Why Your Trading Education Is Actually Making You Poorer with Christopher Hnatko (stage 1) - Ep. 348
November 25, 2025 • 22 mins
In this venturesome episode, Christopher Hnatko, Founder of Spartan Trading, shares how to master trading with institutional insights and avoid common pitfalls. If you struggle with financial leaks and poor risk decisions, you won't want to miss it.
You will discover:
- How to define risk thresholds for scalable business choices
- Why institutional views reveal hidden market dynamics
- What real-time mentoring builds confident profitability
This episode is ideal for for Founders, Owners, and CEOs in stage 1 of The Founder's Evolution. Not sure which stage you're in? Find out for free in less than 10 minutes at https://www.scalearchitects.com/founders/quiz
Christopher Hnatko is the founder of Spartan Trading, an online trading education platform that empowers aspiring and experienced traders to master the stock and options markets. With decades of experience spanning hedge funds, financial institutions, and live trading floors, Chris has seen firsthand how traditional trading education falls short—and he built Spartan Trading to fill that gap. Chris’s approach is actionable, hands-on, and results-driven. He doesn’t just teach theory—he walks traders through real-time market opportunities, high-probability setups, and decision-making strategies that accelerate learning and build confidence.
Want to learn more about Christopher Hnatko's work at Spartan? Check out his website at https://spartantrading.com/
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Scott Ritzheimer (00:00):
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again
(00:02):
to the Start scale and succeedpodcast. It's the only podcast
that grows with you through allseven stages of your journey. As
a founder, I'm your host, ScottRitzheimer, and I see a lot of
folks who are trapped in jobsthat just don't fulfill them. I
mean, it is the start of everyfounder's journey out there.
They're looking for a path tofreedom, to financial
independence, and more and more,that doesn't look like having to
(00:27):
go into a traditional businessor waiting decades for
retirement. There are industrieslike trading that offer much
faster routes to the freedomthat they're looking for, if you
do it right. And that's thechallenge, because here's what
happens. Folks get into the gameand either trying to do it on
their own or wasting 1000s ofdollars on many of the courses
(00:47):
and outdated strategies that areout there, they blow up their
accounts in seconds and findthemselves feeling worse off
than they were in the firstplace. And here's the thing that
drives me absolutely crazy aboutthis, and it's not just to the
trading space. It happens inother industries as well. But if
it doesn't work for you, it'salmost like it's your fault,
like you're the problem, andmaybe you did something wrong,
(01:10):
maybe you didn't. But thereality of it is you need to
find some source, someeducation, some training,
someone to walk with you, whocan get you through that
difficult time, and it'sespecially true for trading. So
the real issue that we want toget here is, how do we get
beyond the cursory stuff, theeye candy, the ear candy, and
(01:33):
how do we get past the canstrategies and stuff that just
doesn't really work and get downto the brass tacks of how to
actually do it, particularly inthe world of trading and and if
that's something you'reinterested in, either as a side
hustle or even going full time,your My guest today is going to
be a huge treat for you, becausehe spent decades on actual
(01:54):
trading floors in hedge fundsand at financial institutions.
Chris Hnatko, Hnatco, sorry, Iprobably still said that wrong.
He built Spartan tradingspecifically to fix what's
broken in trading education. Andis the founder of Spartan
trading, an online educationplatform that empowers aspiring
(02:15):
and experienced traders tomaster the stock and options
markets with decades ofexperience spanning hedge funds,
financial institutions and livetrading floors, Chris has seen
firsthand how traditionaltrading education falls short,
and he built Spartan trading tofill that gap. Chris' approach
is actionable. It's hands on,and it's results driven. He
doesn't just teach theory. Hewalks traders through real time
(02:38):
market opportunities, highprobability setups and decision
making strategies thataccelerate learning and build
confidence. He's here with ustoday. Chris, welcome to the
show. Glad to have you here.What's cool about your story is
like you've been there and donethat. You've been on the actual
trading floors, you've you'vetraded with actual hedge funds.
So taking that, what's thesecret here, like, Why does
(03:01):
trading education, or at leastmost trading education, actually
keep people stuck in their jobsinstead of becoming profitable
traders?
Christopher Hnatko (03:08):
Yeah, and just want to have just one, one
piece of clarity here guys, I'vetraded alongside hedge funds and
alongside guys on floors andhelped advise, you know, some of
these types of individuals. Froma consulting standpoint, I
wasn't actually on the floorswith them, because I'm in front
of my screen and my setup in myoffice, so it's online, is where
I'm, you know, doing theseactivities. My partners, though,
(03:31):
that are part of Spartan trade,have Rand floors, ran hedge
funds, ran institutions. They'vegot a lot more tenure. They're
about 4050, years of tenure. Butwe've come together to make this
this group, but, you know, Icertainly do have experience,
you know, dealing with thosetypes of individuals.
