Retail investors have remained resilient despite recent market volatility, soaring inflation, and recession fears. In fact, a July 2022 survey by eToro showed that two-thirds of US investors held their investments steady during the stock market sell-off. It seems this cohort of investors is here to stay, and they have their eye on long-term financial planning.

One community that’s leading the charge of responsible investing is Stock Dads. Stock Dads™ is a premium Discord trading community that offers educational investing and trading services for working fathers. Included in its membership are a customized learning plan, live coaching done by professional traders every day, full trading logs including transparency on wins and losses, and licensed accountants and financial planners.

In this exclusive interview, Stock Dads Director of Social Media, Chris Cheung, discusses his history, and reveals how Stock Dads has created such a tight-knit community and the reason why they have become one of the most successful online trading groups.

What’s your background and how did you get into trading?

When I was young, my dad was into stocks. He started investing heavily during the dot.com Bubble and lost $100,000 which made it a stressful time for my family. I grew to understand the importance of personal finance and investing smartly. I started investing soon after graduating from college in 2016 with $5,000 of my own money and I didn't want to make the same mistakes that my dad did. For years, I spent hours every day learning the craft while still working 3 jobs to make as much money as I could to invest!

During the pandemic, I started to grow my own personal social media presence. Eventually, I teamed up with DJ (Stock Dads™ CEO and Founder) and the rest of the team because I immediately saw the potential. What started as a private Facebook group was growing quickly, and I wanted to be a part of it. At the end of the day, I wanted to put out content that teaches people about investing. So to be able to do that under the Stock Dads umbrella has been great.

I want to teach my children, and Stock Dads is more than a group of dads - it’s also a place for people who didn’t have the best role models or role models that weren’t necessarily financially savvy. That's something that most of us don't really learn about in school or from our parents. Money in general is a subject that a lot of people don't like talking about. Stock Dads flips that narrative.

Why do you believe that Stock Dads has been successful?

The reason Stock Dads is where it is because of how relatable we are. A lot of people have branded themselves, either intentionally or unintentionally, as “get rich quick” schemes while flexing Lamborghinis that, most of the time, probably isn’t even theirs. Our focus is on the community and building generational wealth with our fellow dads.

We're not only trying to put out trades, but we're really trying to educate people in our groups and on social media. We're teaching people why certain trades work, what type of characteristics we're looking at in a company, and other strategies and techniques so that people actually learn how this whole thing works, rather than just blindly following us.

How have Stock Dads been able to handle the shift in the markets over the last few months?

When the markets go up every day, it's easy to sell courses, and you get a lot of mainstream attention on social media. However, what we're trying to do is build a long-term value proposition for people. In the long run, it's going to pay off, so we're still continuing to add new resources to our community. We're regularly tweaking and improving upon our beginner's Roadmap and adding to the resources for that as we learn and evolve the program.

We make sure that we vet our analysts on a regular basis to make sure that their win rates are where we want them to be, and we set an extremely high standard for the type of alerts that we put out. Quality over quantity has certainly contributed to our win rate and success as a whole.

If you could start over again as a trader, or give advice to new traders, what would you do?

Most people believe that they can buy a certain stock or listen to someone else without doing any research. Beginner traders tend to trade with positions that are way too large, thinking they can throw in as much money as possible, simply because someone on the internet said the trade was a no-brainer. I would urge against this. The reason why we focus so much on education is that blindly following anyone is a recipe for disaster. Even with our incredible analysts who consistently hit 80+ % win rates month to month, members can get burned if they don’t learn what they are trading and why. Everyone needs their own unique style. We help traders find theirs.

Additionally, one of the most important skills that I would learn early on is how to determine whether a company is undervalued or overvalued. Learn from some of the best traders and investors in the past. There are a lot of lessons from legendary investors like Warren Buffett or Peter Thiel that can be invaluable during the learning process.

I would also focus on consistency. My discord handle is Mr. Consistency. If you really want to learn how to be a consistent trader, you need to make sure you create and follow your own plan. That means figuring out when your entry point is when you’ll take profit, what is your stop loss? What’s the amount of money that you’re going to trade? If such and such happens in the market then I'm going to get out of my position, things like that. Being disciplined is so important. Making sure that you remove emotions from trading and that you are following your rules every single time. Another tip for beginners is to trade with a consistent amount of money on each trade, and track the results so that you actually can practice, backtest, and see what is and isn’t working with your strategy.
Lastly, be patient, or as we like to say in the Discord, “PAYtient”. In trades, yes, but also in the learning process. As I mentioned earlier, this is not a “get rich quick” scheme, and if you treat it like it is, it can very quickly become a “get broke quick” scheme. Nobody wants that. Let’s do better for ourselves and our families.