4 Influential Traders Who Shaped My Trading Journey – Clement Ang

My early beginnings

To those who have known and followed me for a while, I am a part-time swing trader based in Hong Kong. My trading journey began during my university days in late 2019 when my mum passed me some money and told me to buy HSBC Holdings (SEHK 05) on the Hong Kong stock exchange. That piqued my interest in potentially using discretionary trading to make a living.

Coincidentally, Covid hit in 2020 which set up the Hong Kong market for a strong 3-month run towards the end of the year into early 2021. At that point, I had read a couple of market wizard and technical analysis books, and I was mainly trading flag pennant patterns in stocks that are in Stage 2 of their lifecycle. Some of the moves I distinctly remember catching were SEHK 6969 Smoore Holdings and SEHK 9923 Yeahka (charts below).

At that time, it was unconscious incompetence and a stroke of luck that struck my first pot of gold. Little did I know that what I was trading was mainly volatility contraction patterns in Stage 2 uptrend stocks.

Eventually, the 2022 bear market hit and that was a massively humbling experience. By then, the Hong Kong equity markets had already peaked ahead of time due to the crash of China’s property market, and I had switched my focus in 2021 to the US equity markets. The tough market conditions imparted a lot of learning lessons and exposed my trading incompetencies. Aside from continually learning through books, the TraderLion YouTube channel during the ‘learning phase’ was a massive help, as it provided an avenue to successful traders who found their path to consistent profitability.

In this article, I wanted to shed light on the traders that have been the biggest influence on me (through TraderLion); in shaping the way I approach the markets and allowing me to discover a way of trading that is truly my own.

Ryan Pierpont (The Evolution of a Trader!)

I first stumbled on the TraderLion YouTube channel through Ryan Pierpont’s interview. Back then he was a 2-time USIC competitor and had racked up over +1,000% returns in 2020 and 2021. Initially, I first watched the interview with a healthy dose of skepticism. I thought: ‘For real? Is it even possible to achieve gains of that magnitude in such a short span of time?’. Over time, I had realized my unconscious incompetence and watched the interviews for a second time, finding many gold nuggets that are relevant to traders aspiring to make this journey towards super performance:

• Know your ‘why’ to trading – As with anything in life, you need to know your ‘why’ to trading. Always begin with the end in mind, because without the reason, it will be difficult to persevere during the rough periods and put in the work required to succeed.
• Figure out the type of personality you have as a trader – Newer traders will need to find out the type of trading style that suits them. Are you a day trader or a position trader? Are you more skittish and like to flip the edge much more, or are you comfortable sitting through long periods of volatility to catch a large move in the market leader? Once you have figured out your personality, find a mentor that matches the same style.
• Do not just be a blind follower, eventually learn to make your own investment/trading decisions: “You want to get to a point where there is no one else in the world that you want managing your money more than you because you know yourself better than anybody else”.
• Mastering your edge: Find one edge, figure out the nuances of why this edge works and in what situations it works. Then figure out a process to implement this edge in your trading. Simplicity always trumps complexity – because a simple plan is much easier to follow than a complex one.
• An additional point on edge: Use a ‘weight of the evidence’ approach. Stacking different edges in your favor increases the odds of success. For example, a stock is setting up a volatility contraction pattern near 52-week highs (technical edge), the market is also in a strong uptrend (market edge), and the company exhibits triple-digit growth in sales and earnings quarter-over-quarter (fundamental edge).

Once the foundation is set, it is all about risk management and discipline. Risk management helps to limit drawdowns during rough trading periods, and the discipline allows you to stay the course and removes randomness in your trading.
Though I cannot find the original two interviews, I think this interview is a very good approximation of what I took away. The learning lessons and phases that Ryan illustrates greatly helped me visualize where I stood in the trading journey and spurred me to press on knowing that the light is right at the end of the tunnel.

Patrick Walker (How to Find, Ride, and Manage Super Stocks)

Patrick’s interviews are another gem in the channel that is largely informative, especially for traders looking for a guide to managing a trade end to end. I personally find Patrick’s story very inspiring – managing family capital and putting his 4 kids through private school. That is something I aspire to do as well – to work myself into a position where I can provide a comfortable life for my family through trading. Some key takeaways from this interview that I have adapted to my trading:

