Michael Katz

In this story

1. From a solitary screen to a trading business
2. The losses behind the method
3. Learning what to watch and what to hide
4. Building Trade The Pool with other people
5. The difference between an account and a business
6. The infrastructure behind the screen
7. Automation after the failed experiment
8. A routine built around attention

From a solitary screen to a trading business

Michael Katz describes an early version of his working life in unusually plain terms: sitting in front of a computer with his cat, trading every day and having nobody to discuss the decisions with. There was no mentor beside him to explain what he had done well or badly. Capital was another constraint. In his account, those experiences later helped make the case for a business that combined access to trading resources with a community around the screen.

Katz is chief executive of Trade The Pool, a company offering evaluation and funding programmes for stock traders. His earlier work included heading traders at a local proprietary trading firm. In a published conversation with Prop Firm Match, he recalls working with about seventy traders there, each operating within risk boundaries. That experience gave him a working model for supervising traders, but it did not answer every question involved in building an online business with participants across different countries.

His own introduction to markets was less formal. His father ran a business, and Katz was interested in a working life outside a conventional office job. A girlfriend gave him Robert Kiyosaki's Rich Dad Poor Dad, which introduced him to ideas about money and the stock market. He then spent roughly two years teaching himself through books, articles and the online videos available to him. He describes that period as learning from scratch rather than arriving with a finished method.

Another part of his background was gaming, particularly first-person shooters. The keyboard, computer screen and need for quick decisions made the trading environment feel familiar. In his recollections, that familiarity helped explain his attraction to day trading. It was an entry point, however, rather than protection from the losses and behavioural problems that followed. His later interviews spend considerable time on those problems.

The losses behind the method

One episode discussed in his Trading Nut interview concerns a loss of $91,000 while trading Virgin Galactic shares. The host presents it as a turning point in Katz's thinking about risk and trading psychology. A separate Talking Trading interview account describes the loss occurring over three days. The setback is part of his public explanation of how he learned to trade.

An earlier company account of his conversation with Nicholas Penrake describes a different episode: losing $10,000 on a trade and stepping away for two weeks. That account says Katz used the break to examine both the technical decision and his mental state. Together, his published recollections show that his account of professional development includes interruptions and mistakes, rather than an uninterrupted run of profitable decisions.

In the Penrake conversation, he describes fear of losing money, impulsive decisions and the tendency to close a position too early. His response was to reduce the initial risk, wait for confirmation and build a position in stages. Trading Nut's account returns to a related distinction: results obtained in backtesting do not necessarily carry into live trading. The emphasis in these interviews is on what happens after an attractive idea meets real money, changing prices and the trader's reactions.

Katz also recounts developing an algorithmic system with a friend that performed well in demonstration trading but lost money when used live. The company summary says that, despite his mathematical and coding background, he did not simply turn his own trading into a fully systematic process. Much of his approach involved managing a position as it developed. That failed experiment gives his later interest in automation a more complicated background than an uncomplicated enthusiasm for software.

Learning what to watch and what to hide

Katz's descriptions of his trading contain several specific changes in working habits. In the Penrake account, he recalls previously following four or five stocks at once, using software connected to his Interactive Brokers account. As running the business took more of his attention, he concentrated on one or two trades in a session. The change was a reduction in the number of decisions he was trying to manage, rather than a claim that more activity necessarily produced better results.

The same account describes two recurring setups: an opening move through a support level, and a reversal after a stock reaches an important support area. His current company biography describes a pullback approach using support, MACD divergence and volume confirmation. These descriptions identify the signals he looks for: a support area, a change in momentum and signs of buyers returning.

In the Prop Firm Match conversation, Katz identifies another change that mattered to him: hiding the profit-and-loss window. Watching the dollar figure fluctuate had been competing with attention to the trade itself. Removing that display, he says, shifted his focus toward execution and managing the position. It is a small interface decision with a clear personal purpose, consistent with the fear and impatience he discusses elsewhere.

Preparation is similarly concrete in his account. He describes marking levels on a chart and drawing the sequence he wants to see before entering. He wants to recognise a planned setup when it appears instead of inventing a justification after clicking. He also describes beginning with part of his intended risk and adding gradually.

Building Trade The Pool with other people

Katz says the move toward Trade The Pool followed a call from Gil, whom he identifies as the founder. He brought his experience as a stock trader and head of traders to that conversation. Stock trading was the area he knew best, although he had also traded futures. He describes the choice of equities as a match between that background and an opportunity he saw in a funding industry more visibly associated with other instruments.

The company's development is a shared undertaking in both his interview and The Enterprise World's profile. Katz works alongside a founding leadership team and people responsible for risk, technology and operations. His part in explaining the programmes draws heavily on his own trading experience, while the risk, technology and operating responsibilities are spread across the team.

