In this venturesome episode, Christopher Hnatko, Founder of Spartan Trading, shares how to master trading with institutional insights and avoid common pitfalls. If you struggle with financial leaks and poor risk decisions, you won’t want to miss it.
You will discover:
– What real-time mentoring builds confident profitability
– How to define risk thresholds for scalable business choices
– Why institutional views reveal hidden market dynamics
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the Start scale and succeed podcast. It’s the only podcast that grows with you through all seven stages of your journey. As a founder, I’m your host, Scott Ritzheimer, and I see a lot of folks who are trapped in jobs that just don’t fulfill them. I mean, it is the start of every founder’s journey out there. They’re looking for a path to freedom, to financial independence, and more and more, that doesn’t look like having to go into a traditional business or waiting decades for retirement. There are industries like trading that offer much faster routes to the freedom that they’re looking for, if you do it right. And that’s the challenge, because here’s what happens. Folks get into the game and either trying to do it on their own or wasting 1000s of dollars on many of the courses and outdated strategies that are out there, they blow up their accounts in seconds and find themselves feeling worse off than they were in the first place. And here’s the thing that drives me absolutely crazy about this, and it’s not just to the trading space. It happens in other industries as well. But if it doesn’t work for you, it’s almost like it’s your fault, like you’re the problem, and maybe you did something wrong, maybe you didn’t. But the reality of it is you need to find some source, some education, some training, someone to walk with you, who can get you through that difficult time, and it’s especially true for trading. So the real issue that we want to get here is, how do we get beyond the cursory stuff, the eye candy, the ear candy, and how do we get past the can strategies and stuff that just doesn’t really work and get down to the brass tacks of how to actually do it, particularly in the world of trading and and if that’s something you’re interested in, either as a side hustle or even going full time, your My guest today is going to be a huge treat for you, because he spent decades on actual trading floors in hedge funds and at financial institutions. Chris Hnatko, Hnatco, sorry, I probably still said that wrong. He built Spartan trading specifically to fix what’s broken in trading education. And is the founder of Spartan trading, an online education platform that empowers aspiring and experienced traders to master the stock and options markets with decades of experience spanning hedge funds, financial institutions and live trading floors, Chris has seen firsthand how traditional trading education falls short, and he built Spartan trading to fill that gap. Chris’ approach is actionable. It’s hands on, and it’s results driven. He doesn’t just teach theory. He walks traders through real time market opportunities, high probability setups and decision making strategies that accelerate learning and build confidence. He’s here with us today. Chris, welcome to the show. Glad to have you here. What’s cool about your story is like you’ve been there and done that. You’ve been on the actual trading floors, you’ve you’ve traded with actual hedge funds. So taking that, what’s the secret here, like, Why does trading education, or at least most trading education, actually keep people stuck in their jobs instead of becoming profitable traders?
Christopher Hnatko
Yeah, and just want to have just one, one piece of clarity here guys, I’ve traded alongside hedge funds and alongside guys on floors and helped advise, you know, some of these types of individuals. From a consulting standpoint, I wasn’t actually on the floors with them, because I’m in front of my screen and my setup in my office, so it’s online, is where I’m, you know, doing these activities. My partners, though, that are part of Spartan trade, have Rand floors, ran hedge funds, ran institutions. They’ve got a lot more tenure. They’re about 4050, years of tenure. But we’ve come together to make this this group, but, you know, I certainly do have experience, you know, dealing with those types of individuals.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, thank you. So using that, that’s a lot of experience, especially between the group of you. Where did you see that experience not showing up in other programs?
