Attack with the Stack

My name is Chuck Whitman and I build great traders that lead great lives. Traders I have trained have generated in excess of a billion dollars in trading and are found in some of the largest proprietary trading firms and hedge funds in the United States.

What is the stack? The stack is a powerful tool that can change your life, it is a powerful tool that can change your trading, it's a tool that can show massive improvement in your trading. When we look at the stack, the stack is a tool that helps us process our emotion. Now if we step back for a moment, in past Trader Tip Tuesdays we've been talking about this concept of we live by a code and living by a code is really about living in a authentic life. Living a life of truth, a life of full transparency, full authenticity. In authenticity, there is power. Now the problem is, is that when we grow up, this is especially the case for men, when we grow up as young boys, we are told things like Boys Don't Cry, suck it up and deal with it, but some dirt on it, rub some dirt on it, it'll be fine. What we're taught at a very young age is it's not okay that we express emotion. It's not okay that we express emotion. So we learn to cope by repressing and suppressing our emotions, particularly our anger and our sadness. Now, the problem is, is that when we grow up, emotions are never suppressed for long, they're going to be expressed in some way and usually in unhealthy ways. Internally, if we suppress and we suppress and we suppress these emotions turn into things like ulcers, cancer, panic attacks, uncontrollable anxiety, things of this nature, or we express it externally through things like rage, fighting, confrontation, things that make other people very uncomfortable, things that cause immense damage to other people. I n my own life, I have constantly battled with anger and rage. I grew up in a very volatile family, I had a father who was very volatile and my father, I could see in him that he would suppress and suppress and suppress his anger. He wouldn't say anything, he get really quiet, he would withdraw, he would get depressed, he would drink, he would escape, doing God only knows what. But then one day and some random moment, he would explode, he would explode into massive fits of rage, punching holes in the walls, breaking furniture, hitting us and our family, screaming at us in constant verbal abuse, you didn't know how is going to go and you didn't know where it was going to come from. 

Now for me growing up, I started to realize that I was using those same strategies. Suppress, don't say what's on my mind, pout, do a lot, a lot of pouting, withdraw to myself, and then randomly see this rage come out of nowhere. I knew this was a big problem. I saw the damage it did to people around me that I cared about and I saw the damage it did to myself. Have you ever been in a situation where you blew up in immense rage or anger, and how'd you feel afterwards? Yeah, that you felt sick to your stomach. I thought you felt massive regret, but you felt embarrassment and shame and then you wanted to hide again. That's how I felt. So I knew something needed to be done about this. So I went to counseling, I read books, I learned techniques, and all these things I learned none of them worked. One of the most common techniques is if you feel yourself getting upset, just take deep breaths and count to 10. The idea is you breathe deeply and you count, it relaxes you. But for me, it had the opposite effect. I just got more and more pissed off with every number, 2, 3, 4, 5 and by the time I had to 6 or 7, I want to wash the chair out the fucking window. It didn't work. I don't know what to do. When I learned about the stack, the stack changed everything. When I learned about the stack, I learned the concept that my anger, that my rage could actually be an asset, it could actually make me better. It could actually be a weapon that I use to improve my life. This is revolutionary for me. I was like, wow, I was always trying to minimize it. Now what I was being told is no, we're not going to minimize it. We are going to embrace it. Wow, what a concept and that's what the stack did for me is it gave me a place to fully embrace all of my anger, all of my frustrations, all of my upset all of my depression, all of these things in one place. We need to express it but we need to express it in the right place. Just because you're upset with somebody doesn't mean you can go over and go off on him. Now you're just damaging them in addition to you, but the stack is a place that you can let it roll. You can get as upset as you want. You can say what ever it is on your mind and see, like were taught don't say what's on your mind. Minimize the words, minimize the emotions and it's fucked up. You need to express it. See, the more authentic you are, the more power you have have, the more authentic you are, the more you can feel who you really are, the more authentic you are, the more that you can connect with God and feel the Spirit of God flowing down in you and through you. You can't do that when you're numb. So the stack becomes a powerful tool to process all of that. 