Scott Ritzheimer (03:45):
Yeah, thank you. So using that, that's a lot
of experience, especiallybetween the group of you. Where
did you see that experience notshowing up in other programs?
Christopher Hnatko (03:56):
Well, you know, you don't tend to have
that much tenure, just between,you know, three people, we have
over 100 years of tenure betweenus, us, and you know, that's a
lot. And I find that most of theyou know, the groups out there,
educational side of things, theylack the expert, the expertise,
the experience. Most of themhave never done anything from an
(04:17):
institutional standpoint, mostlyit's on the retail side. If you
really want to understand thegame, you need to understand it
from an institutionalstandpoint, because
realistically, that's kind ofwho's going to have the most
impact on the market. You needto understand the nuances of how
the back end of that works interms of, you know, you want to
understand, you know, order,flow. You want to understand
liquidity, volume, these typesof things, structure, of, you
(04:40):
know, different names thatyou're looking at. You know,
when news is put out, how it'sdisseminated, and, you know,
essentially, how institutionalindividuals react to it, how
they control risk, etc. Because,you know, they have the most
impact within the market. Retaildoesn't necessarily have that
much impact. We're kind of justriding the waves, so to speak.
But they're the guys that are,you know, making. Waves. So I
(05:01):
found that there was a large gapin that. So we use our expertise
there, you know, to go throughevery single type of nuance
within the market. You know,whether it's from, you know,
risk control to the technicalside of things, to, you know,
how money actually flows,interpreting news, I think
there's a lot of you know, Iwould say 95% of the retail
(05:23):
market doesn't know how to lookat, you know, an SEC filing and
actually understand what's goingon. So there's a lot of
confusion when news comes out,especially in the small cap side
of things. So, you know, we takeour expertise and we've, you
know, been able to help guidepeople, you know, within our
chat room, from an educationalstandpoint, you know, day to
day, giving our opinion on, youknow, when things are moving,
(05:45):
what's actually going on, whatwe think is, you know, happening
within the market. I got somereally nice kind of examples
from, you know, today, forinstance, you know, it's a
Friday, and you know, themarket, you know, is coming off
the lows. We're able to, youknow, before the market opened
up, I can see, you know, from atechnical standpoint, it's
fairly extended, you know, goingto get long a lot of these
higher quality names. There'sbeen a lot of volatility lately
(06:07):
in the market. And, you know, wegot into, you know, things like
a matt Tesla, etc, some of thesederivatives. And we had some
pretty large moves on some ofthem, you know, a matt, for
instance, we had these 220 callstoday. They went up to 100% in,
you know, intraday. Now, theseare same day expiration
contracts. But what I'm tryingto get, kind of get to is, you
know, we have the expertise tosee those types of opportunities
(06:29):
and then have the conviction toactually go after them and hold
those types of, you know, tradesfor a longer period of time. And
we help, yeah, people, you know,find those types of ideas, I
guess.
Scott Ritzheimer (06:38):
Yeah, there's this saying that has some truth
to it, but can get us in a lotof trouble, and it's that those
who can't do teach and andoftentimes in industries, you'll
see folks who who find out thatthey can make more money talking
about what it is that they dothan actually doing it
themselves. And how do youseparate, particularly in the
(07:01):
world of training, how trading?How do you separate those who
really can do from those who arejust talking about doing?
Christopher Hnatko (07:08):
Yeah, well, I think one of the things is,
you know, everything that we do,we timestamp every single idea,
and then you can see the outcomeof them. We're very transparent.
I post that online every singleday, and I don't see any any
other group that does that. Youknow, we've been around for
eight years. I've seen a lot ofgroups come and go. We've been
in the industry for, obviously,longer, but, you know, I don't
see any other type of individualthat likes to have that type of
(07:31):
transparency, because no onelikes to be held accountable in
this environment. And I thinkthat's kind of what we've made a
name for ourselves, is, youknow, when people see the
performance consistency and weshow them exactly what we're
doing in and out, and we can beheld accountable to it. It does,
you know, put the proof in thepudding, right? So, and I, you
know, the other thing is, too alot of these different
(07:53):
educational platforms don'tstick around for very long. You
know, some of the guys this,they kind of fade away because,
you know, the markets hop for alittle bit. It's very easy, but
when the market gets a littlebit tough, there's a little bit
of volatility and range. Youknow, people, their their their
groups, kind of get smoked bythat. I think the other, the
other, you know, kind of thingthat really speaks to the
(08:13):
quality of what we do is, youknow, I have individuals that I,
you know, teach in a mentorshipin, you know, environments. And,
you know, we talk, we go throughtheir statistics, you know, week
to week, we make adjustments to,you know, what we're what
they're doing, in our opinion.And, you know, we teach them our
system. And I have some of theseindividuals that you know have
been able to, you know, quittheir jobs. You know, some of
(08:34):
them, you know, top studentAtlanta, for instance, she's
made about $5 million this year,which I think that's
outperforming most people thatactually, you know, run those
other educational rooms, right?So if our students are, you
know, able to outperform thosetypes of people, that, I think
it also just shows you how muchmore power there is and what we
do over others. But of course,you know, that's that's up to
(08:55):
everyone else to see the youknow, the value for them to
decide.
