Lance was a top trader at Trillium and now a very familiar face on numerous trading podcasts, so a big chunk of my audience knows him already. If you frequent the daytrading discourse on Twitter, he can be a surprisingly polarizing figure for someone whose actual viewpoints aren’t all that controversial. Mostly, it’s his decision to become a trading educator that gets people riled up.
That raises the usual questions: Why would a massively profitable trader teach or sell courses? Why not retire and enjoy life? Or keep trading like a rockstar until you’re a billionaire? Lance shares his personal take on that. Whether it changes your opinion of him may come down to whether you believe he means it.
Here’s his story in a nutshell:
- From last place to legend: joined Trillium in 2011 at a $26K salary, lost about $37K his first year and ranked second-to-last in his class, then made roughly $46M net for the firm over ten years and rose to run its Chicago office.
- Trader of the Year at Trillium in 2020 and 2021
- Walked away at the absolute peak at the end of 2021, then grew his personal account to about $71M on $5M of deposits in roughly five years, including about $10M in a single day of the August 2024 Nikkei/yen panic.
- Profiled in Market Wizards: The Next Generation, where he is verified as a $100M trader
- Built a second act beyond trading: founded a non-profit called Impact Competition, advises traders at SMB Capital, sits on the Traders4ACause board, and launched the Magnum Opus trading course, with the proceeds going to charity.
He’s also coined a lot of his own phrases to describe his trading process: Right side of the V, Broken Slot Machine, Exponential Bet Sizing
He’s quite prolific, as he’s been on about 20+ different publications/podcasts at this point, so I wanted to tackle new ground–Lance the firm manager, the mentor, the content creator, and the human being. It’s a bit more of a free flowing conversation than the previous trader profiles that move to a more familiar beat.
Lance the Manager
PETE: Let’s talk about your time running Trillium’s Chicago office. When did you take over, and what did the job involve?
LANCE: My buddy Dave was running the office when I first moved out there. He retired in 2018 and that’s when I took over.
The daily obligations were everything from recruiting and interviewing to helping with firmwide decisions, giving general input, and training all the traders and the incoming class in Chicago. Dealing with risk limits, conducting trader reviews—that was the big bulk of it.
There’s also a lot of run-of-the-mill stuff like any other company–we need a re-up on office supplies. Can we get bagel Tuesdays in the office? Are back-end operations running smoothly? I was a liaison for many different communication lines.
PETE: Is it worthwhile to run a desk?
LANCE: In general, being the office manager is one of the most thankless jobs possible. Spending time on that role created a significant cost to my own trading. Then, when people fail, they blame you. When people do well, they attribute it all to themselves. There’s so much at Trillium in the background that’s imperative to creating success that traders often overlook. We were a well-oiled machine of efficiency, and everybody benefited from that performance, including me. Especially in 2020 and 2021, the office just massively outperformed. My main reason to take it on was to be able to set a culture that was optimized for trader success.
PETE: Tell me a bit about the culture–give the audience a taste of what a prop desk is really about.
I want the environment to be challenging but also enjoyable. You’re trying to keep a tough job fun, while being the hard-ass at times and the friend at others. I wanted to build the team camaraderie. Just ordering in a huge lunch on Fridays to reward everyone’s effort felt great.
We had colorful nicknames. We had a trainee we called Judge because he had an ultra rationalist temperament. In any office debate, we would defer to him to be arbiter of the decision. “Hey, Judge, what’s the call on this?”
We did a lot of prank wars–nothing too hostile, just light-hearted stuff.
There was the gift wrapping prank on Christmas.
There was the inverted monitors prank.
There was the marine magnet prank.
It might seem childish but I thought it took the pressure off the environment.
PETE: What about the more challenging side of the equation? Pushing other traders to do the work.
LANCE: I developed a bit of a hard-ass coach personality to keep challenging our guys.
Often when a young trader hits a rough patch, I’ll make them get back to rookie hours. Some chafe at it as if I’m putting them into the dog house. I’m like, “Dude, it’s not a punishment. It’s cultivating the right mindset.”