Christopher Hnatko
Well, you know, you don’t tend to have that much tenure, just between, you know, three people, we have over 100 years of tenure between us, us, and you know, that’s a lot. And I find that most of the you know, the groups out there, educational side of things, they lack the expert, the expertise, the experience. Most of them have never done anything from an institutional standpoint, mostly it’s on the retail side. If you really want to understand the game, you need to understand it from an institutional standpoint, because realistically, that’s kind of who’s going to have the most impact on the market. You need to understand the nuances of how the back end of that works in terms of, you know, you want to understand, you know, order, flow. You want to understand liquidity, volume, these types of things, structure, of, you know, different names that you’re looking at. You know, when news is put out, how it’s disseminated, and, you know, essentially, how institutional individuals react to it, how they control risk, etc. Because, you know, they have the most impact within the market. Retail doesn’t necessarily have that much impact. We’re kind of just riding the waves, so to speak. But they’re the guys that are, you know, making. Waves. So I found that there was a large gap in that. So we use our expertise there, you know, to go through every single type of nuance within the market. You know, whether it’s from, you know, risk control to the technical side of things, to, you know, how money actually flows, interpreting news, I think there’s a lot of you know, I would say 95% of the retail market doesn’t know how to look at, you know, an SEC filing and actually understand what’s going on. So there’s a lot of confusion when news comes out, especially in the small cap side of things. So, you know, we take our expertise and we’ve, you know, been able to help guide people, you know, within our chat room, from an educational standpoint, you know, day to day, giving our opinion on, you know, when things are moving, what’s actually going on, what we think is, you know, happening within the market. I got some really nice kind of examples from, you know, today, for instance, you know, it’s a Friday, and you know, the market, you know, is coming off the lows. We’re able to, you know, before the market opened up, I can see, you know, from a technical standpoint, it’s fairly extended, you know, going to get long a lot of these higher quality names. There’s been a lot of volatility lately in the market. And, you know, we got into, you know, things like a matt Tesla, etc, some of these derivatives. And we had some pretty large moves on some of them, you know, a matt, for instance, we had these 220 calls today. They went up to 100% in, you know, intraday. Now, these are same day expiration contracts. But what I’m trying to get, kind of get to is, you know, we have the expertise to see those types of opportunities and then have the conviction to actually go after them and hold those types of, you know, trades for a longer period of time. And we help, yeah, people, you know, find those types of ideas, I guess.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, there’s this saying that has some truth to it, but can get us in a lot of trouble, and it’s that those who can’t do teach and and oftentimes in industries, you’ll see folks who who find out that they can make more money talking about what it is that they do than actually doing it themselves. And how do you separate, particularly in the world of training, how trading? How do you separate those who really can do from those who are just talking about doing?
Christopher Hnatko
Yeah, well, I think one of the things is, you know, everything that we do, we timestamp every single idea, and then you can see the outcome of them. We’re very transparent. I post that online every single day, and I don’t see any any other group that does that. You know, we’ve been around for eight years. I’ve seen a lot of groups come and go. We’ve been in the industry for, obviously, longer, but, you know, I don’t see any other type of individual that likes to have that type of transparency, because no one likes to be held accountable in this environment. And I think that’s kind of what we’ve made a name for ourselves, is, you know, when people see the performance consistency and we show them exactly what we’re doing in and out, and we can be held accountable to it. It does, you know, put the proof in the pudding, right? So, and I, you know, the other thing is, too a lot of these different educational platforms don’t stick around for very long. You know, some of the guys this, they kind of fade away because, you know, the markets hop for a little bit. It’s very easy, but when the market gets a little bit tough, there’s a little bit of volatility and range. You know, people, their their their groups, kind of get smoked by that. I think the other, the other, you know, kind of thing that really speaks to the quality of what we do is, you know, I have individuals that I, you know, teach in a mentorship in, you know, environments. And, you know, we talk, we go through their statistics, you know, week to week, we make adjustments to, you know, what we’re what they’re doing, in our opinion. And, you know, we teach them our system. And I have some of these individuals that you know have been able to, you know, quit their jobs. You know, some of them, you know, top student Atlanta, for instance, she’s made about $5 million this year, which I think that’s outperforming most people that actually, you know, run those other educational rooms, right? So if our students are, you know, able to outperform those types of people, that, I think it also just shows you how much more power there is and what we do over others. But of course, you know, that’s that’s up to everyone else to see the you know, the value for them to decide.
Scott Ritzheimer
The thing that’s really cool about what you guys do is, is that it’s those stories where it’s one thing to be successful in a domain, right? It’s one thing to be a great hitter in the major leagues, but being a great hitter in the major leagues doesn’t mean that you’ve got what it takes to make great hitters in the major leagues. What have you all learned at Spartan about the difference between being successful traders and helping build successful traders.