Scott Ritzheimer (08:59):
The thing that's really cool about what
you guys do is, is that it'sthose stories where it's one
thing to be successful in adomain, right? It's one thing to
be a great hitter in the majorleagues, but being a great
hitter in the major leaguesdoesn't mean that you've got
what it takes to make greathitters in the major leagues.
What have you all learned atSpartan about the difference
(09:20):
between being successful tradersand helping build successful
traders.
Christopher Hnatko (09:25):
Well, being a successful trader, you know,
one of the things is this, it'sreally dependent upon your
style, how you operate. From anindividual standpoint, the way
that I operate may not makesense for other individuals. You
know, trading is something thatthere's a couple things that
need to be consistent, andthere's a couple things that you
need to adjust your style towith what you're doing. And what
(09:49):
I mean by that is, you know,it's like playing a sport. You
know, there's going to be guyswho are good at certain things
within, you know, playing on ateam or, you know, individually,
everyone's going to have a.Things that they are good at,
and it's your job to figure outwhat you are good at, and the
only way to do that is bytracking statistics and
probabilities what you'reactually doing. So that's
(10:09):
something that we do witheverybody. We overlay, you know,
some criteria on top of whatthey're doing. We track what
they're doing every single week,and then we can see very clearly
where the, you know, there'sgaps in their performance and
what they actually should focuson to actually grow. So, you
know, I know for myself what I'mgood at. I know, you know, from
a risk control standpoint, whereI'm strong and what
(10:31):
opportunities to go after, andeveryone's different from that
regard. So, you know, one of thethings that we do is when we
talk to individuals and we getthem involved in, you know,
let's say the mentorshipprogram. We do a basically
reporting of every singlebehavior that could possibly do
with our system overlaid on top.And then very quickly, we can
see where they're strong, wherethey're weak. We eliminate where
(10:52):
they're weak, we focus on wherethey're strong, because that's
going to be most scalable. So Iguess, to answer your question,
you know, everyone's anindividual, and everyone's going
to be individually different.It's, you know, the one person,
or it's that individual's job topull the trigger and then to
manage their positions andmanage what they're doing within
the market. I can't do that forthem, but if they are able to
(11:13):
understand where they're strongand understand where they can
actually scale and pushthemselves, they should operate
better, and they should, youknow, perform better in the end
as well.
Scott Ritzheimer (11:22):
Yeah. So in in the trading world in particular,
it's pretty easy to set up. Idon't even know the technical
name for this, but fakeaccounts, basically. But that
trade unreal money in liveenvironments, to some extent. To
give you an idea of what tradinga paper trading account, yes.
Thank you. And and one of theI've seen several friends who
(11:45):
have done that and then got intothe real world and found that
it's, it's a very differentballgame. What is it that
separates? I think my son, he'splaying around with one right
now. He's up like 12 100% orsomething like that. But why?
Why do those returns seem tovary so much with what happens
once, once the rubber meets theroad?
Christopher Hnatko (12:02):
Well, I think there's a couple different
reasons. If you're in a, youknow, let's say you're paper
trading, and you're in anenvironment that you're trading
something that has very low orsmall liquidity, that your buys
and sells are not going to havean impact on what's actually
going on. So there could be,like, a, you know, two or three
cent spread on, on something,you know, in the in on the paper
(12:25):
trading side. But in the realworld, it could be larger just
because, you know, you'reactually looking at, you know, a
market being made there. Andwhen there's a sell that occurs,
it doesn't actually affect thespread, or you're getting filled
on the Ask on the paper tradingside. So the actual gains aren't
actually realistic. I find that,you know, especially, you know,
(12:46):
from a paper trading standpoint,a lot of the times, you know,
you have these accounts that arevery, you know, large that
people are kind of screwedaround with. But when you when
the rubber meets the road, theamount of motion that will come
out from actually executing, andhaving real money on the line
will change the way that youbehave, you know, from a you
(13:07):
know, paper trading standpoint,you kind of think of things a
little bit more logically,because there's no emotion
involved. And then when youactually start to trade, you
start to think illogically. Andthat's the issue. That's the
hard thing about trading, youknow, I think the you know, the
you know, the learning curve isquite large in terms of
understanding the technicals andthese types of things, but the
(13:28):
learning curve is even largerbecause, or with yourself,
because you're the one that's incharge of your emotions. And I
find that that's where the maingap is. You know, people might
find they're incredibly good onpaper trading, but when they
flip to real money, they don'tknow how to operate, because
it's almost like a deer in theheadlights sort of situation.