We were locked in. I was trying to push people: “Hey, this is a hard job but also an amazing opportunity. You need to put in the work. A year or two, it will sneak up on you on how much it helped.”
PETE: What are rookie hours?
LANCE: 7am to 5pm 1(central time), it’s what we have the rookies do in the first few months of our training program. We laid it all out: premarket prep, after-hours review, daily report cards, watching tape, all that stuff. It’s deliberately more intense to hone good work habits.
PETE: What did you hate dealing with most?
LANCE: It’s definitely the interpersonal bullshit conflicts. Literally, one trader is eating tortilla chips, and it’s bothering another senior trader–“dude, you can’t be eating chips that loud.” He’s just eating chips. Guy’s gotta eat, right? He’s not intentionally trying to annoy you, deal with it, use your headphones!
Also, when you’re considered the manager, even dumb stuff out of your control reflects on you too. One time, I’m finally taking a day of vacation, trying to shut off from all the office stuff. I’m getting mass-texted: “Dude, what the fuck? Your trainee is unmuted on a Zoom call.” Turns out he unmuted his laptop mic during a firm-wide meeting while ordering an omelette at our cafeteria. Like–c’mon guys–is that really on me?
Lance the Mentor
PETE: What’s it like mentoring other traders at Trillium?
LANCE: What’s hard at Trillium is that you’re dealing with a twenty-two-year-old right out of school. We did not hire anyone outside that profile2(Pete: I once applied to Trillium, just for fun. This is 2019, age 30, when I had a solid track record, some 7-figure years, never lost money. Zero interest on their end.). Success isn’t straightforward or linear. Everyone is at a different maturity level. Some people thrive in different environments, over different time frames, with different mentors and situations. And there are different styles. Day trading at Trillium is hyperfrenetic in terms of frequency. People can find a path to trading success outside of what we present as our orthodoxy.
PETE: In your own observations, why do smart, hard-working traders fail? It’s something I’m kind of obsessed about in different arenas like sports.
LANCE: You had super smart, super qualified kids but they had one or two behavioral habits that stood in the way of success. It’s simple to diagnose the issue but difficult to weed it out.
I have an example–Ritalin was the top candidate in his class and crushed the interview. Smart, hardworking, quick on his feet—a natural fit for Trillium. However, I remember a couple habits that were tough to eliminate.
First–he was just trading way too many tickers. Like 10-20 a day when I wanted 5-6. So I would give him hard limits–only 5 in a day or so. He would reach 5 and his trading buddy would even warn him “bro you’re done, stick to the stocks you’ve traded!” and he would still trade more stocks anyway. He just could not help himself no matter what restrictions I would implement.
Second–I think he was a bit risk-averse. I wanted him to be able to detach from the P&L. This was a problem for a lot of other trainees by the way, not just him, so it’s quite common.
I remember working in the office on a Sunday with Ritalin and his buddy, who were rookies together. I was telling them, “You guys need to detach from the money. It’s all bullshit.”
I was literally ripping up money. I want it ingrained in their heads that this is an imaginary number on your screen. It’s just a number. Trillium doesn’t care. We’re giving you this money to lose. You’ve got to detach.
Even when I ripped up the money, they were in shock.
They just didn’t get it. It took time.
I felt that too, $100 felt like everything back then. If I made that much in the first hour, giving it back would feel devastating. There’s a common day trader’s trap that develops early on: scalp for money, get stuck thinking it’s a significant amount that’s vulnerable to loss on mid-day trading, get scared to take the right plays.
PETE: That’s funny. What are your views on how to develop risk tolerance for a trader? Is it natural, is it something you work on, bit of both?
LANCE: First, I think there are two types of traders: the scaredy cats and the gunslingers.
The gunslingers are the traders who need to systematically pull themselves back. It might shock people to know that I was so far on the other side, as an extreme scaredy cat trader. We go the other way–we need to push ourselves forward for more risk. It took a lot of intentional work to get there.
I’m in the same category. I started out risk-averse and had to develop my own mental habits to push size. If I were to start trading again, I feel like I’d have to start all over again at very small size, even with 100x the money and track record, because I let the “risk tolerance” muscle basically die on me. Loss aversion sucks.
