Toronto’s Matt Choi, founder and CEO of Certus Trading, is a self-taught, professional trader with more than 17 years of trading experience. A Chartered Market Technician (CMT), he specializes in trading stocks, ETFs, options, commodity and financial futures, and currencies.

According to the Certus Trading website, the longtime entrepreneur owned and operated a successful automobile dealership after he earned his MBA from McMaster University.

Matt Choi is relatively unique among traders. While many learn how to trade by working on the exchange floor or for large hedge funds, Choi began trading his own money while still in college. This provided him with distinct advantages, including making mistakes as he was learning. Once he achieved expert level as a trader, he launched Certus Trading to share with others the knowledge that took him years to acquire. Today he offers a variety of courses, all designed to help traders learn the ropes, develop their skills and maximize investments. He also publishes two newsletters that provide a wealth of information.

How did Matt Choi get started in trading?

As a child growing up in Hong Kong, Choi spent lots of time with his grandfather who was a stockbroker and investor with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. He needed to go into town a couple of times a week to settle his trades, and oftentimes, Choi rode the bus to the exchange with him. Matt Choi says during the bus rides, his grandfather would talk to him about stocks and the stock market, how to pick great companies, and his general investing philosophy.

After his family relocated to Canada, Choi discovered that he had a really good knack for finding good stocks. During his time at university, he won some stock trading competitions and realized that trading came pretty naturally to him.  That reignited his interests in the markets and had him reminiscing about his talks with his grandfather.

Another pivotal moment in Choi’s life came when he enlisted the guidance of a mentor, the late George Fontanills. In addition to learning new trading strategies, George Fontanills helped Matt Choi uncover his true trading personality, a rule-based trader who favors swing trading.

Matt Choi talks more about what sparked his interest in trading in the following video:

What is Certus Trading?

Founded in 2011, Certus Trading is a trading education company owned and operated by Matt Choi, a successful trader for 17 years who learned by doing and now shares his knowledge with his students. The educational programs offered by Certus Trading include courses on stocks and bonds, as well as options and commodities trading.  Certus Trading and Matt Choi will show you strategies that work across multiple asset classes so that you can find high probability trading opportunities in all market conditions.

Choi has said he started Certus Trading to help people achieve their dreams of being better, more knowledgeable traders. He says he’s passionate about teaching his students the same trading strategies he has mastered.

What programs does Certus Trading offer?

Through Certus Trading, Choi delivers a wide and diverse variety of educational opportunities designed to help traders at all levels. They include:

Advance Options Strategy Blueprint (AOSB)
This eight-week program, created especially for aggressive swing traders who are looking for high rewards with controlled risk, is the cornerstone of the Certus Trading offerings. The advantage to this program is that it involves trades that can be done all year long, regardless of market conditions. As part of this program Choi provides advanced options strategies that recommend a steady stream of high probability trades.

Live, Two-Day Options Mastermind
Would you like to meet with Matt? For AOSB students, the two-day Options Mastermind is an intensive in-person workshop during which attendees learn trading options from Choi himself.

Profit Scheduler Club for Options
Based on the premise that the big Wall Street banks make the same trades over and over again, year after year, on the same trading day each year, this annual membership provides students with the opportunity to maximize their profits through access to these profit schedules as well as Choi’s best options trade each week.

Trading Big Moves with Options
Traders who want to make big, profitable moves — either up or down — in stocks, even when they’re wrong on the direction of the move, this “hedged” strategy plays both sides. According to Choi, this is exactly how professional traders make money with options regardless of price direction.

These are just a few examples of the educational options provided by Certus Trading. In recent years day trading has become huge, and for many it’s become a way to achieve wealth. But, as Choi says, you have to know what you’re doing.

Matt Choi’s advice for breaking into trading

In an interview, Matt Choi had this to say about breaking into the trading game:

“You have to really take an interest in the industry. You have to be willing to learn about its history, and how it has evolved over time.  Once you have a good understanding, you can start honing in on a few things that work best for you. You can start by focusing on one or two asset classes. You start to expand and then eventually come back to the things that you’re most passionate about.”

Finding your trading personality

Choi believes that learning profitable trading strategies is important, but says it’s more important to discover who you are as a trader, a term which he coined as your “trading personality.”  Early on, Choi discovered swing trading was the right avenue for him.

Choi has said “I think all successful traders stand out for their own unique reasons. You need to find a mentor who you resonate with. You need to find someone who trades at a similar time frame or speed, someone who trades markets that you are interested in, and even someone who has similar outlooks in life. If those criteria all line up, then chances are it would be a good fit for you and you will be successful.”

Here, Choi talks extensively on the three psychological mindsets a trader needs to beat Wall Street: 

Certus Trading in summary

Matt Choi has said that the one thing you can expect from his courses and programs is that they are very methodical. Through easily understandable, step-by-step details, students who take the courses are educated by a seasoned professional.  As they become more advanced traders, they are shown all of the nuances to further enhance their consistency.

For instance, by the end of taking a Certus Trading’s options course, students should be able to choose stocks that are set to take off over the next 12 months, structure their trades to make a more than 100% return and hedge trades to make money.  Choi says, “You will also be able to put your trades in cruise control mode, so you can simply “set it and forget it.

If you are simply looking for lessons in day trading, Certus Trading may not be the best for you.  However, if your personality is such where you prefer to trade less and take the swings in the markets, then you are a good fit for Matt Choi’s trading style.

Final thoughts

Trading can be a very rewarding experience, but you must learn the details first. There is a lot of risk involved and this can outweigh the returns for those who jump the gun and start trading without being fully prepared. Take the time to work on your education — it’s the most important aspect of trading.

Susan Paige