Maybe they're, you know, tooscared to take losses, and
(13:50):
that's part of the game, and youneed to control risk and take
losses and move on. But, youknow, maybe they have, they
don't have the ability to dothat in real life, because they
don't want to, you know, causethemselves any pain from taking
that loss and losing, you know,money, short term, right? Right
trade, real life. So that'stypically where it is. It's from
the emotional standpoint, Ithink. And then if you want to
get kind of more on thetechnical side, usually it's
(14:10):
unrealistic, because of thefills are going to be
unrealistic because there's, youknow, on anything that's low
liquidity, you can get in andout with, you know, 100 million
shares. But it doesn't affectthe actual, you know, right
market, which isn't realistic.
Scott Ritzheimer (14:22):
Right, right. So having done this a time or
two with others as well, whathave you found? Really makes a
great trader. So is there sometype of personality
characteristic? Is there ourportfolio requirement for folks
who've come through the programand had success, what has
separated them from the rest?
Christopher Hnatko (14:42):
Well, I think, you know, one of the
things that separates them fromthe rest is, you know, we go
through this process ofunderstanding and figuring out,
first and foremost, how muchrisk you should be taking for
trade, and we start at a smallthreshold where it doesn't have
a massive effect on yourmentality. And. Or, you know,
from you from a emotionalstandpoint. And when you take
(15:06):
that approach, you don't haveany emotion while you're
trading. And what I mean by thatis you're able to make decisions
that are going to be morelogical, rather than emotional.
So you need to start at a lowerlevel and understand exactly
what your risk, you know,profile should be before
actually taking a trade. A lotof the times, people start out
they don't actually plan this,and that's what causes a lot of
(15:28):
issues, because, most likely,they're trading with too big of
size, and that's causing them tolose, you know, a lot of money
from them making emotionaldecisions, whether it's, you
know, buying aggressively orselling aggressively and
freaking out, etc. That's not ascalable behavior. What is
scalable is figuring out exactlyyou know how much you want to
take, what your risk actuallyshould be per position, and then
(15:49):
actually planning out your exitstrategy before you even get
into a position as well. Right?That's as important as you know,
as as anything as you know,understanding the technicals
behind something that you'redoing, understanding, you know,
the news or whatever. If youdon't understand how much you're
risking per trade, you probablyare going to, you know, you've
(16:10):
already lost. You're going tomake mistakes over the course of
time. You might get lucky a timeor two, but most likely, you're
going to make some form of amistake that's going to have a
large impact on your bottomline. That's, that's the main
thing I find. So the risk rewardside, we get that dialed in, we
get these statistics andprobabilities figured out, aka
what you're actually good at,what's going to be scalable from
(16:31):
a behavioral standpoint, andthen from there, we can kind of
move on and go through theprocess without those nuances
figured out. Most People Fail.The risk reward is not
necessarily talked about as muchas it is, and that's the biggest
impact to anyone's trading onthe bottom line.
Scott Ritzheimer (16:48):
Yeah, yeah. So Chris, before I let you go, I do
have a question that I want toask. It's one that ask all my
guests. I'm interested to seewhat you'd have to say. But the
question is this, what is thebiggest secret that you wish
wasn't a secret at all. What'sthat? One thing you wish every
founder watching or listeningtoday knew?
Christopher Hnatko (17:04):
I think risk reward of what we just kind of
talked about, is actuallyspending the time to figure it
out what makes sense for you.And that's from a business
standpoint. That's from atrading standpoint. A lot of the
things that you learn in tradingand the behaviors you learn in
trading can be carried over intoyour real life or your business.
You know anything that you do inbusiness, because if you don't
(17:25):
understand the threshold of riskthat you should be taking, you
know when you start a newventure, or whatever things try
to things tend to get out ofhand fairly quickly. So
understanding that riskthreshold and where you should
be in every single situation youput yourself within, I think is
massively key, because it allowsyou the ability to operate, from
a logic standpoint, look atevery single you know, piece of
(17:48):
data and actually make adecision that makes sense. Also,
you're not going to be overleveraged. You're not going to
be stressed out. Things will beplanned. From that standpoint,
it's extremely important intrading. And I think you know,
when you approach it that way,your ability to scale over the
course of time increases, andyour ability to succeed
increases as well, becauseyou're not taking such large
(18:08):
failures that you know, make youor you know, let's you know.
I'll give you an example from amathematical standpoint. Let's
say you know you risk, you knowhalf, half of your, you know
bank account, or your, of your,you know, trading account, etc,
on some sort of a decision ortrade, and it doesn't work out
well, the next thing that youdo, you have to make 100% to get
(18:29):
back to square one. Sounderstanding that you can't
take on too much risk at anysingle, single given point in
time or any opportunity, makes alot of sense, because it's not
going to be scalable. Otherwise,that's that's probably the
biggest thing. I would say.
Scott Ritzheimer (18:42):
Yeah, Chris. I know there's folks listening
today that love to get intotrading, either on the side or
even full time. How can theylearn more about the work that
you all do at Spartan trading?And where can they find out
more?