PETE: Which would you rather train—a gunslinger who needs to pull back, or someone cautious who needs to push?
LANCE: I don’t think the question is which one. It’s how adaptable the person is. How able are they to reprogram themselves?
I’ve worked with gunslingers where there’s nothing you can do to make them pull back. They’re risk-on mode, no matter what. Then I’ve worked with scaredy cats where there’s nothing we can do to get them out of their fears.
There’s a spectrum of what’s right for you. Some factors involve who you are as a human, your goals and objectives, your family situation. Twenty-eight with no kids is different from fifty with five kids. Having $10 million in the bank is different from having zero. It’s the perception of having something to lose versus nothing to lose.
It is like a muscle, but it goes both ways. You need to figure out the optimal place on that spectrum for you and work to that spot, either calming the fuck down or gearing up.
Values change. People change. Goals change. We have to ask ourselves: “How much stress and headache should I put myself through on some of these trades and the swings involved?” There isn’t a right answer. There truly isn’t.
Here’s some color on how I choose to go about it. I know there are traders who want to be green every single day. My mentor and my experiences taught me that it wasn’t optimal to approach trading that way. If you’re green every day, you’re leaving money on the table. You’re trading to craft your PnL in a fake self-imposed range rather than evaluating market opportunity. In everything I’ve done in my career, I’ve tried to move as close to intellectually optimal as possible, which meant to push hard on the great trading opportunities.
For a contrary viewpoint: The first guy I interviewed, Knish, was extremely compulsive about being green every day. Twenty years into his career, he accepts that he might leave money on the table. He could swing trade, he could push, but he’s legitimately happy doing it that way. If that’s what makes him happy, who’s to argue?
Pete: Back to your mentee Ritalin, how did he pan out?
LANCE: He went out in a blaze of glory in this massive move on a biotech—the ticker was KPTO, as I remember it. He was already on his last leg, and then this crazy patent news came out. He initially bought the dip without knowing it had news. I think it halted down and re-opened significantly lower to blow through his risk limits–he lost 15-20k instead of his standard 2k risk.
Ritalin looks at me all dejected and takes a brief walk. When he’s back, he’s holding this box with all his possessions in it, like a tropey layoff in a cliche movie scene. What the hell? I don’t even know where he got it.
So that was it for him but he seemed to be in good spirits about it. He gave it his all and landed on his feet. My understanding now is that he still trades and has found some level of success as a retail trader.
PETE: Can the missing piece develop later, or is someone simply unsuited to that type of day trading?
LANCE: Even on the retail side, you hear about traders where it eventually clicks five to eight years later. A lot of factors go into it–some mix of time, pattern recognition, maturity, where your head is at, your ability, your trading style, the current market cycle.
Lance, the Team Player
PETE: Tell me about working together as a team in the small Princeton office, with just the three of you (Lance, mentor, trader colleague).
LANCE: Yes. We worked very well as a team. We built internal signals and filters that helped my mentor with a lot of different contexts. Take for example–scalping order flow was something we did more back then as the algos weren’t yet perfect. We had a system where we would call out over-aggressive orders from a big buyer/seller on the tape to scalp–we’d yell out “SITCH.” However we had to differentiate it from tapes that looked like breaking news or tapes that looked like a steady aggressive order that would keep pressing–which we’d call out “SEMI” or “SOLID”. Those were signals to pass on the scalp. It was the little things like that we constantly tinker to optimize our team based approach.
I think a great example of working as a team happened during the August 2015 market washout. Using the Trillium tech, I had filter settings that were optimized for recognizing what was halted and down the most, and when they were opening. We could identify, “This is the ETF down thirty percent. Forty percent.” As the market washes, we’re prioritizing the biggest panic moves to spend valuable buying power on. This ended up being pivotal for my mentor, who recorded a personal best PnL that day.
PETE: That was a great day for Trillium. You guys were ahead of the game. It sounds like such a quaint ‘edge’ now in 2026: filters for things dropping thirty percent and halting, so you could buy panic. I made my own scanner for that around 2018? I think. What else do you remember that day?