Today, we're going to talk about the first part of the stack, which is expressing all this emotion. So we look at the stack, let's look at what we're trying to do here. We call it drift, shift and lift. In the drift, if we do not express our emotions, we're going to drift, we're going to withdraw, we're going to drift over to some other place and not be present. When we get too emotional, we can't focus. So one of the things we're going to do is we're going to take this emotion, and we're going to get it out of us. Once we get it out of us, we have the ability to shift our state. You see, sometimes like with me, when I get angry, I couldn't get out of anger. Like no matter what I did, I could not get out of anger, I was unable to shift my state. Even when I knew it, I felt like I was imprisoned in my own body, I felt like I was imprisoned in my own mind. But with the stack, we're going to be able to get it out of us, which is going to allow us to shift our state. Now once we shift our state, we can step back and we can look at what's going on objectively without charge, because we already expressed it, we already got it out of us. When we can do that, then we can shift our state, then we can lift and lift means we can learn from the situation, we can learn the lesson that is there for us, we can learn our patterns, we can learn our behaviors, and then we can change them, then we can change them. See you have to stop the drift because the drift will destroy your life. This shit that you're feeling inside and you don't know how to handle, it is the thing that will destroy your marriage, it is the thing that will ruin the relationship with your kids where they will not want to talk to you. This thing you feel is the thing that's going to cause you to blow your business up or blow your trading account up, this thing that you feel is the thing that is going to have you withdraw and as such not want to work out, want to binge eat, want a drink. Want to do all these things that are really unhealthy. We're going to stop the drift, we're going to shift and then we're going to lift. 

Now to do this. We're going to go through a series of questions and when we go through these questions, we're going to answer them authentically, we're going to answer them emotionally. For some of you this is going to be a real challenge because you've been taught to be too nice and when you're too nice, you're fake. Yes, you are fake and when you're fake, you cannot be authentic, you cannot feel yourself. So the first question we're going to ask ourselves is at this moment, what or who has triggered me to drift feel angry, frustrated, pissed off hurt, upset, disappointed, and why? Why are we upset? Okay, so as we go through these questions, we're going to work through an example so you can see what this would look like. Alright, so I gave me an example here, at this moment blank person or situation has triggered me to feel blank because of blank. Okay, so we're going to work through a situation that's called Steve and the stinky situation. Okay, so Steve is the landlord of my office and so we're going to work through his situation with Steve. At this moment, Steve, my landlord, and the smell of my office is triggered me to feel furious, because I have addressed this situation with him 10 plus fucking times. The shitty smell continues to pour into my fucking office every single morning when I show up, I leased this place to be a sanctuary, not a cesspool. So look at this answer, it's really raw. It's getting right at the heart of the problem. Okay, so that's question one. We're going to answer this and we're going to move to question two. At this moment, if you could scream at this individual or at the situation, what would you say? So see, we're releasing our frustrations. We're not holding anything back. So at this moment, if you could scream at this individual, what would you say? Well, in my example, we're saying, Steve, you motherfucker, fix the smell in my fucking office! I'm so sick and tired of this shit, fix my shit or give me my money back you piece of shit! See how raw I'm being? I'm getting it out of me. 