Christopher Hnatko (18:52):
Sure, you can go to spartantrading.com
There's plenty of informationthere. You can follow us on
YouTube. We have a pretty largeaccount. There a lot of free
information for you guys to use.And of course, you can follow us
on x as well, which we're verybusy posting, you know, during
market hours and all day long.So those are the three areas I'd
probably look at.
Scott Ritzheimer (19:10):
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Chris, thanks
for being on the show. Thanksfor what you all do at Spartan
appreciate your time. Really wasa privilege and honor having you
here. And for those of youwatching and listening, you know
your time and attention mean theworld to us. Hope. You got as
much out of this conversation asI know I did, and I cannot wait
to see you next time. Take careyou.
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again
(00:02):
to the Start scale and succeedpodcast. It's the only podcast
that grows with you through allseven stages of your journey. As
a founder, I'm your host, ScottRitzheimer, and I see a lot of
folks who are trapped in jobsthat just don't fulfill them. I
mean, it is the start of everyfounder's journey out there.
They're looking for a path tofreedom, to financial
independence, and more and more,that doesn't look like having to
(00:27):
go into a traditional businessor waiting decades for
retirement. There are industrieslike trading that offer much
faster routes to the freedomthat they're looking for, if you
do it right. And that's thechallenge, because here's what
happens. Folks get into the gameand either trying to do it on
their own or wasting 1000s ofdollars on many of the courses
(00:47):
and outdated strategies that areout there, they blow up their
accounts in seconds and findthemselves feeling worse off
than they were in the firstplace. And here's the thing that
drives me absolutely crazy aboutthis, and it's not just to the
trading space. It happens inother industries as well. But if
it doesn't work for you, it'salmost like it's your fault,
like you're the problem, andmaybe you did something wrong,
(01:10):
maybe you didn't. But thereality of it is you need to
find some source, someeducation, some training,
someone to walk with you, whocan get you through that
difficult time, and it'sespecially true for trading. So
the real issue that we want toget here is, how do we get
beyond the cursory stuff, theeye candy, the ear candy, and
(01:33):
how do we get past the canstrategies and stuff that just
doesn't really work and get downto the brass tacks of how to
actually do it, particularly inthe world of trading and and if
that's something you'reinterested in, either as a side
hustle or even going full time,your My guest today is going to
be a huge treat for you, becausehe spent decades on actual
(01:54):
trading floors in hedge fundsand at financial institutions.
Chris Hnatko, Hnatco, sorry, Iprobably still said that wrong.
He built Spartan tradingspecifically to fix what's
broken in trading education. Andis the founder of Spartan
trading, an online educationplatform that empowers aspiring
(02:15):
and experienced traders tomaster the stock and options
markets with decades ofexperience spanning hedge funds,
financial institutions and livetrading floors, Chris has seen
firsthand how traditionaltrading education falls short,
and he built Spartan trading tofill that gap. Chris' approach
is actionable. It's hands on,and it's results driven. He
doesn't just teach theory. Hewalks traders through real time
(02:38):
market opportunities, highprobability setups and decision
making strategies thataccelerate learning and build
confidence. He's here with ustoday. Chris, welcome to the
show. Glad to have you here.What's cool about your story is
like you've been there and donethat. You've been on the actual
trading floors, you've you'vetraded with actual hedge funds.
So taking that, what's thesecret here, like, Why does
(03:01):
trading education, or at leastmost trading education, actually
keep people stuck in their jobsinstead of becoming profitable
traders?
Christopher Hnatko (03:08):
Yeah, and just want to have just one, one
piece of clarity here guys, I'vetraded alongside hedge funds and
alongside guys on floors andhelped advise, you know, some of
these types of individuals. Froma consulting standpoint, I
wasn't actually on the floorswith them, because I'm in front
of my screen and my setup in myoffice, so it's online, is where
I'm, you know, doing theseactivities. My partners, though,
(03:31):
that are part of Spartan trade,have Rand floors, ran hedge
funds, ran institutions. They'vegot a lot more tenure. They're
about 4050, years of tenure. Butwe've come together to make this
this group, but, you know, Icertainly do have experience,
you know, dealing with thosetypes of individuals.
Scott Ritzheimer (03:45):
Yeah, thank you. So using that, that's a lot
of experience, especiallybetween the group of you. Where
did you see that experience notshowing up in other programs?
Christopher Hnatko (03:56):
Well, you know, you don't tend to have
that much tenure, just between,you know, three people, we have
over 100 years of tenure betweenus, us, and you know, that's a
lot. And I find that most of theyou know, the groups out there,
educational side of things, theylack the expert, the expertise,
the experience. Most of themhave never done anything from an
(04:17):
institutional standpoint, mostlyit's on the retail side. If you
really want to understand thegame, you need to understand it
from an institutionalstandpoint, because
realistically, that's kind ofwho's going to have the most
impact on the market. You needto understand the nuances of how
the back end of that works interms of, you know, you want to
understand, you know, order,flow. You want to understand
liquidity, volume, these typesof things, structure, of, you
(04:40):
know, different names thatyou're looking at. You know,
when news is put out, how it'sdisseminated, and, you know,
essentially, how institutionalindividuals react to it, how
they control risk, etc. Because,you know, they have the most
impact within the market. Retaildoesn't necessarily have that
much impact. We're kind of justriding the waves, so to speak.
