155 – Stories from the trading floor – Damon Pavlatos

Welcome to the Better System Trader podcast, glad you could join us today, and a “Happy Fathers Day” to all the Aussie dads out there.

In this episode we’re going to be talking about the pits.

The trading pits may be closed (or most of them are anyway) but there’s a lot of history there. Lots of stories and events that occurred over the years that we can still learn from today.

On this podcast episode we have special guest Damon Pavlatos who has been extensively involved in the commodity and financial futures industry since 1978.

He has held Exchange Memberships on the CME, CBOT and Mid America Exchange.

Not only did he trade on the floor for himself but he also executed for some of the biggest players around, including Paul Tudor Jones, Louis Bacon, Monroe Trout, Toby Crabel and others.

In Damons 40+ years of experience he’s seen a lot, and he’s experienced a lot too. So, in our chat today he’s going to share some interesting stories from the floor, and some valuable lessons for traders of all levels of experience too.

Some of the things you’ll discover in my chat with Damon are:

The crash of ’87 – what it was like leading up to, trading through it and how the crash of 2008 was scarier than the crash of 87,
One of the biggest causes of traders blowing up their accounts – it may not be what you think,
Why volume could be the most important indicator and how order flow ‘clues’ can impact trading results,
Why it so important to ‘stay ahead of the curve’ and adapt to changes in technology and the markets,
Why some types of brokerage firms are dangerous and how to check if they’re properly capitalised,
And so much more.

We cover a lot in this episode so let’s jump over now to my chat with Damon.

''The market changes like a chameleon, and you have to adapt to the market changes, and you have to adapt to technology.'' - Damon Pavlatos Click To Tweet