work.
doesn’t work.

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5. Why options? And how did you get into trading
options? Were you always trading options?

Options are the best financial instrument to position

yourself in any trading position imaginable. Options are a
deep hole and anyone can go down the rabbit hole, it can
be very simple or very complex.

Options allow you to hedge, trade directionally, and tap

into more leverage than perps. Most funds use options,
this is where marty learned. We originally were only using
options to hedge our spot book. Now we use options 80%
of the time.

6. Do you only trade options? Can you talk in detail about

hedging?

We mostly sell options, but we use

futures to hedge and hold spot to use as
collateral for our option plays. A simple
strategy is Delta Neutral. From our good
friends at Merrill Edge "Delta is the
theoretical estimate of how much an
option's value may change given a $1
move UP or DOWN in the underlying
security. The Delta values range from -
1(puts) to +1(calls), with 0 representing
an option where the premium barely
moves relative to price changes in the
underlying stock."

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If you buy a call your delta is positive and you have a directional risk,
you can sell futures contracts to become delta neutral, therefore you
have no directional disk. Options hedging has become easier with
tools provided Greeks Live with their One Click Delta Hedging of your
portfolio. Tools like this are a game changer for novice traders, to
fund managers.

7. Why did you shift from Perps and futures? Is there

enough liquidity in crypto options?

Options in tradfi rule the markets... meaning

there is more options volume than shares
traded on most larger stocks. This creates
real momentum and bias as to what direction
the market moves. In crypto this is not the
case, options are gaining traction and
popularity.

In terms of liquidity, there are institutional

liquidity providers available to execute Block
trades (large trades)... Paradigm is an
institutional liquidity provider for Deribit,
Bybit, and CME crypto options. This isn’t to
say that we don’t trade Perps or futures, as these are needed in any
sort of portfolio management. We mostly focus on selling overpriced
options to willing buyers.

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8. Do you think there is an early bird advantage to being
involved with options when a majority of the crypto
market is not?

Yes, for now the crypto options market is somewhat inefficient,

meaning you can find wrongly priced options fairly easily and make
money from those options.

Also with learning a skill that most are not involved in gives you time
to learn more before others, and advance/excel before others,
maybe even allowing you to teach or help others later.

Of course as traders we are in this market to make monies FIRST,

then we can help others along the way.

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9. What are some of the resources you recommend for
beginners in options trading? Some resources in your
pinned tweet are quite hard, how can a complete
beginner grasp them? Should a novice trader get into
options in the first place?

The internet is full of free

resources, from books -
articles - and videos. As with
all information on the
internet there is a lot of it and
most is just noise or
nonsense.

There are many types of

traders... from PA - Options -
breakout - spot only traders,
you just have to find what
works for you. You can solely trade options and trade the options’
price not the price of the underlying.

As for day 1 learners Marty would still recommend the books list in
pinned tweet as many of the simple questions would be answered
fairly rapidly. The information is there in that list for beginners to
super advanced... If advising day 1 options learning, would lean
towards people learn how options are best to hedge or generate
income from your spot holdings.

Note:
Unfortunately, the book list got removed by Twitter because of FED
issues.
Marty will update them soon

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10. What are the various data sources you use to analyze
options?

We use Genesis Vol, Laevitas. These should be enough information

for most options traders.

11. Can you give a Pathway for a trader looking to learn and
emulate what you have done in crypto options trading?
How should a trader start to learn trading from the
beginning. If you had to do it all over again, how would
you do it?

If had to do it all over again,

would delete twitter, dive into
books/articles, and start the
journey.

Unfortunately you're not going

to learn trading from copy
trading someone’s telegram,
discord, etc.

If you’re going to skip a real education about

markets from finance school, MBA, CFA... You're not going
then what makes you think you're going to to learn trading
learn from a discord? Of course there are from copy trading
great people to point you to the right someone’s
resources, but still people need to learn telegram, discord,
mostly on their own. Its not an easy path. etc

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12. If someone is skipping the finance degree just like you
did, what are the benefits/drawbacks of that? Which
path is faster and how much does having an MBA and
then choosing to trade crypto help one?