But they're the guys that are,you know, making. Waves. So I
(05:01):
found that there was a large gapin that. So we use our expertise
there, you know, to go throughevery single type of nuance
within the market. You know,whether it's from, you know,
risk control to the technicalside of things, to, you know,
how money actually flows,interpreting news, I think
there's a lot of you know, Iwould say 95% of the retail
(05:23):
market doesn't know how to lookat, you know, an SEC filing and
actually understand what's goingon. So there's a lot of
confusion when news comes out,especially in the small cap side
of things. So, you know, we takeour expertise and we've, you
know, been able to help guidepeople, you know, within our
chat room, from an educationalstandpoint, you know, day to
day, giving our opinion on, youknow, when things are moving,
(05:45):
what's actually going on, whatwe think is, you know, happening
within the market. I got somereally nice kind of examples
from, you know, today, forinstance, you know, it's a
Friday, and you know, themarket, you know, is coming off
the lows. We're able to, youknow, before the market opened
up, I can see, you know, from atechnical standpoint, it's
fairly extended, you know, goingto get long a lot of these
higher quality names. There'sbeen a lot of volatility lately
(06:07):
in the market. And, you know, wegot into, you know, things like
a matt Tesla, etc, some of thesederivatives. And we had some
pretty large moves on some ofthem, you know, a matt, for
instance, we had these 220 callstoday. They went up to 100% in,
you know, intraday. Now, theseare same day expiration
contracts. But what I'm tryingto get, kind of get to is, you
know, we have the expertise tosee those types of opportunities
(06:29):
and then have the conviction toactually go after them and hold
those types of, you know, tradesfor a longer period of time. And
we help, yeah, people, you know,find those types of ideas, I
guess.
Scott Ritzheimer (06:38):
Yeah, there's this saying that has some truth
to it, but can get us in a lotof trouble, and it's that those
who can't do teach and andoftentimes in industries, you'll
see folks who who find out thatthey can make more money talking
about what it is that they dothan actually doing it
themselves. And how do youseparate, particularly in the
(07:01):
world of training, how trading?How do you separate those who
really can do from those who arejust talking about doing?
Christopher Hnatko (07:08):
Yeah, well, I think one of the things is,
you know, everything that we do,we timestamp every single idea,
and then you can see the outcomeof them. We're very transparent.
I post that online every singleday, and I don't see any any
other group that does that. Youknow, we've been around for
eight years. I've seen a lot ofgroups come and go. We've been
in the industry for, obviously,longer, but, you know, I don't
see any other type of individualthat likes to have that type of
(07:31):
transparency, because no onelikes to be held accountable in
this environment. And I thinkthat's kind of what we've made a
name for ourselves, is, youknow, when people see the
performance consistency and weshow them exactly what we're
doing in and out, and we can beheld accountable to it. It does,
you know, put the proof in thepudding, right? So, and I, you
know, the other thing is, too alot of these different
(07:53):
educational platforms don'tstick around for very long. You
know, some of the guys this,they kind of fade away because,
you know, the markets hop for alittle bit. It's very easy, but
when the market gets a littlebit tough, there's a little bit
of volatility and range. Youknow, people, their their their
groups, kind of get smoked bythat. I think the other, the
other, you know, kind of thingthat really speaks to the
(08:13):
quality of what we do is, youknow, I have individuals that I,
you know, teach in a mentorshipin, you know, environments. And,
you know, we talk, we go throughtheir statistics, you know, week
to week, we make adjustments to,you know, what we're what
they're doing, in our opinion.And, you know, we teach them our
system. And I have some of theseindividuals that you know have
been able to, you know, quittheir jobs. You know, some of
(08:34):
them, you know, top studentAtlanta, for instance, she's
made about $5 million this year,which I think that's
outperforming most people thatactually, you know, run those
other educational rooms, right?So if our students are, you
know, able to outperform thosetypes of people, that, I think
it also just shows you how muchmore power there is and what we
do over others. But of course,you know, that's that's up to
(08:55):
everyone else to see the youknow, the value for them to
decide.
Scott Ritzheimer (08:59):
The thing that's really cool about what
you guys do is, is that it'sthose stories where it's one
thing to be successful in adomain, right? It's one thing to
be a great hitter in the majorleagues, but being a great
hitter in the major leaguesdoesn't mean that you've got
what it takes to make greathitters in the major leagues.
What have you all learned atSpartan about the difference
(09:20):
between being successful tradersand helping build successful
traders.
