Preview:

Ryan just got back from the New York Stock Exchange, and he’s sharing what it was like to stand on the floor during the iconic closing bell. Go behind the scenes to learn more about the modern trading environment, one that’s quieter, more high-tech, and dominated by algorithms.

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More About This Episode:

Ryan discusses what percentage of trades are now executed by computers, and what that means for volatility, investor behavior, and long-term planning.

He also breaks down the growing role of AI in market reactions, the importance of having stop-loss strategies in place, and how real-time data is reshaping the way investors approach both risk and opportunity. Tune it to learn how you can navigate today’s fast-moving markets with confidence and stay disciplined when volatility triggers emotional decision-making.

Here’s what we cover in this episode:

📈 What advisors on the floor think about 2025’s market outlook

🎯 Why clarity and coaching matter more than timing

🧭 Why old-school investing strategies may no longer apply

⚡ How algorithmic trading is accelerating market volatility

0:00 – Intro

0:51 – AI & High Frequency Trading

3:09 – Is Volatility Here to Stay?

7:20 – Principles for the New Market

8:25 – Stops & Pivot Point Planning

9:41 – Being On The Floor on the NYSE

12:03 – Final Thoughts


Resources:

Retire Pilots – https://retirepilots.com

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Pilot Tax – https://pilot-tax.com/

The Pilot’s Advisor Podcast is also on video. Watch & Subscribe on YouTube: https://bit.ly/3EIEBW2

Connect with Pilot-Tax: https://pilot-tax.com/

Episode Transcription:

(Note, this is an automated transcription. Please forgive any errors.)

Walter Storholt 

Hey, welcome to another episode of the pilots advisor. Today’s a special edition of the episode, because Ryan just went to the New York Stock Exchange and actually got to walk on the exchange see the closing bell live, and had a great experience. So we’re going to learn from him what that experience was like and talk to him all about it on today’s episode, I’ll grab Ryan and we’ll get started. You. Back for another episode of Walter storholtz alongside the pilots advisor himself, Ryan Fleming and Ryan, this is gonna be a fun episode today. I get to hear all about your experience on the New York Stock Exchange. My friend, yeah,

Ryan Fleming 

that’s right, I took a took a nice trip up to NYC. Got to spend the day on the New York Stock Exchange, got to have some really cool conversations with some people on the trading floor and just how, how the the dynamics of investing are changing. So I think it’ll be a good conversation today, for sure. We’ll definitely

Walter Storholt 

get into a little bit of market talk while we’re at it, of course, and just kind of where things stand right now, we’re recording today’s episode on Cinco de Mayo, May 5, 2025 just to give you some context for when you are watching it, but we’ll talk a little bit about what we’ve been through so far this year, and kind of the current read on the market as we go through as well. But yeah, Ryan, just take us through what what led to this and tell us a little bit about the day. Yeah,

Ryan Fleming 

no, it was an awesome opportunity. Some of the people I work with sent me an invite to to join them for, you know, a day of training, you know, kind of like an advisor conference, but then also having it in New York City at the stock exchange, so we’re able to go down to the floor watch the closing bell. So it was an awesome opportunity. Got to do that. And some of the things I really want to talk about, not only, you know, obviously, that’s a amazing experience, and I appreciate, you know, being asked to go do that, but the conversations I had up there while I was up there, I think, is something that I want viewers to really hear and understand. And one of the things that really stuck out to me was we know that in the new environment that we live in, that AI and technology and algorithms are going to affect how markets react. And I had no clue how crazy it’s getting, and one of the biggest things we talked about was high frequency trading and how quickly they can trade now, and also that 80% of every single trade that’s made is already been being made by computers. So I think we saw that last month. I mean, we saw a little bit of a sell off, and then there was a ton of automatic selling, and the next thing you know, the market was, you know, in panic mode, when half of it was actually done by computers. Wow. And then, of course, behind that, then we had retail investors that were panicking, and then they were selling. So we saw this, this massive overreaction in the market. And one of the things that we were discussing, because of, because of AI and how quickly they can trade and and how different it’s getting, is a couple the fact that the market is going to continue to get more and more volatile, which is scary if you’re making emotional decisions, but also at the same time that volatility will provide some opportunity if you know how to handle it. Well,