I remember this really intense but unintentionally hilarious moment. Because I have the right filters for these crashing ETFs, I became the point man for everyone else with stock callouts. I’m using the military alphabet.
I’m yelling out these ETFs: “India, Alpha, Echo.”
Dave, the branch manager I succeeded in 2018, goes, “What was that?”
Everybody’s holding their breath a bit–like “Holy fuck, dude.” I was being as loud and clear as possible. He must have been processing it in his head wrong while also handling the stress of large positions. Every single callout, he’s going, “Ah, one more time.” Everyone’s trying to stay locked in, and he’s got the whole room one more repeat away from yelling “STFU.” But you have to bite your tongue—it’s one of the firm’s top traders, and he’s legitimately trying to get the right information. It’s just these little moments that are fun to reminisce on after the dust has settled.
Learning to Size Up
PETE: I want to know about pre-Market Wizards but profitable Lance. When did you first get over a hundred grand in a year—and then a million?
LANCE: I started in 2011. In 2013, I did $320K. In 2014, I did $965K, if you want to count that as close enough.
PETE: Once you were consistently profitable, what were you working on most—more plays, more size?
LANCE: Sizing. I had my mentor role-modeling it. I see a proven elite trader, my own teacher, is getting 20k shares. I’m just in 2k. Why can’t I push it to 5k? Intellectually, it’s the same exact trade. That helped me scale incrementally.
By the end of 2015, all of a sudden I’m having $100K months. Whoa. That was probably the most exciting time on the job. I think that was the jumping-off point from consistently profitable to really scaling up to eventually 8-figure trading results.
I think humans feel best with momentum and forward progress. If you go from 0 to big rockstar gains, and then decline slightly over the rest of your life, life sucks. It’s less about the current state of your bank account and more about the trend of personal progress itself. I think the most happiness comes from that steady growth curve of improvement in all aspects of life, not just financial.
That rings true. Once my trading peak felt behind me, even when I was still profitable, it was tough to have positive emotions about it. I found myself asking “why am I washed?” “why do I make mistakes I previously didn’t?” and eventually just “I hate this shit.” I think a trader who had progressed from $0 to $100/day was likely much happier than me, even if I was making $10k/day.
PETE: How important is it to keep that internal momentum going?
LANCE: When you’re seeing all that forward progress, it’s so tangible. It’s affecting your quality of life day to day in a good way. That’s the best time. There’s also just something so special about being on the rise at a prop firm: a clear hierarchy, a totem pole, all this progress, and you’re recognized for it with awards and leaderboards. It’s very addictive.
Now, financially, I’m flat or declining because I trade less, I donate and do whatever else. It’s a challenge to find that same dynamic that trading provided.
PETE: Did you have a structured process for sizing up during these early years?
LANCE: Nothing at all. It’s funny: A lot of these concepts I talk about now, I was just figuring out. The broken slot machine, the right side of the V, never sizing a trade so big that if it doesn’t work out, it ruins your psychology. Or the little sizing notecard where you write down your A, B, and C trades and how much to risk. Atomic Habits, increasing your size—all that stuff either wasn’t yet visible or wasn’t concrete enough to be functional heuristics–those came later in my career when I started to think about how to teach trading.
PETE: So if it wasn’t heuristics or a detailed process, was it simply the inner beast—“I want a million, I want two million, I want to win Trader of the Year”—pushing you to size up?
LANCE: It wasn’t at all this inner gunslinger’s fire to do it just to do it. I was so hesitant. I was scared to death. I did not have that dog in me at all. I had to override those instincts and reprogram myself, and it took a lot of kicking and screaming. My mentor would get so frustrated with me.
The emotions normalize and once they do–it becomes more rational and intellectual. My mind simply recognizes “This is a rare opportunity where the odds are in my favor, the rational thing to do is to bet big.” It gets easier once you reprogram yourself.
Being a trading educator on the internet
PETE: I think you’re nuts to sell courses. Nuts to keep putting yourself out there on Twitter. It just seems like you’re constantly playing defense against critics–do you think it’s worth it?