Christopher Hnatko
Well, being a successful trader, you know, one of the things is this, it’s really dependent upon your style, how you operate. From an individual standpoint, the way that I operate may not make sense for other individuals. You know, trading is something that there’s a couple things that need to be consistent, and there’s a couple things that you need to adjust your style to with what you’re doing. And what I mean by that is, you know, it’s like playing a sport. You know, there’s going to be guys who are good at certain things within, you know, playing on a team or, you know, individually, everyone’s going to have a. Things that they are good at, and it’s your job to figure out what you are good at, and the only way to do that is by tracking statistics and probabilities what you’re actually doing. So that’s something that we do with everybody. We overlay, you know, some criteria on top of what they’re doing. We track what they’re doing every single week, and then we can see very clearly where the, you know, there’s gaps in their performance and what they actually should focus on to actually grow. So, you know, I know for myself what I’m good at. I know, you know, from a risk control standpoint, where I’m strong and what opportunities to go after, and everyone’s different from that regard. So, you know, one of the things that we do is when we talk to individuals and we get them involved in, you know, let’s say the mentorship program. We do a basically reporting of every single behavior that could possibly do with our system overlaid on top. And then very quickly, we can see where they’re strong, where they’re weak. We eliminate where they’re weak, we focus on where they’re strong, because that’s going to be most scalable. So I guess, to answer your question, you know, everyone’s an individual, and everyone’s going to be individually different. It’s, you know, the one person, or it’s that individual’s job to pull the trigger and then to manage their positions and manage what they’re doing within the market. I can’t do that for them, but if they are able to understand where they’re strong and understand where they can actually scale and push themselves, they should operate better, and they should, you know, perform better in the end as well.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So in in the trading world in particular, it’s pretty easy to set up. I don’t even know the technical name for this, but fake accounts, basically. But that trade unreal money in live environments, to some extent. To give you an idea of what trading a paper trading account, yes. Thank you. And and one of the I’ve seen several friends who have done that and then got into the real world and found that it’s, it’s a very different ballgame. What is it that separates? I think my son, he’s playing around with one right now. He’s up like 12 100% or something like that. But why? Why do those returns seem to vary so much with what happens once, once the rubber meets the road?
Christopher Hnatko
Well, I think there’s a couple different reasons. If you’re in a, you know, let’s say you’re paper trading, and you’re in an environment that you’re trading something that has very low or small liquidity, that your buys and sells are not going to have an impact on what’s actually going on. So there could be, like, a, you know, two or three cent spread on, on something, you know, in the in on the paper trading side. But in the real world, it could be larger just because, you know, you’re actually looking at, you know, a market being made there. And when there’s a sell that occurs, it doesn’t actually affect the spread, or you’re getting filled on the Ask on the paper trading side. So the actual gains aren’t actually realistic. I find that, you know, especially, you know, from a paper trading standpoint, a lot of the times, you know, you have these accounts that are very, you know, large that people are kind of screwed around with. But when you when the rubber meets the road, the amount of motion that will come out from actually executing, and having real money on the line will change the way that you behave, you know, from a you know, paper trading standpoint, you kind of think of things a little bit more logically, because there’s no emotion involved. And then when you actually start to trade, you start to think illogically. And that’s the issue. That’s the hard thing about trading, you know, I think the you know, the you know, the learning curve is quite large in terms of understanding the technicals and these types of things, but the learning curve is even larger because, or with yourself, because you’re the one that’s in charge of your emotions. And I find that that’s where the main gap is. You know, people might find they’re incredibly good on paper trading, but when they flip to real money, they don’t know how to operate, because it’s almost like a deer in the headlights sort of situation. Maybe they’re, you know, too scared to take losses, and that’s part of the game, and you need to control risk and take losses and move on. But, you know, maybe they have, they don’t have the ability to do that in real life, because they don’t want to, you know, cause themselves any pain from taking that loss and losing, you know, money, short term, right? Right trade, real life. So that’s typically where it is. It’s from the emotional standpoint, I think. And then if you want to get kind of more on the technical side, usually it’s unrealistic, because of the fills are going to be unrealistic because there’s, you know, on anything that’s low liquidity, you can get in and out with, you know, 100 million shares. But it doesn’t affect the actual, you know, right market, which isn’t realistic.
Scott Ritzheimer
Right, right. So having done this a time or two with others as well, what have you found? Really makes a great trader. So is there some type of personality characteristic? Is there our portfolio requirement for folks who’ve come through the program and had success, what has separated them from the rest?
