Chris Dunn: Trader, BitCoin, Money Advice, and Hitting Financial Freedom Through Investing

I interviewed Chris Dunn who is one of the few people I’ve known who is a trader who has consistently made money over the years. Most traders I've met crap out very quickly.

*SIDE NOTE* One person who listened to this interview early said, "After listening to this I realized I need to do something about my investing."

So check out this great interview about investing your money, easy strategies to save/invest, and also community building over the internet:

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Here's a bunch of short clips if you can't watch the whole video:

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CLIP: My inflation protection kit

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This is the "Inflation Protection Kit" Tweet I was referring to in the interview:

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CLIP: This is the truth about day trading.

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CLIP: Did you go through this phase?

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CLIP: This is the only way for traders to make money nowadays.

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CLIP: It doesn’t matter the frequency at which you trade; a trader's skills are always necessary.

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CLIP: The level of financial education out there is very low.

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Neville's Notes from the interview:
​After every interview I re-watch the recording and take my own notes:

• 0:00:33: I used to be a day trader from 2002 to 2013, but markets changed and nobody makes money day trading.
• 0:00:55: The only people making money day trading are market manipulators.
• 0:01:00: Neville tells his day trading story from college.
• 0:01:55: In theory if you “buy low and sell high” you make money, so the appeal is real, but few succeed in this.
• 0:02:05: Day trading is you buy/sell in one day, also called short term trading or scalping. Now with high frequency algorithms the profits got competed away. The way to make money is swing trading or position trading a.k.a. Holding for longer periods of time. Even if you’re holding long positions you’re still a trader.
• 0:04:45: How the hell is a normal person supposed to learn this? Well…they don’t.
• 0:05:50: Chris got started day trading young so he got an education young, but most don’t get that.
• 0:06:10: In a previous generation your investing would be handled by the company you were with for decades.
• 0:06:40: Many people with 401k’s will just have it sitting in cash because they don’t know what to invest in.
• 0:07:02: I’ve talked to very smart people and they don’t understand the concept of inflation.
• 0:07:29: Everybody doesn’t need to be a professional investor, but if you want to be financially free it’s your duty to learn the basics.
• 0:08:22: I think I’ve made more from investing than business with this simple portfolio called “My Inflation Protection Kit.” This simple Tweet is my same play for the last 10 years.
• 0:09:09: Warren Buffett just recommends SPY or VOO and buy that dollar cost averaged every month and holding it forever.
• 0:11:06: The basic level is DCA an S&P 500 index, or the next level is trying to think about what stock or crypto will go up in the long run.
• 0:12:08: Neville: The best thing I ever did in college way try day trading. I learned so much valuable advice in this era and made small mistakes before I made any real money.
• 0:13:40: The typical exaggerated headline is like: [Asset] Goes [Up/Down] For [Reason]. Like: “Tesla Went Down Because Elon Sneezed on SNL”
• 0:14:19: Neville’s story about how he made his first big win buying Dynegy after the Enron scandal because he actually read the investor report vs listening to the news headlines.
• 0:16:15: His wife Nikki trades retail stocks by reading financials then buying when overreactions happen like this LuLu Lemon case.
• 0:17:02: Buying BitCoin when no one is talking about it was the move. Going against the crowd is often when to buy/sell.
• 0:17:38: BitCoin is the most emotionally driven asset I’ve ever seen, but the cool thing is it starts the conversation of “What exactly is money? What is it backed by?”
• 0:19:13: Neville’s interesting advantage for realizing the strength of the US Dollar because of going to India every few years, and realizing $1 was worth $70 there.
• 0:19:55: Gold was very important in India because that’s how you saved money or stored wealth vs the local currency.
• 0:21:20: Some countries are way ahead on trends because they had to leapfrog some of the technologies in the US, like text messaging money, mobile phones, and credit cards.
• 0:22:15: Market Cap / Supply = Price. But the way price is discovered is through exchanges, and when more people sell the price goes down, when lots of people are buying the price goes up.