Walter Storholt 

that’s really interesting that you mentioned that I am just shocked to hear that it’s 80% of that is just all kind of being done by computers, and we’re working algorithms into this whole setup as well. And it’s just kind of wild to see how fast that causes that volatility to spike. And as you mentioned, it’s going to become something more and more frequent that we have to deal with. So I don’t know that makes me a little nervous, because the news obviously likes to grab onto negative headlines and run with it, and so I feel like we’re just going to constantly get stories of the market experienced a historic drop, and that’s just because things are going to get more and more volatile. But volatile. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that things were were worse than, you know, prior drops of kind of a similar stature. I don’t know. It’s hard to get grips onto it, I suppose,

Ryan Fleming 

yeah, and I think it’s even more scary too, because you have, you know, like, say, the 10% pullback we had this year was the fastest one in like, 75 years, or something like that, and you wonder if they’re going to get worse now, the other side too. If you’re in a portfolio where you have investments where they’re not being actively managed, and you’re sitting there in a, you know, the old school way of low cost ETFs passive strategy, let it do its thing. It’s going to be harder and harder for you to make up those pullbacks. And you know, it’s scary to me to see if this is going to be the new market. How invest? How can we get it so investors aren’t going to hurt themselves even more? Because, once again, behavioral finance and those emotional decisions that the people make are one of the things that hurt them the most. I

Walter Storholt 

know that’s one of your favorite subjects. I imagine emotions were something that were, I don’t know, did you feel your emotions change being actually on the floor of the stock exchange? Is it? It may not be the craziness that it was back in the I don’t know, 80s and 90s, when you see those famous videos of the craziness of the stock exchange, but it’s got to be a pretty good energy down there on the floor.

Ryan Fleming 

Well. Oh, absolutely. And now, you know, you don’t have all those people standing around, but you got, you know, guys that are market makers, that are sitting there in front of like, six or seven different screens, and it’s all the computers making the trade. So it’s, it’s the heat alone in the in the on the floor from all the different computers and TV screens, you can just, yeah,

Walter Storholt 

no kidding. I mean, you you’re in a room with like, two or three monitors, you can start feeling that heat come off, right?

Ryan Fleming 

Yeah. And then, of course, I was standing right behind the closing bell. And, you know, I know we have a clip of that where I was, you know, the idiot in the background, standing like, you know, on live TV. And I had a few of my few, my clients and friends start sending me screenshots of it, but, but just the heat off of that alone was was pretty wild. I don’t know. I think, I think obviously being on the exchange was exciting, but, but the tech, not technology side of it. And I know we talk about AI now all the time, but it’s coming, and it’s real and and I think that if you’re you know, using some of those old strategies, you’re probably going to get left behind or hurt, because the new market reality with high frequency trading, it’s here, and it’s happening.

Walter Storholt 

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Ryan Fleming 

you know, obviously the same, you know, the same principles hold true. You know, we always talk about, you know, don’t stock pick, don’t market time. Don’t track record invest, but I think, I think that the technology, the AI and the algorithms might have to play a part in handling the market, like having a plan for when these dips happen and taking advantage of them. We might be in a situation where you have to have that downside protection by having stops, you know, like a stop on the top end and the bottom end. It’s just getting more and more complicated. Is what I’m seeing. I mean, you know, ignorance is bliss, but, but, you know, peeking behind the curtains and see what’s going on, it’s like, oh my gosh. How are we going to handle this? And how are we going to get better and and I you know, it’s it makes for an interesting conversation, for sure. Tell me

Walter Storholt 

a little bit more about stop. So you’re talking about, instead of riding through the ups and the downs, this is different from timing. We’re not trying to time the bottom or or time the top and get out of the way. But you’re talking about kind of like just emergency stops that when the volatility drops so quickly, it can get you out with a plan to get back in soon. Or how do you implement that in a client’s plan? Yeah, something

Ryan Fleming 

that we call pivot points. But anytime you buy into a position, mathematically, you can calculate a top stop and a bottom stop. So we don’t know which way the market’s going to go, but mathematically, we can actually determine the best time to get out so you can lock in that say whether you can lock in that gain, or, let’s say, the market’s tumbling, it’s protecting you from the downsides. You only got a little bit of that loss, and then you get back out, and then the technology will buy you right back in with those same stops. So depending on how quickly the market’s moving or changing, it can protect you at some point from not, you know, going right back in. So it’s, it’s a it’s pretty crazy stuff. I don’t know what to tell you. And of course, it takes a lot of money and research and and power to put these things together. But because of automated trading and computers, it’s possible.