Christopher Hnatko (09:25):
Well, being a successful trader, you know,
one of the things is this, it'sreally dependent upon your
style, how you operate. From anindividual standpoint, the way
that I operate may not makesense for other individuals. You
know, trading is something thatthere's a couple things that
need to be consistent, andthere's a couple things that you
need to adjust your style towith what you're doing. And what
(09:49):
I mean by that is, you know,it's like playing a sport. You
know, there's going to be guyswho are good at certain things
within, you know, playing on ateam or, you know, individually,
everyone's going to have a.Things that they are good at,
and it's your job to figure outwhat you are good at, and the
only way to do that is bytracking statistics and
probabilities what you'reactually doing. So that's
(10:09):
something that we do witheverybody. We overlay, you know,
some criteria on top of whatthey're doing. We track what
they're doing every single week,and then we can see very clearly
where the, you know, there'sgaps in their performance and
what they actually should focuson to actually grow. So, you
know, I know for myself what I'mgood at. I know, you know, from
a risk control standpoint, whereI'm strong and what
(10:31):
opportunities to go after, andeveryone's different from that
regard. So, you know, one of thethings that we do is when we
talk to individuals and we getthem involved in, you know,
let's say the mentorshipprogram. We do a basically
reporting of every singlebehavior that could possibly do
with our system overlaid on top.And then very quickly, we can
see where they're strong, wherethey're weak. We eliminate where
(10:52):
they're weak, we focus on wherethey're strong, because that's
going to be most scalable. So Iguess, to answer your question,
you know, everyone's anindividual, and everyone's going
to be individually different.It's, you know, the one person,
or it's that individual's job topull the trigger and then to
manage their positions andmanage what they're doing within
the market. I can't do that forthem, but if they are able to
(11:13):
understand where they're strongand understand where they can
actually scale and pushthemselves, they should operate
better, and they should, youknow, perform better in the end
as well.
Scott Ritzheimer (11:22):
Yeah. So in in the trading world in particular,
it's pretty easy to set up. Idon't even know the technical
name for this, but fakeaccounts, basically. But that
trade unreal money in liveenvironments, to some extent. To
give you an idea of what tradinga paper trading account, yes.
Thank you. And and one of theI've seen several friends who
(11:45):
have done that and then got intothe real world and found that
it's, it's a very differentballgame. What is it that
separates? I think my son, he'splaying around with one right
now. He's up like 12 100% orsomething like that. But why?
Why do those returns seem tovary so much with what happens
once, once the rubber meets theroad?
Christopher Hnatko (12:02):
Well, I think there's a couple different
reasons. If you're in a, youknow, let's say you're paper
trading, and you're in anenvironment that you're trading
something that has very low orsmall liquidity, that your buys
and sells are not going to havean impact on what's actually
going on. So there could be,like, a, you know, two or three
cent spread on, on something,you know, in the in on the paper
(12:25):
trading side. But in the realworld, it could be larger just
because, you know, you'reactually looking at, you know, a
market being made there. Andwhen there's a sell that occurs,
it doesn't actually affect thespread, or you're getting filled
on the Ask on the paper tradingside. So the actual gains aren't
actually realistic. I find that,you know, especially, you know,
(12:46):
from a paper trading standpoint,a lot of the times, you know,
you have these accounts that arevery, you know, large that
people are kind of screwedaround with. But when you when
the rubber meets the road, theamount of motion that will come
out from actually executing, andhaving real money on the line
will change the way that youbehave, you know, from a you
(13:07):
know, paper trading standpoint,you kind of think of things a
little bit more logically,because there's no emotion
involved. And then when youactually start to trade, you
start to think illogically. Andthat's the issue. That's the
hard thing about trading, youknow, I think the you know, the
you know, the learning curve isquite large in terms of
understanding the technicals andthese types of things, but the
(13:28):
learning curve is even largerbecause, or with yourself,
because you're the one that's incharge of your emotions. And I
find that that's where the maingap is. You know, people might
find they're incredibly good onpaper trading, but when they
flip to real money, they don'tknow how to operate, because
it's almost like a deer in theheadlights sort of situation.
Maybe they're, you know, tooscared to take losses, and
(13:50):
that's part of the game, and youneed to control risk and take
losses and move on. But, youknow, maybe they have, they
don't have the ability to dothat in real life, because they
don't want to, you know, causethemselves any pain from taking
that loss and losing, you know,money, short term, right? Right
trade, real life. So that'stypically where it is. It's from
the emotional standpoint, Ithink. And then if you want to
get kind of more on thetechnical side, usually it's
(14:10):
unrealistic, because of thefills are going to be
unrealistic because there's, youknow, on anything that's low
liquidity, you can get in andout with, you know, 100 million
shares. But it doesn't affectthe actual, you know, right
market, which isn't realistic.
Scott Ritzheimer (14:22):
Right, right. So having done this a time or
two with others as well, whathave you found? Really makes a
great trader. So is there sometype of personality
characteristic? Is there ourportfolio requirement for folks
who've come through the programand had success, what has
separated them from the rest?