• Look for charts that everyone can see: clean and simple bases. If it takes you more than 5 seconds to squint at a chart and figure out if there is a trade, then there is likely no trade to be had.
• Risk management is #1: Keep your losses small as big losses work geometrically against you. Never ever average down, because losers average losers. Additionally, never ever let a good profit turn into a loss, therefore it is important to always improve your worst-case scenario.
• Let time compound money for you: ride trends via the 8-EMA and 21-EMA. Whilst I do not use these 2 specific moving averages, I do make use of the 10-EMA and 20-EMA to gauge and ride trends for as long as possible.
• Selling partials on the way up as the stock has made a good move: By selling some, you are guaranteed a profit and gives you a psychological edge. You remove the stress, which typically derails good decision-making.
• ‘People talk with their mouths and vote with their pocketbooks’: Tune out the noise and focus on what the stock is doing. Price action is the final arbiter on whether you make or lose money, not other people’s opinions.
• Look for stocks with good fundamentals and are setting up technically for potential upside via a clean and simple base: Patrick likes to look for stocks with sales and/or earnings of 40% or more within the top 30 industry groups. For Patrick’s screen results, he likes to sort it by: (1) Industry Group Rank – this ensures he prioritizes stocks in the top industry groups, and (2) % off 52-Wk High – this ensures that he focuses on trading stocks that have the least amount of overhead resistance. This has indeed become one of the screens I run on my own for my weekend routine.
• For those with a full-time job, simplicity is key: Spend your efforts focusing on the highest quality stocks and trade those. This helps to keep you focused and limits the universe of stocks to look at. On execution, buy stops attached with a contingent sell stop is your best friend – this will ensure that you get filled if the stock moves through its pivot point while you are away from screens at work.

Overall, whilst in the learning phase, Pat has been a huge help in making sure I simplify my process and focus on clean and simple bases. His walkthrough on his process was also hugely instrumental in getting me to start thinking about trade management on a much deeper level – eventually coming up with my own set of trade management rules.

Mark Minervini (277% Gain in 2021, Interview with Mark Minervini)

I first found Mark Minervini through Investor Business Daily (IBD), followed by TraderLion and his books. Mark has been one of the biggest influences in my trading especially when it comes to preparation end-to-end, from the mindset of being a winner to watchlist preparation, and eventually execution. This interview of his performance in 2021 especially left a lasting impression just because I understood how tough the environment was (having traded through this period myself), and yet, Mark was able to return a monster 300+% year by the end of the 2021 US Investment Championships. Whilst intuitively simple, I believe these short takeaways are worth millions of dollars when applied properly:

• Market adaptation: For those who have traded 2021, it was an extremely choppy market. Stocks would break out of pivots but very quickly reverse in short order. Swing traders who try to buy pivots with the intention of holding for longer timeframes would get chopped up in a market environment like this. What impressed upon me the most was that I learned that there isn’t a need to style drift when the market changes. Rather, there is a need to change your ‘trading tactics’ to suit a particular market environment within the core of your trading strategy.
• Turnover, concentration, and timing are the solutions to generating huge returns in the market: While it would seem intuitive to think that huge returns are made in identifying a monster trend and following it higher, another way to do so is to make small gains compounded over time. It is much easier to find five stocks that go 10% than finding five stocks that go 100%.
• Risk management and progressive exposure is the holy grail to ensure compounding works only on the upside: This ensures that the downside is protected in periods of poor performance. Thinking ‘risk-first’ and always improving your worst-case scenario is vital to complementing turnover, concentration, and timing for super performance.

If there was ever a holy grail to trading, Mark Minervini would be the one in my opinion. His work has literally been a game changer for me to my performance, and for that I am eternally grateful.

Brian Shannon (Technical Analysis Using Multiple Timeframes)

What struck me about Brian is his no-nonsense approach to the markets. Brian was also the first interview I saw where he utilized the weight of the evidence approach via multiple timeframes to stack the odds in his favor:

• ‘Only Price Pays’ – The price of a stock is the final arbiter of whether you end up with a profit, or loss when you sell it. Therefore, it is vitally important to tune out the noise and listen to the feedback of your open positions. This phrase also implies that risk management should always be at the forefront of your trading strategy – at the end of the day, does it feel good to hold on to a stock showing a loss?
• Utilize the 5-day moving average to determine the short-term trend: Brian constantly preaches to never be long when price is trading below the 5-day moving average. This has massively improved my selectivity in stocks, making sure I only take trades with trend-alignment in my favor.
• ‘Do NOT buy the dip, buy strength after the dip’: In other words, never catch a falling knife as the stock begins correcting lower to the downside. Rather, you should only attempt buying as the stock begins to stabilize and turn higher. This has been especially useful when trading stocks via a pullback buy, or as they begin to turn out of a higher low.
• Brian’s approach was immensely helpful for me as I now look at the 65-min chart with the 5-day SMA on top of the typical daily, and weekly charts that swing traders typically use.

Conclusion – Finding your own style

While there were many more traders interviewed on the channel that I’ve managed to pick little nuggets from to compliment my trading, these 4 were the biggest influences when I first discovered TraderLion. I highly recommend giving them a watch and encourage you to experiment with what works and what doesn’t for yourself.