Christopher Hnatko
Well, I think, you know, one of the things that separates them from the rest is, you know, we go through this process of understanding and figuring out, first and foremost, how much risk you should be taking for trade, and we start at a small threshold where it doesn’t have a massive effect on your mentality. And. Or, you know, from you from a emotional standpoint. And when you take that approach, you don’t have any emotion while you’re trading. And what I mean by that is you’re able to make decisions that are going to be more logical, rather than emotional. So you need to start at a lower level and understand exactly what your risk, you know, profile should be before actually taking a trade. A lot of the times, people start out they don’t actually plan this, and that’s what causes a lot of issues, because, most likely, they’re trading with too big of size, and that’s causing them to lose, you know, a lot of money from them making emotional decisions, whether it’s, you know, buying aggressively or selling aggressively and freaking out, etc. That’s not a scalable behavior. What is scalable is figuring out exactly you know how much you want to take, what your risk actually should be per position, and then actually planning out your exit strategy before you even get into a position as well. Right? That’s as important as you know, as as anything as you know, understanding the technicals behind something that you’re doing, understanding, you know, the news or whatever. If you don’t understand how much you’re risking per trade, you probably are going to, you know, you’ve already lost. You’re going to make mistakes over the course of time. You might get lucky a time or two, but most likely, you’re going to make some form of a mistake that’s going to have a large impact on your bottom line. That’s, that’s the main thing I find. So the risk reward side, we get that dialed in, we get these statistics and probabilities figured out, aka what you’re actually good at, what’s going to be scalable from a behavioral standpoint, and then from there, we can kind of move on and go through the process without those nuances figured out. Most People Fail. The risk reward is not necessarily talked about as much as it is, and that’s the biggest impact to anyone’s trading on the bottom line.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So Chris, before I let you go, I do have a question that I want to ask. It’s one that ask all my guests. I’m interested to see what you’d have to say. But the question is this, what is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that? One thing you wish every founder watching or listening today knew?
Christopher Hnatko
I think risk reward of what we just kind of talked about, is actually spending the time to figure it out what makes sense for you. And that’s from a business standpoint. That’s from a trading standpoint. A lot of the things that you learn in trading and the behaviors you learn in trading can be carried over into your real life or your business. You know anything that you do in business, because if you don’t understand the threshold of risk that you should be taking, you know when you start a new venture, or whatever things try to things tend to get out of hand fairly quickly. So understanding that risk threshold and where you should be in every single situation you put yourself within, I think is massively key, because it allows you the ability to operate, from a logic standpoint, look at every single you know, piece of data and actually make a decision that makes sense. Also, you’re not going to be over leveraged. You’re not going to be stressed out. Things will be planned. From that standpoint, it’s extremely important in trading. And I think you know, when you approach it that way, your ability to scale over the course of time increases, and your ability to succeed increases as well, because you’re not taking such large failures that you know, make you or you know, let’s you know. I’ll give you an example from a mathematical standpoint. Let’s say you know you risk, you know half, half of your, you know bank account, or your, of your, you know, trading account, etc, on some sort of a decision or trade, and it doesn’t work out well, the next thing that you do, you have to make 100% to get back to square one. So understanding that you can’t take on too much risk at any single, single given point in time or any opportunity, makes a lot of sense, because it’s not going to be scalable. Otherwise, that’s that’s probably the biggest thing. I would say.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, Chris. I know there’s folks listening today that love to get into trading, either on the side or even full time. How can they learn more about the work that you all do at Spartan trading? And where can they find out more?
Christopher Hnatko
Sure, you can go to spartantrading.com There’s plenty of information there. You can follow us on YouTube. We have a pretty large account. There a lot of free information for you guys to use. And of course, you can follow us on x as well, which we’re very busy posting, you know, during market hours and all day long. So those are the three areas I’d probably look at.
Scott Ritzheimer
Fantastic, fantastic. Well, Chris, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for what you all do at Spartan appreciate your time. Really was a privilege and honor having you here. And for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean the world to us. Hope. You got as much out of this conversation as I know I did, and I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Christopher Hnatko
Christopher Hnatko is the founder of Spartan Trading, an online trading education platform that empowers aspiring and experienced traders to master the stock and options markets. With decades of experience spanning hedge funds, financial institutions, and live trading floors, Chris has seen firsthand how traditional trading education falls short—and he built Spartan Trading to fill that gap. Chris’s approach is actionable, hands-on, and results-driven. He doesn’t just teach theory—he walks traders through real-time market opportunities, high-probability setups, and decision-making strategies that accelerate learning and build confidence.
Want to learn more about Christopher Hnatko’s work at Spartan? Check out his website at https://spartantrading.com/