He also links the support offered around the programmes to the isolation he remembers from trading alone. In the Prop Firm Match interview, he describes a live trading room, a Discord community, educational material and a newsletter discussing strategies, psychology and risk. He identifies relationships with tools providers including Bookmap and TrendSpider. Those examples show what he wanted to add around access to capital: places to ask questions, compare approaches and find information.

One educational project he describes was an extended live event bringing partners together to discuss trading. He also mentions material about preparing before the market opens and scanning for stocks. Those activities extend his role beyond explaining the funding programmes, placing him among the teachers and partners producing material for participants.

The gaming connection appears again in his enthusiasm for trading competitions. He describes enjoying the leaderboard and community element, while also discussing trial access and smaller programme options as ways participants could become familiar with the platform. In his telling, those changes developed through work on awareness and access, alongside the less visible task of arranging market data and partnerships.

The difference between an account and a business

Moving online changed the scale of the problem. In the recorded Prop Firm Match conversation, Katz contrasted working directly with a local trading group against operating a service used by people around the world. A participant naturally concentrated on the rules affecting one account; the company had to consider the exposure created by many accounts and different trading styles at the same time.

The programme mechanics he described in that conversation belonged to the service as it operated then. Participants began on simulator accounts. After reaching the required target, their activity was checked by the risk team, with an interview involving him or another team member. Katz also explained that reaching a funded phase did not mean every order from every participant was automatically sent to the live market. The firm assessed which activity it was prepared to take into that market.

He illustrated that assessment through contrasting traders. Someone taking a large short position in a penny stock presented a different pattern from someone trading a small number of shares in a large technology company. Katz described building profiles around those differences, including the size of the risk taken per trade. His explanation connected the firm's market exposure to the participant's behaviour rather than to an account label alone.

One recurring problem he identified was participants treating all available buying power as an amount to use immediately. He described traders taking positions that were too large, then contrasted that behaviour with using only a portion of the available amount. Another pattern was entering repeatedly without a recognisable setup, simply to stay involved when the market was quiet. He said the consistency requirements used at the time were intended to distinguish repeatable activity from a single lucky trade.

His account separates the participant's trading decisions from the company's decision about what exposure it will accept. The two sides of the business can look different from an individual's screen, where the immediate concern is a particular trade.

The infrastructure behind the screen

Katz is candid in the same conversation about technical problems the company had encountered. He describes the difficulty of bringing together stock-market data from different exchanges, obtaining the necessary access and normalising feeds before delivering them through a trading platform. The point is specific to the product he is discussing: a service covering a large range of equity symbols has a substantial information pipeline behind the screen participants see.

He contrasts that pipeline with a simpler picture of receiving quotes from a single provider. Different sources and instruments have to work together, and the company has to keep improving the platform and its data delivery. He acknowledges past issues while describing the work of improving it.

Support is another part of that operating account. Katz describes in-house and remote staff, live chat, tickets and community assistance. Technical questions and trading questions are different, but both can arrive while a participant is trying to use the service. His description places responsibility for the experience across several functions rather than treating the platform as software that runs independently of people.

The Enterprise World profile similarly describes investment in technology, risk monitoring and operational structure. The organisational picture is consistent with the interview: a trading business has to maintain data, evaluate activity, provide support and decide how much exposure to accept. Katz's recollections of scaling from a local floor show why those responsibilities became more complicated as the audience expanded.

Automation after the failed experiment

In his Global Fintech Series interview, Katz describes automation as becoming more accessible through no-code tools. His interest is not limited to faster order entry. He anticipates traders being able to package and exchange systems, with marketplaces for strategies and algorithms. He presents these as expectations about the industry's direction.

His earlier failed experiment with a friend gives context to that interest. In the Global Fintech Series interview, he called for records explaining why a person adjusted or overrode a system, alongside measures of its performance. His focus remained on decisions around the tool as well as its output.

Katz also rejected the idea that automation removes emotion altogether. That position sits alongside his personal preference for discretion in managing trades. His public record contains both an appetite for automation and an example of why a successful demonstration can be misleading.

The same distinction applies to expansion. In the Prop Firm Match conversation, he discusses interest in giving participants access to markets closer to where they live, rather than only American equities. He presents this as development work and an ambition, another step beyond the stock-market service with which the company began.

A routine built around attention

Away from product plans, Katz describes a routine of getting up early, meditating and making time for exercise. He talks about going to bed earlier than he once did and working gradually at changing habits. He does not offer those habits as a universal formula. They are part of his own explanation of how he prepares to concentrate, both in trading and in running the company.

His most consistent personal examples concern attention: reducing the number of trades, removing the dollar display, preparing a chart before acting and stepping away after a serious loss. His most specific business examples concern boundaries: assessing different traders, supporting participants and deciding what exposure the company will carry. They connect the individual at the screen with the executive responsible for the wider operation.