Christopher Hnatko (14:42):
Well, I think, you know, one of the
things that separates them fromthe rest is, you know, we go
through this process ofunderstanding and figuring out,
first and foremost, how muchrisk you should be taking for
trade, and we start at a smallthreshold where it doesn't have
a massive effect on yourmentality. And. Or, you know,
from you from a emotionalstandpoint. And when you take
(15:06):
that approach, you don't haveany emotion while you're
trading. And what I mean by thatis you're able to make decisions
that are going to be morelogical, rather than emotional.
So you need to start at a lowerlevel and understand exactly
what your risk, you know,profile should be before
actually taking a trade. A lotof the times, people start out
they don't actually plan this,and that's what causes a lot of
(15:28):
issues, because, most likely,they're trading with too big of
size, and that's causing them tolose, you know, a lot of money
from them making emotionaldecisions, whether it's, you
know, buying aggressively orselling aggressively and
freaking out, etc. That's not ascalable behavior. What is
scalable is figuring out exactlyyou know how much you want to
take, what your risk actuallyshould be per position, and then
(15:49):
actually planning out your exitstrategy before you even get
into a position as well. Right?That's as important as you know,
as as anything as you know,understanding the technicals
behind something that you'redoing, understanding, you know,
the news or whatever. If youdon't understand how much you're
risking per trade, you probablyare going to, you know, you've
(16:10):
already lost. You're going tomake mistakes over the course of
time. You might get lucky a timeor two, but most likely, you're
going to make some form of amistake that's going to have a
large impact on your bottomline. That's, that's the main
thing I find. So the risk rewardside, we get that dialed in, we
get these statistics andprobabilities figured out, aka
what you're actually good at,what's going to be scalable from
(16:31):
a behavioral standpoint, andthen from there, we can kind of
move on and go through theprocess without those nuances
figured out. Most People Fail.The risk reward is not
necessarily talked about as muchas it is, and that's the biggest
impact to anyone's trading onthe bottom line.
Scott Ritzheimer (16:48):
Yeah, yeah. So Chris, before I let you go, I do
have a question that I want toask. It's one that ask all my
guests. I'm interested to seewhat you'd have to say. But the
question is this, what is thebiggest secret that you wish
wasn't a secret at all. What'sthat? One thing you wish every
founder watching or listeningtoday knew?
Christopher Hnatko (17:04):
I think risk reward of what we just kind of
talked about, is actuallyspending the time to figure it
out what makes sense for you.And that's from a business
standpoint. That's from atrading standpoint. A lot of the
things that you learn in tradingand the behaviors you learn in
trading can be carried over intoyour real life or your business.
You know anything that you do inbusiness, because if you don't
(17:25):
understand the threshold of riskthat you should be taking, you
know when you start a newventure, or whatever things try
to things tend to get out ofhand fairly quickly. So
understanding that riskthreshold and where you should
be in every single situation youput yourself within, I think is
massively key, because it allowsyou the ability to operate, from
a logic standpoint, look atevery single you know, piece of
(17:48):
data and actually make adecision that makes sense. Also,
you're not going to be overleveraged. You're not going to
be stressed out. Things will beplanned. From that standpoint,
it's extremely important intrading. And I think you know,
when you approach it that way,your ability to scale over the
course of time increases, andyour ability to succeed
increases as well, becauseyou're not taking such large
(18:08):
failures that you know, make youor you know, let's you know.
I'll give you an example from amathematical standpoint. Let's
say you know you risk, you knowhalf, half of your, you know
bank account, or your, of your,you know, trading account, etc,
on some sort of a decision ortrade, and it doesn't work out
well, the next thing that youdo, you have to make 100% to get
(18:29):
back to square one. Sounderstanding that you can't
take on too much risk at anysingle, single given point in
time or any opportunity, makes alot of sense, because it's not
going to be scalable. Otherwise,that's that's probably the
biggest thing. I would say.
Scott Ritzheimer (18:42):
Yeah, Chris. I know there's folks listening
today that love to get intotrading, either on the side or
even full time. How can theylearn more about the work that
you all do at Spartan trading?And where can they find out
more?
Christopher Hnatko (18:52):
Sure, you can go to spartantrading.com
There's plenty of informationthere. You can follow us on
YouTube. We have a pretty largeaccount. There a lot of free
information for you guys to use.And of course, you can follow us
on x as well, which we're verybusy posting, you know, during
market hours and all day long.So those are the three areas I'd
probably look at.
Scott Ritzheimer (19:10):
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Chris, thanks
for being on the show. Thanksfor what you all do at Spartan
appreciate your time. Really wasa privilege and honor having you
here. And for those of youwatching and listening, you know
your time and attention mean theworld to us. Hope. You got as
much out of this conversation asI know I did, and I cannot wait
to see you next time. Take careyou.
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