LANCE: Criticism is fine. In fact it can be healthy, the question is whether it’s accurate and in good faith. If I’m being insulted or blatantly trolled, I don’t feel the need to address that.
If somebody questions my intentions–“Lance, you’re just grifting or scammin’ me!”–well, they might have good reason to doubt me. But I genuinely think my content is useful to traders, especially given the alternatives they could be consuming. I don’t think it’s unethical to present a high-effort and self-proven education product for sale.
I try to address the most common criticisms rationally, with a level head: “Lance, if you made so much money, why did you make a trading course?” That’s an important objection. It’s fair. That same skepticism would be my gut instinct too. I will spend the time to address that.
People text me, “Don’t worry about the haters” or, “Don’t let yourself get worked up”. I actually don’t feel that way. I accept a certain level of doubt comes with the territory and I don’t get worked up over it, even if it seems like I’m rabidly active on Twitter doing exactly that. I just see myself standing up for my product.
PETE: Why do you think people have such strong opinions about what you should do with your life after making it as a trader?
LANCE: I’ve reflected a lot on that. Most people are judging my actions from their own values: “Lance, if I had a hundred million, I wouldn’t be on social media, I’d be at the pool all day.”
What are you talking about? Plenty of rich people, across all industries, are using social media. And I don’t want to sit at the pool all day anyway. I enjoy working and being productive. My sense is that most people hate their jobs, so they’re projecting a bit when they ask “Why the hell are you doing this?” For them, being rich is the ticket to stop working at the job they hate. But I don’t hate my job (being a trading educator).
So when I’m answering the same criticism again, I see myself trying to connect with others on explaining my own motivations. It paints a more transparent picture. You’re learning from someone sharing actual stuff that works. I want them to see it’s possible it’s not always a scammy course-seller who never ever made money trading in his life. A former professional with a proven track record actually does want to help.
PETE: What tells you that your work is helping people?
LANCE: I’m getting good feedback. Just a few days ago, I was just at Traders4aCause in Austin. Traders travel from around the world and they approach me to say “Lance, you’re a huge role model. You’ve helped my trading. Your YouTube videos are so useful. I was struggling, and this helped me. Thank you.”
Most people will fail, yes, but some people on the cusp will greatly benefit. I do think the content adds value and it stands up well, especially compared to the alternatives out there.
I find it personally engaging to build the course. It’s a different scoreboard: Can I create something that resonates with people and adds value to them? It’s been fun to break down trading concepts on a granular level so that my audience can understand it.
PETE: How do you feel about creating a business out of yourself and exposing your face/name so frequently?
While I was initially hesitant for privacy reasons and all the negatives associated with social media, I now believe that building up a personal brand is incredibly powerful. It’s something I can leverage to connect with those whom I respect and admire.
PETE: Who are some people you’ve reached out to?
LANCE: I had DMs with James Clear—he used something I brought up to him in his newsletter and gave me a shout-out. DMing with Bryan Johnson about health-related stuff. Meeting with Alex Hormozi was super cool. I love his thinking, I pick his brain. Plenty of great traders too, of course.
PETE: What do you think of some of these so-called “life gurus”? Do you emulate them? Do you find any of them to be a bit much?
LANCE: I admire them because they push the envelope with their message.
Take Bryan Johnson for instance–I think he adds massive value, because intellectually, I think he’s right about a lot of things. I see him as an ultramagnified version of me to some degree, at least somewhat philosophically. I know my personal health habits have improved because of him. I’ve taken actions because of him, and I’m sure millions of others have, too. General health awareness, making your sleep sacred.
You’re going to feel shitty when you drink or eat shitty food. Doing some of these habits is a form of self-harm. It might feel worth it to you now, but is it worth it long term? Me staying up until three in the morning doomscrolling—that’s self-harm. You’re taking something off your life for something that isn’t really giving you mental wellness.
Yes, he’s extreme with some of his methods but you need extremists to move the boundaries and change the norms.
If his message was simply, “Just get an extra five minutes of sleep a day”, do you think his message reaches the discourse at all? No!