Walter Storholt 

How does this change the communication there on the floor, like are, are the brokers or the people that are on the floor? Are they communicating directly with clients? Is it, you know, wholesale folks that are buying? Is it more just of a tour at this point to go to the New York Stock Exchange? Is it more nostalgia than anything? Mm. Well,

Ryan Fleming 

I kind of think it is because it’s, you know, the exchange is almost quiet. I mean, it’s very quiet on the floor, nobody’s yelling or, you know, it’s not like the old movies you saw, or, you know, the Wall Street or boiler room or whatever. I mean, this is not that’s, it’s, it’s pretty quiet. It’s

Walter Storholt 

kind of sad. Everything’s coming online, in a way, fun to watch in the past, right? The craziness,

Ryan Fleming 

yeah, yeah. There’s not nobody’s in there smoking and throwing pieces of paper and yelling and fighting. There was, there was none of that, but it was, it was definitely a treat. And it made it a little bit easier being there as well, simply because on Thursday and Friday of last week, I feel like the market really started to get a lot of traction. We, you know, going in the right direction. We had two big days where the market was up, and I think that helped the experience talking with a lot of other advisors that were there. I think that the general consensus is that everybody feels like the market’s actually pretty healthy. Now, granted, we still have to make up for the losses that happen because of a lot of the tariff conversation, but almost everybody in agreement really feels like we Inc a couple of these deals with a few countries that the market’s really going to take off and and no different than anything else. I mean, whatever trade deal you negotiate with any of these countries, you know whether it’s a 5% difference, 6% difference, 10% difference, whatever that trade balance difference is that’s an immediate 10% 5% whatever it is difference that we know for the foreseeable future on every single good that is traded back and forth. So it’s actually pretty massive.

Walter Storholt 

So that that sentiment was very palpable on the floor, it sounds like 100%

Ryan Fleming 

and of course, you know, every, I think everybody realizes that China is probably the biggest one, the one that matters the most. But when you start looking at some of those other countries over in Asia, you know, with Vietnam and or even India, where there’s, you know, they still have the ability for cheap, cheap labor, those those deals are going to really matter. And I think we have what’s probably going to be a bit of a bumpy road, but a really exciting maybe third and fourth quarter of this year. I think it’s gonna be interesting. We

Walter Storholt 

will stay tuned to it all. Any final comments on your experience down there, Ryan, or things we should we should be thinking about here, kind of in this early May time frame,

Ryan Fleming 

not really, I know I shared a couple pictures with you, and then we decided we should probably talk about it and just, you know, discuss the experience. But just like any other advisor conference, you learn a lot. You hope to come home with a couple golden nuggets. But yeah, but being there in New York City right on the exchange, was an awesome opportunity. I’m happy to have done it, and I glad we got shared talk about it. Yeah, thanks

Walter Storholt 

for sharing the pictures with us, and that video of you in the background there on live TV was pretty cool. And also your thoughts on the market. So to our audio listeners out there, definitely go check out this episode on YouTube so you can see the pictures of Ryan, and we show them throughout the episode. So it’s fun for you to check that out and leave a comment. Tell us what you think of Ryan’s of Ryan’s outfit, nice suit, my friend. Good, good. Good showing up on the stock exchange. That was

Ryan Fleming 

good. I appreciate it. At least I didn’t have to wear a tie. Looking sharp,

Walter Storholt 

looking sharp. Well, awesome. Well, don’t forget, if you are watching on YouTube, to like and subscribe to the channel so you don’t miss notifications for future episodes. Please share these videos with others who might find them helpful, especially, of course, if you are a pilot, Ryan is the pilots advisor, and you can find all sorts of great resources linked in the description of today’s show, so be sure to go check that out as well, and you can get some really direct advice for the industry from a financial advisor. And also, of course, fellow pilot, if you’re new to the show and didn’t know that, oh yeah, Ryan’s pilot as well. So go check all those resources info out in the description of the show, and Ryan will talk to you again

Ryan Fleming 

soon. Sounds good Walter can’t wait.

Speaker 1 

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