• 0:23:28: Million dollars per BitCoin sounds crazy, but you can do calculations which would peg it at that. It’s important to learn the hard numbers vs speculation.
• 0:24:50: Neville’s theory of BitCoin is MySpace, it’ll be the first big thing, but Ethereum is Facebook and could take over.
• 0:30:15: How do you define “financial freedom?" It’s having a portfolio that supports your dream lifestyle and grows faster than that costs. Most people don’t get here, they just work and spend in a cycle.
• 0:31:00: True passive income is not side hustles, but rather financial stuff.
• 0:31:14: Watching worldwide debt spiral out of control is very concerning.
• 0:32:04: Hopefully governments keep themselves financially responsible by holding BitCoin or something else. This is the case where BTC goes to $1,000,000/coin with this type of money pouring into it.
• 0:33:27: Talk about online communities. Chris has a members area, Discord for chat channels, Zoom calls.
• 0:33:55: How do you advertise your community?
• 0:34:50: The average active membership is 5 years, and they get all clients through social media like Twitter and YouTube, no SEO. A BitCoin Basics series of videos were what still gets people into their ecosystem.
• 0:37:25: I kinda wish I kept being in the financial content world because finance is “close to the money.” When talking about building wealth there’s a very tangible ROI, because people think “If I make $100k off this advice, then a $200 fee is worth it.”
• 0:40:18: Neville learned how big the gambling industry was because he helped some roommates make a site called ParlaysAndPicks where they sold a $49/mo subscription for baseball bets.
• 0:41:16: Positioning is important, Ramit Sethi nailed it with his Dream Job course because the value prop was so strong.
• 0:41:58: So many people have an incessant desire to gamble in some way. A lot of gambling and day trading just degenerate gamblers. For better or worse crypto is perfect for gamblers because it’s always open, it’s worldwide, and people “think” they have unfair advantages over others.
• 0:44:13: Chris started DailyDough.co and talks about his experience with starting a newsletter. They had 100,000+ subs but people were disengaged, so they started a newsletter. “If we do a newsletter it gives us a chance to be consistent.” It’s really hard to grow newsletters.
• 0:45:55: Newsletters and Podcasts have no viral loop like YouTube does. They are ok with not giant numbers because the people listening are incredibly high value and several hundred bucks a year per listener. It’s also harder to grow them because ads are far more expensive.
• 0:47:55: Neville pays over $7,000/year to just host an email newsletter list. You also lose readers with every send. Email stays stagnant unless you really push.
• 0:48:59: SEO is mostly dead for most people, instead social media content is seeing better results. YouTube subscribers seem to be best.
• 0:50:11: Branded Searches are the best SEO result because they are specifically look for YOUR content.
• 0:50:20: When I changed Kopywriting Kourse to Copywriting Course a huge downside was I owned the word “Kopywriting” so branded searches were easy to do vs now. I actually just bought Kopywriting.com for $1500 because I missed the K’s.
• 0:51:25: I learned this lesson: Whenever you have something a little edgy or memorable something sticks better. BodyMonkey vs HouseOfRave story. We recorded a professional version of Copywriting Course and it totally flopped.
• 0:53:09: With the K’s I always had this cool quick story to show why Kopywriting was better than Copywriting. From Day 1 of the Copywriting Course I’ve always thought writers should be able to communicate over multiple formats.
• 0:54:55: I’m about to get married, so how do people split finances?
• 0:58:24: Would you start a newsletter again? Maybe not without an existing list. “A newsletter is just a blog.”
• 0:59:35: Neville says most of the videos he makes are private inside his community because they’re not “YouTube-ized” enough.
• 1:01:25: What is the average day of Neville? I work on the community for a bit, I build new features into it, I create a decent amount of content like YouTube videos and newsletters. I make a few investments here and there but this doesn’t take much time wise.
• 1:03:30: Are you making startup investments? Yes, but the main thing for investing is what I will get in-between a sale like seeing investor updates and being a part of a fast growing company.
• 1:07:05: Naval Ravikant’s advice for minimum angel investing: Make 12 bets, over 4 years, with the same size check.
• 1:09:05: Chris listened to over 200 pitches before writing his first angel investment check.
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Hope you enjoyed this interview and got something out of it! Watch the whole thing here (pls give a 👍🏼 and share if you like it)!

Sincerely,
Neville Medhora - Guy interested in money

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​P.S. Reply with questions or feedback about this interview, happy to answer anything!

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