Now, this will move us to number three. At this moment. If you could force this person or this situation to a desired action, what would you want them to do to help you feel better? So in our case, at this moment with Steve and the stinky situation, at this moment, I would force Steve to accept the fact that he has fucked up over and over and over again on this issue, and that he is losing trust in me as a client because of his empty promises to fix the problem. Being very clear, but what I would force him to do I forced him to fucking fix it. All right, then we move to question four, at this moment with no filter or constraints, what do you truly think about the individual or the situation? So blank name a person is blank. Okay, so in this example with Steve in the stinky situation, well, Steve is a piece of shit. He's a fucking hopeless property manager and Steve has crossed the line for the last time. All right, now move to question five, I never want to experience and then list what you don't want to experience. So example, I never want to experience blank listing what you don't ever want to experience. So Steve in the stinky situation, I don't ever want to walk into my office and smell the same shit that I'm smelling. I don't ever want to get another email saying that Steve is fixing it and nothing ever fucking changes, being clear, about what I never want to experience again. Then we move to the last question, in this moment, if you had to put all your feelings into one singular trigger statement, what would it be an example is at this moment, the name of the trigger person, should or should not and then I give a description of the advice that I demand from an individual. So in this case, was Steve in the stinky situation, Steve should fix the smell immediately and stop bullshitting me with his stories. I don't want to story, I just want to fix the smell. So I never smell it again. 

Okay, so you can see that we have expressed all of this emotion, all of the frustration and started to get clear about what it is that we actually want. That's what we've done in the six questions. Now we're not done, we're done for this week, we've handled the emotional side. But next week, we're going to flip it and we're going to actually start examining it. Now that we put the emotion out, we're going to start examining the situation, but what is the lesson we can learn what are the best scenarios or alternatives to solve the situation and decide what it is most that we want and to go get it. Now as I said, I started stalking over three years ago, I had a lot of anger, I had a lot of trauma that needed to be fixed and one by one, I started stalking everything I was angry about, everything I was rageful about, all the traumas I experienced, everything from issues with my wife to issues with my partner, issues with my father issues with co workers issues with my self, and I started processing all these one by one by one and then the charge that I was carrying around, it dissipated, it was gone and when I thought of them, I didn't get angry, I didn't get rageful I didn't get upset, I was neutral about it, in some cases, actually feeling really compassionate. Now with other people I've worked through, I've seen them do the same thing, seen them process horrible issues, infidelity from their spouse, theft from a co worker, lots of trading losses, health problems, you name it. I've seen them process these, and I've seen them shift, and then I saw them lift. This is a game changer for you. I mean, I have spent millions of dollars on coaching, I've worked with some of the best coaches in the world, some of the best programs in the world. It's something I've been devoted to my whole life. I have seen like the best stuff and I'll tell you, out of everything I've seen, this tool right here is one of the absolute most effective I've ever seen at helping people get over their issues and come to a new reality. 

So I'm gonna give you your own chance to do this yourself. We're gonna do it in two parts, we do it in two parts, but I'm going to have a reward for you for each part. So here's what we're gonna do, there's a link that's put in the comments below and you can see here on this page, it's www.tradingmatrix.com/stack, what you're going to do is when you go in there, you're going to be able to complete a stack and answer these questions that I just shared with you and if you answer these questions, we're gonna give you free access to our webinar called how little money trades. How little money trades is a phenomenal webinar, it was first recorded in the midst of the meme stock mania back in 2021 and then we've recently updated it for what happened in May and in June, and GameStop. So in how little money trades, you're going to learn why stocks exploded during 2021 and how it's different this time. Two, you're going to learn how gamma impacts the leverage and options positions. That was a big feature of what was going on. Three, you're going to learn how big money trades, how big money effects a stock's price action. Four you're going to learn six rules for cornering a market. I've never seen this anywhere. This is how you corner a market. Now very difficult to do got to have lots of money, and it is one of the most complex games, but it has been done. I give you six rules for how somebody would corner a market, then I'll show you the seven edges of big money traders and you're gonna learn the aspects of trading to avoid to avoid failure. This is a phenomenal resource and if you do your stack, you do the first half of the stack on the site. we'll give it to you for free. It's Tuesday. It's Trader Tip Tuesday, and on Trader Tip Tuesday, I come to you with tips and tactics like this today that will help you take your performance to an elite level. You want to have an elite life, stack. You learned that today. So get going on your stack and I will see you next Tuesday