Marty thinks a degree at Harvard or

equivalent puts you one step ahead of
non ivy school plebs. Specifically
meaning the people you meet at these
establishments can become future
business partners, references for jobs,
etc. You are easily rubbing shoulders
with the right people at these
establishments and it allows an
individual the opportunity to excel
ahead of someone who went to community college 10000%.

Not saying that any other college or degree is bullshit or you can’t
make it in life, or that you can’t meet the right people, just simply
stating when your network grows more at these “fine”
establishments. You can also skip the degree - go into workforce and
then go for a CFA after x amount of specific work hours (which is
hard).

A draw back of no degree is if you started trying to trade on your

own, you just clicked buttons, never were profitable, never learned
real risk management, options, futures, etc…. Then unfortunately no
one would hire you. Just like any skill, if you know it and can show
your worth and skill then some employers don't care, especially in
the crypto space more than tradfi.

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13. Would you be willing to share some strategies that you
currently deploy and how many assets you track?

We keep it simple. We mostly trade BTC

and ETH. On Deribit our Options are coin
collateralized in BTC and ETH. We try not
to overcomplicate it, and we don’t do
Defi. It’s hard to come back to your clients
and tell them you lost all their monies on
some unregulated exchange and some
hacker ran a smart contract to drain the
treasury... Props to the folks that made a
bunch of money onchain... but that’s not
our style.

A simple strategy involves holding spot, let's say we hold 1ETH, we

can sell 1 ETH option to willing buyers that think they can make
money. We are the sellers, and they are the buyers. Right now the
November 4th, ETH $1700 call is $38 or 0.0245ETH. We can sell 1
ETH November 4th $1700 call for 0.0245ETH ($38) and if the price of
ETH is under $1700 by November 4th, we make $38... on 1 eth this is
not much... but on 1000ETH that is $38,000. Do not take this trade,
this is a simple example.

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14. What can you tell the readers without diluting your edge
that no other successful options traders wants to let out?

Marty thinks that most options traders want to (and do)

cast a dark cloud over options… as in… these are for US
smarty pants/wealthy folks and not for YOU plebs. Yet
options are just another financial tool and skill anyone
can focus on and learn.

Options traders want to say options are too complex, too

risky, etc - all negative things and never provide
reasonable resources for people to start learning. The
Easiest way to use options is to hedge against your spot
exposure, and basic selling Out the money options on
your spot holdings to generate income.

15. Do you see your trading edges being depleted?

Marty thinks manual execution is on the

way out, unless with major size and long
term holdings, meaning you’re going to
buy 100k+ of a stock and sit on it for
life. Or sitting on a coin in size, more
buying and holding will outlast manual
traders in the future.

Most probably won’t agree with this

take, but for sake of mental health its
probably best. All trading is leaning
more and more towards towards computers and algo’s. We are
expanding into more algo trading as we enter 2023.

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16. What are your biggest mistakes/regrets on trading?

In hindsight there is always the wish or thought that

you should have bet more or cut the losing trade
faster... at this point it all becomes so unemotional,
which is hard for most people to overcome. In terms
of regrets, like many of us... we wish we could of
BOUGHT MORE.

17. Any last advice for aspiring traders?

Something most important for them to
takeaway from this interaction with you.

Marty wouldn’t wish trading on his worst

enemy, there is major ups and downs and
big physiological levels to personally climb
over.

No course seller, FX guru, or someone with

a paid service is not going to make you a
better trader... Please connect on Twitter
@Rush_BTC and Marty will do his best to
give different book or article
recommendations based on someone's
situation.

You are not going to become an options pimp overnight and the
grind will be hard, yet rewarding - like most things in life you put
your time and effort into.

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 The End

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 Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this interview as

much as I did.

If you’re looking to take your trading

further, my mentorship is always
available for free -Check Mentorship
Index-.

More trading tutorials are to come,

make sure you check out my telegram
channel for any updates.

Love,
EmperorBTC

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