I understand not everyone is comfortable with the extreme messaging and can find it a bit much. But in the aggregate, these people push the masses toward healthier habits. So I do admire them and strive to emulate their better habits.
The Costs of Trading
PETE: Have you ever canceled a date or an important commitment because of trading?
LANCE: I tend to be the person who doesn’t cancel because I want to keep a commitment. But what happened was I will turn down the invite in the first place and not be present for too many things.
Let’s talk about being present in general–right now, I’m able to look at you without checking my phone. I don’t have positions on, worrying about them while trying to hold a conversation. When you’re trading, that simple loss of presence is so huge. You lose your ability to enjoy a vacation, listen to other people’s stories, and work on the missions you care about.
That cost of presence affects people. I don’t think most traders are aware of it. I hang out with these young gun traders—and I love these guys—but so many of them can’t stop checking the quotes. I’m not judging, I’ve been there and maybe it is necessary for that stage of your life.
But there’s a cost. You know how many of my friends were trading on their honeymoon? How many friends were trading on their phone during the birth of their child?
I’m uncomfortable with the actual answer there. Do they realize what they’re missing out on?
PETE: That’s what scares me about getting back into trading. I drop off and pick up my kid every day. If I’m all-in on trading again, I’ll be checking my phone while she’s trying to talk to me. If it’s a really bad day, I’ll be in a daze where I can’t muster a conversation at all. I don’t like the thought of it. I’m not sure I know how to balance that.
LANCE: Yeah, absolutely. Let’s say you make all this money to be “free” from regular working life. Are you truly free if you can’t go to the gym, have dinner, or spend time with family without your mind dominated by trading thoughts?
I’ve never lost sleep over the content, the course, social media, any of that. It can be mildly annoying but I’m never stressing over it to the level of when I’m trading. I do it because I enjoy it and find fulfillment in it.
Health, friends, family, your overall experiences, what you’ve done for the world, what you’ve given back—that’s what matters. Trading and trading content are just games. I play these games, but I’m aware they’re silly games.
Living Out Your Values, Having Empathy
PETE: Open forum here–any advice for others you haven’t gotten off your chest?
LANCE: Do the introspection to figure out what’s important to you. Based on those values and priorities, build the systems and take the actions that align with them.
It’s okay to be a hobbyist trader. It can be a hobby. That’s great–don’t beat yourself up over it. What’s not okay is saying, “I want to be a pro trader.” and then treating it like a low-effort hobby.
It’s okay to say, “Money’s not important to me. My kids are more important,” and then take them to school every day. But you can’t say that and then turn around and only pay attention to screens and PnL.
PETE: There’s a delusion or inconsistency to that.
LANCE: Yeah. It can be nuanced of course. With a million bucks on the line, you’d probably not take your kid to school for one day, right?
PETE: Good point. Anything else?
LANCE: I’m a big believer in being intentional with empathy, to see the perspective of others and how it drives their actions.
Where most people run into issues is imposing their own perspective. We can only see the world through our own experiences, and we’re so quick to judge.
I think so much divisiveness and so many problems in the world come from judging others through our own values and experiences, rather than reverse-engineering what it means for them to feel a certain way. You might have strong views because you had different life experiences. You come from a different world. The Iowa farmer is going to be very different from the Bostonian grad student. The Black person, the gay person, the conservative, the blue collar–whoever. Rather than, “I don’t get their actions at all (from my own viewpoint)” I’d like it to be more “Let me view their perspective.”
Bryan Johnson, we just talked about him but a good example. He’s not saying everyone needs to spend all day optimizing their health like he does. But, as I understand his life, he was depressed and suicidal even after making hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s a strong impetus to say, “Oh my God, I need to make a big change right now,” and then take things to an extreme.
People judge that extreme, but he’s coming from a unique circumstance that drove him to those actions. I think the world is better when we try to understand what’s really behind the impetus of the actions.
Ultimately, what’s true to me? Let me live in accordance with that, and let me not judge others for living according to their own values.
PETE: I think that’s a great perspective to have. Thank you Lance for being a guest on Churning and Chatting!
